Gods and Men, Ch. X
March 31, 2008
By J.D. Cook
X. Empire State Building
The pair made their way from Hazleton into New York City in a week or so. They had avoided confrontations with Loki’s forces which consisted of brain washed, former U.S. citizens. Inside the city it was hard to avoid being spotted. Tanks patrolled the streets and soldiers conducted building searches. It was a small miracle that the pair made it to the Empire State Building unseen, and they hid in a dark corridor, once inside.
Jeremiah drew all the electricity in New York City into him through a wire that ran below him. This way, no one saw the electricity fly into him which would have exposed their position. There was so much power in Jeremiah that his eye’s glowed white and he began to glow.
“Ready?” asked Don as he loaded his M-16.
“Oh yeah.” said Jeremiah as he stood up and began to walk towards Loki’s suites. The ground began to shake and many of the men began to fall to the ground. Don’s M-16 sent bullets past Jeremiah’s ear into the enemy troops. Suddenly, lightning erupted from Jeremiah, and attacked all the enemys in sight. Don ran up behind him and followed him into the building.
“Well, you handled that!” Don said, amazed.
In Loki’s suite on the top of the building, the lights suddenly went out. He got up and tried the light switch, but nothing happened. He walked to the elevator, but that didn’t work either. A flash of light came from the room he had just left. Loki ran back and looked around, deciding the flash came from outside. He looked out the window and saw that all of his perimeter security had been destroyed by waht appeared to be a massive earthquake through the city. One of the many perks of being a god, was the ability to instantly summon real-time knowledge. Loki shivered with fear as he gained knowledge that someone was in pursuit of him who carried Thor’s hammer.
The walk to the elevators was easy considering the lightning had killed or injured almost all of the enemies.
“This is where I leave you.” said Don as they reached the elevators.
“You are not coming up to tackle Loki with me?”
“Sorry. I’m not much use off the ground, but I will make sure that no more troops get upstairs.” Don ran and took up a position behind a huge desk.
Jeremiah turned but the elevator didn’t work. After a moment he realized it needed power and he supplied it. Jeremiah knew that Loki was waiting for him on the top floor.
The doors opened to a long corridor and Jeremiah walked to the end of it where there stood a lone door. He opened it and inside sat a handsome young gentleman with dark hair and dark eyes.
“Welcome back.” I thought I finished you off. That pesky Odin has something to with this, doesn’t he?”
Jeremiah stood silent.
“I bet they filled your mind with all kinds of nasty things about how I’m so bad and need to be destroyed, didn’t they?” Loki continued.
“I didn’t do anything! Look, New York is fine.” he said, motioning towards his large windows.
Outside the window was a beautiful and pristine New York skyline that hadn’t been there a second ago. “No more games, Loki! I’m going to defeat you regardless of what you say!” said Jeremiah as he charged at Loki and held Thor’s hammer ready to swing. Loki jumped up and changed into the menacing, monster form that had defeated Jeremiah a decade ealier. The hammer blow, coupled with Jeremiah’s electricity, sent Loki out the window, but Jeremiah couldn’t stop himself from falling out along with him.
“Just like old times!” shouted Loki as his wings started to propel him up again.
Jeremiah threw Thor’s hammer as he fell passed Loki and at the same time he sent the full force of New York’s electricity at him. The hammer tore one of Loki’s wings clean off. As it fell back to earth, it managed to pound Loki in the back while the electricity put a huge hole in Loki’s chest.
Don was firing shots at and disturbing the ground beneath Loki’s onrushing military personnel when he heard a huge crash outside, followed by a second. Loki’s military immediately stopped, confused at what they were doing. Don raced passed them. Outside in the street lay three figures imbedded in the concrete; A bald man with a scarred face and black robes, a plastic sillouette of a man with orange hair and strange robes, and Jeremiah.
He was laying with his arms out and blood pooling around him. Thor’s hammer landed next to him. A whirl wind came from nowhere, and swept up the body of the plastic sillouette straight into the clouds. The wind moved to the hammer and took that as well. Then it moved towards the corpse Jeremiah.
Jeremiah looked up and saw the beautiful Pruor staring down at him through a long, cloudy funnel. In an instance, she winked and the tunnel vanished, replaced by the skyline of New York City.
“He died a hero!” yelled Don falling to his knees. “HE DIED A HERO!”
“I like to think I lived as a hero!” said Jeremiah softly, standing steadily beside Don.