When the last of his Horsemen fell, Nero felt their deaths like an ache in his soul- but he didn't have a soul, so he overlooked the sudden emptiness, the sudden feeling that he'd lost a limb, and continued fighting.
When an Angel took down his Prophet, Nero was deafened by the sudden, sharp silence. But then the sounds of battle returned, quieter than before, and he continued fighting.
When Nero reached Meggido and saw the Dragon die, it took a moment for his brain to follow the reality of her body hitting the ground. It was the longest moment of his life.
Nero had not been engineered to feel heartbreak, or sadness, or regret. In many ways, he was exactly what his creators had intended him to be; in lieu of feeling loss over the gaping empty space in his consciousness, he felt nothing more than pure, unadulterated fury.
He strode across the field of Meggido, gathering the powers of the fallen to himself: the Crown, the Sword, the Scales, the Skull, the Scroll with its seven seals. The Serpent's power was his own, now, released to him without restriction at her death. Nero glowed with the strength of his dead comrades; his counterpart was waiting for him, standing over Belinda's body, covered in her blood.
"Excuse me," he said politely. "The "covered in the blood of my enemies" look is just so last milennium. This is the twenty first century; the subjugation of humanity is all about style. I'm going to have to kill you before you become a terminal eyesore." He drew his scythe and opened the blade with a practiced twirl. "There's not enough room for two antichrists on this plane of existence, my friend- and I got here first. It's time to end this."
The Dark Messiah spread his hands (still dripping with her blood, black and acidic) and smiled disarmingly. "By all means, lets begin. But first, we'll need an audience." He gestured expansively to the battlefield and its carpet of corpses. "What's that old saying- you know, something to do with gladiators."
The dead rose up with a wail, dragging their pestilent and wasted bodies to surround the two of them. "That's right, now I remember. 'Morituri te salutamus.'" The weapon he drew from the air was a mirror to Nero's own. "Hail, Caesar."
Nero met his attack head on with a smile, all thoughts of death and emptiness forgotten in the face of battle.
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...*cough* Project: Apocalypse. It's another one of those stories that involves way too much religious wankery, and everyone ends up dead in the end. Or mostly dead. Or at least dead enough for government work, which really isn't all that dead at all. (It came out of that time in my life when I was reading Revelations far too much for my own good.) But hey, there are people with scythes running around. That makes everything better! ...sort of.
Nothing to say, really. (The dialogue bites, but Nero and Cain were weirdly socialized as small children, and they love ruining moods.) The title is Latin for "I have a catapult. Give me all your money or I'll throw an enormous rock at your head." It's a Nero sort of thing to say.
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