Six months.
I spent six months wandering the world the Silus had left me on. I had a feeling that I was from here. The feeling was confirmed by Silky, but I had yet to find anything of any significance to me.
I sat down on a bench in a mall in the City of Richmond. I had been exploring for hours today alone and was worn down.
Silky sat next to me. "You think you can find what you're looking for?"
"Yeah. I'll find it," I told her, also trying to convince myself. "I feel like this particular area was of some significance.
"I see," she said. "Well -"
She was interrupted by screaming. Lots of it.
I stood up and rushed to where it was coming from. I arrived in the center of the walkway to see a huge, tentacled monster, vaguely resembling a human, smashing basically everything. Screaming at the top of its lungs.
I yelled at everyone to get out of the building and readied myself for a fight.
As soon as I did so, the creature turned its attention to me.
"You," it said with such hatred I had a hard time believing that it had actually said it.
I readied myself as it charged. I sidestepped and kicked it in the stomach, following up with a nice (even if I do say so myself) uppercut to its chin.
I sent it flying backward. It then leapt to its feet with a growl.
"What exactly are you?" I wondered aloud as it charged again.
I sidestepped once more, but this time it played tricky, it used its tentacles to reach out in every possible direction, several grabbing my ankles and wrists. It threw me against the wall hard, sending me through a few displays along the way. I looked up in time to see the prize car they had on the mall floor sailing through the air toward me. I held out my hand and it exploded.
That hadn't been my intention, but it would suffice.
I then cloaked my arms in red lightning and went back at the beast, pummeling it with an onslaught. I had to admit that its resilience was impressive.
I finished my combo with a dropkick to the head, sending it face first into the concrete floor.
Even still, it struggled against me. I held my arm up to the sky and summoned a massive javelin of red lightning. Planting one foot firmly on the ground and the other on the creature's head, I brought down the bolt hard and it cried out as it was electrocuted with billions upon billions of volts of electricity.
When its body had stopped twitching, I removed my foot and backed away, making sure it was dead. When it twitched one more time, I incinerated it. There weren't even ashes left.
I hadn't wanted to do that as it caused excess damage to the surroundings, but at this point, it would probably have been cheaper to simply level the building.
I walked outside, rubbing the back of my head where it had struck the wall. I turned to look back and make sure everything was decent enough. I nodded, confident and then turned to see dozens of cameras aimed at me.
"Nier?" Someone asked.
I warped up onto the roof. "Silky, you good?" I asked.
"Yeah," she answered from somewhere off to my left.
"Good." then I warped us away.
-
I warped to a nearby cafe, where I landed in street clothes as my more common attire was too noticeable.
"They're getting faster to arrive at the scene," Silky whispered.
I nodded. This wasn't the first time this had happened. I had felled a few threats in the past six months, and after the second and third one, the media had started catching up to me. They would try to stop me so they could ask me questions, but they obviously never could.
I looked up at the tv screen behind the counter.
"-since his three-month hiatus, it is nice to see that he is finally active again."
"Yes, Jerry that's right. But he's still as unresponsive to calls and questions as he ever was."
"True, true," Jerry admitted. "But maybe he thinks we would be in danger if we did."
I snorted. I quite simply didn't feel like answering their questions.
"-we've asked a representative from the military to answer these questions for us."
"Yes, thank you Bill," a man in military fatigues appeared on screen. "I will answer your questions as best I can."
I listened to what he was about to say.
"So, in regard to whether he is a military experiment or not," the man said. "I am not kept up to date on any top-secret projects, and as I have not been instructed to not speak with you, I must assume that he is his own person."
A small picture of me in my usual outfit appeared on screen.
"What his powers might be," the man began. "Is actually almost completely unknown. We have sent teams to each site to test for any kind of residue - chemical or radiation - that he may have left behind, but there is none. As near as our scientists can figure, he must be utilizing some kind of ultra-high tech beyond our current comprehension."
I snorted again.
"If you think it's so funny, you should just go and tell them," Silky whispered.
I shook my head and started walking out of the cafe. If I told the world where my power came from, they wouldn't believe me, and those that would, would become so desperate for it they would tear themselves and those around them apart trying to attain it.
"Why not?" Silky asked, as we stepped outside.
I explained to her my reasoning.
"Well, that may be true, but it might be worth a shot. At least the world would hear the truth about God for once."
"If I explained my powers," I began. "I would break so many minds. And the message of where they came from would have the opposite effect of what you may be thinking. People would go seeking God for a reward, rather than for forgiveness."
Silky scoffed, mostly because she knew I was right.
"I need to find the rest of my memories," I said, changing the subject.
"Yeah," she agreed. "If you recover the rest, you can help me more efficiently."
"Ouch," I said, feigning pain by clutching my chest.
"Oh, stop it."
I laughed.
"Nier?" Someone behind me asked.
I froze. I had heard the exact same name back at the mall. I knew it meant something. But what?
"Nierix?" The same voice said. And that was it. For a second, everything was quiet.
I whipped around to see who called that name, and there she was.
Her long blonde hair was tied back in a ponytail, keeping her crystal blue eyes unshrouded. She stood about my height, an athletic build, with shorts, a tank top, and running shoes.
It almost seemed as if the world stopped.
My name.
The pain was so intense that at first it only registered as a slight discomfort. Then it exploded like a bomb behind my eyes.
Memories. Countless memories, even more than when I had touched the sphere in the garden, flooded my brain. All at once. It felt like they were all trying to get my attention at once. A hundred people trying to fit through the door at the same time.
I couldn't move, I couldn't even scream. I just stood there, trying to process all of this.
When the pain finally receded, I found that I was crying.
"Carmen," I breathed in disbelief.
She ran forward and gripped me tight in her arms. "Nierix," she said. "You're back."
I wrapped my arms around her, tears still streaming from my eyes. "Yeah, I'm back."