Second Genesis

Chapter 568: Hate

The Immovable’s irises had practically swallowed her pupils.

She had felt Grey’s power before, but the situation where he had sent her flying was completely different from what she had just witnessed. Back then, she had infiltrated his Neural Frame because she believed him weak, and at the time, she had been right.

However, that same intrusion had compromised her position, because she had willingly extended part of herself deep into Grey’s territory before he suddenly wrested control back.

It could be said that Grey had only sent her flying because she had already opened the door for him, and that was exactly why she had calmed down so quickly afterward. No matter how surprising the result had been, she had still believed herself to be in control of the larger situation.

This time, there was no such excuse.

The Pope wasn’t a hand-to-hand combatant like a Paladin or one of the Guardians, but that hardly meant he was defenseless. His senses, especially his Resonant Sense, were exceptional, his reaction speed should have been beneath almost no one in the Church other than Sister Teresa, and the restraint and stalling techniques of Monks were precisely the sort of abilities designed to stop someone from simply rushing them down.

Yet Grey had crossed the distance once, attacked once, and the Pope was simply dead.

The Immovable’s gaze slowly shifted toward Grey. He had entered the Church already covered in a fine mist of blood, something everyone had ignored because there had been too many other shocking things happening at once, but now those dried droplets across his face, hair, and clothes seemed to carry a completely different meaning.

Whatever explanations everyone had been using to convince themselves they were still in control had begun falling apart.

DONG.

The mournful toll of an ancient bell echoed from somewhere high above them, its deep note rolling through the Church hard enough to make the stone beneath their feet tremble.

Grey’s eyes narrowed as Holy Energy began leaking from the Pope’s corpse in broad streams, rising from his flesh like mist and being drawn upward toward the bell.

Grey barely had time to wonder what the hell that meant before he felt something shift behind him.

Sister Teresa’s hand sign locked onto his back and her energy moved.

Grey’s expression became ice cold.

The last time he had fallen into the hands of a Nun, things had gone badly enough that he still remembered every miserable second of it. One of those women had placed some strange curse on his Neural Frame that reversed his inputs, so every time he tried to move his left arm, his right one answered instead. Fighting his own body had been one of the most infuriating things he had ever experienced.

Then there had been the Oracle.

That woman could stop time.

For whatever reason, the ability hadn’t worked properly on Grey himself, but he had no intention of assuming that would happen twice. Whatever level that Oracle had been at, Sister Teresa was clearly operating in a completely different realm, and if she possessed anything even remotely similar, Grey didn’t want to find out how difficult breaking free would be.

Fortunately, there was one very large difference between then and now.

Grey didn’t fear anyone who relied on Holy Energy anymore.

"GREY! PLEASE!" Petri shouted from across the room, panic cracking through his voice. "AT LEAST SPARE HER!"

There was probably nobody present who understood how broken Grey’s current relationship with Holy Energy had become better than Petri. He had seen Grey interfere with it before, had watched him twist and suppress it in ways that shouldn’t have been possible, and now he had just watched Grey kill the Pope before the man could even properly react. If Grey had managed that, then whatever control he possessed over Holy Energy had clearly advanced to an entirely different level.

Sister Teresa’s blessing surged toward Grey’s back.

White-gold tendrils erupted from his Bringer of Light Gloves in response, and the world around them seemed to warp under the pressure. The light didn’t simply scatter outward, it folded into precise threads that curved through the air, bending straight lines around themselves as though space had become soft.

Sister Teresa’s blessing froze before it could settle over Grey, the white-gold energy wrapping around it, squeezing, twisting, and forcing it back toward its source.

Grey moved.

BANG.

The stone beneath his feet cratered and a streak of white-gold crossed the hall. Sister Teresa’s eyes widened, but Grey was already standing in front of her before the sound of his acceleration had finished echoing through the Church.

His hand came down toward her wrists.

CRUNCH.

White-gold power compressed around his palm and hammered through the blessings protecting her hands. The force distorted the air around the impact and drove Sister Teresa down onto her knees, cracks spreading through the stone beneath them as both of her hands collapsed into little more than bloody pulp.

Her scream tore through the hall.

Grey stood over her, the white-gold threads still winding around his arms like living veins of light, and the coldness in his gaze made even Petri stop moving for a moment.

"I really fucking hate overly nice people," Grey said, looking down at her.

Sister Teresa breathed hard through the pain, staring at what remained of her hands.

"Only people like you actually make me go back on my own word." Grey’s jaw tightened slightly, because he had told her that if she acted again, he would take her head, and yet here she was still breathing. Somehow, that annoyed him more than it probably should have. "But I promise you this time, if you dare take action again, it won’t be your hands, it’ll be your head."

Sister Teresa didn’t move, but neither did anyone else.

Grey slowly straightened, then turned his head toward The Immovable. White-gold light continued rolling off him in thin streams as his eyes settled on the strongest Guardian present.

The Immovable met his gaze.