Father Mathias, The Oracle

He willed open the compartment hidden in his cybernetic arm. The multitude of purple pills that were usually there were nowhere to be seen. Mathias silently cursed at his thoughtlessness but redirected that rage towards what was happening around him.

“Damn humanity and its never ending greed.”

He hated all of them, not a single one was redeemable in his eyes. As the corpse of one of his followers hit the ground, he did not hesitate to kick it, causing the head to burst open like a watermelon..

"Now my shoes are dirty too! Ugh!"

The courier from the Church should have arrived today to give him new pills to keep his nerves, and the followers, at bay. But the damn Black Hand had surrounded both the Church and the Chinese's districts.

"Fuckers even put up some jammers." He thought while cleaning his shoe.

Before he could put his now clean foot down, one of the Angels covered him with his body. A dull noise followed soon after my many others.

"Baruchiel! Do something!" Father Mathias shouted while the bullet swarm threatened to kill him.

Not even a second later, the Angel named Baruchiel crashed down from heaven, turning the poor aggressor into mincemeat.

Not enjoying being in the grasp of a cold death machine, Mathias pushed the unnamed Angel away and walked up to what remained of the android's body.

Strangely enough, there was some blood on the ground mixed with broken down electronic components.

"A cyborg again?" He muttered under his breath.

The last assassin was a cyborg too, though strangely enough, there were none of them in the frontline, only type 3 Epsilon-class androids. While they were serviceable enough for an armed conflict against Mark I Enhanced Humans, they stood no chance against the elite of the various factions.

"Why…what is their plan?"

Being for so long off his pills made Father Mathias think too much. It was not a bad thing in itself, but coupled with the horrible paranoia that followed, it was not a state which he could stay much in.

Walking closer to the battlefield, he started noticing more corpses by the sides of the roads. They had begun piling up and were blocking the passage for his own followers, so they had to move them about.

"May God forgive you for your sinful lives…" Silently prayed the cyborg priest while passing by the corpse of a mother and her child.

The smell of blood weighted heavily in the air, lesser men among his followers would throw up at the sight of so much death. Thankfully his cybernetics allowed him to avoid being beholden by such humane limitations. Though this did not mean that he felt nothing while watching so much carnage.

A sudden influx of memories came to his mind. Mathias was looking down at someone's shoes. He was holding up a cup in his hands, towards the person's chest, although from the Oracle's seated position, he barely reached the man's waist.

Then a burning sensation spread from his hand, right into his arm. The cup he was holding was on the ground, the few snacks that were on it, now on the dirty ground.

He brought his hand closer to his chest and held it together. Soon after he crawled in a fetal position to cover most of his body from the kick that would follow shortly.

Mathias cybernetic legs gave out and he fell straight into a shallow pool of blood. Using his arms, he pushed himself upward. The pool reflected his sorry image to his cybernetic eye but the biological one showed him a different image: that of a malnourished child, with his sunken cheeks and eyes, his skin pale as if all the blood had been drained from him.

"Suriel! Carry me!" Father Mathias shouted.

Immediately, one of the Angels gently grabbed him by his waist and pulled him up, into their cold embrace.

The Oracle's hand covered his right eye. His nails started to pierce through what little natural skin remained on his face. The wave of pain somewhat brought him back to a normal state of mind, although his legs were still out of commission.

He sighed.

"Fly low towards the Iron Dragon District, Suriel." Then he turned his attention to Baruchiel, "You help the followers on the frontline but be ready for a possible recall."

Both the Angels took flight, one going north while the other going south. From up here, the carnage seemed to not impact him as much, though the sight of so many abandoned and broken down buildings made him remember things he hoped he'd forgotten.

"One never fully outgrows his past, uh?" He thought to himself with a weak smile.

Nevertheless he had grown, changed for the better, at least that's what he told himself. His talk with Jack, the man known as Legion came to his mind.

"We are not so different in the end…"

Before his mind could continue down on that pitiful lane, something impacted and then exploded on their position. Suriel was able to quickly use its wings to gently embrace Father Mathies and protect him from the shrapnels. They crashed into two apartments, the first one crumbling from the new angel-made hole that it sported shortly before turning into a pile of debris.

Father Mathias felt a sharp cut on the top of his head, followed by a burning sensation from his cybernetic eye. The Angel opened its wings and allowed him sight of his surroundings. They were in a living room of sorts, in front of them a hole that gave vision to the sky. Some meters away, he saw a figure holding something on its shoulder before disappearing out of sight. The cyborg got on his two feet and cautiously walked towards the opening.

“Was that… a rocket launcher?”

Whatever it was, considering the damage he had suffered, this time the Black Hand was not holding back on killing him. The Oracle ripped his cybernetic eye out. The impact had fractured his right eye-socket, the bone had penetrated the prosthetic and because of it, it was overheating. He did not want the plastic compliments inside his eye hole.

Father Mathias threw the eye to the side and beckoned for his Angel. Except for a broken wing, overall the almost-wholly android being behind him was still operational. A stray thought passed in the forefront of his mind: to recall the Archangel here by his side.

After all this would not be the last attempt on his life. He had underestimated them, but if they have other instruments such as those, then it would be next to impossible to see the beginning of a new day.

“Tsk.”

Even if he wanted to do that, he could not. The Archangel was busy dealing with the B-Class Unknowns of the Black Hand. If he recalled it, they could easily turn their full attention to the Iron Dragon faction and deal with them, before giving the final strike to them.

“Hope that Fu guy has no weird ideas.”

Mathias did not enjoy dealing with people outside of the Church, especially ones that were so divorced to the word of God. Nevertheless, if they dared to pull anything like that, it would spell doom for both of them.

“Unless he plans to make a deal with the Black Hand…”

Doubts were starting to plague his mind. Fortunately, the stinging pain from his eye-socket called for his attention. Mathias turned to look at the Angel. His biological eye pupil expanded as Suriel’s chest opened to reveal many, long and thin tendrils. Each one of them with a medical apparatus at its end. He failed to contain a shiver as he was reminded of his Initiation to the Church and his first contact with the Purple.

He closed his eyes and he let the Angel work its miracle. In the span of a few minutes, the shape of his face had turned back into a less grotesque appearance. In his mind he silently thanked his hormonal implant that regulated the adrenaline that was currently in his bloodstream, otherwise he would be on the ground screaming like a little bitch.

Glancing at the Angel, he understood that flight would be nigh-impossible so he prepared to recall Baruchiel, but before he could do that, he heard some noises coming from under him. The source could be civilians, but to make sure, he ordered Suriel to go and check it while he followed closely behind.

Suriel dropped down from the hole and immediately prepared for a fight. The Angel pinned some of the people down using its large body and wings.

“這是什麼鬼!”

“我擦!”

“天使!”

Immediately Mathias, thanks to the automatic international translator chip in his brain, understood that the language these people spoke was Chinese.

"Why would the Iron Dragon be so close to their territories?"

True they were in an alliance, but them being so deep in the Church's District was worrisome. Especially so since they did not even communicate any of their movement in their area of the battlefield. It was, to say the least, very suspicious according to the priest current suffering from withdrawals.

"Identify yourselfs!" He shouted from the hole. No need to show his face yet.

"It's me! Abraham Fu! Tell your fucking Angel to stop crushing my men!"

"Now this is even more suspicious!"

"I will after you tell me what the fuck you are doing here." He was, against all odds, able to somewhat calmly ask that question.

"You called for us!" His anger was clearly hearable.

"I did not do such a thing?" Father Mathias was not able to completely hide his uncertainty.

Considering his extensive, and very invasive, cyberware, he needed constant intake of Purple to keep his wits together. It had only been a few days since he had taken his regular daily dosage. Even before the war started he was having trouble fulfilling the quota since he had to share most of it with the ever growing numbers of the Church’s followers. The possibility of him sending a message to the Iron Dragon and subsequently forgetting about it was not nil.

After some seconds of hesitation, he dropped down and commanded the Angel to free the pinned men.

“We checked the source of the message and it was from your personal pad, ID and all checked out.”

“Impossible, I have…” Mathias started to look everywhere for his pad but he could not find it. Panic started to settle in his body.

“If so-”

Before Abraham Fu could finish his sentence, another voice interrupted him.

“You would do well to shut up and listen.” Spoke the figure from the top of the building where Father Mathias and Suriel had crashed.

“The Grinning Devil in chinese”

“The Devil of Hong Kong in chinese!”

He looked down on them. His eyes were not visible thanks to the black helmet he was wearing. Nonetheless, the blood dripping down from his sleeves to his now tainted red gloves, the tiny droplets of blood that peppered his clothes looked like a work in progress work of modern art that allowed the viewer to imagine where they had come from in the first place…

Most of all was the way he carried himself. The air felt solemn, the silence after he interrupted Abraham Fu seemed to stretch into infinity, making some of them gulp down their anxieties as their hands trembled and inched closer to their guns. The Grinning Devil did not move a single inch, standing there on the edge like a statue of a God, judging them for being such pathetic specimens of humanity.

“What a blasphemous thought…”

Meeting the legendary Unknown in this condition was something he wanted to avoid. His mind, his best ally all these years, would not be able to help him out of this mess. The figure of the Devil slowly started to become indistinguishable, as the shadows of the night started to engulf him, that mass of darkness spoke to him in a familiar voice to him:

“You have been a naughty boy…” The sound of something metallic hitting the ground deafened his ears. His chest felt too tight, his breath coming out haggard and raspy. The cybernetic eye started to malfunction when he started to re-imagine some of the darkest moments of his past.

Using Suriel as cover, he quickly pressed the emergency switch located under his cybernetic eye before it could cause more damage. Thankfully the others were too busy being awe-struck to notice the poor priest having an emotional breakdown.

“I want you, all of your faction members, alive and not-so-alive…” - He said with undisguised disgust while staring at Suriel - “...to get the fuck out of the Polis in less than 5 minutes.”

“And why would we do that?” Asked Abraham Fu, his right hand hovering ominously over his handgun holster hanging from his belt.

The Grinning Devil did not answer, instead he threw something towards the Chinese man’s head. Thankfully one of his…Jianshi? Jiangshi?... one of his cybernetically enhanced goons was able to grab before it could impact Abraham Fu’s face. What a shame.

The Head of the Iron Dragon carefully inspected the object that almost made a new hole in his head. From a distance, Father Mathias recognized it as a pad of sorts, though the design was much different from the ones he had seen in Ural Polis. Abraham started to fiddle with it, until he stopped moving completely, his eyes wide open and beads of sweat slowly beginning to form on his furrowed brow.

“Fuck… EVERYONE BEGIN TO PREPARE FOR EVAC.” He shouted after a few seconds, his whole body trembling.

“What’s going-”

“They are nuking the place.” Even before Father Mathias could ask what the hell was going on, Abraham cut to the chase.

Father Mathias turned to the Grinning Devil, the shadows that seemed to envelope him now less oppressive to his senses.

“H-how can we be sure it is not a ploy by him?”

Abraham Fu passed him the pad that he had been examining till now. Immediately his doubts about the origin of this object had been solved: the symbol of the EUP proudly visible on the back of the device and as a wallpaper made it quite obvious…too obvious.

He started to look into it, through the various messages and whatever else he could gets his hand on. It was unfortunate that his eye was deactivated, it would have made this chore much easier on his mind.

After some digging, a message coming from an unknown source came up. There were some short exchanges, from the previous owner of this pad and the unknown person on the other side. It told that the U-class Unknown Khutulun had been dealt with and that the owner needed to get the hell out of there before they dropped a broken arrow on the city.

“Why?”

Father Mathias always thought that the Ural Polis was one of the most important bastions of defense of the EUP from the Chinese and the Caliphate. It was true that there had been a tenuous ceasefire going on, thanks to the Bloody Lion and his Lion’s Share, but nonetheless destroying the whole Polis seemed such a drastic action…

“Maybe… maybe they want to deal with all of us in a single stroke?”

It was possible, this continuous state coexistence was just putting some bandages on someone that got his limb cut. It was a temporary respite, threatening to subvert the careful balance that had been established. So instead of dealing with all of that, they decided to just clinch the question once and for all.

He sends a command to Baruchiel, telling him to start preparing for an imminent evac. The space behind his eyes started to throb, a terrible headache was encroaching on him. The Archangel was already on his way to pick him up.

“Why would they do that?” Muttered the cyborg under his breath.

With this act, the EUP would be declaring war to the Church of Redemption. He had known that their relationship was less than amiable, but destroying an outpost like this was a clear act of war. Once this situation was dealt with he would contact the other high rank members of the Church and see what should be done in the future.

“I do not know nor care, what I know is that the Head Bitch wants to kill all of you. I will not make it easy for her.” Answered the Grinning Devil, venom dripping from his every word.

He had no idea who this “Head Bitch”, but he could take a guess. A signal came from his Archangel, telling him that something was approaching from the sky. He felt his blood, or whatever liquid was in his veins, run cold.

After that, the Grinning Devil disappeared from view, leaving behind the EUP pad. Father Mathias would gladly keep it and use it as evidence once he was reunited with his brethren. He turned to look at Abraham Fu. The man had been giving commands over the comms this whole moment, his Jian-whatever keeping an eye on the angel in the case it did any threatening moves.

He gave the man a quick prayer and blessing, then started moving to where the Archangel was coming from. It would take approximately less than a minute to reach it. According to its calculation, the object that was in the sky would take less than 10 minutes to reach close to the ground. Time was running short.

Archangel Michael stood before him in all his glory, its six metallic wings enveloping the small alley they had gotten themselves into. His skin a glistening gray, though unlike the Angels, it was smooth accentuating its more humane appearance. Covering its metallic skin, was a torn tunic that revealed most of its sculpted chest. One could clearly see the sight of blood on it, clearly not its own. The only parts of his attire that remained untouched was the lower part of his tunic and the military cingulum which reverberated all over the alley.

It stretched his hands towards Father Mathias, which hesitantly took it. The Archangel embraced the cyborg and began to fly upward. Such was the force produced by his uptake that the neighboring building began to crumble.

He did not know for how much long they had been flying, or how far. But after what seemed an eternity, he was able to peek with his one good eye at the Polis. Immediately he felt a sudden force

his eyes began to shed tears and burn. A mushroom shaped cloud covered all of his vision. It looked as if it was reaching Heaven. Before he could no longer keep his eye on it, the shadow changed their shapes into what looked like two humanoid beings fighting each other. After such a sight, his body started to convulse from his Purple withdrawal.

As he was feeling his consciousness fading, he prayed. He prayed to his followers that had died in the blast and the conflict, to the Iron Dragons members too that died without being able to go to Heaven and into the heavenly Lord’s embrace. He prayed to the Absolute, that if they meet again, he may be lenient on his soul and body. Lastly, with a sardonic smile, he prayed for the Grinning Devil. In hopes that their destinies may never cross again.

The gentleness of unconsciousness saved him from the more gruesome sight he would have seen from up in there in the sky.

“Remember Mathias, there is no more terrible monster in this world than a fellow man… may God bless this earth and strike us down for our sins…”