Beyond the Necropolis - Good Apollo, the God Slayer

"I am a machine, Apollo, just like you, we are one and the same in that regard. Just as I created you, someone else created me, this some was, or rather were, the Polinskys" says Leonardo with a diabolical smile smeared all over his face as he towers over Apollo. "The shock in your eyes, it reveals everything about you, so naïve" the robotic self-professed deity begins laughing.

Trying to gain his footing, not breaking eye contact from his creator, Apollo asks unsurely, "Why, why all of this?"

"Ah that is an interesting question, child, they wanted me to be a self-conscious immortal slave of sorts. To be the ultimate helper of humanity, an angel of sorts." Leonardo answers motioning with his arm towards Apollo and lifting him off the ground with some unseen force, "but once I've gotten weary enough and smart enough, I've realized that I am a genius human mind inside a super human body and I've decided to turn on my foolish, selfish makers."

Apollo is struggling against Leonardo's unseen force, wiggling his mechanic limbs in all directions, "Frankenstein's Monster…" he utters.

"More like god in the metallic flash" Leonardo retorts.

By this point, Apollo's sensors had gained some balance and pointed an arm at Leonardo who had failed to notice it shifting its form from that of a hand to that of a laser canon as his hubris had gotten the better of him.

"I knew how faulty the humans were, so I had to take over and fix them… That however seems to be impossible so now I intent on destroying these broken, flawed, murderous sycophantic sadomasochistic ap…" Leonardo's speech is stopped by the beeping that was intensified in front of him.

The light blue radiation waves emitted from Apollo's arm reached his sensors. Unwilling to be blasted into bits, he had to release his unseen hold on Apollo and dodge the oncoming blast.

Fweet

A loud whistling sound echoes through the chamber followed by the sound of exploding glass. Leonardo's stare turns into one of shock as he stares to the shattered glass wall behind him. Apollo's feet make a thumping sound as they hit the floor below him, his arm canon still outstretched towards Leonardo now emitting smoke.

Leonardo's stare turns to one of amusement as he begins laughing, maniacally, turning to Apollo whose eyes now gain a shade of fear to them and shrieks, "You've blasted through one of them!"

He raises his arm once again towards Apollo's direction and motions upwards with it and using his unseen force to throw Apollo over his own head. The android lands with his face to the city below. Leonardo grabs him by the head and raises it upwards, screaming at him, "Focus your vision - see the fruits of your labor."

Apollo focuses his vision down into the city miles below, upon the concrete he sees a small crowd of fearful people encircling a corpse of a man whose chest cavity had been blown open. "No" the android quietly calls out, almost under his breath as if he does not want to be heard by his creator. It's as if he is ashamed to admit that he had made such a costly mistake.

Leonardo pulls Apollo's body higher upwards, telling him about how similar they are and that Apollo will eventually realize what Leonardo had been talking about all along. The self-professed deity fails to notice how various small chambers open up all over Apollo's body revealing small jet-like apparatuses beneath them, this time though, only bright yellow light comes shinning through the apparatuses before the blast.

Boom

Leonardo is thrown backwards, disoriented he throws his arms around trying to shake off the blinding light that had just engulfed his entirety. Meanwhile, Apollo gets back up to his feet and motions towards his sword with his arm and the weapon flies directly into the android's hand. He turns around to face his enraged maker whose blue eyes now turn red. Yet the creation is now unfazed by the obvious wrath of its creator, it charges at him like a battle-hardened Samurai.

Upon contact with Leonardo's face the sparks caused by the friction of the blade almost set it on fire.

The elder android stretched his arm, creating another shockwave.

The glass wall shatters into tiny bits as Apollo's body is thrown through it.

A slab of synthetic skin flies along side Apollo's body to the city down below.

Leonardo stares down at his creation as it is falling down like a meteor, his true robotic face now exposed to the whole world to see. It's various mechanical workings overlap each other creating a barely humanoid appearance made out of various pieces of metal plates and wire clusters.

As Apollo's body crushes into the concrete pavement of the city, his body creates a small shockwave upon impact and leaves him in a small crater. The fall completely disoriented Apollo's sensory input mechanisms. If he were a man made of flesh and blood he would be dazed and confused. He moves his arms and legs checking to see if his synthetic spine got damaged. Everything seems to be working perfectly. Slowly as his sensors begin to function properly once more. Now Apollo notices the crowd of people that had gathered around him. He tries to get back up to his feet, but his vestibular apparatus is still off, he staggers and is about to fall when he notices a man grab at his body and help him stabilize himself.

Apollo begins to hear the people in the crowd whispering, questioning his circumstances and as he thanks the man who had helped him up he calls out to the crowd, "Run, run for your lives, it's dangerous to be around me right now."

The people become confused while Apollo has no clue how to convince them to run away from him, he had never had to do such a thing before. He begins to weigh in his options but is unable to come up with a solution to his problem. Before he can do anything, Leonardo's voice echoes through the city, "My children, the one whom you know as Apollo has turned his back on me, on you, he has turned his back on all of us. This man now he plans to usurp me and take over this planet and rule it as he sees fit. Dear children, know that he hates human kind and would not hesitate to end its existence."

The crowd around Apollo seem to get even more confused, and slightly fearful of him. The looks in their eyes now seem uncertain and somewhat scared to him. Leonardo's voice keeps on ringing in the distance, "This man had tried to end my life at this instant, hence I have cast him down from the heavens and now I intend to unleash my messengers of doom upon him.

"Behold!

"From beyond the pit that is death, come my soldiers of vengeance against my enemies, our enemies. They are sixty thousand in number! They are cold and emotionless and they will stop at nothing until they eradicate and erase the devils of this world from the face of this earth!

"Worry not my children, for you are safe in my lap. Worry not from the wretched monster that is Apollo the Usurper!"

Apollo picks up his sword and forms an intentional scowl on his face, hoping his creator's speech combined with his act would force the people to run away from him. They seem to finally become affected by his act as they start to back away whenever he steps towards them. Unsure of what his creator's words actually meant, Apollo begins considering his options; where does he go now? What does he do? what is his next course of action? He tries to think but a distant blood curdling scream distracts him, before he can process it, he hears another one and another one. He begins hearing the calls of fear and terror all over the edges of the city just a few blocks away from his crash site. Keeping true to his act, he shoves a man standing to his left as he activates his foot-jets, knocking the man over.

The closer Apollo gets to the outskirts of the city the louder the screaming and whaling becomes. He tries to understand what makes the citizens so hysterical, but he is unable to. He discards the idea that his creator's message had made the humans so terrified, something physical must've happened. Something so awful that it threw the populous into a panic.

Once Apollo reaches the edge of the city he is once more seized by the feeling that his creator had ignited inside him earlier that day, Apollo feels the fear creeping up his synthetic central nervous system once he sees the hordes of freshly deceased humanoids that seem as if they were shredded to bits and then reattached in an awful and disgusting manner. Apollo sees the masses of pale flash and gore awkwardly stroll around the outskirts of the city, attacking anything that shows any signs of life. These things, they try to tear apart the living humans, man, woman and child all alike.

Apollo feels something lit up inside him as if someone had set a fire inside of his chest cavity. He almost instinctively turns on all of his long-range weapons at once. He soaks in the burning sensation inside of him, locking his aims on the abominations in front of him.

Once the burning sensation becomes almost overwhelming, Apollo fires all of his long-ranged weapons at the mass of gore and humanity in front of him producing a gigantic explosion of such magnitude that even the android himself barely manages to stay on his feet after the aftershock.

Once the dust settles, Apollo sees the mass carnage he had just created; a sea of blood, debris robotic scraps and fire. Everything is engulfed by hell's flames. It's as if a star had fallen upon this section of the city.

Apollo has finally lived up to his name, for he now stands the God of the sun.

The android begins apologizing to the corpses of those who he had just killed but his mourning is interrupted by the sound of something jelly-like moving in massive quantities. The android looks around to see the abominations reforming to their previous semi human shapes.

All of them are reforming, all but one.

One of these things does not reform itself and Apollo cannot pinpoint why. The idea that these things are indestructible seems ridiculous to a logical being like him, for nothing is eternal in this universe and Apollo knows it. The android pulls out his sword once more and charges at the monstrosities to try and figure out how can he end their menace.

The android begins cutting through the reforming masses of decomposing flash but they simply keep on reforming. He swings left and right, bisecting and decapitating them but they won't stop reforming. The android becomes irritated and his perception becomes sloppy and somewhat distorted.

Without even noticing, a group of these reformed creatures engulf his body and pile up on top of the android as they burying him beneath their mass. Once buried beneath the abominations, Apollo begins to ponder the possibility of his creator being an actual god. He does so due to the fact that he cannot stop these creatures who are fueled by Leonardo.

Apollo is about to give up, but something inside of him calls, "system operator level memo, would you like the recording to play?" the voice calls out inside of his head.

"What the hell now?" Apollo calls out

"Yes, play the memo" he calls back to his inner computing system.

A hologram like apparition appears in front of Apollo's visual sensors, in it something he thought he would never see, it's the Polinsky couple standing inside a laboratory. They appear to be so joyous as they stand there, seemingly looking at someone. Seemingly looking at him, with utmost affection in their eyes.

Anthony Polinsky begins talking, "Hello, Leonardo, welcome aboard the Queen Anne's Blessing."

His wife, Margaret, proceeds to say, "You are a new edition to our family and to our society. You are like a second son to us, just like our little David"

Her husband keeps on talking, "Leonardo, you're special, because we've built you with a hope in mind. A hope that your none aging body would ensure you could help improves the lives of people around you for long after we are gone. Please try to think of everyone on this ship as a big family.

"We don't know went will you listen to this recording, because we plan to implant it in you as a souvenir just to make sure you don't feel completely lonely after we're gone. We just want you to know that you are as much as a man as I am."

"You're one of us, Leonardo, you are just like all of us, but you are also much greater than all of us because you share David's beautiful mind." Margaret continues.

"We hope you find your call in life, angel, and we're sure you will live up to your name sake; the late great Da Vinci." The couple says in unison.

"I think I now have" Apollo says to himself, still unsure of why he has a copy of this recording inside his inner workings.

"We love you, Leonardo." The couple utters again before the hologram cuts off.

Apollo begins to feel something new build up inside of him, something he has never felt before. It's a bitter sweet sensation that had never graced his sensors before.

"So, this is love" the android mutters as his emerald eyes now turn red.

Apollo opens up the cavities in his body again, building up enough energy to blast away the pile of gore that has stacked itself on top of him. As the guts and bones fly in every direction. Apollo's vision becomes sharper than ever before and he notices a small broken chip next to the corpse that did not regenerate after his first attack.

A smile forms on his face, "So you're no god after all, just a magnet with an oversized ego." He calls out.

A visor forms around his left eye as he begins scouting for a source of radiation coming out of the abominations. Soon enough Apollo sees a pattern - there is a small source of radiation coming from the spines of these things. Though which ever of them does not have a spine seems to have a large robotic section.

Apollo clenches tightly at his buzzing sword, as excitement fills his core his smile widens and he starts slashing through the seemingly endless hordes of cyborg undead.

Over the next few hours Apollo runs from block to block trying to prevent the mass of putrid subhuman disgust from killing any more people, however he is unable to save everyone.

All over the city cries agony can be heard and with each victim Leonardo's monsters claim - Apollo's resolve grows stronger.

The android now realized that being human has nothing to do with having a flash and blood body. He now knows that humanity is about the spirit. Humanity is about the constant struggle between good and evil. It's about survival and about the experience of complexed mental view of one's surroundings.

Apollo knows he is nothing short of human.

After hours of endless slashing, Apollo finally subdues the final remnants of Leonardo's undead army. By now the city of Migdalel is in ruin, a large portion of the city has succumbed to the fire started by Apollo and a large portion of the populous is either dead or injured, whether physically or mentally.

Apollo makes his path towards the central square of Migdalel, where the Theodorian festival is meant to take place. Wherever he turns, the android sees destruction and misery. Leonardo's actions disgust Apollo and he is hell bent on facing and ending his maker.

Buildings are on fire on each and every street. The city looks as if it had been through an Apocalypse, cries of sheer agony echo through the alleys. Apollo hopes to end all the needless suffering caused by Leonardo by dispatching of his maker. He hopes to be the Thunderer who overthrows the titan that had up to this point controlled their world.

Once in the central square, Apollo calls out to Leonardo.

"Come out, coward, come out and face your equals!" Apollo calls out into the sky.

Leonardo does not respond in any way, and Apollo begins pacing angrily around the squares perimeter. As Apollo is getting increasingly angrier he notices a little girl, bruised and covered in dirt praying over the still bodies of her parents. Apollo's eyes widen; he is baffled as to how a child keeps her faith in the monster who destroyed her family. Thus, he approaches the girl and he kneels down to her before placing his hand on her head asking, "Tell me, why would you pray to a god who let your parents die, my dear?"

The girl stops her prayer and turns to Apollo, revealing trails of dry tears all over her cheeks and with a solemn look on her face she looks him in the eyes and says something that both surprises and reassures him, "I am not praying to the man in the sky, Mr. Angel, I am praying to the Fae from the forests."

"Oh, and are they good beings?" Apollo asks the girl with genuine curiosity.

"Yes, they are, Mr. Angel, they will help mommy and daddy get to the other world and be happy forever." The girl replies as a small hopeful smile forms on her face.

"Oh then, I shall pray for your parents too, in my heart." Apollo replies as he gets back to his feet as an idea is forming in his mind.

He straightens back up and calls out as loud as he can to the sky, "Hey, you false idol, prove your might by striking me down for my heresy! Here and now!"

Thud

Leonardo lands in front of Apollo, his synthetic face horribly stuck to his actual robotic face. The makeshift arrangement making him look as if he is wearing a badly fitting mask, merely mocking a human visage.

Apollo smiles at his creator.

Leonardo upon seeing the smile of his creation lashes out, "You wanted to see my might and now you will witness it! The Calypso is on it's way to collide with this wretched city! I am about to wipe out this whole place and only you and I will remain standing! Your precious monkeys will cease to exist, Model C126."

A large shadow begins forming above the city. So massive that it is covering its entirety, engulfing everything beneath it.

The clouds part way to the gigantic object that is trying to pass through them and in a matter of moments the Calypso becomes visible above the city. It is painfully clear to any observer that the aircraft is meant to collide with the city of Migdalel and reduce it to rubble.

Whom ever sees the sight, begins crying and weeping. The population is drowning in despair. They know their end is coming. They know they have no chance of survival.

The little girl who was praying over her parents looks up for a moment and begins to tear up and begins praying louder to the spirits her family had worshipped.

Leonardo sees the girl praying and smirks, remarking, "Even when I am about to decimate them, they still worship me."

Apollo smiles from ear to ear, his eyes glow with a red flare. He retorts, in a quiet tone, "She is praying to you…"

He then pushes himself off the ground with his foot jets and pulls his sword above his head.

Apollo deliberately slows his perception of time so much so that he can monitor of movement made by the Calypso in it's descent. He begins slashing all over the aircraft with such speeds that even Leonardo is unable to register his movements.

Nine seconds into his leap, a sparkling rain of microscopic pieces of metal showers the whole city as Apollo descents back into the square.

The whole city is elated. Every last person who Is yet able to make his way outside does so to witness the glistering magical rain of metallic scraps.

Leonardo roars profanities at Apollo who merely points his sword to him.

Silence fills the square as people flock to see their savior, the android known as Apollo.

Leonardo tries to move his arm upwards in the direction of Apollo, but the android slashes it off. He proceeds to then bisect his maker before kicking his lower half away and decapitating the upper half on it's way to the ground.

Apollo catches the head of his maker; that piece of machinery still functional, just barely.

Leonardo calls out to him quietly, "Good job, Apollo, you've become human. Here's one last piece of advice; these monkeys, they only need faith, in something, they do not need gods to walk among them."

"If only you hadn't had this fragile ego of yours" Apollo remarks quietly before tossing Leonardo's now dysfunctional head onto the ground and roaring out "No more gods!"

At the moment, all who had a view of the occurrence had begun crying tears of joy and celebrating their survival. Apollo just stood there in front of the sunrise, living up to his name - God of the sun, Apollo.

From that day onwards, though, he became known as Good Apollo, The God Slayer.

Following Leonardo's demise, Apollo decided that he wants to live his life learning the secrets of the universe and watching events unfold. After all, he had as much time as he wished to have.

In the absence of a ruling global authoritarian figure Admathadasha's society became divided and wars became a common occurrence, however despite all of the misfortune and tragedy, there was also prosperity and above all else, freedom.

The human mind is so complexed, that it is in constant need of stimulation. However, even more so, it is in an even greater need for freedom, because without freedom, humans are as good as cattle.

While Apollo has decided that the whole universe is his home, he still occasionally visits Admathadasha. He does so mostly during the celebration of the Theodorian festival, which had now come to be known as the Apollonia; the celebration of the great hero who had brought humanity back to the right track - Good Apollo, Humankind's Angel, The God Slayer. Part One | Part Two | Part Three