Dantega:Volume 3 Chapter 10

Chapter 29: The Ransom

(PART 1)

"H-How... Why?" Rage asks in confusion.

Phoenix huffs air out of his nose and shrugs his shoulders. "It's a long story."

"Make it short, I'm quite interested as well." said Pontius while holding his hand out in a presenting manner.

Phoenix does make it short, so short that it still leaves the mind to wonder, especially when he reveals a bitter frown as he says, "I was sent to Earth to die once again."

"Then how did you end up here?" Pontius asks.

Phoenix smiles, "That's an even longer story, and I don't care to explain."

"If that's the case, I won't press on any further. But, if you intend to pass the Gate, I will kill you again."

"Hahahaha how cold of you to say 'again', I bet you enjoy this job a lot more than your last one." Phoenix points his bible at him and finishes, "I'm happy that you're here though... I've been waiting for this day for a long time."

"So be it."

Pontius jumps up atop a big rock and lifts his arms, out of the ground comes dozens of pale zombie like Roman soldiers all clad in the armor for that specific time frame. Pontius then points his index finger at the two and the soldiers all charge at them.

Rage is about to attack but he is halted by Phoenix's hand. "I told you to let me handle this didn't I?"

Rage's frowns and asks, "You can't expect me to sit by and watch can you?"

"I'm not expecting anything, I'm demanding it."

Rage clicks his tongue and takes a step back, displeasure painted all over his face.

Phoenix chuckles a bit at walks towards the charging soldiers, he shoots them a sharp glare and says, "Vanish."

The soldiers immediately dissolve and their ashes float into the sky.

"!?"

"You look surprised Pilate... You didn't think I've always been a meek man did you?"

"Could you have done this back then?"

"Of course I could... But I didn't have the mindset to do such a thing, I also wasn't allowed to inflict harm on any kind of being until the Battle of Armageddon."

Pontius tilts his head and mumbles something to himself.

Phoenix, in somewhat of a joking manner says, "What? You didn't hear about that? You sure get behind the times when you're stuck here for a few thousand years huh?"

"All I need to care about is protecting the passageway of this Gate... Matters of the Earth and what lies above and below it are not of my concern." Pontius methodically replies.

This makes Phoenix a little agitated, as if to pick at him a little more he asks, "How many people have been through this Gate?"

"Very few have, I only let the ones I deem worthy of such an honor pass to the other side."

"Really now... Well let me ask you one last question, who assigned you to this position?"

Pontius points his index finger to the sky and smoothly answers, "God."

Phoenix scowls and grits his teeth, he throws his bible and once it hits the ground it bursts into flames.

"All of us are just his little puppets that belong on stage..." the priest says bitterly. "It is just that some characters are liked more than others." He continues to walk when he takes his eccentric priest scarf off his shoulders holds it out. "Those characters are always given a pleasant ending... Be it eternal life or the most basic of his gifts, he must have had to go through a lot of trouble to do this for you... All of that effort, for the man who sent his only begotten son to die a horrible death."

The scarf grows extremely large and turns into a winding cloth of multicolored flames, a very unholy looking weapon to say the least. He swings it toward Pontius, but he dodges, the flame cloth hits the rock he was sitting on and completely obliterates it, the power in this weapon can still be felt burning the air.

Pontius lands atop a cross that holds a crucified dead body on it, looking down with his white eyes he says, "That was certainly not a benevolent type of attack..."

"Who says I have to fight like an Angel?"

The two glare at each other and leave Rage wondering just what in the world is happening, he still hasn't completely coped with the revelation of the Messiah. And just why is he willingly attempting to kill someone with his own hands?

It would seem that Phoenix senses this so with his back turned to him he gives a hint that doesn't help Rage any closer to figuring it out. "Let's just say that I'm doing this because of a long story."

All he can do is imagine why, and what exactly happened throughout the times to make him act so different from the past.

The truth is, the answer can be found by looking back at the story of Phoenix, and also, the story of Ubica.

To understand why Ubica is involved, we'd need to go a thousand years into the past and take a closer look at the happenings of the Apocalypse...

---

During the reign of Ubica The Anti-Christ over a thousand years earlier...

"So is this the prophesied declaration of war?" asks Ubica. He is sitting on a throne and is wearing an odd mask with three pointed horns on it over one of his maddening black eyes.

Phoenix is addressing him, his appearance is a little different however. His hair is black and longer, and he has a full beard.

"Yes it is." Phoenix answers.

Ubica smiles and looks to Messor who is standing right beside him and then back, "Interesting... You do know that things aren't going to end up the way it does in that pathetic book of yours right?"

With a straight face Phoenix replies, "I must disagree, that book is the man written voice of God. If he says this is going to end in a certain way, then it will."

Ubica laughs, "Hahahaha, how naive you are Holy One."

He stands to his feet, revealing his outfit of a long black robe that drags across the dark red carpet that rest like a pathway on the marble floor. He steps off the three step staircase and walks to his counterpart.

Now face to face and looking each other in the eyes, Ubica asks, "Do you really believe everything he says?"

"Of course, his word is absolute."

"His word is a load of shit... If he is so almighty then he could easily end all this himself right? In a matter of fact, he could have made it so none of this would've ever happened in the first place."

"That is because he wants to give his children a free will."

Ubica smiles condescendingly. "A free will to do what? To ruin themselves? To defy him and worship me? To bring this world to its destruction?" Phoenix stays quiet as Ubica continues. "I must say, no being would want one of his own creations to damage or destroy another one... So I offer you a different explanation... Perhaps he is just weak?"

"God is the almighty being, he has more power than any of us can even imagine."

"I beg to differ Promised One... If that were the case, then what are you for?"

Phoenix remains calm and answers, "I exist to exercise his will."

"Oh? If you exist to exercise his will, that contradicts what you said about him giving his creations a free will."

Phoenix's eyebrow twitches at that.

Ubica presses on and adds, "So if he is the almighty, wouldn't he be able to impose his own will? It seems awfully odd that he would need anyone else to do such a thing."

Phoenix's eyebrows twitch yet again, it would seem that this has given him a slight spike in emotion.

He retorts Ubica's statement and asks, "Is that not the same thing you are doing for Satan?"

He starts walking back towards his throne when he replies, "Hmmm? What does he have to do with anything?"

Phoenix's composure stiffens for a split second.

"Well, he is your creator is he not?"

Ubica halts his walk to his seat and instead walks back towards Phoenix. "Is he now? Who told you that?"

"It's common sense... God has explained it all."

"What if I told you that God was lying when he said such a thing?"

Phoenix stays silent and tries to remain composed.

Ubica sees this and starts to get amused, "You see, I was created by the evil of man, my birth comes from the combined sins of every single person in the history of your father's creation. So I guess in turn, that would mean that I was technically created by God... Correct? You know, those sins that you died like a dog for had to go somewhere, and they certainly weren't going to go to you, they all went to me, your opposite's birth. Who do you think gave them away?"

Phoenix's face begins to contort and lose its firm shape, it is becoming obvious that Ubica's words are starting to affect him in a negative way.

Ubica feeds of such energy and keeps pressing, "If he did not tell you such a thing, that would mean he lied to you... Does the almighty being have to lie? If he was such a great power, there would be no need to do such a thing."

"He did not lie, nor would he ever need to. He would never create monster lik----"

"He created evil by giving man its first restrictions did he not? Or rather, he let it grow and never bothered to stop it." Ubica interrupts.

"....."

"Hahahaha look at how robotic you are, you are no better than a puppet from a play that is destined to say the same lines over and over for all eternity. If he gave you the vision to see how things really are you would never follow down such a repetitive path."

"You're spouting hypocritical nonsense, you are doing the exact same thing for the Devil."

Ubica takes another step closer to him and replies, "That is where you are mistaken Anointed One, I am the antithetical version of you... So that means that unlike you, I make my own decisions; I'm not under the control of anyone. I am my own man so I do believe I have a very important thing that you don't, it is called freedom."

Phoenix bites his tongue to keep himself from talking; it is quite apparent that anything he says will not do any kind of good in swaying the mindset of Ubica.

He turns to exit the room when he says, "In the upcoming moons, your worshipers will be judged, and in seven days time, the battle will commence in the valley of Harmagiddo. There, the holy power of the light will finally destroy the evil of the darkness and rid God's world of it for all time."

"Oh really now? In the unlikely occurrence that we do lose, I highly doubt that you could ever truly get rid of evil. His lies will be shown through his so called 'anger', and the world will once again fall into the same kind of situation. And once more, you would be the one who has to suffer for it."

Phoenix stops walking and says, "That outcome is an impossibility, the Angels of my army and I will assure it."

Ubica laughs and makes a bold statement. "I predict that I will rest on a feathered bed of every last one of your Angel's severed wings. I will kill them all with my own hands."

Phoenix doesn't reply and opens the door to the exit, but before he can leave he feels at tap on his shoulder. He quickly turns and find Ubica standing right in front of him, holding his head awfully close to Phoenix's face. The mask that he was wearing is off and both of his glaring eyes can be seen.

Phoenix is left with one last batch of Ubica's head sticking words.

"Feigning ignorance is not exercising faith... You will find that with my help, in seven days time, that faith you hold will be the death of everything you've ever known."

---

Back at the first Gate of Purgatory, the present Phoenix continues his battle with Pontius Pilate.

With the flame cloth swinging and destroying everything in its path; Pontius is jumping all over the place, displaying a mastery of escape because one hit from this cloth would most definitely result in an instant death.

"A limber man you've become Pilate, did God give you such a power as well?" Phoenix asks while attacking.

"I have taken part in God's will, if this is my punishment or my reward, it is my obligation to accept."

Looking at this job as a Gatekeeper closely, the pros and the cons can be seen clearly. He is stuck in such a place forced to stare at the same scenery for all eternity, and fight an endless battle against constant people who have attained similar abilities by becoming 'aware'.

Or on the bright side, he has always loved his old job as a judge, this is quite similar to that past because it is entirely up to him who passes, and this time there is no need to feel guilty for his killings because it is God's will to protect the passageways of the Earth.

To Phoenix, either way is equally bad because in his mind, Pontius should be nowhere near any kind of position other than a firm spot in Hell.

Phoenix bundles up his cloth so it wraps around his entire arm and says, "Allow me to override his decision to give you such an obligation."

The cloth whips forward at an incredible speed, thinking that he's out of range Pontius stays calm, but to his surprise the cloth never stops so in a last ditch effort to avoid any crucial damage he pulls out his Roman sword and deflects it.

But at a terrible cost.

During his defense his arm was badly burnt, so burnt in fact that it reaches all the way to the bone. The muscle and the tendons are all crisped away and growing fast, so in order halt any further damage he takes his sword and cuts his own arm off.

"Don't you find it ironic that I would use flames to destroy my enemy?" Phoenix asks with a slight laugh.

Pontius still holds on to his statue like face and replies, "Being here for so long... Nothing surprises me anymore."

"Hmph, is that so? Well my Phoenix Cloth's fire will be a fitting punishment for what you've done."

Phoenix swings it over his head like a lasso and it causes a huge circle of odd colored flame to float above him, the circle drops and then stops so it's waist high to his body and twirls much like a hula hoop. The cloth wraps back around his arm and he proceeds to give chase to Pontius on foot.

The two play cat and mouse for a while until Phoenix rests his palm on the hoop and throws his hand forward, this results in smaller circles of flame giving chase to Pontius as well.

Narrowly avoiding a hit by one of the discs, Pontius jumps along the top of the crosses, much to his shock he hears a thunderous noise crash from behind him. The disc is following him and is mercilessly ripping through the wood of the crosses and the bones of the bodies that are nailed to them.

Trying to move faster doesn't work and he comes to the conclusion that this is some sort of attack that seeks its target and won't stop until it hits what it was intended to hit.

"These are the eternal flames from the bottomless pit of fire the Anti Christ was cast in, these flames will never stop burning until the the evil of its target is destroyed." explains Phoenix as he maneuvers the throw of three more discs.

Rage is standing there all by his lonesome and his mind is racing twenty times faster than normal, his whole thought process is about what could have possibly gone awry to make the only begotten son act in such a manner. As an observer from the best of views, he looks back on what he saw in the battle of Armageddon but finds that nothing comes to mind that could make him act this way.

Though it's not like the person Phoenix is at this moment is completely different from the man he was in the past, it is still enough to make Rage wonder what changed his thought process so. The answer once again lies in the stories of Phoenix and Ubica.

The reason for Phoenix's change in personality, can be answered by looking into the occurrences of the Battle of Armageddon.

---

A thousand years earlier...

After revealing his trump card of 144,000 Angels atop Mount Zion, and long past the point where they all battled the Army of Demons.

Phoenix finds himself in disarray and despair when he looks at the world in which he stands; millions upon millions of people are dead and mangled across the horizon and as far as the eye can see.

At an even greater number than the dead, people are fighting with all of their might in a blinded rage. As if adding even more mayhem to the battle, falling out of the reddened sky above them are an abundance of hailstones that weigh hundreds of pounds.

This is the seventh bowl of God's anger.

Before the hail, the entirety of the world was ravaged with thunderous lightning and the biggest earthquake the likes of man has ever seen. This has left the terrain of the planet in absolute devastation.

But this isn't what has gotten Phoenix so shaken, a seemingly infinite amount of white, light brown, and gold feathers float in the wind in an odd discrepancy with the chaos surrounding them.

Phoenix walks amidst the dead bodies of demons, humans, and heavenly beings in a trance, his white robes covered in blood. Looking among the faces of the dead people, his temples begin to beat when he starts to recognize them; he starts breathing sharply and his ears begin to pulsate with pain when the sound of a loud laugh can be heard.

Phoenix's eyes roll off the dead and follow the feathered trail which leads to the base of what seems like a mountain of bloodied wings.

Atop of it sits the laughing man. The man who is enjoying himself to the fullest while holding an injured angel hostage is Ubica the Anti-Christ.

Ubica grabs the back of the Angel's wings and puts his foot on her back, he begins to push with his foot and pull with his hands.

The Angel screams in pain as her pride is slowly being ripped from her body.

Through a cracked voice Phoenix shouts, "Let her go!!"

Ubica halts his attack and turns to him with a smile, "The weight of your words have no effect on me Holy One. This is part of the proof that the human written voice of God is a book of lies."

He pulls on the Angel's wings once more and the tearing sound begins crack like rope snapping.

"Stop it!!"

"Oh? Is the Anointed One begging the embodiment of evil for mercy?"

Ubica once again starts to laugh.

Phoenix is standing there and quite helplessly at that, in a last ditch effort he decides to run to her aid but he is stopped by the voice of the Angel pleading, "...Please don't come near."

"But..."

"This is what he wants... It's a trap to get you roused... Don't let anything he says or does affect you."

"Hahaha aww man, I thought destroyed your voice box... Well then my little innocent Angel, this now means that you are useless to me." Ubica says as he breathes into her ear.

He smiles and effortlessly rips her wings off and tosses them into the air.

Phoenix's shoulders jolt as her blood sprays under the light of the moon.

"Angelene!!!!"

As the Angel falls, she smiles at the sound of him shouting her name, and once she lands on the severed wings of her comrades she looks at him and softly says, "All... Be it... For the King.."

She shows him one last smile and then...

CRACKKK!!!

Ubica slams his foot into her face; the crushing blow causes the mountain of feathers to rustle up and fly all about.

This is undoubtedly the death of this Angel named Angelene. Her head was literally flattened by the weight of Ubica's stomp.

Phoenix drops to his knees and sits there together with his dead allies. Every last Angel is someone he considered a friend, throughout time he has grown an unbreakable bond with them so seeing all of them brutally massacred like this has devastated him.

Ubica chuckles and moves his fingers as if counting, after a few moments he says, "That was Angel number 143,999... The one named Micheal escaped like a sniveling coward, that piece of shit..."

Phoenix puts his hands over his face in panic, this was absolutely not supposed to happen. Satan's Army is dominating the forces of good and even he, the son of God has been defeated by Ubica.

"I don't believe your father told you that all of your best friends would be slaughtered by my hands alone. I don't think he even told you that one would die right? An outstanding victory for the army of light is what he said right!? His 'anger' would judge the people who bore the Mark of the Beast and worshiped his Idol right!?" Ubica shouts with his arms wide open.

Phoenix looks at him through his fingers and speaks into his hand, "T-This is all apart of his plan."

"Lies! I have destroyed God's plan!"

"G-God can not be defeated..."

"He has been defeated since the beginning! A defeated man uses his own children to fight his battles for him; if he was a man of victory he'd be here in your place! He would impose his 'anger' by himself instead of sending Angels holding bowls to pour them on my followers! He sent those Angels to be killed by me! He sent you to die by my hands because of his cowardice!"

"N-No... That's not true."

"The truth is what can be seen with your eyes! You and your brainwashed comrades all followed him into oblivion. And now, I am the one who holds the world in my hands!"

Ubica disappears in a green flash and reappears right in front of Phoenix, Ubica takes Phoenix's hands and moves them off his face, he lifts the son of God's head and looks him in the eye.

"Let me ask you, what is it that 'you' want?"

Phoenix glares at him and can't find the right words to say so Ubica tries to simplify it for him.

"What I mean is, now that there is no one's will to follow, what is it you intend to do? Who is it that you intend to follow?"

"Are you asking me to join you?"

"Not at all Messiah, I'm not Satan... I won't ask you to worship me, I won't ask you to follow me, I won't ask you to be my ally."

"Then what are you trying to do..?"

"I'm trying to give you an offer."

"An offer?"

"That's right... And once again, unlike Satan, I won't offer you all of the Kingdoms of this world if you bow down to me."

"Then what are you offering?"

Ubica smiles and jumps backwards all the way back to the top of mountain of wings from the all of the dead Angels.

He spreads his arms and through the silhouette of the moon he firmly declares,

"I OFFER YOU NOTHING!!"

Phoenix is confused, he doesn't quite know what he is talking about, and in all honesty he'd rather die than ever accept any kind of gift from Ubica.

"I don't get it..."

"Think about it, think long and hard as to what an offering of nothing means to a man such as yourself. Once you come up with the answer, you will be more than that of a mere stringed puppet, you will be free. And with that freedom you will find new goals and aspirations that you would only be able to obtain with your own two hands."

Phoenix tries to think of this, but his mind is going blank, it would seem that his injuries and the shock of this whole situation has caused his thinking to become scarce.

Ubica's eyes glow as he adds, "I have just given you a gift that your father would never bless you with. And one day, you will thank me for it."

Ubica laughs loudly, until he is interrupted by a piercing pain in his back that exits out of his gut; blood squirts outward but it quickly stops when he puts his hand over his wound.

The attack came from the other side of the mountain of wings so Phoenix can't see what is happening.

Ubica turns around and sees where it came from. "Well if it isn't Damien and the Seven Demons of Hell all standing together and looking at me with such invidious eyes."

He stays silent for a few seconds, and then a green and black glow starts to shine around him, a huge smile surfaces on his face as he says,

"HEY HEY! IS THIS WHAT THEY CALL A BETRAYAL!!??"

---

Back on Purgatory, the scene is hectic as discs of flames chase Pontius and destroy anything in its way.

Rage is ducking for cover and dodging flying debris, while doing this he thinks to himself, (It's a good thing the others aren't here yet.)

But as soon as he thought that, the rest of the group come rushing to him.

They are most likely running because the sounds of the battle.

"What's going on here!?" shouts Cyrus.

Rage clicks his tongue and gestures him to look for himself, Niera sees the abilities of Phoenix and says, "I knew that there was something weird about him!" Rage looks at her as if asking what she means and she answers his look. "That guy who attacked us a couple days ago, Phoenix used his bible and sent him away."

"An exorcism?" Rage asks to himself.

"Eh-Um... Just who is he?" Niera asks while tugging on Rage's sleeve.

"He is someone I'm sure you've heard of."

Aria is amazed at all the explosions, ever since she gained her own ability to blow things up she has been infatuated with the sounds and the looks they make. Watching the discs hit the crosses and boned corpses, she can't help but look down the line of this seemingly endless row. It looks as though the further the crosses go away from the Gate, the less decomposed the bodies on the crosses get. She is about to look away in disgust until she catches a glimpse of something that makes her heart skip a beat.

She inhales sharply and her legs start to move until she is at a full sprint toward the epicenter of this intense battle.

"Aria!?" Niera shouts when she sees her rush right into danger.

"You fool! What do you think your doing!?" shouts Rage.

He readies to run after her but stops when the sight of Sora bolting past him catches his eye, she runs and avoids the destruction just as narrowly as Aria did.

Aria reaches the crosses and stops running, she holds her breath and slumps her shoulders as she looks up with wide eyes.

Sora catches up with her and she grabs Aria's shoulder, after turning her around, even Sora finds it hard to keep her usual emotionless face when she sees Aria pale and shocked.

Aria shakily points up at the cross, and Sora looks to where she is pointing and sees an extremely skinny man with a full gritty gray beard with long hair nailed onto it.

Aria stutters when she speaks the words she finds extremely difficult to say,

"Th-Th-That's... Papa.."

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