“Um, aren’t we supposed to be going the other way? You know. Away from Armageddon city?” Jonghyun’s eyes were big as he watched the swarms of screaming citizens-while, at the same time, struggling to keep up with the long legged stranger (more or less) ahead of him.

The other man only smiled to the side facetiously. His brisk walk was uninterrupted, the timing of his steps precise and pre-calculated.

“Hello?” came the high pitched voice again.

“No one told you to follow me, Jonghyun-ah.”

“No, but I’m not going to sit around and watch you walk to your imminent death! Now turn around before we both die!”

Jinki chuckled, shaking his head in amusement. He didn’t reply, only kept walking. The street was cracked from Richter scale shattering earthquakes; with a few aftershocks as a pretty red bow. Far off were a few unyielding tornadoes, but you’d have to be able to see through the death cloud of exhaust of the many fires running rampant through the city in order to glimpse the giant destructors of nature. Sky blood red. Sirens, crime, debris and desolation. All of chaos, and it was originating here, soon to be an epidemic.

Of course it was practical that he turn the around.

But it would be more practical for Jonghyun to follow his own advice.

“You think this is funny?”

“Why so protective over me, little man?”

“I’m not-yah, slow down!” Jonghyun grumbled as he broke into a short sprint, quite am unorthodox mess with his rumbled, torn business suit. When he caught up to the other man he scowled. “I don’t care about you, if that’s what you’re thinking. I just don’t want it on my conscious that I let a clearly mentally impaired idiot walk his way to doom!”

“Clearly.” Jinki suddenly shot an arm out to clothesline the younger’s midsection. The electric pole came crashing down, deadly wires tearing. Jonghyun screamed and jumped into Jinki’s arms.

The older grinned at him a second later, when Jonghyun poked his head out from his chest.

“You were saying?”

There was a grunt as the accountant violently tore away, nearly falling on his face in the unleveled concrete. “Look, you know why I’m here. I know you do. Just like I know you know why New Seoul is about to become the next lost city of Atlantis.” He dusted himself off, ducking from an identified flying object.

“Oh the flooding. That should start soon.” Jinki continued on, casually stepping over the pole. Ignoring the wires touching the gutter water as if the danger of such a zone were irrelevant.

“Don’t you care that you will die here?”

“Don’t you care about saving your own ? Get out of here, I know you want to. You all are about to die anyway.”

“You all? What the , are you some kind of invading alien? Are you doing all of this?

“You said I know why you’re here. Now lets take that as a given. I do. And you’re right, Jonghyun. I’m not like any of you, as you like to convince yourself time and time again-don’t look so surprised. I can do whatever you imagine I can.”

Yet Jonghyun could shake off the sudden reveal of telepathy with ease. There were more important things than mindreading right now. “You didn’t answer my question!” he hollered through the cries of people running out of yet another diner.

Jinki smiled cryptically, something sinister behind the shine in his eyes.

Jonghyun stopped walking, a mask of horror on his face.

But sooner than not he was clamoring after the fading figure, entering the abandoned, half-demolished diner after him. Jinki swung himself on a stool. His hand went down on the bell. When the sniveling on the other side of the counter started to annoy him, he leaned up out of his seat with a pleasant grin, peering down to the waitress in fetal position.

“Now, I think I’ll take a coffee with six sugars. In world full of kissers and pullers,” he added with a chortle.  “Oh, and with cream. Definitely can’t forget the cream.”

Both men watched the girl scramble up with a loud scream. She ran out of the diner…straight through the glass door. And kept going.

Jinki was already staring at Jonghyun when the younger turned back to him. A cocked head put a pep in Jonghyun’s step as he immediately rounded behind the counter to start on the coffee.

“Hmm. She must have been bad at making coffee.”

“What did you do to her?”

“Nothing, but I’m pretty sure the man hole about three blocks down will knock the kinks out of her neck for good.”

“What-

“Less talking, more beverage please.” Jinki emptied a packet of artificial sugar on the counter, swirling finger creating strange symbols in the white crystals. He calmly started down at his ministrations as he spoke evenly to the spooked man currently fighting with the cracked coffee machine. “Mind a few words, my Jonghyun?”

“Go for it. I’ll be dead soon anyway.” he mumbled.

The older his lips piteously. “I’m sorry to hear that it displeases you. I thought you weren’t afraid of anything.”

“I’ve never been. Up until you.” Jonghyun cursed, bring his burned fingertip to his mouth. “Now hurry up and tell me, before I get into some freak accident.”

A passive shrug. He waited until the mug of hot coffee was set in front of him.

“I’m angry Jonghyun. Actually, angry isn’t the word. I’m quite largely enraged.” Took a leisurely sip.

“You sure do look it,” the younger sassed.

“I know my face is deceiving, but it is true. I’m pissed, and I have been for quite some time. Everything came out as a huge disappointment, you see. Everything I created. All that I carefully planned and executed-a waste. And I can only blame myself; crying over spilled milk is useless  at this point.”

Jonghyun cringed at a large boom. The building next to them crumbled down in a dusty heap. The slabs of wall and lumps of brick seemed to deflect off the small diner, though it all crashed into everything thing around it.  But when Jonghyun went to question both the phenomenon and the older’s ambiguous words, Jinki didn’t let him get a word in edgeways.

“I should have listened to the old man, I know that now. I was a stupid boy thinking I could handle such an outstanding task. Trying to play father and not having a clue as to what I was doing. Yet all is not lost. At least I learned my lesson.” He sipped again, wiping the whipped cream from his upper lip with the back of his hand.  Sighed. “At least this lesson. The old man always was wise.” Then light laughter.

Jonghyun swallowed, arms limp to his sides. “I don’t…follow.”

Jinki finally looked up at him through his bangs. Beckoned him over gently. And Jonghyun was hesitantly making his way over the stool next to the hooded man. It wasn’t as if he had a choice. There was something wrong about this “man”, something really out of place. And if this was how Jinki was at his angriest, Jonghyun would do nothing to test that.

“Sit.”

He sat unblinkingly. Not even the rising tidal wave out the window would distract him.

Jinki, however, was distracted momentarily. If one could call it that. He didn’t look in the wave’s direction, but flicked his wrist nonchalantly towards it. Instantly the wave shifted west, away from the entire borough they were in.

“Now listen to me.”

“I’m listening.”

“You may not understand anything I say, so don’t get discouraged. Still listen.” Jinki shimmied around to fully face the younger, arm resting on the counter. His stare was…intimate. Penetrating.

“I see you with your palms in your pants-but me? I got the world in my hands. I let it spin on my finger-was a critical thinker.  Was trying to walk a straight line but the line was crooked. Was “shooting for stars” so that astronauts dodged the bullets. I was Double R-a rebel with a reason. I tried to fight your devils with my demons. Living in a glass with everyone-like you- looking, yet how could you get the picture if you don’t know who took it?

“Then I found that this was real business, and that I was unemployed. The blood was in the streets and it was up to my knees. Turned into underground , and I became a seed. Yeah, I was bought a brand new attitude-because the hate became music to all of your ears, and you grabbed your dancing shoes.  Life became a gamble because I’d failed to check the point spread. Something finally convinced that I should have saved my bull on a memory card and opted out when I had a chance, or even before I did what I did.

“You all question that there is no answer to-none that I can provide because it will not be absorbed in the way that it should. So you can say I built a house on “I don’t give a ’ avenue. All these current affairs; this neglect and self-centeredness and inhumanity-oh, but who the hell cares? Everybody fighting over power and position like musical chairs.

“So now I’m on the road to redemption, and yes, I’ll even use a few stairs, forget the spares. I’m ready and so I’m here-prepared. “

His voice softened up considerably, his eyes still firm but the edge draining away. He slumped back, lips thinning. Looking through Jonghyun, possibly not even speaking to him anymore.

“And the rockets red blare, the bombs bursting in air. I know this life is a rollercoaster…but it turned out unfair. And I’m sorry. There was a blessing in disguise…right before yours and everyone else’s eyes…then I realized, hey? Since it is a disguise, how would you all even know it was there? Again…I’m sorry.”

Jonghyun gazed back, the whole of him slowly unpeeling.

None of it had hit him, absolutely none of it hit him until he noticed the creeping golden glow that started from Jinki’s left hand and was now up to his neck. He didn’t understand the poetic euphemisms and metaphors and , like he was bound not to, but yeah; he understood ethereal light when he saw it.

“Jonghyun?” the weird man smiled.

“Uh….huh.”

Jinki giggled, downing the rest of his coffee, ruffling the younger’s hair before hopping down from the stool, something under his breath about molding clay and fun. Shards were crunched as went to the glassless door and pulled it open. 120mph of cone-shaped wind whistled several feet away, stalled by that peculiar wrinkle of Jinki’s nose.

The accountant’s stool was turned with invisible hands. So that a petrified Jonghyun was met with a fully celestial, immensely glorious heart attack on sculptured legs.

Jinki was taller; leverage for his height because most of the diner’s ceiling was gone. Beefier. A ing Oscar statue in ancient Greek hero garb: down to the tied sandals, armor and golden bands on his forearms, shoulders and ankles. Even the ing river of light brown silk that was his “mane”, which had been a cropped, dry mess atop his head a few seconds ago.

“In essence little man…I’ve grown sick of what all of this has become, sick enough like I need meds. I know your name…I know everyone’s name and who they are…but names are unimportant at this point. You all are in the belly in the beast…and she has been thinking about abortion.”

Jonghyun’s lower jaw trembled, somehow now able to understand the word play and, thus,  connect what he saw with what he heard. . “S-she?”

“Clearly.” The radiance of the odd, teasing smile was enhanced, of course. Thirty two pearls of perfection that slay Jonghyun seventy times seven.

A plane crashing into the main square trembled the ground, erupting into flames. The people who managed to crawl out from the mangled metal were all hosts of the furious, red-orange heat, terrible screams serenading the moment.

Jonghyun weakly turned from the disturbing sight to Jinki. Jinki was holding his free hand out. A hand bigger that two of the younger’s heads put together…

Yet leather wrapped feet landed on the tile anyway. He staggered his way silently, vulnerably over to the towering hulk of light.

Once he was within touching distance, Jinki scooped him up with that one arm, holding him like a little girl would her baby doll. So that Jonghyun’s tiny head rested in the crease of his elbow.

“I can take you with me, Jonghyun-ah. I can take you home with me. You will never remember the mistake you knew as a life, a world of savagery I manifested out of carelessness, pride and contest. All you have to do is say the word.”

Helpless slits searched now-blue-gold eyes.

“Word,” he whispered without hesitance.

And then he was limp.

Jinki giddily, sweetly kissed the center of the human’s forehead. He couldn’t wait to rebuild him, lavish him, spoil his Jonghyun and make him apart of his family. Dad would still be pissed, but once he saw how cute and impressionable and adorably grouchy Jonghyun was, there was no way he’d say no to his adoption.

Ah, but first, there was business to tend to. There would be plenty of time for the more preferred aftermath.

The kooky deity that he was, he ducked his big out the door instead of easily taking off through the open ceiling. He was soaring into the air faster than one of his father’s messengers; those guys who tended to Earth, his older brother and father’s favored planet of look-a-likes.  What Jinki’s planet hadn’t turned out to be, and was definitely far from “more evolved,” like he’d promised it would be when he rebelliously left home all those years ago.

Once he was high in the bloody sky, he rolled his eyes. Yeah, a stupid boy. Only Jonghyun compensated for this and the little guy was more than he’d hoped for, in all honesty.

Many golden whips of lightning-like ropes webbed from the palms of his hands, as he’d thrown Jonghyun’s body over his wide shoulder. The colossal ropes went out in all directions, deep into space and lassoed the nearby planets, including his planet’s sun. Now the heavy snarl was on his face, the true reveal of his uncharted temper and humiliation.

The god gave one great, heaving pull, and all the captured planets hurled into his at once, crushing the sphere into smithereens in seconds.

He didn’t look back as he propelled through stars and galaxies and darkness, leaving the remnants of his “project” in his wake.

Jonghyun was curled to his golden chest, Jinki beaming down at his unintended miracle.