Do you know what I love about life? It’s that if you open yourself up to the world, it will open itself up in return, for better or worse.


    Mourning Olivia was a strange bittersweet experience. I felt nothing the entire time I knew her due to my stint in unreality. Our relationship could be defined as me going through the motions of being someone, something, I no longer was. As much as I love all my abilities and as much as I try, I will never truly be human again.


    They say all magic comes at a price; I thought for a while that my ever-encompassing apathy was the price. I was wrong, for how can one experience the cost if they are indifferent to it. it is only after she died that I realized the cost, I will forever be outside reality. Be outside a normal human life. Even if I regain a human body, it will be an eternal one. I had exchanged a normal human life for every other possible one.


    So, I did not really mourn a friend. I mourned the possibility of what we could have become, what we could have experienced together. The possibility of what any relationship I form could have become.


    I did eventually come to terms with it though. Olivia had kept whatever goodness existed in my husk of a heart from rotting. While I will never be the good man she thought I could become, I will always carry that goodness with me. I had accepted that was all our friendship was meant to be.


    That led me to accept the fact that all my relationships will be but chapters in my book even if I fill the other’s. I can at least make those chapters good ones.


    You might be wondering why I am having these thoughts, I certainly would at least. The reason lay dead at my feet. For better or worse indeed.


    Claire is… was a friend. I would even go so far as to say a close friend.


    Claire was the granddaughter of Aphrodite and Hercules. She had inherited a sliver of divinity from both, beauty from Aphrodite and strength from Hercules. She could have used either in a myriad of self-serving ways, but instead she opened an affordable gym. She used her divinity to draw out the beauty and strength of all who worked towards either in her pseudo-temple.


    She quickly became a pillar of the community due to her extensive philanthropic efforts. She gave free memberships to at risk youths, battered women, and anyone else she thought could use it. She even opened her gym to the homeless during bad weather conditions.


    In short, she was a way better person than me.


    I met her when I signed up for some person training. She would invest even more of her divinities in her private clients, that’s how she kept the lights on. My body was still in rough shape from my fight with Little Frankie, that’s what I call him in my head at least.


    Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.


    Her divinities not only fixed up my appearance, but they also helped my insides get a bit more structured. Make no mistake, my insides are still a horror show and I’m in perpetual agony. However, it was now more like a bad tooth ache than a dull rusty knife being run across my insides. I even got my hair back, even though it now looked like a unicorn threw up in it.


    It was not all her help that made me like her. It was her simple kindness. Olivia was a warrior of righteousness; she defended humanity with her life and her death. She showed me humanity’s strength, resilience, and willingness to sacrifice. Clarie showed me humanity’s kindness. She helped her fellow man for no other reason than that she could. I once saw her walk home in winter without a jacket because she gave it to another who needed it more.


    While she may have sounded like a saint floating above the earth, what made me her friend was that she wasn’t. She swore like a sailor, drank like a drunkard, and gave her love freely. She once spent the entire weekend crying on my couch eating ice cream, because she found out that man she went on two dates with was married. I like to think that I enjoy life, but she showed me that I could never enjoy it like she could. She knew that even as a demigod her time was limited, so she wanted to stuff as much life into it as she could.


    So, suffice to say when I felt our karmic tie sever, I ran to her as quickly as I could.


    When I arrived, it was to sirens and flashing lights. I quickly ducked under the police before being stopped by one of the officers at the scene.


    “Sir this is an active crime scene. Please step back over the tape.”


    Pulling out my badge and showing it to the officer, “Agent Jesse Cole and this is my partner, Agent Bennett Flint.”


    The officer took in our appearances. Me with my fluorescent tie-dye hair and Bennett’s human form with its mane made up of long curly hair and a beard.


    “Yeah… I’m gonna have to talk to the sarge about this.” The officer said to us before walking away.


    With my badge and liberal use of Smoke I was able to take over the case, but I was unsure if I wanted it. if I wanted to deal with why she had died, that she had died.


    “What happened to you.” I said talking to myself while running my hand through her hair.


    With a flash of green light from Time Piece, I found out.


    Artifacts:


    [Disparate Unity]


    [Smoke]


    [Bennett]


    [Time Piece]


    Materials:


    [Nascent Energy Vampire Progenitor Mantle (Remnants)]


    [Empowerment (Remnants)]


    [Frankenstein’s Lightning (Remnants)]


    [Emotive Fire]


    [Emotive Ice]


    [Olivia’s Friendship (Remnants)]


    [Beastly Heart (Remnants)]


    [Murder Weapon (Remnants)]


    [Various Utility Artifacts]


    [Various Articles Of Clothing]


    [Death Dogtags]