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Hawk's voice remained exactly as it had been.
Calm.
But…
There wasn't a trace of pain or injury in his tone.
"Is that it?"
"..."
The fanatical ecstasy on Jack and Allen's faces froze instantly. Their eyes went wide with disbelief as they stared at the Gemini Gold Cloth, which had been reduced to a shredded, tattered ruin.
The next second.
Right before their eyes, the battered shell of the Golden Armor simply melted away, dissolving into nothingness like snow under the sun.
"What?"
"How is that possible?"
"Where did he go?"
"Right here."
Hawk's voice was a chilling whisper.
Alarm bells screamed in Jack and Allen's heads. They whipped around instinctively, looking toward the source of the voice.
In the distance.
Father Moreau, the Italian woman Nadya, and the six-year-old Danny—the Angel of Death who absolutely had to reach the monastery by midnight—were cowering behind a small sand dune.
Seeing Jack and Allen look their way, Father Moreau assumed the danger had passed. He breathed a sigh of relief and started to stand up.
But then.
He saw the two Blood Angels hurtling toward them, their eyes wide with panic.
And then… he felt it. A bone-deep chill.
He swallowed hard. Slowly, mechanically, he turned his head to look behind him.
Out of the corner of his eye, Moreau caught a glimpse of a face with a jawline as sharp as a blade.
Hawk, deciding the priest was turning his head a little too slowly, reached out and gave him a hand.
CRACK!
Moreau's head spun seven hundred and eighty-five degrees. With a sickening pop, like a piece of plastic twisted past its breaking point, it snapped off completely.
His neck was broken, his head detached.
Father Moreau, Dead!
Beside him, the Italian woman, Nadya, snapped out of her shock. She looked up at the man in the bespoke, dark gray suit, her eyes meeting his. She saw a flash of golden light in his pupils.
VMMMM!
In an instant, Nadya was vaporized.
But the unawakened Angel of Death was quick. He didn't even glance at his incinerated mother. With a sudden burst of speed, he bolted, leaping forward like a startled gazelle.
Hawk didn't blink. With a mere thought, an invisible wave of telekinesis shot out, freezing the boy in mid-air, suspended mid-stride.
Just then.
Jack and Allen arrived, interposing themselves between Hawk and the boy.
They unfurled their massive, blood-red wings. In a blinding flurry of motion, they unleashed a storm of razor-sharp, steel-like feathers, a hurricane of crimson blades tearing toward Hawk.
Hawk blurred backward, retreating instantly.
Jack and Allen exchanged a quick look. With a powerful beat of his wings, Jack morphed his feathers into a long, blood-red broadsword and charged at Hawk.
Allen stayed behind, his face grim, frantically trying to figure out how to break the telekinetic hold on the Angel of Death.
Hawk hovered in the air, his eyes tracking Jack's incoming assault.
The next second.
Just as Jack was about to reach him, Hawk vanished. He reappeared instantly behind the Blood Angel. "In the name of the Lord!" Jack roared, slashing the crimson broadsword backward without looking.
Hawk smirked. He sidestepped the blade with ease, his form flickering as he vanished again. He materialized directly behind Jack and lashed out with a devastating kick.
BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!
Jack was swatted from the sky like a fly. He slammed into the desert floor below, cratering the hard-packed sand and gravel.
Pfft!
Covered in dust and dirt, Jack shot out of the crater, his blood-red sword raised, his eyes frantically scanning the empty sky.
"Where is he??"
"Show yourself!"
"Come out!"
Jack roared at the empty air.
Below, Allen, guarding the suspended Angel of Death, was equally tense. He gripped his own sword, his eyes darting back and forth, desperate to catch a glimpse of Hawk.
But…
The desert was silent, save for the howling wind that had picked up with the onset of night.
And then!
Footsteps.
Clack.
Clack.
Clack.
The steady, rhythmic sound echoed from the darkness. A moment later, the fully armored figure of the Gemini Gold Cloth—the one they thought they had just destroyed—stepped out of the shadows, its cape billowing majestically in the wind.
Hawk had originally planned to step onto the battlefield himself.
But just as he was about to get reckless, Gwen's smile flashed in his mind.
So—
He changed his mind. He chose to remain cloaked by the Reality Stone and continue fighting through his avatar, the Gemini Cloth.
Again.
Better safe than sorry.
He wasn't a comic book villain; he couldn't afford to be arrogant. As long as he played it smart, he wouldn't get blindsided.
And so!
Controlling the Gemini Cloth as it strode from the void, Hawk looked down at Jack, who was clutching his blood-red sword. The Golden Armor raised its right hand and curled its index finger in a taunting gesture.
"Come on."
"AAAAH!"
Seeing the blatant insult, Jack lost his mind. He crouched low, then, with a deafening BOOM, shattered the ground beneath him and launched himself at the Golden Armor, becoming a blur of crimson steel.
"DIE, HERETIC!"
"Lightning Plasma!"
The Gemini Cloth threw a right punch. But unlike previous iterations, this strike was accompanied by five distinct flashes of light as it slammed into the Blood Angel.
High above.
Sitting cross-legged in his meditation, Hawk smirked.
As every fan knows:
The Gemini Gold Saints possess a very specific, utterly devastating technique.
It's called—Five-Sense Deprivation: Lightning Plasma.
"First sense!"
"Sight!"
Poof!
Jack, hurtling toward Hawk at breakneck speed, suddenly found his vision plunging into absolute, impenetrable blackness. He instinctively skidded to a halt.
Just then.
Hawk's voice echoed in Jack's ears, cold and absolute, like a divine judgment.
"Smell!"
Hiss.
Jack felt an invisible force pulse through him. The next second, the overwhelming stench of copper blood, the dusty tang of the desert air, and even the subtle hum of his own energy completely vanished.
His nose had become a useless ornament. The world was suddenly sterile and bizarre. The primal instinct to use scent to discern danger and safety was abruptly severed.
Caught in this sudden, terrifying sensory void, Jack panicked. He roared in anger, unleashing torrents of energy. He flapped his wings wildly and swung his blood-red sword in erratic, blind arcs.
A short distance away, Allen watched his partner flailing like a madman, swinging his sword at nothing while Hawk stood calmly just thirty feet away.
"He's right in front of—"
Hawk glanced at Allen, then refocused on the panicking Jack. His voice boomed in Jack's ears one last time.
"Hearing!"
VMMMM—
Just as Jack strained to catch his partner's voice...
The world fell dead silent!
The echo of his own roars, the whistling of his wings cutting the air, the thrum of power in his veins... every single sound ceased instantly.
An absolute, suffocating silence encased him like a concrete coffin.
Jack felt as if he had been banished to an isolated, soundless void, a cage where he could neither see, smell, nor hear.
Fortunately.
He could still feel the friction of his wings against his body, the sensation of his own movement. It was the only thing telling him he was still alive.
But soon, within that absolute silence and darkness, Hawk's voice echoed directly inside his mind, clear and chilling.
"Touch!"
"Ugh!"
Jack grunted, feeling as if his body had instantly turned into a hollow shell.
He couldn't feel the contraction of his muscles or the resistance of the air when he flapped his wings. He couldn't feel the solid earth beneath his feet. He couldn't even tell if his hand was still gripping his sword.
He tried to swing his blade, but he had no way of knowing if his arm had moved, or if the sword was even there.
He tried to steady himself, but he had no sense of balance.
Through Hawk's eyes, the sight was pathetic. Jack's wings hung limp. Like a marionette with its strings cut, he stumbled, his previously terrifying charge reduced to a clumsy, comical shuffle.
Finally, Hawk's voice echoed in his mind one last time.
"Taste!"
"..."
Five senses, stripped away!
Sight, smell, hearing, touch, and taste.
With the severing of his final sense, an overwhelming sensation of absolute nothingness swallowed Jack whole.
He froze in place, utterly motionless.
He couldn't see, smell, hear, touch, or taste.
His consciousness was trapped in an infinite void of darkness. Even anger, roaring, and struggling had lost all meaning.
Allen, guarding the Angel of Death, stared in absolute horror.
He couldn't understand what was happening to Jack—the warrior the Lord Himself had praised as the most likely successor to the Archangels.
Hawk slowly walked up to Jack.
He looked into the Blood Angel's wide, open, yet completely hollow eyes. His gaze was devoid of emotion.
"It's over!"
BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!
The pupils in Jack's hollow eyes rapidly dilated until pure white consumed his entire eye. His body tilted backward, and he crashed onto the desert sand with a heavy thud.
He was alive.
But he was already dead.
His soul and consciousness were permanently trapped within a sensory-deprived husk. He couldn't even achieve the release of true death.
But…
As Hawk stepped over Jack's fallen body, he raised his left hand like a blade. A streak of golden light severed Jack's head from his shoulders, instantly absorbing his soul into the Underworld.
But he didn't lift the sensory deprivation.
Even in the Underworld, Jack's consciousness would remain trapped in eternal, absolute nothingness.
The next second.
To Allen's absolute terror, Hawk materialized directly in front of him. Before Allen could even react, Hawk's right hand tapped his forehead. "You're brothers in arms, right? It's only fair you experience what he's going through."
In an instant, Allen, stripped of his five senses, stood frozen like a wooden statue.
His eyes were completely vacant.
Hawk then turned his attention to the Angel of Death, still suspended mid-air by his telekinesis.
"Now—"
"It's just you and me."
"Angel of Death, do me a favor. Call that old bastard Yahweh down here."
"I want to kill him!!"
"..."
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