Where Antichrists Come From: After the War

[Originally posted at Slacktivist.]
[I still don't have all of Where Antichrists Come From here, in fact I might be lacking most of it, but you can find Nick's origin here, and a couple other scenes here, and here.]

The thing about war was that it was messy. Death is clean enough, but dying... dying can take time. Dying can involve suffering. Dying... well, if it took long enough to notice, dying pretty well sucked.

That's why Nick had demanded to be brought here, not that it really needed to be a demand. He brushed aside concerns about his safety, as if God would let him be harmed early.

God was a meticulous bastard. Everything had to be done just so. Harm the Antichrist before the time had come? No fucking way.

So there was no need to fear for his safety and with that out of the way his staff would take him anywhere. This was where he had chosen because it had the most people dying. He looked at what had once been a city, and spoke a name, "Lucifer."

She was at his side. "Yeah, Nick? Kind of busy,"

"Tell me where I can save the most people."

"That one," she pointed to an improvised field hospital a few miles away.

"Thanks, I thought I could figure out on my own, but ..." he wasn't sure what to say. How do you convey being completely overwhelmed?

"No problem," Lucifer said. "Tell your search teams to push further into the city, especially northwest of the city center. They're staying too far back, and it'll cost dearly."

"Ok," Nick said. "Thanks again."

"I've got to go," Lucifer told him. "Fallout to get rid of, laws of physics to break, you know."

Nick nodded and she was gone. He relayed her orders to his search and rescue teams, then had his helicopter fly him to the makeshift hospital she'd indicated.

"What are you going to do?" the pilot asked him on the way.

"Help people."

"How can you, sir? What can you do in the face of... of..." the pilot gestured at the wreckage, "that."

"Signs and wonders," Nick mumbled. "Signs and wonders."

When the arrived Nick jumped out without waiting for the helicopter to land. It departed as soon as he was clear of it. He'd ordered it to join the search and rescue efforts.

A doctor noticed him and said, "We don't have time for a photo op, stay out of the way."

Nick resisted the urge to smile; it was nice to know that people would still react that way to the admitted Antichrist, but this wasn't a time to smile. "I didn't bring a camera," he said, then asked, "Where are the hopeless cases?"

The doctor seemed pissed off at him for not disappearing, but gestured to a tent before going back to what she had been doing.

NIck went into the tent and put the powers of the Antichrist to good use. He couldn't raise the dead, not yet at any rate, but healing with his hands? That he could do.

It was a small difference. The world wouldn't be saved on a case by case basis. But it was a difference. And at the moment it was the most he could do.

Plus, it felt good.

If, in the end, they lost and he went to Hell, which was the most likely outcome, at least he'd know he'd done it for the right reasons.

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