"I was wondering what you were up to when you didn't come back to the party... This wasn't high on my list of expectations though."
Bashenga snorted when he saw who had come to find him first.
"Did I ask you to come after me? Please don't disturb my beautiful quiet with your incessant prattling."
"Ah, there's my dear brother. As charming as an unplanned prison colonoscopy. It's a miracle someone as bubbly as Gaia chooses to hang around you."
Bash felt his mood beginning to plummet with the mention of the green-haired goddess still waiting on him at home.
"Why have you come, brother? Could your time not be better spent clinging to your woman like a wet-nosed dog? Oh, I'm sorry, what do you call her again...? Your darling 'Mon-Mon'."
Straga stared at his brother with a look that screamed annoyance.
He sat down beside Bashenga and together the two of them looked out into the burning cosmos in front of them.
"Wow... You're in a real shit mood, huh cupcake?"
"Do not refer to me as cupcake, you insect." Bashenga reeled.
"Monica calls me coffee cake actually. I think its because I'm dark, sweet, and great in the morning."
"I don't care."
"I mean sure, it could also be because I crumble in her fingers too, but that's just a part of being married for so long. She knows just what to say to make me-"
"I. Don't. Care."
"Fine, fine."
The brothers went back to being silent for a few minutes.
It was a while before Straga tried to talk again, so Bash thought that he would be left alone.
Oh how wrong he was...
"So... What's the meaning of all this?" Straga gestured to everything in front of them.
"My responsibility. Something everyone else in this family seems to have the luxury of overlooking." Bashenga responded coldly.
"Yea... seems like a load of bull to me. This is a lot more than simple Armageddon."
"I come in many forms, fool. Plague, drought, famine, war, natural disasters, falling stars, meteors... There is nothing simple about me."
"...Uh-huh, sure. You are a lot of things, and none of them are pretty, but I don't know any divine being who would ever call you cruel. But this is..."
Armageddon ultimately is the penultimate agent of change.
It is like gardening. Clearing away that which has reached it's ending so that something new can be planted, or something that will arise from the ashes of what was destroyed.
But what Bashenga had done didn't fall within that umbrella.
This was destruction so fine that even Straga didn't know how many billions of years that it would take to bring new life into this rubble. He didn't even know if it ever would.
The more likely scenario was that these fragments of debris would hurtle off into space and trigger even more apocalyptic events before their time had come.
Straga couldn't just allow that.
He held out his hand and a pulse of destructive power rippled out from his fingertips.
It passed over the enormous chunks of debris and crushed them so finely that they looked like mere bunches of sand.
Bashenga's expression remained unchanged. "Many would speak of my cruelty. Only fools would say otherwise."
Straga reclined and placed his hands behind his head. "Only mortals would say otherwise... The divine understand that you are more necessity than nefarious."
Out of the corner of his eye, he stared deeply into his father's soul.
Bashenga was much more forcefully with how he pushed away his brother's arm this time.
"The only one excited over that prospect is you!" He hissed.
"What? Why??"
"I do not like children, so I naturally wouldn't share your same enthusiasm with having even more of them around."
"Is it because you spent so much time in a child forum that now you're traumatized?" Straga asked pitifully.
"Idiot! Of course not!"
"Well having your own kids is really different from watching someone else's. At least this way you get to give them back when you get tired of them."
"I will not have the child around me in the first place." Bash defended.
The pair flew for a bit longer and when Straga suddenly became quiet, Bashenga immediately feared that he had said something to give too much of his thoughts away.
"Let me ask you something.." Straga began. "The reason why you're upset.. does it have something to do with the baby?"
Bash turned up his nose in disgust. "Your constant insistence that I am in some unsavory emotional state is tiring and has no basis in reality. I. Am. Fine."
"What are you lying to me for? I am not doing anything but trying to help you. We're brothers."
"I don't need your help or anyone else's... And evidently it seems that 'family' is not my strong suit."
Straga felt like he was getting closer to the crux of the issue.
"Did you and Thea maybe fight about this? Did she say something to bother you?"
"SHE is not the problem!" Bashenga snapped.
Straga remained unphased and continued to press. "I see... so it's you then?"
Bashenga had always been a bit softer to Thea and Courtney than his other siblings. He even allowed them in his space for almost a whole hour sometimes before he kicked them out.
Courtney was the sister who seemed to find him genuinely interesting and cool. Even if he didn't understand why.
But Thea was... every bit the archetype of an older sister.
She was caring in a way that was different from a parent. She was fun. Relatable. Warm.
It stood to reason that a fight with her would have put him in a bad mood.
"Whatever is going on, you and Thea can always make up. She's never abandoned us when we needed her befo-"
"Stop. Talking."
Bash could feel his blood boiling as his body reacted.
His arm became large enough that he could grab Straga's entire body with one hand.
He continued to apply pressure; squeezing his brother's body like a child would a juice pouch.
He hated his brother for asking questions. He hated himself for allowing him to get into his headspace. And he hated having to remember the look on his sister's face as he left.
"Does this make you feel better?"
Bashenga faltered.
Straga maintained an unwavering eye contact with his brother that was neither angry or confused.
"If it helps you then you can do whatever you want... just don't expect me to fight back. I will not raise my hands against you when you're like this. That's not how our family operates. It can't be. We are all we have."
Bashenga was bested without even a single punch being thrown.
And now, as he stood before his brother, he had no idea what he was supposed to do or say next.