Flashfire will never admit he is afraid. The gnawing beast in his gut can’t be fear. But the images coming out of PK Resonance… the news… Highheart’s panicked message about Home Run and Megajoule and Pandahead… They’re certainly making him feel something.

Home Run and Megajoule. Somehow the same person. A person that Flashfire has looked up to his entire life. He grimaces, watching the smoke rising over the city from PK Resonance’s main campus. The helicopter takes them out painfully slow - he would have flown himself straight here, but apparently he’s the highest ranking cape around and they need someone to at least set up a temporary command center. Plus, there’s the old man rotting in the helicopter passenger seat.

The damage is easier to assess the closer they get. One of the residence towers, the northwest one, is belching smoke and ash, and it looks like an earthquake has turned a solid acre of the campus woods into a busted crater.

The aircraft brings them down near a barricade erected in the courtyard outside the main PK Resonance building, below the statue of Park Dae-seong. A series of quick fabricated walls reinforced by metal beams have been raised to serve as their temporary HQ. Capes in different costumes have the area surrounded, along with lesser security agents in their standard blue uniforms and tactical gear.

Flashfire drags Paul out of the helicopter. As soon as the engines die, he barks, “Tell me what the fuck all this is about, and how I can stop it.”

“You need me,” Paul snaps back. Old man’s got some bite of his own, it seems. “He needs an empath. You got one of those?”

Highheart’s out there somewhere. Flashfire shakes his head, pushes Paul into a cape’s custody. “I’m not taking you anywhere near him. We know you lived with him for years. I’m not gonna bring you two back together, not until hell freezes over.”

Paul looks back at the pyroclastic column swallowing a part of Houston’s night sky. “It just might, tonight.”

A storm cloud of drones flies by, but they can’t get into the column of smoke. Flashfire’s power makes him the perfect candidate to get in there.

“He’s a clone, you said,” Flashfire says.

“He’s… it’s complicated,” Paul replies. “With what’s going on… I can’t imagine it’s the kid I know. Right now, the person at the wheel isn’t Home Run.” He sniffs, snarls, and says, “You can think of him as possessed. If you’d get me to him, I could fix it.”

“Again, not gonna happen. You just wait here.” Flashfire nods to the cape, who takes Paul back to the temporary HQ set up. He glances around, sees who’s gathered. None of the prominent capes here, not the famous ones, not the powerful ones. He’s got Jettison, a man with simple aerokinesis, Trainwreck, a hero who gets stronger the more he gets hurt, and Octopede, a guy with eight arms. The guy’s suited up in special armor, but c’mon.

Flashfire shakes his head and pulls them together. “Priority right now is to target Home Run. I’m sure there are capes and PK personnel in there - buy them time to get extracted. I want every cape we have on support, and anybody with fire suppression powers working on clearing this smoke-”

Behind them, a massive explosion rocks the campus. A new plume of fire and molten rock shoots up near the tower.

Flashfire leaps into the air, riding his white hot flames into the sky. “On my lead! Jettison, keep the fire and smoke clear of us. Trainwreck, hit him with everything you’ve got! Octopede, stay with me. Don’t get separated!” His team follows him as he rockets toward Home Run. He’d chosen these capes specifically for their ability to fly.

Ahead of them, there’s screaming, gunfire, and other notes of Affected battle. Flashfire struggles to keep his cool. People run from the tower screaming in terror, covered in blood. The bottom floor is in ruins, belching smoke and ash, and he feels something pulling at his chest as he looks down there. Tugging at his Affect. Not real gravity, but a kind of gravity of the soul.

To Flashfire’s shock, Highheart emerges from the smoke, limping alongside another person… a mask. A woman in a motorcycle helmet with a sword at her side. He recognizes her from the night Home Run brought him to the Front as a prisoner. He’d broken her arm to escape.

“You!” he roars, shooting down to meet them. “And in that fucking mask outfit, too!”

“Stand down, Flashfire,” Highheart manages. “We’ve got bigger priorities.”

“When this is over, she’s coming back to the Shrine with us,” Flashfire says, pointing his flaming hand at the mask. “She’s a criminal.”

“If there’s a Shrine to go back to,” Highheart replies.

“My friends,” the mask chokes out. “He’s killing them.”

Highheart grabs Flashfire’s shoulder, and it’s only then he notices the burn blister on her arm. Her black skin turned scabby and green and melted. “It’s bad, Flash. It’s worse than Carnality. No masks or capes right now.”

The other capes catch up to them, and Octopede takes Highheart in his arms while Trainwreck supports the mask. Flashfire stammers, looking at the horror unleashed on them.

A thunderous wave of force splits the smoke, revealing Home Run hovering across the hellscape he’s created, his hands outstretched as if to proclaim: I am here. Come and find yourself wanting.

Flashfire leaps into the air. He laser-focuses on Home Run, blacking out everything else. He sees the face he’s revered all this time, Megajoule’s face, staring back at him. But the person behind those eyes is someone unknown. Someone who’s laughing at him as he flies like a missile aimed for their heart.

The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

Whoever wins, Flashfire knows that no one watching will forget the capes that jumped into hell, preceded by gales from Jettison, by arcs of blazing fire from his own palms. Flashfire has to believe, as he pours himself out upon Home Run, that Houston would cheer his name at last, and not remember him as the man who brought the Vanguard here.

It’s a mere backhand that sends Flashfire flying upward into the stinging smoke. His head swims from the blow, and he struggles to get upright, to orient himself in the dark, roiling cloud. That one blow rattles him to his bones, makes him think he should go home and pretend none of this ever happened. But then he gets his bearings, catches his breath, and rockets back down to rejoin the fight.

Octopede is down, bisected from head to groin by Home Run’s hand. He twists Jettison’s head off like a bottle cap. Trainwreck pulled to pieces. In seconds, all that’s left are smoking bodies, their powers found wanting in the face of Home Run’s onslaught.

Flashfire roars down, pouring out everything he has - and then Home Run is two inches from his face, his grin so wide it could split the skin of his cheeks open. A quick punch to Flashfire’s stomach. Before he can register another fact, he hits the ground, rolling. Tossed aside like trash.

He looks down at his stomach to see the smoldering hole Home Run put in him. He wills his legs to move but they refuse. Oh Metis, he paralyzed me.

It’s only Highheart and Silent left. Home Run warps to about fifteen feet above them. They cling to each other, looking up at their doom.

“You’re an empath, right?” Home Run shouts, his voice like thunder over the campus. “Last time I let one of you near me, you stuck a blade in my heart.” He raises his fist, and from within his fingers, a blazing white star forms. “So we’ll do this, instead.”

The flicks his thumb at them like he’s flicking a coin, and the point of light shoots down. Highheart tries to push Silent free. Flashfire screams, trying to get up, trying to force his legs to work.

The light swallows both women, mask and cape alike. When it vanishes, there’s no trace of them.

And then Home Run appears right above Flashfire. He steps down out of the air as if there are invisible stairs only he can see, and shimmies his shoulders as he makes it to the ground.

“No,” Flashfire says weakly.

Home Run leans over him. “You won’t die for at least a few more minutes. I severed your spinal cord.”

Flashfire stares into his face, the face of Megajoule and yet not. The face of the man who killed his best friend. “You cocksucker. You’re not him.” Flashfire has seen so many pictures, so many videos, so many pieces of media of Megajoule throughout his life. Like every single other Affected out there, he reveres Megajoule. He knows the man’s heart. His personality. He’d never do this. This… creature… grins down at him and kneels, his fingers blazing with power.

“P-please,” Flashfire says.

The grin turns feral, the eyes widen in amusement that quickly focuses into hatred. “Please what? Please kill me and wipe my filth from this planet? Please destroy me and all my kind until we can’t hurt anyone ever again?” The tidal waves of Affect washing over Flashfire, the emotions, they are deeper and wider than any he’s ever felt. An ocean of engrams. An ocean of hate.

The beast stands upright, fires raging behind his head like a halo of unholy light. “I will crack the foundation of your world. You fancy yourself some kind of god. I’ll show you true godhood.”

He launches into the night.

Flashfire watches, unable to move. He’s never felt so powerless as he does now, watching the first skyscraper just outside of PK’s main campus start to crumble.

#

Bedevil and Mateo soar on his hardlight platform over collapsed buildings and broken streets, staring down at the end result of unchecked Affected war. On the ruined PK campus, the residence towers are like broken daggers, run through by a molten river. Smoke rises and bubbles. Houston suffers beyond the campus, too, and it looks like Gabriel has moved the warpath on. Bedevil has to find some capes, someone to rally.

She points down at the temporary HQ set up in the shadow of the main PK Resonance building. “Bring us down there. Maybe we can get help.”

They alight in the courtyard. Bedevil’s legs are still wobbly, but her body has none of her attention right now. They need to get a message out to Oracle, to the rest of the Vanguard. Everyone needs to work together on this.

She had hoped to find a few capes still left alive, but there’s only a man in yellow spandex watching over an old man in the corner. At first, she’s disappointed, but then Mateo yelps in shock. “Paul??”

“Paul?” she asks. The man Gabe couldn’t stop talking about? The one who oversaw the lab? The man who’s responsible for Gabe, the cloning program, and whatever hell is going on outside?

Mateo runs up to the old man and jumps into his arms. Paul seems just as shocked as Bedevil, but then he returns the embrace. “Hey, kid. Long time no see. You okay?”

“Been worse,” Mateo says, pulling away. “…Do you know what’s happening?”

Paul nods grimly.

“You do?” Bedevil wraps him up in invisible tendrils of air, trusses him up like a roast. Yellow Spandex shouts, looks like he wants to intervene, but Bedevil jabs a finger at him and says, “If you know what’s good for you, you’ll go home to your fuckin’ family and hope this isn’t your last night alive.”

Yellow Spandex gets the message. He grimaces and runs.

“As for you,” Bedevil hisses. “I should fucking kill you.”

“Why does this keep happening to me?” Paul looks to the sky for an answer. Then, he looks back at Bedevil. “Yeah, you should. But you need me. I’m your only shot at stopping all of this.”

Bedevil relents, dropping him to the ground. “How?” she demands.

“He’s under the control of his eldest brother, the first clone we made. That guy is powerful beyond measure. But I’ve locked him away before, kept him from possessing Gabe. I can do it again, if I can get my hands on him.” Paul hangs his head. “I’d probably die just getting close from all the different kinds of radiation coming off him. But I-” He falters, as if he doesn’t want to admit this. “I’d deserve it.”

The cape in Bedevil takes over. She groans inwardly and says, “Look, if we can avoid that, we should.”

Paul shrugs. “Anyone who gets close to him is going to die.”

“Even if they have absolute control over atomic matter?” she asks. “My shield can stop his radiation. I can stop everything he throws at me.”

“Sure, your power might counteract the physical effects of his to some degree, but when you start fighting, when you pit engram against engram, he’s going to kill you,” Paul says.

Another tremor shakes the earth beneath their feet. He’s getting farther away. She looks out at Houston and sees his path taking him toward the Shrine. He’s going right for the heart of the city.

This is all personal for him. He wanted to kill Park because he was at the lab. He probably wants to hit the Shrine because it’s about the capes that made him. And maybe in some fucked up way, Gabe wanted all of this, too. So this thing, whatever’s at the wheel, is just doing what Gabe wanted, if not in the way he wanted it.

But it stands to reason from all of that that if he could find Paul, he’d probably kill him too. Which means, he’d probably follow Bedevil just about anywhere because of who she is, trying to kill her, too.

“What if I lead him to you? We set up an ambush, Mateo protects you with his shield, and I get him to spend as much of his power as I can handle so that we can all survive this and get Gabe back?” Bedevil asks.

Paul chews on that. “It could work… Theoretically. But you’d have to get him to spend a lot of his power. And remember he can drink it back up again quickly, so you’ll need to get him distracted.”

Mateo doesn’t look like he likes this idea. “Maybe Gabe would hear me. Listen to me. Maybe if he just sees us, he can take back control of his body.”

“I wish it worked like that,” Paul says, patting the kid’s shoulder.

Mateo sighs, shakes his head. “Okay. I guess this is the plan.”