As the light faded and the dust settled, the dragon was in pieces on the ground, Azrael and everyone else scattered about. ReSkin sees Azrael and begins to crawl towards him.
“What the hell was that?” ReSkin asks as he approaches Azrael. “Damn near took all of us out, where did that power come from?”
Azrael slowly regains consciousness, looking up at ReSkin. “I have no idea, I feel like I was just in a plane crash.. I don’t know what happened, last thing I remember I was in the forest and next thing I’m here.”
“There’s this guy named Fallo who caused all of this chaos, I have no clue where he went.” ReSkin says as he begins to help Azrael into a sitting position. “That dragon we just nearly died to was an out of control ‘illusion’ as he called it.”
“The last I checked, illusions aren’t real and can’t hurt anyone.” Azrael says as he begins to sit up. “My body feels broken, good thing I have insurance heh!” he says, groaning in pain.
The dust begins to blow away as the wind picks up, clouds begin to gather, the powerful explosion causes a small weather event to occur, thunder can be heard in the distance, rain is imminent. ReSkin begins to help Azrael up off the ground, suddenly, Azrael feels a shock to his body, he immediately drops back to the ground.
“Whoa, Azrael, are you alrig...” ReSkin began to say before being distracted by something happening in the distance.
Uncle Lorenzo was trapped under a pile of debris calling out for help, he suddenly screams and becomes enraged, his body becoming uncontrollably hot, enough to melt the aluminum beams pinning him to the ground, he rises as flames begin to engulf his body. The wooden debris around him begins to set fire.
“Joseph..” Screamed Lorenzo. Picking up and tossing debris to the side, a massive blaze has begun to grow out of control. The rain begins to douse the flames, causing Lorenzo to fall to the ground as his fire is extinguished as well. He lies unconscious on the ground, barely breathing.
The rain lightens up a bit as you see Francine and Tony emerge from some rubble with the Mayor of Salina still being detained. They begin to move away slowly from the destruction, trying to reach the rendezvous point to wait for Hal as he commanded. As they inched closer to the boundary, Francine looked back to see if she could see Hal, but sadly all she saw was her fallen Uncle. She begins to sob, dropping to one knee.
“What are you doing? We need to go, we have to get him to the meet-up point, we don’t have time for tears France.. Let’s go.” Tony says as he pulls her up by her arm and starts to walk away.
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As Francine begins to turn around to leave, she hears a weird squeal sound, a sort of high pitched screech. She turns back around to see Joseph, who has now mutated into an awful looking creature, with sharp boney spikes protruding out of his forearms, shoulders and spine, running right toward her, before she could react, she was impaled in six different places.
“NOOOOO” Hal screamed as he watched it unfold, he began to run in their direction when Joe spots him and launches three spikes at him, one of which strikes him in the lower left hip. “Noo..not Frankie..” he says as she falls to the ground, lifeless.
Without hesitation, Tony strikes with the force of a thousand fists killing Joe in his tracks. Turning around to find his sister lying on the ground, he kneels down to her, tears starting to fill his eyes. He sees Hal making his way over slowly.
“What’re you doing, get the hell away from her, this is all your fault you bastard, she warned you this was a bad plan but you wouldn’t listen, you let your greed and power go to your head, get away and don’t show your face here again.” Tony says to Hal dramatically as he shoves him away.
Hal begins to walk away but stops. “You know.. Tony.. you’re right.. I should have just listened.. She’d still be alive..”
As Hal leaves the area, Tony begins to look for Uncle Lorenzo, he gets tackled by ReSkin to the ground, Tony gets up slowly.
“Damnit, leave me alone man.” Tony shouts at ReSkin.
“You’re kidding right?” ReSkin replied. “Y’all literally caused all of this and you expect me to just leave you alone?” ReSkin says as he begins to tussle with Tony.
While both men are fighting, Azrael begins to stand up. Shouting at the men, it’s like nobody can hear him. He begins to look around, not understanding what happened, he sees his body lying on the ground. “What the hell, how am I..” He starts to look around noticing a woman standing next to a body, he decides to walk over, she looks up.
“Am I dead?” Francine asks Azrael.
“I hope not.. Means I’m with you.. that sucks..” Azrael responds.
“What’s that in your hand?” Francine asks.
Azrael looks over and notices he’s carrying a golden staff. “I uh, I couldn’t tell you, but I feel as if I’m supposed to hand this to you.”
“Thanks I guess, you know we aren’t bad people right? We just made some pretty dumb decisions.” Francine said.
“It’s not up to me to judge you, I honestly don’t even know what’s going on here, I just showed up.. Anyway, take it, it’s yours.”
As Azrael hands the golden staff to Francine it begins to glow, a beautiful black crystal sits atop the staff slowly turning white as Francine takes control of it. A burst of energy starts emanating from Francine, her hair flying up, she feels empowered. Francine touches the staff to her body and she wakes up, at the same time Azrael wakes up, both back in their bodies but in critical condition. Tony and ReSkin realize that both Francine and Azrael are alive and awake, they cease their fighting and rush over to them. Francine looks over as Tony begins to approach her, she notices the staff is still in her hand.