Oh," she said, and hesitated. "Well that's never happened before."

"Like you said, it's not a muscle I flex, it just happens. You can't lock me out of my powers."

"Yes, I see that. Irritating."

She mused a moment longer before, from below as before, another shadow emerged. I cut it down before it had time to even fully exist. But then there were more. I lashed out, my blades glowing white against the blackness, tracing arcs around me like the rings of saturn in the blackness of space.

Yet more came. Hundreds. Thousands. Until the black of the void was replaced with the black of her shadows. Still I fought, blades slicing every way, whirling around me as fast as light could move, tearing through the shadows, banishing the darkness with light.

They piled onto me, endlessly, but the mass met their end the very moment they reached my radius. Unmoving, on my knees, I sat untouched in the eye of the carnage like a bodhisattva as the numberless spectres dissolved into smoke around me.

It...wasn't as easy or simple as that. I was still paralyzed, Saga may not have been able to stop my powers, but she knew what I'd do before I did it. The shadows were fast and lethal and endless, and many times were only a hair's breadth from driving their shadowy talons through my body before I could react and send one of my precious four guardians to stop them.

Even with four weapons, even with an effective range of a little over ten feet, they were on me constantly, threatening to cross that distance in the blink of an eye. I held them back for what seemed like hours, watched thousands of twisted effigies of Saga disappear into smoke.

I didn't know if I could endure, but I did anyway. This was Saga's next way of torturing me. If she couldn't kill me again and again, she'd make me fight her until I was ready to quit. All I had to do...was never be ready to quit. Ever.

Almost as soon as I had that thought, they vanished, all as one, and it was just me and the blackness and her on her throne again.

"Work off some stress?" She asked, dryly.

"I could go another thousand rounds if you'd like."

"I wouldn't. I suppose I never asked, but is there anything I could say or do which would convince you what a horrible person you are and that you should leave?"

"Nothing comes to mind."

"I figured. Ready for round three then?"

I tensed as the world and Saga melted from view, not sure what new scheme she'd come up with this time, but instead found myself laughing, sitting peacefully on my couch, watching the holo.

Lia was cuddled up next to me, sometimes watching the holo, sometimes working on the homework sitting on the couch in front of her, pen cap in her mouth, feet flat on the sofa, knees stretching out her old, gross sweatshirt from within. Mom and Dad were there, Dad in his recliner, reading the news on a holo, Mom on the other couch.

"Saga, you son of a bitch, don't do this," I threatened.

"You watch your language," Mom snapped. I felt sheepish.

No. I had to fight. I couldn't fall into the memories, or I'd never get out. "Balls, cock, wanker, fuck, shit, damn, asshole!" I shouted.

"Language!" Mom hissed.

"Bro. What the hedgehog are you doing?" Lia was leaning off of me and looking like I was spewing radiation.

"I'm just...I'm trying to save someone."

"By swearing like a pirate?"

"Worst pirate I've ever heard," Dad mused.

"Honey! We are not encouraging this!"

"I'm not encouraging it, but you have to admit that was pretty sad," he replied, not putting down the holo. "Wanker. That's not even real English."

"Honey!"

"Right. Athan, you're grounded. Stop swearing in front of your mother."

"Stop swearing, period, you mean," she said, deflated. "You are such a horrible child, doing that to your mother," she muttered.

"Sorry, Mom," I said, not even sure why I'd decided to do that in the first place.

"And I hear that's not even the worst of it," she continued.

Here we go. Once mom started on something she was impossible to stop. Lia gave me a glance that let me know in no uncertain terms this was all my fault.

"I heard that our little boy has grown up to become an Exhuman. Can you believe that?"

Lia pulled further away from me as Dad finally put down the holo. "Bro, is that true?"

"It's...but you know it's true, Lia. You saw me." My mind raced as I tried to put together thoughts and memories which made no sense. I'd just done this with her, I had lit up a cave with lightning and she thought it was cool. But where would we find a cave in LA?

"You knew about this?" Dad roared as he stood up. "You keep secrets from me, in my own house? My own daughter!"

"Daddy, I didn't know! I'm sorry!" Lia shrieked as she tried to untangle herself from her sweatshirt. Mom began to wail. Everything turned surreal so fast, was this really happening?

He advanced on her, hand raised. There was a slap which echoed through the room, and Lia was falling to the floor.

"I didn't know! I didn't know!" she kept crying out.

"Liar! How dare you!" She grunted as he kicked her in the gut.

"That's enough!" I shouted, finding my arm locked around Dad's. "Stop it, she didn't do anything."

Before I could react, I felt stinging pain on my face and found myself falling backwards onto the couch. Dad ignored me and kicked Lia again.

"Do you see what you did to this family?" He said as he kicked her again and again, her crying slowly becoming mewling gasps. "Do you understand that Exhumans and normal people can never. Ever. Get along?" He punctuated his sentence with more kicks and Lia went silent. Mom's wailing reached a new level and he turned and grabbed her by the face, throwing her to the floor as well.

I was standing again, lightning swords out at and the ready. I saw red. Lia's body was motionless on the ground, a trickle of blood dripping from the corner of her mouth. Mom wailed and tried to protect her own head. Dad just stared at me.

"You going to kill me then?" he said. "Realize that there's no place for humans in your world?"

"No," whispered, as I cut him in half. "I realized you aren't real." He disappeared in a haze of black smoke, as did the room and the others.

[But it could have been,] Saga said.

"You're sick. Fucking sick. Maybe I should just leave you in there."

[You should.]

"I won't. I promised you."

Without another word I found myself falling and landed in another world. Outside my parent's house. Me, kneeling on the ground, arms behind my head, surrounded by XPCA. Blackett strode forward menacingly.

"Submit and surrender," he said, simply.

I hesitated, and then threw out the script. This would not go the way it had before. "No."

A soldier fired at me, the laser dissipating into my shield, and in the same moment, lightning surged towards him and coursed into his gun and body. The weapon exploded violently, sending him flying back, where he slammed against a short fence and remained unnervingly still.

"Submit and surrender."

"No."

Another soldier fired. Lightning coursed through him and he collapsed next to me, twitching and screaming, his voice coming out horrifying and synthesized. When he lay still, the smell of burning flesh hung in the air.

"Do you not see the futility of trying to coexist, Exhuman?"

"I do not."

Another soldier fired. A rocket this time. A huge surge of lightning followed the trail and seeped into every inch of the man and his weapon. Several explosions tore through his armor, and then a larger blast as the additional rockets on his back detonated, sending bodies flying everywhere. Fire broke out, but still Blackett didn't flinch, staring me down even as his soldiers panicked around him to put out the flames.

"How many more lives will you take before you realize this is the way it has to be?"

"These aren't real lives. This is just a memory."

"These were real lives. These men died because of you." He grabbed the dead soldier next to me and thrust him onto me. The body was limp and heavy and still warm. I retched, but tried to keep it together. It was just a memory.

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That wasn't a reassuring thought, because she was right. It was a memory, but it was a memory of the first man I ever killed. It had been so easy, just an accident, if he and I weren't enemies.

"This isn't working either, Saga. You're right, this is nauseating and horrible. But all you're showing me is how right I am. This world, these horrible unnecessary deaths...Exhuman events like this one...they're a symptom of your kind of madness. It's people like you who think that humans and Exhumans can't coexist that made these people attack me, made me kill them."

I looked down at the still corpse beside me, posed exactly as I remembered, saw in my mind every night for weeks.

"You're not breaking my will, you're just strengthening my resolve."

Again the world wiped away. I found myself on a rocky plateau overlooking a black abyss surrounded by a destroyed city in flames. There with me was Karu and the Exhuman we'd killed.

She looked just as I saw whenever I closed my eyes. Scarred, swollen, charred, eviscerated, all at my hand.

"I knew you'd show me this," I said. "Same story different day. This woman chose to oppress others, like you would have me do, just because I'm stronger than them."

"This woman," said Karu, "isn't what you should be afraid of."

Karu swung her arm dramatically and the Exhuman's head flew off and landed in front of me, Karu suddenly weidling her wrist-blades and wearing her full pearlescent hunting armor.

"It's me. Do you truly believe that I would go along with your little plan? I find the notion laughable. Perhaps I make exception for you, but for Exhumans such as these? Why would I even stop to talk with such filth? Exhumans are beyond salvation."

"Saga, I believe in Karu. I believe in you. I know both of you can do it, but only if you share in my beliefs."

"How arrogant," Karu said, levelling a blade at me. "You presume that you are smarter than everyone around you? Open your eyes, fool. Every one of your friends holds fear and prejudices in their heart, and blindly, you think yourself greater and smarter than them all?"

"No--"

"Then you accept there is a basis for our prejudices."

"It's not--"

"Ashton, I may be weak of heart when it comes to you, I may support you against my better judgement, but that beast chained in that mine is there for good reason, and should you ever set her free, I will hunt the two of you to the ends of the earth."

"No. You won't. You two may be equal and opposite, but at the end of the day, you both want the same thing. You want to exist, you want to protect the ones you love, you want to live without oppression. As long as both of you are striving towards that same goal, you can coexist. We can all coexist. You just need to set down your hate, one day at a time."

"You think it's that easy? Saga endured a lifetime of misery at human hands. Everyone I've ever loved died at Exhuman hands. Do you think people put aside their differences so readily, just because you ask nicely?"

"No. But I think they can endure until they realize that persons are not people. Karu didn't and wouldn't kill you without reason. You aren't the one who killed Karu's friends. The proof is me, Saga. I'm an Exhuman, and she's already befriended me. You can be next."

The apparition of Karu sighed at me and then, too, melted away. Finally, I found myself in The Bunker, my old home. Saga was here, sitting on the floor where AEGIS usually would be.

"What memory is this?" I asked. "And how are you going to try to twist it to show me how wrong I am about everything in the world?"

"This is all of your memories," she said. "And I'm not going to twist anything. The things I've shown you, those are your own unresolved nightmares, that's your own baggage you get to carry around with you all day."

I saw Saga was in tears, rocking softly as she spoke. How long had she been crying? Was she crying for herself, or for me? Or for what she was doing to me?

"Is...is this it? Are you just...trying to use the fact that...girls crying makes me uncomfortable?"

"You are such an idiot," she said, and smiled a little as she wiped away a tear. "No. And I apologize for my mess. You see, this whole time, I've been diving deeper and deeper into your heart and mind to show you how wrong you are about everything. And...you've suffered a lot, but always been strong. I don't even understand why, but it made me cry."

"Is...this it then? Are we done fighting?"

"No. There's still one more person who hates you. Hates you more than anyone else."

"It's you, isn't it?"

"No. I actually...love you, in a weird way. If you can believe that. He's out there."

She gestured towards the Bunker door. My heart skipped half a beat at her hesitant drop of the L-word, but I couldn't stop and ruminate. I stepped outside and found myself in a bathroom, window broken, ceiling rotted, stripes of sunlight filtering in from the outside. Wooden walls, rotting away. The bathroom from the building outside Saga's mine. In front of me, a broken sink. Above it...a mirror.

"He feels guilt and shame, tries to punish you for others' mistakes. Always willing to take the blame, always feeling like he has to support everyone or he's letting them down. And then at night, he can't even sleep, can't be alone with his thoughts, or he has to face the things he's done."

"Saga, no." The spidery cracks in the mirror were fusing together. I couldn't look.

"Always the high morals. Always. So pushy and arrogant, he'll kill another Exhuman because of her insistence on her way of life, so convinced is he of his own. He just wants to survive and be left alone he says, and then meddles in others' affairs constantly."

She was practically shrieking now, sobs choking her voice at times. "What if I just wanted to be left alone! Why do you get to decide what's good enough for me or not? Why is your damn stubbornness so much more righteous and perfect than anyone else's?"

"Saga," I said as the mirror resolved in front of me and I saw a shadow of myself in it. "I'm just trying to help."

"So was that Exhuman you killed. She just wanted her kids back. So were the XPCA you murdered, they were just doing their job. So was I! I just let you and your human sister walk right on in. I could have killed either of you in a heartbeat."

Her voice was frantic now, beating on the inside of my head. "Maybe I should have! Maybe I still should!"

"Saga, I know I'm not perfect!" The mirror was growing larger, consuming all of my vision, letting me see nothing but a horrible warped image of myself.

"Then how are you so damn sure that you're right about this? After everything I've done to you and shown you, why are you still fighting me now!? How are you so goddamn convinced that you are so fully perfect?"

"Because I don't have to be perfect to help you! Perfection may be beyond my grasp, and I'm okay with that, but that doesn't mean I have to give up on chasing it. I don't have to be perfect all the time to help people, I just have to try. And that's what I'm doing right now, Saga. trying to help you, imperfect as I am."

Her thoughts froze. The mirror shattered. I was back in blackness again.

I stood there for what felt like a very long time with nothing but blackness around me. Gradually, Saga descended and sat cross-legged on the floor opposite me.

"I really hate you, you know that?"

"I thought you loved me, in a weird way."

"I do. That too. I'm not sure it's possible to plunge through a person's entire life and history and see everything they've ever seen, feel everything they've ever felt, and not love them. Even if they were a terrible person, and you...are far from a terrible person."

"Um. Thanks? I wasn't expecting this."

"Neither was I." She sighed and looked defeated and small, her eyes were bloodshot and she sat hunched on the floor.

"Where does that leave us?" I asked.

"I don't know. I don't think I can beat you, and I don't think I can let you beat me," she said, gloomily.

"Why not? Let me beat you, that is."

"Would you like to relive the events of the past hour again? I saw and lived all of that with you too, and my opinion is still my opinion. Humans can't be trusted, and I will never put my life in their hands. Flat out."

"Then we're at an impasse?"

"No. There's one more thing left," she said bitterly.

"Then bring it on."

"You really are an idiot, aren't you? Do you listen to anything I say?"

"Uh, all of it. Hard to tune it out when it echoes inside my head. But hard to know what you're referring to."

"Killing you. That's what I've got left. That or doing things to your brain which would, from your perspective, be about the same as killing you. No more free will, for example."

"Oh. Well, don't do that."

"Then you'll leave instead?"

"No."

"Then that's where we're at."

We both glumly sat in the emptiness for a long time.

"I was wrong about something at least," she said. "I said this would end when one of us broke, and neither of us did, no matter what I tried to do to you."

"Yay, I guess."

"Yeah."

Silence fell over us once again.

"Well, this is intolerable," she said at long last. "I'd explain that I'm sorry and I don't want to do this and all that, but you've heard it all before and didn't give a shit then either." She stood and cracked her knuckles. "This won't be like the other times you died. You aren't coming back from this one."

I stood too. "You said I had a martyr complex." She nodded. "Well, there's no way I'd rather die than trying to help someone."

"You're such a dick."

"Hurry up and kill me then, if you're going to."

I didn't know what I was doing. I was exhausted, and not just from lack of sleep. As much as I plowed through torment after torment, every one of them hung on me, as they had each been specifically crafted to do by Saga's sadistic mind. I felt like we'd been in this non-world for days, just fighting. I was so tired of fighting her. So tired of everything.

Did that mean I was ready to die? Of course not. I was leaving so many friends behind. So much of my life unlived. I think I hoped that this was just another game by Saga.

Any presumption I had of that vanished as I collapsed forward, pain all over my body as my heart stopped. I gasped out, the deep lungfuls of black air from the mines unable to reach my body without my heart working. I saw the coarse-cut floor under my hands fading in and out of view, I was back in Saga's chamber, back in the real world. Dying for real.

I staggered forward, crawling, and ran into something in the dark. It fell over, crashing to the ground with a metallic clatter. Involuntarily, I lit up my swords to see.

And right there in front of me was Saga's coffin, surrounded by medical carts and ancient lamps, one of which I'd just knocked over.

I staggered towards it, my limbs becoming weaker every time I moved them, unsure of what, if anything, I'd do when I got there. I was too weak, it had only been seconds, but my entire body was shutting down.

Desperately, I fell, landing on my side and rolling on my back, gasping for breath. In the dim light of the room, I could see a shape watching me from inside the coffin's window, a hand pressed against the pane.

[Goodbye...Athan. I will miss you.]

I couldn't move, couldn't breathe, my body simply had nothing left. I lay on the floor feeling my own body going cold and feeling vanishing from me in waves, the last thing I'd see was my own bolt of lightning hovering over me, like a light from a distant tunnel.

My mind was foggy and dim, but...lightning. An idea so close. I'd done this before. I couldn't remember. Everything was turning white.

Goodbye everyone who loved me. There were not many of you, but I cherished each of you dearly. I'm sorry I couldn't save you, Saga. I'm sorry I had to leave you behind, Lia. I'm sorry I couldn't make a world for us, AEGIS and Karu.

And Karu.

"...and Karu," my lips barely formed the words.

I couldn't move, but focused every bit of my failing will into my powers and sent a shock through my heart. It spasmed from the jolt, and I felt warmth touch my fingertips for a moment.

I jolted again. And again. And again. I felt incredible pain, but...I felt it. I felt something. I was alive still. My heart wasn't restarting, probably because of whatever Saga was doing. I was on manual, but I wasn't sure how many more shocks like that I could take. I was tearing through my own flesh just to keep myself alive.

I shuffled to my knees and hands, focused on jolting myself alive every second.

[No...this is impossible.]

My palm slapped on the floor in front of me as I crawled a step.

[Stop! Go away!]

Another step. And then another. My insides burned, my heart felt like it was on fire, but still I went. Forcing myself, painfully jolting my heart every step of the way.

[It's impossible! You're dead!]

I grabbed the edge of the coffin and pulled myself up. There was a panel here, many words and buttons I couldn't read through the haze in my eyes. A small one, by itself. I pressed it and the panel came to life, lights and holos aglow. Another button. A large friendly green one.

[Don't you dare! I will kill you! I will--]

I felt Saga pushing in on my mind every way she could. Blackness enveloped my senses, my body freezing. The edges of my brain began to burn away...

I pressed it. I heard Saga scream, not just in my head, but right in front of me, saw her through the window in the coffin, arching her back, her eyes wide. Felt the needle enter Saga's spine.

And then I collapsed, the darkness of unconsciousness replacing darkness from her mind. The last thing I heard before blackness took me was the sound of my heart beating in my ears.