CHAPTER FORTY ONE

Outside Saint Petersburg, Russia

Vladislav Geronimov cut stone outside in the snow. He held an ax, just so he didn't look crazy to passersby. The village was small, and everyone knew him and his family. A man, his wife, and their daughter. Fifteen years ago, their baby boy died of scarlet fever. He was not even a year old at the time. Vlad's wife was never the same after that; utterly depressed. Five years ago, it got the best of her, and she left Russia and Vlad alone to look after their daughter, Ana.

Vlad took good care of Ana, along with the local community stepping in to help the Geronimov family get back on their feet after such tremendous loses. Ana went off to school and three days later a second sun appeared in the sky. Ever since then panic has ruled Russia. The phones were useless, and the internet was permanently down. Vlad knew he could only stay home and wait for her.

Last night, in the coldest storm of his life, Vlad found himself outside on the stone slab before he cut it. He had never seen it before, the storm must have uncovered it. How did he get out here? Vlad tried to get up and couldn't budge, like something was holding him down. Vlad did not believe in ghosts. He was a man of science. That is what he went to school for, and that is what he sent Ana away for. He worked in a factory throughout the Cold War and decided to keep the job long after the wall fell.

Vlad knew whatever this was, it was not magic. There had to be an explanation. Two words came to his mind: density and pressure. The atmosphere around him was altered. Perhaps it was the stone slab's polarity. Vlad tried again to get up, when he did, his head lifted and it felt like he tore his chest open, cracking his chest plate straight up and down.

His head dropped back, and the wound opened and burned. Vlad screamed in the night, but there was no blood. He was not cut open. He writhed in pain and felt his body fuse into something else. Vlad rolled off the stone and crawled back to his house. He made it through the door, up the stairs, and into his room before he passed out. The bastard was tough as nails. He woke up later just beside his bed.

It was no surprise that once he gathered his strength and dressed his wounds he returned to the stone earth slab. Vlad put his hand on it and felt nothing, like it was all a dream. He was going mad alone by himself, cabin fever getting the best of him. He needed his daughter to come home. Vlad at his wit's end slammed his fist, just as Moses did during his transformation, and broke into the earth. What happened next was nothing like the rest, not even DarkFlood.

Vlad had no physical characteristic change. He looked exactly the same, human. But that is not what he was. He put his hand over the stone and pushed it back together, sealing the crack. "No," He lifted the entire thing out of the snowy ground with ease, "It's not the stone I'm controlling..."

"It's the gravity." A man said to his right dressed in all black armor and a cape, standing along with two other men.

"Who are you all?"

"I'm DarkFlood, and this is Moses and Lazarus."

"How did you get here?"

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"I carried them across the world." DarkFlood explained through teleporting three feet over and back all before Vlad.

"That is impossible."

"You are saying it's impossible, a man who can bend pressure with his mind, a man who can fly."

"Whut?"

"Trust me, my friend."

DarkFlood stepped back with his company to give Vlad some room. Vlad wiped his hands together and wiggled his fingers. He closed his eyes, threw his hands down and catapulted into the air.

"My God!" gasped Lazarus, "This is really happening."

"Just like Superman." Moses proclaimed.

DarkFlood ran after Vlad and used his pulse blasts to jump high into the air. These leaps gave him enough altitude to track Vlad through the clouds. He was going all out, pushing the limits. Philip knew he would get tired quickly and if he's going as high as he can as fast as he can when he passes out, this poor guy is done for.

Vlad turned through another cloud. DarkFlood appeared right in front of him with his arms and legs sprawled out, anticipating the trap; he grabbed onto Vlad passing by and held on for dear life as this crazy Russian pushed for Mach 3. Meanwhile back at the house, Moses and Lazarus waited patiently for their return.

They went back inside and sat at the kitchen table. Lazarus took it upon himself to boil water for coffee or tea. He looked out the window over the sink, down the dirt driveway in the snow, to the road where a young woman was walking across it towards them. She was a girl in her mid-twenties; bundled up tight with a faded red scarf around her neck.

"The door is locked, right?"

"I locked it when we came back."

The girl walked up to the front door of the house and opened it without having to unlock it and let herself in. "Wait a second," Lazarus muttered, as he approached her in the common room, "Is this your home?"

She screamed and the scarf flushed dark red, "You! You can see me?"

"Yes."

DarkFlood teleported back into the kitchen directly on top of the table with Vlad unconscious in his arms. They regained stability and integrity and fell, crashing down on Moses still sitting there unsuspectingly.

Moses got out of the way in time and only received some minor scrapes and bruises. He was still extremely nervous about losing his flesh to the stone, like a deadly plague or King Midas, lord of gold, he feared the end, becoming a statue. For now, he stayed alive and pulled Vlad from the wreckage along with DarkFlood.

Lazarus brought Ana over to them. She looked at her father and tended to him while Lazarus explained what happened to Philip and Moses. The whole time, Philip direly thinking of a way to share Lazarus' power to see the dead, if only to help random people. But what he would give to talk to his Sensei one more time, or his Grandfather, or Sarah...

In a couple of hours Vlad awoke and Lazarus told him of his own extraordinary power and amongst all the things Ana got Lazarus to tell her father, like how she was murdered, and who murdered her, he took one thing to the heart, the last thing she said to him before moving on.

"You don't have to wait for me anymore, Papa."

He went back to New York City with DarkFlood, Moses, and Lazarus. Together they would form the first super league. When it was still an age where the concept was new. DarkFlood could see the present and the future, he saw how super heroes and super villains would soon be the ordinary man, and a super league would mean nothing more than a common street gang. This would make history, just like what was to come for DarkFlood. A moment so big in time, so powerful, that Philip could not see it. All he could do was dream around it and hope to find the key to what was to come.