Quinn was astonished. It was completely smooth and rounded in many places. The surface of the fighter jet was completely red, and it did not appear to have a glass canopy. It was likely coated in layers of the expensive material called crysien that he had used on his engine back at the University. His powers would not work on that thing, he realized. Very very good design.

The thing peppered him with bullets from it's cannon. The bullets were also coated in crysien, so barriers did not stop them. The craft flew straight behind him at a curve and pointed it's nose at him again, peppering him with projectiles.

Wait, that should not be possible.

The thing maneuvered again. A symphony of control surfaces activated, not just the three axis controls that Quinn's fighter jet had. Quinn counted dozens of moving parts. Surfaces on the front of the wing that changed the shape of the wing, it had two tails with two rudders each at a slight angle so that they could move inward or outward for extra elevator control. Genius!

However, the thing was still doing stuff that should be impossible. It would get caught in a flat spin over his head, but still manage to point the nose at him and blast his airplane apart with cannon fire. It was dancing in the sky directly above his head and it always seemed to be able to point it's nose at him and use it's cannon. No matter how fast he could turn, it could always turn faster. It seemed to always be in a blind spot. Most of his effort was spent repairing the damage to his fighter with his powers. He struggled to focus on where the enemy was spatially.

Then Quinn noticed that there were these cute little nozzles on the exhaust that could vector the thrust.

That. Changed Everything.

He needed to get close to the ground so he could pull up more minerals and add those. Those beautiful, beautiful thrust vectoring thingies. He pointed his nose at the ground and started his descent. The ground below was a patchwork of dark rock and white snow. The sky in all directions was a cacophony of billowing black, gray, and white clouds. There was a pocket of clear air directly blow him and he flew into it.

That had been a mistake. As soon as he did, the crimson fighter jet above him fired missiles at him. He could not block them.

His fighter jet ripped apart in the sky. He reached out to try and grab the pieces and repair it, but the explosion had released some sort of red fog that was weakening his powers. Then he noticed that in every direction, hundred of fighter jets were firing missiles at his falling form. Not all of them were aiming at him, more like a cloud of missiles that would explode around him in a firework pattern.

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Those explosions blew most of the pieces far away from him, making it difficult to sense the metals. The sound deafened him. His flesh burned and the shrapnel tore his body to shreds.

He was falling then, his clothes burned away. He was using all his power to heal himself. He figured he would just go underground and build another fighter jet, this time with those beautiful thrust vectoring nozzles. Then he would be unstoppable.

He was busy designing the new airplane when he hit the ground.

Annoying.

He landed in a snowy field, surrounded by trees caked with snow. The wind was blowing the snow off the trees. The sky above was gray. The crimson airplane continued to pound him with those nasty red-mist missiles.

Fucking annoying.

He stood up, and in front of him he saw the light of dawn, burning with the intensity of the heart of a fighter jet. It came closer. Burning, burning.

It was a woman with a gauntlet on one hand, traveling at likely faster than the speed of sound, her clothes pressed skin-tight against her body, with fire all around her and something much worse burning as well. She started moving faster towards him.

Wait no, she wasn't moving faster. The snow blowing from the trees was also moving faster as well. And faster, and faster. Wait, why couldn't he think of a reason? Why did he feel so stupid? Where was he again? What had he been doing? And why did he feel so weak? He reached for ether and found almost nothing, barely a trickle. That burning red mist around her was revolting. Wrongness.

Then the woman ripped out his throat. He snapped back hard enough to crack trees, and sank into a snow bank.

He sat in the snow, bleeding. The woman didn't really have any expression on her face. It was as if she could not see him. She adjusted her clothes and her pointy witch hat. Her long golden hair blew in the gentle breeze along with the wintery powder from the trees.

Wait? Was that Kiera Blaine?!

It was. Those were oculomancer eyes. It didn't make any sense. Could she always fly at supersonic speeds? How did she even know to be here as he fell?

Oh wait, he was dying. He needed to heal, fast. He tried to use the tiny trickle of ether that he could sense to heal his throat. He found it was impossible. There was some shifting, evolving, self-healing maze of crysien infecting his wounds. He was bleeding all over. He would bleed out before he could fix it.

A fighter jet flew over Kiera's head. It was the color of sunset, and blood.

Then it hit him.

Brother, help! BROTHER! HELP!

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Kiera continued to look only at the vendark spectrum as the golden glow of the man faded and finally went totally black. She could hear the sounds of fighter jets overhead. She waited a few minutes to make sure that the golden glow did not return. She was still burning sien, still creating an entropic field to block powers.

Her sien ran out. She shifted her eyes back into the visual spectrum. The man was naked, his clothes likely burned away by the missiles. And he had a familiar face.

"Quinn?!" She gasped. It was Quinn. She had killed Seth's brother.

She felt, not pain, and not pity. Not hatred. Not regret. She felt empathy. He must have felt that he was born into the wrong world the entire time. Every time he looked up into the sky and dreamed of flying there, but the whole of human infrastructure was perfected to prevent that.

Fiona's red fighter jet flew over Kiera's head. It flipped upside down into a flat spin and shot off flares in salute to Kiera's kill. Then it's thrust vectoring pointed the nose at the sky and it rocketed off. Fiona vanished into the clouds.