"We can still--"

"Enough, Dashuan," Cassandra sizzled as she sprinted into view, the overwhelming sounds of the police responding to basically a suicide mission became apparent.

"Join us NOW, or face the consequences of your godamn idealism." Agent Cassandra's cruel look from when she had slain Mr. Hernandez returned and her hand now gripped Derek's arm as she examined the suit a few feet away with a monitor.

A blinding flash of cyan light suddenly detonated across the night sky.

The piercing boom of Arc's decent was like that of a rocket taking off. There was no hesitation in her path.

Agent Cassandra's body convulsed as electricity coursed through her, her eyes wide with shock and pain. Within the time the charged bolt of electricity stopped the black-haired woman's heart and ripped the skin from her skill, Arc had landed.

Detonating blood and chunks of bone all over Derek's gleaming white suit; reducing Cassandra to paste and clumpy bits of spasming muscle, burn sinew, and shattered skeletal remains.

"No!" Dashuan cried.

"CASS!!!!" Derek fell from his feet as he watched the smoke rising from different puddles of cooked flesh and essence.

Dashuan stared in horror, his face glowing in the fires of the different electrical storms Arc and Derek had caused with their unstable abilities.

"Arc," he stammered out, stumbling to his knees.

"What the fuck did you do!?"

Arc turned to face him as more cyan voltage blazed from her body, Arc's expression unreadable but discernable from the almost darkness that covered her now bandaged eye. "I did what was necessary," Her voice was distorted by the flaring energy surrounding her.

"She was a threat to us all, You don't know who she works for..." she stated.

Dashuan shook his head, struggling to find the right words. "Yes but... we can't just kill people like this. It's not right--Not with how strong we are, we're better than them!"

"Do you even believe that??" Arc scoffed. Another strike like lightning boomed from her, blasting through a nearby billboard for dog food and setting it alight.

"We are just stronger, not better--The way they've hunted us, experimented with deadly weapons to maim us..."

Arc stared at Derek, still shell-shocked and trying to understand what had happened. "Try to control us!?"

She gestured to the destruction around them. "This is the world they want, a pristine cage for the wealthy to whip their pets! Dashuan, It's time we made the distinction between us and them."

To Dashuan's surprise, he found himself considering her words heavily.

The idea of a place where Aberrants could live freely, without fear of persecution... it was tempting but it was exactly what Cassandra had promised that came with no autonomy.

But was he even ready to leave the world behind? Turn his back on the humans who he spent his entire life trying to live with while always being on the outside?

"I... I understand what you're saying," Dashuan said slowly.

"It's appealing. But we can't build it on a foundation of violence and death--Isn't that why Cassandra was dangerous?! You killed her but are saying the same crazy shit, except for the insane hate you have for innocent people!"

Arc's electric aura flickered, her head tilting as she regarded him with a shaking head. "Maybe you're right,"

"But the fact stands that that Cassandra was dangerous--Ultress would have wanted me to, theres things you don't understand" She conceded.

He opened his mouth to respond but a guttural yet mechanically distorted scream cut through the air and nearly arriving sound of squad cars.

Derek, still encased in his power-mimicking suit, lunged at Arc with a fury that made Dashuan's blood run cold as the slam rattled his teeth.

"You killed her!" Derek bellowed, electricity crackling around his fists as he swung at Arc and missed due to her ducking.

The force blew the last foundations from a nearby bank, causing it to begin to shudder and spill large debris over the area. "She was trying to help you sick fucks!"

"To give you a future!" The second punch connected, lapping up electricity from Arc's body and setting off a minor pulse.

After connecting that devastating hit, Derek grabbed her by the face and threw her with all his might into the air; the wind whipping as he directed her upward. "and you murdered her!"

His suit opened at the wrists, exposing large steaming coils, Derek let out a massive more concentrated electric blast that atomized the particles it flew past and blitzed toward the aberrant.

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Arc gained her composure in the air, finding the right time as she spun skyward retaliating with a blast of her own that split Derek's in half.

The atmosphere burst with white light.

Arc landed, blowing the street apart as she slammed into Derek. "What the fuck are you!?" she shot back a concerned look as he did not even try to dodge and simply stood up, letting off another anguished distorted scream.

"DIE YOU FUCKING ANIMAL!!" Derek rushed at her, catching her by the chest with a close line as he activated his flight and the two disappeared into another building with an explosion of electricity and ignited dust particles.

"Stop!" Dashuan yelled, trying to interpose himself between them; pushing the limits of his speed to absorb a lashing kick from Derek with his wrist as he entered the building. "This isn't solving anything! We're just causing more destruction!"

Derek's arm unnaturally curved, opening the same compartment of seething coils. "Fuck you Dashuan!"

The blast sent Dashuan out of the rumbling building. The sound of a nearby scream made him wake up. He could feel the branching burns running up and down his muscles, but it was nothing compared to what he realized; There were still many people trapped around this fight, and there was no end that he could see in sight.

He heard another blood-curdling scream, Dashuan's ears rang, his heart sinking as he thought of all the damage they had caused.

Dashuan made a split-second decision.

He couldn't stop them, but he could try to minimize the damage they were causing. Using his now-trained flight and strength, he raced through the battlefield, pulling civilians out of harm's way and shielding them from falling debris just seconds before death in most cases.

The sound of helicopter rotors cut through the chaos, and Dashuan looked up to see military choppers approaching as he gripped the hand of a man nearly about to fall from his 22nd-story apartment.

This was spiraling out of control faster than he could have imagined, Dashuan flew the man to a nearby subway entrance and soared back to the night sky.

"Attention, Aberrant individuals," a voice boomed from a loudspeaker.

"You are ordered to stand down immediately. Failure to comply will result in lethal force...The city will not fall!"

Dashuan's heart pounded so loud that he could feel it more than the tremors still being caused by Arc and Derek.

This was exactly what he had been afraid of--

A direct confrontation that would only lead to more violence and additional obliteration.

Dashuan caught a glimpse of Arc hovering in the air, her body crackling with more energy than Dashuan had ever seen her wield before and now almost achieving flight.

She was preparing for a massive attack; he knew from the corn fields, but this time, Arc absorbed the surrounding amperage from the city; A massive cyan ball of plasma comprised her entire body, and small pointed bursts already let loose into approaching military copters.

Derek, seeing the imminent danger, made a decision of his own.

His suit's energy readings moaned jeopardy as he prepared to absorb Volt's attack, clearly intending to sacrifice himself to save the city as the entire suit opened its different gleaming Tesla coils. Each now shooting enough steam to mist the air around him.

Dashuan took in the scene before him, trying to use the valuable seconds he had to think of something, anything to stop them.

Arc, poised to unleash devastation.

Derek, ready to throw his life away.

The military, fingers on triggers, about to open fire on all of them with no understanding of how outmatched they were.

But caught in the middle--

Countless innocent civilians would become collateral damage in this clash of gods.

As Arc unleashed her electric armageddon Derek mid launch himself forward to intercept it with brilliant white suit, as the military opened fire with a barrage that would have leveled city blocks--

Dashuan put out both his hands, driven by the absolute desperation of needing to stop them all.

He screamed out-- The air grew heavy, dense, as if the world itself had suddenly been submerged in molasses. Arc's electric blast, a blinding wave of annihilation, grounded almost instantly.

Derek's heroic charge became a crashing failure, falling just short of the electricities contained discharge into the steel of the nearly destroyed stadium.

The military's bullets and helicopters lost momentum, their pilots swaying and performing evasive maneuvers to compensate for the wild anomaly.

For six agonizing seconds, Dashuan held a small part of the world hostage. His body trembled, sweat pouring down his face as he strained to maintain control over the fundamental forces of nature that seemed to let him command them.

In those six seconds--

Dashuan saved them all, he finally was being a hero. He saw with perfect clarity the path that had led them here--the anxiety, the broken dreams, the escalating violence on all sides.

Yet he witnessed, with equal clarity, the way forward he had always dreamed of.

He would save them all.

His power began to wane, gravity reasserted itself and resumed its normal flow, Dashuan collapsed to his knees, unable to draw air into his strained lungs.

But he forced himself to stand, to face the dumbfounded faces of companions and adversaries alike. "Enough,"

"This ends now...." he declared, his voice carrying an authority.

Arc hovered uncertainly as the energy quickly dissipated, her electric aura flickering with confusion along with exhaustion.

Derek stood frozen, the suit's systems struggling to process what had just happened and compensating for his delirious state.

Even The military forces held their fire, equally bewildered by the impossible scene they had just witnessed.

"We've all made mistakes," Dashuan began, his voice carrying across the eerie silence that had fallen over the battlefield.

"We've all acted out of fear, out of anger, out of a desire to protect what we care about."

Dashuan took a deep breath, steeling himself for what he knew he had to do. "But this path we're on... it only leads to more destruction, more pain, more loss...And I let that happen!"

He turned to Arc, his eyes imploring her to be an ally. "You're right that we can't go back to living under their rules. But we can't build a better future through brutality and ruin. We have to be better than that."

Then he pivoted to Derek.

"I understand your pain, your sense of loyalty...and even your loss more than you know; But vengeance won't bring her back--" Dashuan clapped his hands together at the final word.

Derek flinched but remained standing motionless, letting him continue. "It won't undo what's been done. We have to find a way to move forward, to heal, and bring a future for everyone!"

Finally, he addressed the military forces.

"And you... you've been tasked with protecting people from a threat you don't fully understand. But we're not your enemies. We're people, just like you, trying to find our place in a world that's changing faster than any of us can understand."

Dashuan took a step forward, his hands open in a gesture of peace like he had done the first time being assaulted by the military.

"What if... what if we tried something different? What if, instead of fighting each other, we worked together to build a world where everyone--Aberrant and non-Aberrant alike-- could live in peace?"

He could see the uncertainty in their faces, it made him gulp down the piercing lump in his throat.

It was a crazy idea, a truly naive one perhaps. But after what they had just witnessed, after seeing the destruction their conflict had wrought, maybe they were ready to consider a different path.

"I'm not saying it will be easy," Dashuan continued. "We've all done things we regret. We've all been hurt, been afraid. But we have a choice now. We can continue down this road of mutual destruction, or we can try to build something better."

"Together."

No one moved.

The only sound was the blaze of small fires and the distant wail of buildings teetering on their last life.

Then, slowly, Derek's suit powered down.

Arc's electric aura faded, leaving her looking suddenly vulnerable and utterly human as she stood there in her black suit, tattered and bleeding from different points

one by one, the military personnel lowered their weapons and helicopters floated in the air; unsure how to proceed.

Dashuan felt a glimmer of hope.

It was a small step, a fragile moment of peace that could shatter at any instant. But it was a start, the start he yearned for every day.

"So," he enunciated, looking from face to face.

As dawn broke over the battered city, casting a golden light over the scene of near-destruction, Dashuan spoke. "What do you say? Are we ready to try a different way?"

It wasn't a resolution.

Not even the end of their struggles. But--

It was a new beginning.