The city had become a warzone, even without the military's current presence.

Smoke jutted from countless infernos, sirens wailed perpetually as police fought for their lives, and above it all flew a solitary figure.

Dashuan soared, his heart solemn as he surveyed the disarray below.

In the months since he'd revealed his powers he had wished to find the other's Arc had only mentioned the one time he had managed to speak with her, but this, this was far more Aberrants than Dashuan could have ever asked.

They were everywhere, their newfound abilities manifesting in ways both incredible and threatening as Dashuan cataloged the biggest threats or allies he could see from above:

A woman stumbled down the main street, grasping plants sprouting from her footsteps intermingled with thorny vines coiling around lampposts and cars that seemed cognizant enough.

Nearby, a man's pale skin had hardened into a transparent metallic sheen, his fists leaving craters in the asphalt as he lashed out in panic toward incoming police officers.

Dashuan dove towards a group of civilians trapped by a growing wall of frigid crystalline structures, the work of an Aberrant whose touch was turning everything to glittering, razor-sharp ice.

With precision, Dashuan altered the gravity around the ice crystals, causing them to powder and creating a misted escape route toward himself that many hastily took. "Go!"

"Head for the evacuation centers!" he shouted to the stragglers.

As they fled, Dashuan's cell phone hummed to life. When he answered Arc's voice came through, strained and breathless. "Dashuan, we've got a situation at the hospital-----they're mutating. Violently."

"On my way," Dashuan reacted, launching himself back into the molten atmosphere. As he fled, he caught glances of Derek in his suit a few streets away, corralling a group of newly-powered individuals who seemed more confused than dangerous.

At least someone was making progress.

The hospital loomed ahead, and Dashuan's stomach dropped at the sight.

The building was partially collapsed, and from the gaping holes in its walls, he could see flashes of bizarre glare and hear inhuman exclamations.

Landing at the shuttering entrance, Dashuan was immediately confronted by the horror within.

Some patients and staff alike were transforming, their bodies twisting and warping in grotesque ways that did not seem like what had happened to him 2 decades ago. Some grew extra limbs, others melted into amorphous blobs of flesh that congealed together before sizzling off into screaming heaps of flesh that decomposed rabidly.

Through it all, Dashuan could see Arc fighting desperately to keep the generator on to the main hospital; Dashuan felt anger with himself at forgetting she now freelanced at the different Hospitals of New Heaven.

"About time you showed up," she yelled annoyed, her red hair standing on end from the cyan electricity coursing through her.

"I can't... I can't stop them all and keep the lights on."

Dashuan nodded, reaching out with his power to create a gravitational barrier, holding back a surge of mutated former patients that formed a small battalion of snarling soldiers of abomination. "We need to evacuate anyone who hasn't turned...Into those things yet," he said.

"And... and we need to contain those who have."

It was brutal, heartbreaking work for Dashuan.

For every person they managed to save, Dashuan found himself using his powers in ways he never had before--turning the gravity high enough to rend bloody holes from the chests and heads of the aberrants too far gone.

Dashuan tried to forget their faces, using his enhanced strength to only beat them back enough for a killing shot of altered gravity if they were too dangerous.

Hours blurred together as they fought their way through the hospital's scores of infected. By the time they emerged, both Dashuan and Arc were exhausted, their clothes torn to shreds and stained fat chunks of brain and guts.

"We can't keep this up," Arc stated.

"There are too many of them, and more are changing every minute...I have to go see Ultress--"

Dashuan opened his mouth to respond but was cut off by the sound of approaching helicopters.

Looking up, he saw a fleet of military aircraft descending on the city.

For a moment, he felt a surge of hope knowing reinforcements had arrived, and this time he was on the army's side.

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But that hope was quickly dashed as the helicopters quickly opened fire, raining bullets down on a group of Aberrants who were causing havoc in a nearby park only a few feet away.

Dashuan watched as the new mutants fell, their bodies riddled with holes; He knew that some needed to be killed but it was too much, they had not even checked if they were truly hostile first.

"No!" he shouted, launching himself towards the scene.

"Stop! They don't know what they're doing!"

His pleas fell on deaf and combat-helmeted ears

The military had arrived in force, and they appeared to have only one objective:

Eliminate the threat, by any means necessary.

Dashuan found himself caught in an impossible situation.

He darted between helicopters and Aberrants, using his gravity powers to deflect bullets and restrain out-of-control mutants for seconds at a time but enough to save many of those he was able to see.

"Dashuan!" Derek's voice came over a loudspeaker embedded in his suit. "They're not distinguishing between hostile and non-hostile Aberrants."

"Get to safety!"

Dashan heart shattered, how could he only save himself?

The military's arrival had turned a crisis into a slaughter.

He needed to focus on saving who he could; not escaping like he was too weak to help.

As he flew over the city, searching for Aberrants to rescue that were farther from the military's sweep, Dashuan noticed how vastly different the new Aberrants were to him and Arc.

Unlike his almost cosmic abilities, these new Aberrants seemed to have developed powers more closely tied to biology--

He saw a man whose skin had become translucent and pale, his inner organs rearranging themselves before Dashuan's eyes like some sort of mutated deep-sea fish.

Another woman had developed a symbiotic relationship with swarms of cockroaches that bustled their way from the sewer, franticly directing them to no avail as they slowly engulfed their new queen.

Yet another had gained the ability to manipulate sound waves, shattering windows and disorienting soldiers with sonic screams that forced Dashuan to quickly cover his ears before a sniper on an adjacent rooftop quickly took them out.

"Holy shit..." Dashuan tried to keep himself together as he surveyed the countless skirmishes below. These new Aberrants had powers that were in many ways more versatile than Dashuan's gravity manipulation, but they lacked the control, the understanding of their abilities that he had developed over months of training and 24 years of being instilled within them as he had.

As the day wore on with little success, Dashuan, Arc, and Derek independently managed to gather a group of relatively stable new Aberrants, guiding them to a makeshift safe zone they'd established in an abandoned subway station on the north side of the slums.

Just as Dashuan was about to stop their search and rescue to regroup and plan their next move, Reports were coming in of three particularly dangerous Aberrants terrorizing the neighborhood over Derek's secure military line.

"I'll handle it," Dashuan told the others with a look of concern. "You two stay here, keep these people safe." The others nodded as they limped into the entrance.

As he approached the area that was reported, Dashuan could already see the extent of the destruction.

Homes were torn apart, cars overturned, and in the center of it all, three figures stood like conquering Warmongers among a pile of mangled corpses.

The first was a man whose body seemed to be composed entirely of living flame; He laughed maniacally as he set fire to everything he touched, debauching in the annihilation of the more suburban neighborhood. The second threat was a woman who had developed the ability to control metal, Lamposts twisted like pretzels around her, and she wore a crude armor of scavenged scrap metal plating of nearby vehicles, floating menacingly above the ground with a twisted smile. The third was the most unsettling--

a person of indeterminate gender whose body constantly altered and transformed, sometimes growing to the size of a center in basketball, other times shrinking down to the size of a small child yet retaining the same features as they beat blood in and out of scared citizens' bodies.

As Dashuan landed before them, he could see the wild look in their eyes... the intoxication of power, the release of long-suppressed desires.

"Fucking Titan?!" the flame man sneered. "I wonder if you can even stop me now--" He turned to the metal-encased woman flinging cars to and fro. "Looks like this pussy is gonna try and make us be lapdogs like him."

Dashuan raised his hands, trying to project calm energy into the situation as always. "I'm not a lapdog...Just a guy trying to do the right thing" he said while gesturing to the flaming carnage around them. "The power... it's overwhelming--Trust me, I know. But you don't have to do this. Let me help you learn to control it."

The metal-controlling woman screamed, a harsh, bitter sound. "Control it!? Why would we want to control it?! Do you have any idea what it's like, to be powerless your whole life? To be stepped on, ignored, treated like nothing while the world goes to shit around you!?" The metal peeledd away from her face to reveal blood and flayed muscle fiber that stuck to the encasing as she shrieked from the pain of the shifting metal despite her words

"I was a joke at home," the flame man snapped. "The cuck everyone laughed at behind his back as they pounded my wife fucking silly. Well, who's laughing now!?" The man motioned to a house that was nothing more than soot and ash.

The shapeshifter's form rippled, settling into a monstrous, multi-limbed configuration. "We were nobodies," it hissed. "Now we're gods...Like you."

Dashuan's heart sank to the depths of his soul. He recognized the real pain in their voices, the intoxication of suddenly having power after a lifetime of feeling powerless creaming over the pang.

"I understand," he said softly to the group as Dashuan tensed his muscles. "Believe me, I do. But this... this isn't the answer. You're hurting innocent people. People like you used to be...People who need protection."

For a moment, he thought he saw a flicker of doubt in their eyes. But then the flame man roared, sending a massive fireball hurtling toward Dashuan.

Instinctively, Dashuan altered the gravity around the fireball, causing it to veer off course and explode harmlessly into the asphalt with a blazing splash to his side.

He had no time to rest--

The metal-controller was already hurling a barrage of twisted metal shrapnel his way with deadly precision.

Dashuan took to the air, using his powers to dodge and weave through the assault of flying shards. Concentrating, he created a bubble of intense gravity around the flame man, smothering his fires and bringing him to his knees.

The shapeshifter lunged at him, its body elongating into a mass of tentacles and claws. Dashuan barely managed to avoid its grasp along with the angle of dodging the shrapnel, using short bursts of altered gravity to keep just out of reach as he now hovered in the air.

"Please," he called out, dodging another volley of metal shards but some caught his skin; sending him veering off course. "It doesn't have to be this way. Your powers... they're amazing. Think of the good you could do with them!"

Dashuan realized he had no choice as they seemed to only scoff at his remarks. He couldn't reason with them, couldn't appeal to their better natures. Not while they were like this, drunk on power and rage.

With a heavy heart, he went on the offensive.

He used his gravity manipulation in ways he never had before, creating localized fields of crushing force to pin down the shapeshifter, bending the metal-controller's attacks back on herself while containing the flaming man all at the same time without breaking a sweat.

In the end, it was Dashuan's control, and his months of training, that made the difference. He managed to subdue the rogue Aberrants, trapping them in fields of altered gravity that left them powerless and straining to even draw breath in the intense domain.

As he stood there, panting from adrenaline more than actual fatigue, Dashuan looked at the three figures he had defeated. They glared at him with a mixture of hate and fear, still struggling against the invisible bonds that forced them to the ground.

"I'm sorry," Dashuan said. "I'm sorry that this power came to you like this, that you felt this was your only choice. But I promise you, it doesn't have to be this way. Let me help you."

For a long moment, there was silence. Then, slowly, the flame man's fires began to dim. The metal-controller's improvised armor clattered against ground. The shapeshifter's form settled into something more recognizably human.

"Are you going to kill us like the others?" the woman questioned, her voice now small and frightened.

Dashuan smiled gently, releasing them from his gravitational hold after assessing the situation. "Now, we learn. Together. This power... it's a part of you now. But it doesn't have to define you. You can be more than your pain, more than your anger. You can be heroes."

As he led the chastened Aberrants back towards the safe zone, Dashuan's mind couldn't help but feel this was not the end.

The eclipse had changed everything, unleashing powers beyond imagination, yet Dashuan was more convinced than ever that the real power lay not in cosmic forces or biological mutations, but in the choices they made.

In the compassion they showed, the understanding they offered, and the hope they kindled in each other.

Dashuan was determined to be at the forefront of that change, guiding, teaching, and most of all, truly understanding. For in understanding, he knew, lay the key.