Emily opened her eyes and found herself staring at the falling snow. She felt the cold wind blow across her skin. She sat up and found herself in a small crater. She was still inside the Museum but the ceiling was gone and so was most of the front of the building. She was also naked.

She sighed and looked around not understanding what had happened. “Was there a bomb or maybe a missile strike? Was this part of the Major’s plan.” She asked herself. In front of her maybe twenty feet away was a badly burnt body that was holding a small twisted piece of metal that might have been a gun at one point.

Behind her, she heard the sound of the odd bird call. It was that stupid bird again. She turned around and saw the beautiful purple bird that had streaks of bright red and yellow running through it. It stopped singing and jumped into the air and flew. Emily watched it fly past her and spiral around her over and over until it reached the ceiling then it exploded with a loud pop.

Emily flinched back as purple feathers with streaks of red and yellow fell around her. She picked one of the falling feathers out of the air. She looked at the feather in wonder for a couple of seconds before the edges started to turn orange and sparkle. The feather was consumed as the orange spread deeper into the feather until nothing was left not ever ash. Emily looked around but she couldn’t see any other feathers. They had all been consumed like the one she held.

She let her hand drop and she looked up again as she heard a sound to her right. She looked towards the sound and found a room that was only partially damaged. In the room, a fat man was lying on the ground pulling himself deeper into the room. His legs were bent and twisted.

She knew that man. She felt rage as she looked on the man as he pulled himself away from her. She stood up and walked towards him. There was a lot of rubble that must have come from when the ceiling had been destroyed. She stepped around the fist-sized rocks and walked up to the fat man. He looked back and saw her. She watched as his eyes widened in fear and he started to pull himself forward frantically. She looked down at him and watched as he slowly moved away from her.

A glint of light made her lookup. Buried in a small bullet-ridden ship at headfirst was Righteous. She smiled and left the fat man to get her tomahawk. The small bullet-ridden ship had a display case in front of it that was completely undamaged. Besides, the display case were two North Korean flags. One was the old one they used to use and the other was the newer one.

In the display case was a set of really old fashioned US Army clothes in olive drab colors that they used to use back in the day. There was a ripped American flag that had bullet holes in it. There was a plaque that described what was going on in the display. The ship was a mockup of the USS Pueblo, a spy ship, that had been captured in 1968.

She smiled then frowned and reached for her hair. She spotted her reflection in the glass and noticed that her hair had changed once more. Before she had been captured she had short black hair. Afterward her hair was red and curly. She assumed that the North Koreans had colored it for some odd reason, but now looking at her reflection she saw that her hair was blonde now. It was straight light and she had a straightener on it. It was also falling over her face covering it.

She sighed and let her hair go. “Another mystery for another day.” She thought to herself as she saw her naked self in the mirror. She looked behind her and saw the fat man had only crawled a few feet then she turned back to the display case and grabbed the lock. She only meant to break the lock, but she accidentally yanked the lock, the latch, and a large chunk of wood off from the display case.

“My powers are back.” She thought amused. She pulled up the glass case and reached in and pulled out the uniform pants. The uniform had everything but underwear.

“Make sense. Who wants to put underwear on display.” She thought to herself and she got dressed in the old fashioned uniform. It had everything from an old fashioned belt complete with a silver belt buckle to a pair of black shiny boots. She put it all on. It was made of a man who was bigger than her so she had to roll up her pant legs so they would get in her way, and tighten the belt buckle quickly a bit so her pants wouldn’t fall off.

She pulled on the thick old fashion jacket and heard something behind her. She turned around concerned that it was the fat man escaping, but it wasn’t. It was a Korean man dressed in a waiter's uniform. He had a phone in his hand and was pointing it at the fat man filming him as he tried to crawl away. That gave her an idea.

She reached into the case and pulled out the batter and torn American flag and reached for the new North Korean flag. She unclipped the flag and let it drop and clip the batter American flag instead. She lifted the flagpole out of the brass stand and saw that it had a sharpened brass tip on the end. “That will work.” She thought to herself. She turned around and was about to brush the hair out of her face when she spotted the waiter pointing his phone at her. She ignored both her hair and the man and turned back around to pull Righteous out of the fake ship.

She slowly walked back to the fat man. In her left hand, she carried Righteous and her right she carried the flagpole with the American flag on it. She stalked the fat man and stopped when she was right beside him. He turned his head and saw her. He stopped crawling and his expression was full of fear and desperation.

“Wait! Don’t kill me. I know things. I know that your people are wrong about your powers. You could be the most powerful person in the world if you only knew what your powers really are. Let me live and I’ll tell you what they are. Let me teach you how to use your powers better. Just let me live.” He pleaded with her.

For a second she was tempted, but it passed. She didn’t care. She was fine with how her powers worked as they were. The fat man must have seen her because his expression became ever more desperate.

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“That was a Phoenix. It has come to investigate your rebirth. You died but came back. He told me that you might have learned how to do it, I didn’t believe him. People have been trying to either steal a Phoenix’s powers or copy them since ancient times. I didn’t believe it when he told me, but I do now. Please that is only scratching at the surface of your powers. Let me live and I’ll tell you anything you want to know.” The fat man told her as he tried to convince her not to kill him.

Emily remembered the beautiful woman and the amazing jungle. “Is that a real place?” she wondered to herself. The second time she considered letting the fat man go.

“Who is this guy who told you about me?” She asked?

“I don’t know his real name, but goes by Guante. He is the mastermind behind OCS. He’s the guy who ordered you to be taken in Afghanistan. I was the one who got him the Phoenix that Magus was going to use to sacrifice with you to increase his power. I didn’t know that at the time, but he helped me kill my father so I owed him.” The fat man told her.

“Look, I can’t take down the wall, but we can live as kings. You and me together. Korea will be ours.” He said with his hand in front of him.

“What about the people?” She asked him to try to hide her hate.

“We can save those who matter. You want some of your American friends to be spared then you tell me their names and they’ll live in luxury for the rest of their lives. I have plans. We can keep a few peasants to do farming in the greenhouses and be our servants. We will keep the people that matter alive with us. You’ll see. It will be a paradise.” He told her.

She stared down at the mad man in front of her. Her hate consuming her. “All their efforts and the wall can’t be taken down? So many people were going to die because this idiot wanted to live in a winter wonderland.”

“No.” She told him and rolled him over onto his back with her boot. “No paradise for you.” She told him and slammed the flagpole into his chest. She felt the flagpole go right through his body and sink into the ground below him. She let go of the flagpole and stepped back.

To her surprise, he didn’t scream. He gasped and reached up to grab the flagpole. He tried to pull it out of him, but it was too deeply buried in the ground below him. She watched him for a few seconds, but he still didn’t die. She was just thinking of using Righteous to cut his fool head off to end his suffering when someone said her name.

“Never.” She nearly jumped out of her skin when Si-Woo appeared beside her. He was holding the other flag pole. He had found a South Korean flag somewhere and clipped it to the flagpole. It was dirty and covered in gray dust.

“Si-Woo.” She said smiling.

“Together?” He asked her to raise the flagpole.

“Okay.” She said and reached out with her right hand and grabbed the pole just below his hand. They lined the flagpole up together and she looked up at him. He nodded and together they slammed it down into the chest of the fat man.

He gasped in pain but didn’t scream. She took a step back and Si-Woo followed her. They watched as the fat man grunt and turn red in anger as he tried to pull the flagpole out of his stomach. He still didn’t die.

Emily spun Righteous in her hand and was about to step forward to end his suffering, but Si-Woo stopped her by putting his hand on her shoulder. She could have easily ignored him as she was much stronger than he was, but she stopped and looked down at the fat man. A few seconds later he started gasping and breathing oddly. His eyes looked into the distance at something that only he could see. Then he sighed and his whole body relaxed.

A second later there was a loud sound like someone stung a guitar which was followed by a green light that streaked out in a circle above them. In the green light's wake were strange geometric shapes that slowly faded.

“The wall has fallen.” Si-Woo told her.

They looked up into the night sky for a long time. Si-Woo turned away first to talk to the man who was filming them with his phone. Emily left him to do whatever he was going to do and she went out to look for her fellow soldiers. She found Ywarl first. He was kneeling around a bunch of both South and North Korean soldiers. Kyo was dragging an injured Defence Force soldier to Ywarl to heal. They both stopped what they were doing and looked at her. She nodded her head at them and went to look for survivors.

Dawn found her carrying Muller's body towards where they were keeping all that had fallen in the battle. She gently placed that last of her squad members down next to a North Korean soldier’s body. He had made it inside the museum building but lost his life in the following gunbattle.

She stood up from her fallen friend and heard a loud thumping sound. She turned around and looked west and saw a bunch of black dots on the horizon. She watched in silence as the dots got closer.

“Your people?” Si-Woo asked gently, putting the sixteen-year-old boy’s body who had awakened to his power during the war next to Muller's body.

Emily watched the dots get close fearing the worst. “They coming in from the wrong direction.” She told him.

The dots quickly got bigger and Emily recognized the dots as helicopters. Chinese helicopters. She watched some of them fly over the museum and start to land in the back while others landed in the streets around them.

Chinese soldiers stormed out of the helicopters. Emily looked around at the survivor and sighed sadly. There weren't many of them left. If they had to fight they would all die. She looked up at the few helicopters still circling around them and recognized the SK cannons that were mounted on them. She looked back down and tried to think of something. The only thing she could think of was to attack and force the soldiers to attack her while her friends could escape. She didn’t think she would last long, but hopefully long enough for them to fade into the countryside.

She spun Righteous around and took a deep breath to gather the courage to attack when SI-Woo grabbed her arm. “Do you trust me?” He asked her.

“Yes, of course.” She told him, confused. She turned away from him and looked towards the advancing soldiers.

“Then kneel.” He told her as he dropped his weapons to the side and knelt down. He looked at her, pleading for her to do the same things as he put his hands on his head. Beside him Kyo copied him. Emily turned away and saw Ywarl doing the same thing. He nodded to her as he put his rifle down and put his hands on his head. She looked at the rest of her friends and some of the surviving North Koreans as they all surrendered.

“Sergeant Never.” A Chinese Officer said in a British accent walking towards them. “Please we mean you no harm. Put down your weapons and surrender or we will fire on you.”

Emily looked up at the circling Helicopters and knew they had her in their sights. She grunted in frustration and slammed RIghteous into the ground burying the ax head in the street. She threw her little black knife so that it’s blade buried itself into the ground. Then she put her hand on her head and knelt down surrendering. Behind her, the waiter filmed the entire thing on his phone.