Isles, I'm sorry for having been such a pathetic mess that you were hired to watch over and safeguard. And look what became of you.

My own inability to find the power to stand on my own two feet.

My own inability to find the power to protect my own family.

My own inability to find the power led to your death.

Isles, I wished I was strong like you. I wished I had the power that you had so that I could learn what it meant to be independent. To be able to take destiny into my own hands and mold it to whatever I deemed fit at that time.

But I couldn't.

I wouldn't.

I shouldn't.

The very notion of 'power' brings images of him into my mind. Tormenting my conscience into believing I will become just like him if I strived for this illustrious dream. A dream of grandeur that will only end in an ever-consuming obsession.

An obsession that long consumed him.

And now it consumes me.

I'm a coward, aren't I?

A coward that hides behind her pain and anguish like a mask. Hiding behind these pretenses I put up for myself like a birdcage that confines and stunts my own hopes. Suffocating my dying happiness.

Isles, I don't know what I can do to earn your respect or forgiveness. If your vengeful spirit elects to haunt me, then I will welcome you. I will welcome and protect you with open arms, just like you have done to me and my daughter.

So please, haunt me.

Haunt me and witness what I can do.

Witness what a mother who's lost her only child is pushed to do.

Vox, I'm sorry for being unable to be brave like you were. For being unable to find the courage like you did. And for failing to protect you, my daughter.

You were always and will forever be that joyous light in my life.

A light that shone into my darkened, shackled heart.

A star that I and my lover could cherish, together.

But I know that you are not gone. Your light is not yet snuffed, my little Star. I know that we can rebuild you, just like we did four years ago from that scrapyard that was marked to be your gravesite.

I refuse to let you lay here.

You do not deserve to be left to rot in this forgotten city.

Our Star, you were our world, even when the world itself did not treat you with the same love.

Vox, I promise to bring you back, even if we have to live a life of solitude just to have you return to our lives. These laws that deemed you to be a menace to society were spurred on from people who do not know of the warmth you were capable of showing. The warmth that you were oh so willing to share.

So please, wait for me.

Wait for the day we bring you back.

For the day that you can awaken once more and shower us with your light.

Cass, Rye, and Oriol, I'm sorry for having the three of you be forced to face the horrors of my past. I'm especially sorry to you, Cass. When I had heard that the Tiger's Guard were harassing and assaulting both you and your sisters back in Millington, I felt a wave of pain take hold at my core.

Had I the power to stand for my own, do you think I would've been able to stop them?

Had I the power to stop them, do you think you would've gone on to take this contract?

Had I the power to change myself, do you think we would've lived free of pain?

I do not know. And I realize now that my contemplations of what could have been hold no merit in the here and now. All I can say is that I am grateful for your unyielding support and caring empathy. Knowing that the three of you, no, all of you are willing to go to such lengths for me fills my heart with uplifting happiness. A joy that makes me feel as if I can take off and bravely fly across the skies of uncertainty.

So please, allow me to stand.

Allow me to stand in your steads.

To finally have my turn in fighting for the lives that yet remain.

Razel, my love, my only love. I am so immensely sorry for having you bear the weight of our shared sins and torments. Others think that you find a sick pleasure in the violence you are forced to thrive in to protect me and our daughter, but I know how much it weighs on your heart. Those beautiful, silver eyes that my brother loathes have long since lost their luster in the face of the years shackle us.

I want to see them shine once more.

I want to see the love they once beheld.

This narrative has been purloined without the author's approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.

I want to see you look unto me for protection.

Razel, you were always like the moon to me. Others think of the moon as a cold and mysterious entity that keeps the life-giving light of day at bay. But to me, you were the moon that shined over the expansive sea of love that you were able to bring out from within me. And just like a moon, you wore the many phases of it to keep the anguish in check. The sharpness of the crescent moon, to the emptiness of a new moon.

But I want you to become full of my love.

For I want to become the sky that holds you and our Star.

And I want to become the storm that strikes down those who wish to see us apart.

Now, I understand what I have been seeking. This 'power' was nothing but a perverse idealization of what I truly wanted: strength. One demands control over others, playing the role of a supreme being that shapes the fates of others to its sick wants. The other, is a means to an end, the means to be a fire that won't die even in the pouring rain.

So please, grant me the strength.

The strength to press on.

To press on into a new era for ourselves.

"Frankie," Strafe spoke coldly, her voice crackling with the electricity that filled her being, "why haven't you stopped."

Hearing his name be called with such animosity elicited him to rise, lifting his body off of Razel who looked on at the two electrified siblings. Looking on at Strafe in awe.

"Whatever do you mean, sister?" Frankie asked as a tinge of nervousness can be heard in his words. An immense, unsettling pressure had washed over his body ever since that bolt of lightning struck. The lightning that heralded this drowning downpour.

"You always did want me to manifest the Miracle that has been running in our family for generations. Right, Frankie?" she asked as she stepped forth. Revealing more of her form that had changed with the manifestation of this new-found strength.

Her torso was clad in cloth wrappings that were dyed black as a yellow cloak rested upon her shoulders. This cloak split down its center, splitting off into two tails that trailed down to her ankles in length. Her arms, exposed to the cold, pelting rain, were adorned by six, thick, metal bracers. Bracers that wrapped around her biceps, forearms, and wrists as the etchings engraved into their blackened surfaces spoke of the Star, Moon, Sky, and the destructive Hurricane.

A pair of matching, puffy pants adorned her legs as swirling, gilded, cyclone embroideries were imprinted on its sleeves. Her feet, protected by simple white-sandals, cleaved effortlessly through the raising water that pooled below. The hazel eyes that were once shared with her brother shifted into an eternal, golden hue as her hair that was dyed a perfect blonde returned to its natural, light-brown colorization. Her circular spectacle that framed her eyes sparking with the Radiance that surged through her.

"I wanted you to become the heir to--" Frankie started, but was quickly silenced by Strafe's onrush who threw a wild punch. For a moment, he saw a white bolt streak behind the trajectory of her fist, and when it connected with his left cheekbone, the bolt erupted into a flash of white. Even with his heightened reflexes, he was unable to evade it as the numbing aftershock rumbled throughout his body.

His knees gave way from the concussive force that rocked his skull, but he was not allowed to fall as Strafe held him up by grabbing the nail that pierced his shoulder. Her other hand clutching tightly onto Vox's bracelet.

"Frankie, it's no longer about what you want. Or do you not understand the position that you are in?" she spoke, bringing him closer so that she may look down on him. "I reject your demented desires. I reject the familial blood we share. And I reject the Miracle you've wanted me to bloom, Frankie."

The hand that was wrapped around his nail siphoned the electricity that coursed through it, and in turn, sapped him of his own power. He looked up at Strafe with quivering, hazel eyes. Eyes that showed a feeling that was alien to the man: fear.

He went to strike Strafe in a desperate attempt to separate himself from her grasp. But she was faster. Much faster.

In retaliation, she delivered a sharp knee to his gut as another flash of white lightning accompanied the strike, shocking him with its immense might. With him reeling, she pulled the nail free from Frankie's fleshy sheath as blood seeped from the long-since scarred wound.

From his keeled-over position, Strafe ducked low and wound up to deliver an upper-cut into Frankie's diaphragm. The force of her punch as she sprung up forced his body to contort around her drilling fist as a flash of white struck him once more.

His gasping mouth spewed forth with blood that erupted from his spasming lungs. Watching in horror as he was swept clean off his feet and lingering in the air. Watching as Strafe lined up another punch with the fist that clung fiercely onto Vox's bracelet.

With a flash of light, the strike was thrown. The strength of the punch shattered his sternum as a shockwave of force rippled through his body and beyond the point of impact, dispersing the heavy rainfall along its destructive path.

"This is for the love that you chose to hurt, Frankie!!!" Strafe roared as she followed through with her punch, sending Frankie rocketing down across the corridor to the concrete wall opposite where Isles's body laid.

His back slammed against the thick, crumbling surface as his vision had grown hazy and blurred. His consciousness slipping as he found himself struggling to resist her relentless onslaught. With an unsteady hand, he gripped onto a divot of the wall to help support his shaking legs, but once he stood, they stopped.

Then, a coldness settled in. A frigidity that numbed his legs down to the marrow as he found his feet stuck in place. His eyes trailed down to hazily gaze at the thick encasing of ice that froze him where he stood. Ice that trailed from where Isles laid.

"D-damn you, Wolf...!!!"

"The only one to be damned tonight is you, Frankie!" Strafe interjected, her voice booming as a vicious bolt of lightning struck before her, leaving behind a large, copper wheel in its wake. "And with my love, I will Bloom my own Miracle."

The eight-spoked wheel then levitated as it split itself into eight sections. These sections then started to rotate, their acceleration increasing with each completed cycle as a concentrated field of electricity formed around Strafe.

She placed the nail she had ripped off from Frankie into the wheel's center, watching it levitate perpendicular with the wheel as its sharpened tip was aimed for him, her begrudged target. Then, she leveled her right hand against the nail's face, tucking her index and middle finger into the crook of her thumb.

"I am the Sky that holds the Moon and the Star. My wrath, an ever-consuming Hurricane..."

On cue, her bracers then split just like the wheel. Each bracer split into three sections that orbited around right arm to generate the immense electricity needed for her ability. With everything aligned, she held Vox's bracelet over her heart. Her golden eyes, wet with the rain and with her tears, glared down at the man responsible for her years of torment.

"Bloomed Miracle: Drowned Lightning."

With a flick of her cocked fingers, she shot the nail forth at an unperceivable speed. A deafening thundercrack shook the hall she stood in as an equally powerful flash of light encompassed the corridor. The sheer force generated from the nail's launch caused her cloak to flutter wildly behind her as the pooled water at her feet was sent flying every which way.

Then, there was the damage. A gigantic, circular cavity was formed on Frankie's torso that made for a visceral framing of the destruction that continued beyond him. Anything that stood in the way of the nail was absolutely destroyed, as the layers of walls past the one he was frozen too were all obliterated in similar fashion.

His mind was still conscious for a few moments, unable to comprehend the level of strength that Strafe had managed to grasp. A defeated hand went to grab at a gut that was no longer there, a sense of disbelief washing over his fading mind as the ice that froze him in place shattered from the initial impact of the nail.

His body was then unable to support itself. He fell onto his knees, his face falling onto the water below. His body then laid there, unmoving.