The Phenomena of Fireflies and Star... - Chapter 36: Chapter 36

It took a while, but the thick kaleidoscopic radiation that had engulfed the Hall of Heroes slowly faded away, revealing inch by inch, second after second, the aftermath of Max's blast.
Around him was a wide crater no deeper than the height of an average human. As it appeared, he had scalped the entirety of the Noble Ground.
When the colors sizzled out, there were no more trees, no more grass, and no more fancy landscaping. Only a crater. No debris within the blast radius, either. The smell of smoke, however, corrupted the space, and sparking sensations of energy lingered in the area.
Max had been able to contain his own blast, having stopped it just before it could break out to other structures and especially before it could severely damage the building behind him. The street and the sidewalk remained untouched by the blast, too. A quick glance behind him showed the blackened state of the main building's damaged façade, but nothing else beyond it had been scorched.
He looked down before him to see what had become of Malign.
Malign was now a charred and unmoving body, eyes discolored and directionless.
Max had a sudden stab of regret inside him, followed by a moment of guilt.
Followed by acceptance and a blossoming feeling of relief.
"You could've stayed good, Dr. Perez," Max said under his breath. "But it's over."
In the blink of an eye, Malign's body glitched out of sight.
Gone.
'What?!' Max thought, his alarm piercing through him like a spike trap. 'An illusion!'
'Where is he?!'
Max heard a faint crunch behind him, making him turn on his knees toward it quickly.
A dark shadow closed the distance within a second, and before Max could think of what to do, he found himself staring right into the magenta flames of Malign's eyes. He felt the telepath's cold hands clasping the sides of his head, followed by a burst of heat inside his skull.
"I can tell you've been experiencing symptoms of your natural weakness, Gabriel," Malign said, his fingers oozing with psychic energy. "But I don't think you're fully aware, if you even have the slightest idea what it is. Allow me to figure it out."
The telepath pressed harder against Max's skull, reducing him into a groaning mess.
"You should've learned my strategy by now, Gabriel," Malign whispered right before his image disappeared from Max's sight, replaced by flashes of the faces of the people Max kept in his heart.
It was like being sucked into a time loop. A hot and stinging time loop. He saw the faces that were now forever engraved in his heart. He saw his parents, followed by Dicoy, and then Midnight Sambac and Dragon. He saw them vividly in the flashes of every memory he had shared with them, both the good and the bad.
And then, he saw Ames.
He saw Ames, the young man who had caught him red-handed in his attempt to flee from his life.
He saw Ames, the person who had fought through his grief by braving a hero's journey.
He saw Ames, the young boy trapped within a damaged man's body, constricted by a prejudice that had been amplified by tragedy. The same young boy who had eventually learned to reconcile with the man his shell was. The same young boy who smiled at the sight of fireflies, real or holographic.
He saw Ames, the person he had fallen in love with through the most trying days and the most difficult nights.
He saw Ames, the same person who had helped him try to become human again. Somehow.
He saw Ames, the source of his strength, his reason to live, and the greatest love he'd ever had in his life.
His weakness.
The flashing images stopped, and Max found himself staring into Malign's eyes once more.
Max's cheeks were wet with tears that had already been escaping him without his knowledge.
"You haven't loved someone like him in a long time, haven't you?" Malign asked, fingers still attached like wires to Max's head. "Perhaps ever. He taught you what it meant to be human again. The life of it, the love, the pain."
Malign's head tilted tauntingly, the energy in the glow of his eyes sparking up as a devilish smile spread across his face.
"And the death," the telepath finished.
'Now!' a thought flashed in Max's head, boosting his instincts to a greater height. He conjured two golden constructs of himself, both solidified and strong, and willed them to grab Malign from behind, pulling the telepath off. Max felt the mental relief immediately.
Malign's eyes widened in surprise the moment his arms were pulled apart. Max controlled the constructs to kick the back of Malign's legs, sending the telepath down to his knees.
"Here's a refresher," Max snarled as he reached inside his jacket, into an inner pocket, and whipped out the loaded syringe gun he had taken from the truck. He shoved the gun to Malign's chest and pulled the trigger, administering the power suppressant formula. "Thought I'd share the experience."
"Gah!" Malign gasped, still caught in the grapples of the constructs. "Damn you!"
"Actually," Max said, going back up to his feet and sending a swift roundhouse kick across Malign's head. The constructs faded in a blink and Malign fell onto his side on the ground, shocked by the pain. Max was grateful for Ames's quick thinking. The forehead kiss had been a good way for Ames to secretly implant his own telepathic influence over Max's mind. Max threw the syringe gun away and focused on Malign again. "Ames already helped me deal with my love issues. I was just playing along so that I could watch you realize that you've failed. And the best thing about military-style jackets? They've got a lot of pockets."
Max had needed to learn how to navigate the "telepathic surgery" Ames had put him under on his own, but he'd gladly been able to make peace with and heal from whatever he'd needed to reconcile with.
"I don't understand," Malign remarked, eyes unsteady with confusion.
"Love is my weakness, him being the greatest," Max said, taking his jacket off and throwing it away. "There isn't a day that I'm not afraid for him, that I'm not afraid to lose him. Like I did all the others. I came from a human life of pain, walked into the Enforcement a broken person, and walked out an empty and desperate man. Not much different from how I walked in."
Max kept himself ready as Malign got back up on his feet.
"He is a burning reminder of how painful and traumatic love is," Max flicked his wrists, readying them for a potential beat-down. "And of how we forged the love that we have in fire. Of how that love, that weakness, has become my strength. Mine and his."
"You really think that's going to be enough?" Malign challenged, energy wheels coming back. The wheels, however, began to flicker and dim. Malign stared at his energy emission as it slowly faded away into deactivation. A shaky breath escaped the telepath's mouth as he stared helplessly at his worsening weakness. He glared at Max, eye color dulling out from cosmic pink to human hazelnut. Defiant, still. "Fate always finds a way, Alpha. No matter where you run. No matter how fast. Look at what happened to me. Fate is cruel, and it never fails."
"Sure," Max said, floating off the ground. Ready for another round. With Malign's second-exposure powers now deactivated, he wouldn't be as skilled a fighter. "But destiny? Destiny is..."
"Mine," A vaguely familiar voice spoke from up ahead, from the building. It was soft, but it echoed hauntingly, triggering Max's goosebumps. He looked ahead, past Malign, at who it was.
The first thing Max noticed was a large wheel of energy, burning in intense pink and yet fine in detail as it transitioned into an otherworldly sigil. The sigil floated behind Ames, whose eyes were now completely magenta, blazing in the fieriest pink. Ames, whose composure was evident in his regal and proud stance. He truly looked powerful. Unbroken.
Malign followed Max's gaze, breathing growing heavier upon seeing what Max was seeing.
With a simple raise of his hand and a flick of his wrist, Ames threw the sigil up, positioning it horizontally above him like a spotlight and casting a sickening pink glow over himself.
"Ours," Ames said, his hand still up.
"What are you doing?" Malign nervously asked.
"Showing you...," Ames replied, his steaming voice echoing eerily in the night sky. "What my grand design looks like."
Max watched as Ames brought his hand down authoritatively, sending the sigil smashing down through himself and onto the floor.
'Lines?' Max thought, watching as blazing pink lines of energy began to slither from the sigil. He cautiously levitated a bit higher. The lines stretched out fast, covering the whole lot. Even the main building. New lines formed, cutting across the ones that had already stretched out. 'A grid.'
Max watched as Malign nervously looked around himself, unable to levitate and avoid the grid beneath his feet.
"What are you doing?!' Malign shouted, struggling to maintain his grip over his growing fear.
A loud string of explosions erupted from below, and Max flew up higher instinctively. He watched in awe as the grid that now blanketed the area pushed its way down and into the surfaces it had blanketed over, breaking through matter and crackling with energy. Malign swayed and fell onto his knees, unable to control his balance in the sudden shake.
"From this night onward," Ames spoke, reaching his hand out toward Malign. In an instant, the telepath was pulled off of his knees hard and right into Ames's hand, trapped in a strangulation he couldn't break from. Max watched in creeping terror as Malign desperately and futilely tried to hit Ames's arm away. Malign's legs swung wildly in the suspension, and his choking noises worsened. "Fate is what I make of it."
Ames flew up to the sky, taking Malign with him and leaving behind a magenta trail of psionic energy.
A sudden and unnatural eruption of exploding sounds forced Max to fly up even higher in the air. Much to his marvel and his discomfort, he witnessed the squared out portions of the building popping out of place, their hard fragments floating in a strange fashion. From there, the unusual explosion and suspension of matter spread out to the rest of the grid of Ames's energy in a circular fashion. The squares of rocks, soil, earth, and other solid matter popped up loudly in sequence, only to have their debris freeze in mid-air just like the ones in the epicenter of the explosive phenomenon.
Max had never seen anything like this before.
Even from an atom manipulator like Midnight Sambac.
Max felt torn. He wanted to go up to the sky, but there was something breathtaking and outlandish about what was happening on the Noble Ground. Also, if anything bad were to happen, he needed to be down here to stop it.
The fragments started twirling up in a spiral, their colors shifting into the strangest effects. Max had never seen these colors. They were almost sickening in their dazzling freakishness. The fragments finally settled into the most alien magentas, the most electric pink sapphires, with hints of other colors and entrancing irregularities of brilliance that he never would've seen in even the most precious stones. He flew around the area, watching as the fragments started flying into one spot, flowing through the air in the most unnatural of ways, seemingly changing in material, and piling up.
Some of the fragments stretched, some dispersed and reshaped into something else, and some expanded and curved. Soon enough, the last fragments that had yet to find their places finally found theirs. Ultimately, they connected with each other, taking shape.
Max didn't know what it was at first, but it had taken a spherical shape. A perfect sphere, with patterns large and fine, made from solid matter.
'A globe?'
As if one last spectacle, the floating sphere's colors turned into the most brilliant red with a chromatic finish to it.
'No,' Max finally recognized it. 'The Mastermind.'
The Mastermind construct fell into the gridded crater with a resounding bellow. From underneath it came a strange red wave that expanded in radius. Wherever the red wave passed, strange constructs sprouted from the ground beneath. They were fine constructs, and they settled in the most delicate shapes and the most alluring colors. Max flew back down, headed for the edge of the cemented and undamaged sidewalk, close to the truck container. The grid didn't go past the crater that Max had made earlier. He landed nimbly on his feet, watching as the wave approached, triggering the sprouting of the unusual constructs.
When the wave reached the end of the grid, it fizzled out.
Max knelt down, watching up close the constructs rising from the crater.
'Plants?' he thought, awestruck and speechless. He reached out to the sprouting construct that looked like a stem, marveling at its faintly reflective sheen. The stem broke out and spread into thinner and finer branches.
What seemed to be leaves began to form, followed by what should be flowers. Max had never seen these flowers before, but their petals boasted of magenta, white, and pink. They had a sheen to them, too, much like the leaves. Their shapes were pretty, and their bodies were lush and full, but they weren't natural. They almost weren't of this earth. He touched the flower closest to him cautiously, feeling the smoothness of its petals and the flow of nutrients in its veins.
He slowly stood up, his gaze traveling onward over the scene before him: a large red construct of The Mastermind's avatar in the middle of a thick garden of otherworldly plants. Even the main building of the Hall of Heroes was now wrapped in a lush foliage of what should be the same plants.
As for the grid, it was gone.
'What is all this?' he wondered, feeling a strange calming aura permeating all over the place. It was pleasant, but it wasn't normal. He didn't know what to make of anything going on.
His eyes drifted up to the sky.
'Ames, what's going on?'
"Gah!"
A sudden sting of pain in Max's mind shocked him into gripping his temples. There was a shrill sound occupying his head, giving him flashes of pink light. He gripped his head tighter as he struggled with the feeling of his mind being claimed by something else.
Ames slowed down to a stop the moment he was past the troposphere, lifting Malign up until they were at the same eye level. The super-terrorist was almost knocked out. Despite the fear that now occupied his face, and the powerlessness that now oppressed him, Malign was still reeking of rebellion and wrath. Hatred, too.
"Are you gonna' blast me out?" Malign persevered in his speech through the tension strangling his neck. "Destroy me?"
"I could erase you from existence in the next second," Ames replied, nodding at him before pushing him off and keeping him suspended in place using telekinesis. "But that wouldn't be satisfying."
"I did what I had to do to stop monsters like you," Malign said, face twisted in anger and moist with tears. "But the world turned me into a monster. It spat on my face. So I gave it a monster. I gave it what it wanted from me."
Ames remembered the long delay of Malign's healing ability. Ames understood what it was, what it meant, and what caused it. He'd had time to process the information he needed during his unconsciousness.
"I can tell you've been experiencing symptoms of your natural weakness, Perez," Ames said, reaching out to touch the super-terrorist on the forehead, his fingers glowing in pink. "Allow me to say it out loud."
The moment Ames's fingers made contact with Malign's forehead, a sharp gasp escaped the super-terrorist's mouth, and his eyes were overtaken by an incandescent pink glow.
"I want to show you what my mind can do...," Ames said, telepathically linking Malign's mind with Max's senses.
Ames could tell that Malign was beginning to see what had taken place on the ground below.
Ames could tell that Malign was experiencing the terror of being possessed by someone of greater power than his own. Malign was now quivering, unable to speak as he struggled under the psychic overload.
"I am a new order created from your chaos, far beyond the madness of telepathy that you fear," Ames telepathically declared, his words burning directly into Malign's mind. "The fear that you have since decided to bury underneath your menace and your mayhem. That fear is your natural weakness. I exceed you, and like I once was in your grand design, you are now a mere stroke in mine. I am a vision of a tomorrow of my design, a future of which I am the mastermind."
With that said, Ames let Malign's forehead go.
Malign gasped for air the moment his mind was liberated, his breathing heavy and loud and sickening to hear.
"What are you?" Malign's angry and horrified words came out like hurt barks. "What are you?!"
Ames smiled, savoring the sensations inside his body as the cognitive boxes in his mind all opened at once.
"I am," Ames spoke, his physical voice crystal clear and his tone proud. He had found a fitting name. "Signos."
"No!" Max yelped, now down on his knees in the unearthly garden. He had fallen into it in the struggle. The stems and the branches of the unusual flora brushed gently against his skin. He then let out a breath of relief the moment his mind was finally freed.
From what Max understood, Ames had just used him to show Malign what had taken place on the Noble Ground. In addition to that, it seemed that Ames was now allowing the Omega Phenomenon in him out of its restraints.
'This isn't good,' Max realized.
He crouched down properly, his eyes aimed up at the sky and his body charging up.
He jumped off into flight, breaking the sound barrier as he rushed toward the clouds. He flew through the cloud layers as quickly as he could, keeping in mind where Ames and Malign would be. After breaking through one last layer, he found out instantly that he was where he needed to be.
Max successfully located them, but he was immediately overwhelmed by the sheer display of dominance in the distance before him, evidenced by Ames's deathly glare glowing beyond any intensity he'd ever displayed before and Malign struggling in front of the apparition that had captured him.
Ames and Malign weren't far away. Max gazed upon them with an infallible recognition of a phenomenon of catastrophic potential, but he didn't know what to do.
He watched speechlessly as another sigil appeared at the back of Ames's head. It looked the same as before, a blazing pink sigil of fine details and wheel-like patterns, but its glow was sharper now. At the center of it seemed to be a hot white radiance.
Malign's heavy gasps drastically turned into the most guttural screams. Max shivered at the sound of them, for they resonated with unbound terror. He couldn't even see Malign's face, but he wasn't sure he wanted to. Ames merely stared at Malign with eyes flaming in alien pink energy.
"Ames...," Max uttered helplessly.
The sigil floating at the back of Ames's head opened up at its bottom. Specifically, the outermost layer of it. The inner wheels seemed unaffected. The parted ends of the outermost layer folded outward to an extent, pointing toward opposite sides and away from the rest of the construct. The sigil released smaller circular sigils of varying patterns. Within the wheels that comprised them were other shapes, moving about like intricate clockwork mechanisms. The smaller sigils, eight in total, hovered over the larger sigil, following its curve. It was as if Ames had a glowing crown of sigils. The crown, particularly the primary sigil, was reminiscent of a particular symbol.
The omega symbol.
A majestic crown that suggested the end.
The way Ames looked, Max could've sworn he was looking at a miracle. A revelation.
Perhaps an inversion of either one.
A dark vision.
An omen.
Signos lifted his hands up to his sides, unleashing the full radiance of his crown, each strand of light a flash of memory, a psionic manifestation, a vision of power...
An omen of tomorrow.
And Malign's further psychological descent.
Signos could feel Malign's remaining powers leaving him as his terror and the visions that plagued him unearthed his natural weakness. His screams got hoarser the longer he struggled.
Signos proceeded to absorb Malign's powers and energy, fueling the radiation of his crown and making it burn even brighter. Malign's screams eventually quieted down to raspy gasps and jagged breathing. Helpless sounds of his defeat.
The look of pain and fear in Malign's eyes were very familiar, and anybody who had lost a loved one to him who would look at his face right now would share the same angering nostalgia. His eyes now mirrored the look of devastation he had once brought out from his victims.
"O-Omega...," Malign's voice cracked as his eyes glazed out due to the radiation of the crown of sigils before him. "Phenomenon..."
"Hmph," Signos scoffed in delight, remembering a few words that he would never forget. For a moment, Malign's eyes flickered back to alertness, as if realizing what was about to happen. There was a second of tense and airless silence between them, but merely a second.
"Such a strong mind," Signos spoke, reaching out his hand and telekinetically pulling Malign toward him.
"N-No!" Malign begged helplessly as Signos's fingertips touched his forehead.
"Such a breakable body," Signos finished, proceeding to psionically alter Malign's atomic structure. A look of deep terror flashed on Malign's face just before his pale skin grayed out and hardened. Like cement. His scream faded into silence barely two seconds after it had burst, freezing in voiceless terror as he completely turned into a statue with no recognizable human tissue.
A thoughtless, emotionless, and lifeless statue.
Breakable.
Signos released the statue from his telekinetic grip, allowing it to fall down to the ground below.
His eyes followed its ghastly form as it descended until it was out of sight, headed for a certain explosion into lifeless inhuman fragments.
For good.
For good.
He took a deep breath. It had to be the deepest one he'd ever taken. He savored the coolness of the night sky, not knowing what to think. Not knowing what to feel. Desperate to feel something. Something good. When he breathed out, it was as if he was pushing something heavy out from inside of him.
He noticed the dimming of the glow from the back of his head.
He felt the cool down of the power that had just been burning from inside of him, and he felt the boxes in his mind closing securely, leaving only two open. His crown disappeared completely at once.
'It is done,' he told himself. 'He is gone.'
'He is finally gone.'
And up ahead, he saw the man he loved staring back at him insecurely, waiting for him to say anything.
"Hey...," he called out softly, much to Max's immediate relief. "Max, I'm scared."
"Ames...," Max responded, flying toward him immediately and wrapping him in a tight embrace.
Ames hugged back, finally feeling something. There was a spark in his heart. It was warm, and little by little, it pulsated through his body and out of his eyes as tears. Very warm, very welcome tears.
"I'm sorry," Ames uttered, resting his head on Max's shoulder. "I'm so sorry."
"It's okay," Max hushed him, massaging the back of his head. "It's okay now."
They savored their reunion above the clouds, wrapped in their embrace in the silence of the night sky.
"We can't stay here," Ames said, his heart aching at the words, knowing fully well the inevitability of their fruition. "We have to make things right."
"This time, we do," Max replied. "I just want to hold you a little longer. Can we do that?"
"Yes," Ames said, squeezing Max tighter. He would have to part from this eventually, but right now, they deserved the embrace. He knew they did. "I miss you. Everything."
"We can have a moment right now," Max offered. "A little revisit to the Ames and Max Only dimension?"
Ames smiled at the idea. He really missed that. It hadn't even been a terribly long time since their last private escapade into their own world, but he really missed that. He looked up at the sky, at the starlight that had been covered by the clouds beneath them.
"I have a better idea," Ames said, parting from the embrace and linking his hands with Max's.
"What's the plan?" Max asked, looking at him knowingly with eyes glowing in sunlight gold.
"Cloudy night tonight," Ames answered. "But not for long."
They parted from each other's hands, backing up just a little bit.
Ames readied himself just as Max brought his hands close together, a brilliant orb of amber light forming between them. He looked up at Ames with a pleasant smile on his face, eyes looking as if asking for permission.
"Go on," Ames said, nodding at Max.
Max threw his hands up, making the orb ascend to a good enough height. With the twirling motions of his arms, the orb expanded until it was about a beach ball's size. When he finally cast his hands down to his sides, the large orb of light dispersed into countless star constructs.
Colors danced and twinkled beautifully above Ames and Max as the radius of the dispersion continued to expand.
From the twinkling star constructs flew out sparkles upon sparkles of holographic fireflies.
Excited by the spectacle, Ames brought his arms before his chest and focused on the lights.
He flung his arms to his sides, psionically making more star constructs and more sparkles pop out. Using his psionic energy, he proceeded to expand further and faster the radius of Max's light show, birthing more holograms in every inch of the sky that the wave of his energy traveled through.
It was a dazzling moment. A breathtaking moment.
And it was theirs.
After braving battle after battle, each one much worse than the one before it, a moment of light wouldn't hurt.
Underneath the dazzling lights, Ames saw Max looking at him longingly.
"The war is not over yet," Max's words were sad, but this time, there was an undertone of hope in them.
"I know," Ames answered, confidence in his own voice.
A curious glow from Max's chest caught Ames's attention. It seemed to be right above Max's heart. Its golden light was soft, but it was radiant enough to show its pattern. Max noticed it, too, and he looked down at it with uncertainty. Two slanted lines of golden light facing opposite directions met at an endpoint, and another line connected them by their midpoints. Ames recognized the pattern as the letter "A".
'A,' Ames thought just as Max looked up at him with uncertain eyes.
"Alpha," Ames said, somehow recognizing what the "A" meant. It was as if the recognition had come from somewhere deep and instinctive within himself. He watched as the golden light faded away. "The Alpha Phenomenon."
"Not sure what that was about," Max finally spoke, managing a meek smile. "But that felt good. Warm. Felt right. Never happened to me before, though."
"Don't worry about it," Ames replied, smiling back. "Something tells me it's a very good thing. I think I agree with it. I mean, I should know. You're the Alpha. The Alpha Phenomenon. Once theirs. And now mine."
Ames floated toward Max, savoring the dreamy illumination of the dancing colors above them. When the gap between them was closed, they found themselves in each other's kiss, a spark of energy forming upon contact, pulsating throughout their bodies.
'I love you infinitely, Max,' Ames thought.
'I love you infinitely, too, Ames,' the response from Max's mind came to Ames as a pleasant surprise.
Ames figured that he must have carelessly sent his thought as a telepathic message, prompting Max to think his response hard enough to be telepathically heard. Not an issue for Ames at all. Max's clever means of responding couldn't have been more fitting.
Especially with Ames having influenced Max's empathy before.
Ames knew he had it coming, and he welcomed it.
Still, an underlying thought in his mind was knocking on the moment for recognition.
It had to come eventually.
'And I'll miss you every day, too,' Ames admitted, kissing Max even harder. He didn't know when he'd ever find himself in the comfort and the stability of Max's embrace again after tonight. He didn't know when he'd ever get to kiss Max again and feel this rush of life, this Big Bang of energies between them. He wasn't even a hundred percent sure he'd ever get the chance again. He just had to win this battle to win the war. No matter how long it took. No matter how much it hurt him. Max, in a way, was an element of his fate. Max was also the destination at the end of this uncertain exodus, just as much as he was the destiny Ames had been fighting fate with blood and sweat for.
Ames had already made his message loud and clear.
Fighting fate wasn't a hard option to consider if that meant securing his destiny.
'Every day,' Ames thought again the moment they parted from each other's lips. He held Max's face, allowing his skin to remember how it felt. The brilliant golden suns in Max's eyes looked back at Ames the way they'd always looked at him, but now they held the warm nostalgia of a sunset's glow. 'Someday, every sunset will be ours. I'll be coming home to you.'
It had started with a vehicular accident involving the Division truck, followed by unusual traffic jams around Falco Central Park reportedly influenced by Malign's telepathy, followed by law enforcement cordoning the streets and alleys around the Hall of Heroes, and then a violent light show of figures in the sky.
The Enforcers who had been deployed to the scene had ended up backing away, not wanting to turn the streets into an even worse warzone than it had already become. Instead, they'd decided to help in keeping civilians at a safe distance from Malign and, amazingly, Ames, whom they now called the Omega Phenomenon. Both powerful superhumans and very grave dangers to public safety.
Word about the chaos had definitely traveled faster than most of the Enforcers had flown, and all the shocking information that Eliza now had, she'd gotten from eavesdropping on one of the agents left behind.
She was more than relieved to hear that Ames had survived.
Now, something else was happening in the night sky.
She wasn't quite sure if it was a bad thing or a good thing, but it sure was pretty. Amazing, actually. The view from the top of Division HQ's central building allowed for extended periods of sight-seeing. A lot of Division's employees were watching from the lower levels, captivated by the light show that had been brought along by what had appeared to be a shockwave in the sky. She had witnessed its early seconds, and she remembered how the wave had continued in expanding its radius, scattering twinkling lights wherever it had spread.
There were clouds in the sky, but they couldn't hide the light show beyond them well enough. Besides, the spaces between them were good enough windows that revealed the beauty of the twinkling lights.
She gazed upon the twinkling lights, observing how some of them were stationary like starlight while some were moving about like fireflies.
'Are those just light thingies or are those actual fireflies?' she wondered. 'Are they ever really that high up?'
She wasn't sure.
Judging from the chitchat of the onlookers below, they were probably just as curious, if not confused. They'd been expressing their thoughts about the light show for roughly two minutes now.
"What do you know?" one of onlookers below just had to say aloud to whoever she was chatting—or arguing—with. "Those could be actual fireflies."
"Heck," Eliza muttered under her breath. "At this point, I don't know anything."
Her educated guess was that it was Max's doing, which was rather reckless, considering he had to stay dead to public knowledge. She'd heard the Division-wide announcement and had even received a specifically worded text instructing her to stay silent about Max still being alive.
With what was going on, she wondered how Division would be covering the whole thing up. If they managed to clean this up, too, she wouldn't ever doubt them again.
Her phone rang. She quickly pulled it out of her purse and checked who it was.
'Unknown number,' she sighed, knowing exactly who was calling her. It had been a while, and she was suddenly pricked by a sense of foreboding. She took the call.
"We're in Phase Two now," the distorted voice on the other end said.
"I had a feeling you'd call," Eliza replied, managing her breaths as the man's words began to sink in better to her understanding. Keeping her eyes on the dazzling spectacle up in the sky was really helping her stay composed at the moment despite how grim everything had just turned out. "Is it time?"
"Not yet," the voice said after a moment. A hesitant moment, Eliza was convinced. "Patience. Do not be unprepared."
The call ended before she could say anything else. Not that she had anything of value to say. It had been quite a tiring day, and she had no words left. Even puns, much to her disappointment. She could definitely use a break.
Lowering her phone, she let out a vexed sigh.
"Phase Two," she echoed, literally turning on her heels and making her way down the building's grand stairs. "Yep."
He wished he hadn't had to let go. Then again, he didn't have much of a choice. Besides, it was the right thing to do. With everything that had happened tonight, he had a lot of explaining to do waiting for him back in HQ.
Max landed on the ground, by the open container door of a newly arrived Division truck. His invisibility field was up.
Law enforcement and Division agents had finally been given permission to close in on the Hall of Heroes, and they now took up the street space with their vehicles and their people. That was as far as they were willing to go, though. Nobody had dared to walk through the strange garden or toward the large red construct in the middle of it. As for radioactivity concerns, the flowers, as Max had been informed prior to his descent, had them covered.
Max looked back at the sky from where he'd come, watching as the firefly and the starlight constructs descended, inspiring both amazed and confused reactions from the people around him. Max watched with a heavy heart as Ames, surrounded by the photokinetic constructs he'd always so adored, carefully descended through the clouds, his glowing hands guiding his flight path and channeling his advanced telekinesis to control the movements of the constructs.
Battle Cry, Sun Dancer, and Alpha flew up to the sky to meet Ames on his descent, immediately establishing a perimeter around him.
"The Omega Phenomenon has been secured," one of the nearby Division agents said. "No sign of Malign anywhere. No sign of Max Angeles, either."
'Max Angeles isn't going anywhere this time,' Max thought, looking at Ames for the last time as the Enforcers escorted him on the way down. 'I'll wait for you, Ames. No matter how long.'
With a heart as determined as it was burdened, Max climbed into the darkness of the truck container and deactivated his invisibility field, leaving behind the aftermath of the battle and the phenomena of fireflies and starlight.