The Phenomena of Fireflies and Star... - Chapter 4: Chapter 4

"I've been a soldier all my life. This 'family of soldiers' tradition. I don't want it to be our family's story."
"What are you saying, Papa?"
"What do you want to be when you grow up, Anak? Because I don't want to be the one who tells you the answer."
"Hmm, a teacher?"
"A teacher, huh?"
"Yes."
"That is a different kind of heroism, but it's heroism all the same."
The afternoon sun was warm in the distance, and the breeze wasn't intrusive, only adequately soft. His father was already of senior age, and the man supported himself with his makeshift cane even while sitting down on the wooden bench.
His father had actually already retired, but the call of service had never left the ex-soldier's system, and he still contributed to the community whenever he felt like he could. Somehow. He was a good man.
The Second World War had just begun. His father would've been in the trenches already if it weren't for his age and his injury.
To spare his father the guilt of not participating in the defense efforts of the Philippine forces, he had signed up. He knew his father would disapprove, but he hadn't heard his father's explicit disapproval yet. Thus, the biggest decision he'd ever made in his life so far.
"I know what you did," his father said after a long pause. He couldn't do more than wordlessly stare at the man and try to read his poker face, which hadn't aged well throughout the years. This time, his disappointment registered a little more obviously. "You shouldn't have. Not for me."
"Why not, Papa?" he asked, taking a deep breath.
His father took a while. The old man merely looked back at him. There was a certain fog over his father's eyes that looked to him like sadness. Nostalgia. Maybe even some melancholy.
"Anak," his father spoke, planting a firm hand on his shoulder. "I want you to be the author of your own life. What kind of life would it be if somebody else wrote it for you?"
He didn't want to pretend that he knew the most precise answer to the question, but he had one in mind. This one came with a lot of thought that had preceded their current conversation.
"Not mine," he said.
"Hmm," his father uttered. "Unless you try to write it yourself, you might never find an answer you can fully believe."
He wanted to listen more, to prolong moments like this with his father.
But there came a strange aerial hiss that grew louder and louder at a speed he couldn't have expected it to come at. The intrusion was jolting, and it took them a while to locate where it was coming from.
He looked behind him, and far up in the sky was an armada of small planes. Birds of war. He stared at them as they flew by.
"Angels of destruction," his father commented, trailing the planes with a long gaze as they flew off to the sunset, sweeping over the rice fields down the mountain. His father's eyes and contemplative face spoke of so many things in their silence.
He looked down on his hands, noticing the scabs from the cuts he'd had from farm work. He liked to pick on them.
For some reason, his vision seemed to be playing tricks on him. His legs looked rather interesting in the blur of the corners of his vision. He puts his hands onto his lap and looked at his legs.
For a few seconds, a sudden wave of airless silence engulfed him.
There was a painful irregularity in the beating of his heart.
He felt as if he was losing blood in a second.
He wanted to scream, but he couldn't.
That want quickly became a need.
Where his legs should've been, bandaged stumps hung.
And they leaked with blood.
September 22, 2023
4:45 AM
"No," Alpha croaked out as he finally broke into consciousness. His eyes opened to the cool and dim comfort of reality. For a few seconds, he merely stared at the ceiling. He could feel his body, his blood flow, and his heartbeat.
He felt the comfortable cushion beneath him and the hug of the warm blanket.
They felt good.
But the place wasn't familiar to him.
He resorted to heightened alertness, swiftly sitting up on the bed. His clothes weren't his own. A large beige sweater and comfy pajamas had already replaced his suit, which he couldn't see anywhere in the room.
'Wait..,' he thought in a sudden flush of shyness as he realized what had been done to him. Sheepishly, he pulled up the garter of the pajamas and used an illuminated finger to light up the dark.
He was wearing underwear.
His battle suit was so tight that underwear was impossible to wear in it.
'Which means...'
Warmth flowered awkwardly in his cheeks.
He tried to remember what had happened, feeling the place out and looking around for clues. He knew that the energy that had struck him had put him in disarray. Consequently, he couldn't function well, and his strength acted against him. Malign and Emerald had used Channel to hit him with his own powers. Smart. Disrespectful. A true Severance Seven trademark.
He remembered that he'd managed to walk a considerable distance in the rain after even a simple hover had depleted his energy in chunks.
Somebody had stopped by to help him.
'Who was that?' he thought as his eyes continued to look around the room. He eventually looked toward the lamp on the bedside table. Beside it stood a bunch of picture frames.
It was normally disrespectful for him to look into other people's stuff, but he wasn't exactly in a guaranteed safe space right now. He took one of the picture frames.
There he was.
Alpha recognized the young man's face immediately.
'He saved me,' Alpha remembered. 'He looks amiable. Young. Spirited. A rather good-looking fellow, too. Hooded and yet double-lidded eyes; sharp and yet inviting. His nose is adequately tall. Considerably bridged. Friendly smile, too. And yet he looks like he's hiding some pain. Somewhere deep.'
Alpha noticed his chest's faint glow. As it appeared, his powers weren't in their best state again. His empathic powers seemed to be glitching for they didn't normally trigger his bioluminescent powers. These empathic powers of his had no visual aspect. This had happened a few times before. It should go back to normal eventually. The photograph and the young man's face were emitting pulsations of emotional residue. Sentimentality. The pulsations were fairly palpable. The young man had other people in the picture, and they seemed to be his family.
'Thank you,' Alpha thought, flicking a golf ball-sized orb of light onto the space before him.
He stood off of the bed and helped himself to the door, the orb of light following him and floating close by as he carefully exited the bedroom. He found himself on a mezzanine overlooking the first floor of the house, of which the only illuminated area was the kitchen. The kitchen was rather dainty, painted in beige with counters in cream and marble countertops of rose gold color. The dining room table, standing under an adequately bright overhead light, was of varnished wood. Only one of the four seats was occupied, and the young man who occupied it looked up at him the moment the bedroom door closed.
Alpha deactivated his little light orb.
The young man looked surprised, uneasy, and maybe slightly uncomfortable. Plus, he was giving off the vibes. Alpha understood. He gave the guy a kind smile, a gesture reciprocated sincerely but also reservedly.
"Um...," Alpha didn't know what to say. "Hi."
"Hey...," the young man replied kindly. "I, um, I haven't dried your suit yet. It smelled kind of funny after, but I promise you, I'm great at manual laundry."
Alpha nodded gently, unable to hold back his smile at how amusing that statement was. The suit wasn't made of commercially available material. He couldn't explain it as precisely as the folks in the laboratories and the Research and Development department could. Nanotechnology was heavily incorporated into the suit, but it was protected by the thin and durable membrane resembling leather that covered the technology. The gold emblem just below the stomach section of the suit was the main power source and power button for the entire suit. He figured it must've been busted, too. The suit probably hadn't receded into the emblem.
Alpha proceeded down the stairs nearby, appreciating its sturdiness against his strong build. The young man followed him with a gaze.
"I soaked the suit. I don't think I've ever washed any material like that of your suit...," the young man continued. "Please, um, take a seat."
Alpha reached the bottom of the stairs and nodded to the man in response before sitting down on the chair opposite him. For a few seconds, they were just staring uncertainly at each other.
'He seems kind,' Alpha thought. 'But there's a cloud of insecurity and unease emanating from him right now. I must be the cause.'
"I don't know how to thank you," Alpha began softly, putting his hands on the table. "I don't think you should be so open to help someone you don't know."
"Your skin, uh," the young man answered, clearing his throat. "You—how do I say this—flickered. Like, ah, a flashlight. Or a strobe. While you were in the car. I knew it was you."
"Most people won't help," Alpha pointed out. "I must've been quite heavy, huh?"
"Yeah," the young man's voice cracked into a shy chuckle. His eyes were sincere, but they were sincerely awkward, too. Alpha got it. "You healed, I guess. But you were very filthy when I found you, so I had to put you under the shower. I'm sorry. Post-COVID and I'm still uneasy with bacteria."
"You were very kind," Alpha said reassuringly, smiling as he did.
He remembered his younger self because of the man's energy. He wasn't bold, but he had his own qualities. The young man was giving off an aura that neither intimidated him nor alarmed him. He was, however, concerned by the unease. There was something deeper behind it. It wasn't guilt. It wasn't fear. It was just insecurity. Doubt.
"I'm Alpha," he introduced himself, reaching out with his free hand. The young man merely stared at the hand before him for a good two seconds before shaking it. The young man's palm felt smooth, but his hand had a slight tremble. A very faint tremble. Alpha kind of felt bad about it, considering he might've caused it.
"I'm Ames," the young man said, forcing a smile on his face.
"Ames, I...," Alpha went on, letting go of Ames's hand. "I need to go. There are dangerous people who want me dead. Being with a civilian means putting a civilian in harm's way."
'What am I saying?' Alpha thought to himself. 'Am I really going back?'
'Or do I just...'
'Do I just go away?'
"Do you have internet here?" Alpha asked, blinking into clarity of mind. "There might've been some news regarding my disappearance."
Ames nodded, taking out a cellphone and gently pushing it over for Alpha to use.
Alpha took it carefully. It was already unlocked. He helped himself into a browser. Tapping into the News section, he found his name in every article.
His heart jerked in a sudden tension. The news was filled with reports about his disappearance. So much had happened in the past few hours.
"Whoa," he uttered in shock. Eventful.
As it appeared, there had been search parties sent out, but they couldn't find witnesses or leads to go by. The rain had concealed him.
"People are looking for you, too," Ames spoke. "Last night's news reports were almost all about you."
"Any news on Malign?" Alpha asked, forgetting that he wasn't speaking to anybody from HQ. "I'm sorry for asking."
"At large," Ames replied, a disappointed look on his face. "But injured. Allegedly. Reports said he left defeated but very angry."
"Dammit," Alpha sighed. He was right about the others managing to deal with Malign and Emerald. It wasn't exactly a surprise that neither Seven member had been caught, but the news itself was another disruption to the conflict Alpha was already entertaining in his head.
His dreams had just become significantly more vivid. Not to mention disturbingly specific. He used to have them only in snippets. As much as he loved being a hero, recent missions had made him realize how severely detached he'd become from his humanity. It had been decades.
It would be in the 1940s when he had last felt truly human. He didn't exactly feel human again in his current disposition, but the drastic change in the environment solidified the thoughts he'd been entertaining for a decade now. It was like a parody that he couldn't help but wish was true. Him in a normal kitchen, in normal clothes, had never felt more tempting.
'My tracker broke,' he recalled. 'My suit is busted.'
'I'm missing.'
The thoughts repeated in his head, and they refused to silence themselves. He wasn't even sure if he wanted to counter them. He had a duty, though.
'But I haven't had a life in such a long, long time...'
'What am I gonna' do?'
"Alpha?" Ames interrupted. The young man was even more bothered now. His eyebrows were close to tying up with each other. "Anything wrong?"
'I don't know...,' Alpha replied in his head. 'I'm very, very uncomfortably confused.'
He looked around him, at random areas in the house, desperate to redirect his thoughts as they harassed him with ideas that he didn't fully oppose.
'Malign's still out there,' he thought to himself. 'He's still out there. And I'm here thinking about going AWOL.'
'I've been thinking about going AWOL for years. I've been praying for a shot at a new life. I don't think I've ever gotten louder signs.'
"Anak," his father's words in his dream returned to him. It hadn't felt like just a dream. Rather, a shot-for-shot memory flash. "I want you to be the author of your own life. What kind of life would it be if somebody else wrote it for you?"
"Not mine," he remembered saying.
"Hmm. Unless you try to write it yourself, you might never find an answer you can fully believe."
'I've been fighting for over eight decades against every threat imaginable,' he recalled. 'Can't I just be a dead superhero and start over again? As me? The me I miss?'
"Alpha," he finally spoke, gently pushing the phone back to Ames, who took it cautiously. "Alpha is my job title."
"Okay...," Ames replied, uncertain but intrigued. Alpha had to admit that Ames's emotional energy was consistent and powerful. He couldn't stop reading it as it pulsated toward him.
"How old do you think I am, Ames?" Alpha took a slight tangent, warming himself up for something he might consider stupid later on.
"Um," Ames took his time. "Well, you look young, but you'd have to be older than my father. Way older."
"One hundred and two," Alpha replied.
"Whoa," Ames scoffed, a surprised look on his face. "I mean I didn't think you'd be that old."
"I'm gonna' need your help, Ames."
"M-my help?"
"Yes."
"W-why? How? I don't... I don't understand."
"My name is Gabriel Clemente," Alpha prefaced, biting his lower lip a bit in a moment of hesitation that was replaced immediately by a determination he couldn't believe he was allowing to blossom. "And I've been a licensed superhuman national defender for over eight decades now."
"Why are you telling me this, Alpha?" Ames's energy almost vocally stated how puzzled he was. "I mean... Gabriel?"
"Because...," Alpha paused. It was just so hard. He grimaced at the thought. He'd probably already stared into every nook and cranny in the space he was in, and he still couldn't escape the nagging of the opportunity and the opposing guilt.
"Because why, Alpha?"
"Because," Alpha shut his eyes tight for a while, feeling the tension of his conscience smacking him in full force. He then noticed something on the wall by one of the kitchen cabinets.
It seemed to be a framed certificate. He could make out the words.
'Ambrose Andrade,' he read. 'Most outstanding teacher of the year 2022...'
'Gonzales University of Arts and Sciences.'
One last time, his guilt hit him in the gut. However, it didn't rattle him as much anymore. He let out a breath. It felt like the heaviest exhalation he'd ever made, and yet it was almost voiceless.
"Because from now on, I want to be just Gabriel Clemente."
"You mean..."
"I mean I quit, Ames."
Ames's eyes widened in shock and confusion, mouth opening in a mute expression of disbelief.
"Can you help me, Ames?"