“Mother… Can you see them, Mother…?”
Yet another building in the city was lit ablaze, bright red and orange and yellow fire erupting and leaking blistering and fiery infernos from out of peach and every last broken door and window, the Old Hroldan Inn, built so long ago in New York City that even the people who ran it had no idea of when the cornerstone had been lain, a building that rose several hundred feet into the sky, a living moment that even the people of the lowest levels of common life could measure up to the achievements of the grand moneyed classes, was currently in the middle of collapsing top-to-bottom in an amazing inferno straight from the depths of Hell, Or, at least, that what an outside observer would rightfully conclude. It was an amazing sight to witness, and it came right out of nowhere. And how could they, these hypothetical witnesses to the tragedy, be blamed for reaching such a conclusion? They would not have known about the sleeping human beings and working employees still trapped inside of the inn with no means of escape, the few who did foolishly attempt to leap out of the building either being instantaneously consumed in a fireball on the way down, or their unlucky human bodied selves turning into a gigantic impact and liquifying into a fine red mist upon contact with the unforgiving surface of the Earth, not known about the frightened and teared-eyed cries of the little ones as their very skin and hair and clothes were painfully and horribly torn off in the blazing bastion, slowly, horrifically, and accompanied with the horrific screeching and screaming of every single human being in the inferno, slowly and painfully losing their lives and their bodies to the onslaught of the incoming flames, the wailing of the dead and the soon-to-be-dead combing, joining together as one and unifying in their ashy departures into the aether of whatever could possibly be beyond the world that had just been a part of just a few seconds ago. Nobody would know about them, save for one or two relatives who were probably too poor to even pay for their funerals or for a glass jar to house what little ashes remained of their corpses following a reluctant round of DNA testing. No one would weep for them. No one would remember them. They had made no mark upon the world. They had just lived. for a few months to multiple decades, and, just like that, they were gone, meaningless names in a government logbook somewhere in the back of the filing cabinets of a New York City Hall that would never care about them, anyway. Meaningless lives, meaningless names. Burned away to nothing by inferno of the supernatural.
“Can you see them dancing up into the darkness? The flames?”
What was formerly a black night under a starless sky had become bright as day, the hottest temperatures that the city city had ever felt being lit up by the old building that had gone up like a Viking’s funeral pyre, which was quickly now collapsing, the fine shingled roof scattering into the blistering winds, old stone chimneys crashing through the floorboards and the wooden beams of the ceilings to crush to death anyone who had been stubborn enough to survive the initial first wave of the blaze, the ensuing fountains of blood dissipating and disappearing into the infernal waves of flames, and on the outside of the building was formed a vortex of plumes of blistering fire that sucked into it the surrounding Oxygen from the whispering winds.
“Are you watching them spin and writhe and curl? And do you know that they beckon to you?
Call you with silent voices?”
Plead with you to come, to come, to come, to come…?”
“Late AGAIN, Quinn?”, annoyingly asked a fellow firefighter from the Brooklyn East Department as a blonde man with wild controlled golden hair parted to his right side, still adjusting his uniform of a black baggy fire jacket with prominent golden yellow accents and a pair of dark yellow air tanks upon his back.
“I am not as fast as the Blue Flame, Paul! What’s happening now and why is it so bad around here?”
“The mother of all six-alarmers is what's happening.”, the other fighter scoffed at him, while the blonde one joined him in securing the army of firehoses attacked to the departmental red trucks, which continued to do nothing in the face of such an overwhelming tide of flaming power. “Like you can’t see. Which you probably can’t, not with that unseemly, unsightly hair over your eyes.”
“Get off me, Paul, it’s only my right eye, and I wasn’t using it anyway.”
“Man, we’ve been hitting this with everything we’ve got, and Zilch! I’ve never seen anything burn so hot!”
“What is this, some kind of chemical fire?”
“No. According to our info, there’s nothing but plain old wood and brick.”
“Anybody inside?”, further inquired the man with the gilded locks of golden hair while spraying a gigantic hose at the inferno, with the pressurised water simply dissolving in the face of the fire on the inside of the doors and windows that was clearly not of his world.
“No, thank heaven–”, responded Paul Vernheart, a frazzled-looking man with his facial hair in such a configuration that betrayed that he had neither shaved the stubbled lower half of his face nor cut his matted black hair in a matter of months, while vainly attempting to find a point that the firehose could fix.
“Not true!”, yelled a blonde bearded man who had been viewing the building from the outside before the Fire Department had gotten themselves to the scene, while the flames made his eyes invisible behind his square glasses. “Me an’ and a couple’a guys seen somebody on the second floor… Looked like a guy with swords… Looked like he was Dancing, for pity’s sake!”
“Okay then, thanks for the briefing.”, the blonde responded to the outsider while flashing him a two-fingured gesture of supposed reassurance, before slapping on his black fire helmet and picking up a conventional fire squad’s axe. “But now, I gotta go to work. Catch you later.”
With that, the spirited young man ran right into the heart of the blaze, and disappeared into the intensifying heat.
And, as the brave fighter went into the blazing ruins of a residence doomed to an untimely death, he was watched by another. Or, more accurately, two others; one of whom was an extremely invested human being with a tan coat and shaggy brown hair, and the other of whom was a smaller creature, topped with a large reddish-brown baseball cap, and eyes of a particular shade of purplish-blue that seemed to hint at it belonging to something grotesquely less than human.
“No mistakes, Quinn.”, remarked an angry Paul.
He is two beings. Ashley Quinn, a wild, passionate, yet kind and humble fireman; and Ash, an alien presence with whom the boy shares his body. As for his soul? Quinn doesn’t know. As he makes his way up the charred remnants of what once were very charitably considered stairs, he is naturally motivated to invoke one of his beyond-human capabilities. Sometimes he – They – can control the very essence of fire, bend its appearance, alter its shape, dullen and intensify it, cast it towards others and away from the self, and even suck it into himself – Themselves – change its properties, or simply quell it. He makes his first attempt to push it away from him and out the window, and it fails, the flames simply just come back, and they come back with a vengeance. He tries to take it all into his mouth, and his inside innerworkings are unable to hold even the tiniest portion of it. Thus, he must let all of the flames – and his hard work – all blow right out. Almost always, he is more powerful than anyone else, even in the form of a civilian. But not now. The fire – This fire – seems to have a mind of its own. It resists all of Ash’s efforts. Just as its intensity and immensity had resisted the thousands of gallons of water that had been hosed into it. Then, as he kneels down, his head and his legs and his whole body ringing from the heat, his mind clouded by the sweltering sensations that caused his whole world to fall before him into just red, red, and more red. Then, his limits can no longer be dealt with by such a normal body, and, almost involuntarily, he rapidly begins to transform. It is as though his regular self is taken apart and ripped open, before another self is put on his bare flesh and blood body like another suit of clothing.
A pillar of fire both erupts from within him – within his heart, within his mind, within his very Soul – and erupts from up above and below him, forming a supreme inferno that engulfs him, consuming him, every single portion of his being changed inside of a geyser of frightening stability. After all, fire has a stable appearance, yet changes everything it touches. And, when the gigantic pillar of flames has gone away, the being that emerges from the blaze within the blaze has become more. Much more. More in ways that he cannot possibly, cannot physically comprehend. He has become a veritable Titan by comparison, reborn again as a being of gigantic musculature and mass sculpted by a god of war and destruction, adorned with gigantic gauntlets covering both of his fists, the elements of the previous firefighting uniform having become integrated into his very own body, resulting in yellow stripes built into the skin of his arms and legs, the markings upon his brown gloves becoming golden glowing energy conduits, through which seemed to be contained the power to raze life itself in the form of the ever-glowing flames. What had once been mildly-messy golden hair had grown into a wild and outrageous mane of deep silver and gray, that blew around in the sweltering inferno but did not burn, and, now that his flowing mass of crowning silver hair no longer covered his right eye twenty-four-seven, three-sixty-six, the previously-covered implement had now warped to reflect the other half of the being, for now it blazed bright red, some lingering aspect of one always present in the other. He was not fully Ashley anymore, his mind and body had now become the one known as Ash.
In ways that he ever still cannot comprehend, by his very nature and makeup he begins to absorb energy from the inferno around him, energy that fills him, saturates each and every last one of the very cells in his body, and sends waves of the most primal form of pleasure rippling all through him: An overwhelmingly sensuous experience, but, as he soon realises, a dangerous one.
“Got to… Focus… Got to… Get out…”
Because if he doesn’t, he thinks as his heavy-duty-booted pair of feet carry him up through the building’s lingering remains…
“Don’t know what could happen… Explosion… Could take out half the city… Maybe…”
And so, once again, he uses the most common exercise of his pure power, an exercise in alien capabilities that he has almost performed a hundred times, and, from the point of view of everyone on the outside, the entire sky of overwhelmed by an inverse inferno, deep and scarlet in its colour, so massive that anyone on the upper levels of East Side would and could have seen it, a bright star that dazzled both the onlookers, and the world.
“What… What the Hell was that?”, asked a very bewildered Paul while experiencing and beholding the oncoming onslaught of mystical, wispy, willowing smoke coming the way of everyone down on the floor of the whole incident.
Ashley then emerged from the scarred, and charred, and burned, skelotonised wreckage of the Old Hroldan Inn, weakly stepping with exhausted feet and his clothes back on.
“Empty… Safe… Nobody inside.”
“How can you be so sure?”
“Hunch. Very strong hunch.”, he replied simply, in a vain attempt to intimidate him, before wandering off into the nearby darkened alleyway.
Meanwhile, from elsewhere upon the street, the man with the brown hair took the creature next to him way from the ruins, and began to walk away.
“Come, Alvie, it’s time to leave. You did very well tonight.”
But, while the fire on the coastal end of the city that never slept had now dissipated at the righteous hands of a bona fide hero, the fires of the poor streets of the nearby Gotham City remained fully in vogue, as the fires set by the homeless, lit in their cans of trashes, lit up the wholeness of the run-down alleyways against the nighttime purple sky, the same sky under which one woman walked, and the same streets upon which one woman continued in her misery. Naturally, that same misery was only amplified when an unexpected visitor, dressed in the mantle of the bat, now with a blue cape and cowl replacing the previous black, dropped down right behind her, his presence casting a long, dark, heavy, neverending shadow upon the entirety of her world.
“You know that’s my name.”
Batman continued to stand behind her, pulling from his usual bag of tricks to try to intimidate her, standing against the full moon to make himself a living shadow, growling in his usual gravelly cadence, and forcefully pulling her toward him to force her to look his way while he grilled her.
“Two questions. Were you near the ports by Old Hroldan Inn? And did you set a fire there?”
“No to both.”, the girl matter-of-factly responded “Now why do you ask?”
Batman leaned in even closer and growled even harder. “An old and inhabited inn burned to the ground. The firefighters reported a man with two swords at the scene.”
“And so naturally you thought of me. Because I’m such a man, right? And because my other identity makes use of flaming blades.”
“Precisely.”, he responded while his voice grew even lower and much less patient.
“Not guilty. Of that. Or of anything else you may want to blame on me. Your perpetual distrust in me doesn’t change a thing.”
“In case your brain has conveniently blocked out all your memories of everything you’ve done wrong, I did mistakenly think you could be given the honour of my trust. And you betrayed my trust. You took a life. There’s no statute of limitations on that. Ever. Not with me”
“Then why. Do you bother. To talk to me?”
Batman couldn’t help but have a mild level of impressment with her. Perhaps, after all her life, she actually was growing a spine.
“If you are innocent, and that’s only an if, then you may want to clear yourself. On your personal computer, you’ll easily be able to find a complete file on the arsonists in Gotham City. I suggest you pay particular attention to one who calls himself ‘The Firefly’.”
“And if I succeed?”, she asked while turning her back away to make the man’s job easier. “Catch this Firefly? Prove I’m innocent? Then will you believe I’m not a killer?”
But she knew that asking the question was futile. He was already gone. Every time.
As she walks away, Jeanne-Paula Valley asks herself: “Why do I care what he thinks?” And the answer is: “Because I do. Probably always will.”
“Playing your walking game again?”, asked the man with the brown hair, now dressed in a blue short-sleeved button-up shirt, accompanied by a sky blue bowtie and a plaid grid-patterned brown vest, having now gotten the opportunity to take his coat off, now that both him and the creature were back to dwelling up within his home. “That’s an excellent game, but perhaps it’s time for bed now.”
The short thing busy with walking on the man’s fine red carpeted floor gave him almost a pre-programmed response.
“I want to stay up for my mother.”, proclaimed the creature, a small, mostly-silent, and very scrawny thing, resembling the classical image of aliens from another planet, grey–skinned, large-headed, and large-eyed, wearing a blue T-Shirt emblazoned with the red and yellow symbol of Superman. “You said if Surtur and I made the signal fire last night, then my mother would come.”
Surtur. The figure of the flames. The one whom the onlookers had seen and witnessed holding the dual flaming swords in both of his hands. The figure whom he had summoned to send the signal fire to call out for his mother.
“I think we may need another signal fire. Or possibly two.”
“Your mother is a great distance away, after all.”, the blue-shirted man agreed while getting up from his couch to kneel down to talk at the creature’s level. “Three signal fires may be necessary. You can understand that, can’t you?”
“And speaking of Surtur… Do you suppose you could summon him?”
Instantly a swirling torrent of flames began to manifest itself within the living room of the man’s apartment, forming into a bipedal, humanoid figure, dressed in an armoured cuirass and a cloak that was constantly on fire, just like the rest of his entire body, and a helmet that covered his full face, leaving only holes for two nonexistent eyes, and in his hands were two gigantic, elegant blades, built both for cleaving all enemies in two and for precise and sophisticated stabbings for the betrayal of others and anyone who had wronged him. A blazing figure of retributive flaming unholiness.
While the girl in red stands atop a brick building overlooking the New York squares, the high-rising buildings of the city containing all the people in positions of power who would never care about anyone on the bottom forming sharpened sticks aiming at the eyes of god into the skyline behind her, she speaks her name aloud, to remind herself that she is not the mask she holds in her hand, she is not…
And as the mask goes on, and she feels herself dwindle and wither away, stored in the back of some meta level of her own consciousness, the other comes to the forefront, and it is Azrael who thinks for her: The costume is necessary; it triggers the ingrained psycho-psychological changes in her muscles her limbic systems; her cortical centres. But, as she ignites her hands and leaps off of the tall building with a single bound, she knows, even the angel knows, that she hates it, for, even as it confers superhuman abilities upon her, it robs the original host of who she is. Even in the now, is it the weak and meek Jeanne-Paula Valley who is thinking about herself? Or is it Azrael, the avenger programmed from the moment of her conception to be a force of woe, destruction, ruin, and decay, a tide of fire built for the sole purpose of ending lives with her powers. According to the masked man, Firefly was sure to be hiding in the building she was rapidly approaching, and as she sailed right into the window, emerging into a room in a poor borough, of dilapidated wood floor panelling and dirty, filthy, stained, and burn-marked mattresses and chairs and bottles, and a dented wooden desk littered with papers, some of which were now covered in the myriad shards of glass induced by the intruder, she was greeted with a rude awakening that broke her fantasy.
“Then, there, upon the cracked red plaster wall, hung up by a duo of tacks upon the top right and the bottom left ends of the thing, she, Azrael, spots something she’s never seen before – a map of New York City. Her golden hand places its palm upon the old, almost-withered paper, and spots a series of circles, drawn in red ink in a manner that makes it safe to say that they didn’t come from the manufacturer.
As the angel departs from the burrow in the borough, soaring across the sky with the force of her own power, kicking herself off the ledges to create a flaming streak in the night, she reverts to once more being in her own head, in a world of her own.
Those two circles with the lines struck through them… They're the sites of recent, suspicious fires… Or, at least, that’s what the masked man said. And, then, the third circle… The one without the line… It marks a place just a few blocks from here. A place where I may find…
Firefly, that is, the man dressed in a charcoal black and warmened grey suit, capped off with the gliding wings that spanned for nearly thirteen feet behind him, a helmet of a simplified insectile, Firefly appearance, and carrying in his wretched and outstretched hands a pair of fire-spewing guns connected with hoses to the incendiary tank upon his back, was, at the time, occupied with standing on his tippy toes atop a building, making himself tall enough to tough the New York sky, and preaching in his insane prattle about his patented and trademarked particular rogues gallery shtick…
“Unpack the marshmallows, ladies and gentlemen, because we’re about to begin a splendid bonfire!”
…Before the villain was suddenly menaced upon by a red-suited vigilante posing in a ridiculous manner with her knees bent low and her arms stretched behind her, yelling in her own form of preaching platitudes.
“Garfield Lynns! KNOW that you are EVIL!”
“KNOW that you are IGNORANT!”
Azrael speaking. Jeanne-Paula… Is not exactly present.
The man in the grey bug suit was almost stunned for a few seconds, before sarcastically asking to her: “Surtur? Fire deity? My absolutely positively no-bones all-time favourite Norse God?”, then simply pointed a gun and kept on talking.
“No. Of course. You’re not him. What you're going to be is BARBECUE!”, and his flaming gun spewed forth a geyser load of high-pressurised fire.
“C’mere, husband, you ol’ CROWBAR!”, screeched out an old woman with a can of Dr Cherry in her hand while she looked out of the window of her high-rise condominium and smoked on the old lit pipe in her other hand.
“What is it, sweetie-pie?”, asked the woman’s equally-old husband while the fight outside began to turn and heat up.
“Stop yer yammerin’ an’ look outta the window.”
“Anything that you say, light-of-my-life.”
“I swear the whole neighbourhood’s goin’ to the dogs.”
“Just because a couple’o’ fello’s have got some real big lighters? Angel honey darling.”
“Well, don’t just stand there, you ol’ puke –”, the old woman said while Azrael hid behind her cape to repel the Firefly’s flames, which reflected them into annihilating several of the nearby water tower supports. “– Go get the fire department!”
“My finger’s on the dial, shining ol’ pillar of lovability.”
“Hot enough for you, Surtur, old rubbish?!”, yelled Firefly, while neglecting to realise that none of the attacks from his guns were doing anything to her.
The costume is flameproof, but it is not refrigerated. The heat is becoming intense. She needs to do something to fix it. Thus, she slams a swinging fist into the face of the fiery flamer, knocking him into a shallow wall crowning around the building, but was unfortunately unable to close the gap inbetwixt them before the vile one simply pulled out his other gun and started shooting her again; and now she was back to square one.
Meanwhile, elsewhere in the east side of America, one Ashley Quinn was busy with lounging by a run-down old joint dubbed Officer Jusko’s Donuts, resting against his bright purple motorcycle while scratching several scars on his chest underneath his shirt. The radio of a nearby Police car was loud rough for him to hear, proclaiming: “ – Possible arson at Bleecker And South Street – ”
“Only three blocks from here!”, he exclaimed as he instantly swallowed his donut and downed the rest of his extra large coffee – oftentimes he had to eat for two, and thus the cheapest way to do so on the miniscule budget that he got paid with was to cram cheap and processed calories down his throat – kicked his motorcycle into high gear, and zoomed right away towards the flaming disturbance, leaving a trail of smoke and road grime in his dust.
“You win! You win! I surrender!”, that miscreant known as Firefly cried, having had his other gun knocked out of his hand by Azrael in the intervening time. “But, before you do whatever you're planning to… I wanted to tell you something…”
With the sound of a powerful WHOCK!!, Azrael was sent back, and right into the water tower.
“What are you doing, you ignoramus?!”, yelled the old woman while her husband was busy sticking his head out the open window.
“Watching something that beats the Weather Channel by a country mile. Lover doll.”
Next, the man in the grey costume swung his incendiary tube up above his head, intending to simply bring it down upon the girl’s head, which was repelled at the last possible second with a swing of the burning, blistering blade, sending a supercharged explosion out into the night that once more temporarily lit up the entirety of the sky.
“Doing my work for me! Are you just an idiot?! But, don’t get me wrong, I’m certainly grateful. Remind me to put you on my Christmas Card list.”
The fire almost seemed to turn purple against the blackness of the night, at least how Azrael saw it, right before the Firefly proceeded to lower his hands and pull several pill-shaped canisters from off his belt.
“And now, for a much more special surprise. Little wonders of my own creation that I like to call ‘Incendiary Capsules’. I intend to sell them for Christmas gifts.”
With that, his pitching arm chucked them right at her, and he gloated: “Should drive Gameboy Colours clean off the market!”
Now it was Azrael who was thinking again, just as the capsules broke all on their own when making contact with her armoured skin, setting the whole of her and the rooftop ablaze.
This outfit is designed to resist ordinary fire. But this is some chemical horror. I’ll be roasted alive. Wait. The thing I got knocked into. The water tank. New York rooftops are full of them. Well, let’s hope this one’s not empty.
Refreshing beyond all belief. Covered in a rapid’s worth of water from head to toe.
Not even that mini-downpour was enough to do the whole trick. But, it helped. And I can handle the rest.
“Nifty trick, jackass.”, Firefly began. “You did manage to save yourself – But in just a few minutes the whole building – and all of the buildings around us – are destined to be doomed into nothing but smoky memories. You know, if anyone will even bother to remember it – or you – at all.”
As the two of the combatants on the rooftop turned their heads over to look at the new man entering the proverbial arena, they beheld someone whom they didn’t know, but a man who knew himself to be Ash, standing perched atop the rooftop of a nearby residential building, with his right eye glowing with his fiery spirit, a sparkling aura of ribbon-like flames dancing around his body, winding about his limbs in idle and restrained fury, and behind him standing the moon, fully-lit and perfectly reflecting the light of the set stun, illuminating his pimped-out fire wardrobe but casting his glowing face in shadow.
“I don’t know WHICH of you two hooligans is responsible for this… Maybe… No… PROBABLY both of you. But, quite frankly, in the face of disasters like these… I don’t much CARE who’s responsible. So stay put…”
The titanic man’s giant-gauntleted hands lifted themselves up, almost involuntarily, and the dancing plumes of destruction around him began to join forces with the raging flames atop the rooftop, and his left eye began to glow just as hot as his right.
“What the Hell’s goin’ on up here?”, inquired a whole new group of civilians, obvious lowlives and hooligans, dressed in extremely-shabby clothing, not on the outside too visibly smart, and all of them carrying loaded guns.
While both Ash and Azrael were turning their attentions away to look towards the unexpected intruders, the already-running Firefly began to run away, verbally groaning while he departed.
“Allow me to answer for you. They are, regrettably, employees of the man who owns all these buildings. I was contractually employed by a rival in business to reduce the whole of it to charcoal and embers.”
Stepping up over the roof lining, his artificial wings began to kick into overdrive, while he continued to explain. “These men, meanwhile, are not model citizens. Hoods. Thugs. Hooligans. Punks. Hoodrats. East Coast G’s. Miscreants. You get the idea. I had hoped to accomplish my task without attracting their rather violent attention…”
Raising two fingers up to mockingly salute the both of them, he turned his head and flew away.
“But, well, I have no qualms about you receiving their attention. Dosvedonya!”
As he started for the haven of the distance, the thugs in question started to speak in their questionable dialects.
“Bust ‘em up. Bust ‘em up good.”
“No guns? Are you outta your mind?”
“Nah, we ain’t out of ‘ar minds. We’re smarter than the usual rats. We don’t wanna get the cops on our collective asses.”
“You…”, began Ash, pointing towards Azrael, who had, the entire time, been taking a few seconds to get her rest. “It seems like you were not the one responsible. So, at least ‘till this is over, I guess it looks like we’re on the same side.”
Azrael and Ash, now teamed together, began to unleash their power in the form of giant furries of destruction upon the hooligans and the hoodrats. Together they glowed as their fists and blades and swipes and kicks clobbered almost the entirety of the tiny mob, before several of them instead elected to regroup, and pointed their glocks right for the two supposed “Heroes”.
“You know what? Screw the ‘No gun’ thing.”
“Yeah. First, we ice the fuck outta ‘em. Then, only then we worry about the uniforms.”
A horde of bullets rang out of their flickers like a Hornet’s nest, all of which were given a terminal case of a swift deflection by the twin blades in Azrael’s arms, and all of the unsuccessful bullets unceremoniously fell down to the floor of the rooftop, in a manner that made the thighs who had fired them seem like total fools.
“Di’ d’Jew see that? He knocked those slugs away wit’ ‘Them big knives–”
“Yeah? Well, his buddy ain’t got a blade–”
As if personally offended, from one of Ash’s giant hands spewed a concentrated beam of pure, unadulterated flames, knocking all of the the guns out of their hands at once and leaving visible burn marks upon the flesh of their combined enemies.
“Something better. I do a GREAT impression of Puff The Magic Dragon!”
Then, in a move that surprised Azrael what good, Ash’s massive hands proceeded to scoop her up and take her with him as the man of flames kicked his feet up and leapt for Fireflys direction, closing the distance just enough for him to free one hand and shoot out a rope of fire, wrapping it around the high-speed opponent and tightening it with no care for anyone or anything. Instantly the Firefly was lassoed and, with a huge and irritated TUG!, slammed down onto the nearest adjacent rooftop, wherein his mask was broken in two from the impact, revealing the face of a youthful, disrespectful little punk, with blue hair streaked with lavender, a near-permanent sneer that betrayed no regrets for anything that he had ever done, and an attitude that only served to piss his captor off in a form even fiercer.
“Don’t leave so soon. The party hasn’t even gotten started, and we haven’t even gotten to play Twenty Questions yet. You’ve told us you’re an arsonist. So question One: Why? Why do you do it?”
“I get paid to do it.”, answered Garfield, straining against his supernatural ropes. “And… Well, I get a thrill out of fires. Yeah, yeah, a thrill. A real BIG thrill. Always gotten a kick out of those things.”
The man in the high-collared fire work outfit, thoroughly unamused, leaned down and picked him up by the neck, the silver buckles holding the two halves of it together straining to hold up and in against his bulk, before lowering his registry even further and leaning in even closer to grill him with his heated words and breath.
“You listen to me, PUNK. I’ve seen firsthand what fire does to human beings. Humans like ME. Humans like YOU. I’ve FELT it. I’ve heard the vain screams of burning children, crying out for their mothers and fathers who preceded them into the beyond. I've dug up the charred corpses of people who NEVER deserved to meet their end in an inferno… Dug them out of burned buildings and ruined dreams with my own two hands. I have GAGGED on the STENCH of burning FLESH, burning HEARTS, burning DREAMS, and burning SOULS. The souls and bodies of PEOPLE! PEOPLE LIKE ME! PEOPLE LIKE YOU! And no matter HOW much work it will take for a FLEA like you to UNDERSTAND the PAIN that the people YOU burn go through… I will MAKE you FEEL that PAIN!”
Once he was finished, Ash sent Garfield into that special involuntary Dreamland with a flaming punch.
“I will be back for you later.”
Several minutes had passed before Ash was walking down one of the many alleys in New York with Azrael strolling at his side, and the two of them were now freely conversing. with one another, about a great many things.
“...So you’re called Azrael and you’re here to clear your name. Who’s been goin’ after you? Cops? Feds?”
“Somebody heavier than that.”, the girl replied. “Way heavier. Now, who are you?”
“The answer to THAT would be one Hell of a lot more complicated than programming my VCR. Fact is, I’m not sure I CAN answer. Looking like THIS, I don’t know…”
The titanic being subsequently paused in his tracks, first chilling out, and then calming himself down, reverting back to a blaze of bright heat, and then back to a much smaller, weaker man.
“Like this, I’m Ashley Quinn. My buds call me Ash.”
“That was… Very impressive.”
“You think so?”, Ashley quipped while the two of them passed by a set of inner-city wooden fencing. “Then you oughtta see my card tricks. Actually… Look… Could you do me a favour and reciprocate? Get outta the fancy suit – I feel like I’m at a morally-questionable Halloween party.”
“All right, then. Give me a minute.”
Azrael ducked behind the wooden fence, covered in obscene graffitis, while the sparkling young lad leaned himself against the wood and continued to talk.
“So, right after I clocked the creep, you said you wanted to ask him something. Wanna share that with me?”
While he was asking this question, the girl had reverted back to being a girl, having stuffed her costume into her shoulder-mounted duffel bag and swapped out her angelic finery for a black and red Gotham Varsity jacket dressed over a white turtleneck and colour-matching jeans. Adjusting the tightness of her brown shoes and while rubbing off her red-rimmed glasses, to him she responded.
“He referred to me as ‘Searcher’, or ‘Sir Tore’, or something like that. I wonder what he meant.”
“Beats me. You figure it’s important?”
Paula stepped out of the gap in the fencing, her unintentional wild mullet blowing about a little in the breeze as a natural consequence of no care for her hair. “I have no idea what’s important.”
When he saw her, Ashley looked just the slightest bit surprised, perfectly evident on the visage of his face.
“Um… I am. Did that surprise you?”
“A little bit.”, Quinn admitted. “Then again, considering that people tend to get surprised when I tell them I’m a man…”
To prove his point, Ashley shrugged off his thin brown jacket and his almost-antiquated long white shirt, to reveal a chest with prominent, almost-burned-looking scars underneath his pectorals and nips, something that the girl wasn’t all too familiar with, but could definitely ascertain the meaning behind their presence.
“I guess I’m not one to judge, now, am I?”, he finished off with a smile.
“I suppose that makes you the opposite of me.”, replied the one with hair of brighter blonde.
The boy’s smirk didn’t fade, and he simply answered with a question. “That depends. Who do you like?”
“Yeah, you know, as in dating. Who do ya like?”
“Um… Well… I guess I’m kinda boring. I just like women.”
“Well, then, congrats!”, replied the boy with darker blonde atop his head and over one of his two eyes. “You are the opposite of me.”
A few seconds of silence, before Ash got his shirt and coat back on, before, then, he spoke again.
“Sorry I jumped the gun back there with Firefly. Next time we meet him I’ll wait a few seconds. Then I’ll hit him twice.”
“That’d make me happy. Really happy. Um, listen. He got to you, huh?”
“Like I told him, I know fire. I really know fire. I know it way down deep in my guts. Anybody, no matter who, that uses fire for profit… Or even worse – for fun – they ought to dump him in the deepest hole…”
Then, the two fiery blondes instantly turned their focus to something else they were hearing beyond the horizon.
Instantly the two of them ran as fast as their mortal feet could possibly carry them, across the ill-maintained paved sidewalks and through the bends of the big apple, spitting themselves out to be graced with the unholy sight of another burning building, this time a blazing brick building, a multiple-floor food market that, due to the blaze occurring on and from the inside, had essentially become a furnace.
“I’m Quinn from–”, Ash began, as he skidded to a halt in front of a couple of other firefighters who were already on the scene.
“Yeah, I reckanize ya.”, replied a uniformed, short-haired, black firefighter by the name of Mike, the only one of the squad who could spare a second to talk to him.
“If you look real hard then you can probably guess.”
“Same kind of bad one, huh?”
“The worst.”, Mike responded, while the glow of the hellish inferno turned all of their collective vision into nothing but black and orange. “Resistin’ everythin’ we throw at it.”
“Just like the other night…”
“Just like the other night…”
“The screwy part of this is…”, continued the short-haired fighting man. “This time, we was actually warned…”
“–Warned that the building would be burned, despite any precautions the police might take.”, came the filtered voice of a young and orange-haired female news reporter, sitting next to a display of the carnage and bordered by another display that ironically stated that LOLA CHONG GIVES GOOD NEWS. Meanwhile, both Jeanne and Ashley were left with no choice but to sit and listen to it, as now the both of them were seated down upon classical bar stools, sitting there with practically-boiling umber orange mugs in their hands, Ash with grimy but energising black diner coffee and Paula with cheap tea from a red box, served by a disinterested waitress who seemed to have contempt for every human being, the two of them the only patrons of the Durant Diner in the dead of night.
“Although dozens of officers were deployed around the structure, the fire did begin exactly at Eleven-Fifteen, as the message predicted. City officials are at a loss–”
“Anyway…”, Ashley started up again while Paula started to sip on her double-bagged and double-brewed black tea. “I guess this proves that that Firefly creep isn’t the main bad guy. That vermin, he was hassling with us while the other fire was being set. What do you make of that warning?”
“Somebody showing off, maybe? Or proving something–?”
“YOW! This stuff is HOT!”, the boy unexpectedly interjected after a single attempt to swallow his coffee.
“Wait, your drink is too hot? I thought mine was just right. Are your taste buds okay?”
Quinn looked confused and absolutely puzzled as he tilted his head. “But your drink is exactly as hot as mine? What–? Oh, screw it.”
Jeanne was entirely unbothered. “Or maybe it was a test.”
“Or maybe none of the above.”, muttered the boy in brown while reluctantly going back to his coffee. “Hey, where are you going?”
“I’ve thought of someone whom I can ask about what the arsonist called me… ‘Searcher’, or whoever it was.”
A payphone installed outside the diner gives her access to a telephone number known to only a few dozen people on the entire planet. A phone number that connects the caller to a woman who no longer officially exists.
“Oracle.”, began the woman on the receiving end of the phone line.
“The angel here.”, was the answer, and before she was even finished with saying that, Oracle’s mood had improved by a marketable amount.
“Hey, there Az, long time no see. What’s the problem, sport?”
“I need to know about a ‘Searcher’, or ‘Sir Tore’.”
“Well, then,”, responded the woman with the two red hair buns while her fingers hovered just a microcosm of an inch above the keyboard. “Give me a crumb of context. Got anything to do with John Ford movies? Or mythology? Or fire?”
“Fire sounds about right.”
“For this one I don’t even need to crack open a book. You probably mean Surtur – Sometimes spelled S - u - r - t - r. – In teutonic myths, he uses a fiery sword to end the world. Very bad news, very anti-social.”
“I’m not sure. Oracle, can you turn up anything else about this Surtr person?”
“Well, first things first, you’re calling from a restaurant in New York.”
“Well, speaking of mythology, I am the oracle, remember? Oh, and by the way, don’t order their French Fries; they’re soggy. Anyway, there’s been reports from firemen and eyewitnesses about a figure with flaming swords resembling Surtr being spotted inside those buildings – both before and during the flames. Get back to me in an hour, okay?”
In a moment that seemed almost perfectly timed by fate itself, just as Jeanne-Paula put the phone back into its hook, Ashley, carrying a mug of coffee that he seemed practically addicted to, burst outside through the diner door with some unexpected news.
Thankfully for them, the news report was still going on by the time that they had been seated back down on their counter booths, and the anchorwoman continued to read off the report as it occurred:
“– Have just received another message from the unknown arsonist. He says – and we quote: ‘Unless the city agrees to pay me twenty-five million dollars, I will burn down a structure of major importance somewhere in the city precisely at midnight tomorrow, and indeed Poseidon will have many guests.’–”
“Twenty-five mils, huh?”, asked Ash Quinn in disbelief. “Whew, this mystery really isn’t into minimum wage, is he?
Paula, meanwhile, sauntered away from the shiny dark red countertop and grabbed her light blue duffel bag, leaning against the back wall, an ancient relic covered with posters on posters on posters, advertising things like Anniversary Feast Of Saint Raphael Of Brooklynn, and In case of choking bring a hammer to fall on, and Concerts from the Berdly Memorial Foundation, and, of course, a poster simply proclaiming: FUCK WEST SIDE.
“Mignight tomorrow. We have just over twenty-four hours to catch him”
“What do you mean we, Kemo Sabe?”, asked Ash as he dug deep into his pocket for a sufficient amount of money, which he got, and threw haphazardly onto the counter with at least two rounds of tips. “I don’t remember forming any partnerships after we lassoed Firefly.”
“You didn’t.”, Jeanne agreed, while fluffing her coat and adjusting her glasses. “We didn’t. But it makes perfect sense, doesn’t it? We both want to capture the arsonist, we’re polar opposites in most superficial ways, we’re both blondes–”
“– And we obviously have things in common between us that are more meaningful.”, she continued while the both of them absconded into the night.
“Secrets. Two identities, for example.”
“And we might have a better chance at success in this endeavour if we work together. You know New York like the back of your hand, and I… have certain resources. And connections.”
“I’ll bet you have, at that.”, replied the boy. “Okay, strange miss, I’m sold. Partners it is. Miss… Hey, what is your real name, anyway?”
She turned her face back to look at him and answered with seemingly no concept of even protecting her secret identity. “Jeanne-Paula Valley. Out of the suit. Azrael in it.”
With a drive and a smile, Ashley Quinn reached out his hand, which she took and shook without any form of possible hesitation. The city never slept, but the two of them – the four of them – weren’t like the others driving and walking and biking past them, having no idea of who they were and who they could possibly be. They were separate. Different. And perhaps, the both of them would even be remembered.
Ash spoke with a certain level of happiness.
“Glad to know you. Either one or the both of you.”
Paula responded with some level of relief, and, though she by no means had a way with words, she did have a way with honesty in her emotions.
“So, do you have any ideas in that head of yours about where to begin?”
“Hehe, I wish. I wonder if the arsonist was telling the truth. I mean, is he really after something as simple as–”
“– Extortion!”, cried the man with the patchy white and brown hair from within the darkness of his personal office, with blackened walls covered in relics of myths, vases and paintings of legends, and pieces of the past, while a single lamp hung above him and covered his wooden desk in yellow light.
“Let the fools believe that is my motive. Oh, the money will most certainly be useful. But my true purpose is far, far grander… Far, FAR GRANDER!”, he kept on talking, to nobody in particular, save for the dark blue piece of recording equipment firmly seated upon the wood of the desk, and atop which spun a duo of tapes that were busy with recording everything he uttered.
“For many years I laboured in academia, teaching the ancient myths to those who had nothing better to do with their monetary-fueled education – those grand, elaborate, inspiring tales of heroes and divinities. But, I always knew I was telling lies. We want to believe in these beings, these religions, these things so much greater than we shabby mortals, for we who are cursed by nature with finite lifespans seek answers in the great beyond to give a meaningful sense of purpose to our pitiful, worthless, insignificant human lives; but they do not exist, and they never have existed. Not until now. It was my magnificent destiny to come upon a creature wandering alone in the woods, crashed into a crater in the middle of the dark forest, smothered in vapour and smoke and all the trappings of an obvious extraterrestrial origin. He – It – was left to itself, alone and frightened… Simply pointed up when it saw me, said its mother had abandoned him and then vanished into the clouds above. Although suffering from amnesia and delusions, it was obvious to me just as much as anyone that he had been gifted with extraordinary intelligence.”
“I took to him immediately – perhaps because I, too, was abandoned early in my childhood. I adopted him, raised him as if he were my own son, and I began to educate him, and to tutor him. He was quicker to learn than any student I had ever taught, and carried within him a true affinity for mythology, for my specialty. Then, one day, as I was telling him of the myths and legends of the Norse people, of how Surtr would eventually be destined to bring the destruction of the whole world with his fiery sword, he somehow physically manifested Surtr out of flames from nowhere in front of me! I was initially overcome with excitement and utter astonishment, but that was nothing compared to my reaction when, against all laws of physics, the Surtr that he created actually started a fire! Instantaneously I extinguished the blaze and ran to share the news with my colleagues. But they laughed and scoffed, as I should have known they would. To them, I was as I had always been, the eccentric outsider, the ludicrous false academic dreamer with no future, a dolt and a twat who would never amount to anything and who would never be remembered.”
“Then, I was graced with a bountiful idea of grander and grander capabilities. I convinced my young ward to use his power to bring me sweet revenge. Every single building on that evil, wicked, wretched campus became conflagrant in infernal flames, in one, single, solitary instance of the deepest, most primal satisfaction. Surtr triumphant at last! But, the talented and gifted instrument of this wondrous deed was frightened at what he had done, of what destruction he had righteously brought down upon those in the world most deserving of it. Somehow, he could not bring himself to see what I had seen. Somehow, tears fell out of his alien eyes at the completion of the vengeful act of justice he had performed on my behalf. Ever since that night, it has become a necessity to tell him a fabrication concerning a signal to his missing mother–”
“Professor?”, the extraterrestrial asked in curiosity, having wandered close enough to the room to know he was talking, but not close enough to realise what he was talking about, his unearthly form cast in shadow in front of the yellow lights of the hallway. “Who are you talking to?”
“Posterity.”, answered the Professor. “What I am dictating unto my recording machine will one day replace the Holy Bible. Look out there into the harbour. Do you see it? That will be the sight of our next signal…”
“Oracle, the angel.”, Jeanne-Paula Valley said into the receiver held up into her ear, while Ashley Quinn was simultaneously slamming his foot on the gas of his motorcycle as fast as the two of them could possibly go, speeding past every sign and marker known to man in their mad dash to find anywhere that fit the news description.
“I’d recognise your dulcet tones anywhere, champ.”
“Have you got anything more on Surtr?”
“Tons more. Possibly too much more.”, answered the woman of large glasses and red hair. “But before I bore you to beyond death with a ton of academic jargon, I turned up something else that might be of interest to you. Happened last year. A Long Island College – the whole place, including the outbuildings and dorms – burned to the ground in minutes, despite te best efforts of the fire guys. Went down so fast that only a few people escaped – one of whom was a ‘Professor Kiseddy’, whose specialty was – you guessed it – the Norse myth of Surtr.”
The normally clear-as-crystal voice of the oracle was now unfortunately somewhat obscured by the extreme hissing of the driving-inducement of the winds caused by being on the motorcycle. “Interesting, huh?”
“Could be a coincidence.”, the bespectacled blonde answered while holding onto Ash for dear life.
“Remember what Thoreau said about the trout in the milk.”
“Never mind. Anyway, here’s the professor’s address, in case you want to think about making a house visit. 555 Riverpark Drive in Manhattan. That’s courtesy the city’s directory. Oh, and something else I wanted to ask you, too. Hey, champ, you got a girlfriend yet?”
At first she was going to answer yes, but… Then she thought about it a little harder. The first… No longer seemed to enjoy her company anymore. And the second… Well, being with her was fun while it lasted, but ultimately she knew she was destined to be someone else’s girl. So, no, she actually didn’t have one.
“Not exactly. Well, not at all, really.”
As the phone line went off, Barbara was simply left back to her own devices once again, and with that silence she filled it, by leaning back in her swivel chair, resting her head in her folded hands, and then thinking out loud to herself. About the angel.
“She sounds shy… And kind of nice…”
“Riverpark Drive?!”, yelled Ash, needing to shout to overcome the adversity of the winds. “Sure, I know it! Bunch of ultra-pricey condos near the U.N. building overlooking the river! That where we’re heading?!”
“Yes!”, screeched Paula in response, while the sharp and throttled right and left turns of the man’s motorcycle almost outright threw her off at least several times. “But first, pull into that alley! That! Alley!”
“You cold?”, asked Quinn from atop his firefighter-branded motorcycle while Jeanne shrugged off her varsity jacket and shrugged on her angelic radiant raiment.
“No. I think that pretty soon I’m gonna need what these clothes give me.”
“You wanna share with me, sister?”
“Somehow I feel in my gut that we’re getting close, but I can’t put a hand or a finger on why. Hey, wait! Didn’t the terrorist’s message say something about Poseidon?”
“So we have a professor whose specialty is mythology and a mention of a Greek sea god…”, she continued as her gaze was briefly hypnotised by staring into the white lenses of her mask, causing the speech coming out of her mouth to falter off and trail away.
“Could be a coincidence.”
It was Azrael who emerged from the darkness and finished her answer.
“Don’t forget what Thoreau said about the trout in the milk.”
“What in the Damn-flippin’ Hel are you talking about?”
“Do you see it?”, asked the former professor to the small alien child standing by his side, looking out of one of the man’s open windows through a black pair of binoculars. “Out on the water?”
The object the child was looking at was less of a singular thing and more of a shell containing a great many things: The S.S. Queen Elizabeth Three, a gigantic passenger cruise ship of truly marvellous proportions, its lights shining across the entirety of the bay and its population of attendees positively bustling and buzzing and their human activities. Behind it, the night sky remained its beautiful purple, mixed in with a layer of a flaming, burning pink at the horizon, no doubt a reflection of the shadow of the past and a future sign of things to come.
“That, that ship right there, is where you must manifest Surtr – Where you must next signal to your mother.”
“But the people…”, the child began in vain while lowering his vision-lenses.
“If you wish to remain an orphan – If you have no love for your mother – that is quite all right with me.”, was the response of a vicious and wicked man with callous heart of empty stone. “Shall we perchance go out for Ice Cream, child, after this?”
The small, reluctant alien did the best he could to try and ignore what he was about to bring to the world, but the closing of his tearing, purple eyes was unable to simply go away.
“Did you see that?”, yelled Ashley, just as both him and Azraele ended their destructive wild ride upon the very edge of the harbour, beholding a colossal vessel going up in infernal blazes, a fountain of flaming destruction shining like a beacon, enough to be visible from even a mile away.
“That ship there… It burst into flames!”
“It’s the Queen Elizabeth Three; must be a thousand passengers on and in that flaming hot tub!”
Instantly he jumped off the bike and ran into action, leaving a trail of platform dust in his wake as he sped away.
“Can you handle the bike?!”
“I’ve… Had some training…”
“Okay, you go see the professor! I’ve got something more important to do!”
Speeding off and away to beyond a metal-mesh of fencing carrying a sign on it dubbed
AUTHORISED PERSONNEL ONLY
and passing through a veritable gauntlet of security posts and arbitrary gates, Quinn immediately hopped onto the ramp leading up to it, flashed his Certified Fire Service badge, and, slightly out of breath, asked them: “Quinn. Can you use another hand?”
“Absolutely yes. Hop aboard.”, responded the main other officer on the emergency boat’s beaten, weary deck.
While Ashley and whatever firemen the city could scramble at the moment rushed as fast as they could to the flaming pyre formerly known as a passenger ship, Azrael finished riding even madder than before upon the borrowed bike, and, very wary of the presumed time limit before her target could possibly flee, proceeded to zoom right by a snooty bellhop who tried in vain to tell her that: “You got the wrong place, mister. There’s no costume parties in this building–”, and ran right over the poor unmoving bastard’s right leg as she sent a divine wind of roaring fury right into the communications equipment on the far wall of the lobby of the building.
“You will not issue a warning to my quarry.”
“Elevators are out of order, you lousy punk!”, screamed the doorman in between screeches of pain at the injury to his leg. “You’d best get on your-”
Simply, Azrael ignored him, instead opting to take the more direct option, beginning to pry open the doors to the elevator shaft with her bare hands, before unconsciously emulating the ape genes within herself and leaping right up the cable, grabbing onto it with her giant fists and slowly beginning to climb.
“Never, ever seen fire like that before!”, exclaimed one of the officers upon the boat while just having gotten finished with setting up the primary fire hose.
Ash’s response was grim. “I have.”
“Here, help me wet down the hull near the bow.”, began another officer, while Ash and several others helped him aim the gigantic fire hose and fire its contents into the aether. “Cool her off–”
And then the firehose proceeded to live up to its name when it began to actually fire out fire, a torrent of flames seemingly born from nowhere, naturally only serving to barbecue even more of the innocent bystanders on board.
“See? I told you Surtr could make fire come from the hoses if you only concentrated.”, came the words of the disgraced former respected educator, to the ears of a weeping child who almost didn’t even hear them.
“That’ll get you killed!”, yelled one of the fellow firemen while the blonde boy started to leap up and climb the ropes, crossing paths with several of the only lifeboats that had not yet been burned.
“Maybe it will, but I don’t care about me, I care about all of them! I have to go up there!”, he shouted back as he scrambled up and onto the deck.
“I’m with the fire department.”, he yelled out to a remaining white-suited attendant once he had gotten over the railing. “What’s the situation?”
The sharp-dressed man, bald with large glasses and a white moustache. just responded: “Not good. Couple hundred passengers trapped in the ballroom. Fire started so fast… Nobody had time to evacuate. But that’s not all. Hell, that might not even be the worst of it on this ship right now. The engine room’s an inferno. If the flames reach the full tanks and–”
“WHERE’S THE WORST OF IT?!”
“Midships! Above the ballroom and the midline fuel tanks!”
“Thanks, sir!”, and the Quinn once more ran headlong, headstrong, into the heart of the danger, with so much more care for everyone else in the world, everyone, except himself. Then, he saw him. The god among the flames, standing right there, standing ready, standing for him, standing perfectly still.
“Hey, so we meet at last.”, the boy proclaimed while positively skidding his way down the breaking metal stairs., feeling the change into his other self overtake his body once more, his spirit growing more primal, stronger, and even more passionate than he had been before. “Searcher or Sir Tore or WHATEVER your name is. I don’t really know, but at this point I don't really care. YOU caused all this death, all this destruction, all this RUIN, all of the TAKING of all these INNOCENT lives! But, It’s just you and me now, buddy. Just you and me…”
By the time that the changing behind had successfully made his way down all the stairs, the flames didn’t hurt him anymore. He was not human, he was something beyond those normal, mortal parameters. Now, he was a being with a flaming mane, large triangle buttons all down the front of his massive coat, gigantic muscles primed and built for war, and a kind of fire in his eyes that perfectly embodied, deep down, just who Ash was.
“Is it him…?’, asked the professor, while stepping back in a moment of fear at having now been graced with the opportunity to behold an avenging angel at her very most wrathful, right in his very own residence, slightly hunched over from the climb, a sword of Norse Ulfberht Steel lit fully ablaze in her hand, a plague of fire spreading everywhere she had run and cut her way through to reach the very top of the condominium building, and now having become a shadow of flaming blackness within the inferno.
The child was almost just as wondered, but, instead of back, he found himself stepping forward, mesmerized by what he viewed as the living legend in front of him.
When the angel spoke, it was free from heroics, free from platitudes, free from the spirit of costumed superheroic adventures, and focused on one sole thing.
“PUT IT –”, screamed Ash from within the centre of the bowels of Hel itself.
“– OUT. NOW.”, finished Azrael, swinging a blade across the floor to trap them all in fire.
But the professor did not listen to her. He did not listen to anyone. He had become lost, in a world of his own head, raising his hands out to a fallen sky and almost seeming to talk to the delusions locked within his own mind, while the child, weeping even harder than ever before, had no choice remaining bu to stand right there and kep crying.
“He’s HERE! Surtr is HERE! He’s here with us now! Living… breathing… standing among us – A GOD! And I CREATED HIM! What does that make me? What kind of power do I command? The world will Bow! And Cringe–!”
Azrael finished for him. “The world will sneer. Now, I won’t tell you again…”
Ash continued to scream at the unmoving harbinger of destruction. “PUT OUT THE FIRE!”
And, in the middle of the inferno, as the figure of the end of the world made no response, the alien-empowered being raised his hands up to the flames of Hell and, without any hesitation, began to push himself even further and further.
“Too much… Too much… Too strong… Too hot… I try to absorb it–”
He began to painfully absorb the flames of the engine room into his own body, reeling in primitive pain as he took into himself the plumes of death.
The entire field of his vision was blinding with light, fire spreading through each and every last fraction of him, and from the pressure he was forced down on his knees.
“– Hundreds die screaming –!”
Ten seconds passed, and all that the remaining fire officers could see on the outside, as their fire boat took all of the remaining passengers that they could away from the blaze, was the sight of the magnificent inferno seemingly being pulled away, sucked out of all ends of the ship, and absorbed back into some unknown point.
“What in the sweet name of Glory–?”
“It’s like somebody just snuffed it out–”
“Just like it was a candle or something.”
From the view within the burning apartment of the coastal high-rise building, lowering the binoculars through which she had viewed the ultimate spectacle, the angel Azrael lowered her implements of vision, exhibiting some level of relief underneath her mask and simply whispered out: “Good.”
The little grey alien reluctantly got out of his small little stupor and just looked around confused. “But I did nothing…”
The professor sneered at him. “Of course you didn’t. Surtr did, didn’t you?”
“No.”, the avenger responded. “And I am not called Surtr. I am not a god. I am an angel. I am Azrael.”
“Azrael? Why, even better. An angel of vengeance, mine to command! You can begin by slaughtering everyone in Brooklyn, I hate that damned Brooklyn! Then we can move on to Staten Island."
Hearing this man’s insane and presumptatory prattle, the angel of vengeance was not impressed and simply leaned in close to school him to his face.
“Know that you are twisted and vile, a rotten pestilence upon the integrity of this good world, wholly wretched and unworthy of the compassion that I show unto you by not exterminating you right where you stand. But do not try my patience.”
“The fire went out by itself…”, began the little alien. “Does that mean my Mother saw it? Will she come for me now?”
“Not likely–”, the man began to respond. “– Probably because the signal fires had nothing to do with her. If she still lives. Which I doubt.”
“You lied to me. Why would you lie to me?”
“I used you, child. You were a shabby tool, but all I had to summon the gods I knew had to exist.”
In response, the child started to wander away, and his deep purple eyes began to glow a passionate red, right before a spiral of flame began to form from the remnants of Azrael’s flames on the floor, behind the professor’s visual line of attention.
“But, now, I have Azrael, here, with me, and I don’t need your pathetic pyromaniac–”
And, before he could ever finish his incorrect bragging, right behind him, spawned once more the incendiary figure of Surtr, the helmeted figure radiating with death, whose cloak flamed out behind him as he drew his blades, and the professor’s screams once he turned around and saw him were ultimately drowned in the sound of the ensuing slashes, rapid strikes of pure fire that hit him without spiritual force to send him flying, through the living room, and out the window, a dwindling star that, on its way down, burned away to nothing. Never to be found, never to be remembered.
Ashley Quinn got off another boat, sent to rescue the remainder of the survivors, about half an hour later, completely and utterly exhausted, and unsure of what had even happened in there.
“You’re okay? You’re sure you’re okay?”, asked one of the remaining officers.
“Yeah. I’m okay.”, Ash responded as he gestured two of his fingers while walking away.
Suddenly, he was overcome with an unexpected shock and surprise, as Jeanne-Paula Valley proceeded to turn up right in front of him, strolling in upon a purple motorcycle, dented but alive, much like the blonde girl herself, who started off with: “I think this belongs to you.”
Taking another look at the boy’s queasy, sickly appearance, for him she suddenly became concerned.
“I feel ill.”, he admitted, as he jumped up to the bike and decided on letting her drive the bike for once, and lurching just a little as she kicked the whole thing into overdrive.
“You find the professor?”
“Yes. He was responsible for the fires. And he’s dead. He had some kind of alien child with him. A boy. He was using the kid to make Surtr and start all the fires.”
“So where’s the kid now?”, he asked in a very concerned way.
“I don’t know.”, the girl with the red glasses admitted, while her long locks of messy blonde hair blew wildly in the wind. “He vanished. He just vanished.”
Indeed, the child had vanished, but had not by any means gotten lost. Now, elsewhere in the dark depths of New York City, with a pink and purple sky hanging up high behind him, he pleaded one more time.
“– Beckon to you. Plead with you to come for me, to come, to come… Can you hear me… Mother…? Are you there?”
And, from out of nowhere, a female voice responded. A voice that, to the child, sounded all too familiar to him. A voice… that made his galactic, extraterrestrial, wonder-filled purple eyes return to their prior sense of awe at all there was in the universal expanse around him, and, as he lifted his eyes and head up to look at her, at the source of the voice, had returned to being filled with wonder once more.
“Yes.”, answered the voice of a woman, who extended out a hand from the shadows for him to take.
“No signals were ever needed. It was foreordained that we would return for you. Come home now, my child. Come home.”
