It felt like we were the last to arrive, but I knew that couldn't be the case. I'd been in the XPCA long enough to know it held its fair share of unmotivated jackoffs, despite the reputation for selflessness and zeal they tried to enforce. Most people joined up thinking they'd be humanity's last line of defense against the Exhuman threat. Somehow, some joined up thinking nothing at all.

Things had turned hairy there for a bit. For the second time, my permissions and rank were revoked from under me, and it didn't feel any better than the first. The good news was, I was overseeing Moon and Tem at the time, and as soon as they successfully resisted arrest, they came for me, and the MPs were a lot less eager to try to cuff them than they'd just been with me.

Still, we were apparently all about that fugitive life again. As soon as things had gone sour, I knew Athan was somehow in the middle of it, and with Justice cracking a shit-egg on America's face, there really was only one place we'd find him. And find him we would.

So we had the motivation. We had the direction. What we did not have was a ride. Come to think of it, whoevers' armored truck this was supposed to be would be the last to arrive. So we'd beaten them at least, which was a positive point.

Though it seemed more like a negative as we began that final descent towards Vegas, the dark desert crowning the narrow ribbon of road we were following, more vehicles going the opposite way than ours, by far, as the evacuees poured out of the area. From here, it felt like we could see everything.

Justice was somehow easy to spot, despite being just one man in the sky. He was constantly illuminated as the vertex towards which all the streaking fire was converging, and from which death was originating.

Below him was that death. There had to be thousands of bodies piled up there, it looked more like sandbags than corpses from the road. But sandbags were arrayed in straight lines, these were splayed wherever they'd fallen, casting long shadows from the fireworks tearing up the night sky. I couldn't see well enough to know if any were wounded, or if the ones left were truly an accurate death toll. Either way, there were too many; more than I'd ever seen on any mission I'd run. It made my stomach turn.

Many, I realized, were military. Not XPCA but other branches, who were trickling into the fight as we were, maybe even against orders. Back when it was just the XPCA out here, it was a big thing already, but with the surprise appearance of the Oasians and New Eden, I think everybody realized we were facing a climax. Anyone interested in fighting for America: Exhuman, military, hell, even civilians...they were making their way here, now.

I glanced in the mirror and saw Moon and Tem staring out the window, two different kinds of quiet on them. Tem looked frightened, and maybe for the first time, I related to her. Moon...was intense. Her own kind of frightening. If attitude alone could kill, Moon would have won us the fight on the spot, and I think all who witnessed it would have been traumatized at what she'd do to Justice. But unfortunately, she had to rely on guns and powers, just like the rest of us.

Or, rest of them. The Exhumans. Whatever.

"I think our biggest advantage will be the element of surprise," I conferred, as I turned off the road and made a beeline across the rocky sand. "We won't be with the battle lines, and Tem hits hard. If both of you can laser him down...well, we know he bleeds. Let's set that blood on fire and hope it sticks."

"A question," Moon stated, and I caught sight of her hand raised in the mirror. She did not continue without prompting.

"This isn't a briefing, and I'm not your CO. We all got fired, we're just three stupid women in a van. Speak your mind, Moon."

"If we are not acting in a professional sense--"

"Speak your mind, Kaori."

She nodded dimutely. "What are we to do in the event that our alpha strike is unsuccessful?"

"What, you mean you don't think that the three of us are going to swoop in, guns blazing, machismo estrogen pumping, background music swelling, and manage to achieve in one attempt with one stroke what those hundred-thousand soldiers over there are desperately trying and failing to do?"

"Forgive me. Whatever could I possibly have been thinking?"

I chuckled. Moon had grown on me somehow, which was impressive, considering when I first met her, I thought she had the charm of a loose thread on a sweater.

"If that doesn't take, we've got some options. Most of them involve invisibility and running and hiding. But mostly, I want to see if this works."

"I see. So while we are making an attempt on the world's most dangerous man, with the hope of attracting his attention, and the death that comes with it, what will you be doing?"

"Um, I'm not exactly sure. Not like they want me fulfilling an administrative role, I'm sure."

"I'm sure any role which needs doing, needs filling. There are invariable casualties at all levels."

"Yeah, but I'm not exactly trusted, am I? They might take any soldier willing, but putting the wrong person in any of the thinking or intelligence roles is asking for bad thoughts and terrible intel. An active detriment, I'm sure they don't want."

I thought I saw Moon frowning at me, but when I glanced in the mirror again, saw the same impassive face as ever.

"Don't worry, I'll come up with something," I reassured her.

"You seem unsure about everything. It is not reassuring."

"Well this isn't the most rigorously-planned op, I'll give you that."

"Are you also unsure of the contents of the package you had us stop to pick up?"

"I've told you already, that's none of your business."

"At this point, everything is my business. If you are concerned I may tell your secrets, I assure you, I stand an excellent chance of dying in the next few minutes, and I suspect the deceased to be excellent secret-keepers."

"Sorry kid. The bag is my business."

She went quiet, which was her preferred way of ending a conversation, I think. That just left us with the distant crack and boom of powers constantly going off and munition exploding. Every now and again I'd see a radiant burst amidst the army's ranks, throwing bodies and scattering them, until the blast faded and all I could see was the darkness of their ranks again.

We were almost there when I heard a shrill scream from behind me, and whipped around in my seat hard enough to get whiplash.

It was Tem, but she was directly behind me and I couldn't see her. Moon was attempting to unbuckle and do something, but it just looked and sounded like chaos to me. I swore as I focused on keeping us driving, when I found myself screaming in turn.

Something sharp, like razors, drew right down my leg, and we all lurched as my foot suddenly slammed the gas in shock. I clawed at whatever was down there, expecting an animal or something, but felt nothing, just came back with bloody streaks on my fingertips.

"What the fuck is it?" I shouted, keeping control of the van enough to swerve a rock. I wanted to stop to address the problem, but we were so close now. If we could push on for just another minute, we could stop there.

"I don't know," Tem squealed. "It bit me!"

"An animal?"

"No animal with which I am familiar." Moon's tone was tense. "Nor do I understand how it slipped by."

I glanced down and saw a shadow slipping under my vision, and yelped, pulling both of my feet out of the well and onto my seat. Empty eyes...literal, empty nonexistent eyes, like holes in the darkness peered up at me for an instant before disappearing under the seat.

"Guys, what the fuck?" I shouted. "It's got a human face."

"Tem, don't!" Moon cried, and I heard and saw her dive across the seats. A moment later, I heard nothing but my eardrums pounding and the ripping of air, as a laser whited out the entire back...and out the side of the van, and into the desert.

That sent me swerving, with the sudden loss of a quarter of our vehicle on one side. I had no idea how hard it was to drive most of a car, and with my feet not on the pedals. I frowned and gripped the wheel until my knuckles were white, watching our speedometer trickle downwards while we coasted across the rocks.

I could fix that issue at least. I tapped the dash and brought cruise control online, which maintained our speed without my needing to put my feet down. But the car was listing so badly to the left now, I felt like I was driving it sideways.

"So much for the element of surprise," I commented.

"We already lost surprise," Moon said, in Tem's voice. "This human-faced thing is an attack, I am certain."

"I got him," Tem explained. "I fried him."

"I find that very difficult to believe. There's--"

Moon gasped as she was cut off, and I could hear the slicing sound, the popping of her skin as her flesh was cut open. Tem screamed again, and the moment I spent glancing back was nearly enough to plow us into a boulder the size of a train, coming up on us sideways, as though out of nowhere.

"I got him!" Tem explained. "I did, I know I did!"

"It's an attack, Tem, use your brain," Moon seethed. "It is some nature of Exhuman power, a genisist, giving life to some aspect to assail us."

"Well keep your feet up off the floor, that's what I did. It was lashing at me from under the seat."

"B-but...I got him…"

I heard them shuffle in their seats, a dripping sound I hoped wasn't blood, but couldn't think of anything else it might be. I felt my own wounds, and realized my pants leg was completely soaked through already. The cuts were brutally deep.

"We're close enough," I said, disabling the cruise control and letting friction take us down. "We'll just get out and deal with it when we're not crammed in a deathtrap."

Suddenly, we lurched again, and I heard Moon falling over herself and muttering in Japanese some words I was sure her father didn't teach her.

"I thought you said we were close enough," she commented.

"We...I did. We are." I stared with confusion at the readout on the dash, telling me what my own body already knew. We were accelerating, instead of dipping below forty, we were now climbing above seventy. The vehicle -- what was left of it -- trembled in my hands, the steering wheel vibrating like a screw coming loose.

"Then why are we flooring it?"

I looked down and saw a look of pure malevolence. The empty human face, almost like a shadow puppet against the driver's mat. And from the shadows, emerged claw-tipped tendrils, wrapped fast around the gas pedal.

"What in the actual fuck?" I asked.

"Is the vehicle broken?"

"No, it's the fucking...thing. It's holding down the gas. Hang on--"

It was hard to do, pinned up on the seat, but I popped my holster and drew my pistol. Almost at once, the shadow-thing began to slink away, but with my gun in-hand, I was faster, and put two rounds into the floor through its face.

The blade-things disappeared back into shadow like they never even were, and the car, thankfully, began to slow again. I helped it along by gingerly lowering my bleeding leg and pressing on the brake. I heard Moon clatter again, and thought if I kept this up, I may just learn a new Japanese swear or two. Kusoyaro or something like that.

All three of us seemed keen to get the hell out of the van, with me stopping only to grab my backpack and throw it over my shoulders. Moon was back in herself, probably so she didn't leave her vulnerable body laying around for the thing to get, and we were out on the rocky desert, a scant few hundred feet from where Justice was hovering in the air.

"Okay Tem. Igloo formation," Moon ordered.

"I understand."

Made me happy that they had their own little playbook developing. I knew Moon got on well with Tower but...he wasn't around. To see her bonding with Tem of all people, well…

I mean, I'd care more if we were gonna live. But in the off-chance we did, I made a note to feel happy about it then.

"Stay with the van. On the roof, I think would be safest," Moon said. "I suspect the animus to be of shadow aspect; avoid contrasting light and dark."

"Got it," I said, falling back while they advanced. As they went, I thought I could see malevolence in their shadows whenever the sky flashed with light, and hoped mine didn't look the same. I took Moon's advice and got up high, where the shadows of the bushes, like so many clawing hands, wouldn't reach.

And watched as the two girls worked together to put together a shining, splendid little dome. Igloo formation, I understood. Motes of light, crafted into an impenetrable defense atop them.

And, I noted, completely incapable of holding a shadow. Nice perk.

For several minutes, it looked like they were finished, but I didn't know what next they were planning. They were maybe deep in discussion or planning...or maybe just fortifying the igloo with light I couldn't detect. Either way, I had a good long time to watch the battle continue to unfold.

Too long, really. Now that I knew what I was looking for, I began to see the shadow-things everywhere. They were really tearing up the lines, to say nothing of the troops' focus. Soldiers were antsy, spending more time looking at the ground than at their enemy, and I realized the blasts I'd seen going off in the ranks...they weren't from Justice, they were the soldiers' own weapons; guns fired in panic at their own feet, or maybe grenades or exotics seized by a shadow thing. It was demoralizing havoc, to have something like that undermining you while already facing a superhuman threat.

Although, Justice himself didn't seem particularly threatening at the moment. He was just advancing, slowly, dangerously. Every once in a while, when someone drew too close, one of the hunters or some rogue Exhuman, or a too-clever shadow ops, he'd annihilate them in a spectacular, flashy way. Ripping open the earth or skewering them into a billion chunks. It was a demonstration and a warning, of what happened when some invisible line was crossed.

And the real danger was that he was pushing that line towards the massed defenders, inch-by-inch. It wasn't close just yet, still a few hundred feet away...but I could only imagine the carnage he was promising if he got there. I had to wonder why he was being so deliberate and cruel about it. Some twisted strategy, or simple sadism, I didn't know.

When suddenly my view of the battlefield whited out. From above the igloo, a beam of annihilating candescence -- somehow both pure white, and the transparent purple of Moon's specters -- annihilated the black of the sky and devoured the din of the battlefield with its roar.

It looked like it caught him dead-on. Nailed Justice straight in the back...as well as a good six or seven feet on each side of him. He was just a shadow now, a sliver of darkness in the stream of pure light, and with every passing second, flecks of the dark blew off and were carried away, torn downstream by the sheer force of light.

I could see clearly, once my eyes adjusted. I saw hundreds of thousands of shining faces, all lit up as one, all staring up at the glistening splendor which had cut the night. I heard an appreciative 'ooh', and even cheering.

Bit by bit, the shadow fell apart. I could only imagine what was happening to Justice inside that beam of light, how much he was disintegrating, and what he was doing to hold himself together. It had been over ten seconds now, and the beam was beginning to waver, losing solidity, losing focus. The purple beam sputtered out first, leaving just the shadow and the light.

But then even the light began to fade. The beam seemed to shrink in diameter, the intensity of the white began to fade. The sky began to resume its darkness.

Still Tem held on, like a maniac. Fifteen seconds, then twenty, and still she held. I could hear her screaming from where I sat, her voice echoing strangely across the desert.

Once, twice, the beam almost went out, only to surge back to life. The black fragments dissolved, floating away like dust. So little of him left...so close...if only she could hold…

And then he was gone. There was no stain to the light, just a pure streak across the sky. Moments after he dissipated into nothing, Tem's scream fell abruptly short, and all that remained was the afterimage, burned into the eyes of all who watched.

A long moment passed. And then another. I became increasingly aware of the pounding of my blood in my ears. Of the weight of my head, and the sound of my breathing.

He wasn't there. He wasn't coming back. Was that it? Was that really it?

A cheer began to erupt from the line, building like a wave. There was still confusion, but all of them were united in this goal. Thousands had died, but hundreds of thousands of them somehow lived, somehow held the line against the world's most dangerous Exhuman, until we could show up to save them.

I could almost smile. Their enthusiasm was infectious. But a lifetime of dealing with Exhumans had honed my gut, and it wasn't ready to celebrate just yet. I scanned the sky, looking for any trace, any hint, any movement whatsoever.

Except my fucking eyes were all blasted out from the light. Everything I looked at was filled with streaky after-images. I stared at the dark of the ground and forced myself to blink, over and over, like the high-G exercises back when I still had my wings.

And...there. The shadows...moving, I thought. In a way that didn't match the tangle of the bushes. I rose to my feet and shouted, but it was just another voice lost to the din. I went for my bag, ripping it off my shoulders and throwing it in front of me on the roof of the van, pulling out everything.

I heard it before I saw it. Like a bad turn at karaoke, some of the yelling turned bloody. Screams broke out, and with them, confusion, incomprehension, disbelief.

I saw a man, arms raised in triumph, grin still plastered on his face as he slipped below the crowd-line, his legs cut out from under him. All through the crowd, the shadows attacked at once, tearing holes and plunging blades in silent, black, death.

Panic ensued. Guns went off everywhere. The ranks were spreading, too thin to be defensible, people backing into each other with nowhere to go.

And then, from the earth itself, Justice rose over the dome of the igloo, looking somewhat worse for wear, burns across his body and his clothes and hair burned away. I wondered just how much of the beam he'd withstood before he'd managed to swap himself with a chunk of rock.

But just as he'd commanded the ground to open to let him out, now he opened it under the igloo. He seemed surprised when it continued floating, when nobody fell out the bottom. That might explain the extra minutes they spent, putting in a floor made of light as well.

Next he slashed at it, and a hundredfold powers unloaded on the light-walls. Every power I could conceive of, and a dozen more erupted from nothing to lash at them -- a tendril of pure fire, streaking currents of acid igniting globs of burrowing tentacles; light and darkness, flaring like strobe and anti-strobe, space rending and torrents of lightspeed hail. All nine layers of hell, come at once, to pound at their door for their insolence to burn a god.

One of them had to stick. Light was an incredible defense, but it couldn't beat everything, I was sure. Just because I'd never seen Tem's defense penetrated, didn't mean it couldn't be. Just meant I'd only seen three or four try.

And this was dozens. Maybe a hundred. More powers than I'd ever seen. Just how had this freak of nature come to be?

I didn't stop to ask, just kept moving my hands and emptying the bag. And swearing. Kusoyaro.

The sound of light breaking was a new one to me, and not at all pleasant, even disregarding the circumstances. It was like someone had set their kettle to boil, and the steam screaming out of it was burning a very, very loud and very unhappy cat, whose only means of escape was climbing a chalkboard. Screeching like I couldn't believe, and it was all I could manage to hold my ears and close my eyes against the noise, even as I felt one of my ears trickling blood onto my fingers.

The sound only intensified as he focused his attack. Black blades of something were pressed against the wall of light in a line, slowly sinking in, millimeter by millimeter, forcing their way through the impenetrable defense.

He spoke, and I could hear it echoing as though he'd said it directly to me, over the screeching tearing as though that were nothing.

"You will break."

He clenched his fist, and with it, the blades drove home. The wall shattered, the whole igloo began to disintegrate into harmless, unstable motes of light. I could see the girls, two of them in three bodies, clawing at their fortress, willing it to stay intact, even as it collapsed under them, even as they began to fall into the pit he'd carved away below.

Tem wasn't screaming anymore. She was fully unconscious, blown out by her superlative effort at annihilating Justice. Moon was scraping together pads of purple light to hold them up, but something was wrong, something in her powers had been disrupted, it wasn't holding anymore. She was slipping faster than she was keeping them aloft.

And Justice just floating and watched, his eyes crawling with malevolence, his hands black with blood, as the girl before him scrambled and fumbled and clawed for her very existence.

To her credit, when it became clear that it was not working, that she was only delaying her death, she turned on him and fired all she had left in a violet beam that rivaled Tem's blast.

And that move, that spiteful, vindictive last throw, ineffective as it was, was what saved her life.

As Justice was preoccupied with not being roasted alive, I swooped in, as fast as my wings would carry me. I felt the familiar roar of wind in my face, the unforgettable responses of my jetpack responding to my thoughts more than my actions, the blur of the landscape under me as I tore past in a trail of blue plasma.

I also felt my heart pounding. The blood pooling in my extremities, my lightheadedness. I breathed as I knew I had to, focused on my one task, kept Moon and Tem right in my sights, so that even if I did go hypoxic, I would see them, I would remember.

But it all came crumbling apart when the pounding in my head stopped. When my heart skipped a beat. My fucking defective ticker, plaguing me still, on my last flight. I needed all the oxygen my body could move, which was an amount far greater than zero.

All the symptoms I'd been feeling suddenly bit into me with edge. My limbs felt heavy, bloated, swollen, unmovable. My thoughts grew distracted and stupid. My flight slowed, my wings dipped, my breathing went shallow.

I heard a beep, somewhere far away. My pacemaker kicked in, jolting me, jolting my heart back to service, jolting my brain into awareness, it felt like.

That was actually just the blood, I knew. But the effect was the same. I caught myself out of a dive I'd started into. I focused on the three bodies falling in front of me, towards an abyss so deep and so black, I thought I might be looking at the other side of the glasslands.

I felt the pain of slamming into them. Felt Moon clawing at me for a grip, felt Tem's unconscious body, flopping in the breeze, and Moon's real one. Thank God they were so light.

As though inspired, Moon redoubled her attack, the constant beam harrowing Justice, pushing him back, making him burn, making him withdraw...saving our stupid-ass skins.

"I...I--" Moon muttered, sounding frustrated as she dangled off of Tem's body in my arms. "I...can't--"

Whatever it was she couldn't do she didn't say. But it became obvious when she went limp, and I was carrying three limp bodies, and the beam went out.

Carrying was a generous term, since we were overweight, and headed for a crash. I pulled us up as sharply as I could, trying to eke out any distance possible. We just needed to clear the abyss. The strain of the assent pulled at me, the G's clawing at my blood and my mind. Just a few more feet...and…

My heart stopped again. I felt dead in the air, felt cold creeping in where warmth should have been through my body. Too late, it felt, the beep, the jolt. We were falling. I was lost, with all the girls in my arms, we were tumbling. The landscape was flipping over itself, again and again, and with my greyscaled, tunnel-visioned, unfocused eyes, I couldn't tell which was ground and which was sky.

They were all black anyway. Gravity would sort it out. I just hoped we hit ground soon, because if we spent much longer falling, gravity would do more than just sort us out.

Somehow, I got my wish sooner than I wanted. I never even saw it coming, just crack, and we were all falling and rolling and tumbling, completely unprepared, completely unprotected. If a sharp rock came along, I'd have been done for.

But apparently none did. Because I gradually felt the spinning slowing, and realized that I'd stopped, and it was just my head spinning now. I couldn't see the girls, didn't know if they'd landed like I had, or hell, if we were at the edge of the pit and they'd both fallen in. I had no idea, and until my body stopped shaking and my blood flowed again, I couldn't know.

I realized, none of that would matter. Because there was something in the middle of my vision, and I didn't have to make it out to recognize him. His face was a mask of pure loathing, pure irritation, as though our attempts on his life tonight had been a real thorn in his side, that much I could make out. And that much made me smile, despite it all.

But he was flying right for me, and I couldn't even get my hand to reach for my gun. Of all the thousands of times I'd practiced drawing and firing, muscle memory didn't mean shit if you didn't own your own muscles.

So I laid there. Weak and helpless as any damsel as he approached, given up on all his pretenses of being slow and ominous, moving quickly now, to put a decisive end to the three of us and get back to terrorizing the world.

I saw he had burns on him. I just wished we'd managed more.

He zoomed straight for me, silent, deadly. I wondered how he'd do it. I hoped I'd proven myself annoying enough to warrant a quick putting-out. I'd already been toyed with over execution far more than any woman should, and a clean death seemed deserved at this point.

But he just kept coming. And coming. And...going.

At the same aggravated clip, he tore right over our heads. I felt him rush past, the wind that held him up, blowing my hair around in the world's tiniest monsoon.

And then he was gone, somehow. Just...passed me right by. It was better than a swift death, just not at all what I'd been expecting. I laid there for long moments until my heart got a grip on itself, and my body felt like...well, pain. But better than cold nothing.

I sat up and looked for the others, feeling panic at not seeing them, until I realized, I couldn't see me either. I had to do some experimental self-prodding to determine, yeah, I was still here. Just as transparent as a one-line email from a five-star general.

"This was...the plan," Tem said, her voice brittle. "...that you s-s-said. Invisibility, and...running...and hiding." She coughed weakly, and I could hear the strain in even that.

"You did great, kid," I told her. "I'm so proud."

"Ch...Chariot...would...would he be…?"

"He'd be proud of you too. I know it."

I shuffled upright and felt around until I located both of their bodies, and began to pull. Light, they certainly were, but I wasn't likely to make it the hundreds of feet we still needed to get back to the lines. Lines which were re-solidifying with Justice's temporary rampage, putting them out of focus for the moment.

I had to blink a lot again as something else appeared right in front of my face.

"Tem?" Jack called. "Are you here somewhere? Tem?"

"Jack!" I squealed.

"Colonel Dawn!" he grinned. "You are safe, thank goodness. I welcome the reunion, but perhaps this is not the best place for it?"

"You said it," I said, gripping his hand. Felt so warm after my own blood took a hiatus. "Provide evac ASAP, Papa-Foxtrot One."

"Heard and acknowledged, Central," he beamed. "Papa-Foxtrot One, moving out."