[Aos]The Ghost Lives On(solo)

Deep in the earth, in a forgotten place that once sat below a beacon of hope for millions, a figure stood, it's form shrouded by the cold grip of darkness. In the back ground, a loud, grating thump echoed through the concealed passages, it's sound lost to the outside world.

A building stood tall and independent,as fresh in his mind as the bright summer day he'd last laid eyed on it. It filled him with pride to say he lived behind it's walls, and even more to say he served along-side it's greatest heroes. He was an X-Man, and he was in love... The kind of joy he felt was nearly untouchable...

The figure's wrist flicked, and a spark of electricity illuminated a welder's mask. A steady hand guided a small rod across an arc of electricity, bleeding the rod into two angled pieces of metal... The crackling sound was nearly drowned out by the generator in the background, but none of the noise bothered him; in fact, it had a calming effect... Something about the drone of progress brought about a comforting numbness that was all too welcome in these times. Contact was removed, and the arc disappeared. A click was heard as a light bulb sparked into existence, revealing a gloved hand, and scarred flesh at the wrist.

The feeling was indescribable... The flash of light, his body's reaction, the inability to move as the shockwave passed through him, gladly announcing that it was so much bigger than anything he'd ever imagined... After minutes, hours, or seconds of inconceivable confusion, one chilling thought pulled him out of the daze... Her... His head lifted to see the rubble around him; a ruined city stood in the place of what he'd sworn to protect with his life.

A slow nod found the light clicked off again, another piece of metal moved into position, and yet another arc of electricity mended a wound created by two steel plates. The figure was sure to be careful in his welds; they had to be perfect, they had to be strong. They had a big job ahead of them. The light clicked on once more, and a single dim eye held the object close, to be sure he hadn't botched the weld.

But he was alive, and the city was dead. There was nothing he could do about that. All he could do was go home, and hope to a god he'd never had faith in that he spared the one person in his life that was worth anything. When he finally made it to those once proud walls, he found them crumbled, and filled with dead friends, the product of paranoia and ignorant rage. As for her... He never found her.

It looked alright... He repeated the whole process again, and then once more until he had a basic shape to work with... The click of the light bulb revealed a small box made from fairly thick steel. He held it up, and very, very close, and a clouded eye passed over it countless times... He would have to have someone else in particular take a look at it to be sure, but it looked solid, and without holes, save the opening on one side. He set it down, and took off his mask, clicking off the light as he did so... There was no reason to keep it on.

What he did find where people... Angry people; a mob. He recognized some of them. They were people whose lives he'd saved, people who'd thanked him only weeks before for saving their loved ones. Now, they didn't see him as a savior; they saw him as a monster. To them he was a symbol of the knife in the heart of a dying world. To him, they were still innocent people; he couldn't fight back... He could only try to run.

With eyes closed, the world came to life; he felt it around him as he walked, the dark hallways as bright as day, the urgent pitter-pattering of little rat feet tickling his one unhindered sense... It was a miracle, how life seemed to find a way to adapt to loss... Where he lost most of his sight, and his hearing in one ear was forever dampened, he gained a new way of seeing the world. There was always that sadness, though, at the things you had to lose to gain such gifts.

He tried... he tried so hard to escape without hurting anyone... With the roar of deafening energy in his body from the blast that broke the spine of his home, he could have made them all disappear, but he couldn't. He ran one way, they cut him off, he wanted to jump away, but he might hurt one of them in the process... They threw things at him; bottles, bricks, rocks... He blocked them the best he could. When he felt a bottle flying in from behind, he spun and tried to smash it from the air, but where other bottles brought only air with them, this one brought fire. Before he knew it, he was engulfed in flames.

A hand grasped a bottle as the other set down the incomplete box. The mouth was lifted to warped lips, where amber liquid passed through, and seared his insides... It warmed him, deep, deep inside, but it would never be enough to make the cold go away.

How could they? How could they call themselves human? It was his only clear thought among the chorus of screams in his mind as the flames ate him alive. He let all of the energy go; He didn't care anymore. He didn't care that he could feel the shrapnel bursting from the ground beneath his feet, and ripping into the crowd as he was flung through the air. He didn't care that some of them still had families to care for, that they were lost and confused and felt they were doing the right thing... The people of New York city were dead; every single one of them died in that explosion. All that was left were sick, soulless bodies trying their best to keep their crummy hearts still beating... Yes... They were all dead... And as he landed, some thousands of feet away... Saphirus realized he was dead, too.