They say life always finds a way.

In hindsight nothing should have survived the explosion. The technology originally used on Hiroshima and Nagasaki had leapt forward like arcs of lightening in the subsequent decades, each culminating in short and sudden streaks of destruction progressively deadlier than the last. If a nuclear warhead had actually hit New York, there wouldn’t even be ruins.

Still, the ruins stood; hollow rusting skeletons of construction acting as a scornful reminder of what used to be an of what use to be and could still have been even as they stood in mocking defiance of a blast which should have left nothing.

The Church of Humanity had been right about at least one thing; mutants had brought about the end of the world.

Mankind though, mankind had finished the job.

As he stared down at the desiccated remnants of the once famous city Zephyr doubted there were many still alive who would appreciate the irony. Then again, most people hadn’t emerged from the One Day War as relatively unscathed as he had.

Shifting his gaze away from the lifeless blue skies which surrounded him the elemental tilted his captain’s hat down over his eyes as he lowered his head and lounged further into his seat. A strange, bittersweet nostalgia overtook him as he recalled, only three years ago, those first terrified moments where the whole world had seemed to end and it felt as though he were racing death itself.

He’d been over a mile away when the explosion had hit, people watching at a café as he waited to meet someone. His senses being what they were, he’d felt the blast a scant second before anyone else had even begun to hear the rapidly growing thunder. He recalled preempting a number of terrified screams by rocketing into the air without any thought of subtlety or decorum, switching from an idle sitting position to a vaguely human shaped speck in the blink of an eye.

And he still hadn’t been fast enough.

Looking back, the real danger hadn’t been the force of the explosion itself but instead the debris which had been dragged with it. Even now, three years on, Zephyr doubted he could have blocked or deflected ever piece of shrapnel or other lethal confetti when it was all moving at just under the speed of sound.


That realization had bought him true fear for the first time in nearly a decade. He’d panicked and in that panic he’d taken what he’d seen as the only option , let himself fall apart and unravel, escaping into the air just before the expanding mushroom cloud overtook him.

They say life always finds a way.

He’d woken up three weeks later naked, wet and cold in the scoured remains of a forest drenched by rainfall. Tired and weak, he’d barely been able to move and almost hadn’t cared when he’d felt the first chilling tendrils of hypothermia creep into his limbs, aching at first before becoming almost pleasantly numb. Eventually though, hunger and thirst had forced him to move and he dragged his gaunt frame into the rotted hollow of a tree stump, forcing himself to eat mushrooms and other foliage he would have considered garbage in another life.

He lingered in the woods for three days; most of the time spent in a dead sleep as his body tried to recover from the effort of pulling itself together from whatever distance he’d been scattered across. During the short moments of the day when he was lucid he foraged anything which seemed edible and by some miracle managed to avoid poisoning himself.

When he was finally strong enough to venture out beyond the trees he’d found the world had changed.

No one ever said the way would be nice.

They say life always find a way.

Back in the present the low bass of a fog horn roused the Zephyr from his musings. Idly flicking his ash stained hat back over his eyes the mercenary come captain lifted his feet from the ramshackle collection of wood he called a desk and straightened his posture as his chair landed back on all four legs a moment before an audible knock came at the door.

Picking up the nearest notepad the elemental ran his eyes quickly down the brief logistics figures he’d jotted down earlier before deigning to respond. “What is it Walter?”

He heard the door behind him slide open and just from the from the faint sigh which met his ears Zephyr could easily picture the aging man’s expression even as he himself resisted the urge to respond in kind. As close as they were to what was left of the Old Apple, there was only reason the old blue blood would take up his time.

“We’re approaching the New York ruins and should be at Ms. Manfrella’s bunker within two hours.”[/color]

Walter was, if not an imaginative soul, than at least an attentive one. Before the war he’d been, well, the exact title escaped Zephyr at the moment but it had boiled down to being a glorified accountant for the parliamentary House of Lords in London. In short, it had been a comfortable if dull job which had paid far more than it should.

“Is there enough fuel for the ship to finish under its own power?”

There was a short moment of hesitation before Walters articulated tone returned with a faint but noticeable cadence of discomfort. “There is, but it would drain the reserve tank more than I’d like.”[/color]

Glancing over his shoulder Zephyr raised a skeptical brow. “You do know we can refuel once we offload? The city is hardly short of gas stations.”

Walters mustache twitched and he ran a hand along its length gravely as he replied. “They won’t be around forever sir, in the long run it’s better to ration what we have now while we can afford it.”[/color]

“We’re not the only one’s scavenging for fuel Walter, merely the most noticeable. It makes more sense to take what we can now if there’s no guarantee it will be here tomorrow. Still, I’ll see what I can do about getting us a good head wind.”

The aged blueblood nodded slowly, not happy by any means but at least partially mollified as he made to leave. The two had had this argument every journey for the past three years and it had become practically tradition, which Zephyr privately suspected, was the main reason the old Walruses persisted with it. He was the sort to who’d have been brought up to respect tradition without ever stopping to think why.

Closing his eyes again as he hard his door slide shut the elemental allowed his mind to drift once more as he again pondered how on earth the old walrus had managed to survive London’s nuclear blitz, especially given that his profession was one that many considered rather lacking in survival traits. The only time he’d ever bothered to ask, Walter had merely raised a bush of an eyebrow and run a hand over his excessively eccentric mustache before replying.

“Why, I adapted, as one must.”[/color]

The explanation had been so supremely idoneous at the time that Zephyr had merely left it at that and after a few further questions had offered the man a position as something which could perhaps best be described as a Steward.

He’d yet to be disappointed.

Sometimes the most unexpected ways are the most rewarding.