The heat, the light. The roaring noise. Black cloud writhing its way upwards from the ground. A little yelling, a lot of running, and the faithful comfort of sirens. Shadrach noticed none of this, and all of it.

The man sat cross-legged on a bitumen road now littered with glass and fragments, hands in lap, gazing. His eyes were unfocused. He didn't need them right now. But he was still watching, still observing the air before his face. He couldn't see it, but he was aware of it, just as he'd always been aware of his own body, aware of its substance, its shudder of vibration as sound pulsed through it from all around, aware of the light that penetrated it every which way in more colours than an eye could ever see. It danced between itself, atom bouncing on atom and simmering with heat. Fluid. Chaotic. Gorgeous, thought the man. Shapeless.

He was still aware of his body, too, and it also was fluid. Beautifully shaped clay- Not much more. Still soft enough to submit to a sculptor's touch. Still moving with his thoughts like it always did. Shadrach felt supple, today. In all his other memories he'd been so stiff and rigid. Everything else felt supple and limber, too. The air in his lungs, the air on his skin, the clothes on his arms and the black-grey road under him. He focused his eyes on the ground before him and stretched his arm, child-like, towards the dust of this world. He picked up a piece of the concrete curb before him as if it was sand, and like sand, it slipped from his hand and through his fingers in grains. He lifted it back up into his palm again, tensing the solid matter like a muscle of his own body. It contracted like flesh, and when he dropped it, it splashed onto the ground in drops. Shapeless. Malleable. Just another part of himself, subject to his imagination, like everything else.

Stretching his arm brought it to Shadrach's attention that the collection of molecules he liked to think of as his body was, in fact, experiencing considerable discomfort. An instant of panic ricocheted through him, and he stood up rapidly, already taking inventory of the parts of himself and how much exposure they'd received. He was hot, sweating profusely, and his ears were quaking under the reach of the noise. In moments, the air around his head stilled its rushing sound, and the ugly darkness of sweat in his clothes flicked itself into a cold mist resting on a cool body. His heart was beating a little too quickly, so he gentled it; There were some particles of smoke in his lungs that he didn't like, so he unmade them, dissolving them from this world like a breath of wind. ...Where did they go? thought the man, though he knew they were simply destroyed. He would investigate later. Shadrach was not the type to leave empty spaces unexplored.

There was one empty space that Shadrach had ignored, though, and that was a gap in his memory. He'd been... Done with work, for a day. The sun was setting. It was down now, though there was still some light from the sky. He'd taken the wrong bus, a southbound bus, one that ran almost into the inner city. He knew he often slept on the back seat, but couldn't remember doing so. And then he was here, and the world was like this, soft and loose around him.

For the first time since waking up, Shadrach put his bodily eyes to necessary use, using them to receive light from the places that were just a bit too far out of his reach to sense. Took in the blackened mass of wreckage, still burning, though a team of firefighters were close, and beginning to unload. Cooled his body temperature again, and reached down to gather a handful of glass shards from the ground until he found what he suspected- A single fragment, stained by a trace of human tissue. Skin and blood. Not his DNA, but he didn't know whose, either.

"I'm gone, then." The man sighed. Not with regret, nor with relief. An acknowledgement of an ending.

Ivo Shadrach thought that, on another day, in a rigid body, he might have tried to calm himself with a cigarette. But right now... He'd never cared to smoke so little in his life. He didn't feel gone at all, and perhaps that was why the idea of his death suddenly meant so little to him. He was here, really here, for the first time. And he felt comfortable. He felt like himself. The world around him was paint, and his body within it was clay, and he could see it all as perfectly arranged as a gallery, piece for piece.

He tossed the glass shards into the air, and they dipped and swerved smoothly in the air, splintering into fine flakes that spun and orbited his bubble of quiet in a glittering silica halo.

Kaya wasn't too sure why she smiled to herself amidst the orange, blacks, and reds. There was a thought in her mind, but it just escaped her recollection. She tried again and again for any reference, any foundation upon which she could carve a path to her current, contemporary standing, but...

...well, the greens weren't here. Here, the greens were jade and shiny, shining off an orange-white light that wasn't as soft as the one she recalled. They also refracted the black, black which felt so warm...but also so cool. So soft, but the way the little granules of the blackness rolled like mud underneath her skin suggested otherwise.

If only she could...remember how rough it was exactly, before.

And she could hear the voice.

"I'm gone, then."

Gone? Gone where? How did she know what did "gone" mean? Why would that even be important?

The black granules molded and clung to her hands like dough. She wanted...no, NEEDED to feel what was gone. But the texture, the consistency she wanted...it never was quite right. Too spongey one moment, too dry the next. But she squeezed the black, and she was upright. Right...pulled down.

She didn't like the feeling anymore, so she decided to not be pulled down. She was up, at least, but not too far. She wanted to stay here for a bit, to remember what was gone.

Maybe she could just forget what happened now, and continue on with her life...then. But how? All she smelled was the oils burning and the metal melting. The blacks were loosening up into tar again, and the bright oranges still flickered. How could she remember?

She felt herself grow hot, and her body pulsed in rhythmic descent into panic.

Thrown clear by the blast, Kylie sits up dizzily. She has no idea that a few moments ago she was a charred and twisted corpse. She feels dazed and disoriented, new sensations floating through her mind. She puts it down to concussion as she stands and looks at the wreckage. Then she looks down at herself. Her costume is a broken mess... and she spent so long on it. It seems selfish to think about that with the sirens and fires, but still..

As she considers this, Kylie's outfit begins to fix itself, broken parts closing over, new fabric growing out. And even as Kylie watches this happen in shock, the changes continue. The foam parts become polished metal, with finer detailed emblems than the foam would have taken. The collection of LEDs representing the character's plasma generator suddenly burn with flames, and as a helmet builds itself around Kylie's head, the collection of wild thoughts and sensations at the back of her mind vanish, appearing on a display before her eyes.

Suddenly, she has a handle on her situation. Her mind is clear, her abilities presented through a lens she understands. She must be...

A superhero!

And what do heroes do? They save the day. And here's a disaster for her to deal with. Kylie's boots flare, and she lifts into the air on them, flying with ease. Because how else would she fly? She even adopts the pose the character she's playing usually would as she points her finger at the flaming wreckage and draws in the energy. She doesn't even think on how she does it - The character could, after all. But the flames stretch out and drain away into Kylie's fingertip, before she floats down once again in front of the astounded rescue workers.

Josh had jumped on a bus that was supposed to send him straight to the Academy of English Writing and Literature; a well renowned school that was famous for their upbringing of some great poets and play wrights. As the bus travelled slowly, something happened - something odd. The other people didn't seem to notice it but it was there. Something malicious and evil. The bus turned and sped up, sailing straight into a fuel depot; a one way ticket to hell, at least for a normal person. The bus crashed, exploding upon impact and destroying the depot, but more importantly killing everyone on board. The twisted, smouldering skeleton that was the bus lay there, and strewn around it were charred corpses. To the side of one, a pair of shattered and burnt glasses, and a small dice.

Josh's head was swimming, filled with odd shapes and colours that could only be described as a bad trip. Everything smelt of smoke and burning oil mixed with scorched flesh. Standing up and casting the images aside, he saw the scene. Destruction - pure destruction. In his hand a small, blue dice with 20 sides; except the only numbers were the 1 and 20, with the rest blank. Sirens were roaring, at least they sounded like they were roaring. Blaring might have been the better word, but his head hurt and his mind couldn't distinguish the two. Police tape surrounded the area and people had crowded around it. So many dead - probably a suicide attack. There hadn't been any previous news of suicide attacks in Avernale, and certainly not in England. Maybe this was a war declaration. Who knew. All he knew however was that he felt something missing; like someone took tweezers and plucked a piece of his mind away. He was headed for the Academy, and then the bus turned off. He felt strange and that was it.

Taking the dice he rolled it across the floor, it landing on the 1. Instantly his head began to ache and images of death flowed through it. The bus. The bus turned and ploughed straight into the fuel depot. Did the driver even care? At least 20 bodies were around. Some might have been taken away, others not in view. His lungs burnt and the memory kept repeating. Fire licked at the ground and the corpses and the bus. Police moved into the area and looked it over. everything went so fast. Josh took the dice again, and rolled a 20. His lungs were filled with clean air and the memory stopped repeating in a painful fashion with no control, but instead one where he was in control. That was right, he got on the bus and the driver killed everyone. Was it everyone? Across the road a body lay, with broken glasses and a scorched D20 resting on the 1. Josh keeled over, collapsed and sat there staring. How? How could he be dead? HOW? This wasn't supposed to happen. He was going to live a successful life as an author and full-fill his dreams. How could he die? how...?

Jonathan had taken the same bus to occupy the shift that he took six days of the week. The bus took him to the inner city, where that mind-numbing job of his kept him eternally unsatisfied and ever bored, and yet it was the only job which he was fit to hold. Now he was simply taking the route back. He had taken the same route today, yet there was one glaring difference. How strange it was for only one element to change for the whole system, so seemingly sturdy, to abruptly collapse.

Even though they he had been staring out the window throughout his trip, he did not realize what had happened until it was too late. The next thing he realized, there was a large explosion. Jonathan's only hope, as shocking as it might have been, was that it had been some kind of attack. He would prefer it to be an attack by a strong and worthy nation, which would spark off a long and costly conflict which would scar generations, but he would also settle for the more mundane terrorist attack. His greatest fear at the moment was that his death wouldn't mean anything, and that the crash was merely due to the incompetency of the driver. Such thoughts of glory protected Jonathan from any actual fear of death.

For one brief moment, Jonathan felt death. He could feel the breath of the reaper down on him, his bloody scythe coming to collect him. Even if no such reaper had truly come down, Jonathan felt a moment more poignant than any he had felt during life, and he knew he felt his own death. However, the next moment he was clearly alive. He was not in any sort of afterlife, but at the sight of the burning bus. His body felt different. He was more fluid than he had been before, and yet he had remained solid all the same. A pinch of his arm told Jonathan that he appeared to be the same on the outside, but he was aware that something about him was different. His new fluidity made him feel as if he could move however he wanted, and the crash had left him with no injuries. Unpleasant particles filled his lungs, and so he made them vanish. How he could do such a feat was truly beyond him at the time, and it only heightened his sense of bewilderment.

The crash did not seem to have had any effect on him. On the contrary, Jonathan had felt more alive than he had ever felt in the entirety of his existence. Walking among the charred ruins of the crash the bus had inflicted, he cleared a path for himself to depart. What he was doing still remained a mystery to himself, but he let out a fireball with enough force and power to clear a path for himself. Jonathan might have done better to stay where he was and gain a ride from one of the policemen who now surrounded this place, but that would have been him thinking in the pure practicality he had been living in his first life. He knew that he was doing everything exactly as it should be. So Jonathan walked through the pathway he had cleared with his own power, the flames surrounding him not disturbing him as much as they would have in his previous life. It was not as if he was immune to them, only that he knew they could do no damage to him. He wondered how long his old name of Jonathan would still fit for him.

Standing under a small and blackened patch of sky with his hands clasped loosely together behind his back and a bubble of quiet comforting his ears, Shadrach did nothing, watched intensely, and saw no humans. Not in the way that he had perceived humans before. There were definitely two kinds of people wandering the wreckage in human bodies, but his perception had changed, and now he could see a difference.

Most were the people he'd expect to see in an event like this. Police, paramedics, firefighters. Victims. Casualties. The dead. One of them approached him in a uniform and asked if Shadrach was alright, waited for a response and received none; Asked for him to stay out of the way if he was a bystander; Then finally, having gained only silence, asking if Shadrach could hear him. He couldn't, but he could perceive the vibrations of his voice outside the bubble, and Shadrach bent the streams of light around his body long enough to walk out of the nurse's view while he was invisible. These people- If he looked closely enough- were puppets. Fleshy vehicles, driven by something that flickered and flowed inside them like a mute pilot, that bubbled around the skulls of the dead, residue of an extinguished life. There were so many of them nearby. Were these the inhabitants of Avernale? The world?

He beckoned to one of the translucent globules of puppeteer that drifted in fragility between the ashes of the dead. It flew to him, and he inhaled it; It smelled of tears, of smiles, of wisdom and regret and money and sex. Of life. He let it sink into his lungs like a sick goldfish, and cradled it there. ...It doesn't actually matter. I think I realise that now. They looked like humans, spoke like humans, feared and rejoiced like humans. I guess I'm just not a practical man, to be wasting my time looking at souls, thought Shadrach, with a laugh. Ironic, to admit something he'd known since he was a toddler.

And then... Then there were the other people. Very few of those. They looked like him- Acted like the human he'd once been, a body without a pilot. They felt normal. Companions on a small world. So why was it that they were doing such strange things?

One of them, a woman in a segmented costume painted in metallic greys and violets, was airborne, inhaling the tenacious petroleum flame into her hand; Another, a fragile-looking young man with a placid expression, was lighting them again, striding out among the corpses in a clean-blasted path. Shadrach had an idea the two opposites would soon see each other and collide, and gave them both a wide berth, sinking into and out of invisibility as he liked it. One was close among the people with souls, putting back together the broken ones where even a doctor would struggle to stop that bubble of spirit from detaching. One of them was alone, spinning a die and kneeling beside a destroyed human with a face that might be panic. And yet others. Shadrach didn't make the realisation until he saw the thin girl with the dyed hair, who, like himself, was playing with glass.

The young man laughed softly, hand in front of mouth. Ah, hell... Isn't it always oneself that's the hardest to read? No wonder I can't see the puppeteers. These people are liquid! Just people with a big imagination. Doing nothing stranger than I am, even. Shit, that means I can't trick them out of my visibility, either. Well. "Catch," he announced to the girl in the dress, lightly tossing his own halo of glass into her shifting cube of it, his hands unmoving. "Have fun."

It was surprisingly peaceful, between the flames and the smoke and the charred flesh and puddles of human spirit. Shadrach was coming to see that, so long as he kept his body safe from the heat and the worst of the noise, the only thing he was really afraid of was a crowd. "Hey," he opened to the tall, snow-haired young man with the dice, ignoring his distress. About his age, though the two looked nothing alike. "This yours?" He reached into one of the bodies, melting the burnt meat and lifting up the skull. This one didn't have a soul nearby, and Shadrach had a feeling that the teenager-entity was why, though he still didn't chance on the thought that his death was the reason he looked so stressed. "Yeah, yours for sure. The one you're using still has skin on it an all, but the bone's the same. So you're dead, huh?"

@The Ghost in Black @Vocab

Darren felt something grip him with an intensity he had never felt before, like his heart was being ripped out of his chest. He squirmed where he was but the claws refused to release him. In the distance he saw a bright white light that slowly approached him. When the light finally arrived, it engulfed him for a short time, then flickered out of existence back to the pitch black he was in before. He struggled again, this time intensely. The grip released him and he had a feeling of falling.

Darren's eyes batted in the smoke of the nearby fire. For a second, everything was blurry. The area focused to reveal he was in a gas station, lying on his side. The building was burning around him. A few feet from him his laptop case was sitting on the ground, blood and embers lay on it. Darren stood and wandered over to it. Opening it he saw that the computer was broken clean in half. Beside the broken laptop sat the usual 100 card MtG deck that had won countless Friday Night Magic events. Darren removed it and put it in his pocket with shaky hands. A small chunk of the roof of the station fell inward next to him, an ember landed on his shoulder with a tinge of pain. When Darren brushed the ember off, he was surprised to see it had not burned him.

Walking over to where he had stood up, he searched the room, in one corner lay a body face-down. Darren approached it and rolled it over, revealing its face. It was him.

Aleksandri continued to float around the area collecting glass until she had a mass the size of one of the bus's wheels orbiting around her. Every now and then Aleksa's feet would touch the ground which would ripple as though she were touching the surface of a puddle though the ripples would only spread a foot in any direction. The sounds slowly came back to Aleksa and she listened to the fire crackle around her body and the whistling of the wind passing over her mass of glass which morphed into a beanbag like seat, she floated up and flopped Down on it. As soon as she touched the makeshift chair it sprouted soft fur that moved independently from the wind.

When Aleksa heard the man call "catch" she looked up and saw the ring of glass floating towards her. She helped guide it until it was above her own head before stretching and lowering it onto her own head where it sat like a small crown, "I am the glass queen!" She called as the ring morphed into a full glass crown. The glass beanbag began to look puff up and look more and more like a cloud which Aleksa shifted on to be lying on her stomach. While she laid there Aleksandri began looking around at the other people around yet didn't bother to turn her head, instead she rotated the who cloud. Almost every entity around her had a certain... substance to them that Aleksa hadn't noticed before this point in time, it was as if there was something piloting them but she also saw it on the ground near dead bodies as well. The thing was that man from earlier didn't have that stuff inside him, him and a few other people around, like the superhero that had just finished draining fire from an area of the wreckage or the one that the man from earlier went to talk with.

"Superhero it is then" she said before causing her cloud to rise above the wreckage and move above the girl in the armor, Aleksandri lowered the cloud next to Kylie and gave a cheshire smile. "Soooo, watcha doin' there miss hero?" She asked with a small yawn.
@Bai Suzhen

Kylie takes the first explosion for a fuel tank sparking off, or perhaps a car, under all the smoke. Still, she's doing a god job sucking up the flames, that should let emergency services through-

Then there's a girl next to her, lying on a sparkling cloud, asking her what she's up to.

"Uh... hi. I'm fighting the fire." Kylie has to suppress an instinct to tell the girl to get away from the danger, but someone floating on a cloud has clearly gone through the same thing as her. Did they crash into a strange mutagen, or something?

The HUD inside her helmet 'scans' the girl, and tells Kylie this girl is like her... as though that wasn't obvious. Her visor opens to show her face, and the display is replaced with an understanding. The girl is controlling the glass... the girl is like her...

Kylie's foot-jets fade to a cosmetic glow, and she stays hanging in the air. Gravity is for other people. She doesn't need the armour either... but she does like the way it looks.

"Aleksandri... wait, how did I know your name? Do you have any idea just what the heck is going on?"

Before she can get an answer, there's another explosion. Kylie looks down, and this time even though there's thick smoke in the way, she knows whats on the other side. There's a man, a man like her and Aleksa, throwing more explosions, undoing her work, risking more lives. Her helmet snaps closed again, the HUD showing her distances, heats, nearby points of interest.

"It can wait! I have to stop him!"

Kylie lands around twenty feet in front of Johnathan on one hand and one knee, cracking the ground with the force. She slowly stands, points her finger at him and commands "Stop!"

@The ghost in black @ZB1996

@Bai Suzhen
With his newfound almighty power, Jonathan cleared a raging path of flames that he could traverse across across with not a single. As he saw the power of his unfolded, he was both impressed and pleased of it. He walked among the flames. The path to freedom was open and the powers of the heavens stood embalmed in his hands.

And yet, such as they were, annoyances stood to keep Jonathan from such liberation from here. A damsel of a gentle figure and unassuming physique stood in front of him. Yet she was in a strange suit of combat, so unlike those of normality. Jonathan was truly alive, and of greater worth than he had ever been. He did not see any reason why he should be delayed. What was it that this lady wished of him?

"Space warrior, what would you ask of me?" Jonathan said. "I am not to be unheeded needlessly, for look upon me and you shall a being reborn! But wait..."

Jonathan could feel a strange sensation in his body. Yes, he could see something in the girl. It was something the two of them shared. Yet what could he, a being reborn, share with a space warrior? He saw inside her an aspect of her being, and knew that she was like him. She did seem to be in possession of power that was beyond that of a mere human. Such power did not come from her fake power armor.

"Ah, I see it," Jonathan said. "It would have been preferable to be the only one, but I see that there are others. From the ebony gates of death I have returned, and have been given a second life of power. Are you the same, space warrior? No matter the answer to the question, stand away from my exit. With whirls of Crimson I created the gate out of hell, and you shall not bar me from my chosen path."

Every nerve in her body was screaming—and then it wasn’t. The pain didn’t just fade; it disappeared so surely that it could have been a dream. She might have been dreaming for a while, her self somewhere else while the rest of her figured out what to do about a body.

Alex came back to herself like waking up, like opening her eyes—the world was gone, and then it wasn’t. Making sense of it took slightly longer. It began with the feel of gravel digging into her side, the weight of her body against the asphalt. Next came heat against her back, out of place in the cool November air. Finally, the sounds of disaster: the cacophony of screaming and sirens.

Now that she’d taken stock of her surroundings, it was time to look closer to home. Alex eased her way, slowly, so slowly, into a sitting position. Heavy curls slid over her shoulders, familiar and comforting.

Her body looked just as she remembered it should, not a single limb out of place, no cuts or broken bones. The brown skin of her arms and legs was smooth and unmarked, save for the expected scattering of freckles. Though it felt like she shouldn’t be, she was whole.

Alex remembered, belatedly, that she’d skinned her knee last week, running late to an audition downtown. The scrapes on her palms had been superficial and were already healed, but she’d come down hard enough on one leg to draw blood. There should still be a scab there.

The moment she thought it, there was.

Alex stared. I’m in shock, she thought, and then, It’s too loud.

Immediately, the noise lowered, as muffled as if she’d closed a door between herself and the rest of the world.

Alex swallowed.

There were people nearby. The ones who were screaming, or the ones who hadn’t gotten up. There was a fire raging. And all she could focus on was the way the world dimmed when she wanted it to, the way bile climbed her throat when she spotted a man holding up a charred skull, or the unavoidable fact that not too long ago, she been inside that husk of a vehicle, sitting right behind the driver.

She could hear her mother scolding, Alexandra Denali, never take one thing in this life for granted, and her father saying, gently, Alex, don’t just look for the helpers; follow them. And still, she couldn’t make herself move. Jericho would say she was in shock; Ravi would say it was her underused sense of self-preservation kicking in.

Her grandma would say she was being self-absorbed, and that was probably closest to the truth.

Chasing the voices from her head, Alex took a deep breath, forcing herself to focus on the way the air filled her lungs. (Clean air, because she coughed once on smoke and willed it to go away.) She exhaled just as carefully, feeling a little more at home in her body as she did so.

In a moment. She’d deal with it all in a moment.

Ross just stood staring down at the corpse before him, face down in a puddle of its own blood that was seeping from a crack in the forehead.

This was, frankly, the definition of impossible. All you could see, feel and here were simply external stimuli translated into electrical signals interpreted by the brain. And yet here he was staring down at his brain as it leaked from the side of his shattered skull.

This had to be a dream; Perhaps he was in a coma, or was unconscious following the crash? Or perhaps the crash never occurred at all, and he would wake up in his bed with his brain inside his skull.

A terrifying thought crept into his mind; If he /was/ in a coma (he was quite certain the crash was real.) then was this what it would be like? He'd be stuck walking through some dream until he woke up, if ever?

He heard a voice call out and turned his head to see two paramedics rush over, crouching down over his corpse. One of them reached out to check the pulse and then glanced up to the other, shaking his head slowly and calling out for a body bag.

Ross turned slowly... And saw perhaps the strangest thing he had ever seen going on in his life. He tried to suppress a smirk out of instinct, but upon remembering it was a dream he couldn't help but burst out laughing at the absurdity of someone in sci-fi battle army and a girl on a cloud of shards just... There. And then... No, that was impossible.

He turned around slowly, struggling to hold back laughter; One of the two paramedics looked up from his corpse towards him... And then his eyes widened and glanced back down to the corpse. Then back up to Ross again.

"Oh my god." He gasped as he stared at the doppelganger of the corpse. His teammate glanced up to him and then followed his gaze before jerking backwards and falling onto his back

"Holy shit!" He exclaimed, before looking past him to the other two deities beyond and scrambling backwards and away as he yelled once more "Holy shit!"

Ross turned away, his eyes wide in shock and his face drained of colour as a horrifying realisation hit him, taking his breath out of him. He just sort of stood their, frozen on the spot as he stared off into the distant skyline.

This wasn't a dream.

Aleksandi was about to answer Kylie when she flew off after a guy who was blowing stuff up and setting more fires. "That doesn't seem safe for anyone" Aleksa said as she propped her head up on an upturned palm and lazily drifted her way until she was above the conflicting two.

The cloud hovered just within earshot of the duo with Aleksa resting on top of it and had turned transparent enough for her to see through it. She turned her cloud almost 180 degrees and laid there upside down, "Since the law of gravity doesn't apply to me I might as well abuse it..." she said to herself before sinking a bit deeper into the upside down clouds soft surface.

"Is everything alright down there Miss Superhero?" she called below before the top of the cloud began to cloud itself and become foggy enough to cast a shadow below as it blocked the sun from passing through. After about 2 minutes of floating Aleksa lowered the cloud quickly until she was hanging infront of the fire man with her face almost a foot from his own, "Hi... how ya doin sir?" she asked with a completely straight and serious face.
@Bai Suzhen@ZB1996

@The ghost in black
Jonathan looked at the new arrival, who flew in on a puff of kinds, as if she had arrived upon a cloud. Upon inspection Jonathan saw that what she drove was indeed a cloud, in which she could traverse the air around her. He could feel it upon him when she arrived, that she was in a way alike to himself. His soul itself informed him of her presence and her nature, differentiating her from the mere mortals which he could sense. Her presence felt different from the fetid and mundane feel of the spirit of a human.

She spoke to him in an irreverent tone, but that was no matter at the time. He was still but a beginner at this new existence that the game of the circle of life had tossed at him. What respect he was deserving of and what respect she was deserving of was not apparent to him at the time. Certainly they were of a higher existence than the unremarkable men and women who lived out there. Could, however, they be exalted to the same level as he himself could.

He did not feel like he should discuss things at the time with them. No matter the power they could muster, with his newly arrived ascension, they could not bar him from anything. What they did was irrelevant to him, and he hoped that they would not distract him to much further.

"Forsooth, cloud-guider, of what purpose do you aim for, what goal do you surmount by speaking to me? Let it be known that from the burning path I have cindered across the scorched earth a pathway of flames. I go my own way now, for I feel the ascendancy. Indeed, you all follow your own hearts. So again, cloud-finder, what do you hope to accomplish with me?"

"Alas, poor Yorick," quoted Shadrach in an outbreath, resting the skull on the lower torso of the body that had grown it. "A fellow of infinite jest. Not anymore, anyway." The thin boy on the ground still hadn't moved much, but his body was stabilising. Shad thought he'd leave the other teenager to whatever chain of thought he had to untangle. He knew how it felt to have to steal a moment's quiet out of a harsh day, and he had some empathy- And a trickle of anticipation. The boy was staring at his own dice with more intensity than Shadrach liked to be around. It reminded him of an elastic band stretched too far taut. His steps were casual as he left, but he moved with inhuman speed.

He didn't go very far. Just far enough, maybe, to stay out of reach of the couple who were playing with fire. Joined by the girl with the glass. Let them play. It's not like they can hurt themselves. Not much. Not my responsibility. The injured humans at the edges of his vision may well have been his responsibility, if he took a moment to consider the situation, but Shadrach didn't. Empathy towards the meat puppets was remarkably slow in coming. Some of them caught his attention sooner than others, though, especially the one screaming 'holy shit' at the top of his lungs as he bolted from the grey-haired man standing over his old body. His comrade shortly followed.

"Takes some of us longer than others to get the feel of it," commented Shadrach levelly towards the middling man, casting his eyes first to the airborne kids on the far side of the wreck, then to the still frame of the pale-haired teenager, then back again. Then back to the teen. He didn't feel very far away at all. "The motes of soot spinning through the air. A human'd never see them, ever. But once you feel them- It's like a ballet." He liked this guy, so far, who didn't seem nearly as stressed, but just as quiet.

@darkwolf687@Vocab

Kylie gives the man a long look... his manner of speech might be the strangest thing all day, and it causes her to mentally mis-step. Rather than offer an epic challenge or ultimatum, she simply says "Uh... I'd like you to stop blowing things up? I'm trying to put this fire out, and save people."

That's no good, but it's out now. Things start to make more sense, at the back of her mind. "It's clear whatever has happened to me has happened to you two as well... we're just as experienced with the powers, but do you want to face off against a champion fighter?"

Well, she won a cuddly toy at an arcade fighter tournament, so it's not technically a lie... and if she could pull off some of those combos in real life... especially the lightning bolts...

As Kylie ponders this, and mentally gets ready for a confrontation, her outfit changes. The armour slides away in wisps of fog, as similar wisps wrap about her into a martial arts gi.

@ZB1996

Gasp. The oxygen in the air flooded the lungs of the being that breathed. In went into the air, and out. It was a rapid pattern of motion that came naturally to the boy who stood there, silent. His eyes were fixated on something afar as if he was staring towards the distance. He blinked, forcing his eyelashes to flutter profusely in a rapid motion like the rising and falling of his chest. His normal functionalities had begun to work. He was breathing, he was blinking, and he was finally beginning to move. The shock of whatever had happened before this moment was fading. The boy decided it was best to study his surroundings at first, in-order to understand whatever move he was to make next. Trees. Pine trees of different shades and heights surrounded him. There was an airy thickness that haunted the young man's skin; giving him chills from his neck to his toes. He was returning to reality, slowly but gradually. Why it was taking him longer than others was a mystery in itself, if-not frustrating for him in general. What had even happened? Why was he standing in the middle of a forest that smelled like burning flesh and metal? Had he contracted a sudden case of amnesia? He didn't understand what was going on, and had no recollection of memory long term or short term. What was going on?

He looked to his left. More trees. He looked to his right. Trees, but the faint sight of an orange flare in the distance ahead of the wood. He turned his head to see what was behind him. His eyes immediately fixated on a very dark patch of blood on the oak tree behind him. It seeped through the bark and into the grass below it. As his pupils followed the blood trail, they focused on yet another surprising sight. There laid a body, battered and twisted in unnatural positions. With a closer look, the face of the body had been severely singed and melted off leaving nothing but strains of tendons and cracked bone. The spine of the body was broken in three different spots, cutting through the skin as an unhealthy amount of blood oozed through the long lacerations. The corpse's left arm was bent outward instead of inward. The man grasped at his mouth, keeping himself from suddenly belching onto the grotesque pile of human matter in front of him. He had to figure out who this was before finding out who he was first. Maybe if he were to understand who he was standing next to and why, he'd be able to figure out who he was afterwards.

The young man knelt down on top of the wet grass near the corpse. There was no smell of rot, at least not yet. This gave the boy an immediate hint that this accident, or perhaps murder, was fresh and recent. His hand rummaged through the pockets of the corpse's dark green flannel.

"This is a really nice flannel though... shit. I'm so sorry about what happened to you," he stopped to consider the situation once more, and then rhetorically asked, "what the fuck is going on?" In order to answer this question, he forced himself to rummage in the corpse's pockets. His fingers grasped around the shreddings of a wallet. The boy pulled it out and opened it, peeking at the credit cards and coins. He opened the next flap, suddenly finding a wad of over three-hundred in currency. The young man's eyes widened as the smell of money entered his nose. There was so much of it. What was he supposed to do with it? Should he take it? Or leave it? What was the right thing to do? Or, better yet, what did he want to do?

He decided to pocket the money. Why he took it he couldn't quite place, but he had a feeling he could use it to buy something extremely important to him. Something extremely expensive. Something extremely illegal. With a closer look at the body, the boy picked up the faintest smell of marijuana. Where this was coming from, he didn't know. It was strong though; giving the young man a very strong sense of yearning and commitment. Where were these strange emotions coming from? He looked at the wallet he found inside the man's pocket once more. With this second check, he came across an I.D. of some sort.

"Gregory Mechkta." The boy said out loud. The name sounded familiar, and it gave him that strange feeling one gets when you say your own name. He put this feeling off to the side. After all, how could the corpse next to him have the exact same name as him? It wasn't impossible, but it was highly unlikely. For now, he needed to figure where he was and why. He scratched at the dark green flannel that stuck to his back. He was sweating for no damn reason. The air around him wasn't hot nor cold, it felt off and nonexistent. He almost felt like his presence was intimidating enough for the air around him to retract in fear. This was another feeling that the boy questioned. Why did the air feel weird? Why couldn't he remember what he was doing there? Why could he feel every red blood cell pump through his veins? Why were there so many unanswered questions? His anxiety levels began to rise as his breath heavily escalated to a quickened pace.

He felt an anxiety attack coming quick and fast.

"No- stop, stop. Stop. Stop. No. Stop... stop." He repeated again and again. His body was tensing, and he was beginning to shake. He was growing aggravated at the mere fact that he couldn't control his own emotions; and with a quick stomp on the floor he froze. He froze directly in place and closed his eyes. Feelings of fear and stress began to melt away as euphoria kicked in. His senses heightened, and everything around him slowed down. Colors intensified. The air grew warm and sticky. He could feel every part of his body tingle, giving him full sense of his surroundings. And with a gasp of air, he laughed lightly and stumbled; hitting the floor with a loud thud. The thud echoed across the floor, and just as he touched the ground a wave of red and purple dust seeped into the air like a mysterious cloud. These colorful particles dazzled and morphed from green to orange to blue to brown and all the way back to red and purple again and again. As the dust fell upon the grass and the plants that surrounded him, they began to thicken and grow at a quickened pace. Blooms of lilies, daisies, and even flowers unknown to this soil sprouted and hugged the skin of the young man.

Venus flytraps crawled out from the dirt and wrapped around the trees and bushes in the nearest vicinity. They grew bigger and bigger, hissing and oozing an extremely misgiving oil onto the thickening grass. This oil gleamed like any other oil, with rainbow-like attributes that glistened in the sunlight. Whatever this oil touched began to sizzle and burn, giving off a very thick smoke. The sound of crickets deafened the noise of vines tightening and growing. Their chirps were eerie and chilling, giving one a sense of uncleanliness and terror. As the foliage condensed around the amnesiac boy's body, covering him as if they were becoming his protective shield, his body began to glow. The petals of the blossoms were morphing from color to color in an unbelievable pace. Some of these colors were ones undetectable to the human eye as they expanded across rays of ultraviolet and infrared light. The colors and lights were bright enough to attract anyone near his green cocoon as the plants stiffened around his limbs and torso. He was experiencing the greatest high of his life as the oils and powder from the vegetation around him began to bleed into his skin through his pores. For a second, the breeze around him stopped. The crickets were silenced. And for a brief moment, his eyes opened suddenly. From his eyes came a bright flash of color as the filth and tar inside his lungs and body in-general drained out into the vines and into the ground, killing the grass as a ring of death and decay formed around him and his thriving plants. He was being purified. He was being renewed. He was becoming immortal.

So I'm dead then... and there is no coming back... no chance in all hell... but then... how am I here? he thought, looking up to see the man holding his charred skull. Why? Why was he holding his skull... and better question... why the hell was he quoting Shakespeare? Seeing him plop the skull back down Josh rolled the dice again. Numberless. The skull, now laying atop the body of Josh himself disintegrated into dust and was blown away into the wind. Then he spoke.
"Yes... I guess I am dead," he spoke with determination and meaning, "But that won't stop me any more. Now my mortal coil has been shuffled off I am free to progress how I want, without worry; without fear." and it was true. Throwing the dice into the air it landed on what could only be described as an invisible table. Then it rolled. Numberless, once again. The fires, the smoke and the dust from around circulated around Josh, only to become a blade of gas and dust. Maybe things would be different. Then, he spoke once again.
"In my right hand the power of creation lies. There is the ability to make worlds and mold matter to my liking," he continued, now with added intensity in his voice, "And in my left the usurper of all. With this hand I bend and break everything around me, only to reform it later to my own design. With these two hands I will become an embodiment of everything I could not. In my hand I forge a blade. This blade is the combination of suffering, sadness and death. But here it is also equal parts joy, happiness and life. With this blade I carve the mortal world in twine and do away with all in my path. This is the path of the God I take, therefore this is the way the world shall be. No creature, living or dead can stand the power innate within being such as oneself, therefore I cast the spell that destroys the illusion we have created. Before we commence, we must first follow a writ of passage that condemns us on this path. Before we leave we destroy the chains that bind us; hold us to the ground and we will escape. "Not a whit, we defy augury. There is a special providence in the fall of a sparrow. If it is now, tis not to come. If it is not to come, it be now. If it be not now, yet it will come; readiness is all." and with that he stepped forward, taking his dice and rolling once more. 1. Of course. The metal of the bus cracked and bent, the wind picked up and scattered the dust around. The burning intensified and the corpse turned to dust and scattered in the winds. The metal rusted and split, cracking into pieces only to then melt and evaporate. Gods don't bleed.