Amongst the devastation ...

Principle struggled to extricate himself from the rubble, his hand lifting to his face. As his hand came away, he noticed blood upon the fingers. Blood! He couldn't remember the last time he had lost blood in a confrontation. Not even in the sub-dimension, where he had fought as hard as ever, but with his powers dampened by the shackle. Psycona had truly held back his full potential, Principle knew that now.

True, his powers had waned due to the trials he had suffered, but he still could never have expected this. Psycona, and it was Psycona, whatever illusory form he wore and the personality he displayed, hovered above him, a malevolent grin spread upon his now-twisted features. Principle should have known. Should have offered his help years ago, a shoulder upon which Zjahn could have laid all his troubles, his guilts and fears, but he had respected the alien when he had requested solace to work through his grief alone.

It seemed clear, now, that this split in his friend's personality was a consequence of those terrible events, light years away from Earth. Principle understood that grief, though only partially. He, too, came from a dead world. Except his world had perished in a natural disaster, centuries before he had exited his life-pod. He had only learned, later, that he was not a child of Earth, but a visitor from the stars.

His parents, adoptive parents, had raised him from infancy, born in the moment he had left the life-pod, and they had taught him the very best of human values. He had grown up with the principles of decency, kindness above all things, and a sense of duty instilled in him throughout his childhood. Zjahn had not had that grounding. He had come from the slaughter of his people to this world that must have seemed so very ... alien to him.

"We can work this out, Zjahn!" He lifted the concrete slab from his body, easing it to the side as he shook his head. "You are clearly in pain. Allow me, us, to help you."

"Help me! I've never felt so free. So alive. So powerful!" Zjahn flexed his fingers, the smile widening. "I hold the power of life and death in my hands. Why should my planet be the only one to suffer? Why should you, with your pathetic ideals, be more beloved than me? I should have been loved by these insects! Worshipped!"

"That's not why we do this. Not any of us!" He rose from the ground, his ability to fly coming in intermittent fits and starts, more drained than he thought. "We dedicate our lives to serving these people. We aren't their gods, or their kings. We offer them our protection and they allow it. We police our enemies by the consent of the many, not crush them by the whims of the one!"

Zjahn sneered at him. In his current state, the man must consider it a weakness to want permission to fight for these humans, but they did not need super-powered leaders, dictators, they needed the freedom to govern themselves. In Principle's time on Earth, he had seen that freedom stumble. He had seen it come close to disaster, but humans always managed to come through in the end.

Miles away, he heard the steady, tiny beat of his son's heart. So small and vulnerable, yet so strong. If this version of Zjahn had his way, Ben would grow up in a world ruptured and broken, a slave to the whims of a lost and twisted man and Principle could not allow that. Win or lose, he had to give his all to ensure that did not come to pass, even if it meant fighting a friend to the death.

"You are so naive. Tony." Zjahn said that deliberately. Not to expose Principle's identity, but to show him that he knew everything. "You always have been so pathetically small in your ambitions. And with ... a son to look after, no less! How perfectly charming and sickening. Perhaps I should ..."

Zjahn's head had turned toward Arclight City, that glittering oasis of the best of humanity. A promise of what the world could one day become. A paradigm shifting vision of the future. Principle's home. The home of his wife ... and his son. That Zjahn dared turn his gaze that way, to taunt him, brought forth a fury Principle had not felt in a long time.

He launched himself upward, with every ounce of his remaining strength, arms outstretched before him, hands clenched into fists. He far outraced the sonic boom that followed in his wake, left the pressure wave of air clapping back into place as his mass forced it aside as he flew. Few could match his speed, even fewer could outpace him at all, and Psycona, Phaross, Zjahn, was not one of them.

At least, he had always believed so.

-+-

Amid the rubble ...

Betty clapped her hands to her ears as the sound threatened to break her eardrums. Winds rushed past her, picking at her now filthy and torn dress. A dress that she had only worn once before and she doubted could survive repair. Then the air rushed back, dragging her the other way as Sean stood beside her, reaching out for her hand.

She couldn't believe, still, that this man was the same person, essentially, that now fought Principle above the devastated streets of Faraday City. He had always come across as somewhat odd, but harmless. To think that he had hidden his true self all this time beggared belief. A small, unassuming man that had neither pretensions nor deceit, as far as she had known, Sean had always only ever been her little neighbour.

"You are going to get yourself killed! Look around you!" Sean's fingers, his illusory fingers, interlocked with hers, keeping a tight grip. "You have no place here! And I am only a danger to you. If I know you have powers, so does he and when he has killed Principle, he will come for you!"

"Let him try." She sounded confident, but that was all it was. Inside, her heart pounded against her chest. "I'm not afraid of him. He's you."

"It's not me! I'm not even me!" Sean gripped his head with his free hand, shaking it in disbelief. "The person you know has never existed. Psycona never existed. They are merely disguises for a creature from another world. Zjahn. That's my, his, our name. Zjahn Zjmit. And we, he, I, are so different from you I could never explain it. We have different values, different ways of seeing the universe. We ..."

"... are in pain." Something cracked like thunder above their heads and a blazing shooting star screamed towards the ground. "You say you're different, but I've seen it before. In the tears of a parent who has lost their child. In the eyes of a defeated soldier, watching invading armies overrun their homeland. In the actions of someone that has lost ... everything. You are in pain. He is in pain. And you've been alone for so very long, you've forgotten that even your people had to rely on each other in times of great turmoil."

He gaped at her, but she could read it all in the thoughts of the man, the alien, above. In the few moments since she had revealed her powers, the few hours since she had learned she had any powers at all, she could feel it growing. If she tried, if she wanted to, she could read every mind on Earth and learn everything. She didn't, and wouldn't, but she could and that both fascinated and terrified her. To imagine what it must feel like to have billions of minds within reach. What could that do to someone that could not switch it off, as she had learned she could do? No-one should have that power. Least of all an investigative journalist. The urge to misuse it could overwhelm anyone's ethical principles.

"How do you know that?" Sean stepped away, slipping down the rubble and sending a miniature avalanche sliding into the crater. His fingers released hers. "No-one is strong enough to read my mind. Not on this planet."

"Apparently, I am." She could only shrug. The day before, she would have laughed at the thought of having powers. "And I think this is how we're going to bring him back. Psycona. Zjahn. You. But, first, we have to reach him. I don't know how I know, but I think this needs me to actually, you know, touch him."

She grimaced at that, emphasising how fraught with difficulty that endeavour could prove. Sean had said, himself, or as much as said it. Phaross, or Psycona, and she really needed to decide what persona to call him when she wrote the story, leaving out her involvement, of course, considered her a threat. And she had this moment told this fragment of him that she needed to touch him to fix him. That was dumb, even for her.

Too late to take it back, Betty decided the only way forward was to actually go forward. Into the battlefield, where Principle fought against perhaps the most dangerous opponent of his life. An opponent that, even now, had particles invading Principle's body, bringing the world's greatest hero closer to death with each passing second. Of course she had to save him. After everything Principle had done, and Psycona for his part, she had to save them both.

If Psycona would allow it.

-+-

In the epicentre ...

He had little left to give. This was more than mere exhaustion, or depleted powers from a year in a place that did not have the necessary energies to restore them. This was different than anything he had felt before. A lethargy prompted not by pushing himself beyond his limits, but by something he had only experienced as a child, before his powers began to manifest. He felt ... ill.

Principle spread out his arms to the sides, breaking the slabs of concrete that Zjahn had telekinetically manipulated to smash into Principle from both directions. His friend knew that would not hurt him much, but that was not the point. Zjahn played with him, like a cat toying with a fly. Paws batting him one way, then the other, offering escape and cruelly taking it away at the last second. Zjahn knew exactly what he was doing. He dragged this battle out for a reason, and Principle needed to find out why.

Was it in order to await the response from the humans? No. Many years ago, when supers began to emerge on this planet, a tacit understanding came into being. The humans had tried to stop the burgeoning field of super-villains and that had come at a great cost. Then, they tried fighting alongside the supers that stood on the side of right, decency and justice, and even then, casualties suffered. Thus, the nominal response for many years was to allow the supers to do what they had to do and try to save as many people as they could.

Oh, they had Super-Response Teams ready to roll out at a moment's notice. Armoured soldiers graced by outdated designs by Drone, but they could only engage as a last resort. An endgame scenario for any time the hero community could not contain the villains they faced. That contingency had only ever seen action once before, but they itched to fight. Principle expected they may need to deploy sooner, rather than later, at this point.

A pain wracked his chest. A pain he could not describe. A pain so powerful, it caused his legs to crumble beneath him. His hand clutched at his chest as pains began to spark and run up and down his left arm. If he didn't know any better, he would think it a heart attack. Fingers of his pained hand gripped the dirt and rubble before him, becoming clawed as the pain throbbed and pulsed within and, above, Zjahn hovered, not even attempting to finish him off.

This was his plan all along! With difficulty, Principle turned his gaze toward his chest, vision burrowing through the high-density cells of his body, peering deep within himself, to his heart. A strong, powerful heart that could power the entirety of the States, if used like that. A heart that fluttered and beat out a rhythm that had gone awry. Principle saw it, then. A blockage that even he could not reach, made of millions of microscopic particles clumping together.

Zjahn had won. And he had known it all along.