The bar-goers cheer, raising their glasses into the air, toasting to their Starfox, their hero. I can't blame them. After the story he told me about saving a child from the blackout and the wicked blue glow currently surrounding him with his lightning whip crackling from his hand... he is damn majestic.

"You should have turned down this job," he growls.

"I wish I could've, Sparky, but I didn't really have a choice," I reply.

"Sparky, huh? I kinda like it."

I strike my volted blade across the bar top, sending a shower of violet sparks in his direction. He grunts and shields his face with his empty hand. I take the opening and kick him square in the chest, sending him staggering backward into a table. He doesn't crash through it, but his lightning whip slices the adjacent chairs into charred, smoking pieces.

A few of the bar-goers scream in surprise and I feel a stab of guilt for endangering innocent people... even if they might be Starfoxes. While Macon rises to his feet, I turn for the darkened side of the bar, praying for an escape. A steel door sits beneath an unlit 'EXIT' sign, beckoning me. The front doors are closer, but taking this fight out into the streets is the last thing I need on my bad rap sheet for the night.

I dodge around the cluttered tables and the randomly placed chairs, the disorganization becoming an obstacle. I shove at the chairs, sending them scooting and clattering in my wake. Macon's back up on his feet, the buzz of his lightning whip rising as he nears me. My heart climbs up my throat, my pulse pounds in my eardrums. When I clear the mess of tables, I reach for the door handle, stumbling to a stop.

I hear the whoosh of his whip before it licks against the steel door in one quick flick. The burst of lightning blinds me for a brief moment and I blink hard, sucking in a startled breath. Bits of blue fire singe my hand, and I yank my arm away from the door, gripping my volted knife tightly as I whirl around to face Macon.

This was such a bad idea. A terrible, idiotic idea.

"Please," Macon mocks, placing his empty hand over his heart as he looms closer. "Don't go. Stay a while." His whip sizzles as he chuckles.

"I definitely see why they want you dead." I drop my burnt hand to my side, trying to ignore the searing pain that seems to reach my bones. "You're quite a handful."

"Who wants me dead, lovely?"

I reach behind me slowly. Finding the door handle, I wrap my fingers around it while keeping my violet blade in my other hand pointed at Macon. He stops for a moment, his brows creasing in the glow of his blue lightning. Then he stills, the brilliance of his electricity flickering the slightest.

"You work for them?" His voice is different, and I can't pick out his emotions. If the damn lights worked in this joint, it wouldn't be as much of a problem. "You work for the House of Horns?"

I don't answer his question. Instead, I use his moment as a weakness to my swiftness and slip out the door, closing it shut before he even has a chance to react. There isn't much time to think or act, I just know the only way I will be able to get a one-up on Macon is if I surprise him. There isn't much in the dimly lit alley, but instead of hiding behind the dumpster like he would assume, I bolt behind the corner of another building. When he has his back turned...I'll strike.

The door to the Bitbucket bangs open just as I find safe cover behind the crumbling stone wall. The buzz of Macon's whip fills the alley. I turn off the volts on my knife and let it fade, then use the reflection of the blade as a mirror, angling my wrist around the corner-wall until I can see Macon standing under a dull dangling light.

"Little Elf," he sings, his voice echoing through the alley. "I know you're out here." I twist my blade to mirror him as he strides across the alley, nearing the dumpster I'd chosen not to hide behind.

Surprisingly, his whip is gone, his lightning only lingering around his fingertips now.

"I should have known you were with the House of Horns right when I saw you," he says as he creeps closer to the dumpster. "The lorkins found you by accident, didn't they? They forced you into working for them. They sent you here because Venjo Zhane couldn't stomach the job, huh, Little Elf?"

Damn, is he a seer too?

I try to keep my blade steady as I watch him in its reflection, but tremors still worm through my bones and I nearly drop the knife on the cement. I take deep breaths in through my nose and out through my mouth. Glancing back down at the blade, I see Macon round the corner of the dumpster. The lightning at his fingers flare with intensity, ready to protect himself, but the fire dies when he sees I'm not there.

I'm at his back before he can take his next breath with my knife pointed at the side of his neck. With a press of a button, the blade's volts are back on and the sudden heat at Macon's neck has him freezing.

"Don't call me 'Little Elf'," I say into his ear. "That's what they call me."

"What would you prefer I call you, lovely?"

"Nothing," I say and touch the tip of the blade against his skin. His body convulses for a moment, then he drops to his knees. I remove the end of my violet blade from his skin and cover up my creeping guilt with snark. "I was wondering if you were immune to all electricity or just yours." I shrug my shoulders. "Question answered."

Also not a seer or he would've seen that coming.

"Shit," Macon groans. "That stung like a bitch." His hand comes to his neck, the sparking electricity shifting to a white glow. The angry red burn on his neck vanishes when he removes his hand.

He... he healed himself. I never thought something like this was possible. If anyone else knew about this power, what would they do to get their hands on him? It's better I just put him out of his misery now. Being at the clutches of another has brought me nothing but pain and strife.

But I can't. I can't ever seem to do anything to save myself.

"What are you?" I ask, unable to hide the awe in my voice.

"Just your everyday mage," he grunts, rising to his knees.

I don't lift my blade, unable to move. "I've never seen anything like what you just did. It's not normal."

"Neither are you," he answers, turning to face me. There is no electricity at his fingers, no deadly fire in his eyes. "Face it, you and I have never been normal and never will be."

"Don't act like you know a thing about me." My words are bitter and my voice is sharp.

"Look at you!" he laughs. "You're a fuckin' elf! I can't even remember the last time I saw one of you. Your white hair and your pointed ears. Your allure and your grace when you move. Go ahead. Tell me you're normal, that you're like every human in Voltyss."

I'm silent. Am I that obvious? Am I like a gigapad with no password to its contents? I don't give in to his pokes and prods at my soul.

"If I don't kill you," I tell him. "They'll kill me. This is my normal. This is my life."

Macon cocks his head to the side as if he's thinking. "What if I disappear for a while?"

His offer stuns me. "What?" The word slips from my open lips.

"I'll hide out for a bit, and you tell Jojin that you offed me. Then we're both safe." He holds his hands out to his sides like he is presenting a prize of sorts. "We both win."

There is a possibility to his words, but no promise. "And what happens when he finds out I left you alive? Don't tell me you plan to stay hidden forever."

"We'll come to that point when we reach it, and when we do, you'll have me as an ally."

I eye him skeptically. "How do I know this isn't a trick, Sparky?"

He smirks at the nickname. "Why would you think that?"

"You're a Starfox," I answer. "It's what you do."

Macon grins widely now, his white teeth flashing beneath the dangling light. "But my word is worth more than ten million shinies. You spare my life, I'll help save yours."

I act like I am debating his offer, even though I will take it. This buys me more time to think of a way to escape from the House of Horns and live without fear of being tracked down, while leaving my hands clean of blood. I just can't put my finger on him or his motives, but he is able to pin me down and point me out so easily, as if it is another talent he has.

"Deal," I say, but I don't trust him.

"Then this is where we part ways, lovely," he says.

"Stop calling me 'lovely'."

"So I get a nickname, but you don't? You didn't want me to call you 'Little Elf' anymore."

"My name is Alyndra," I inform him, raising my chin the slightest. "Alyndra Ilira."

"Doesn't that just roll off the tongue?" he says, his eyes darting down to my lips. "Guessin' you already know my name then?"

"I sure do...Macon Falcove."

He playfully shivers. "Oh, say my name again."

"Shut up," I say and shove his chest. But before I can pull my hand away, he grabs hold of my wrist and pulls me closer to him.

"I don't want to say I hope I'll see you again," he says, his voice low in the quiet alley. My heart pounds in my chest and I fear he can feel it through his leather jacket. "That would mean you were having trouble with the Horns. But I do want to see you again, without the volted blade, as badass as that thing is. You're an interesting soul, Alyndra Ilira."

Then he steps back and disappears through the door of the Bitbucket. The heat of him leaves and I find myself feeling cold in the shadows of the alley.

#

I'm too wired to sleep.

It's late into the sleeping hours by the time I arrive back at my apartment, the only place that I feel truly safe. I turn off every light in the small square space and lay on my bed, staring out the glass window into the Aura.

I glance over at the digiclock on the wall blinking 2:37 at me, telling me to go to sleep, but my mind will not turn off.

My encounter with Macon replays in my head, the emotions of it all wrecking me over and over until I'm curling into my sheets as I stare through the glass, up at the one star in the empty Night sky.

Then I can't take it anymore.

I toss the sheets away from my legs and crawl across the bed, leaning down to scoop up my gigapad from the floor and flop back down onto my thin pillow. The tech is light in my hand, so light that sometimes when I'm using it while lying down, it slips out of my hands and hits the bridge of my nose. I don't risk it tonight and roll over onto my side.

Just like other times when I can't fall asleep because my fear of the dark, I browse the Net for memories of the past. Sometimes I watch videos of elves and the artistic way that they moved and they sang. Other times I watch the human channels which are full of ridiculous pranks and painful looking fails that results in laughter from the person camming the thing. I don't understand it, but it's still amusing in some strange way.

But tonight my mind lingers to the time before, now known as the Dawn, and the fallen cities that once thrived in the Sun Queen's light—what I could have seen with my own eyes. It is like escaping away into another future that was once possible.

There was Autumnspire, a mortal elven city on the eastern coast. The powerful Farfina line ruled there—the strongest, swiftest, most beautiful of the earthen elves. Nestled deep in the Maple Grove, their copper towers could once be seen peeking over the amber and orange leaves of the trees, shining in the glimmer of the sun. The elves left for the Skyscape when the Evernight fell.

In the north was Juniper City, home to a stout human king who closed the walls around his skyscraper city when the Night fell. I find past pictures of a world of sparkling snow drifting past windows that shone like mirrors, and snapshots of frost-winged eagles soaring through wispy clouds that drifted between the buildings. Snow-capped mountains paint the landscape behind, a seemingly endless terrain.

I scour the Net for more history, from the scorched oldland of Emberton to the trading harbor of Saltcross Bay, from the barren gloomfields to the bountiful hazelhills. There had been so much difference between them all, yet there was one thing they had in common—life. Not just a beating heart and working lungs, but hopes and dreams and wishes made on stars that once used to be in the night sky.

Voltyss was created to feed on those dreams and wishes. When the tech-humans built this city, it was for tourists of all sorts to come spend their shinies on chasing hopes and buying gadgets they didn't need. Once the Evernight fell and every star dropped from the sky, bringing nightmares and death, dreams and wishes shattered like glass on pavement.

I pull the thin sheet on my bed up to my neck and think back to the Cobalt District and the blinking lights meant to protect those living there. I think of the House of Horns and the House of Teeth. The Starfoxes. The Mercs and the tech-human Court. The Duskers addicted to the Ether and Nether they sell illegally. Then I think of those just like me, forced into the darkest corners of life.

This city isn't an endless well of wishes and dreams. No. It has a festering hole in its heart, and I don't know if it can be fixed. But maybe, just maybe, if I survive this city, I can help the lost find their way too.