T U N E S O F T H E famous Amazing Grace swayed along with the sombreness of the vicinity as the trumpets blew to the wind.
Six men, soldiers, dressed in black, carried a casket with white gloved hands, walking at a slow pace as a twenty-one gun salute was held.
Large cannons emitted their contents at the heart of the city, with thousands of people walking behind the casket until it was lowered to the concrete six foot hole below.
Far out in the city, thousands of fans had laid out flowers arranged in a way that they formed one large lightning bolt on the ground.
The casket was black and sleek, reflecting the dark sky up above which was blanketed with clouds that threatened to release their bowels down on the forsaken city.
It was lowered down with conveyer belt bindings as the large blue lightning bolt emblem representing the greatest hero the world had ever known sparkled in contrast to the black of the casket.
The entire city was in tears, following the sapphire speedster's death after it was confirmed by papparazo who had been hungry for a story that same ill-fated day when he stumbled upon the Blue Streak battling it out with another dangerous being that way thought to be the cause of his death.
Everything had happened so fast but he had managed to catch sight of the Blue Streak exploding into nothing and destroying whatever he a as fighting together with him.
The footage went viral in a matter of seconds and a week later, the millitary had decided to give him a send-off for all the work he had done for the city, which was something Carol had to differ with.
'They were burying him like a soldier. He was more than that, ' so Carol had said after having been the last person to have seen him alive.
Still having this thought in her mind, Carol had decided to attend the Blue Streak Memorial where they were probably laying down an empty coffin.
In Brookhaven, around the same time, Nicolas Johnson or a part of him, was being laid down in a mahogany made casket, right next to Jenna Austin-Johnson's father's grave; Timothy.
Jenna stood closest to the grave, her eyes glazed from crying the previous night before the funeral. She held her cool throughout the entire event, holding her daughter in front of her who understood that her father was gone and was not coming back any time soon.
She (Jenna) was in a black short dress and her hair flowed with the wind of that cold morning. She approached the grave with the coffin lying inside it and grabbed a mound of red soil between her fingers. Natasha watched her mother and did the same.
They both cast the soil onto the coffin and Jenna felt her eyes begin to water as she remembered that day, a week earlier, just moments after he had appeared to her in that bizarre moment when he had come to ask for her help and she had told him what to do.
All that time, Jenna had wanted her husband to become the hero the city had always known despite his answer.
Well, he did. Because of her, so Jenna had kept telling herself, torturing herself with the guilt of being responsible for her husband's death.
If only she hadn't pressured him to do so. Maybe he could still be alive...
She fought back her tears, refusing to give in to cry as she recalled how Carol had appeared at her house that night and Jenna saw what was in her hands. A piece of charred cloth with a lightning bolt emblem barely visible, which she immediately recognized and all her strength drained from her as she went to her knees next to Carol who fell by her side.
Jenna had been given a moment to give remarks about her husband by the Reverend but she couldn't. She just couldn't. The words would not form. Her mouth was glued shut.
"Hey..." someone patted her on the shoulder as Jenna turned to meet Rachel.
They hugged each other before Rachel also cast soil to the coffin, followed by Damon who too found himself hugging Jenna.
Carter Hall was also present, having being a great part to the final days of Nick and behind him was a woman—Katie Patterson. It had taken her a very short time to realize who the Blue Streak actually was as she and Carter cast their soil.
Peter Andrews and Susan Claire followed soon after while Jenna met with more familiar faces like Mona; the woman who had helped her give birth to Natasha back in Hawaii.
"He was a good man," came Taika, Mona's brother, also hugging Jenna.
Jenna couldn't believe they'd flown all the way from Hawaii to there and she couldn't have been more grateful at the number of friends her husband had managed to bring up with him.
Mona took Natasha with her after the funeral was over, seeing that Jenna was not yet ready to leave the place.
Natasha hugged her mother, herself feeling a great loss within her but one she could not yet understand and hugging her mother helped her with it before turning to leave with Mona.
Apart from the two men that were standing some distance away with their spades at hand, Jenna was standing by herself next to her husband's coffin which only had a piece of cloth stashed inside it and had it not been for Peter Andrews and his close ties with the city's chief medical examiner, she would have had a lot of trouble trying to acquire a casket.
Jenna closed her eyes, trying to feel anything, anything that would perhaps tell her that her husband was still alive. There was no sign.
Not this time.
Nicolas James Johnson
1984-2016Loving Father, Husband & FriendThe words were inscribed on his grave as Jenna turned to leave, feeling that they had left out hero but was somehow glad they had because it was her who had forced that upon her husband, or so she told herself.
Soon after, the men with the spades got to work and covered up the entire grave with soil and the sky finally let up with rain.
About a month later, towards one evening, Jenna had met up with Carter and Katie at the facility.
"I need you to help me with something..." she had said to them.
H E R B R E A T H I N G W A S fast while she felt the wind brush across her face. She rounded a corner which led towards her house where she came to a stop after her usual morning jog.Opening the door, Natasha Johnson found her mother in the kitchen as she walked towards the fridge."Breakfast is ready, " came Jenna, whipping something from the pan, "I made pancakes, your favorite! ""I think I'm gonna be late for school, mom! " Natasha teased before brushing back a strand of her golden pony-tailed hair and taking a gulp of water from a bottle."You know how great your pancakes are!" Natasha added.Jenna smiled as she handed her a plate with two pieces of pancake.She took time to notice how her daughter had grown over the past fifteen years from when she was just the tiniest, cutest thing back o
N A T A S H A W A S W A L K I N G over to her seat in class and her eyes momentarily landed on the boy seated just right across her desk to the right, a desk in front of her. This had happened a couple of times before but she always pretended to be looking at something else-or was he doing that too?Passing by his desk, Natasha noticed he was scribbling something in his book. No. He was drawing. He was kind of an artist-okay, he was a great artist. Natasha briefly looked back at all the things he had drawn, all of which she never actually got to see up close.The boy never showed anyone his drawings, so Natasha would always catch him sketching something during class and at times she would be so 'drawn' to the art work that she would fail to hear Mr. Eisenhower point at her to explain the Bernoulli's Principle.Natasha was placing her books on her desk and moving to her
L U C A S K I N G W A S still having a hard time in deciding whether to join the Warriors or not and it so happened that he wasn't the only one with a full plate as Susan Claire was seated in her office at the precinct, going through a group of files scattered all over her desk.The APD were caught in a fix with the rampantly rising drug smuggling cartels which started out in 2026—two years earlier."We just caught one, Captain!" came a voice from her door.Yes. Claire was the department's new police captain, currently going on six years after Mayor Joshua Avery was impeached and charged with the assassination of the National Guard Commander back in 2016 together with the mastermind; Trevor Brandon, who is still in Atlanta's most wanted list after his escape from Georgia and has never been heard of since.Following the events of the impeachment,
T O W A R D S T H E E V E N I N G of the same day, Natasha was just getting back home from school to find piles of boxes lying all around the living room.Her mother appeared from the stairwell in a sweater with the sleeves rolled up to her elbows and her hair was ruffled up a little. She had a large box in her hands."Oh, hey! I was just gathering some old stuff from the attic.""What old stuff?"Natasha set down her bag and went to help her mother with the box she was carrying."Well, you know...stuff. The attic's getting crowded.""What are you going to do to with it?""Katie told me about this charity home and I it sounded like a good idea."Natasha's eyes moved past where her mother was standing, making her turn to see what she was looking at."Are those...Dad's clo
P O L I C E C A P T A I N S U S A N Claire slid her glock into her holster next to her hip as she walked out of the precinct, wearing sunglasses.She stopped next to her car—a Dodge Challenger Hell Cat and watched two detectives move past her with another man between them whose hands were cuffed in front of him. She waited until they had gotten with him into another car, a yellow cab and she did the same.The cab was first to get out of the precinct's parking lot, followed by the captain's car.Claire checked the time displayed on a small screen at the dashboard, next to the steer wheel, which was charged by a high power battery as well as the rest of the car after an advancement was made to replace fuel energy. Half past four o'clock in the afternoon—the exact time the delivery guy was expected to show up at the exch
S H E S T O O D A few feet away from the tall mound of stone and marble that cast a shadow over her from the setting sun.For an unknown reason, Natasha found herself visiting that place more than once in a week, just to let out the day's weight and gaze upon the twenty-foot statue of the Blue Streak which captured him in a sprinting position and the large lightning bolt emblem plastered to his chest being the only thing that had color as a blue glowing lamp enclosed in a glass case was attached on top of it, highlighting the emblem.The rest of the sculpture was a solid dark grey with one of his feet, the right one, erected onto a pedestal while the left one was raised and bending almost forty-five degrees to give the perfect running position. TO WHOEVER SEEKS TRUE STRENGTH&nbs
T H E L A S T T I M E she had set foot at that place was way back before she'd started high school.Apparently, her mother never really talked about that place as much.The building was one of the biggest structures in the city with five storeys. There were other buildings with more storeys but this one covered a pretty big area of land and was entirely made with glass from the outside.CARTER•LABSNatasha still didn't get the title which was plastered at the very center of the facility. Why was there no space separating the two. As in, Carter Labs.Oh well, must be a 'successful scientist' thing. "Hi there, Natasha!" called Katie Patterso
"M O M, F O R T H E one hundredth time, my stuff is okay!" cried out Natasha while dragging her wheeled bag out of her room."OK, just making sure you don't forget anything, honey."Natasha then noticed the long look her mother was giving her."You know I'm only going for three days, Mom."Jenna moved over to the door before grabbing her daughter's bag.She put the bag in the trunk of her grey Prius as Natasha got in the car."Alright, students. Listen up, please," began the fairly tall man in a broken suit and short brown hair.It was Mr. Gilbert-the History teacher.He was addressing his class."I guess everyone knows where we're going today.The Museum of Natural History in New York..."A student raised his hand."Yes, Lucy!"
T H E Y S T O P P E D A T Natasha's place where Lucas helped her set up the new Life Cell before arriving at Carter•Labs towards the afternoon."Hello?" called Natasha at the entrance."Shouldn't there be like security for this place?" Lucas asked, still marvelling at the size of the building.A whirring sound followed the moment Natasha set foot at the entrance and a machine that looked like a large kind of gun appeared right in front of Natasha."You sure you've been here before?" Lucas asked, wanting to pull back Natasha from the entrance.A bright green beam of light then flowed out of the machine and traced down Natasha's body from head to toe.Identity confirmed. Natasha Austin-Johnson.It was an automated voice that came from the interactive consciousness installed in the
J E N N A G O T H O M E from the hospital just in time to find her daughter alighting the school bus.She grabbed her and hugged her, almost squeezing the life out of her."Mom, it was just three days!""Well, you're still my daughter and nobody's taking that away from me, so deal with it!" Jenna said comically, hugging Natasha even tighter."I missed you too, mom."Natasha was more than relieved to learn that her mother had no idea of what had happened back in New York. She would have been freaking out as if the embrace for having not seen her for less than three days wasn't enough.The beeping noise of the alarm startled Natasha after which she suddenly found herself lashing out her left hand and hitting the device to make it stop.Her face was smothered into a pillow and did not feel like getting out of be
"W E A R E S O dead!" began Cassie after she, Natasha, Lucas and Bianca got back to the museum only to find out that everyone was gone — the students, that is."Hey, why were you following us?" Cassie turned to Bianca.She gave a faked surprise expression."I don't know what you're talking about.""You...""Speaking of death," Lucas cut in, "Here comes Mr.Gilbert."The History teacher appeared from an office while walking with a security guard. His face clearly showed he was furious or was it concern and/or relief?"Where have the four of you been?""I was the one who saw them sneak out!" Bianca blurted out."Nice going, genius!" Cassie shot back, "and that's how I know you followed us!"Bianca rolled her eyes."Ok, the important thing is that all of you
N E W Y O R K C I T Y. They got there towards noon as the coach cruised through Manhattan."We're here!" said an exhilarated Cassie Richards, dragging Natasha out of the bus.Natasha took a moment, observing the scenery filled with skyscrapers with jumbo-trons and the streets lined with theaters as well as yellow taxi cabs moving to and fro on the freeways."Well, it's pretty much like Atlanta but way bigger and with taller buildings, I guess," Natasha said.They got to the entrance of the Museum of Natural History where they were lead through the reception by a guide. Lucas lagged a little behind to look at the statue erected in front of the museum which depicted a sculpture of a man riding a horse.
"M O M, F O R T H E one hundredth time, my stuff is okay!" cried out Natasha while dragging her wheeled bag out of her room."OK, just making sure you don't forget anything, honey."Natasha then noticed the long look her mother was giving her."You know I'm only going for three days, Mom."Jenna moved over to the door before grabbing her daughter's bag.She put the bag in the trunk of her grey Prius as Natasha got in the car."Alright, students. Listen up, please," began the fairly tall man in a broken suit and short brown hair.It was Mr. Gilbert-the History teacher.He was addressing his class."I guess everyone knows where we're going today.The Museum of Natural History in New York..."A student raised his hand."Yes, Lucy!"
T H E L A S T T I M E she had set foot at that place was way back before she'd started high school.Apparently, her mother never really talked about that place as much.The building was one of the biggest structures in the city with five storeys. There were other buildings with more storeys but this one covered a pretty big area of land and was entirely made with glass from the outside.CARTER•LABSNatasha still didn't get the title which was plastered at the very center of the facility. Why was there no space separating the two. As in, Carter Labs.Oh well, must be a 'successful scientist' thing. "Hi there, Natasha!" called Katie Patterso
S H E S T O O D A few feet away from the tall mound of stone and marble that cast a shadow over her from the setting sun.For an unknown reason, Natasha found herself visiting that place more than once in a week, just to let out the day's weight and gaze upon the twenty-foot statue of the Blue Streak which captured him in a sprinting position and the large lightning bolt emblem plastered to his chest being the only thing that had color as a blue glowing lamp enclosed in a glass case was attached on top of it, highlighting the emblem.The rest of the sculpture was a solid dark grey with one of his feet, the right one, erected onto a pedestal while the left one was raised and bending almost forty-five degrees to give the perfect running position. TO WHOEVER SEEKS TRUE STRENGTH&nbs
P O L I C E C A P T A I N S U S A N Claire slid her glock into her holster next to her hip as she walked out of the precinct, wearing sunglasses.She stopped next to her car—a Dodge Challenger Hell Cat and watched two detectives move past her with another man between them whose hands were cuffed in front of him. She waited until they had gotten with him into another car, a yellow cab and she did the same.The cab was first to get out of the precinct's parking lot, followed by the captain's car.Claire checked the time displayed on a small screen at the dashboard, next to the steer wheel, which was charged by a high power battery as well as the rest of the car after an advancement was made to replace fuel energy. Half past four o'clock in the afternoon—the exact time the delivery guy was expected to show up at the exch
T O W A R D S T H E E V E N I N G of the same day, Natasha was just getting back home from school to find piles of boxes lying all around the living room.Her mother appeared from the stairwell in a sweater with the sleeves rolled up to her elbows and her hair was ruffled up a little. She had a large box in her hands."Oh, hey! I was just gathering some old stuff from the attic.""What old stuff?"Natasha set down her bag and went to help her mother with the box she was carrying."Well, you know...stuff. The attic's getting crowded.""What are you going to do to with it?""Katie told me about this charity home and I it sounded like a good idea."Natasha's eyes moved past where her mother was standing, making her turn to see what she was looking at."Are those...Dad's clo