His Final Cure

"…you cursed orphan!"

Those words, though they meant no more than a rude complain from a disrespectful boy of her age, cut deeply into the brittle mind of the young girl.

On her way back to the mansion, grey clouds gloomed over the little town. Brown tiles crackled in the cold wind on the roof tops, accompanied by the hoarse sound of crows. Covering herself in a oversized hoodie, the little girl ran down the empty road, her pinkish-red hair covering her forehead in a messy manner.

"Look who this is!" exclaimed her grey-haired uncle when he saw her in the garden, "If this isn't my favorite little icicle!"

The girl hugged the pillar-like leg of the man and wept gently, tears staining the man's white lab coat. However, the nickname he called her made her feel warm and secure inside.

"Now, now, what happened? Did someone call you by a bad name again?" The rough hands of the man gently patted the small head under the hoodie. He then kneeled down and wiped away her tears with his thumb.

"Don't worry, Tracy," he said with a calm voice as the young girl lifted her head up. The amber pupils of hers met the brown of the man. 

"No one is ever cursed…we all have our purpose to be alive. And yours, dear, is to make this world a better place."

◆ ◆ ◆

"Shut up…" Tracy murmured in annoyance. Her fists clenched. The smug smile she always wears on her face disappeared. "You are the one that lost your purpose!"

"Huh? Did I hear that right?" Dirac breathed heavily as he responded, half of his face drenched in his own blood, "I am a warrior fighting for survival, yet a brat that hides behind her master and her little friends get to say I'm 'lost'? Quit joking!"

"Enough!" Tracy charged at him. She ran in large leaps, until the air beneath her feet condensed into invisible stairs, with the large pressure sending her higher into the air with each step. An ice spear longer than her height began condensing in her hands, as she raised it above her head-

"Now! Edwin!" she yelled into the distance while still airborne.

Dirac felt the familiar feeling of space twisting around him as a blue flash shot at his direction. In the meantime, the aura next to him seemed to grow heavier…seems that the two boys, hidden in the corner a second ago, decided to come out to play…

Deadly strikes from three directions centered Dirac in the middle. Time seemed to slow down for Dirac, as his mind tried to grasp the severity of his situation: an icy spear aimed at his head from above; a slash from an unseen dimension coming at him; a police car's wreckage flying at him with enormous inertia…

A twisted smile stretched across the blood-stained face.

"You think this would kill me?!" The furious scream announced Dirac's unwillingness to give up. "I AM NOT GOING DOWN TODAY!!!"

He extended his arms sideways. Instead of a white sphere of plasma forming in his palms like always, a halo of white-hot matter appeared next to Dirac, with his stretched arms as the diameter. The devices on his hands crackled with sparks, signaling that they were at full power. The ring grew thicker and thicker, trembling as its light flickered violently.

This blast, however, wasn't as concentrated as energy beams for it sacrificed intensity for area of effect. It would barely melt iron after spreading for a few meters, yet the deadly radiations emitted would still fatally burn the incoming attackers.

And then, release.

The white beast, caged in the ring-shaped forcefield, escaped with all its might.

In exact moment, the blue flash rushing towards Dirac stopped midway. In fact, all the other attacks were also diverted away from their target.

Edwin stretched his right hand in front of him, then laid it on a concrete block sticking out of the ground.

It was one of the countless blocks that were planted around Dirac in the past ten minutes, which have formed a ragged fence around him.

Then, he lightly turned his palm, and spoke in the same emotionless tone he always did.

"Shut it in."

And a concrete dome rose to the sky.

◆ ◆ ◆

There aren't many ways to kill a soldier with the both the sharpest spear and the toughest shield.

One of the solutions was to use his own weapon against himself – especially when he cannot attack and defend simultaneously.

Accomplishing such a feat took the planning and incredible physical efforts of three espers with different powers: pulling objects into hyperspace, decreasing the bond strength of molecules, and manipulating the mass of objects. With Emilio's power, large chunks of boulders were hurled across vast distances easily. With the addition of Edwin's gravity control, they were guided precisely to their targeted landing sites. Before hitting the ground, Tracy would be responsible for the final enhancements to the flying boulders. Indeed, her stepping off the flying chunks of concrete weren't just means of dodging Dirac's attacks, but a chance to coat one side of the chunk in metal. By melting chunks of metal and hardening them again on the surfaces, the large concrete blocks became highly reflective on one side. After that, each individual section of the final wall would fall to their designated spots.

But then, how could Dirac not tell that a dome was being built around him? How did the dome not exist just a second before it appeared?

The answer: hyperspace manipulation.

The concrete walls thrown towards Dirac were "incomplete" – most of their shapes were moved into hyperspace beforehand, somewhere inaccessible to all.

Except one individual, of course.

Thus, a reflective cage meters in radius were built around Dirac without him noticing.

Lastly, it was time for the soldier to use his "spear".

The joint attack from all sides from the three teens forced Dirac to release a blast that lacks intensity, but high in volume of effect; a blast of mostly radiation, not hot plasma.

A blast that can be mostly deflected by reflective surfaces.

Plus, it was confirmed previously that Dirac's force field had a huge flaw: it was needed for both defending and shaping each plasma blast. Now that all the efforts were put into containing the plasma for the blast…

Dirac became a twig amidst a forest fire.

The soldier didn't just shoot his sharpest spear at himself, but in the process, lowered his toughest shield.

◆ ◆ ◆

It was too late when Dirac finally realized the trap.

"GAHH-" 

The roar of sudden realization was muffled by the enclosing dome of debris, before it was completely drowned in a loud thud that rumbled the insides of every living person in the city. White lights shot out of the thin cracks in the rough and blocky dome, then dimmed immediately, as if a star was about to be born under the rubble, but was extinguished immediately.

A stream of black smoke rose between the cracked walls, like a dark ghost ascending into the night, which was painted red by the burning surroundings.

Edwin pulled his palm away from the outer wall of the dome and stumbled backwards.

"Was that it?"

What answered him was the crackling of burning materials around the site, and the sound of police sirens screeching from afar.

Suddenly, the dome collapsed, kicking up a cloud of dust. It slowly settled to reveal the few concrete blocks that were left standing amidst the sea of rubble, like tomb stones for a fallen monster.

"It's…finally over." Emilio dragged his injured body close to Edwin. The teen's blonde hair was stained by grey dust and dark-red blood of his own. "Wait…did you see Tracy?"

Edwin lifted his head up and saw the young girl lying unconscious in the rubble. Parts of her exposed thighs were reddened with scratches. She twitched in pain while trying to sit up.

"Still alive?" Tracy coughed and shouted at the two boys.

Too tired to even respond, Edwin slightly waved his hand at her. But the question remained in his head: was that it? Where was Dirac?

"I assume he's gone – fried in to dust." Emilio stared at the broken dome of rubble, which collapsed under its own weight. As it disintegrated, the reflective inner surface of the structure showed, reflecting the charred ground inside it.

"We need to be sure," murmured Edwin, trying to walk towards the center of the dome. Emilio, carried half of Edwin's weight on his shoulder, his expression tightened with caution.

As if approaching a broken cage of a man-devouring beast, cold sweat dripped down their face as approached where Dirac's body should be. Slowly, Emilio peeked over a remaining part of the dome…

Nothing.

There wasn't a thing where Dirac should be at, other than burn marks, charred soil and…

A gaping hole on the ground.

"The hell…"

While Emilio froze where he was, Edwin's eyes widened with the worst possibility crashing into his mind.

"Damn it…" he cursed silently, before flinging away Emilio's arm, which carried Edwin.

Ignoring the blonde teen shouting behind him, Edwin dragged his injured body across the rugged terrain, into the wide hole on the ground, which, as expected by him, lead to the sewage underground. Below him were the trails left behind by the devil himself – a trail of blood, mixed with black flakes of what looked like burnt skin.

"You bastard…" murmured Edwin, trying to force his body to move faster, but being incapable of exercising his teleportation made it impossible.

"This isn't over yet!" He bit his teeth tightly, until blood oozed out between his teeth. "I will not let you get your hands on that bomb of yours!"

◆ ◆ ◆

The trail of dried blood lead deeper and deeper into the tunnels, until it reached a connection to a familiar subway tunnel – the exact location where Edwin and Tracy first learned about Dirac's hideous plan. Ramming through the secret entrance that guarded the lab, Edwin quickly lost balance and threw himself on the metallic bridge that lead to the center of the huge cavity. The space was almost identical to it was just days ago, when Edwin first found the prototype of the anti-matter container lying on the floor below him. The metal bridge still extended through the diameter of the spherical space, where, in the center of it, lies something that wasn't here before…

A ten-meters wide bundle of fully charged anti-matter cells.

Edwin still vividly remembered the experiment he did with Tracy: with milligrams of anti-matter left within a cubic cell, the explosion it caused still managed to level and melt a chunk of ground five-meters in radius.

Now imagine that times ten thousand.

Not just the city, but half of the country, would be consumed by a fireball of annihilation.

"Dirac!" Edwin yelled hysterically. He was still on the floor, struggling to stand up.

His shouting echoed in the spherical space, then faded away as it was consumed by the dead silence.

"Drip, drip…" A faint noise of liquid dripping onto metal came from right next to the bomb in the center.

A more-or-less human-looking figure sat against the closest guard rail. Blood dripped down from his side onto the floor. Like a broken doll, his incomplete limbs lied weakly against his side; his neck could not even support the weight of his head, which laid sideways on his right shoulder. The only way Edwin could tell he wasn't dead was by his chest slowly rising and falling.

Edwin managed to get up by climbing onto the guard rails. He dragged himself along the rails, only to fall again, making a loud bang as his head hit the metal ground. Strenuously, he lifted his head to look at that figure, who was just a meter away from him.

"Dirac…"

"Well…you caught me," whispered the man on the edge of death. Upon a closer look, Edwin saw that other than a patch of skin around his left eye, the rest of his body were a horrid mix of black and dark red – resulted from his burnt clothing mixed with his charred skin.

"Guess I was…too late." Dirac looked at his left arm, where the section below his elbow were completely gone. A mocking smirk appeared on his face. "In the end…I managed to accomplish…nothing."

Edwin sat up, his back against the guard rails across Dirac. Panting, he stared at his worst enemy.

"Why…did you have to do this?"

Dirac's eyes opened a little wider. He turned his eyes to look at the young boy, whose face was half covered in his own blood.

"You don't sound…angry," said Dirac, "just…sad and confused. Are you not, boy?"

"You killed people, a lot of them." Edwin felt tears forming in his eyes. "You killed the one dearest to me…why? What's the point of all this pain you bring?"

"…"

With eyes closed, Dirac surrounded himself in darkness.

"Right…darkness…that's all I've known," he thought to himself, "my life – before, during and after that war – had never seen a strand of light. The reason? Because I am a damn esper."

He reopened his eyes and looked at the boy across him. Edwin stayed silent, his face dry of emotions, yet a tear drop flowed down his cheek.

"That kid…I took away his – who was he again? His father? Friend?" The voice inside Dirac's mind kept going. "I also killed that blonde kid's father…God, what did I accomplish after all these massacres?"

He peeked at the bomb next to him.

"Oh yeah, I remember now," he thought, "I was part of 'Remedy'…we are trying to go to war with non-espers…we are trying to cure this world."

"'Cure'?" he suddenly asked himself "so what did you cure after all this? So, you 'cured' this world by killing this boy's family? By slaughtering innocent ones who could've been happier than you ever could?"

Dirac laughed, then coughed heavily as blood spewed out of his mouth.

"You know, kid…I think I got it now…I was just envious of you for having something – no – someone to fight for…" Dirac coughed again, "maybe…I treated the wrong people as enemies…non-esperes, espers…we are all uncurable monsters."

"It's better for this world…and for us…if we all die."

The light in Dirac's eyes faded away with his last breath.

Meanwhile, the detonation controller – blinking with warning lights – fell out of his loosened grip.