How the hell she survived that, she didn't know. That she was alive - Nene thanked all of the Gods in every Pantheon she could recall – that was enough for her. How didn't matter. Didn't matter at all.

Her body shook as badly as her words.

Her hands were worse.

The sky had fallen and the ground had risen to meet it in the brightest, noisiest, pyrotechnicalist display of violent reality that should have only been experienced in 4D, preferably at home, with the support of a boyfriend.

"I hope, I hope I didn't mess my pants."

Dust, ash, wisps of fire.

The boomer growth was gone, along with pretty much everything else.

"It's gotta be dead,"

It had to be. She couldn't see anything. And she was walking on sand. What the hell had happened? Find out when I get out, back to Sylia's building and watch it all on TV, sitting on the couch, with a bucket of ice cream.

She hoped that there was a building left. Or a Tokyo.

Nene didn't know which way to go. It was all the same. She picked left from where she was facing and started walking, brushing spot fires out of her hair. She'd made it a quarter mile from the Stadium and away from that thing before the next disaster had struck. As long as she wasn't heading back towards it she'd eventually get out of this fog or find somebody and take it from there.

The absence of sound, even her feet stepping one after the other.

She stopped and touched her ears. There was blood on her fingers.

She hadn't been talking aloud. Talking in her head.

She kept moving. Ruptured eardrums, what else could be broken that she couldn't feel? Perhaps she was already dead and this was the afterlife, drifting lost in Hades' realm.

Through the dust tall rectangular shapes began to emerge. Her footing became easier, the sand thinning and the cloud parting into scene of hysteria. The shapes were buildings, whole and broken. There were fires. There was a car, half of a car, rust eaten away from the back lying partially in the sand. There was a body in it, half a body, vertically. There were flashing lights, police, fire, ambulance. Lots of people. Lots of bodies.

She stumbled to an ambulance thronged already by the absence of typical orderliness. No one turned away from the ambulance to look at her, to exclaim at her wounds, preoccupied by their own feared injury.

There must have been screaming, people started running and pointing. Nene followed their arms; the top half of a building was sheering off, missing the support of a trio of levels beneath it. She watched as it started to yaw, and snap, and slide and start to pick up speed, ignorant of the throng shoving through each other to get away, that the building was falling towards her.

And then she was airborne, above as the building crashed below, and landed ontop a green painted roof.

Held in solid blue arms.

"Priss!, Oh my God, Priss!" she screamed.

Ordinarily Priss would have lifted the visor of her helmet. This time, oddly, the helmet kind of dematerialised away and exposed the singer's top.

Priss' mouth moved.

"I can't hear! I'm deaf." she hoped Priss could understand what she was saying and it wasn't some garbled nonsense.

Priss let her down so she could stand, still lean against her. That was the relief she needed. A fricken' Hard Suit.

Priss touched her ear, it stung.

"Can you hear me now?"

She could.

"Yes, yes, Priss I can. What was that, dermal? Sub-vocal?"

"Doesn't matter," Priss replied, it was just kind of the beginning of the end, in a way. But she didn't need to talk to the girl. "Do you know what happened?"

Fuck.

"Explain." Priss could tell.

Nene wrapped her arms around the Hard Suit. If she was hugging Priss, she'd be less likely to get all violent.

"I miss him so much, Priss. I just wanted to wake him up, that was all."

"Mackey? He did this?"

"No... I did it."

Metal encased hands grabbed her shoulders and pulled her away so she could not get away from Priss's eyes.

"Tell me."

And she did until she was a sobbing wreck, recovered a little. Priss left her and walked to the edge of the roof, facing where the Stadium was or had been.

"It's clearing."

Nene joined Priss at the edge.

The dust bowl was settling, clearing the edges, working its way in to the epicentre. The rest of the city appeared first, every sprawling outwards between the pillars of thick smoke.

"It's still here."

"Looks like most of the Umbrella landed in the from the bay to Shinjuku,"

Nene turned, there were plenty of pillars behind her to, to the north.

"You mean, that was-"

It was Priss's turn to monologue, arms folded., the longest Nene had ever had to listen, longer than one of Sylia's bossplains.

"That," she pointed, "is your fault then. I just woke it up."

Priss stared icily at her.

"I'm going in. Galatea will be there, and Sylia."

"Mackey," they had to be together, "Mackey will be there too! I have go, too."

"Not a chance, Nene. I've spent enough time talking. Take yourself to a hospital, the further from here the better. Find Linna, Nigel, and stay out of trouble."

"You didn't say Mackey. You know he's there too, don't you?"

"It doesn't matter."

"Yes it does!"

"If he's there," Priss sighed, "I'll bring him back, I promise. And Sylia, if there's anything of Sylia left."

"I'm coming."

"No," Priss ignited her jets, lifting, hovering, "you're not. You don't have a suit and this is going to be deadly."

Priss jetted away from the building.

"Hey, how did you get your suit anyway? It was stuck underground!"

Shit!

Nene punched the ledge.

The air had cleared enough that the centre of the war zone, where the Stadium was, was hazily visible. It looked like there was no Stadium anymore. The boomer head was still there though, and somebody out on the sands moving towards it.