Ah, here at last! But of course with my updates, it probably doesn't feel like that long.

Ash belongs to Renaissance Pictures, and Amy and Tails belong to Sega Corporation. Alas.

My memories of the whole incident were pretty hazy.

Of course, that often happens when I go into a temper flare – I blank out for most of it, which makes it a lot harder for me to deal with and piece together, at least from a narrative standpoint. I was told of events later by the others, and given how conflicting they were, I'll just condense them down into one account.

I exploded with a yell louder than King Kong's. My fists – and whole body – started glowing up at once. A light shot out of my pendant – white and ghostly, like the Charactus was purging something from itself. Something it didn't need, that had been plaguing it for a long time, and that was now able to leave, invoked by my present state of mind. It flashed around and then settled in the rafters as if thinking, I'd like to see how this plays out. Get out the ectoplasmic popcorn.

I then punched the floor – which, since I was on one of the top floors, sent Starr down a full level and left a huge hole in the floor, leading down to where he was. And also sent debris down to it. Whoops.

I heard the avatars exclaiming in shock, though it sounded far away. Ash in particular was screaming something about bringing down the whole building.

That didn't stop me, though. In my temper flare, I was focused on only one thing – eliminating the man who'd dared to insult my people and attack my friends. He was going to die. He was going to pay – for Jethro Stein, for Charlie, for Horzvedt, for the innocents gunned down in Gaza.

A groan from Starr told me the creep was still alive. I'd have to fix that.

"STARR!" I roared. I lunged straight through the crater I'd made on the top floor and landed in the pottery shop without a scratch. I scanned around for Starr, who quickly backed up into one of his vases upon seeing me – not that I would have blamed him. If I were thinking clearly.

"Boy, please," he said, his tone pleading. "I didn't mean–"

Another thing Starr didn't know about me – I'm insanely difficult to reason with when I'm like this. And I knew I'd heard him correctly about the Jew thing. I grabbed one of Starr's finished vases and smashed it against his head.

Starr swore and grabbed his gun, apparently forgetting about his injured shoulder (and the bones he'd probably broken in his fall). He fired, but wildly this time, taking out another of his own duplicate vases. Even if I wasn't in a state of fury, I would not have felt sorry about destroying Starr's property. I grabbed another vase and threw it, missing his head this time, but nailing his gun arm.

I heard a scream as Starr clutched his shoulder, still wounded from Horzvedt's bullet. I moved straight in towards him, a Fury closing in for the kill.

"I HEARD WHAT YOU SAID!" I screamed. I grabbed Starr's face and forced it towards the kiln.

Starr, upon realizing what I was going to do, tried to shoot again. But I kicked him in the keister, forcing him to drop the gun. Instead of shoving Starr into the kiln, though, I overturned it. The flames spread across the building – just like all those years ago, when Jethro Stein vanished from existence. Just like the moment things turned upside down for Jasper Horzvedt.

Starr yelped and ran for it. Unfortunately, he was injured, and I wasn't letting him go anywhere.

I was the hunter, looking for vengeance. He was going to be sorry he crossed me. And I was inescapable.

I chased after him, ripping up the wallpaper as I went in my tornado of destruction – which I found quite satisfying, even in my current state. When I caught up to him, I sent another blow his way. This time, it aimed directly at his chest, with enough force to send him through another floor. I wound up in Horzvedt's office, which hadn't been the destination I'd intended, but it felt good enough.

I leaped through the crater. Once I'd reached Starr, I banged him against the desk.

"Dammit, boy – SON OF A–!" Starr yelped as I shoved his face into the wooden desk. "Are you really going to… pitch this big a fit… over that strike?"

"He will," echoed a strange corporeal voice even I could hear in my half-mad rage. It sounded familiar for some reason – a reason I would've placed if, again, my brain had been working properly.

I screamed and shoved Starr through the floor again. This time, he went through all the floors, straight down to the bottom.

I leaped through the holes, straight down – by the way, in three leaps – just to check that Starr was really dead. I found the forger paralyzed by his fall from four stories, but from the movement in his chest, still alive. In retrospect, that fall would have killed a regular human being, but I reckoned Starr had stopped being human a long time ago.

It didn't change matters about his fate. He'd hurt my people. He'd hurt my friends. He'd hurt a perfectly good woman. And he was going to die for it.

I grabbed one of the wooden planks and lifted it over my head, pointing it at Starr's skull. The plank was way too dense for me to lift on my own, but my rage gave me strength unparalleled.

"Won't matter! (wheeze)," Starr moaned, writhing in agony. "Jethro (wheeze) was long gone…"

"It isn't just for my death," said the voice, which sounded vaguely like a child's – a teenage boy's, in fact. Was it Jethro addressing him, or his ghost? The light moved in a little closer as I watched Starr.

I bonked Starr on the head with the plank. Starr let out a moan.

Unfortunately, my consciousness was starting to come back, ebbing my rage and my strength. But Starr looked pretty far along. He was dying, in fact.

Just then, a falling pot – on fire from the still-blazing pottery shop – dropped on Starr's head and set him ablaze. With the last of my strength, I tossed the plank into the fire – at Starr's head. A loud crack came as it hit him.

The voice spoke again – clearer in my mind, now that my rage had started receding. It became clear that the voice was addressing Starr. "So, you wish to destroy all the Jews? Then you shall die at the hands of a Jew."

Then my rage dissipated, and I blacked out.

"What the heck was that?" Ash's voice came to me as I came to.

I woke up on the ground floor of the Terminal Commerce, groggy and weak. Starr's carcass lay in a pile of burning debris. The others – meaning my VLADJI comrades, the avatars, Charlie and her father – were already down on the floor with me, taking in all the damage.

The Terminal Commerce building was an absolute mess. There were huge holes in the floors, so I could see the carnage inside – wallpaper ripped up, planks disengaged, and – from the smoke – an entire floor on fire. What beast could have done all that to an abandoned building?

Wait…

"How… How high's the insurance bill?" I asked.

"Oh, good," Imira said as she stood over me. "You're awake."

"I guess," I muttered, getting up to my feet. Which turned out to be a mistake, as DJ promptly grabbed me by the arm.

"You're all right," she said firmly. "And you'll never – ever–" she twisted my arm – "explode like that again."

I winced, and not just because DJ was hurting me. I sure wasn't proud of what had happened back there. I'd gone into destructo-mode and killed someone – admittedly, someone who deserved it, but still. I couldn't very well take that back. Even worse, I couldn't guarantee it wouldn't happen again. I had no way to control the temper flares, much less when they happened.

"Hey," Imira said, glaring at our leader in the eye. "He had a lot to get out of his system. First Starr teaming up with Hamas and that…" She faltered, as if she either couldn't bring herself to name Starr's treason or couldn't find a word strong enough to describe it. "And on top of that, he has to discover the fact that that creep's abused Charlie, murdered a child – yeah, that'd send him into a conniption pretty good. And it's not like Starr didn't warrant all that. He was going to be a threat to our lives."

I was surprised that Imira knew what I had to face. Then again, she knew a thing or two about anger. She probably had busted a few things herself when she first got the news. It also surprised me that she was talking to DJ like that. But then we'd all been through a pretty frightening Sunday. I wouldn't be surprised if nerves were starting to fray.

"Still, that was… bothersome," Amy said, leaning against the front desk – or what was left of it. She looked pretty exhausted, and I didn't think it was just from the excitement of today.

"You want me to–?" Tails began, but Amy waved him off.

"I'm fine," she said, and explained for my benefit: "I stabilized the place while you were out. Just to keep it from collapsing on us. That whole skyscraper – that took a lot out of me."

That I could easily see happening. One of her powers was the ability to repair items just by touch. I imagined she hadn't exactly tried it on a whole building. The best she could've done was keep it intact for us – and keep the damage from spreading too fast.

"Does anyone care to explain this?" Ash demanded, pointing around the building.

It took me a second to register that he was talking about the cause of the damage.

"Temper flare," Amy said quietly. "I didn't expect Amos to lash out like that, though."

Imira snorted. "First time I noticed it was against a scorpio. I really thought he was going to kill it."

"Thanks for the reminder," I muttered.

"Hey, we all lose our temper, Amos," she said to me. "Me, I got the news from Baghdad – on that very same day, in fact. A cousin of mine's over there. He was talking about it – and the war declaration – and I just… I felt sick and… well, I had some time to scream and curse and throw things."

I flinched, imagining Imira throwing some of the chairs and tables in the restaurant. She had much bigger toys to throw around.

"But I slaughtered someone," I countered.

"Ah." Imira grimaced. "Yeah, that stays with you. I had to hurt quite a few people on the streets, just so they'd stay off me. I still remember all that. This one man was molesting a boy, and I grabbed a plank and hit him to get him to stop, and he collapsed. I wasn't judging how hard I hit him, but it was hard enough to kill him. I still wonder what would have happened if I hadn't been so hard with the plank."

I nodded. Strangely, that made me feel better.

Ash cleared his throat. "Well, if you've finished your little chat, I think someone wants to talk to you."

He jerked his thumb towards a glowing light, which was descending from the rafters of the third floor down to our level.

The light stopped at eye level with me, and a voice whispered in my head: Amos Darvosky?

I approached the light, and everyone backed up, except Horzvedt and Charlie.

The light then formed itself into a human silhouette – then into something like a hologram. Or a ghost. The ghost of a teenage boy, around fourteen. With a baseball cap.

"Jethro Stein," I whispered.

Hoo boy. Ghost time!

Verse for the update: Hosea 14:1. Stay tuned!