I never knew what sorrow was until today…It started like any other, waking up and getting some coffee.  Zephyr was eating his fourth helping of breakfast.  I got my coffee and began my long trudge up to the roof, it is a workout in itself to make every step soft and light…I really have gotten used to these boots, I still wish they could be smaller.  Watching the sun come up on the horizon of Epic City has become my morning meditation routine.  Seeing “Lady Liberation” stare over her city always put me in a good mood.  These are the things I missed while working in Capitol City.

I usually spend about an hour, hour and a half up there working on my new passion, yoga, it seems to really help with my new weight, it keeps me mindful of what my body is capable of.  This morning was different though; my mind was adrift in the early red and purple haze…she was on my mind…Katherine.  I found myself back in our apartment watching the sun come up, she comes up behind me with a hug, a kiss, her warmth was something I never tired of.  Christ!…this thing is getting heavy…remember your training…concentrate…come on.  That’s when she got the call, the call that took her away from our life and me.  She had been accepted to the senates new International Dividends Spending Board.  It was another fancy name for senate to approve export and import spending abroad.  But it was her chance to get in the front door for what she really wanted and that was in the Senate.  It also meant being far from me in Epic City…why didn’t I ever call when I got here?…Oh yeah because I weigh one and a half fucking tons!…I should have called.  We had both promised each other and ourselves that our relationship would never compromise our goals.  We where so young and stupid.  Because we had both promised we let ourselves separate, both of our young hearts broken.  My internship was going great, primarily because all I did was work so I could forget…it helped numb the pain.  I missed her so muc…SHIT!!!   The rubble is shifting!

“Chief!  It’s shifting, I need more support beams!!”  The beams are nearly in place before I finish my sentence, along with a pat on the back from my new friend Kent, out of all the new guys from McFreak as Jake likes to put it, Kent has become the closest of all.  I replant my feet and get my…sixteenth wind is it now?

Three years ago Katherine came to Epic City to work inside Castor and Pollux, the twins, for the senate.  Today the twins fell and all the beautifully crafted marble and statuary that resided on it came crumbling down…along with countless lives…including Katherines.  The rest of the foundation and myself have been working here for the last 27 hours.  Right now we are recovering the first wave of EFD that got trapped under Pollux we have found about 300 of them…at least 200 are still missing along with possibly ten thousand employees of the Global Trade Centers.  When the first plane hit we were horrified when the second hit we were there and gave as much help as we could to evacuate people, when Pollux fell and the majority of firefighters and medical personnel where lost we ended up leading the effort.  I have been holding up this main girder for 6 hours now…I would continue to do it for 6 days, but the fire chiefs have just told me that I can let it go now they have got everyone they can for now.

They tell me that the press would like a word with me; they have had a chance to talk to all the other members of the McKormic Foundation.  I am standing just outside of ground zero on a small podium…realizing that I am half naked because all my clothes have been shredded in the last day.  Questions fly at me but I can’t seem to make sense of any of them…they are noise…I can only look out to the faces…blink my eyes to the explosions of countless camera flashes.  I can only respond with my heart.

“I hope to never know another day like this.  I hope to never know such a loss of innocence again.  My unusual abilities began for me nearly a year ago and in that time I have been shunned and revered by society.  At some point during that time you the people of America gave me my nickname… Society’s Shield.  I will not speak for my friend’s…friends who on dark wings gathered the falling bodies and set them upon firm ground there lives shattered but saved.  Friends who stretched there limits beyond anything they have before to allow lives to clamber to the safe earth, friends who took the fire upon there flesh again and again only to protect others who could not withstand the lick of the flame.  Friends who know the power of a moment and have the speed to change fates call.  I will not speak for all the hero’s here today, I speak for me.  I appreciate all the help and guidance the McKormic Foundation has given me to do what I did here today, but it isn’t enough.  I ask the people of America today to let me earn the name the have given me…as Society’s Shield I ask America and the United Societies Government to allow me to be a foot soldier in the fight against Terror.  I await your call America, thank you."

I turn in silence knowing what my words mean…I have never felt stronger about them in my entire life…they have given me my seventeenth wind, I return to the rubble.