"Go on, then," Elijah says, nudging us one at a time with his feet. "Show me your ugly mugs."
Gabe and I pull down our hoods and stand up, staring daggers at Elijah, but first turning to Fionna and thinking together, Don't worry. We got this.
Elijah uses his free hand to poke and prod first my face, then Gabe's. "I see you both got my eyes," he says. "I guess you, though" - here he looks back at me, his lip curling - "take more after your mother. Whoever she is. Some innocent sap who went for artificial insemination and still got herself fucked."
"Don't talk about our mom like that," Gabe says. "You don't even know her."
Elijah laughs, then turns to Fionna. "So these boys are your friends? Is it true that one's an angel and the other's a demon?"
Fionna nods wordlessly, still with her angry glare fixed on her face.
"And their names are...?"
"Alex Snow," I say before Fionna has to respond. Gabe adds his name a second later.
"And I assume you're the angel?" Elijah says, looking at Gabe.
Gabe shakes his head. "Some angel I would've been, huh, Alex?"
Elijah rolls his eyes. It's so disturbing how much he looks like Gabe doing the exact same thing. "I shoulda guessed. You look more like me, so it only makes sense that you'd be a full-on demon. Tell me, how does it feel, knowing your brother can fly but you never will?"
"Actually, I can fly," Gabe says, shuffling his wings. I look closely and see that he's finally got slits in the back of his jacket. The edges of his wings poke out just enough to shine against the dark fabric.
"In your dreams, maybe," Elijah says, snorting. "If you inherited your dashing good looks from me, no doubt you also got my vivid imagination."
Gabe's fists clench. "I'm nothing like you."
"Yeah. You keep telling yourself that." Elijah chuckles again. It's getting really irritating. "Odd that the demon would get an angel's name, and the angel didn't. What was your mother thinking? Or, more accurately, was she thinking?"
Now it's my turn to get aggressive. "If you're only here to insult us, this meeting is over. Goodbye, and don't let the door hit you where the Lord split you."
"In that case, y'all can just kiss my lily-white ass," Elijah says. "Fun though it may be to get under your skins, that's not why I'm here tonight. Before I give you back your little friend, I feel I owe you boys an explanation. Maybe I'll clarify some of the lies you've no doubt heard from my dear old friend Bob."
The chill deepens as the wind picks up, rustling the trees around us.
"We've already figured out Robert was lying to us," I say.
"Wonderful," Elijah says. "Then I won't have to talk so much longer. You know, I'm really not used to public speaking. I don't think I've talked this much in...well, ever." He adds a small chuckle, but nobody else laughs. "Rough crowd. I get it."
"Are you just gonna keep cracking wise, or are you gonna tell us what you're so obviously dying to say?" I ask, matching the hatred and disgust in his voice as best I can.
"I can see now how we're related," Elijah says. "You know, I, too, used to hate my father when I was your age. Hated that belt-whipping, Bible-thumping inbred bastard with a passion. I was one of those poor unfortunate souls who went into the Army just to trade a fake boot camp for the real thing. And now, seeing how much you boys clearly want nothing more than to see me gutted like a fish, I guess the apples didn't fall so far from the tree after all." He smiles horribly. "Which is all the worse for you boys. Their window to strike is drawing more and more shut each day."
"What are you talking about?" Gabe asks.
"Project Red Rain, of course," Elijah says, his smile growing wider, becoming a serpentine smirk. "What? Y'all didn't think they'd end it on account of little old me losing my religion, now did you?"
I look down at Fionna's hand - the one that Elijah isn't holding - and see small flames sprouting up at her fingertips. Fingers which I realize had been gloved, likely by Elijah so she couldn't attack him. But even gloves, especially if they're made of plain old thread, will combust eventually.
Knowing what to do now, I look at Gabe and think, Let's keep him monologuing. Fionna's got an idea.
Turning back to Elijah, I say, "We figured as much. But how would they keep going? I thought General Rector killed himself."
"I'm glad you brought him up," Elijah says. "Rector. General or no, that man did not have the brainpower to be in charge of all this science shit. I always suspected he was just there for authority or something. Then I overheard him on the phone one day, right after they locked me up, and he accepted the call under a code name. Juliet Romeo Beta.
"Obviously, Juliet Romeo were his initials. Beta, of course, the Greek letter. I would've thought nothing of it at the time, except I had heard him once before talking to someone else, using not only that code name, but also that of his contact. Alpha. Whoever this Alpha character is, that had to be his boss. The real puppetmaster who ruined me."
"That's real nice," I say, keeping a close eye on the growing flames around Fionna's free hand, "but what does that have to do with us?"
"Think about it. They harvested my mixed-up sperm - among other assorted bodily fluids - for a reason. They knew they'd already failed with me, so they figured they might as well cut their losses for now, then try again with the next generation."
Gabe and I exchange glances. "I'm sure you'll understand when we say we don't believe you," Gabe says.
"Believe it, boys," Elijah says. "Sure, I got no proof, but I guarantee that soon enough, Alpha's gonna send his goons, whoever they may be, up to your doorstep to take you away in the dead of night. You should be paying attention. All this Red Rain bullshit - it's bigger than y'all think. I just know it is."
"So is that why you broke out of prison? To stop the Red Rain people?" I ask. Fionna's got her hand mostly freed now, and is keeping the flame as faint as possible so Elijah can't see it. "And was killing off all those innocent people just a bonus?"
"I'm an honest man," Elijah says. "And I always follow through on my promises."
I catch Fionna's eye. She raises her eyebrow, and I think, Do it.
About bloody time. Fionna pushes Elijah with her now-flaming hand, causing him to yell in pain and let go of her, holding his side.
I grab Fionna's hand - the other one - and lead her away as I run from Elijah, with Gabe close behind. We get all the way to the end, then move to our right, hiding in an alley between two houses. All around us, we hear dogs barking, and confused voices as people are woken up by the commotion outside.
Above us, a light comes on and an old woman yells, "Hey! What are you kids doing? Get out!"
We don't need her to tell us twice. Elijah's nowhere to be seen, but he could easily hear the old woman and figure out where we are.
So we jump over the gate at the other end of the alley, crossing the street until we can hide in the next alley.
"Are you all right, Fionna?" I ask. "What did he do to you?"
"Nothing major," Fionna whispers. "He just kept freezing my hand down, then he put the gloves on after I started melting my way out. Otherwise, I'm fine."
"Good," I say.
"Thank God," Gabe says.
"Well, now how are we gonna get outta here?" Fionna mutters.
I frown, kicking a rock that I almost stepped on a second ago. "That's gonna be a problem. The Bridge is closed for the night, you can't fly...Gabe, do you think we can chance taking Fionna to that cave?"
"I'm not sure we can find our way back there in the dark," Gabe says. He's looking over the gate, keeping an eye out for Elijah.
"Can we at least try?" I ask. "Come on, Gabe, we can't stay out here all night."
Gabe looks over the gate again. "All right, coast is clear. Let's make a break for it."
Fionna steps between me and Gabe as we slowly file out of the alley and onto the street, heading for the eastern end. When we get there, we turn north, heading for the main road. The whole time, we move as slowly and quietly as possible, hyper-alert, watching to make sure we're not being followed.
Just as we reach the main road, the rain starts up again, forcing us to pull on our hoods. Except Fionna doesn't have one - just her beanie. So I lend her my hoodie - that way she can do a better job of keeping her head dry.
She makes a small chuckle as she takes off her beanie and places it on my head. "Thanks, Feathers," she says.
"Don't mention it."
Gabe beckons us forward, and we start walking up the main road - but then, less than fifty feet later, Fionna unexpectedly rises into the air, screaming and kicking at whatever invisible force is carrying her.
Gabe and I look up, horrified - especially when it dawns on us what's happening. Even in the darkness, we can see the outline of Elijah's body in the rain. It turns out that there is no rain, not really - it's all just Elijah using his elemental, floating above us.
And carrying Fionna away, back into town, faster than we can keep up with him, even while on the wing.
Gabe and I land in the plaza just in time to see Elijah burst through the turnstile in front of the cable car station. Using finger-sized blades of ice, he breaks into the control room and turns the machine on, sending the cars in motion on the constantly looping cable. At the same time, he's forced to constantly keep some of his focus devoted to using his ice-hand to trap Fionna. As she'd told us earlier, she has no problem melting the ice as needed, but it doesn't help her much when Elijah just re-freezes her all over again.
"Go get the cops," I tell Gabe.
"Whoa, whoa, whoa," he says. "It's gonna take both of us to stop this guy. At least. And I'm not gonna leave you, bro."
"If you do what I say, that'll be one less loved one for me to worry about." I spread my wings. "Just do it."
Gabe laughs. "God, you really are a cheeky bastard, you know that?"
"Go!" I yell, flying to the creek as fast as I can so I can pick up some water. I would love to be able to pull water molecules from the air and use those, as Elijah seems capable of doing, but that sort of elemental power is way beyond me, so I have to make do. As I come back, I watch Gabe take flight, going west towards the police station.
Fionna is throwing fire at Elijah like you wouldn't believe, but he's either so psycho, so strong, or both, that he completely fails to notice he's being hurt. He simply manhandles Fionna into the next cable car as it comes into the station, then joins her inside, shutting the door.
"Seriously?" I ask nobody in particular. "Why do they always go up instead of down?"
I fly after the rising cable car, compressing the water in my hands into a pair of huge ice blades. One of these I throw at the machinery in the station below, destroying it and keeping the cable car suspended almost a hundred feet up.
The other I throw at the cable car itself, right into the double doors' Plexiglas window. To my eternal surprise, the window shatters - I thought Plexiglas was supposed to be unbreakable. Clearly the town of Coldfire Creek needs to get their money back.
Rather than cut my hands on the remaining chunks of Plexiglas sticking to the window frames, I reach inside and pull the emergency latch so I can get in. Inside, Fionna's continuing to rain fire on Elijah, while he raises protective barriers of ice. Using my ice blades, too, the thieving dickhead.
"Someone call for an avenging angel?" I ask with a lopsided grin, unable to resist.
Seeing me enter the cable car, Elijah lunges at me, forcing me to duck aside - and I don't do it fast enough. His wild motion causes the already-swaying cable car to pitch even more dangerously. In all the commotion, I end up pinned against one wall by Elijah while Fionna hangs on for dear life from the open door.
Before I can stop him, Elijah clambers off of me and makes another ice blade, which he swings at Fionna's knuckles. She lets go before he can cut her fingers - which of course means she's now sentenced herself to a ten-story fall.
Time slows to a crawl as I muscle my way out of the cable car and open my wings, flying straight down towards Fionna. She's screaming with pure, raw fear, stretching her hands out towards me in the hopes that I can catch her. Fly-falling at an insane, borderline-terminal velocity, I grab her hands and pull her up into my arms with only about ten feet to go before she hits the ground. Her weight is enough to knock the wind out of me, but by keeping my wings spread out, I'm able to gradually and safely lower us all the way down.
"Fionna?" I whisper.
She's not moving. I'm so scared right now - is she dead? She can't be.
"Fionna? Are you-"
"Alive? Of course I am, Feathers."
"Oh my God!" I set Fionna on her feet, then grab her in the biggest hug I've ever given in my entire life. "I don't believe it - it actually worked! Y-Y-You're alive!"
"Hey, Spidey couldn't save Gwen Stacy," Fionna says, delivering her own rib-crushing (not to mention wing-crushing) hug, "but then again, Spidey's not an angel."
"You have no idea how much I love you right now," I say, joyful tears falling freely from my eyes.
"Wanna bet?" Fionna chuckles. "I thought I'd die before I knew - hey, look out!"
The loud scraping sound enters my ears too late. Elijah jumps down five feet to my left and throws another big ice blade - I think he might have used it to zipline down the cable - right at Fionna and me.
We break apart, diving away from the incoming mega-icicle in opposite directions, landing hard on the pavement. I'm winded and dizzy, and from what little of Fionna I can see, she must be the same.
"After all the bullshit I've had to put up with tonight," Elijah snarls, staring directly at Fionna's prostrate form, "I think I've waited long enough for this."
Somewhere in the distance, the plaza's clock tower strikes midnight, but the sound is muffled by approaching sirens. Police cars must be coming up the main road, but I still can't see them.
In any case, they don't arrive nearly fast enough to stop Elijah. He stalks over to Fionna and rolls her over roughly. She raises her hand, which is once again on fire.
And then she lowers her hand to her chest. She doesn't even scream, and it's only then that I realize Elijah is possessing her.
But not for long. Not if I can reach him in time.
But I'm still barely able to move. All I can do is crawl his way. I try to distract him by yelling, "Hey assbutt! Come get me, you bloody jack-off!"
But I still don't make it fast enough.
By the time I reach Fionna, Elijah has broken his possession, as evidenced by the fact that Fionna is screaming in agony, weakly trying to push him away.
And he's only broken away from her so he can concentrate on his own body, his own hands, which he uses to break off a piece of his big ice blade.
Elijah takes this piece and shoves it right into Fionna's burned chest, causing her scream to morph into a shocked gasp.
And, ungodly sadist that he is, he doesn't stop there.
He carves a ragged circle in the middle of Fionna's chest, all the way around the big burn mark, then lifts away the skin and muscle, undoubtedly exposing her internal organs.
Elijah raises his blade again and cuts her heart out, then tosses it aside like a chicken bone, stands up, and walks away.
By the time I reach Fionna, the only thing I can do is hold her hand, sobbing like a baby, my tears - no longer of joy, but instead of despair - and the just-arrived rain (actual rain, not just Elijah doing an elemental trick) mixing with the huge amounts of blood all over the hoodie I just lent her not ten minutes ago.
Her mouth moves once, but no sound comes out. No last words. Nothing. Not even a gasping final breath.
I feel the life leave her, her pulse dropping down to zero, her arm going limp, her eyes freezing in place.
I reach out to close her eyes. After that, I don't want to move.
But I have to. I can't let her killer get away. Not again.