Day 23: Epilogue
He could feel the waves of exertion wafting away as the energy leeched from his muscles and swirled about him. The impact hadn't hurt him, his physiology had seen to that, but even the act of absorbing kinetic energy took its toll. He wasn't a kid anymore. His powers didn't work half as well as when he'd been in his prime. When he'd been a member of a team. When he'd had her. Slowly, he pushed himself to stand. His muscles tightened, the fat burned away and he felt the raw surge of power rush through him as his cells consumed what they craved. He wanted to jump and to fly again. To run against the pull of gravity, to slip it's grasp as he'd done in his youth. The urge overwhelmed him for a moment before it subsided, leaving only the aches of age and atrophy behind. Years ago he'd been a tights wearing superhero. He was no longer that person, he was beyond heroism. Now he was a simple artist living in a modest home in a normal world that had