"Damn Rob, ain't this somethin'!"

Rob had to agree. Jamall, Kirt, & he along with their girlfriends Twanda, Melissa, and Amy were actually in New York. The city was simply awesome. It was all he could do to keep craning his neck to look at the tall building or to stop staring at all the different kinds of people he was seeing on the streets.

He thanked God again for the talent for basketball that had enabled him to go to college and see more of the world than the sleepy little Midwest town he had been born in. He had dreamed of seeing London, Rome, Sidney, Tokyo, New York, and a hundred other places since he had been old enough to realize how small his hometown was. Now he was here.

"Sure is, Jamall. Sure is…." He replied.

Amy gave his hand a quick squeeze and whispered in his ear "Headache better?"

The monster headache had actually started two days ago. He had worried that he might not be able to play on the Friday tournament opener, but this morning it was gone, leaving him free to wander around the city a bit with his friends before their last afternoon practice and the start of the tournament. Grinning he nodded and gave her hand a quick squeeze back.

He realized that Jamall was talking again. Something about finding a place to eat lunch. He just shook his head. Kirt was the team's center and at 6' 11" towered above Jamall and even Rob himself, both guards, but Jamall ate twice as much as Kirt ever did. Talked more than twice as much too. Rob just smiled and turned to ask Amy what she wanted to eat when a rat shot out from behind a trash can right in front of Jamall. Both Jamall and Twanda lost their balance on the slick ice that coated the sidewalk. Jamall's reflexes, honed by years of basketball and other sports kept him from falling, but Twanda started to go down.

Without thinking Rob moved. Before the others had a chance to react he had skidded over and had Twanda's arm.

"Shit, your fast, man." Jamall said. "Glad you are on our team!"

They laughed.

It was then they heard it.

A sound so high pitched that it was almost outside their range of hearing, followed by a very audible BOOM and the fainter sounds of screams. Whatever was making the noise had disturbed more than just the rat Rob realized. There were all sorts of animals headed away from whatever was making that noise.

"What the heck is that?" Kirt asked. It was one of the longest sentences the quite center had uttered all day.

"Do you think it could be a Nova?" Melissa gushed. Rob hated when she did that. She had a real thing for Novas. He half suspected it was why she hung out with Kirt. Tall as he was he was probably the closest thing to a Nova she would ever be able to sink her claws into.

Amy looked worried as he suggested, "We might want to get out of the street Jamall."

Twanda raised her voice over the growing volume; "There's a coffee shop over there."

"Let's go!" Said Jamall. They were his last words.

Just then the two Nova's flew into view. Both were dressed in outrageous outfits. The guy was surrounded by an aura of purple flame and seemed to be gathering himself for some sort of attack. The woman had fantastically gold wings and her mouth was framed in an "O" as she used some sort of sonic powers against the purple flame guy.

Almost faster than Rob could follow "purple flame guy" unleashed a blast of fire so intense that it hurt to look at and the woman with an almost casual flick of her wings moved so that it just barely missed her. That same blinding fire struck Jamall, completely vaporizing his head an upper torso in less than a heartbeat.

***

Rob's head felt like it was being vaporized too. An explosion of pain deep within his head had occurred almost the second the two had come into view.

Time slowed to a crawl. Reality seemed to shatter around him. Like broken glass falling Rob was vaguely aware of "reality shards" with visions slowly moving in them smashing down all around him as he stood in an endless sphere of white light.

On another level the future branched out all around him like some sort of crazy biological structure. Branches seemed to go in all directions with endless variation getting smaller and smaller the further out they went.

For one endless moment Rob was tempted to try to follow all those branches and understand what they meant. For another he was tempted to try and see what was happening in all the falling shards. For yet one more he was tempted to just let go of himself and become one with the light.

Slowly he began to realize that he had crossed some sort of line when he had seen the two combatants accidentally kill Jamall. Nothing would ever be the same.

Rob also realized that he was about to cross another line that he would never be able to cross back over. He had a choice of what was to come next. A sense of overwhelming godlike power and possibility filled him.

He could fight two careless Novas who had killed Jamall … but … he remembered when he was younger playing basketball against older boys. That is what going against those two would be like. He would be like an untrained youngster going against adults. Also adding a third person to the fight might not make it any quicker and could just end with more innocent people dead or hurt.

He could try to help Jamall … but … Jamall was dead. It would be crazy to try to fix him with his head gone. Maybe he could bring Jamall's body back, but it would have none of his friend's memories even if by some miracle he did succeed.

So really it only left one choice. He could help the friends he still had left.

***

With a jarring snap reality came back into focus and time seemed to speed up again, though Rob was moving faster than he ever had before. He flung up his hand and a hard dense black field of pure force came into existence between the group and the two novas.

Then with another gesture he summoned up another black field in front of them. However, instead of staying solid, this fields darkness resolved into a view of the safety of Rob's hotel bedroom.

"Move!" he yelled as chunks of building loosened by the "golden winged girl's" voice fell on the black field of energy above them. Rob could feel the two novas still fighting even though he couldn't see them through his protective shield. Amy and Melissa ran towards the hotel room, but Twanda was still staring in shock at Jamall's smoldering remains and Kirt's height had betrayed him as he slipped on the icy sidewalk.

"Crap." Rob mumbled to himself. However with preternatural grace and calm he half ran half skidded over to Kirt and scooped him up with one arm. Then he grabbed Twanda around the waist with his other hand and, carrying both of them, leapt trough the portal he had created.

A sense of danger he had hardly been aware of faded as the portal closed. It was only then that he realized that he had been hurt too. The arm of his jacket smoldered where the same purple flame had killed Jamall had clipped him. Almost unthinkingly he willed the flesh to mend as he put Kirt and Twanda gently down.

Rob realized what had happened. Maybe he should have been happy, but all he could think of was the look of fear Amy was giving him and the memory of his friend Jamall dead in the streets of New York. He had been right. He had crossed a threshold today. He had gone past a line that could not be crossed back over. Nothing would ever be the same. He sank to his knees as the pain in his head returned in force.

"Holy shit, Rob!" Melissa practically cooed, "You're a nova too!"