Dirk found his feet, the cooling asphalt under his rough soles feeling good like a soothing rain, his breath rolling out hot and heavy into the frost tinged night. He stood over crags where weeds had prevailed through the solid stone, plants splintering the ground at every step in wild zigs and zags, several flowers even blooming up and out from the rubble. It was like the ultimate triumph of Light over Darkness Dirk thought, the meek hidden of lore now revealed as stronger then ever, even stronger then the wave that had crashed them down in the first place. "Bullshit." Barbed wire lay strewn slack several feet away, his eyes following this to an old side road spanning off into the interstate. From this there was nothing but dimming lights before the heart of the city could be glimsped, a whispering voice in the hollow of it's void the sights and sounds of people untold, stories yet unwritten.
The city was nothing special, the wastie surprised to not see more fires or explosions occurring, the cries of the wicked lost on his cauliflowered ears for now. "Funny." His sense of humor needed work. He picked up his step and made a short hop over the broken wiring before turning back, thinking...
He bent down and began spooling the rusted barbed wire up carefully, his callused fingers easily plying it into a short bundle that he slacked over his right shoulder, padding for his leather pack at his back. He fingered a hand rolled cigarette up from it's tattered side pocket, lighting it with a flick of his cover-less Zippo whilst feeling for his Super Sledge. The weapon was, of course, still strapped tightly to his back by several belt looped straps. Lights became blurs of spectral shine over the window spotted horizon, and the few trees left in the world before the Concrete gave Dirk reason to pause, feel over their rough faces where axes had carved their claim but failed to take it all. "Good old boys." He remarked with a long drag of his cig, the shadows of his face growing deeper as the moon smiled overhead.
Dirk's signature gas mask found itself strapped back over his scarred visage, the off worlder looking ahead to the road through cyan lenses.
War was hell or so he knew well enough, his grip tightening over the barbed wire bound about his thick shoulder like an iron python..
---
He steps through glass and gasoline, a trail of it leading to a burning pump station not too far off from the main road. He watches it burn while taking wet steps that leave black trails along the cooling concrete sidewalk, heat like sighing ghosts blistering off of the burning soap box of a building. He never glances away until it is glowing under the horizon at his back, his gaze falling back towards the heart of a city gone insane..
And then it happened. A bolt fizzled through him, and Dirk cringed back from an overwhelming light that shattered over the city-scape like a grand spell, his hands falling over his gas-masked visage.
Ripping it away his naked black eyes look upon a night sky ridden with light pollution, yet gaze no spectacle bursting any further, a frown of disappointment forming now. "Can't say I've seen that before." And he hadn't, a rare occasion indeed. Dirk had traveled many roads on many planets, and to see something new was not only intriguing...
It was terrifying, plain and simple.
Picking up into a hard sprint, Dirk was going to find whatever had caused that brilliant flash. He just had to see it again.