Silence reigned in the clearing as Patrick struggled to sit up again after the blast. The magic had gone, faded back into the Earth, and all that was left was a smoldering pile where the Silence the Noise operatives had once stood. Patrick watched as the light around him faded as the regal, red attire once again gave way to normal, tattered, funeral clothes. Phoenix landed next to him, chirping happily. A sense of accomplishment tugged at Patrick's heart. You did it, Phoenix seemed to be saying.
"Yes... I suppose I did..." Patrick said, still panting. "For now, anyway..."
Slowly, painfully, he rose again. The pain had returned to his leg though it was less severe than before and his cuts had healed fully. Patrick smiled. "Well, that's a nice side effect, I suppose." He looked at Phoenix. "Is it going to be like..." he thought of how he'd burst into flame earlier, how painful that had been. "Well, like that, every time?"
Phoenix chirped happily. Nope, she thought at him. Patrick smiled. "Good. The less burning up, the better."
That's when the animals began to emerge. The foxes, the bats, the cats, the frogs, each emerged from their hiding places and approached Patrick again. They landed on his shoulder, sniffed at his fingers, tickling them. Patrick laughed softly. "I'm alright, I'm okay... sorry about your home by the way..." Fortunately for him, the animals didn't seem to mind. They just continued to chatter happily. But their happy celebration was interrupted by a sound overhead, a helicopter flying over the forest, and Patrick's heart lurched.
In all the chaos he had completely forgotten about the outside world. "Elisa!" he shouted. "Jesus Christ, what if she's home by now‽ God, if she is, she's going to have a heart attack when she sees the house!" And that I'm not there, Patrick thought. "I've got to get back home right now."
With that, Patrick said goodbye to his newfound animal friends and left the clearing, though it was slow going, even with Phoenix helping him. He limped on his leg and the forest terrain was rough and bumpy. Eventually though, he arrived in his backyard where the light from his kitchen was still shining softly on the grass. He stepped through the remains of the backdoor just as the lock turned in the front.
"PATRICK!" shouted Elisa as she rushed inside. Her footsteps padded through the living room until they reached the kitchen where his girlfriend looked at him with wide eyes. She hadn't even bothered to take her shoes off, Patrick noticed.
"Oh, Patrick, thank God you're alright!" she shouted, throwing her arms around him. Patrick stumbled; taken aback. Elisa's touch was warm, gentle but firm, but he could feel her heart beating quickly underneath her chest, filled with fear for him, and his own flooded with gratitude. God, what would he do without her?
For a minute the two of them were still. Then Elisa whispered, "God, I was so worried... it was insane..." What was insane, Patrick thought, but in her presence his tongue suddenly felt like lead. She pulled back and examined him, holding onto his shoulders, then cupping his face in his hands. "Are you sure you're alright? You weren't too frightened, were you?"
"Frightened of what?" Patrick mumbled, genuinely confused. Did she somehow know of Silence the Noise? Did she see the wreckage and deduced that a burglar had come in? Was that why she had come home in a panic?
In response, Elisa fully released Patrick and began talking at a mile a minute. "God, Patrick, don't tell me you didn't see it. Everybody saw it."
"Saw what?" Patrick furrowed his brow.
"Jesus, it was insane. There was this..." she gestured wildly. "Spire of fire in the sky... like, all the way in the sky stretching up towards the moon. It bathed everything in this red light, I thought the world was ending..."
"Really...?" Patrick asked, voice faint but even as he said that the gears in his mind were turning. When the flames had consumed him in the forest, could that have escalated into the strange phenomenon that Elisa had described? Was thatwhat had happened while he'd blacked out? A slight dusting of pink spread across Patrick's cheeks. Between this and the funeral he was really picking up a habit of making others worry...
"What happened to the house?" Elisa asked, glancing around. It was clear Silence the Noise had made a mess of things. Aside from the ruined coffee table, the back door was still wide open and many things in the kitchen and bedroom had been dirtied, toppled over, or were otherwise in a state of disarray. Patrick furrowed his brow, hesitated, because he didn't exactly want to tell Elisa about Courtney and the others, though he also hadn't thought up a good excuse for the mess. But luckily, Elisa explained it away herself.
"Oh, well, perhaps it was shockwaves from that firey hell tower," she said, putting her hands on her hips. "Did it cause an explosion with it being so close by? Oh, and look at you, you haven't even changed out of your funeral clothes." She tutted. "Patrick, it's nearly ten at night. Here, how about I get you dressed in something- Oh!"
Elisa had just noticed Phoenix who had perched in one of the open doors in the kitchen. Her eyes were wide in shock, but Patrick only smiled softly, squeezed her shoulder and approached her. He held out his arm under the window and Phoenix landed gracefully upon it. "I know she's big but don't be scared. This is Phoenix. She was Pete's pet. He... bequeathed him to me." Phoenix chirped happily, agreeing.
"Oh. I see..." Elisa said, eyes still wide. They flicked from Patrick to Phoenix still unsure for a moment. "I... didn't know she would be staying with us... but... I haven't seen you smile like that in so long, Patrick."
"Huh?" Patrick blinked. It took him a second to realize that yes, he had been smiling. Genuinely, happily, smiling. The first time he'd done so since Pete, Joe and Andy's deaths. No, perhaps he wasn't so alone after all. The thought caused the tiny smile to reappear on his face.
"Now, as I was saying..." Elisa said, gently taking hold of Patrick's shoulders. "Let's get you into some proper night clothes. I can't stand to see you in that muddy, black suit any longer."
Back at the airport, Frank looked up from his cell phone to see Gerard returning from the terminal desk, a grim expression on his face. "Well, it's official. Our flight's been cancelled."
"Great..." Frank muttered sarcastically.
"They're going to post us up in a hotel and get us on the next flight home," he informed his bandmates. "But for now they're grounding every plane coming to and from Chicago. Understandably they're being pretty cautious about air travel right now."
"Has anyone figured out what it was yet?" Ray asked his bandmates.
"This guy I'm arguing with on Twitter is convinced it's a government secret," Frank said. "But I'm not so sure... I think it was some sort of weather thing."
"The weather?" Ray echoed, aghast. "What sort of weather phenomenon looks like that?"
From there, Frank, Ray and eventually Bob dissolved into an argument about just what the strange sight over the Chicago skyline had been, the discussion only intensifying as they left the airport to head to their hotel. Meanwhile, Gerard and Mikey held back, exchanging grave, meaningful looks.
"So, we're not going to be taking the first plane out, are we?" Mikey asked and Gerard shook his head.
"That right there," Gerard said, pointing to the vast expanse of windows lining the terminals. People were still looking out them, whispering to each other, despite the fact that the fire had long gone out. "I don't know exactly what it was, but it was textbook magical phenomena. Some of the biggest I'd ever seen in my life. Something crazy had to have caused it, I'm sure of it."
Mikey nodded, agreeing. "I'm sure you're right, Gee. But should we really be investigating? We're not professional witches, we're amateurs. Maybe someone more qualified should be dealing with this..."
"Someone like who?" Gerard asked and Mikey stopped, frowning deeply. The unfortunate truth was that there was no one. "If we don't look into this, who will? And besides, the fact that this happened the day we bury three out of four members of Fall Out Boy? I don't think it's a coincidence, Mikey."
"Fall Out Boy was rather latent with magical power..." Mikey conceded.
"Look, we'll take a small, cursory look at what happened tomorrow morning," Gerard said. "If it seems like we're in over our heads, we'll back off."
"And if it doesn't?" Mikey asked.
"Well, then... the only way for us to become better witches is to practice, practice, practice."
Courtney was furious. How could she not be? For a moment, one agonizingly small moment, she had been so close. Three out of four Fall Out Boys dead. The last one completely and utterly at her mercy. Even the bird had hardly been able to stop her, especially when she'd sicced her minions on the little man. It had been their fault, not hers, that Patrick Stump had slipped away. Their fault that he had gotten ahold of the gemstones. Their fault that he had unlocked the power in his voice and defeated her. Not to mention destroyed two of the cult issued wands.
So yeah, Courtney was pretty furious. But it was pretty hard to hold on to her fury when her boss was utterly livid.
It was just the two of them in the room now. The throne room to be exact, because of course the boss had one of those. It was a drab, concrete space, draped with black banners each bearing the symbol of a music note with a red line through it, the insignia of Silence the Noise. Between them, wall-mounted torches provided light. The floor was covered with a long, red carpet and at the end sat the throne itself. At the end of the throne sat the boss, a robed figure with a plague mask over his face. Or maybe it just was his face. Courtney had no way of knowing, for no one could claim to have seen him without that plague mask on.
Courtney got down on her knees and bowed her head. When it came to the boss, the expectation was that he got what he wanted without even having to speak. In this case, it was an apology. "I'm sorry, my lord," she said, her hushed voice still sounding like a firecracker in the empty, echoing room. "I regret to inform you that Patrick Stump, the last soul we needed for our spell, has slipped away."
There was a long pause as the boss considered what had been said, rapped his long, claw-like fingers upon the arm rests of his throne. "Slipped away how?" he asked, his voice deep, slow and thick.
"Patrick Stump..." Courtney said through gritted teeth. Naturally, it was difficult for her to recount the magnitude of her failure to her superior. "He... got away. With the gemstones in the briefcase." It briefly occurred to her to mention that it technically hadn't been her, but her subordinates who had messed up that part, but she knew the boss wouldn't have accepted that as an excuse, would've only called her weak for relying on them in the first place. "He unlocked his latent power. He used his voice to defeat us. I apologize, my leader. It won't happen again."
"Of course, it won't happen again," the boss said, raising his voice. "Fall Out Boy was a once in a generationband. No one else in music today had quite as much magic, would have worked for our spell quite as well! And now you've gone and squandered resources. Wasted them. That doesn't make me very happy, Love. That doesn't make me very happy at all."
"But Boss, surely there is hope?" Courtney asked, daring to look up at him. "Patrick may be empowered but he's still human. We can still kill him. Give me some time and a better team. We can gather his soul and that of all his bandmates! We can still complete the spell!"
"You're so confident in that, aren't you...?" the Boss asked. Slowly, he tapped his chin, as if thinking something over. 'Be clearly aware of the stars and infinity on high,' Vincent Van Goh said. 'Then life seems almost enchanted after all.' A perfectly poetic saying, one that inspired out late friend Pete Wentz immensely. Fall Out Boy's third studio album was symbolized by a waxing crescent. That is the phase of the moon tonight.
"You have until the moon returns to this phase, Courtney Love, to dispose of Patrick Stump, to retrieve the gemstones and to trap him and his friends' souls within them. And if you don't fulfill my request, it won't just be you getting hurt. But I will ensure that the one you love, that one whose care you've entrusted to me, is harmed in the process."
Courtney swallowed at that. Not him, she thought as she felt the bile rising to her throat. Hasn't he already dealt with enough already? But of course, she couldn't voice such thoughts to the boss. So, she simply swallowed them and said, "Yes, boss," in that rough, coarse voice of hers. "Your wish is my command."