The funeral for James was one that many described as a funeral for Superman, and in a sense it was. It was a funeral for their Superman. The City came together and built a statue of him in his honor that rivaled the size of some buildings, ten stories in height. Though the Vanguard never found a body, it was important that they had at least a coffin for the man. Everyone followed the people who carried the casket with a lit candle in their hand. The dark night sky was still illuminated slightly by the remnants of the explosion near Saturn. 

Sidriks, David, and many others held the casket in their arms. The people of the city wanted the statue to be built, but the guardians knew that he would be incredibly upset at the idea. He'd have wanted a monument dedicated to those who lost their lives during the Taken War, not just to the man who ended it. The group approached the top of the stairs to the monument and set the casket on a large marble pedestal in the center of it. Cameron lay her hand on the casket, feeling the wood of the tree that it was made out of. Seven frames were lined up on the side with scout rifles in hand pointed to the sky. It had been a long time since she had last experienced a funeral like this. 

David stepped up to the podium first. Many people could tell by the way he was shaking he was having a hard time trying to keep himself together. "My Dad..." He sighed as he started to speak. "One of the things that he'd told me when I was a kid was every day to make my bed." He said as he looked down at the floor. "He said that I had to do it otherwise I wouldn't get any breakfast." He chuckled softly. "So, naturally, me being the gullible kid that I am, decided to do it because he made such a good breakfast." He continued. 

"When I turned twelve, I finally worked up the guts to ask. 'Dad, why do you want me to make my bed every morning?' he looked over at me after I asked and rather than give me the answer 'because I said so' he told me this: I want you to start each day, with a task completed. Because that leads to another task completed and then another and another. But perhaps the most important question that I'd ever asked him was..." He said with a slight sniffle in his voice. "Dad...why do you fight so hard?' I asked him that question when I was eight, and he paused for a little while looking up at the starlight sky with me sitting next to him. He replied eventually because I want my people to live in a world where they don't have to be afraid." He said before he had decided to step away. It broke his heart to talk about his dad like this. 

Sidriks stepped up to the podium to a microphone to speak. He took his helmet off and lay it down on the floor. "James-17 was...a great man. That much we all know." He said keeping his composure as best he could. "He died with a smile on his face, something that I'm not familiar with. I could never understand how or why he was able to do that, death is a sad time and he expressed how afraid he was to be left alone." Sidriks said looking back over to the white casket. "He was brave, fearless, and a perfect example of what we can achieve if we strive for better things. His life was one of servitude, but he never found his work to be empty. He died doing what he loved. He wasn't just my friend. He was my best friend." He said before stepping down. 

Many of James' close relatives stayed close by to the statue but didn't say anything. The frames loaded their weapons and fired three bullets each in sync. All twenty-one shots making a resounding crash in the night sky. The people took their candles and placed them in the nearby river, letting them float down by the wax catchers. All of them started to walk back home. However, David stayed in place at the statue looking up to it. 

"Man Dad, you would have hated this." He said looking up at the giant statue. He walked around the casket for a moment and looked at the number of flowers and weapons that were on the ground. He took the rifle off of his back and looked at it for a moment. Contemplating whether or not he should put it on the altar for him. He then heard an odd noise behind him. It sounded like a blink, but not exactly so. He turned around and saw a detailed purple figure. He strained his eyes for a moment and rubbed them to make sure he wasn't seeing things. "Emily?" He asked looking at the luminescent figure.

"David! Oh, thank Christ you're here." She said to him. "Glad to see you again."

"Glad to see you too. Anyway, what are you doing here? And how are you here in the first place?!" He exclaimed. 

"I'm in tune with the Void, and it's energy, it can transcend reality and the Afterworld. I'm using it to manifest myself in the mortal plane." 

"Okay, so why are you here?" 

"I wanted to tell you something important. Grandpa isn't here." She said to him. David looked at her confused for a moment. 

"What do you mean he isn't there? He's dead." He replied. 

"Exactly the problem, none of us up here can find him. We all come into the same dimensional gate when we arrive here. He never came through." 

"So, he's alive?" 

"Well, we don't know, that's the thing. He has a soul, I mean, there are plenty of Exos who are up here." 

"Wait....you don't think he went to Hell do you?" David asked her. 

"No, even if he did Satan himself wouldn't be able to keep him and Grandma apart for long." She replied. 

"So where do you think he is?" 

"We don't know, we've been looking all over the place for him, but we can't find him." She said to him before he looked back up to the statue. 

"Dad, I hope you come back soon." 

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Meanwhile, in Cirtugan, Sidriks stood in front of the largest army of Eliksni ever assembled since the days of the Great War he looked upon them all with a look of pure fiery zeal. He stood upon the edge of their shipyard looking upon them all. "The Hive are crusaders against life, light, and existence itself. With the death of my best friend, my blood has ascended to a boiling point. I will not be sated until the Hive are extinct. Today, we crusade against this plague in our system. They have slaughtered our children, our wives, our husbands, and our comrades. We are off to war. AND WE WILL END THEM ALL!" Sidriks roared throwing his fist into the air. His soldiers reciprocated the gesture as they all moved off to their warships bound for the moon. 

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Several hours after the funeral had concluded Cameron walked into her apartment. However, nothing felt the same anymore. Everything felt lifeless and dead. She felt tired like nothing was worth living for anymore. She just needed help through this, and Nova appeared to have gone. Charon was going through this his own way too. Vel was placed in charge of Cirtugan while Sidriks went off to do something. She felt alone, completely and utterly alone. She didn't even bother with turning on the lights, she just didn't want to feel anything. 

All she felt was emptiness and pain. 

Cameron walked over to the end of the couch and lay down on her side looking at the TV that was still off. She could hear some footsteps coming from upstairs going down toward her. She listened carefully as David walked over to her side and sat down, wearing his pajamas. She lay her head down, and David moved toward her and gave her a hug. "I'm sorry Mom..." 

"I feel sorry for you most of all David.." She sniffled. "Your Dad didn't even get to see you grow up." She said feeling tears coming out of her eyes. David thought for a moment about what his sister had told him several hours before, there would be hope for him to come back. But, if she knew that, then she wouldn't be able to focus on other things; like her friends and other members of her family. Cameron sat up a moment later and looked down at the floor between her knees. She stood up and walked over toward the kitchen to get a drink. 

"Mom, please tell me you won't be drinking a lot of alcohol." David pleaded. Cameron looked at him and nodded pulling a glass bottle of a cola out of the fridge. She opened the bottle and walked over toward the upstairs part of the apartment. She opened the door to the right as she entered the hallway from the spiral stairwell. She opened it to see her husbands workshop, the half where he'd kept all of his writings. She slowly walked over and sat down in the swivel chair that was in front of the beautiful walnut wood desk. Papers were strewn about like the storm had just blown through, sketches and paragraphs crossed out and smudged with an eraser. She lifted up each of the pages and lay them down in a nice stack on the top left corner. On the top of the shelves that lined the walls above them were covered in copies of the Grimoire books he'd written, but there was one book that was out of place. 

Out of all the covers that were on top of these shelves, most of them had a title on the spine in a horizontal fashion, but this was different. The cover for this book was leather bound and with a brass clasp binding the other half of the cover to envelop the pages. She took the book off the shelf as if it were an artifact of an ancient civilization, one that could crumble with merely a thought. She gently removed the brass hook clasp over the shiny covering. The inside revealed that these pages were far more personal than just the Grimoires he'd made. 

Each of the white pages had been dated, and the pages had been scrawled into so much as to conserve space and groups of them had been written into the margins. Cameron took that book and headed down toward her room to read it. At the front was a small note card taped to the back cover. 

"Dear Cameron 

By the time that you have read this, I have passed away. By either my own accord or by circumstances that were out of my control. Either way, I just wanted to tell you how sorry that I am. Sorry that I had left you and my family behind. 

If I had died, know that I had sacrificed myself for you. I did this to preserve the future that I had used my time to build. The future that you, Nova, and David will be able to see and be in together. 

Don't try to get revenge. Don't try to make it seem like I had died in vain. 

I didn't. 

As long as you're here, I never failed in my mission. You and my family have made me so proud. I am proud to be a father, a husband, and a guardian. And I couldn't have done anything like what I have done, without you. 

You are the person who drove me to do everything that I ever did. I did everything to protect those I loved. For the planet that I also loved. You were the wonder of my life. And I will never forget what you did for me. 

-Love, 

James. "

Cameron walked downstairs with the book in her hand to see David sitting down on the couch holding a stuffed animal his dad made him from when he was a baby. Cameron opened the door to her bedroom with the journal in her hands and sat down on her bed. With the edition in her hand, she opened with Athena floating next to her to look at the small journal. Reading each entry with careful thought, and an overarching gloom with each passing sentence. She noticed how the passages that he'd written were almost a direct translation of his thoughts. She looked out the window for a long while after reading the pages. If there was something that she'd wished he'd been here for, it was the latest desire she had between her and him.

That she'd wanted a second child.