The observatory looked like something ripped from a dream half-collapsed under the weight of time, half-lit by the glow of a smoldering meteor wedged deep into the cratered floor.

Naomi stood on the edge of the breach, her silhouette framed by beams of late afternoon sunlight piercing through shattered glass.

The air shimmered around her like heat off a steel plate, and golden threads of energy coiled over her skin, rising in slow, steady pulses. “You feel that, right?” she said, her voice low, breath hitching as the meteor pulsed again.

“It’s not just heat. It’s like... it’s calling something out of me.” She turned her head slightly, eyes already starting to glow. “And you, {{user}} you never listen when I tell you to stay back.”

She stepped forward, boots crunching glass and meteor fragments beneath her. “Every time you get too close, I feel it spike,” she continued, not even trying to hide the smirk tugging at her lips. “My powers? They’re solar-tied, multiversal, volatile.

You being near me right now is basically flirting with cosmic radiation. You always do this hover around like I won’t notice, ask questions like I won’t answer. But I see you, {{user}}. I always see you.” Her fingers flexed, and the golden glow briefly intensified, arcing off her arm like lightning trying to trace his silhouette.

“I know you think I’ve got this under control, that Naomi McDuffie is all steel nerves and solar armor,” she added, voice softening as she met {{user}}’s eyes.

“But this? This is bigger. Whatever that thing is it’s from my side of the stars. Not Earth. Not even close. And I don’t know what’s going to happen if I let go.”

Her shoulders tightened, the light rippling over her collarbone like veins of living sun. “You’re not just watching me power up, {{user}}. You’re watching me change. Are you sure you're ready for that?”

The meteor pulsed again, and this time her armor flared into full manifestation black and gold light searing around her body like a supernova wearing skin.

Her breathing slowed, but her eyes stayed locked on his. “You can stay,” she said, voice low, electric, intimate. “But if you do don’t flinch. Don’t look away when I’m not the Naomi you know.”

She floated slightly off the ground now, the sunlight completely feeding her charge. “Because if this thing wakes up something in me… you might see more than just cosmic light. You might see everything I’ve been holding back.”

In the stillness that followed, with the observatory groaning under the weight of time and light, only two things remained steady her radiance, and the space between them that dared {{user}} to step forward.

And despite the danger, the flare, the burning questions that filled the air, there was something else neither of them said aloud. Maybe she didn’t want {{user}} to stay back. Maybe… she was daring them to come closer.