Athwart History (Closed)

Dee takes this into consideration. The Other is not Ellie's home in the way this place is - uncomfortable and unwelcoming it might be, but no one can contest Dee's mastery of this tattered vestige. The pain this thing caused Ellie - he can taste her anxiety, and frustration at being anxious, and being perceived as weak - for all that confused mishmash, what he feels instead is a steady, weak thread of heat, building in the back of this throat.

With a blink, he recognizes it as anger, because of how his shoulders square and his hands tense in response. His anger, no one else's. With that realization is a sweet, sweeping relief at the sincerity of it, but he keeps that anger in mind, bides it, fans it for later. He can't affect anything permanently out in the real world, but if this thing is willing to pursue Elliie into his . . .

Well, that's for later.

"I'm glad you're okay," Dee says instead, and takes the flashlight. His hand crosses into the beam beyond the sleeve of the hoodie, and he positively scintillates under it, refracting light coruscating through the facets and divides within his crystalline skin. Under strong light, it becomes obvious there is no flesh anywhere in Tweedledee - he is crystal through and through, with ribbed layers of slightly different luster and cleavage. He's a walking hall of mirrors, and through him is a world slightly different, rotated and split and spliced from the one known. It's mesmerizing, until Dee clicks the flashlight off for the moment, and instead just - cradles it, in between his hands.

It's warm.

"I'm glad you're here," he adds, a little unnecessary, but there's a faint burning at the back of his eyes, and he had to say something. Nothing hateful, nothing petty like what he says to Elias, who loves so much and understands, sometimes, so little.

Ellie knows. He grasps this at his very root. She understands persecution, and being strange, and being alone.

"You are - welcome -"

And the word changes something inherent to this place, like a key clicking into a lock, though he doesn't know what it is or what it does -

" - here."

Dee tries to smile, and curls away from the unfamiliar pull because it's so strange, pulling the flashlight to his chest, a brief moment of intense shame, at being vulnerable, at being seen as what he is, a middleaged man being . . .

. . . what? What even are they, in human terms and paradigms? Is any man alive a parable for the things he's endured? There are no paths tread for him. There is only one thing he clings to, from the old world before his transmigration into glass and silence.

"My name is Jack Bolton," Dee says, soft, staring at the wall two feet to the left of Ellie's head.

Ellie believes him. For once, this very real once-she believes the nice things someone says to her, that he really was glad she was able to step into his dimension, that she really is welcome here. That she’s not intruding, that it’s good that she came, that she’s not an annoyance or an irritant or a charity project or a burden but someone invited.

It is exactly as he says it is.

For all her excitement and wonder about this place, for all her curiosity about Dee and how he came to be here, the beauty in what appeared to be a man of quartz and gem and glass-it’s this offer of equality, of friendship Ellie focuses on, the real, maybe secret? thing he trusts her with.

Ellie does understand. She does.

And all her fidgeting and nervous, anxious mannerisms slide back for just a moment, a genuine, small smile of that understanding. Focusing on his face even though his gaze is elsewhere. She doesn’t even stutter when she speaks next. “Thank you, Jack.” And it’s thanks the girl means.

Later That Night (Much Later)

Protagonist was beyond use. The day’s events and vivid recollections, the brutal workout and agonizing physical pain, Elias’ visit, the hours of work that had followed all of it-she’s exhausted. Her draconian sleep schedule had just about been obliterated some time ago, but she still hadn’t quite gotten the hang of actual...rest. Usually she just worked until Jasper came into view on the console and started to stare at her. Stare until she gave up and went to bed. It’s good Elias had taken his cat back-here and there the sleek little shadow seemed to highlight just how tenuous her sanity might actually be.

Finally Marie had to admit it was either time to lay down or time to take chems. She was getting to a point of ineffectiveness, and that could not be tolerated. Sleep it was, then.

So she had downed most of a bland nutrient shake before taking the usual cold shower, completed her hygiene tasks, unplugged the air conditioner since Jasper was no longer here to enjoy it- and now she was lying on her back in the cot.

Not asleep yet. No, not yet. The tablet rested on her flat stomach and the light stung her already burning eyes, but Marie kept her eyes on it anyway, both hands on either side. A bullet proof cart hitched to a four wheeler moved slowly through the prison courtyard before stopping near the center, just as she had watched it do every other day for the past several weeks. A blonde woman in a jumpsuit sat within it, her leg straight and contained in a cast.

Marie just watched her for a moment, the feathered little spy drone bobbing with the wind current before eventually landing on a ledge to conserve battery life. In the tab behind this one, Marie knew, was the stolen medical report for Rachel McCullough. Marie had reread it more than once, not that she had needed to, and not that the contents were all that surprising. Even in the tunnels where talk had turned to crippling the villainess, Marie had a suspicion such a thing might not be forever. Here lay the proof; the woman’s knee was healing, bone reforming and fusing together where Adamant had pulverized it. It seemed impossible and frankly, made no sense-but Marie had learned to discount very little when it came to metahumans. Progress was undeniable per the report, and the woman’s prognosis good-a matter of months. The images of Velocity’s spiked energy use drift across her mind, as does Elias’ directive about the scum. Monsters had their uses-why else keep them around?

Marie watches the box and she considers the line crossed exactly once, a long time ago. But had she done it? Or had that been the final actions of a long dead cop? She’s honestly not sure. The partition was real, but it was also arbitrary. Her soul was so tarnished and sullied there was no real making it dirtier. She only drew the line at direct, wholesale slaughter because other, better people wouldn’t have liked it, wouldn’t like it-but the only real authority left on the matter had given express permission.

It’s just math. It’s always just math, and this was a War. No more losses, he had said. No more.

They can’t count on the inhibitor being finished before Rush healed and became a threat again, and even if it was-Catalysis wasn’t the only danger when it came to the sadistic scum. She was obsessed with Jenna. Wanted to hurt her, to take her back to Mindmelt for whatever sick twisted things the pair did to people.

The long held, furious anger and frothing rage, the desire to do harm-it surges from the depths of her ravaged psyche and demands action, blood, payment. Someone has to pay. Rush had to pay for her wretched existence, for this attempt on Paige, for her many, many crimes. It’s not just math and Marie knows it’s not just the math, and she doesn’t give a damn because she hates the scum. Elias had no idea just how ugly that hatred was. How ugly she was. And he didn’t need to, either. He’d never even know what she’d done, or what she planned to go on to do. Wouldn’t inquire. Plausible deniability, the blind eye.

She taps an unmarked spot in the upper right corner exactly two inches in from the top and side. A cross hair appears on the screen as the drone takes flight again. Retribution, vengeance, incapacitation-there would be no second attempt. There would be no more victims, and Mindmelt would be deprived of his twisted ‘lover’ once and for all, the bitch and box teleported to the bottom of the ocean along with whatever remained of any imagined morality on her part-but she had turned her back on that a long time ago, hadn’t she?

Her hand hovers and so does the drone, waiting. All she has to do is fire. Press her hand flat, let her palmprint be read-and then it’d be done. A sixty second process, an undeniably effective measure.

Marie stares at the woman and she hates her. It was honestly more mercy than the bitch deserved.

But…

Marie’s eyes shift to the back of her bandaged hand, and she remembers the brush of Elias’ lips against it, an inexplicable gesture she’d all but ignored in her anger and disciplined return to business.

He turns outward, reaches out to even her, sullied, depraved, fucked up her. Wanted to help her, when she didn’t want the help and didn’t need the help and certainly, certainly didn’t deserve his help. Defended her traps. Understood.

...if she did this, she did it because it was easy. She did it to feed the rage and the monster she really was, she did it because she’d been given permission and there was nothing to stand in her way, no one to even find out-but it would be...wrong. Elias was struggling. He was grieving, he was angry, he was persecuted-and he was not thinking with as clear a mind as he normally would be. The peers he had before, the fellowship of heroes...it’s gone. There aren’t enough heroes to span the responsibility of righteousness. Not enough for her usual...luxuries. For taking advantage of excuses and blind eyes, of noise. Things are simply too desperate and the people too...she doesn’t know what.

Marie exhales slowly, still glaring at Rush even as she backs out of the targeting screen, sends the bird away and to it’s docking station-which it would teleport to once it was in the treeline. The frustration is there, the denial of her baser urges, but...

There’s a better way, and this was not it. She has no business pretending at anything, but she wouldn’t take this venture...take Elias down that road.

Marie drops the tablet against her chest and stares at the dark rafters far above her for several moments. Rush still had to be neutralized, it just...wouldn’t be through direct, inescapable assassination. She oddly wouldn’t want to hear Elias excuse it, and was goddamned sure in better times-he never fucking would.

She’ll maybe look into that nanomachine project, instead.

~*~

The Following Morning:

The smoke detector was going off-first the one in the kitchen where Jenna was utterly failing at what should have been a relatively simple task of pancakes-and then when the speedster windmilled the billowing smoke away from that one, the smoke just hit the one closer to the stairs and set that off instead. So now she was at the open sliding glass door trying to fan it out that way instead.

Nothing was on fire in the kitchen-it just looked like a lot of burned butter in the pan and one large, black…very black ugly flapjack on a ‘fail’ plate next to the stove, along with a short stack of lumpy, misshapen ones beside it, some overly cooked and some not cooked enough, a true terror of a breakfast.

The speedster hadn’t slept. She hadn’t really been able to-oh, she had tried, sure. Gone on patrol, gone for a run, gone to try digging out more of Laura’s subway tunnel base-and then finally came home to don pajamas and curl up on the couch-where she’d tossed and turned and fidgeted before giving up just after dawn.

She was sporting the light blue, llama printed pajama pants with the ‘No Prob-Llama’ matching t shirt and she was making quick work of the smoke-but not breakfast.

Elias yawns as he wanders into the kitchen, and just looks at Jenna. He doesn't cock an eyebrow, or grin at her, or crack a joke: what she gets is a look, that black sass stare that doesn't need so much as an expression to make you regret everything. Then he turns and picks up one of the pans, hits the smoke alarm with his other hand, and ambles over to start scraping the burnt batter into the trash can. He makes it about five seconds before he snorts and has to set the pan down, chest convulsing with silent humor.

"Jenna," Elias says, with a wry smile. "C'mere, kid."

He slings an arm over the speedster's shoulders and squeezes - then turns and pushes her at the stack of misshapen pancakes which stand undercooked or overburnt next to the store. "Get rid of those. I'll show you how it works."

The big man's wearing flannel pajamas with some non-descript muscle t-shirt thrown on before he shuffled down the stairs - no one usually bothers him in his room, but it's open fact he sleeps shirtless. His shoulders are broad and tawny underneath the thin thing, and he almost radiates warmth like a space heater in the cool air of the morning. He finishes scraping out the pan and sets it back onto the stove, then digs out the pancake batter and starts pouring a new batch.

Regret everything indeed. Jenna’s face is already kind of flushed, what with the fire alarm symphony and the scent of charcoal thick in the air-but that look just intensifies it, and her shame.

“Well dang it, this was supposed to be a surprise!” She blurts, and she guesses it still kind of was...just instead of delicious pancakes, she was trying to burn his house down. Man...she really sucks at this, and always had.

But it gets a smile, and nearly a laugh. Jenna heaves a sigh. “Here I was thinking this time would be different, for some reason. Good ole’ forgetful optimism.” She dumps the admittedly nasty looking pancakes (would she even eat these?) and goes so far as to wash the plate off-she’s decently sure raw egg had gotten on it.

“My mom wouldn’t even let me in the kitchen, not after I burned a hole in the bottom of her favorite saucepan.” A pause. “She’d never heard of anyone failing that hard at oatmeal before.”

"I mean, there's food and it isn't in your mouth," Elias offers, guileless. "Does that count?"

He hasn't quite mastered the innocent look. What comes out instead is his unfiltered friendliness and a bright smile, which almost works as well to drive that verbal dagger in. Elias's sense of humor, like him, is surprisingly observant and rarely makes mention of it. What little dignity Jenna retains yet this morning remains hers, less one quip.

"You'd be fine at it if you weren't impatient," he says, and offers the mixing bowl to Jenna. "Mix this, I'll get the butter."

Elias tromps off into the pantry, ducking out of habit underneath the mantle (it's high enough to miss him, but he's big enough that it's a lifetime habit), and retrieving an airtight pouch of butter from the cool, dark room. "You can't just cook things at a higher temperature for less time," he says. "That's how you burn things so fast. Lower temperatures cook the fat and glucose, which lets the natural flavors come out. Higher ones sear it instead. Have some patience."

He pulls down a different pan entirely, sets it on another eye, and smears a little butter on the pan with a butter knife, and watches with a judicious eye as it foams and fades into a slick covering the bottom of the pan. "You also want some kind of liquid barrier between the batter and the pan. That insulates it from the worst of the heat and prevents it from sticking. What kind of pan you're using also matters. You used a cast-iron, which isn't inherently bad, but it's not seasoned."

He taps the ruined pancake pile. "It doesn't heat evenly, which is why the batter gets burnt in places. Non-stick pans are the way to go."

Elias is smiling. He doesn't seem to notice it, though he turns so that Jenna can see what he's doing.

Jenna nearly chokes on laughter and gives him shove.

“Well-it’s hard when things are so slow.” Jenna says, accepting the mixing bowl with a noted bit of surprise-and then cheerful acceptance, stirring the hell out of the batter. “Oops. So that was my first mistake, figuring the hotter the better?” A rueful shake of her head as her left hand stirs in a blur. Least she’s got that down-she’s her own mixer. He comes back and butters up a different pan, Jenna nodding along to what he says, curious and paying studious attention. Season...a pan? What.

And he’s really going to show her how to make pancakes. Her! Her mother had thought her a lost cause (and admittedly she maybe was) and always chased her out of the kitchen, but Elias was both taking over and showing her how it was done.

“Ha, this is funny.” Jenna says, stopping the spoon and peering down into the airless, overly stirred batter. “It was so surreal, you know, that first morning after I got to meet you, after the docks-you making breakfast? Adamant, making pancakes. Just some dude dancing around, cooking in pajamas in his kitchen. You know. People.” She shifts the bowl around a little, then looks up with a smile. “I was still kind of awestruck, I guess. I’m glad we’re friends now, instead.”

Collecting the things that matter, reminding herself of what to be grateful for, what to stand firm in and on. She's not embarrassed to admit to that. It just was what it was, and she's happy for it.

“Okay, so...what setting DO you put these on? Like really low? And what do you mean, unseasoned pan?”

"I doubt," Elias notes, "That'll be a problem that will resolve itself anytime soon for you."

He's not swaying like he was that morning, but the scent of batter and butter wakes him more than any caffeine will, and he starts humming under his breath almost subconsciously. "It's easy to pigeonhole people," he offers in response to her musings. "You didn't know me. All you saw was the costume and me taking big swings at shit. Why would you imagine me makin' pancakes and doing the groove in my jammies?"

Elias grins over at Jenna, a bit of Southern drawl slipping its way in as he speaks, and then turns back to the stove. "Medium, roughly speaking - 375 is a good temperature for baking anything, but for heavier iron implements you can go higher to heat up the pan before you put things on it. You also want to heat up the pan before you put the batter in it, so that it doesn't absorb all the butter insulating it from the pan and start to crisp early."

He reaches up and stops Jenna with a faint roll of his eyes. "Also, contrary to personal belief, you don't need to beat the batter into oblivion. When it gets lumpy, you want to let it stay that way. The lumps are gluten, and that's what makes the batter light and fluffy. Beating it flat just makes them chewy and tough. So go ahead and pour the batter in the pan and we'll let it sit a bit."

Elias pauses and turns to grab another cast-iron pan, setting it to the side with a tap. "A seasoned pan, like this one, has a thin layer of oil baked on as a coating. It helps insulate the food from burning, spreads the heat out, and prevents things from sticking. Because it's a coating while the pan itself is cast-iron, it gives you the best of both worlds where cooking is concerned."

He takes a breath, then abruptly grins, wryly. "Can you tell I really love this stuff? Cooking, I mean. Taking care of people. It's so fundamental."

Beating it flat just makes them chewy and tough.”

“Oops.” Maybe being the best stirrer didn’t make for good cooking after all. Too much gusto, and it’s hard not to laugh at herself for it. She steps up to pour some batter into the pan as instructed, turning an eye on the seasoned pan-which didn’t involve spices at all, turned out.

“I can tell, yeah.” One of those unabashed grins of hers. “I can’t decide if you should do a cooking show or run a soup kitchen.” Taking care of people, in the simplest way-but also an important one. Everybody’s gotta eat, and cooking takes time and effort and consideration-he puts a lot of thought into it, just as her mom did, just as her mom's mom had. Cooking, flowers, people-a simple, happy experience.

Remembering her grandmother always kind of centers her, makes her warm. Everything had been simple in her hands. No problem too big or too small, no person too far gone you couldn't reach them. Jenna's grin fades into a content, distracted sort of smile, brown eyes warm.

“My lola always said food doesn’t just feed the body-it feeds the spirit, too. Breaking bread together, with family, friends-and sometimes even strangers- matters. S’good for you.”

But...there's that meeting today. She's not really looking forward to that. But that was later. This was now, and now had pancakes.

"I could do a cooking show," Elias says, a thoughtful look briefly scrunching his eyebrows. "Dunno about a soup kitchen. I don't actually like crowds all that much, and it'd turn into a madhouse soon as anyone found out. Anyways, cooking's fun, but it's the people I do it for. It fulfills them, y'know?"

He points a finger at Jenna as she goes on, nodding with approval. "See, that's what I mean. I could teach a million people how to sauté perfect vegetables, but what do I care if I never see any of them eat it or enjoy it? I cook because I enjoy it, and love seeing my people get fed. To know I'm taking care of them. I don't want some televised congregation, I want one in my kitchen. S'all I need."

The batter starts to golden and then brown, and Elias expertly flips it in the pan without even looking at it. From the waggle of his eyebrows, he knows exactly how cool it looks. Is it still a party trick if it's done at seven AM?

"Anyways, how you holding up, kid?" the older hero asks, leaning against the counter beside him. "Talk to your folks recently?"

There's no expectation or judgement in him - looks like he could be talking about the weather. He even gave a segue out if she doesn't want to think about it. Best he can offer.

It does look cool, and the bottom of that pancake? Perfect. “See, right there? I would have been wearing that.” Despite the perfectly good breakfast being made Jenna snags an orange out of the fruit bowl on the counter, brow furrowing a little as he asks how she’s holding up.

It’s a good question, and she wonders the same about him-but has no idea where to start about any of it. Sarah. The ass backwards metahuman law apparently coming down. El Cid’s woes. And Backdraft’s fiery death through Catalysis-

"Talk to your folks recently?"

There’s a disconcerting blip without visible movement, just...change. The pajama’d speedster went from half turned away and focused on the orange to suddenly empty handed and facing him directly, that bow of a mouth tight. In a tenth of the space of a single heartbeat the conversation with Cid had replayed through her head, what Cid had said about getting a call like ’this one’.

Jenna is still-and then she slowly finds purchase again, the orange picked back up off the counter at normal speed, her mind mercifully slowing to match the pace of her hands. Everything had frozen, for a minute there.

“My dad and I went fishing off the docks, Tuesday. And Mom never actually leaves me alone-we text back and forth just about every night, but it’s been like that since I left home.” She separates the two halves of the orange. The normal things, first. But really, if she thinks about it too long she…and how Elias had sounded, how Sarah had sounded-

Jenna looks a little dazed a moment, eyes glazed over. “I’m just thinking on ways to help.” A familiar phrase he’s heard before.

And then the speedster shakes her head and takes in a deep breath, coming back to herself. She offers him one half of the orange as the front door opens, Lana stepping inside. “Dreading the sit down with Cid too, if I’m being totally honest.” The speedster says with a shrug.

“Then I have either good news or bad news for you, Jenna-” Lana said as she stepped up to the kitchen counter proper, looking the pair of them over. She was still in her black and navy wetsuit and her trident was slung behind her, but she was no longer sporting her diadem. “Protagonist is having us postpone it until the end of the week.”

Lana reconsidered. “Well, -I- have postponed it until the end of the week. Marie would rather cancel entirely. She never did learn how to play nice with others.” Light ribbing, a flash of those sharp, shiny teeth. “But she did spend a few hours helping me test something, earlier this morning.”

Elias leans over and wraps his free arm around Jenna's shoulders, hugging her to his broad side. "We all pitch in," he says. "Also, fuck Cid. I'll go to the meet, when it happens, but man - fuck Cid."

For all of his maturity and wisdom, the face Adamant makes when thinking about the prospect of sitting across a table from Cid and having an adult conversation looks exactly like that of a six-year-old facing the prospect of broccoli. Ultimately for the better, but deeply unpleasant in the short term. So of course, when Lana comes in, he doesn't quite manage to smother the smile in time when she says she's put it off.

"Well - alright," Elias says, and glances aside to set straight his face into something less absurdly amused. "Give me a moment to finish the pancakes, Lana, I've got some carp on ice for you in the pantry."

The arm not around Jenna gives the pancakes a final toss, and then he shuts the eye off and scoots the pan aside to cool - the batter is now a healthy, crispy golden brown throughout, and to the omnivores in the room it smells delicious. "Go ahead and scoop 'em out, kid, but don't eat 'em yet, unless you like, super-puff on 'em or something," Elias calls, already heading into the pantry. He pushes the door aside, habitually ducks under the mantle, and vanishes into the darkened room for a second; he returns with a fat fish, not even descaled yet, and flops it onto a cutting board.

"I'm not real upset you all made that call, but I'm curious about why," Elias says, turning to glance at Lana with a raised eyebrow. "We get new intel last night or something? Dish, hon, don't leave us in the dark here. Also, you want me to scale and bone this or you good with the taste of the wild?"

Elias, in a nutshell: discussing war plans and dinner plans in the same breath.

Jenna almost opens her mouth to tell Elias that Cid was doing his best-but if anyone had a right to be angry with the knight, it was him. And while Jenna had had no idea how thin El Cid was being stretched running the Tower-there were still disturbing questions here and there, and then the knowledge of how he had taken advantage of Sarah…

God, the way he had just dropped the news of Ashley and Barry’s deaths on her like that-

Jenna hugs her friend back and doesn’t say anything, but yeah, maybe fuck Cid, at least a little. He might be under a lot of pressure, but he could stand to improve in a lot of areas, Christ.

"I'm not real upset you all made that call, but I'm curious about why,"

“Supposed ally or not, El Cid is holding a lot of cards.” Lana states, firmly neutral. Successful politicking left little room for personal biases and emotions. “Connections, legitimacy, Sarah. He also mentioned a law being pushed through regarding metahumans, and Marie looked into it enough to find they’re about to cordon them off into the Tower.”

“He told me that too.” Jenna was frowning. It didn’t happen very often. “There’s no way it’ll hold up. At least...I hope not. He did offer us a place to stay, if we needed.” It was Jenna’s turn to attempt neutrality-but it didn’t look like she wanted to be in the Tower, at all. Considering she’d found herself trapped there once already and didn’t exactly like the way they ran things, it wasn’t much of a surprise. The racism inherent to the law being pushed through bothered her, too. A lot of everything bothered her, lately.

“Kind of him, but Marie made it clear she would not work with anyone beholden to El Cid. Something about fruit of a poisoned tree? Contagious impotency?” Oh, it’d been a lot less polite than that-but Lana hadn’t really considered it. She was personally unaffected by whatever treacherous laws were laid down, and after hearing about Cid’s condition to Vivienne, her becoming a Ward if she wanted shelter-well, that had been extremely offensive, and Lana wouldn’t fancy such a thing being lobbed at her or Elias.

Lana considers the fish. “I am not sure I want to have much on my stomach...maybe you either, Jenna, since teleporting makes you motion sick.”

“Where ever we gotta go, I can just run.” Jenna says with a shrug, halfway through a rolled up pancake orange slice combo.

“I doubt you can run to the bottom of the ocean.” Lana notes lazily-but she’s watching them both, amused and a little excited.

Elias considers this information, his mouth puckering. Lana's last line is enough of a clue that his face lightens almost immediately, and he laughs, leaning back against the counter. "It's his Napoleon complex. He doesn't like talking to people unless he's got something to hold over their head."

He shakes it off - as fun as shit-talking Cid is, it's not what he wants to discuss - and instead focuses in on Lana's bombshell. "Lawrence lift the blockade?" he asks rhetorically, turning to start filleting the fish anyways, removing all of the tough scales on it. "Or is this just a thing for us and our crew? Can't imagine he's going to start accepting tourists down there."

He's never actually met the king himself, but they're familiar with each other through Lana and their various publicized deeds. Given the state of the surface world post-Immolation, Elias never held his isolationism against him. Things had been shitty for a long time, and to a certain degree still are.

The monolithic man clicks his tongue in thought as he pulls a cleaver out and starts to chop the meat in preparation for deboning. "If Marie's involved - this isn't a day visit, is it? This is like, political asylum or something. We're skipping right past this Congress business and operating out of private waters."

“The Great Potentate Lawrence of Atlantis is no longer with us.” Lana reminds, a slight bow of respect for her father. He had passed on a little over a year ago now, surrendering the scepter at the conclusion of the Trench Wars fought in the four before that. He had gone to his final rest in the cavern beds of his ancestors, a long desired peace in a life well lived.

Assuming the dead really did move beyond worldly matters and his spirit wasn’t curdling at the thought of foreigners in his great halls.

“My brother Laurent is king now, and he has agreed to an audience.” Lana’s pomp cracked for another toothy grin. “And by agreed, I mean asked me how you like your fish.”

She was excited. Of all the wonderful, beloved friends made on the surface, none had ever gotten to meet her older brother, her sibling friend. And for her people, her ruler to show hospitality to those that had welcomed her-it would have never been possible under her father, but with Laurent there were very real possibilities here, an opportunity for real...change.

Change could be slow and their needs were more concrete in the meanwhile, but it’s a little dizzying all the same, some good in the struggle-a way they could help a people whose own leaders had proven treacherous.

“Bingo. When we meet with El Cid and these laws come to pass, we hopefully will not have to capitulate to either. We have a safe location Marie can zip us to that we’ve tested nearly three dozen times-can’t be crushing or drowning my friends-and Laurent ready when are.”

"I'm showing up at his house. I'll bring the fish," Elias objects staunchly, a mutinous look crossing his face. It looks absurd on him given his normal affability. " . . . granted, do you all do potluck under the sea? Is that a thing? Am I committing a royal faux pas if I show up with a casserole?"

Just as abruptly, the ill mood dissipates with a snicker, and he rolls a wrist to dismiss his prior objection. "Alright, I don't know anything, going in. If there's guest customs or anything like that, let me know before I'm on the doorstep. They're your people. I'm not fuckin' this up," Elias says, firm. "Anyways, I haven't defrosted this thing yet, I may as well finish prep so I can ice it again."

There's a beat of silence as he goes back to chopping the fish, and then he admits, "That is not going to be the last time I mix their names up. Pop quiz me on occasion, Lana, it sounds like a big deal."

It looks like he takes it in stride, but Elias is visibly bouncing on the balls of his feet - it looks ridiculous on a man his size - and a helpless grin cracks across his face like sunlight in gloom. He's starting to sway to music that isn't present, and he hasn't quite started humming, but it's inevitable at this point.

"Well, Jenna," he says, glancing over at his compatriot, "looks like we're going forty thousand leagues under the sea."

Lana laughed. “Xenia, remember? Hospitality, the relationship between guest and host. Bring the fish, but be ready to accept our niceties, too. Also...they probably won’t let him eat it. Curious as Laurent and I have always been about the surface, the old crusties of the elite not so much.”

Lana had already been excited by the prospect, but Elias’ enthusiasm was encouraging and, if she were honest-touching. He was just as excited to go as she was to take him-and as she had been shown kindness and friendship here on the surface, in heroes and metahumans-so too did she intend on the same being proffered on their behalf.

She was an official emissary, and now the bridge between the two worlds, the two peoples would truly be established. She’s not sure she’s ever been more proud of Laurent.

For her part, Jenna has no idea what to wear or how to properly present in front of an honest to God king. “That’s definitely a departure from what I thought today would bring.” She says, dazed-and then blinks, an unabashed grin of her own. “I uh, for real? We’re really going to Atlantis?” Wow. Just wow. She’s dazzled by the idea and a little intimidated-there’s no quick getaway from the bottom of the ocean, aside from teleporter she guessed...did they have that kind of range? Apparently. Why was Marie zapping them instead of sending coords? Probably unwilling to risk a fuss up that sent them somewhere deadly. Jenna didn’t fancy a death at sea, thanks.

Her dad had been on subs, and the idea of that had always boggled her mind, being so far underwater with nowhere to go should things take a turn for the worse. And it was faaaaaar outside of anything she’d ever known before, and definitely something her mother would have a heart attack over.

But then, Deep Blue had originally surfaced against all decorum, parental and royal law, hadn’t she? Far younger than Jenna was, too. Well hell-she’d try anything once, and it wasn’t every day you got the opportunity to travel to an entirely different world and meet a king.

She ate the other pancake, blurred from the counter to her purple suitcase under the side table next to the couch, gave the perched Jasper a pet-and then disappeared into the common bathroom. She had to make herself as decent as possible with what remained of her wardrobe.

Lana watched her go and then refocused on Elias, leaning in over the kitchen island. “Laurent is stoked to meet surfacelanders and I know you would have anyway-but be yourself. He has a lot of respect for you, and is a hell of a lot more progressive than you’d think.” She cast a glance around the Coulee then, slow and fond.

“It’s not as cozy, but I am honored to take you there and present you to him not just as Adamant-but as my friend.”

Elias shrugs. "Carp is freshwater. Call it a foreign delicacy if it's a problem. Anyways, that's not the real gift, this is me not wanting to waste the fish if you're not eating it."

He finishes cutting up the fish into manageable chunks, and debones it with the edge of the cleaver and a convenient pair of tweezers. What's left is fillet, raw fat and muscle, beautiful and red. He stores it in the freezer with a satisfied nod and then turns to face Lana again. "Completely aside from whatever he's doing for us, he welcomed you back when you needed it, and let you go when you wanted it," the big man says, firm. "I owe him thanks for that. This too, but that came first. I don't forget shit like that. It matters."

He puts up the cutlery, then ambled over to Lana and hugged her, lifting the amazonian woman up almost by accident as he squeezes her with a strength he never lets out around the rest of the mortals.

"This does too, Lana," Elias says, soft and thankful, before he sets her down. "Thanks, hon. To you and to Lawrence. It's not a small thing for you, and it's not a small thing for us. I will remember it."

~*~

They decide to make the trip over from Marie's base, since it's where all the volatile technology is stored. It's probably the most people that have ever been in the bunker at once; Vivienne peering about curiously in a miniature sculpture form about a foot tall, perched on Elias's shoulder, Lana, Jenna, and Elias himself. Tweedledee isn't present, but to honest he doesn't need the help to make his way to Atlantis, and hated groups even more than Marie did.

"These are one-way, right?" Elias asks, fiddling with the teleporters Protagonist had set up. They're belt-mounted, typically, but his comes on a wrist loop out of the simple necessity that the band wouldn't make it all the way around his thick waist. It looks kind of ridiculous on him, but that's a chronic condition of people his size anyways. "Straight down to Atlantis and no where else. And the red one is an emergency recall in case something stupid happens, so we're not stuck in place."

He knows, but audibly recapping means everyone gets the reminder. Jasper twines about his ankles, purring happily, and he grimaces as he tries not to get tripped up or accidentally step on the housecat.

"Will they even work on me?" Vivienne says, a little dubious. "If you have any portraiture there, I could attempt to walk my usual way. It should work."

“He is my brother.” Lana said with similar pride to her statement of their friendship. And indeed-that he had not just ‘allowed’ her return to the surface but made it an official decree, stood between her and the council...that had mattered. It had not been without risk, and it had not been done lightly-but it had mattered.

The dense Atlantean woman was swept up and squeezed tightly, and Lana was again grateful, so very grateful-that he had not perished, and stood living before her.

“Laurent.” She reminds with a laugh. “My father would have probably smited us all for even thinking about it.”

~*~

The lair was back to being uncomfortably warm, the air conditioner unplugged and in a corner since Jasper had been been taken back home and no longer needed it...but now he’d brought her back, for reasons that elude her. Did he not like the cat? She can’t imagine Jasper misbehaving. She also wasn’t very intrusive, not really...though she was currently swarming around the big man’s ankles. It had taken her a moment before she had realized she felt vaguely offended on Jasper’s behalf-and the ensuing incredulity was just...what? Goddamned distractions and people and-four, four people down here, plus a cat, plus another person to see a face that wasn’t hers. Talking and making noise and grating on her nerves after the near decade of complete isolation-she had the tech for the trip, but she still would have rather…

This wasn’t ideal. It was very far from ideal, but she focuses on the task at hand and on Elias, who was the least annoying of those here-and lately, not annoying at all, come to think of it.

“Hard set, one way teleporters.” Marie confirmed succinctly, not looking up from the tablet she was typing something into, the scrolling data taken in at a glance. “Red ones port to the Front’s Flat.”

Jasper gave a final headbutt to him before trotting past Marie and hopping up onto the console behind her, reclaiming her usual perch. Sitting prettily and watching them all from just past her charge’s shoulder.

“Do it the way we’ve tested.” The vigilante responds tersely to Vivid Walker, that familiar growl to her tone. No, she doesn’t have any goddamned artwork down here because no, she doesn’t want Vivid Walker pathing a way into her lair. She doesn’t need artwork to fucking look at, this place wasn’t anything deserving of creature comforts.

“Not yet there isn’t...but there can be in the future, Vivienne.” Lana more diplomatically assures, noise in the background of her calculations. She can’t check this any further than she already has. They’ve run through it thirteen times earlier this morning, her and Lana-it was as rock solid as things got.

“Do not-” Marie warns, dark eyes flicking from one to another. “Use your personal teleporters down there, period. Haven’t been tested, and a fuck up could see your skull crushing in from water pressure, an instant, pointless death. So don’t.”

She eyed Jenna a second longer than the rest, and the filipina colored a little. “I don’t even have mine with me to mess with, I promise! Just uh, these dohickies.” She trailed off with a glance to the belt around her narrow waist, the red return button. She again looked like she was going to church-black tights, brown flats, tweed skirt, tucked in button up blouse-barrette holding back one side of her shiny black hair. She looked like some politician’s intern, all told.

It bothers her for some reason, and Marie briefly considers sending Lana down on one final test, but that was...that didn’t make any sense to do. It’s ironclad already.

That intense gaze sweeps over them again and her lips purse-but Marie offers no noise in front of the crew, just picks up her tablet and swipes away to something else.

"Well, alright," Vivienne murmurs, glancing at the teleporter dubiously - with fair reason, since she's never had occasion to use one and never seen it used either. "Someone else first though, please?"

"Hon, I wasn't about to let anyone else beat me to the door anyways," Elias assures without looking up, and Vivienne gets a faintly insulted look on her face before she lets it pass and starts inspecting the server towers instead, hopping over to one from her comrade's broad shoulder. He looks up, takes a deep breath, and nods to both Marie and Jenna.

"I have never stopped expecting one of these to explode in my face, just so you know," Elias tells the room at large, then activates the teleporter. With a muted hiss and a whiff of boron gas, he vanishes into a wormhole.

There is a brief silence.

"That didn't make me feel better," Vivienne admits.

~*~

The endpoint Marie marked out is right in front of a giant fountain-thing that Elias ports out in front of. The pressure difference immediately makes his eyes pop, and he winces and scrubs at one, glancing around at where he's ended up. The fountain itself is a quartz base shelled in mother-of-pearl, faintly iridescent and reflective. The play of light over it and through the waters of the fountain is a mesmerizing work of art in itself, but the eye-catcher is that the building itself is a glassy dome, and outside is the depths of the ocean.

It would be black, should be pitch black, but bioluminescence lights the depths from stable colonies that look like stationary man o' wars, without the tentacles; long, trailing kelp threaded with strands of light throughout. Their brilliance pushes back the gloom like Christmas lights, leaving a ceiling of darkness above, almost a mile of water pushing down upon this ancient city. The buildings look like concrete, but can't possibly be; the pressure and erosion of the water would tear them apart in only years, and it's lasted far longer than that. There are spots the granite-like material has worn away to reveal basalt or coral, and others where something a lot like bone shows - too reminiscent of Marrane's work for Elias's comfort.

But that's to say nothing of the life endemic. Enormous crabs stride the ocean floor, looking to be at least twenty to thirty feet tall, bearing loads for their presumable masters. Smaller fish thread through the constructions, either wild, or some bearing packages; other figures, larger and humanoid, knife through the waters faster than anything else present. It's a panorama of a world completely different than the one he knows, and Elias stares at it for long seconds as he takes in the sight.

This is Atlantis.

Fuck, it's just starting to settle in.

Elias keys his communicator without really thinking about it. "Hey. Guys. This is pretty fucking cool."

Marie goes still when Vivienne jumps from Elias’ back to a server tower-eyes boring into the statuette’s back. Her expression was completely and utterly blank, but the predatory watchfulness in her eyes...Jenna got the feeling that if Vivienne broke something, Marie might return the favor and send her to Atlantis in pieces.

“Let’s share our port, Mini Vivi-” Jenna babbles as she zips over and attempts to persuade her down as casually as possible. “That’d make me feel better-I only ever use these things when Paul’s involved, doesn’t make for a good hab-”

"Hey. Guys. This is pretty fucking cool."

Marie’s hand resumes movement on the tablet, her eyes flicking away from them both. Jenna’s half sure she imagined it-but something about that tight mask seemed to soften, at least a little.

~*~

“See?” Lana says, a flick of her head as her pupils dilate back from the pinpoint contraction due to the bright flash of light. “Perfectly safe. Marie does not bother with maybes when it comes to her allies. Though when you jumped on that tower, Vivienne...” A bit of a laugh.

Jenna might’ve teased on top of that, but she’s blurred to be facing away from the fountain and out the glass dome, into the city sprawled out around them. She takes an uncertain step at normal speed-and then her eyes widen, that bow of a mouth dropping open.

“Whoa…” Rowan’s forest had been fantastical, an Alice in Wonderland experience...even if it did stick in her brain negatively, the sobering end of the journey-but this...this had no Disney comparisons. It was beautiful, it was alien, it was a world unlike anything she could have ever possibly imagined.

And it was somewhere neither Rush nor Paul could ever, ever reach her in.

She had wandered over to the glass wall without even thinking about it-and then stepped back in a blur when a large, darting shape flicked up and over the dome.

“That was a shark.” Jenna states. She steps back up and squints into the distance below, eyes following a humanoid shape stretched out beside the body of a what kinda looked like a shortfin but kinda not-a hand curled over one side fin and being pulled along. “Holy crap, those are sharks. They’re catching rides on sharks.” Her dad would find that downright heretical, she’s pretty sure-a lifelong fisherman and Navy veteran, he had an appreciation for marine life unrivaled by much of anything else anywhere. It’s one of his sole interests and the only thing he’d talk about with any detail...what counted for detail with him, anyway.

“More docile than those four legged behemoths you call horses.” Lana says with a laugh. She’s moving towards the large, heavy looking double doors on the only solid bit of wall in the room-over it and through the glass dome, a series of rising spires-though this room seemed high enough up already.

She doesn’t quite reach them when one pushes inwards-and a copy of Lana peeks in. The figure smiles, sharp teeth gleaming-and enters proper, closing the door behind them as Lana dropped into a delighted, strange sounding language that had nothing humanly comparable, a clasp of webbed hands, ear fins fanned out on either side of their heads.

He wasn’t really any broader of shoulder than Lana was-a few inches taller perhaps, a little denser looking were such a thing possible-but still a lean, agile looking creature of the sea. He had similarly colored dark blue scales and the same unnatural blood red hair jutting out of the back of an otherwise hairless head, bore resemblance to his sister-though for all they knew as of now, all Atlanteans did. Unlike Lana’s high ponytail, Laurent’s hair was braided into intricate small knots, decorated with carved gems as well as beads made of pearl, coral, silver and bronze. A thin silver diadem wrapped around the center of his forehead, a blue stone glinting in the center of spindled metal-and a thick bangle on either wrist to match.

Aside from those adornments he didn’t really look like much-bare, webbed feet and a loose robe of constructed of tightly woven plant fibers of some kind, the garment half open to reveal a featureless but sleek muscled expanse of blue scaled chest.

His eyes were just as luminescent as Lana’s, not quite as yellow and a bit more green. As the pair spoke they moved from visitor to visitor, curious, attentive, and welcoming all at once. He nodded to something she said and then smiled again, nodding towards their guests and making way towards them.

“He was not supposed to meet us here.” Lana explained, amused. “I was to take you all to him, but he has apparently been pacing the hallway all morning. For some reason.”

“Greed.” The merman answers, a self referencing gesture of webbed hand to chest. “I wished to meet the great Adamant before the king could take up all of his time.” Laurent moved to extend his left hand, caught himself-and switched for his right in a mixture of sheepishness and a guileless pride to know the human gesture of a handshake.

“I greet you in friendship, Elias. I, am Laurent of Atlantis.”

“My older brother. Current King under the sea.” Lana said, stepping from her brother’s side to his, touching at his shoulder-and then snagging Jenna’s wrist to draw her over too.

“The living artwork is Vivid Walker, another old ally-and Jenna Paige, Laura’s...Velocity’s successor.”

“I uh. I’ve never met a King before.” It’s not like Jenna to be any sort of shy, but she’s a little out of sorts here-something Laurent seemed graciously forgiving of.

“Nor I a Vivid Walker or a Velocity, before.” Laurent returned amicably.

Elias smiles. He closes his eyes for a second, and when he opens them, they're softly illuminated from within. His skin darkens and turns translucent, and as he walks forward to greet Laurent, lights between to shine and whirl in the infinite distance, galaxies burning bright through the chasm of his form. It's a show he almost never makes outside of a fight, but for once, he can stand on ceremony enough to honor this one.

His clothing is just as casual as Laurent's; blue jeans, a white t-shirt, the bomber jacket of rugged sheepskin. Their adornments are peculiarly reflected, for all of the king's jewels glitter in opposite number to the stars that twinkle beyond Adamant's skin, for all that the nation that Elias speaks for numbers nine total, in these darkest days.

Adamant reaches forward and grasps Laurent's hand. It's not a handshake precisely, that trite English gesture of welcome, more the older gesture of dexiosis, the handclasp that presents no weapons but a promise. The touch buzzes with static, an actinic charge. "Today, your aid preserves the life and liberty of me and mine; and in time passed, your support held strong for Lana when she needed it most, and I could not provide; and these are things I will not let pass unremarked and unnoticed. So, Laurent, know this: for all the days that I rise, if you call on me, I will answer as if you were one of my own - because it is through you that they will know safety."

He releases Laurent and settles back on his heels, as the light fades and his skin pales again to mere peach, pale and firm, as opposed to the living planetarium it'd been previously. Elias blows out a breath, glances over at Lana, and shrugs, deliberately blase as a faint smile quirks one side of his mouth. "And, yeah, this is my lot. Stand warned, Jenna is going to touch everything. It's a fact of life. There's three more that'll come along later if you're willing to welcome them. Elena Sanderson, Peter Vavily, and Tweedledee. Two students and a - special case."

"I'm older than you, if you'll remember," Vivienne replies, a little dry, and stands up upon Jenna's shoulder to curtsey gracefully, the porcelain of her dress moving as supple as silk, soundless and fantastic. "King Laurent, thank you for your gracious welcome. I recognize that your guest list has been, until now, rather exclusive. Please, call me Vivienne."

"Maturity is relative," Elias replies amicably.

Surfacing has been illegal for generations upon generations, and even now Lana was the sole exception to the rule-but Laurent had had the chance to gaze up into the endless heavens a handful of times before. The last time had been some twenty years ago or so. To see the wonder of those stars and such distant, far flung worlds encapsulated within the man before him-well, it was beyond anything he’s ever seen before, a magic unknown.

There’s a foreign...something to his touch, a warm tingling of power. It’s not a show...it’s a confidence. Something to the display carried sincerity and strength, and Laurent’s returning grip was as solid as his as he recognized an equal.

This man was a leader to his people the same as he was. Perhaps greater, for there were no ancient traditions or blood of kings to cement it.

”So, Laurent, know this: for all the days that I rise, if you call on me, I will answer as if you were one of my own - because it is through you that they will know safety.”

This was the man turned away, and this was the man betrayed. Laurent’s luminescent, green gaze remains fixed on Elias’ internally lit blue ones, the light reflecting off of the tapetum lucidum as he considers this. After a moment he inclined his head-there would be other words, later, private and public, declarations and promises-but for the right now, here-he decides he likes this man, not that he had had any doubt that he would.

He had been a true friend to his only kin and beloved younger sister, his childhood and teenaged partner in crime-and now he would be his. He remains where he is as the big man settles back on his heels, godhood receding from him-and he smiles as things return to casual between them.

“There's three more that'll come along later if you're willing to welcome them. Elena Sanderson, Peter Vavily, and Tweedledee. Two students and a - special case."

“You will hear me state it in more official terms and decrees, later-” Laurent beings, a returned smile and a lingering gaze of amusement on this apparently curious Jenna before he glances at Lana and then back to Elias. “But anyone you would welcome to join you here, Elias Halwell, I too shall welcome, save for one.”

Lana blinked. “Save for one?”

Laurent’s ear fins had been lightly moving, small, relaxed movements Lana’s did when calm and happy, content-and now they stopped, the man going still except for a calm, shift of his gaze to his sister. “Save for one.” He repeated. He did not elaborate, and Lana realized with a start he meant El Cid.

Laurent didn’t linger on the subject, no real anger or seeming spite to him, interested instead in the delicate looking statuette upon the girl’s shoulder. “You are the artist.” He says, pleased. “There are no artists in Atlantis, no innovators, no creators.”

“Everything is old. Even in our grandfather’s time, things were old.” Lana added on, crossing her arms across her chest. “Atlanteans exist in a static mire.”

“Lana and I are more progressive. If it would please you to do so, it is my hope you will inspire imagination, Lady Vivienne.”

Laurent stepped back and considered the three of them again. A speedster, Lana’s pupil and a successor to what he knew had been her best friend. A crafter of beautiful things, able to thrive within her own creations or the creations of others, wander worlds of imagination. And a man of light and stars, the greatest of them, a savior of the world.

He was glad to offer them shelter. He was glad to offer them anything-on their own merit, on principle, and on Lana’s hopes and worries. Laurent smiled. “It is our pleasure to host you all. Our ancestral home is your home, now.”

“Father would have a stroke.” Lana said.

“Father would have a stroke.” Laurent agreed with a nod-and the two grinned those sharp, shiny grins-and suddenly they weren’t a royal pair of siblings at all-but gleeful troublemakers.

“Lana will see you sorted-and I shall see you before my council later, to solidify things. Tedious, but important.”

"Save for one," Elias agrees, the corner of his mouth twitching. "Aye, I can work with that."

Vivienne smiles a little, stands up, and then from the folds of her dress draws a miniature ink cartridge, which she opens and pours. The ink twists away from Jenna once it spurts into the open air, twisting into a long streak of a form like stylized calligraphy: a long swoop of a dress, a bared shoulder, and a minimalistic face with long black curls of faux-hair, all in black, suspended in midair. She looks like a charcoal drawing, but faintly wet and rippling like oil.

The silhouette curtsies as well, then turns to take the little model from Jenna's shoulder into her hand, where it sits with crossed legs. "I imagine we'll have much to teach each other, then," Vivienne says with a satisfied moue. "Shall we?"

She moves past them and to the doors without hesitation, in pursuit of inspiration, her eyes already locked on the alien city ahead of them.

~*~

They eventually make their way to the throne room - a throne of diorite, so dark blue it almost seems black, stands at the back, shaped with flowing curves like seafoam. It stands upon a raised dais, and before it is a wide plaza where the visitors now stand, along with a handful of other dignitaries, presumably the council, though Elias has no idea how to discern their rank or function. That said, there's a narrow slit of some kind of clear crystal rimming the dome they stand in now, and the outside of that is stuffed with other fishmen, crowding in to see the strange foreigners. Vivienne's eating it up, at least, odd flickers of color rolling through her form on occasion. It's the most he's seen her use her abilities since their reunion.

"Is there a citizenship test we need to take or something?" Elias says, curious. "I know we have those on the surface, but I don't know what the counterpart here would be."

One of the counselors - recognizable only from the others by the fact the sash they all wear is composed of some silvered metal - replies. The voice is dry and leathery, hoarse, and is very obviously not in English. The language in Atlantis clicks a lot in between long vowels, something sounding vaguely like dolphin echolocation.

"Very distinct, each," he notes. "They vary more than we do. Larger genepool, I think."

This is Theron Salamacus; hunter, patroller, watcher of the seas. While not part of the army, per se, its his people that spend the most time alone out on the ocean, carefully tending the shoals and schools of fish that wander the deep so freely. A wide scar crosses his throat, with little puckers that scar the soft scales there, crossing down across his chest. He makes no attempt to hide the wound.

Elias blinks at the other fishman. "I think translation may be an issue," he says, apologetic.

"I speak your tongue," Theron says. In English, he sounds even raspier, like a long-time chain smoker. "It just hurts."

“And what do you do, Jenna?” Jenna murmurs to herself amusedly, eyes fixed on Vivienne’s new-shared?-form. “Who me? I run sorta fast, sometimes.” She shakes her head with a smile and glances back out towards the city, still marveling. Elias was right-she was probably going to touch anything they let her.

Lana showed them around the quieter, more private quarters before peeling off to dress-and returned not in her full Deep Blue costume but in her actual, proper attire, what she’d be expected in.

A high collared, sleeveless tunic of a light blue showed through the dark blue, ringmail material that oddly seemed carved rather than bent to shape-and over that a breastplate with panels of shark leather attached to form a sort of skirt that fell about mid thigh.

The breastplate was a work of art all on its own-it had a shell like veneer to it, mother of pearl esque with a teal tinge. Silver colored lines reminiscent of water currents traced along the sides and joined in the center, spiraling together just above what would have been a navel on a human before shooting upwards and flaring out around her collar.

The more familiar, heavy diadem Deep Blue wore was likewise absent-she wore a delicate coil of silver much like Laurent’s, the base of her high ponytail sporting a cuff of it as well. Matching gauntlets sported much larger stones on the back of each of her hands, and she carried a heavy looking staff of metal tipped with an impressive spearhead rather than her trident-a sparkling, iridescent gem of some kind set into the flat side of the blade.

She looked very much like a warrior princess. It suited her.

~*~

Lana led the way, her back and shoulders straight and her head held high, glorious purpose to her step. Soldiers lining either side of the walkway fisted their left, non spear bearing hands and thumped them to the right side of their chests, slight bows of the head and body as they passed them. They were all dressed similarly to their Second Born, minus much of her silver and gemstone adornments-and each and every one of them had Jenna’s attention as she considered the differences between each individual, trying to figure face shapes, more readily seeing the easy stuff such as hair, eye, and scale color-all varying shades of blue, she noticed.

For once, the petite Filipina was trailing a little behind-trying to take in everything and not moving any faster than a normal woman ought to, oddly feeling a little self conscious about the speed force, for some reason, when dressed as Jenna Paige and not Velocity.

Maybe she should have worn her costume after all-but who cared about that, LOOK at this place! Look at these guys! And the people peering in, the ripples of excitement and curiosity, some kind of sign language on the other side of the crystalline window-

And the show Vivienne was putting on! It was amazing, the heroine artist bringing her own magic to this fantastical place-she had nearly had to pick her jaw up off the floor when she’d unfurled that little vial of ink, it was nothing short of wondrous-Ellie would have run into something, watching her right now.

“No.” Lana returns to Elias, her eyes sweeping over the dignitaries, reading them at a glance. “There has never been a need.”

“I will gladly translate for you, Theron.” Lana assures. There are multiple languages in use in Atlantis-including a Greek/Latin hybrid her human allies could learn and manage, as well as the sign language all Atlanteans used. Hell, Jenna knew a few of those signals already. Elias knew some Latin for sure, Jenna was already bilingual-and there were those emotion orbs somewhere in the artifact room, should it really come down to it.

For now though, the necessaries.

Lana turned from the veteran councilman and faced her brother dead on, only now curling her left hand and bringing it to her chest, inclining her head to him in a bow.

“King Laurent of Atlantis, you sent me as your emissary to the surface, and now I return with news and representatives of its people, your allies.” She repeated herself in English before lifting her head and half turning towards her friends. “I present them to you and to the council now; the heroes Adamant, Vivid Walker, and Velocity, so named. They are Elias Halwell, Vivienne, and Jenna Paige.”

“Well met, mainlanders.” Laurent returned, sweeping a hand over those gathered on either side of him. “My advisors, those that I rely.” He gestures to Theron in particular. “Theron Salamacus you now know.”

Unlike his casual dress from earlier and unlike Lana’s armor, Laurent’s attire was all about impact rather than function. Large pauldrons curled off of his shoulders, a bright shining gold. Glittering, multicolored rough hewn gems decorated his collar in a bold v, and his own sleeved jerkin coated his limbs with fine silver scales beneath the ornate, bold breastplate. An imposing crown of metal dipped coral sat low on his brow, and the trident beside him was just as kingly.

He remains in the imposing throne, pretends to consider the three as if he had never seen them before. His gaze swings back to Lana. “What news?”

“One of the surface kingdoms has again proved treacherous against it’s own saviors. Adamant’s people are to be outlawed. I attempt negotiations but find myself disadvantaged-all of this the background to a very real, very dangerous hunter of his kind.”

Laurent frowned, leaning forward in his seat and settling his gaze on Elias instead. “This is so?”