Athwart History (Closed)

Adamant doesn't tell her she's too green to go out and face the world at large, he doesn't discourage her from doing what she's compelled to do. Best of all, he doesn't tell her to slow down.

No, he encourages keeping her momentum.

Jenna's heart thrums, excitement and hope rising.

He was going to help her.

"Won't like me?" She repeated, lips curving into a smile. "What, I'm not agreeable enough?" Well, she didn't have to like her-if she could help thwart Cid's creepy controlling antics, that'd be great. It creeped her out thinking he knew she was here. Did he realize she was gone then? Did he know how? Would...would he take that out on Daybreak?

He moves to the duffel bag and pulls out some sweats, an easy statement tossed her way. She turns quickly around, reflecting on the fact he'd been in that robe this whole time and now he was changing with her in the same room. Weird circumstances for sure, but hardly his fault-and he was used to it, given what he'd said about that first headquarters.

She does turn her head for a quick glance over her shoulder, because why not? The muscled expanse of his back, his sheer size-they're builds were so ridiculously different it was almost comical. Even their skin colors were opposite-he had flawless pale skin taut across those muscles, luminescent. He was a wall of a man, period.

"Well, I'm up for another twelve hours, and you're tuned for action,"

He says, turning around with the sweatshirt still over his head. "Wait, really?" Jenna is surprised but also excited. She was primed for action. She'd sleep later, nevermind that-by the time he popped his head through he'd find her zipping back into place, already in that shimmering blue costume and pulling her goggles to rest on the top of her dark hair, that unabashed grin again.

"You bet I do."

Marie Rivera, The Protagonist. She had appeared on the scene in one of the grittiest city's of America years and years ago, had personified its brutal mercilessness in her crime stopping methods and reputation. Crime had been bad. Not just bad, but horrific. The back alleys, the old brownstone buildings, the shipping and urban districts had been full of the worst society had to offer-from corrupt politicians, well informed mafia men, and masked homicidal lunatics, there was plenty of hurt to go around.

They had thought her a demon for a long time. Untouchable, all knowing, omnipresent. She'd become a mythic, feared figure to law abiding and law breaking citizens alike, putting the fear of God into the criminal sector. She hadn't been able to stomp out crime, nor had such a thing even possible-but she had sure made it difficult to operate, and certainly more difficult to get away with anything too ambitious. She was bad news for anyone who caught her attention, and a lot of bad men were crushed beneath the heels of her boots. What metahuman villains had been attracted were dealt with just as harshly, if not harsher than the baseline humans. Her almost supernatural ability to be in the right place at the right time had made criminals paranoid and fearful-and what she did to the people she caught red handed had been whispered about in seedy bars and police precincts across the city.

Even after Immolation, her reputation alone had kept some of the ugliest sinners at bay-but not for long. Eventually, inside of two years...they got bold again, and the scum clawed the city back. Without it's brutal protector, it descended further into depravity than it had ever been before.

And all she had been able to do was watch. For all her toil, all her efforts, all her legend- she had been proven to be just a mortal woman after all.

But she'd never retired. Not truly. Withdrawn from the scene as so many others had done, but not to lick her wounds or forget-but to reassess, to continue her investigations interrupted by the beast. To weave her own web, fighting a fight in shadows and technology. The Heroes United Front had answered the call as so many others had. It'd about killed them all and sent Lana into a spiral-but Marie had never let it defeat her, even if it'd broken her body.

The Front. Her joining had been a shock to just about everyone. Her being a baseline human had gotten around in murmurs-but her reputation was so dark and her effectiveness so impressive there had been many who simply hadn't believed it. A few knew she'd been a cop, once. Early, early on. Came from a long line of them. She had married young, still in the academy. And then she had been widowed young. She had already been straining against the red tape and binds of a corrupt department, but when her equally pushing husband was offed-she lost something. Whether that had been her mind was up for debate. But she'd never been the same, and the years had only stripped away more and more of what had been the hot headed young cop. She was still Marie when she served in the front. But after Immolation...the stripping continued unabated, accelerated until only the shell of Protagonist remained.

No, she had never retired. She didn't have the luxury.

Elias laughs, starting to bounce on the balls of his feet. He walks outside barefoot, stretching in the chill twilight air of Indiana and relishing in the prickly discomfort. The door swings open behind him, a touch of light shafting to hold it so. "Marie doesn't like anyone, I'm fairly sure, and the more likeable they are the more she dislikes them for making her professionalism difficult," he says with good cheer. "She's up in Albany, near the SEMATECH complex - I'm pretty sure she's got some kind of preferential deal with them. Got a tech-nest to make any ticker swoon, but her legs are fucked from a bad crash, so she doesn't do a lot of traveling. Prickly bitch; I love her."

He says it so freely.

Adamant rolls his shoulders, then glances over. "We can do this two ways: I can try to drive us there, which will take awhile; I can boat us there, which will also take us awhile; or you can run us there, which won't, but will probably wear you out. What's your choice, hon? It's you that's gotta deal with Cid on your shoulder. I'll let you decide when to punt him off."

He doesn't know what the relative speeds of the various speedsters are, or even how to guess whether such a journey would exhaust Jenna, but this is her boat for now - he's just there to help out.

"Does she have a handle, or not really, having just been doing background stuff?" Jenna couldn't know about the injuries sustained by Protagonist, or even the name Marie-she'd all but disappeared, though there had been a sizable donation to the legal funding when the remaining heroes and their families had gone after xxxx.

Did Elias know everyone? She supposed it made sense that he did, he'd been at the forefront alongside Daybreak, back then.

"I've never run anyone that far." Jenna considers, but she's already half decided on doing so. She wants to act now. The idea of spending time in a car or a boat sounded awful-more confinement. She just wants to go, go, go, and now.

"It won't tire me out." She says resolutely, though perhaps that was a bit of youthful overconfidence-she'd been awake for a long stretch of time and had done a long run twice today. "You going to contact her first? Do you already know right where she is?"

//////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////

Despite only having been to the place once, Elias remembers right where it is-but whatever Jenna had been expecting, this wasn't exactly it. The building looked like so many others at the docks-short, fat, and old crumbling brick work. The type of old school building that half looked like a fort.

The windows were darkened and the front door was solid. Jenna popped on tiptoe to try and peer in. "Looks like a dusty office." She tells him, having fallen behind on the trip to the front steps, the door.

There was a camera, but it looked like older tech than it was-a run of the mill security camera to discourage rogue break ins.

...

A sensor at one end of the cracked road had been tripped as Jenna ran through it-and in rapid succession so had two more, faster than Marie had heard before. Damn thing was probably malfunctioning-she'd look into it tomorrow night-except another alert came through-someone with a GPS device in range of her jammer, which seemed to be doing it's job.

Then the sensor on the front step sounded and she jerked to attention, eyes flying to the panel of monitors to her left. There were cameras connected to many old haunts and locations, a system still in place of the city of Samson itself, flickering live recordings of a cesspit.

She hits a button and the door unlocks with an audible shift of heavy deadbolts-the jamb reinforced on the back. Past the rows of dusty desks and ancient, not even worth stealing computers is a single elevator smack in the center of the back wall. It looks for all the world like it wasn't functioning.

"Halwell." The voice is terse and originated from a speaker directly in front of the elevator, visible in the ceiling. He's the second person she's spoken to in a years-her voice was strange to her ears, her throat a little scratchy from disuse. Sitting in her chair in the cavernous basement, Marie watched the screen intently, pursing her lips. "First the broadcasted message, now a visit." Her voice did not sound surprised, merely stating what was. Her eyes drifted to the girl he'd brought with him. The newest face of the Association, Laura's name but largely untested. She'd kept an eye on her. She'd kept an eye on everything.

"Leave the kid upstairs." She growls before flipping a switch. The elevator shudders to life, power coursing through the building as the lights turned on up top.

The elevator ride was smoother than expected and lasted for a full three minutes, the doors sliding open to reveal the mew beyond. He had been here once before-with Whisper, Daybreak, and then the seven members of the Front. The space was larger than the building above-it spanned beneath several of the neighboring buildings. The central room was dimly lit by various displays and panels of blinking lights, a wall lined with servers. It was a uncomfortably warm even with blasts of cold air coming in in spots. Everything was dark gunmetal or black plastic, devoid of personal effects or decoration. A dimly lit panel on the opposite wall held several gadgets, tools and weapons from her days fighting in the thick of things, her costume hanging in the left most portion. A dark, twilight blue cloak had once given her a larger presence, the hood deep enough it had shadowed her features. A turtlenecked full suit in a thick, motorcycle garb esque material, also dark twilight blue. Flat heeled, steel toed boots came up to about mid calf on the featureless form, black with heavy velco straps across the front. They matched the black gloves and the utility belt she had once worn. No mask, just that black piece of cloth tucked into the neck of the costume, once pulled up to conceal the lower half of her face. Elias would know she'd simply swiped a black grease paint across her eyes, temple to temple.

Information scrolled past on several monitors, the news played on another, and of course-the camera displays. Expensive, extensive technology. Wires and thick cords crisscrossing the floor save for clear and obvious-and new-raised platforms for her chair.

And in the middle of all this, her back turned-was the woman herself. She was not a large woman, but certainly not as petite as Jenna. Five four had been her standing height, sans the flat but thick heeled boots. She had a toned, curved shape, an olive skin tone. Hispanic, dark curly hair back in a tight bun at the nape of her neck, a loose curl or two near her face. She was bent slightly over a small tablet of some kind, tapping away to finish her task, ever focused.

"You're late." She set the tablet on her lap and gripped the wheels to her chair-the wheels were angled outward like many of the racing ones available on the market. No handles, the back of it only reaching midway. She was in a black sports tanktop, toned, strong arms flexing as she rolled the wheels back and pivoted sharply. She was wearing athletic women's shorts, her scarred, useless legs on full display in all their ugliness. The shrapnel and the twisted, jagged metal that had sheared off a good portion of her right thigh-neither had left them pretty, and what had once been strong, powerful legs were reduced to distrophy. And then she hadn't even had the good sense to bleed out after Lana pulled her from the wrecked jet, saved her from drowning.

She'd never quite forgiven the Atlantean for it. Or herself.

Her dark eyes narrowed on him. "Late, and you've brought the poster child to my doorstep." She obviously disapproved. Kid might've had potential, been an option-but then she became one of Cid's.

"Protagonist," Elias says, cheerful, "But since she forgets to be anyone else, I like to call her Marie instead."

He pats Jenna on the shoulder. "Give us a minute to get reacquainted," the hero asks. "She's prickly. I'd put odds I'm going to get shot at least once. But she's been here awhile, and there's going to be a lot of rusty edges on display. That doesn't make her bad, but she is - was always - one of the ragged among us. Marie never learned to heal."

He turns, then, and proceeds into the elevator to a place and a woman that'd never lost their grip on grief.

~*~

The Rookery still looks cutting-edge; Marie had been keeping it up since everything had ended. He'd never had the head for technology and circumspect surveillance that she had, and this was her compulsion on full display - a world contained and strained through a digital lens, served cold and empty on a keyboard. The sight of her, pale and baring her wounds, her self-disgust at the world like thorns punches through his gut. He sees the wires, but he also sees the dirt that her OCD would never have ignored before, the deliberate denial of comfort in that awkward half-chair. It's a portrait of a woman that resents life.

His face firms; Elias strides forth. He steps up beside her in the wheelchair, lifts the entire damn thing with her in it in one steady hand, and scoops Marie into a hug with the other, ignorant of the fact she's highly likely to bite him in response. There's a tightness in his chest that pain isn't relevant to. It's the sensation of watching family die in real-time, and Marie, this Marie, has been dying for god knows how long in this pit, like an animal that's crawled away from a bear trap to die in a familiar hole.

"I guess I am," he says, voice rough. He sets the chair down, gentle - it never even rocked in the surety of his grip. Then Elias seats himself besides the chair on the uncomfortable platform, setting his head level with her shoulder. He stares at the closest computer screen blankly.

He thinks of things to say, then discards them. Marie doesn't want to feel better. She's not like others.

"Are you functional?" he says, instead, drawing from her particular vocabulary. Functional; not fine, not okay, not doing well. Capable of function, that's what concerns her. The rawness scrapes at his throat.

"Back off-" She growls, a spin back on the wheels-but there's nowhere to go as she bumps into the heavy gunmetal desk/console, and Adamant lifts the entire chair up, scooping her into his chest-she's instantly pissed, and she does get off a good hit before she's embraced-solid flat palm to his sternum. It'd hurt, but he was massive enough to absorb the blow, and she hadn't quite gotten her shoulder behind it in time.

There's a noise that for all the world sounded like a hellish, if feminine growl, her entire body tense and strung tight. She hasn't been touched in ages. She hasn't been in the same room as another person in years. Even before, in her tumbling world of violence-non hostile physical touch was rare and unwelcome. A handshake from Protagonist was both the highest vote of confidence and the closest thing to a hug the demon woman had ever offered up.

"Do you feel better?" There's venom there, but that she'd asked a rhetorical, biting question instead of making another flat observation was telling. It affects him, seeing her like this. Her blood boils at what she perceived as weakness on his part-and bitter backlash at what might be either pity or compassion. She has no use for either. This was what was left-she did not care that he was disturbed by it.

"Of course I am." She picks up the tablet, finding the message with the enclosed video and with a quick flick, throws it on the central, larger screen without the audio. Flames consume buildings and glass shatters in the shockwave as the short fight rages, the cameraman distant and the footage grainy.

"Most action you've gotten in years." A gruff statement, her eyes moving from the video to him. There's a gaunt, sleep deprived look to her, but her eyes are just as intelligent, just as calculating and determined. He hadn't disappeared, but he'd gone home intact and able, as invincible as ever-and stayed there. As had Daybreak, on the arm of Cid.

She was, as always, alone. And for all her resources, all her information gathering and shadowy designs-she was useless for what the world sorely needed.

But he was here now. Laura's mirage in tow, but here. "Late, but you're here now. Know better than to pay a social call." Another statement. She looked back to the tablet accessing the lobby camera. The kid couldn't seem to sit still-her hands moving faster than the camera could follow, spinning something. Protagonist always seemed to be on top of things, always seemed to know. It was rare for her to ask a question, to be uncertain about anything. "...why the kid?"

Elias coughs a single-syllable laugh, harsh and barking, which is as much answer as Marie needs. Their language - not just hers, now, as he sinks into her mindset, understanding the steel and rust and corrosion, and beneath, sheer fucking will that compromises Marie - isn't excessive. It's short, sharp. Biting. There is no comfort where there is truth, only surety.

"Most action anyone's gotten," Adamant points out, his voice shifting dry. "Last big fight was, what? Maege and Baba Yaga, over in Turkey five years ago? There hasn't been one in the States."

Not since.

Elias lets the terse shot go. Marie doesn't know his side of Immolation, and no one really does. He's past owing explanations, but not above apologies, verbal or implied. Instead he answers, eyes flat and calm. "Trust and speed. I can only trade on old credit so much. Jenna opens doors I can't. Gives me an in with the Tower, mobility, reach. Decent backup in combat situations. Few negatives besides inexperience, which isn't going to last."

He pauses for a long moment, adds his personal reason. "She's a good person."

The statement Marie will respect least, but understand most, from him. They deal with different sides of the human soul, to be honest. Marie sees only flaws and failings, and Elias forever strains to lift the human spirit beyond its frailties.

"Cid's hot on her six. Doing stupid things. He got anything on her?" he asks, already certain that whatever might be transmitting is already shut down by crossing into Marie's den. She doesn't share control of a situation well, and Cid's a needy bitch. About the only things they agreed on was that their job was necessary, and that Cid's a cunt.

"Trust and speed. I can only trade on old credit so much. Jenna opens doors I can't. Gives me an in with the Tower, mobility, reach. Decent backup in combat situations. Few negatives besides inexperience, which isn't going to last." ,

He was speaking her language. He was also using terms that told her his mind was right where she had been waiting for it to be. She pulled up the file she had on the kid, weighing what he said with what she knew.

"Popular. Can see why the Association wanted their claws in her, especially after Rush and Mindmelt."

Mindmelt? Now THAT hadn't been in the news anywhere, what was Marie talking about? The mind reader and shapeshifter had been a big league villain back in the day. He'd always been a bit smarter than a lot of them, less flamboyant, less attention seeking. He'd driven a few heroes mad. All he had to do was get his hands on a person and he could warp even the most resistant of minds, delve into deep secrets and memories.

And he had been a former lover of Mistress Rush. They made quite a psychopathic pair. If he had indeed paired up with Rush in a joint attack on the novice heroine...it was all the more impressive she'd made it to the other side and triumphed. It also shed light on her being outed-there were no secrets to be kept once Mindmelt got hold.

"She's a good person."

Marie's tapping pauses. She had nearly forgotten how he was, in a way. She watches him a moment, then returns to her tablet. She sounds slightly less gruff when she speaks next, even if just a minuscule amount. "She's fast...and therefore useful." It was as close to approval as they'd get, at least today.

"Always." She comments with derision in response to Cid doing stupid things.

"Laura wrote the code for the alert system, but everything else about her smart watch was an offshoot of League tech. Cid has access to all of that and more. No doubt he's tracking her through it. He'll know she came to my cesspit city." She sounded utterly unalarmed by this. She would love for him to try and pay her a visit, nevermind the chair. But he had no idea where her base was within the twenty mile radius of her jamming equipment. "Jammers."

She taps on something else, some technical specs scrolling past the screen. "I can gut the watch and upgrade it to my system." Dark, sleep deprived eyes cut him a glance. "Two heroes." Her eyes shift to another monitor, and while she doesn't smile, the next word was clear. "Good."

He was here now. And that was what mattered, what would allow her to move forward and against the dark powers that be. With Adamant's help, something could be done other than observation and occasional sabotage.

Adamant's brows lower. Mindmelt was infamous for torture.

He lets it go. He doesn't talk about Immolation, either; he gets it.

"I'll have her drop the watch off," Elias says. "She's got Laura's communicator - use that. Meanwhile, we're here. Anyplace that needs to be leveled, gone through, thoroughly ruined?"

He pops his neck to either side, considering the routes of possible action. "I talked to Tweedledee," he said. "Fight was because Paul stole something from a facility in Congo. Some computer chip. Nergal chased him around the globe for it. Worth checking out?"

His mouth is spitting these short phrases but his brain is silently counting the environment, looking at the bare minimum college mini-fridge stocked with, he would guess, protein shakes, the low, threadbare cot shoved into a corner, the laundry basket and shitty drying rack thrown opposite, with four copies of the exact same outfit Marie is already wearing. He's cataloguing these self-injurious sins and coming up with a shopping list, because goddammit he should not have left Marie alone, not after she was crippled. So fucking much damage done, he had turned away from. What the fuck was a hero for when he chose not to save his friends? The tension of the thought draws his hands to fists and rocks tremors through his thick biceps. Knuckles pop quietly underneath the hum of the monitors.

And Lana. She had a nation to go back to - but was that any comfort, in going back home to be a stranger in a familiar land? What shitty fucking cruelty they'd inflicted on each other.

And with Jenna he has now the ability, the mobility to reunite these scattered souls.

Adamant's eyes burn.

Marie tapped a pattern onto the tablet screen and it shifted to an image of the globe, a swipe to replace the silently playing video. Navy blue dots decorate the landmasses, scattered the world over and crowding out the green coloring of the land in spots. They were most heavily concentrated in regions of Africa and the middle east, but there were also suspicious clusters in Russia and the Australian continent.

Coordinates to places Protagonist would never visit, but had clearly strategized endlessly over anyway, the slowly revolving CGI globe lighting up in places, information scrolling across various monitors and screens. Everything was loading on top of everything else, blipping flashes of dossiers and schematics, 3D rendered blueprint, and security weaknesses, potential entrance points, figures and transactions paid to mercenary groups and the military movements of warlords-the works. Protagonist had created a map for war. A general with no army.

Her dark eyes take it in for the umpteenth time with a slight furrow to her brow, full lips pressing together as she mentally prioritized. She still had no army. But she had two heroes, and that was more than she had had in ten years. As she reads various updates on a few likely missions and considers how best to proceed, Protagonist listens to him speak, that particular mission rising to prominence. Cid was content to ignore the breach-she wasn't.

"Arms depot. Lucrative, dangerous." Fingers swipe and the globe spins, a zoom and click of a specific marker-she already knows the one. "Valuable research there-for scum." Protagonist's eyes narrow, a slight curl to her lip.

"Level it."

With or without the occupants, Protagonist didn't care. She wheels back about six inches and reaches to her right, pressing her hand into a featureless piece of gunmetal steel a moment before retracting it. The drawer opens fluidly but she's already turning away, wheeling closer to the control panel and just past him, already refocusing on scores of limitless data, her intricately woven web of crime and undesirables. It all clicks together somewhere within her steel trap mind, the broken bodied vigilante more obsessed than she had ever been. "Take the third one."

Various gadgets and tech are nestled in foam with numbered slots, discreet and unassuming. The indicated device had a curve to it, the screen lighting up as he scooped it up. She was already sending the coords to it for the kid-Halwell tended to break things.

"Leave the watch in the elevator before you go." Coordinates sent, she glances up at the shifting camera feeds of the forsaken city, imagines she can smell the pollution, the water, the dirt and grime of a city infested, a city sick with disease. It'd been hers and hers alone, but she had never set out to heal it. Her eyes flick back to the map, idle for just a moment.

"Halwell-"

There's a pause before her eyes snap back to focus, gruffness returned in full force.

"Bring me back some hard drives."

////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////

Jenna straightens up from the desk she'd been leaning on, blurring back to the center aisle as the elevator whirs and the doors open. "I didn't hear any gunshots." She says, but the joke falters slightly towards the end, her grin fading into a less certain expression.

Something about -his- expression just...

"So uh, what'd she say?"

Adamant picks up the doodad and frowns at it. He's got a long, bad habit of accidentally crushing delicate objects between the shifting tidal forces of his power, and he resolves to give it to Jenna at the first opportunity, so that the first time he does a powered leap it isn't flattened against his thigh by the G-forces involved (unlike a true speedster, he still works within physics - he himself is tough enough to endure them, but that doesn't work for anything else).

Then he strides forward to stand beside Marie. Doesn't touch her - he's crossed her boundaries once already. Just stands for a long moment, a warm, living, breathing person once again past her walls and defenses, going out to do her work and her will.

"It's good to have you at the helm again, Marie," he says, then turns and walks away, pace sure and swift, bootheels clicking on the weathered concrete in syncopated beat: click-click, click-click.

~*~

When the elevator doors disgorge Elias once more, he waves Jenna over. "Leave the watch in the elevator, Marie'll take care of it," he says, firm. "No, it's nothing to do with you. People rub her raw and she has little patience for it. If she wants to talk to you, it'll be over communicator. She'll have our back on control."

There's a clear difference; his meandering, impersonal manner has catalyzed. Instead, there's an electric hum of purpose behind his weight now, as it pivots smoothly when he advances towards the edge of the campus. "Marie can survive anything, but it's my job to remind her there's more than just the absence of death to existence, and I'll need to devote time later to that. For now, we have a target in the Congo. I set the Delta - my boat - to arrive at coordinates nearest us on shore. We'll head there, mount up, and head out for the Congo soonest. Plan to catch a nap en route, it's a couple hour trip - with the time zone difference, we'll arrive still in twilight hours, and hit it during the late watch."

He takes two long strides, then aboutfaces and hands Jenna the doodad. "Also, take this before it explodes the first time I do something abrupt. I don't know what it does. Presumably, more than exploding, but you'd have to ask Marie."

He raises a friendly eyebrow and a challenging smirk at Jenna, already back in motion as his pace begins to stretch out, his power lengthening his stride into low bounds. "Keep up, newbie!"

"Protagonist." The woman corrects immediately, not looking up-but it's the second time she's heard her name in years and years, once again on the lips of a former comrade. It stirs memories quickly quashed beneath a hardened, emptied heart-and makes her reflect grimly on a person long dead.

She hears the doors close on the elevator, leaving her again in the company of uncaring whirring hard drives and scrolling data streams.

//////////////////////////////////////////

"She'll fix it?" Awesome!-but wait, leave it in the elevator?

Jenna hesitates, finding that a little...odd to say the least. She would have liked to have met her. At the same time, from what she knew of Protagonist (and it wasn't much, the hero community and the vigilante herself had always preferred not to have her in the limelight), she was pretty intense.

She loosened the strap from her slender wrist with a slight frown, stepped forward to set it carefully into the capsule, stepping back just before the doors closed on her. Her wrist felt naked and there was another vague pang of guilt-like she wasn't taking care of Laura's things. She wasn't sure what had happened with it, but as with her base-she felt Cid was somehow responsible.

Before she could ask what he meant about Marie-though she did spare a worried glance back towards the elevator, mildly concerned just from the statement-he had plowed on to their mission.

Oh.

Oh!

"Wow, she knew right where to send us?" Boat ride? Nap? She doesn't want to nap OR ride in a boat-actually, that might be a good idea on both accounts. She wasn't sure she could take someone across water unless she picked them up-and there was no way she could pick up Elias.

She skids to a stop as he turns and hands her the slightly curved, glossy screened device. Looked like a fancier, weirdly shaped smart phone to her. She doesn't have much time to do much with it, her eyes flicking back up to his face as he turned and started off again. He was with it.

"Keep up, newbie!"

He was full of energy and purpose-and so was she. They were really going to go out and do something, and Jenna was a mixture of excited, anxious, and-relieved. Cid and, right now, the league- turning out to be a dud had affected her more than she had entirely gotten to think on just yet. She blurred into motion to catch up and, like before-kept up with his longer, faster strides with little bursts of blurred speed. She would have fallen far behind otherwise.

"This is great-this is way great. I thought I'd be like...flailing in the dark for a while. But with you and her, I'm going where I'm needed at the start." Finally!

"Marie is antithetical to the concept of flailing," Elias says with fond amusement, before in one heroic bound hurdling a two-story office building, coming back down with a bone-rattling thud . "It ceases to exist in her presence by force or will or force of contempt. Shit will get done. I came here to know what needed to happen and we'll make it happen."

They curve an arc up towards Lake Ontario, cutting across several major highways and through two arcs of forested lands - a silver and blue blur, slicing through the night faster than any mortal being could on its own. The deadly-looking Delta is awaiting them on the shore; now seeing it transformed from the outside for the first time, Jenna can truly appreciate just how lethal the thing looks. It's all black, lightless curves that swoop forward into conical points, the surface completely featureless with not even visible windows, just impenetrable armor that's so dark the eye can't pick out its exact shape except in relief. Adamant clicks his tongue at it and gestures with one hand - a brief shaft of light slides beneath the surface and sinks in, then there is a chunk and a port on the side unseals with a whoosh of vacuum-sealed air, revealing a cramped entrance.

"I've never been a shot-caller, to be honest," Elias says, awkwardly crawling in through the entrance - it's clearly not designed for someone his size. "I'll throw hands at the Big Bad, and I'll take care of and protect just about anyone I can mother, but threshing information, finding out where and when to do things? It's not natural to me. I solve problems in front of me - I'm a blunt instrument."

He shrugs with mild chagrin, but smiles anyways. "It's how it is. I'm honestly much more comfortable with Marie or Sarah finding the way to go so I can focus on the immediate situation. Being the general never sat well with me, no matter how the interviews spun it."

He seats himself in one of those cushioned, comfy chairs and leans back, bringing a slide-over keyboard from a terminal that rises from the floor at his left, and types something in rapidly. Coordinates locked, a feminine voice declares. ETA two hours, fifty-three minutes. Clearing route, captain.

Elias shrugs and leans back, glancing over at Jenna. "Strap in. There's protein bars in the survival kit under your seat if you get hungry - we'll chow down about a half hour before we get there to make sure we have energy on landfall."

Whoa.

His leap made her feel a little giddy, feelings of nostalgia and hero worship quickly tempered by a competitive flare of pride. He wasn't the only one who could scale buildings after all. She snapped her goggles down over her eyes and with a grin she disappeared, charging for the building without the usual bit of nervous worry she'd mess up and crush herself to pieces.

She's there with time to spare as he lands, making Jenna internally wince because damn. "I guess that makes sense, with a home city like this." She'd have been swallowed up a long time ago otherwise, she imagined, even if she was Protagonist. "Is...is she actually a demon?"

The miles they put behind them-it was exciting to be here, racing alongside Adamant-but that sort of childish admiration was fading for just...well, respect. Real respect for the man, instead of his media image. He was still mostly a stranger, but his humanity had started to overtake her mental picture and imaginings of the great hero. Him dancing in his kitchen in particular...that sealed it, she wasn't sure why.

He was very companionable. Trustworthy-and not just because he was Adamant. With Cid having proven to be so...whatever he was, she felt she'd learned her lesson about blind trust in heroes.

The speedster slips through the entrance easily, a fluidity to her movements that speaks to a sharp spatial awareness and good balance. Small as she was, she had a lot less to balance, but still-there was an athletic grace there that came naturally.

She frowns a little when he calls himself a blunt instrument, but he smiles and gives a shrug so maybe he didn't mind it. She doesn't sit down right away, giving the boat another, closer study, a silver gloved hand on her hip.

"Well, in the business world, you need different personality archetypes to fill different roles in a team. I'd imagine super hero teams are much the same way, just...cohesion is a lot more important." She slides into the seat, lifting her goggles up off her eyes to rest just past her hairline, a nod.

"Me-well, I don't know where I'd place just yet." She considers, fingers running over her empty wrist. Well damn-there went the easy thing to do with her hands. "I'm used to structure, though, am happy to follow orders-good orders. My dad's a veteran, so things were pretty cut and dry at home. Then I was so focused on school....on the rigid, defined conditions for success and failure. I got into college on a full scholarship, ya know? Lived in the Academic Wing with other serious students, had a 4.0." There's a hint of pride there-but it was the kind born of hard work and sacrifice rather than vanity.

She makes a gesture to her costume, glancing down at the blue material with the hint of a shimmer where the light hit it. "This was a volunteer thing, at first. I've got good time management skills, so I managed both for a while." A solid year. She'd lost some sleep sure, but that'd been okay-her grades hadn't suffered for it.

"Beating Rush was...a fluke, if I'm being honest. She was furious, like psycho homicidal mad- and that first encounter, the one where I SUPER got my ass beat? That was still fresh on her mind too. But she underestimated me-I'm not tough or much of a brawler, but I am smart, and sometimes smart is enough. I wasn't as distracted by being outed as she must've thought I would be."

Though fuck if that whole shitstorm hadn't been-and still kind of was-distressing.

Jenna adjusted a little in her seat, moving to sit up a little higher in it. "So when the Association extended an invite, I thought 'Great! Things are crazy, but here's that much needed structure!' But you know how that turned out. Cid wants cogs in a media machine, not individuals forming something greater than themselves. And Miss Sarah...well, she's just afraid of someone getting hurt. I can understand that, at least, all she's been through."

Jenna ran her fingers over the seat belt strap across her chest, thinking. "But I can't be limited by it, ya know? There's a lot of bad out there right now, and this is all I've got going on anymore. I figure the company's alright enough, too." She teased, another one of those unabashed grins.

Adamant snorts. "No, she's just bitter. There were three nonhumans in the League, counting me and Lana. She may not like other people much, but she still counts as one anyways."

"Balance is important," Adamant says with a nod. "But in the League, it was a lot more about prioritizing the use of our time. Stopping villains rampaging in the streets is always great, but most of the time they aren't - and trying to find them with maybe twelve people in bright outfits is a failing endeavor. It was the job of people like Marie to find where we could rip up the Ring by the roots, or stomp on some idiot before he got his base and resources up and running. Combing websites and police reports, managing bug networks and surveillance nets - that was her specialty. If you spent all day in front of a camera, you'd be grumpy too."

A pause.

"Unless you're a camgirl, I suppose," Elias concedes. "Anyways."

"You'd probably be a scout - out searching the streets wherever Marie sniffs up trouble. You can get into and out of a scrap faster than anyone else, then bring backup. Fast response, y'see?"

But that's an irreverent tangent, and he quietens to listen to Jenna as she spills a little bit of her story, watching her fidget as she explains; categorizing the physical responses, he finds hesitance in her restless hands, fear in her shifting body. For whatever reason, she's been taught not to talk, somewhere.

"Are you still going to be doing classes along with this?" Elias asks, leaning back into his seat to stare at the ceiling, rather than force her to deal with his attention directly. "It'll be rough, I won't lie. You might do better taking some online courses instead - you can hit the attendance, but the time and energy you'll spend is exorbitant."

What he doesn't say - mediocrity isn't an option, post-unmasking. Jenna's a known parahuman, and that alone will cause her all sorts of issues. She's a public figure now, like it or not, and while he doesn't know what kind of effect that's had up to this point, he knows that soon it'll begin to mount. There's a reason he lives off by himself.

"If you decide to keep your course, there's a sort of communal grant that we lease off of. The tower itself is run off a hedge fund managed by Colloid over in the UK; it's not actually publically funded, whatever Cid represents it as. If we pay him a visit at some point and get you officially inducted as a member of the League, you'll receive a "travel and expenses stipend" that realistically lets you support yourself without having a day job."

Elias wasn't really supposed to do end runs around Cid like this either, but the limit of his regard for Cid's opinion has long since passed.

"No." Jenna's voice had turned quiet. "I did both for a year but once I was outed...I had to drop out." She was a mixture of regretful and embarrassed, a set coming to her jaw. Her fingers are starting to blur on the seat belt. "I couldn't endanger other people like that, and I mean, everyone knows who I am. Good guys and bad guys alike."

Really bad guys.

"...that's a success Rush will always have on me, I guess." She shrugged it off, not wanting to be a complete downer.

"Anyway-Velocity is just about all I've been doing, have had going on for the past six months. And that's okay-I make do, ya know?" She winked, that cheerfulness coming back in force. When in doubt, smile. "'Sides, if not for that first time, convenient tapping into the speed force, I probably would have gotten super dead anyway." Flippant, almost joking.

"And yeah...maybe." She says about the stipend. She honestly wasn't sure what she was going to do. Half the city wanted and was willing to feed her, she still had some savings from her barista job-but with Laura's base destroyed, she literally had no where to go.

Ai yi yi, one thing at a time Jenna.

"You said nonhuman earlier-" She realizes, coming back to that. "And who's Lana? Deep Blue? Or...?" She wasn't sure who the other nonhuman might've been. "I mean, I -got- my powers, I wasn't always fast."

Elias shrugs and offers nothing. He never had a civilian identity to speak of - had always been both Elias and Adamant. Even in his earliest days in Gary he had never bothered concealing anything about himself, so the puzzle of divorcing civilian and heroic life is inapplicable to him.

"You define success too much by fear," he says instead. "She could kill people anywhere, Jenna, and dedicate it to you. It doesn't have to be anywhere near you. The reason we hunt these shitty people is because they do shitty things, and they always do these shitty things - the only thing their knowledge of you changes is that they'll try to do it to you instead of people that can't do anything about it. Named heroes are disaster lightning rods, true - but that bolt's gotta come down somewhere, hon, and it might as well be somewhere that you can do something about it."

He rolls his shoulders in a light shrug. "You started this to make the world a better place," Elias reminds, gentle. "You can chase the evils of man all over the world, or you let them come to you. Either way, don't let them define your choices for you."

He shakes off the moralizing. "Anyways, yeah - Lana, Deep Blue. Me and her, we have a different number of chromosomes than homo sapiens - which is obvious for her, she's an entirely different species, but I'm an aberration as far as biology goes. I have extra chromosomes, another organ system, different dietary needs and digestion, and if I gave you a blood transfusion, it'd be like mainlining antifreeze."

Elias takes a look at her face and laughs. "It's just me, hon. Most parahumans have a highly developed lobe of the brain seated behind the cortex - in base homo sapiens it controls vestigial and anachronistic reflexes, like hiccuping and things like that. That lobe is repurposed in parahumans into a power controller, which apparently is inherited from the environment in a way that no one's figured out. For example, there are no ice users anywhere the average temperature is over eighteen degrees Celsius."

"Either way, don't let them define your choices for you."

His advice was solid, but would require being a bit less of a coward. She nearly spills her guts, more than she'd already had...almost. But this was too much to get into, she...she was going to just play that right off for now. Before she can deflect with a joke he moves on with a shrug, either sensing the heaviness or taking her cue.

He launches into an explanation that Jenna's immediately absorbed in-her eyes widening. "Wait, a whole 'nother organ system?" Her dark eyes sweep over him, considering this-and the fact he'd had a hole punched through the chest and survived long enough to heal from it. She remembered what he had said about eventually healing from anything.

"From what I was able to glean from Laura's files, the Speed Force is a type of energy that is both generated by speedsters and utilized by them. You're saying something with that lobe maybe lets me use it?" Hrm. "I mean, powers are a pretty recent thing for me, but it's not just my body moving fast-" She's excited to be learning about heroes and the source of their abilities, what made them different. "My mind keeps up with what I'm doing. And sometimes-sometimes Elias-" Its hard to sit still when she's excited, but strapped into a boat tearing across the water, she can't exactly be hopping around.

"Sometimes I'm processing so fast everything stops. I can't do it myself yet, entirely-but on the roof with Paul it happened, and it happened a few other times before-where I wasn't moving but still thinking so goddamned fast that to me, my perception is that time is stopped."

And it's pretty fucking rad, but she leaves that out.

About him she's dying to ask all sorts of questions, but she can't quite figure how to articulate half of them without sounding...what, racist? Her brows furrow a little, straight white teeth worrying at her lower lip a minute.

"That's...really cool you know, about you. I'd ask about-uh..." She struggles with that a minute then blurts out- "I mean, look-my dad's white okay? I'm his biological daughter, but I clearly took after my mom. So this one time my dad and I were grocery shopping-and this random lady walked up and started going on and on about how great it was that he had adopted a kid from another country." Jenna was scowling.

"I was eight. I get she wasn't being malicious, but racism is still racism. And for fuck's sake, if I had a dollar for every time some guy called me 'exotic' and asked where I was from..."

She flopped back into the seat with a huff, shrugging it off and placing her hands behind her head. "Anyway, the point is I don't want to be like that. No one deserves to be cast as 'other', but you Elias, you're just...really nice, ya know? Aside from all the heroing, I mean." A pause. "We're all just people getting through."

"Yeah, though nobody knows how it works precisely," Elias responds with a shrug. "I have deposits of silicates periodically through my nervous system, and they form a rudimentary computing system that stores information better than baseline axons and has less electrical resistance. When I run Throne through myself, the silicates are processed and dispersed through the nervous system with each impulse, gradually speeding and strengthening the entire system. They also apparently carry blueprints so that when any major body structure is destroyed, it can be reformed swiftly."

He glances over at Jenna, brow furrowing in thought. "You sound like you have the same effect going on, but to be honest I only found all this out when I had an examination by Mannequin, and I dunno if you'd want to deal with him. He's iffy, if a distingushed medical professional."

"Anyways - yeah, you have something that's lowering intracranial signal resistance to zero. You think at infinite speed. Laura did the same thing on occasion when she was really amped up, but if you can do it at a resting state, then you're already forging new territory. She had to be actively racing for it to pop for her."

He snickers and laughs, then. "Exotic. Really? That's just a white-ass way of saying 'flavor of the week'. You really had to deal with that often?"

Adamant turns and glances over at her, arm up on the armrest, eyes twinkling. "I mean, girl like you probably gets hit up already on shallow merits, but you're a superheroine too and a top-grade student. What's the worst pickup line you ever heard? C'mon, dish."

Those are some words. She wished she still had her phone, she'd google some of that right now-she wasn't completely ignorant, just-well, she hadn't been a med student for a reason!

And whoever this Mannequin guy was-she didn't like going to doctor, she wasn't sure how she'd feel about someone Elias described as 'iffy' poking around with things she didn't quite understand herself.

"Ugh, yes." The absurdity of this new direction catches her slightly off guard, her eyes widening on the encased top of the boat before cutting over to him, more than a few kinds of embarrassing memories coming to mind.

"Like, said to me?" She says stupidly, hands coming down to shift in her seat again. The worst immediately springs to mind-a crass line dropped by a frat boy involving her height and kneeling and-

That red undertone to her russet brown skin brightens as her face heats up, suddenly feeling very awkward and DEFINITELY not about to go repeating that one. Not to anyone! "I mean, teenage and college boys are-I mean-"

He was -amused-, and part of her wondered if he'd done that on purpose. The bridge of her nose crinkles and she pretend scowls at him. "Mister teenaged girl over here asking slumber party questions-" She mutters and teases at the same time.

"I can tell you the funniest, though-" Her eyes light up and the color fades as remembers a different, much less embarrassing story, distracted immediately. "Okay, and I feel kind of bad about this one-but I had just moved and wanted to see and do everything at least once in the 'big city'-so my and my friend went clubbing. Now, we're both academics, okay? Not party girls, but hell, I can have fun anywhere and she was too shy to go by herself."

"So we dance and all that good stuff before going to the bar to see what kinds of fruity nonalcholic drinks they've got-and this guy sidles up, looks me over and says-" She mimics a lower male voice ineffectively but comedic.

"I love Vietnamese food."

Jenna -laughs-. It's a silvery sound, fun and mirthful. "Claire was mortified and didn't know what to do-but I just burst out laughing, peals and peals of it because, one-the hell, women aren't food-and two, he got the wrong ethnicity."

She shakes her head. "He looked so embarrassed, I think he'd been thinking that up all night and I never did tell him that no, I am not Vietnamese. I just got him a drink and then Claire and I left."

A flippant shrug. "You gotta know a girl before you go dropping lines, I think!"

"Hell, Jenna, my first and best friends were a pair of teenaged girls," Elias says with a huge grin. "You think I didn't do slumber parties? We used to have movie nights every other Friday in the lounge, just piling up blankets and pillows then watching stupid shit all night. Sarah was addicted to Buffy - she spent probably about a year and a half crushing on Angel's abs."

He laughs, low and wicked, a rumble-bubble of amusement that burbles deep in his throat. "I like Vietnamese. Are you serious? No, really, this guy hit on you like he was ordering takeout. Champion Serve over here confusing what he needs to be using his mouth for, I guess. Apologizing would be the first use."

Adamant pops his shoulders and thinks. "There were a lot of bad pickups at the start, when the hero thing was pretty new and we were mostly just weirdos running around in suits," he says. "Sarah, I mean, you've seen her. She used to practicing shining light straight down when she flew, 'as a matter of modesty'. I think one guy even tried to sue for causing temporary blindness and possible retinal damage. Then he kept misplacing the paperwork for that, I guess."

He puts air quotations on the word 'misplacing'.

"Wasn't as big a deal for the guys, but I remember Echelon and November pretty regularly cruising the clubs and spending nights out on a regular basis," he recalls, naming the late clone-maker and time dilator. "Not that I know anything about clubbing, honestly. That whole bit kind of passed me by."

"You didn't miss much. You can't hear yourself think and everyone is all over each other and already sweaty. Like I said, I can have fun anywhere-but...yeah. I prefer coffee shops. I worked in one-that was my 'college kid' job before all this." She smiles faintly. "They called me the five foot tornado. -I- told them I was five four in shoes." A laugh, but she's starting to feel sleepy. "I used to like matching things up, you know. Outfits and things. I'd dress my friends up too. No one ever would have guessed I was a frou frou girl or whatever-but I liked what I liked."

She pulled her gloves off, something to do with her hands while she thought a moment.

"I didn't mean to be a downer, earlier." She starts slowly, apologetic. "I like helping. I love being fast. And getting to meet people I never would have otherwise is great." Jenna Paige had always been a people person.

She covers a yawn, the speedster small enough to shift around a little under the seat belt straps, drawing her legs up onto the seat.

"And I do believe in the good fight. It's a little...scary at times, but...kind of like you said, better me than the 'little guy'." A sleepy smile. "I'm glad you're here fighting it too."

Elias reaches over with one hand and places it on Jenna's shoulder, his thick thumb rubbing into tightened tendons with long practice and working them into relaxation. She's still a wired ball of energy, even what must be twenty hours into her day. The last week has been mounting tension after tension for Jenna, and it doesn't seem likely to tune down anytime soon. "Grab a nap if you want," he says, soft. "Take rest where you can find it. Trust me on that."

He pauses for a moment and draws back, glancing back at the choppy water parting before the boat as he continues to talk, his voice low and regular. "You aren't a downer. It's been a crappy week for you. Things will go up and get better, but it takes time to shake off the mud. That's alright. That's what I'm here for: to help people that could use my aid."

Adamant turns his head just a little and favors Jenna with a side-eye smile. "It doesn't make you any less a hero to the people you'll help in turn, nor less deserving of aid to accept it. Goodness should be nurtured, especially in one's self."

His hand is about as large as her shoulder, thumb working away at a tight tendon. Jenna could be a little touchy feely too, so it doesn't bother her-just makes her think on the size difference yet again.

Mostly though, even as he speaks and she files the words away for later, his voice had a calming, soothing effect. One even her miles a minute brain slowed up for.

Elias was very introspective. You wouldn't imagine a man as big as him being something of a philosopher, but he's both been around the block and seemed to have done some serious thinking on the way.

She likes it. Respects it sure, but mostly-it was a welcome change of pace.

Buuuut that doesn't mean she won't tease him. "Sure thing, Confucious." And a sleepy version of one of her unabashed grins before Jenna drifted off for the rest of the trip.

They arrive just as the first rays of predawn have begun to lift the utter pitch-black of the Congo night. The arms depot masquerades as an oil drilling platform offshore, looming over the waters like some tyrannic water skimmer. Titanic support struts jut out of the algae-strewn waters to webbings of girders and support rails underneath the platform, birds croaking from their hidden nests in the mess. An ecosystem has grown in the shadow of the colossus, even as the facility's waste both poisons and feeds its hangers-on. Elias turns the engine to a low hum and then putters into a silent run, reaching out to nudge Jenna's shoulder as they close in.

"Heads up," he says with a nod towards the giant facility. "Game time. Wash your face, grab a protein bar, stretch. We go in ten minutes - I want to hit it before the morning sweep and pre-test batteries."

He clips his communicator onto his ear - a thin compound strap seals it there for the moment - and then he asks into the silence, "You read me, Marie? We've arrived, prepping for intrusion. Systems green on your end? We expecting any guests?"

Adamant taps in a few commands to the boat to have it surreptitiously skulk in underneath one support, cloaked by the darkness and the paint job's utterly unreflective surface. He suits his actions to words, stretching out from the pilot's chair and popping his fingers and neck in ugly staccato, like a ripple of popcorn as his joints realign.