Athwart History (Closed)

Jenna barely registered there was something in his hand before he yanked her forward-her cheek and chest crushed into his chest in the sudden bear hug, feet dangling. He was warm, and he smelled like the pancakes he'd made and the forest he lived on the edge of. She knew he was big, but-jeez, he was big.

The speedster was about as heavy as she looked-which was to say, not heavy at all. She's small and enveloped quite easily-that scent of vanilla to her skin and hair.

She looks a little dazed when set back on her feet.

It's hard not to feel a little embarrassed, but...but it's nice. Her heart kind of swells and beats with a bit more hope in it-because here was Adamant, -the Adamant-, telling her she was worth the mantle of Velocity. Talking like she could help.

She'd made the right decision. She was nervous and more than a little scared of what might be coming-but she'd made the right choice, and she just had to stick with it. Fight the good fight. Look out for the little guy.

She glances down to the mysterious item-and realizes what it is. "Oh, wow."

Widened eyes flick back up to his face, her delicate fingers curling around the communicator. She doesn't know what to say. The warm fuzzies are certainly there, but she's briefly tongue tied, speechless.

She blurs, and there's a light but sudden weight knocking into him, a fierce, energy filled hug.

"Thank you-thanks!" She steps back and there's that pixie-ish grin again, dimples and all. "I can be anywhere in a hurry, so if you need me..." An off the cuff salute with an accompanying wink before she blurred-and was gone.

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The car had been found easily enough-no one was joyriding when she got to it and that was a bummer, but at least it'd been found. Not much else was going on, luckily-she didn't fancy anymore heroing in the sweatsuit she'd stolen out of Elias' with.

So she'd gone home. Or rather, what she called 'home' these days. Behind a secret wall in a derelict building's basement was a vault door. Technically, if anyone could find it they'd be able to access the stairs on the other side-if they had the time to turn the large metal wheel about tenthousand times. A speedster made short work of that however-and Jenna was in in record time.

She was quick on the stairs and into the long abandoned, partially built and unfinished subway tunnel. The automatic lights flared on in her wake, the speedster beelining for the nondescript side door on the far end of the tunnel. Just on the other side of the right, opposite wall was an actual, active subway track-the rumbles felt in hers occasionally. It had oddly become something of a soothing noise in the night.

Laura's base had not been a luxurious outfit. The tunnel was empty except for half a dozen tennis balls scattered about at one end, a tennis racket left leaning against the wall. There was also a women's bicycle gathering dust. Jenna's.

She opened the door and electricity thrummed in the overhead lights, flickering on to reveal concrete walls painted white and a rather militaristic space made slightly homey with a few additions better suited to a dorm than a secret base. An odd treadmill looking thing sat in the space immediately to her left, half covered by a sheet. Various complicated instruments were attached to it, looking like something out of a science fiction novel. On that wall there, a blue curtain was pulled across the small bathroom with shower stall. Directly ahead of the entrance was a mostly empty stretch of wall with a white table shoved against it, a large silver case resting next to it, big enough for a person to step into and lit with dark blue rings along the inside. A thick shouldered hanger dangled inside.

To her right and opposite the case was a low metal bed, barely more than a cot. It was shoved against the wall too in parallel, conserving space. A colorful purple bedspread was crumpled across the foot of it, a tangle of pale lilac sheets in the middle from when she'd sprang from it yesterday morning. Above it was a bulletin board with a few notes pinned to it, a few photos. In most of them, a smiling Jenna stood between two older people: a Filipino woman several inches shorter than her with a similar, if slightly less vivacious smile and a taller Caucasian man with a much more serious expression-obviously her parents, given the various ages she appeared to be.

A pile of college textbooks were stacked beneath the bed, a colorful canvas bag. A purple suitcase was open next to it, it's contents either haphazardly folded or strewn about the top and edges.

The wall adjacent to it held a panel of monitors, all currently off; with a final one on the heavy banker's desk below them, a terminal resting next to it. A collection of binders lined the left side and a microscope was on the right, a single chair in front of the computer. The only Jenna addition there was a Starbucks travel mug. Everything else was very much how Laura had left it-down to the framed photos and news articles resting in their places.

She hung her costume carefully within the case, removed her boots and and set them inside along with her gloves and goggles-and then hit the button to seal it off so it could work it's magic.

With that done, she plopped down on the bed and finally looked at her cell phone.

She had missed six phone calls and twice as many text messages throughout the night from her mother-not a good sign. Meant something was out on the internet already. Jenna wanted to tell her all about the fight, the frightening encounter with Paul, Elias-she really did-but Jenna knew how well that'd probably go over.

So she didn't. Just sent an affirming text that she was safe and they could talk later. Then she tapped over to the youtube app, pondering the implied vanity in Googling herself-but she didn't need to type in anything. A trending video of the fight was already on the front page. She didn't really want to see any of that again. Didn't look like anything of the rooftop showdown with Paul, thank God. Too much smoke probably.

Further down and in all caps, someone else had a video with an embarrassing title and way too many exclamation marks. The still was of roaring flames. Jenna sighed and lowered the phone. Man. Her mother was going to kill her.

She lifted it back up and clicked on the video. The shaky cell phone footage showed the hellish looking landscape ahead of it, burning buildings and flames of a city half destroyed. And then there was a shimmering blue blur that burst out of the smoke and fire and straight past the viewer. The camera turned, nearly was dropped-and there she was handing off the Corgi, scratching the pet behind the ears- and turning to race back into the flames.

...well, at least this video had a cute dog in it. She trudged off to take another shower and get dressed-she was going to go to Tony's and eat ALL the pizza.

The Tower is just over two hundred feet of gleaming spire, rising over the city of Wichita. The tip is mounted with a weather satellite of Weathervane's creation, preventing tornadoes and thunderstorms from forming in the area - for that alone, the occupants have been excused from many earthly needs, such as middling things like taxes. That's how Cid prefers business; untrammeled by minor issues, flowing smoothly as predicted. He's sacrificed a lot in this business, spent a lot of blood to see the world safe. In his time, he's seen peace achieved. Tasted victory.

On the top floor, all smooth, fresh glass walls and minimalistic monitors, he watches a bootleg of the skirmish at the docks, and tastes ash instead. Armored in his traditional white plate, now underlaid with smooth machinery and the most advanced cybernetics money can buy, El Cid watches the fight and is aware of the limits of his mortality. His brow is sticky beneath the visored, reflective helmet. He wishes he could brush the sweat off.

"Clumsy," he notes, pointing at the screen, as Adamant is struck by transmuted hydrogen, eradicating the docks and pushing the tide back into the sea. "He didn't take the initiative, and paid for it. A lot of people probably got killed here. He would have too if he weren't a freak of nature."

His lieutenant, Tectonic, stands behind him at attention as he dissects the fight, pointing out where the rogue duo had failed. After every major engagement, his heroes review the fight in a post-action report so they can see where to polish their skills - this is a dry run, so to speak, so they know exactly what to say when Jenna finally decides to show back up again. God knows they'll have maybe fifteen minutes to talk before she gets pissy about something and zips off again.

"You see anything?" The knight asks, peering over the screen. "I don't know what Jenna was doing this whole time. She clearly hadn't scouted beforehand. Got Adamant sniped."

His jaw works and he swallows as, in the video, Adamant strikes the open air and detonates it like a bomb, eradicating everything in his vicinity.

"Still a brute," he murmurs.

Tyler Moore wasn't the largest of men, but he wasn't small either. An inch shy of six feet, he was lean muscled and looked built for speed rather than brawn, with sandy blonde, nearly light brown hair cut short to the scalp in a crew cut. He was clean shaven and arguably handsome with a straight Greek nose, a sharp brow, and greenish hazel eyes.

He was the son of a career military man and had come from a long line of them. His mother and maternal grandfather had both been heroes-he was blood of blood, and rather proud of the fact.

"We even sure they arrived together?" He queried, still frowning from what they've seen so far. Messy shit. "You know how Paige is. Easily excitable and sticking her nose where it don't belong."

He's standing with his feet spaced beneath his shoulders and his hands clasped behind his back resting attention. His own costume was a swirl of bright and dark reds splashed across his chest, and deep brown, earthy tones on his arms and legs. His gloves and boots were a dark red, as was the open topped helm he wore. A ruby studded T was on his right bicep, two gold stripes beneath that.

Arrogant as he could be, he was dependable. Given a task, he could be very tunnel visioned until it was complete.

His eyes narrow as that blue blur arrives, some kind of confrontation-things were flying out of it at Nergal. "This was far out of her weight class." Whether they had arrived together or not, they'd clearly come together during.

He leaned back on his heels a minute, glancing to another monitor and rolling his eyes. "...well sir, looks like she was dog sitting." He says flatly with a nod towards the screen-a news segment was playing silently. There was the youtube video of their newest member, handing off the Corgi before zipping back into the hellish chaos she'd carried him from.

"Can you imagine if she didn't make it? This'd be in all those ASPCA commercials for the next twenty years." City on fire and she was rescuing people's pets.

Cid shook his head and flicked a hand at the screen, changing it to an aerial view of another dock, this one notably not annihilated by firestorms. A boat pulls away from the pier, smooth and black, then begins to peel off - its shape shifting and changing into a lethal projectile that roars off across the water at incredible speed. "Adamant picked her up at some point and took her in the Kingfisher," he says, sour. "She probably wandered up into Gary and found him there, and then he took her straight into a warzone."

He glances at the video and his lips purse beneath the visor, but he eventually shakes his head. "She's a PR wonder. That'd be a good shot if she hadn't done it in the middle of a localized apocalypse, but I can't separate the two. If only she weren't -"

Cid cuts off and shakes his head. It's an old argument - if Paige had just fallen in line, she'd have been a golden girl, but her irreverence and disobedience have instead become a monkey wrench in his system. And then this.

He exhales harshly and clicks over to his tracking system, the communicator watch relaying Paige's position to him. She's off at her little bunker again, and he's not inclined to call her just so she can hang up on him - so instead he remotely disables her police scanner, crippling her ability to vigilante effectively. His mouth curves in satisfaction and he nods to Tectonic.

"She'll come in within the next couple of hours. I'm routing GPS to you for the rest of the day - when she arrives, escort her to me. We need to reign her in before she walks into another disaster."

Tectonic is faithful, a worthy lieutenant. Cid's aware that he likes to use the GPS to bust up the illicit trysts and unauthorized off-base jaunts the juniors get into, but these are things Cid disapproves of himself, and he tacitly approves of the habit. Letting him pull the leash a little both rewards him and disciplines the other heroes. It's very efficient.

He carefully orders his arguments in his mind: public disaster, danger to civilian lives, unprepared, unprofessional. The jaunt to Adamant's house - ugh - and her refusal to so much as call the attack in afterwards. Arguments she'll listen to, that'll cut out the petty motivations she stands on from underneath her. Paige's drive is a youthful thing, and it can be clipped back with patience and a firm hand. He still doesn't know the full story of what happened at the docks, and without knowing he can't make a definitive statement, or control the spin without a chance of someone cutting him off at the knees with some unknown fact. He doesn't have enough information, enough control, over what happened, and that needles him deep and grits his teeth.

Idly, he checks the GPS again, noting that Sarah's out on a patrol flight with Salvage and Joinder, and not due back until evening. Cid flicks an imaginary speck of dust from his shoulder, and dismisses Tectonic with a firm salute. Then he stares at the monitor again, the array of information spread across it, and tries to find a way to seal all the cracks that have only just now begun to open.

Jenna laughed as Anthony Sullivan-the son of the pizza restaurant's owner-previewed a small bit of his newest set to her, something of an amateur comedian. The joint wasn't the biggest or the trendiest, mostly a hole in the wall-but it had -awesome- pie, and a stand up show every Friday.

She never would have discovered it if she hadn't stopped that robbery.

"Okay, okay, fine, do some work or whatever." She teased as he bowed out, leaving her alone in the restaurant side of things as he retreated into the kitchen. Jenna chewed happily on a slice of pineapple pizza, scrolling through youtube on her phone before she checked her watch for the first time in over an hour. But...well, still nothing. Not only nothing, but no chatter at -all- when she moved to that menu.

Jenna frowned at the little smart watch, tapping at it a few times and puzzling over the complete lack of chatter. That wasn't normal. It only pinged when certain keywords popped up, the old but handy tech keeping her posted on the city's going ons, or when she was needed-but now it seemed to be malfunctioning.

Man, she wasn't any good with the technical side of things. This was old tech from Laura, if it broke she didn't really have a way to fix it. Maybe someone at the Tower might know more about it.

Taking a long sip of iced tea she nearly returned to her phone-when she realized there was a little indicator she hadn't seen before. Jenna tapped on that and saw the map, far out of the city.

How...where...?

Wait, that was the tower. Nothing had pinged, but there was a GPS beacon in Wichita nonetheless. No phone call though. And shit, her costume was still being repaired in it's chamber back at base. Did they need her for a mission? Run something somewhere?

She wasn't sure, but she'd best find out. She had to go there eventually anyway.

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For the fifth time Jenna tried swiping the little keycard she'd been given months ago, but the reader still flashed red. It was more than a little frustrating. Maybe it'd been demagnetized or-

"Miss Paige?" Jenna's head turned to see a redhaired girl hardly taller than she was, freckles across the bridge of her nose and large, round blue eyes. She was wearing a black and purple costume with a purple visor across the eyes, one that was currently flipped up.

"Oh-uh, hey. Blink, right?" She could teleport, something like that. She didn't know -alot- about her, but she knew of her. Always good to make friends, right? Jenna smiled, a friendly handshake. "Just Jenna's fine."

Blink smiled back, then nodded towards the keycard and door. "Need some help?"

"Ugh, yeah, I think I kept it next to my phone and it ruined it..."

"Here-" And the pale, shy seeming girl swiped her own, beaming as the doors slid open. "I saw you hose down Rush, you know."

"Ha, really?"

"Yeah. We all thought that was pretty funny."

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The two women chattered as they walked across the gleaming lobby-Tyler watched them impassively from where he stood waiting near the elevator, his arms crossed and his body language closed off. The redhead stopped mid sentence when she caught sight of him-but Paige didn't seem to realize what had caught her attention, at first. Not until the girl made her escape.

"Oh, I uh-I just remembered I left something outside, Jenna-" And in a blip the girl was gone. Up to something probably. Maybe not-she was skittish...but that still made him a bit suspicious. His eyes shifted to the somewhat surprised ones of the latest recruit, watching her turn to look behind her before facing him again. Her brow was furrowed before her expression melted into one of those million dollar smiles.

"Ha, that was a faster exit than even I could pull off!"

"She stays out of trouble." He intoned darkly, looking down his nose at her as she approached the elevator. She seemed to register the statement but didn't respond to it just yet, just a lift of one of her eyebrows.

She wasn't in costume, that was the first thing he had noticed-and disapproved of. She was wearing a dark desert orange patterned blouse under a tan colored cardigan she’d only buttoned towards the bottom. A fluffed dark navy blue skirt fell about mid thigh, a pair of tan colored lace up ankle boots on her feet-an inch or two of the tops of navy blue socks with dark orange argyle showing. She had a brown leather purse that brought everything together, a flash of silver leading him to believe part or all of her costume might be inside of it. She’d pulled her shorter hair back into a ponytail, her longish bangs swept neatly to one side of her (admittedly pretty) face. Her earrings were tiny little fox studs that matched her shirt and socks.

He wondered if the conservative, wholesome look was on purpose for the cameras or not. Probably. He was sure her reluctance to appear on television and give interviews was a sham-playing hard to get with the public.

It made it that much more frustrating she was so damned popular with them.

"I think I wrecked my keycard on accident-but I'm here to respond to the beacon...? Oh. It's you." Her voice lost some of the bubbly friendliness, a note of dismay. "...so what's up?"

Tyler smirked. "C'mon 'Velocity', El Cid is looking for you."

The elevator moves swiftly to the top floor, and opens on a panorama. Only the central shaft breaks the view; the rest is all crystal-clear glass, polarized to prevent outside view. It's a panopticon of the city, glaring down from its height, with smoothly integrated monitors that fold down from the ceiling to present whatever information Cid might find useful. The only furniture is a wide, thronelike chair behind a smooth and featureless desk, facing the elevator, and past it, a wide sparring area with extendable walls, where Cid privately trains his best. It focuses everything onto the armored man as soon as one steps out of the lift.

He's set aside his helmet for now, standing before the window with one monitor beside him, tilted to hide its display. Coal-black hair and a gentleman's aristocratic face, with the soft wear of age, frame a body that belongs on a twenty-three year old, all powerful, thick muscles and a stocky frame. The armor gives him inches he doesn't have, placing him about six foot three - out of it he barely makes six, but then Cid doesn't make a practice of being out of his armor anywhere but the top floor.

"Thank you, Tectonic," he says, gravely, without turning.

There is, perhaps, twenty seconds of dead silence.

"What happened, Miss Paige?" Cid finally says, without turning away from the window. "What possessed you to run into the most destructive villain conflict in almost a decade, without backup, without calling it in, without alerting the authorities? What made you think that you alone, of everyone, was the only one who could help?"

The ride up had been awkward. Tectonic was...well, she didn't think he was the agreeable sort. She knew he was one of the big guns around here, but she also knew he looked and acted like a lackey. She tried to bring up his grandfather, but he didn't respond with anything more than a grunt.

It didn't bode well for whatever Cid wanted.

Everything's going to be fine Jenna. She self assured as she spun the malfunctioning smart watch on her wrist. She'd go ask the Costumer about it-he did tech too, she was pretty sure. You didn't do anything wrong. He's a hero, he'll get it. Don't be a stress snowball.

Right. It'd been a good morning. She needed more time to strategize and had a lot to look into, but it'd been a good morning, she wasn't in this alone, and she could figure things out.

But despite her assurances, she felt small and kind of vulnerable in the large elevator, out of costume and sans goggles, but she tried to hide it. If he was trying to rattle her, she'd be damned if she let it work.

The elevator dinged and he indicated she should go first. She could see the empty desk and the back of the knight as he looked out into the city. Part of her really didn't want to go in there, all of a sudden.

But hey, she was Velocity. Jenna stepped off and Tectonic was close behind before he moved off to the side. She could see him in her peripheral vision, but her eyes were on Cid's back. Silence. And silence was hard for one as bubbly as Jenna. She cleared her throat after what felt like forever but probably wasn't even half a minute-and then he suddenly spoke.

"What happened, Miss Paige?" Oh. This wasn't starting out very well. "I wrote a-" she had reached into her bag to produce the witness statement she'd written, but froze up as the the rest of his upbraiding followed.

"What possessed you to run into the most destructive villain conflict in almost a decade, without backup, without calling it in, without alerting the authorities?"

"Wait a-"

" What made you think that you alone, of everyone, was the only one who could help?"

That one made her feel like she'd been slapped. "Whoa, what?" There's a note of distressed strain to her voice already, but the pushback was immediate. "'Only one who could help'? I didn't go there alone, one. Two, by the time I -was- there, the authorities had written that part of the city off. It was -their- evacuation zone I helped clear while they did what they could outside of it. Are you asking me what happened or are you set to -tell me- what happened, Cid?"

She cast a glance over her shoulder at Tectonic when he made a tsk noise, but continued unabated. "I arrived to a hellscape and I did what I do-get people the hell out of there. There wasn't time to sit and call you or anyone else up for permission." She clearly thought the idea was ridiculous.

Just what the hell was this? Maybe she was being overly defensive. He hadn't been there, maybe he didn't understand just how fast everything had been happening-

"But you weren't there immediately, were you Paige?" Tectonic's voice asked with cool detachment. Jenna took her eyes off of Cid's back and frowned at him. "How long did it take you to get there, once you knew what was going down?"

The question confused her at first. Weren't they angry she'd gone at all? Wait-

"I didn't...I didn't realize what we were heading into, entirely. Or where we were going. I stayed with Adamant."

"You didn't realize? You didn't know? While you were tripping over yourself to play sidekick, people -died- Paige." His tone had turned acidic, the worst sort of rancor.

"I-"

"Nergal showed up and decimated entire city blocks. People instantly incinerated. He pursued fleeing civilians. And where were you?" Jenna lost what bit of temper she'd walked in with, her eyes distant as she remembered the ash and rooftop realization that people had -died-. Before she'd ever set foot there, they had -died-. At the time, she had mourned that but hadn't felt personally responsible. She hadn't been there yet, after all. But Christ, where -had- she been? Awe struck by a fancy boat? Smearing burn resistant gel on her face? Fuck.

The buoyant heroine almost seemed to shrink, her arms crossed and her small hands gripping her biceps as if she felt a bit cold. "I found myself in a bad situation and I did what I could." She finally said, somewhat lamely, eyes distant and remembering.

Cid is silent for a long moment, making a minute gesture to Tectonic so that he holds off; lets the silence drag itself out, and Paige drag herself over the coals. Energy burns itself out - youth expires. He says nothing and lets her confidence crumble from within, and closes the monitor up into the ceiling - angling it just enough that she can see the half-glimpsed image of a row of closed body bags. Her body crumples inward in the reflection of the window, and that's when he turns and steps forward. In his armor, with the sun backlighting him, Cid casts Miss Paige in his shadow.

"I don't blame you for listening to Adamant," Cid says, wearily compassionate. "He's persuasive. Charismatic. I know because I worked with him and alongside him. I know how easy it is to listen to him and let him define your world in his terms. There's a reason he's up there alone, though. Why I have the only remaining organization of superheroes, why this tower alone stands against the advance of chaos."

He shakes his head, and meets Jenna's gaze. Lets exhaustion creep into his voice. "You have to do better, Jenna. You're used to the cops and robbers game, purse thieves and shoplifters, and you can do that by yourself. I commend you on that. I hope you understand the difference, now - imagine how many more lives could have been saved, if you had stepped back, called for help, didn't leap into action before finding out what needed to be done. Being the fastest doesn't mean anything if you don't think before you move, and now you know why I emphasize that: because our mistakes are paid for by the lives of others. And now, you have a death toll on your resume."

Cid shakes his head and turns away again, gazing into the open skyline and away from Jenna, the sun's rays parting around him. His visor slides down - no need to strain his eyes with the bright light, now that she can't see his face anymore. "Tell me what happened, Miss Paige. Start from the beginning. I need to know how I can make things better."

Jenna hadn't meant to look and he certainly hadn't meant to let her see-but she did. Their point was driven home with the image of the body bags seared into her brain.

The color had drained from the petite Filipina's face. She didn't look at either man, just the floor, very much on the verge of either crying or losing her lunch. Cid's shadow eclipsed her small frame easily.

"I don't blame you for listening to Adamant," Jenna glances up, looking miserable. "He's persuasive. Charismatic. I know because I worked with him and alongside him. I know how easy it is to listen to him and let him define your world in his terms. There's a reason he's up there alone, though.

Wh...what? No...no, without him, she wouldn't have even known about the attack at all. He hadn't fucked up-she had. She could have been there but hadn't gone. She could have radioed it in but didn't. "I have the only remaining organization of superheroes, why this tower alone stands against the advance of chaos."

She should have reported in immediately. She...she hadn't been thinking. That was over her head, she wasn't Laura, for God's dake.

"-imagine how many more lives could have been saved if you had stepped back, called for help, didn't leap into action before finding out what needed to be done. ...and now, you have a death toll on your resume."

A death toll. She'd gotten everyone out that she could, if she had waited then the body count would have been worse, wouldn't it? She...no, maybe no one would have had to of died if she'd just...been smarter about it.

The girl was twisted up and confused easily-the part of her that had known what was up, the part of her that had felt self possessed and informed-was crunched up in the dust somewhere beneath a mountain of guilt.

But...

"This wasn't Adamant's fault." She says weakly, none of that energy or pep now. Certainly none of her ire. He talked down to her and she let him-didn't even seem to realize it was happening. But Adamant-well, she was stuck on that. "I was supposed to get people out of the way, that's why he involved me at all. -He- got there as fast he could." She withdraws the carefully written, factual statement from her bag, stares it blankly. It was of a quality it could have easily been used in court. Now she wasn't so sure she'd gotten everything right, despite it being factual, objective observation. "I wrote a statement. Paul and Nergal and...everything I saw. If you think it'll help."

She's been hit hard and sounded awful-but there was still a glimmer of hope, a desire to help that, to anyone else, might have looked downright pathetic. Maybe he could right some of her fuck up, she didn't know.

Cid waits for a moment for his initial response to subside - fuck Elias - and discreetly checks his wrist monitor without moving. Daybreak's on her way back. Time to wrap up. He doesn't need her getting defiant over this sort of thing. He spends a few more long seconds to let the young girl baste in her guilt, then turns and reaches out for the statement. "Adamant is his own man. His mistakes are his own, I admit. Now, let me see this statement, Miss Paige. I'll try to make everything go smoothly for you."

And then the sunlight moves behind his shoulders, a shadow blocking out the daylight over Cid's back, and he minutely tenses. A double-click of his throat mike tells Tectonic to relax - he'd been looming over Miss Paige's shoulder, which was useful for putting her in the proper mindframe, but Sarah would misinterpret it swiftly, and he didn't need that kind of trouble on top of this other mess. He needed at least one place untrammeled by this kind of nonsense. Then he turns to see her.

Daybreak.

Backlit by the sun more gloriously than he ever could be, her golden hair and uniform flit in the headwinds rushing up the sides of the Tower, borne aloft by golden, feathery trails of light. Age has only perfected her beauty, and as ever, Cid takes a moment to bask in her beauty, the perfect swell of her hips and chest, the possessive rush of pride.

He presses a button, and the window slides down to admit his wife into the open room. "Sarah," he greets, with as much warmth as he permits himself to show anyone. "Miss Paige has returned from the fight from the docks. She's written a witness statement as well. We were just about to go over it."

Damage control - not that there's any, yet. But good preparation, and setting the battlefield, is key to a happy homefront.

"Adamant is his own man. His mistakes are his own, I admit. Now, let me see this statement, Miss Paige. I'll try to make everything go smoothly for you. "

Smoothly for her? Who cared about -her-? She'd let people die. Her fingers tightened on the report. No, it wasn't just...the death toll, it was the fact it had happened at all. She may have fucked up in her actions, but she hadn't summoned Nergal and Paul to those docks. She hadn't incited them like that-and neither had Elias.

She can't quite think through her own guilt and confusion however. Part of her doesn't want to hand the report over-which made no sense at all.

"Today, Paige." Tectonic's deep voice intoned over her shoulder-he might've reached to snatch it away from her. She seemed too out of it to prevent him from doing so-but the double tap gets his attention-and then so does the image of Daybreak.

Tyler steps back fluidly, his animosity fading from him as he took a relaxed stance closer to the wall. He knows the moment Paige sees her- she seems to visibly shrink further, her head dropping to perhaps reread the front page of her report.

He had never quite grown used to Miss Sarah in her golden hued glow. As a young teen, he had likened her to an angel. All these years later, the comparison still rang true.

Daybreak glides through the open space, the shimmering gold light abating as she steps effortlessly from flight to walking, a ripple of gold at the first press of her white boot to the tiled floor.

And then she goes from Goddess to woman as the golden light fades from her skin, revealing peach pink tinted cheeks and lips. Dazzling blue eyes, her long blonde hair tousled by flight and framing what was a classically beautiful face. A sash of white was loosely knotted at one curved hip.

"I thought you were going to wait for me?" Her voice is soft and sweet. Despite the question not being addressed to him and despite...himself, Tyler felt a flicker of regret, if not remorse.

If he had a conscience, it only seemed to surface when she was around.

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

The normally bright, grinning speedster looked on the verge of tears. She didn't look up at her, just at what she imagined was the report. Painful memories...the destruction had no doubt been too much for her. As flippant and carefree as the girl could act, Sarah thought her much too tender hearted for a -warzone-.

She bypassed her husband for the girl. Her right hand took the report while her left found her shoulder, a slight frown on her lips. When the Filipina's dark eyes finally flickered up to hers, it was too much.

"Oh Jenna." And she drew her into a tight hug just as the poor thing burst into tears. It was -much- too soon to be talking about this.

"I-I d-didn't know b-better-j-just was there, t-tried to help-."

Dammit Cid. She cast the knight a sharp glance as she smoothed the back of the girl's sweater. He should have waited for her. He'd gone and said the wrong thing or pushed too hard for obviously painful or frightening details.

"We just want you to be safe honey. You could have been killed or worse-none of us want that. Shhh." Soothing, warm waves of energy. Too much too soon, clearly. "Did anyone show you to your room before? Here..."

She walked the neonate heroine back towards the elevator, giving a nod to Tyler when he pressed the button to open the doors for them. She'd just get her settled in for now. There'd be plenty of time for talk later-Sarah wanted her to take a few days to herself, hopefully close at hand so she could keep an eye on her, for once.

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

"Well." Tyler said after a moment, the doors having closed and carried the two women away. "I doubt Velocity will be good for much, next few days."

He uncrossed his arms and moved deeper into the room. He had a lot of disdain for the upstart. Sarah was taking her to her room-he knew it'd remained just as empty as the day it'd been assigned to her. Maybe the speedster would stay put now, dammit.

"She worships the old heroes." He notes. "That includes Adamant. She made contact and...we don't need that. It's bad enough she's got her own city and everyone knows she's got her own city."

Cid offers an inclination of his head in response, conceding Jenna to her care, and retires to his chair as she leads the brokenhearted speedster towards the elevator. The monitor flips out as the female duo exit the top floor via the elevator, and he zips a copy of the information he's compiled, as well as a video file of the last five minutes together, then sends it off to his benefactor. Then he sighs and glances towards Tectonic, letting the monitor collapse again. "I always doubted that I'd be able to bring her to heel myself, but it's possible I can bend her to Sarah instead. It'd be almost as efficient and keep her close at hand. As it stands, I'll need to make sure she can't make contact again, somehow. You'll probably have to confiscate any communicator or phone she's got to prevent her from running off back to Adamant again."

The knight's brow wrinkles, and he considers for a long moment, then stands and motions Tectonic to follow him. "It's time you learned something of leadership," he says to his lieutenant. "I will, of course, count on your discretion in this matter. It is of great significance."

He walks around the outside of the central shaft, to the opposite side of the elevator's entrance. There's an unmarked closet there, where Cid stores a spare copy of his armor for times of emergency. He opens the door - closes it - locks it - then presses a small button beside it. "A key part of effective control is knowing what resources are at hand, and when to use them; and, furthermore, when it is courteous to inform your allies of current events. Good manners is not just a pleasantry - it is an investment in how easy you make the path of communication, the flow of favors, between yourself and another of merit. In short, it is vital."

A belltone sounds from behind the door, and Cid opens it, then kneels to lift something off the floor that hadn't been there before.

A key. Small, futuristic, with a grip and engine that spins ten thousand times in a second.

Cid proffers the curious device to Tectonic. "This should open Jenna's little hideout. Search it for any kind of personal messaging device and appropriate it. Should you feel the need for a vigorous search, we still have a room waiting for Miss Paige at the Tower here; do not restrain yourself on her account. It's against protocol, anyways."

Sarah re entered the spacious office, looking slightly more tired than when she had left. The report was in her hands and flipped several pages in, a frown on her lips and an increasingly anxious expression. By the time she got to the part where Jenna fired a flurry of kicks into The Wandering Jew's eye-she had to stop. Her chest was tight and her stomach rolled at the thought of Jenna, little five foot tall, barely hundred pound Jenna Paige, facing down a monster.

She dropped the report on Cid's desk and rested her curved hip on one edge, rubbing her forehead. "It wasn't just Nergal. The Wandering Jew was there, too. He tried to possess her." She said after a moment, looking up to stare numbly out at the city skyline and setting sun, crossing her arms loosely beneath her soft chest.

"We almost lost another Velocity." She murmured, distant.

Cid sighs, pulling off his helmet and setting it aside with a thunk on the desk. "Figures. It couldn't just be one supervillain resurfacing, has to be two. And nothing of his was recovered, which means he got away scot-free and probably left something in Jenna. Who knows? I can't do magic, and neither can anyone left that I can contact."

He shakes his head, grim, and side-eyes Sarah. "Would you feel better if we tried to decontaminate her, or scan her or something?" the Association leader says. "I don't really know what to do about it. He's obviously going to gun for her now, Jew's always been vindictive. I can't order her to stay at base - she won't listen. I don't have the resources to be sure she'll be fine on her own. What do you think, Sarah?"

His ideas always sound better coming out of Sarah's mouth. When Jenna's base-away-from-base ends up trashed, her fear will put his words on her lips, and Jenna will swallow it much easier than from him. The puzzle pieces click in Cid's mind and satisfy him on some intrinsic level, like sex, but better. Cid heaves a breath with gravity, stands up, and circles the desk to gently sling an arm around Sarah. "These are your kids. We've got to protect them somehow. They don't deserve to go against the worst that's left over from our generation - that's just cruelty."

The warm glow of satisfaction and the soft line of Sarah's body against his stirs Cid's blood, but he holds himself patient. She likely won't be in the mood today. He'll probably be able to badger her into a round or two tomorrow for neglecting him in a time of crisis or something.

"Probably left something in Jenna."

Sarah's eyes widened, the stormy greys turning to him with more than a little panic. The thought had not occurred to her. And if something was wrong, could anything even be done for her?

"He didn't touch her." She said, picking the report back up and scanning that portion again to confirm it. "I would think...no, no. I'll keep an eye on her for behavioral changes... A MRI might be a good idea."

Please, God, not one of hers. She couldn't stand to lose any of them.

"She's so upset, I'm sure she'll stay for a little while. She must have been so very frightened-he tried to get her to say his name-possibly his -actual- name. That must be how he does it. Or at least...one way he does it."

He slid his arm around her and she wished he wouldn't. The thought brought an immediate flush of guilt, but she couldn't help it. Sometimes she wished he would just leave her alone. She wasn't sure what that said about her as a wife. Bad things.

Her eyes returned to the skyline, a frown. "Cruel and dangerous... He shouldn't have taken her. She's not ready... None of them are."

Even with Adamant...She shook her head, tiredly thinking about Jenna. It did not help she had not gotten her start here.

"She won't give up her city. She feels responsible for it... ...wears Laura's alert system on her wrist." Sarah continued to stare idly out the window. She lifted a graceful hand and rested it on the one he had on her shoulder. It was an empty gesture-but she felt obligated. She always felt so...damned obligated. And empty.

"But it managed for seven years without a resident speedster...maybe I can...hm. I just...don't know." She exhaled, kissed him on the cheek-and then slipped under the arm and left the desk, abandoning the report altogether. She was already lost in her thoughts, miles and miles away.

"For now, she needs to rest."

This was the place.

Tyler lowered the small tablet and frowned at the derelict building in front of him. Not exactly fancy digs. How was she getting in here? The front door was locked tight.

He circled the building and looked for another way in, the boarded up windows showing the most promise. Lot of glass still intact though...

Dressed in a dark red leather jacket, dress slacks, and a tucked button up shirt, he cut a handsome if stern figure, overly dressed in this part of town but not particularly notable. It seemed mostly deserted anyway.

He found a window without glass and a loose board, but the space was much too small for him. Large enough for the pipsqueak kid, but too small for his shoulders. With a grunt, he seized hold of the board and jerked backwards, throwing it aside as it broke. There.

He moved inside and down into the basement, sighing at the size of it. Hidden wall...hidden wall...hm. After a bit of tapping he found it, and then he found the vault door. Looked old. After a moment of inspecting the twisting mechanism, he retrieved the key and attached it to the device. He squeezed the trigger and it began turning at a speed his eyes couldn't track-causing the hero to back off several steps, reluctant to lose an arm.

He dropped in, glanced up as the automatic lights switched on in what sounded like a subway tunnel. He'd have to be a little more...concentrated if he wanted to avoid structural damage to the tunnel next door. A tennis racket and a women's bicycle sat at one end of the tunnel, a dozen or more tennis balls littering the concrete. Tch. Messy.

He shoved open the next door and paused inside, a disapproving sweep of the small space, particularly the unmade bed. He wasn't surprised. His dress shoes made small clicks against the concrete as he entered fully, grasping hold of the sheet and tearing it aside to reveal the complicated treadmill looking device.

Looked important.

He snapped a photo of it and sent it to the boss, then moved onto the rest of the place. Small personal effects. A suitcase. Pictures. Was she living here now? Not exactly luxurious digs for the public's beloved Velocity.

He moved straight for the desk, intent on opening drawers-but a purple cell phone AND a small, older communicator device sat smack on top. Arrogance-she clearly never expected intruders. He picked both up, eyes narrowing a tick on the battered old school communicator. With a shake of his head he pocketed it, then moved to fire up the pc-but it was passworded. Looked like older tech-DOS for crying out loud.

He moved the monitor, ripped open the tower case-and removed the hard drive. A ding to his phone told him to spare the treadmill device. Obediently he half pushed, half dragged it out into the abandoned tunnel. He returned for a final once over, but found nothing much of interest. Twice though, he glanced at the suitcase.

Jenna Paige had been attending university as recently as six months ago. She'd dropped out, assumedly to devote more time to playing hero. Had she been living in the dorms then? Dropped out to move here?

His eyes moved to the bulletin board, roamed over the pinned photos. He reached over the unmade bed and unpinned one of a smiling Paige in the middle of what he could only assume were her parents in front of the city's university. He studied it a moment. And then...though he was uncertain why, he pocketed it.

Nothing more to do here but keep her from coming back to it.

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

The news glossed over a small earthquake from the night before, mere tremors felt up top and no real damage. A fault line 12 miles north of the city was thought to be the cause, though no quake was recorded near it.

While damages were negligible, but beneath the street and next to the busy subway tunnel-the former base of Velocity lay in rubble, crackling electricity where wires had been torn through. Concrete slabs had cracked and fallen inwards, dirt and dust from above pouring in. Broken glass from the monitors littered the far, unreachable side-and the closest space to the door would fit hardly anyone at all. To add insult to injury, he made sure to leave the gutted remains of her computer just outside the shattered door.

Cid shrugs, honestly confused and hating the feeling. Sarah retreating from his touch isn't new, but it still bothers him that she runs away from her husband. "Who knows?" he says, irritably. "Everyone that knew anything about sorcery is dead. We're grasping at straws at best. I wish I knew, but I don't."

He shakes his head and sighs. "Southhaven can last without Miss Paige for a few days," he says grudgingly. "I'll station a team down there for a couple weeks while we run her through a battery of scans, try to find out what happened to her. It's out of our normal way, but it's the least we can do if we're going to take her off of her territory."

A logical reason for Tectonic to be in the area, and also one for why her base would be found in disarray. This is worthwhile.

"Call it public outreach, make the point that all of the Tower's heroes are everyone's heroes?" he analyzes further, murmuring. The dancing numbers and branching pathways distract Cid from his burgeoning aggravation, and he slides around the desk and seats himself with hardly a thought, no longer missing the heat of Sarah's body. It'd erode her public support there too, generalize and diffuse it. It's actually a good idea.

"Yes," Cid says, absent-minded. "Yes. Thank you, Sarah. I'll see to it. You keep her safe."

The next day was something of a daze. Her keycard didn't work-not that she felt like going anywhere-and the only person other than Miss Sarah she was able to see or speak to was the damned android doctor.

She hadn't liked the MRI. Tight confines and kind of noisy. They didn't tell her what they were looking for and Jenna didn't ask. She just wanted to go back to the borrowed room. It didn't really feel like hers-it was kind of modern looking and just...weird.

Day two went a lot better. Sort of. She'd been tasked with painting one of the empty lower floors. "You're so fast, I knew it'd be a breeze with your help." Sarah had told her with one of those dazzling but exhausted smiles. To Jenna's surprise, Sarah asked about and wanted to know how Adamant was doing. When she suggested a visit to Gary however, she'd backpedaled and changed the subject.

What might've been fun just felt off though-every time she paused or slowed down to smooth out a spot or flatten the plastic protecting the floor, she caught the veteran heroine watching her kind of anxiously. Jenna did her best to be...herself. Miss Sarah did laugh at a few of her antics, small victories.

By day three Jenna was starting to get antsy, though she kept a smile on her face. Daybreak did a bit of training with her, more control exercises (this time with thrown objects, she hadn't forgotten lopping off Paul's head like that) but there was still no mention of when she'd be allowed to leave. Worse, Sarah said something about her 'teammates' shouldering some of her 'independent work.'

"You're one of us now, Jenna. You don't have to go it alone anymore."

It felt like a demotion, and she hated the idea of other heroes in her...in Laura's city. That night she had gone through every menu option in the stupid smart watch, but she still couldn't get it to work. She had no idea what was going on in her city. She couldn't leave the tower, she had no way to contact anyone, and somewhere out there the bad guys were getting away with either a conspiracy for mass homicide or plain negligence in handling one of their own-and indirectly causing a massacre.

What was more, every time she thought about the conversation with Cid and Tectonic she felt more and more unsettled. She couldn't pinpoint what exactly had been so wrong about it, or how she'd gotten twisted up and turned around-but something hadn't been right. Needless to say, she wasn't rearing to go back in and talk to him. So far, she hadn't had to.

By day five, she couldn't stand it anymore.

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

"I quit." Sarah stopped short just inside the doorway to the speedster's room, nearly dropping the warm, freshly folded towels she had been bringing in. Jenna was standing at the foot of her bed, the loaned clothing items folded in the middle of the made-first time since she'd been there-bed. Her bag was on her shoulder and she looked as if she'd been waiting for her to enter for some time.

"You...what? Jenna?"

"I -quit-. I want out." The usually cheerful, bubbly Filipina looked markedly determined and also a bit upset. Sarah set down the towels, but when she took a step towards the girl, the speedster blurred backwards.

It hurt her in a way she couldn't quite process. As if she were now distrusted. Universally, her kids loved her. Trusted her.

"I wanted to be part of the League. I was -excited- to be part of something, something bigger than me, than Velocity-"

"Honey-"

"The costume ruined my -life-. It ruined it. The esteem of my parents, my education, my future-gone." She shook her head fast, eyes diverting themselves. They were red and looked as if the girl hadn't slept the night before. "But I thought I could do some good, I thought the League would help me do some good, be a bright side that could make up for what I had to give up. But I was wrong. Everything I thought was -wrong-."

Sarah had never seen her like this, not in the months and months she'd known her. She hadn't imagined any sort of venom or bile or anger to her at all. Something was bad here. Sour. "Sit down Jenna, let's talk-" Subtle calming energy, but Jenna was having none of it, Sarah could feel the pushback-throwing her off guard. It...it hadn't happened in a long time.

"No. I can't stomach any of this. The bad guys are still out there! They're organized and unhampered by anything we're doing! You're training heroes but for -what- Miss Sarah? No one is -doing anything- about the things that -matter-."

"They're not ready, you're not ready-" She heard herself start to say, but Jenna was on a roll.

"What I can and can't do isn't up to you to decide. I am a full grown adult, Miss Sarah. And the bad guys are out there -now-. Shield your students all you want, but how long can you really hope to keep them here?"

"I just-I...they're not ready..."

"Well don't lock ME up-"

Sarah looked up from her anxious, lost thoughts and looked at her with a furrowed brow. She had said she wanted out-Sarah had thought that meant out of the league, but did she mean -literally- out?

"Just because I tried and failed to help, just because I'm not willing to live in these weird draconian conditions where I'm being passive aggressively punished with imprisonment-" Things finally clicked for her, a jolted realization out of left field.

"Jenna, you are -not- a prisoner here!"

"The hell I'm not!" Jenna's voice took on a higher timbre, full of hurt and betrayal and she wasn't sure what else. "My keycard doesn't work, the phone in here doesn't dial out, my watch is broken-" She was talking fast, blurring over to the headset and picking it up to reveal a strange dial tone Sarah hadn't heard before. "You're keeping me illegally detained and-"

"No! No, honey, no." Were they? "I'm not." She sank into the bed, dragging her fingers through her hair. "You can leave at any time-I, this is a misunderstanding..."

"Then let me leave!" Jenna continued, blurring to the doors where she tried to swipe the keycard. "Look!"

Sarah rose to her feet and moved towards the door, taking the keycard from the much smaller woman and trying it herself. True to what Jenna claimed, it did not work.

She turned it over in her hand, frowning down at it. "...and your watch? It doesn't work?"

"No! It hasn't since I got home from Elias'." Jenna stared up at her, eyes flicking to the ID and then back. "You...you didn't know?"

Sarah looked to her a moment, then away, turning the card over and over in her hand. "No."

"But Cid must have known."

"...maybe." She felt tired again. She was always so damned tired. "Maybe he did."

"Adamant...said you deserve better, Miss Sarah." Jenna said tentatively, a hint of concern entering her tone, coming down off her tense, angry spiel.

"Cid saved my life."

"That's...what heroes are supposed to do."

So tired.

"Don't quit Jenna." She said softly. "Don't quit the League. You can go, just don't quit."

"I...okay."

She drew the girl into a tight hug, slipping her own keycard off her neck and around hers. "And don't go alone Jenna. Whatever you get into...don't go alone. Take Elias with you and...be careful not go too fast." He'd keep her safe. That she was sure of.

"He misses you, I think."

Sarah stared off into space. "I miss him too." She murmured, then stepped back out of the hug, moved to sit back on the edge of the bed.

"Sarah?"

"Hm?"

"...I'm sorry. I do really think...think the world of you, really."

She heard the doors part, and then the speedster was gone, leaving the heroine alone with her memories and haunted thoughts.

Elias sighs and leans against the mirror of the spare bedroom, stood opposite the bed against the wall. "I'm a little curious about what propelled Paul to set up that kind of bushwhack. It's vicious, sure, but he's had a long time to try a game like that. What changed?"

Beside his reflection in the mirror, a black shape moves with a timid shrug. It's curled up besides the bed's reflection, an outline in a thick winter jacket hunched next to the space heater he's set next to the real bed. He holds his hands over the merrily cranking device. "I can't get near Jew. I won't. He can hurt me."

There's a bit of silence as Elias looks at nothing and lets time pass. The outline curls in on himself, seeking the heat like a parched man does water.

" . . . the chip was a real thing," he says eventually. "I don't know what all that was about, lots of talk about signal amplification and manton routing protocol and other things I don't understand. But the chip was important and Nergal was in charge of it, protecting it or something. Jew stole it and ran off, and Nergal was in trouble for it. So he chased after."

"Where was it?" Elias asks, gentle. He still doesn't move, looking at the wall besides the mirror, leaving the figure just barely within his perception but not close enough to offer any definition. Just a shape in the periphery, a fuzzy shape in the corner of his eye.

"Congo," it murmurs, resentful. "Research facility there. Can you leave me alone now?"

Elias nods, standing straight and glancing away from the mirror. He doesn't look back until he's closed the door behind him, then sighs. Tweedledee has gotten the raw end of a great many deals. He can't be angry with the poor man. Instead he meanders over to the hearthplace and stares at the webbing of news articles and memorabilia, trying to batter his brain into function.

Nergal had no reason at all to be in the Congo looking over something. He worked out of Australia. That probably meant some kind of international cooperation, which was a problem - the conglomerates that supported the various villains much preferred to afford each other distance, so that tender egos could remain unprovoked. If it was a big enough deal to drag Nergal from the Down Under to Congo to his hometown, it was a big deal. Even Paul had picked up on it, somehow, and had deemed it important enough to steal, even if only as bait.

Which left him still wondering where the damn thing was. It had never shown up, which hadn't pricked him at the time, but now it did. Paul probably still had the damn thing tucked away somewhere.

Food for later thought.

The only thing he could do was try to connect the dots. The Congo had the largest extant diamond mines in the world, which could nominally be Nergal's wheelhouse, as creation of synthetic diamond was apparently something he could do given time. Something engineering from diamonds then. Something he hadn't considered. Also, something mystical, given Paul had cared about it at all. He didn't know anything about that, so that was a dead end, but it was something to bring up if he ever hit one of the gurus out there. Mystical properties of diamond.

Something about propagation of changes. Fission of information.

He shakes his head. Elias doesn't know. There's not enough pieces of the puzzle on the table. Time will shake more out.

He absently hopes everything's going alright for the girl. He hasn't heard back from her since, but that's normal. The disconnection, the apathy. It pulls at his eyes and weighs on his shoulders, but that's nothing new. He's still the only one pushing.

Nothing new under the sun.

He goes to bed.

It was barely two a.m. when someone tried to drill into his front door.

Or least, it sounded a bit like a drill-the series of hard raps on wood were so close together and so numerous they hardly resembled knocking. It was only a split second or two of noise before it stopped, the visitor reconsidering-and giving two slow, solid knocks instead.

She was so amped up she hadn't even realized just how fast her hand had been moving- for a minute. The petite heroine was wearing a conservative but fitted red cable knit sweater and flared dark blue jeans-her silver boots. The tall velcro'd boots were beneath the denim, but there was no missing the iridescent sheen covering those size five feet at the cuffs.

Her hair was in that spunky ponytail and she was holding what looked to be a crockpot in one of those traveling potluck bags, her other shoulder bearing a canvas bag with a tennis racket sticking out of it, of all things. "Hey." Her brow furrows at his appearance before she glances at the mostly useless smart watch on her wrist. "Oh jeez-" She was waking him out of a dead sleep at two am in the morning on a -weekend-.

"I forgot, timezones, sorry-" She glances around as if some help or apology might offer itself up on his porch, then glances down at the crockpot case and offers it up faster than the eye could follow. "Uh, pancit?"

She's wired. Wide awake despite STILL not having slept since waking up a full two days ago, there's so much on her mind she can't hardly think straight. But hell if she didn't have -some- manners-and her mother's cooking could right just about any wrong, in her opinion.

And while the traditional Filipino dish would smell delicious, it clearly wasn't the purpose of her visit.

"Or uh, I can come back-" She belatedly adds, as if her showing up out of nowhere only just -now- struck her as a kind of crazy idea.

Elias blinks down at her sleepily. He's swathed in a huge housecoat that drapes around broad shoulders like a ghetto cape, and the hazy rays of the kitchen bulb backlight him as he looks out past the door at Jenna and her odd collection of things. Then he nods and steps back, holding the door wide for her to step past him. "Come on in," he invites, still bleary-eyed, but not hesitant.

Once she's inside he takes the crockpot thing and sets it aside - he doesn't even know what to make of that, let alone at this hour - and then grabs some kind of energy drink out of his fridge, downing half of it in a protracted draw that he finishes off with a eye-rolling grimace as the stimulants rock through his system. He shivers for a moment, blinks a couple times and scrapes the sleep out of his eyes, then plants himself at the table and glances over at Jenna.

"Okay," he says. "One: you can stay here, and as long as you like. Two: You look angry, spill. Three, I'm used to waking up at stupid hours for very silly reasons. Four, no, this isn't silly. To me, at least."

Elias flicks his tongue over his lips, then shudders at the residual sour taste as he makes a face. He's not quite up to running speed yet, but he's rapidly achieving cruise speed as the horrible cocktail works its magic. "I don't know you well yet, but I do know Cid. He was a cunt, wasn't he?"

Jenna takes one step at normal speed-then blurs further in, still holding her bag on her shoulder as if she wouldn't be staying long. "Yeah, sorry-I ran home like, first thing, I had to-there I am zooming around a warzone on youtube and then my mother doesn't hear from me save a text, and holy shit was she mad."

She flits five feet to her left, the words faster and rushed together as she does so. "They'reinthePhillipines-that's why I'm here so early, it's a twelve hour time difference, wasn't thinking-" Another flit, this time near the couch. "You know my father isn't even talking to me? I was there and he stayed in the den the whole time." She almost...ALMOST sits down, but then flits back to her full height and is suddenly by the fireplace, looking over the mantle's many mementos. "He hasn't said a word to me since I was outed as Velocity. Did you know that? No one knows that."

Her voice dropped to a brief, slowed murmur. "'Cept me I guess." She shakes her head and flits back to the couch. "Okay." the larger hero speaks, and is suddenly Jenna is at the table across from him, frowning. Because fuck, she hadn't even thought that far ahead. Where WAS she going to go?

Angry. She was angry. Her hands tremble with it, blood hot and fast- she hardly knew what to do with herself. She's not used to being angry. Certainly not used to words like 'cunt' being thrown around. But-

"Yes." Because he fucking was.

"I was going to go there Elias, I was. I wasn't trying to disrespect him or whatever. I thought hard about my approach, what I'd say about what I'd learned, about what had happened."

She sets her bag down and digs around for a nano second before smacking down a copy of the statement. "I wrote a legal statement, it's all but notarized, swear to God." Her small hand had been flat on the paper and the tabletop, but suddenly it was a fist, the paper partially crumpled within it.

"I thought I was prepped. I mean, I was going to law school. But instead of going to report on my terms it ended up on his-my watch stops working and then I've got a gps signal for the tower-but it leads to Militant McDoucheface Tectonic-he's a real peach, don't know if you know him-"

" While you were tripping over yourself to play sidekick-"
Ya know what, was angry with him too. Nevermind his badass grandpa or mom, he sucked.

"And all of my arguments and carefully thought out everything just-it just fell away, I don't know what happened." Her anger dampens a little as she again tries to place just what had been so...off there, a hand running through her hair, fingers snagging the red ponytail holder so that her hair fell down around her face.

She shook her head sharply, thinking it something to untangle later, or maybe in a minute, she didn't know.

"And then I was a -prisoner-, I was being -punished- and I-I just, I didn't mean to let people die, I did what I could, and this death toll or whatever on my record-I'm not perfect. I...I know that's a heavy thing I can't make up for." Her eyes are distant a moment, the girl finally going still, no more blurred talking with her hands or flitting around, back at the table once more. "But trying to keep me at the tower-I had no phone, no anything, keycard didn't work. I signed up with the Association because I thought I could help more people with them, because I...I wanted to be a real hero or whatever, but I didn't sign away my rights, God dammit. Daybreak claimed she didn't know and I believe her-but there's no way he fucking didn't. There's just no way."

She releases the statement and shakes her head. "How long was he going to keep me there, exactly? That was some false imprisonment shit, the only reason I didn't quit-I tried to quit, by the way-is because Miss Sarah asked me not to. Hell, she's the only reason I was able to get out at all."

She deflated after all of that, fumbling absently with her tennis racket. "And then I went home because my poor mother always thinks the worst, and after-well, I went to Laura's base." She felt like she had failed in some way, brought something bad on things that weren't hers, things that had been entrusted to her.

"And found it's caved in. Maybe it happened naturally but..." Well. Who knew.

Elias considers for a long moment, taking in all of Jenna's words and irrepressible actions with a steady gaze, the fuzziness of sleep slipping away from him as he shapes from a drowsy man in a housecoat into something tougher. He stops blinking and his stare grows long. "You're homegrown, hon," he says. "Truth and justice and family, they mean something to you, and they mean something to your family too. You might not have changed, but your father, he doesn't know that. He sees the mask and wonders how much is true and how much he doesn't know. Go talk to him and tell him you're still his daughter. Steady the ground beneath your feet, and his too. I'm willing to bet it bothers you more than you know."

No one knows the value of family better than he.

"Cid specializes in tearing away what you value," he says, "And - no. You know what, fuck it. This is more important."

Elias stands up and strides away, his gait imperious (even though it looks quite silly in a housecoat) as he gestures over his shoulder at the hearth, where articles, autographs, and photographs cluster in an untidy, loving mess. His finger slams down over a grainy picture of a collapsed tunnel, concrete-dusted heroes, half in costume and half out, caught in the process of taking everything they can out of that dark mouth. "When the Ronom traffic tunnel collapsed, at a conservative estimate, there were eighty people dead before we even arrived there. I spent forty consecutive hours digging rubble off of cars that had flattened under debris. Most of the time all I found was a body."

His finger moves to strike against another photograph. A ship, scuttled and foundering, turned on its side in open waters. Even in the shitty ink coloring, the incandescent blaze of Daybreak's aura is clear over the stormy sea. Tiny shapes lift free of the waves up towards her in a steady stream, ascending towards safety. "The U.S.S. Navarone, sunk five years ago off the shore of the Faroe islands. Took us just over seventeen hours to make it there. They lost forty-two hands before we even made it there."

Adamant turns - and it's Adamant, not Elias, there's a difference in the faces, in the ungiving, stentorian stoutness of the chest - and affixes Jenna with a stare. "You are not responsible for tragedy. Who gets these powers and who doesn't isn't decided by meritocracy, and whether you're in the right place or not is fucking chance. I tell you what matters -"

He takes hold of Jenna's head with both hands, cradling it, his thumbs brushing under her delicate jawline to elevate her eyes to his as he crouches slightly. "That when you saw the fires, you ran towards them. When violent men came, you stood against them. And when no one thanked you afterward, you didn't hang up the cape, because you understood who was hurting."

Adamant draws back, a little, leaning against the hearth and releasing Jenna, though the fiery intensity of his gaze dims none. "Being a hero doesn't mean you get to stop tragedies, Jenna. It just means you make sure you don't turn away from them, or become numb to them. It means hurting. It means making things whole after they're broken. And Cid will never understand that, so he'll never understand you. Take his confusion and his contempt and wear it with pride, because he doesn't know. He will never know. And there will come a day when you walk past little men like him and never notice, because they never do anything but squat in the shadow of their pride and grumble. Leave him behind and become great enough to forget him."

Of course it bothered her. Her mother and her had always been close, but her father had always taken such pride in her and her efforts...it hurt her that Velocity wasn't something he found worthwhile. That he didn't understand why she had had to drop out, why she wasn't doing the things he had always hoped for her. The things he knew she had worked so hard for, had wanted so very much. And having to move away from the home he'd finally settled in after retiring...that could not have been easy.

She is sure the core of it was fear. He was afraid. Both him and her mother were. There was an aspect to heroing that was selfish when it came to loved ones. But...he'd been military. He had to understand that on some level...he just hadn't wanted it for his only child.

It was heavy stuff, for sure. Elias was right. She needed to try and smooth things over.

He starts in on Cid-then abruptly stands, striding towards the mantle. Jenna hesitated, then rose back to her feet and followed him over at normal speed. The tragedies bring trouble to her expression and her body language as she crosses her arms loosely over her chest.

"You are not responsible for tragedy." The words war with the heavy guilt Cid and Tectonic had sparked and cultivated in the speedster. She'd been vulnerable to it. The image of the body bags had sealed the manipulation.

Her dark eyes look unconvinced, failure and guilt heavy on her shoulders, eyes averted. But he reaches forward and forces her eyes up to his face, to see the sincerity and the seriousness in his own.

They are words that she'll think on for a long, long time. She still had to sort it out...but if anyone knows what it means to be a hero, wouldn't it be Adamant?

"He's supposed to be the best of us." She finally says, gaze steady. She's done enough crying, enough thinking and fretting over the past few days.

"And you said he would do nothing." She hasn't gotten a chance to catch the news, but she was certain Cid hadn't done anything of note. He had taken her report and probably spun the story he wanted told rather than the story that was. Kept her cooped up and trapped inside his ivory tower, as ineffective as Cid was.

The fact he hadn't talked to her again in all those days, hadn't sought more information about the message the key holder had passed along-that was telling.

"I can't hope to change him, to control that situation. There is Miss Sarah..." But the heroine was entrenched. Afraid for the heroes under the Association's 'care'. She shook her head. It was like he said. She'd wake up... the insidiousness of everything just needed to be shown to her. Elias believed in Daybreak. Jenna did too.

"But until then, I'm fast. I'm Velocity. And I'm going to do something." Her uncertainty and her anger fell away in favor of sheer will and determination, dismissing all else. The bad guys were operating in other countries, arrogantly assuming no one would do anything about it.

And they'd been right, for the most part. She'd been in her city doing good there, but Cid had been right-it was small stuff against baseline humans. She had thought the League would broaden her horizons, extend her reach-but it hadn't.

She'd been complacent and ignorant. But not now, dammit.

"I can be halfway across the world in twenty minutes easy without breaking a sweat. I can move faster, I just don't know for how long..." " Her eyes flit to her small hands, her voice softening. "But I know I'm faster than Rush. Not by much, but I am, at least over shorter distances."

And those were speed of light, frightening speeds.

Her hands curled into small fists, jaw setting as she looked back up. "They murdered those people. Either in some plot or through negligence, they killed people. And they're wreaking havoc across the ocean like you said. Whatever Cid told the media, I'm publishing my report about what happened. What's he going to do, throw me out? I already tried to quit. But if he's not going to do anything, I am-I just need to figure out where to start."

Adamant watches Jenna work it out in her head with an approving glimmer in his eye, arms crossed over his chest. "Momentum and decisiveness are your tools if you want to escape Cid. Make no mistake, he'll spin this on you somehow. He's got media connections and tools that you and I don't have. It's a reliable bet that he knows you're here already, considering he detained you for most a week already. The first move, then, is to throw his yoke and find something to make sure he isn't on your six anymore."

Elias considers for a long moment, the fingers of his left hand rippling restlessly against his right forearm. "I can think of a couple names, but most of us are out of contact, have been for years. People who'd still have the equipment, the knowhow, and the desire to flick their nose at Cid?"

The corner of his mouth curls in acknowledgement. "One, off the top of my head. Workaholic. She won't like you at all, probably, but she'll respect you, and that's about as close as Marie gets these days to enjoying another human's company. I don't know where she's based out of but the communicator should still work, and like fuck she's tossed anything that's an advantage."

He turns around and grabs a duffel bag off the couch, unzips it to reveal another set of baggy sweats shooting back a "Eyes away unless you want a show," before Elias dumps the housecoat and begins throwing them on. His flesh is pale and flawless, unable to tan or scar, leaving it a luminous expanse of rippling rock-tight muscle. When his power flexes under it, the skin turns translucent and stars twinkle deep through him, a galaxy in the distance of his soul - but for now he's still a man, and his body is so tightly built it looks like he could crack a walnut in his belly button.

The loose jogging pants go on along with a sweatshirt, and now Adamant looks some boxer sweating out water before the weigh in, but it'll do for a midnight jaunt, if that's what he's planning. "Well, I'm up for another twelve hours, and you're tuned for action," the hero says, popping his head through the neckhole of the sweatshirt and tugging it down. "Wanna go bother another old friend of mine and see if we can get her piss Cid off for us? Even if not, she's likely to make us go do useful things."