Athwart History (Closed)

Nergal's distraction, his anger undoes him-maybe even killed him, Jenna's not sure. She darts to just outside the shattered window just in time to see the villian likewise shattered. Jesus.

Adamant had definitely won the throwing contest, but thank God. Things had definitely looked hairy a minute there. She pivoted at speed to report to the veteran hero. She'd come close enough to getting barbequed thanks- she was going to let him do the retrieval.

And then it happened-or rather, finished happening-Paul hadn't been satisfied. Still hoping for that two for one, his distant figure barely visible above the smoke and archaic energy.

Elias would find Jenna suddenly at his side. Not even a blur in arriving-just there. The young woman was in a full panic, strained, anxious words tumbling from her full lips, incomprehensible save for the last few.

"JesuschristElias.Jesuschrist. She twists her upper body and windmills an arm in the direction of the bodysnatcher's rooftop-smoke, dust and ash caught up in the mini cyclone and billowing to obscure them both. At the same time she had dipped enough to slide her slim shoulders under his arm, her own slipping around his muscled back. This was not a good position for this. Her other arm ceased the cyclone and her small silver gloved hand partially wrapped around his much larger wrist.

With great effort she helped haul him at least partially off of that knee, the heroine's petite form pressed into his side-and then she zipped them away beneath the cover of her creation.

--------------

"Y-you said he wouldn't try for you." They were in the ice cream shop she had evacuated earlier, the large windows shattered and the glass crushed to powder beneath her feet. She had managed to get them out of view behind the service counter, a stolen towel n hand, pressed into his chest. She straightened slightly to peek over the colorful tiled counter top for the boogie man. Her goggles were pushed back up over her hair and the headphones were around her neck, the girl looking frightened and very, very concerned as her dark eyes shifted back to him, her voice a hushed, panicked tone.

"You said."

Her voice had lost any and all lighthearted bravado-she was anxious, fearful, and apparently terrified the great Adamant might bleed out in a fucking ice cream shop.

Adamant sucks air deep and chokes on it, a kinetic froth of honeyed light crackling deep in his chest. He pounds it once, coughing, and then spits up some - spider thing - a mess of coruscating, nail-like limbs that tries to clamber straight back up for his mouth only to get squashed by his fist in a hammerblow that pops it like a balloon. Blood dribbles from his chest and the corners of his mouth, and he shakes his head, eyes dilated. "Wrong," he rasps. "Nerg was never so strong. Fucker almost killed me outright, first five seconds. Never gone up so fast - felt like punching a nuke -"

He's sucking air through a tear in his abdomen and the - insect had punched a half-dozen pinholes through his throat with its razor legs when he had thrown it up. His chest buckles, and then light sears from within to boil the wounds closed. It's agonizing, but far from the first time Adamant's had to patch himself over, and he closes his eyes and holds out until he's at least no longer a porous patchwork. Elias inhales, and forces himself to count.

Inhale.

One.

Two.

Three.

Four.

Exhale.

He repeats it again, and the world steadies. It still throbs with pain, but honestly, that's normal. "Fucker lied, of course he did," Adamant says, face twisted with disgust. "This isn't over a computer chip. This's something else - paradigm shift. Game's changin'."

There's a deep, throbbing hum, and the air outside the ice cream shop begins to fill with brown blurs, insectile carapaces filling the air so thickly the click of them colliding with each other is almost as loud as the hum of their wings. Elias reaches out and a silver hand forms, grasps the emergency shutters, and slams it down over the front of the store, cutting out almost all the light except for the red blink of an EXIT sign behind them.

"Swarm," Adamant sighs, and starts to push himself to his feet, then buckles again. His knee's rocking to the side in an awful direction that it just shouldn't when he puts weight on it. He looks at it almost curiously, not quite registering the pain, then reaches down and pushes it back into joint with a hollow crack.

"Ow," he notes, a little absently. "Hey, can you get me up to that rooftop where Paul's at? Walking's hard right now."

Jenna's eyes flashed with even more concern as he tries to take in a breath and chokes on it-the heroine's teeth worrying at her lower lip before he moves to strike his own chest, disrupting her attempt to apply pressure with the towel-and coughs up something with legs.

She had been on her knees huddled behind the counter with him, trying to stop some of the bleeding-but when he spat that up she was suddenly against the opposite wall, knocking her head painfully back into it with a breathed "Jesus Christ-" Not spiders. Fucking spiders.

He destroyed it before it could go anywhere, but her skin still crawls with the imagery. Her hands tremble a little as she inches closer, still keeping low to the ground to stay hidden but slipping fluidly to be back beside him. She felt utterly useless-she had no idea what the extent of his injuries were, what with him coughing up hellish magical spider things.

"You don't look so great. Better than the other guy, but..." She murmurs. No one had been this bold, this uber destructive in years. Trying to eliminate what's left? Why? Why make a move now, after all this time?

And to start with Adamant...

Her hands are tight on the towel as he works to patch himself over, the heroine again straightening up to peek over the top of the counter. What she planned to do if Paul did show up was hard to say. But she wouldn't do nothing, not while Elias was down.

"Fucker lied, of course he did." She glanced back at him. He was large enough that him sitting was about even with her on her knees, the two vastly differently sized heroes almost at eye level. "This isn't over a computer chip. This's something else - paradigm shift. Game's changin'"

Jenna's full lips were pressed into that little bow of dismay again, that slight frown-before her head snapped up to see the sudden influx of flying insects just outside the building. Oh no-but then he the emergency shutters slammed down to leave them in the dark, just the exit sign and the sound of their breathing in the insulated little shop.

"Swarm." He sighs, the red glow casting his features into stark relief. He moves to stand and Jenna does too-tense and watching, her hands out a bit from her body as if she expected him to bowl over. What the petite speedster could do to prevent that was questionable, but it was nice she was looking out.

The crack of his knee makes her shudder.

"Hey, can you get me up to that rooftop where Paul's at? Walking's hard right now."

Jenna blinked. Wha...but he-what?!

"Are you crazy?" She said in that same hushed tone-but now it was tinged with disbelief and a sort of feminine sound of protest. The red blinking light made the goggles on top of her head sparkle, the shimmer to her suit catching the red-and illuminated, in flashes, the determined face of a stubborn young woman. Her small hands are suddenly on his shoulders, an insistent press to get him to sit down and rest against the counter. He's too big for her to really force him to do anything against his will, but she's surprisingly insistent for such a small thing.

"You just had a hole in your chest and admitted to almost dying back there- you're not going anywhere." Coughing up spiders! Spiders that had been clawing around inside of him, Jesus Christ.

"I'll go secure Nergal and...a-and-" And what? Paul was out there. Velocity drew in a breath and paused, her hands still on his shoulders but the girl losing a bit of steam.

But he -needed- to stay here, not go out there and get murdered in his weakened state by a psycho bug monster.

"If this is a statement, a declaration of war and things are as bad as you say- then the world is going to need you, Elias." Her statement was earnest and almost pleading, a very sincere belief in the legendary Adamant and a soft squeeze of one of his shoulders before she retracted her hands, a step back.

"Stay here." Her tone lightened as that inherent energy swelled again, bright in the face of fear and uncertainty the red blinking light illuminating that pixieish grin of hers. "Have an ice cream cone, on me. They got banana flavor here."

Unpowered and out a knee, Adamant sinks easily enough back to the floor, blinking at her. He'd argue, but he can't quite catch his breath, and he'd blow his leg all to hell trying to make his own way up to Paul's sniper perch. He tries to judge the launch angle he'd need to power himself through the roof at the Wandering Jew, comes up with nothing he'd bet money on, and gives it up with a bloody chuckle, wiping the back of his hand across his mouth. It comes away with a dark smear. "Alright, kid. Alright."

He pauses, takes a deep breath. Blinks.

"Just get something around his eyes and bind his hands," Elias says, as he sinks against the counter, his legs sliding out from under him. The starlight sheen of his power begins to slowly fade, and the damage starts coming into view - his jacket's been charred to an ashy rag, and the top layer of his skin begins to flake off; his subdermal barriers had prevented the burn from penetrating deeper, but it still filled the air around him with a smoky froth. He bats it away with a swipe. "I'll hang out. You stay safe, Jenna. If he fights, leave. He hasn't got anything that can catch you."

One sunburnt hand reaches up and clamps on Jenna's shoulder as he speaks, and his eyes meet hers, shining spotlights in the depths of his face. "Keep the good fight."

Outside, the swarm buzzes angrily, and begins to bash itself against the emergency shutter. It abruptly glows a radiant white as Adamant glares at it, and begins to snap and pop as the insects are incinerated by the energies reinforcing it. In response, there's a beat of silence, and then the drone of insect wings abruptly synchronize and syncopate, humming an arched, dizzying melody that soars into shrieks as the swarm rushes the shield. Each shriek accompanies a thundercrack of amber light that crackles through the dying insects and grounds itself in the shield, battering at it.

Far above, perhaps two kilometers above ground level, a fibrous spider web suspends itself between air conditioning units on a desolate rooftop. The hiss and buzz of chitinous wings is thick in the air as loathsome rivers of vermin swim through the air and on the ground, thick as tree-trunks, swarming over each other in mindless coordination. Amid this hive, something that was once a man stands - a hull, now rotting from yellowed sparks of entropy that burn out flesh and core through the weak human meat. Holes have drilled through the gaping business suit where arcs of arcane force have grounded themselves in the surrounding concrete. No insect so much as nears him. A susurrus of vile words pass his lips, and his magics crackle, seeping through the insectile river to strike far below at his wounded foe.

It tastes victory, and reaches for it.

Elias seemed to almost deflate, the large man sinking back and the battle damage revealing itself. Her expression turned more serious as he spoke. He wasn't in a good way. Paul and his creepy crawlers, Nergal and his flames-she didn't fancy the idea of facing either one of them, but she couldn't leave the job half finished.

"Keep the good fight."

Jenna gave a solemn nod as she gazed right back at him, no joke forthcoming. She wasn't going to let them have Adamant. Absolutely not.

She jumped at the first bash with a sharp inhalation-but when he looked back she'd be gone, the exiting door slamming closed in her wake.

Velocity didn't waste much time-a silver trash can lying on it's side was snatched up, the shimmering blue blur darting around the corner with it in hand.

The can filled itself with bugs before she violently hurled it back into the mass-and continued away. Whether a swarm was after her or not it didn't matter-she was much too fast to be caught.

She darts for and jumps through the gaping window he'd previously flown through, finding the crumpled, broken flame maker limp and unresponsive. The dented support beam behind him...goodness.

Wasn't dead though. She didn't think-kind of hard to tell when she was moving faster than the mortal pulse. Jenna pulled the lion mask free and turned it around before placing it back on his head-his lips and nostrils were exposed, but he'd be blind once he came to with this thing on.

Really should have stayed 'reformed', Nergal.

A ziptie flashes into her hands and around his wrists, the villain trussed up like a turkey when she slips a matching one around his ankles.

And then the blur is out again, darting through a back window and into the smoke filled streets, a sharp right and then out of sight.

Vanished.

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

In the space between buildings, trash-half rotting, damp, syrupy food garbage-was raining down over the spider web and the husk of a man suspended in it.

A metal can comes after it, sailing through the air from the rooftop on his left-and coming down hard in its bid for the ground.

It doesn't take long to see the culprit-she's appeared on the corner of the building, slowed to a standstill just long enough to be seen. "Who do I call first-Terminex or the health inspector?" Her voice carries, not entirely lost in the din of insects buzzing through-the girl's flippant tone very irritating, goading.

She blurs to the other corner, the metal trash can lid thrown like a frisbee-a very deadly frisbee, spinning for the man at decapitating speed.

Her expression is serious despite her next bit of posturing.

"Maybe I can just buy some fly paper...?"

The trash can, followed by its lid, cleanly intercepts Paul when he doesn't so much as twitch out of the way. There's a hollow clang as the cylinder bounces off his cranium, but then the lid tears through the weakened flesh of his neck and slices right on through, hurling the decapitated head into the distance and off the edge of the rooftop. Ragged flaps of skin curl in the breeze, and aside from a brief, anemic spurt of blood, it's surprisingly anticlimactic.

And then a long, folded spike protrudes up from the collarbone - up, and up, and up. It unfolds, and slams, piton-like, into the ground. The force jerks the body to the side, leaning before it grotesquely convulses, another rodlike length distorting and pressing against the confines of this flesh-body, like fingers against a curtain. It reaches out and lunges to the opposite side, steadying the flapping corpse in the wind, as a final two phalanges stretch open the neck stump gruesomely and hack into the concrete.

The enormous legs brace, and lift the body into the air off its own feet. Turn it, so that the empty gape of the wound faces Jenna. There is an eye there - the pupil as large as a dinner plate - and it fixates on her with predatory intensity. "alone", it says, and one distended hand flexes and grasps at a lash of viridian heat, cracking it at Jenna without warning. The loose joint causes it to flail unpredictably as the limb holding it threatens to fall loose completely. The arm opposite twists round, corkscrewing back into its own shoulder joint, and then bursts out, flopping to the ground as a long, chitin-plated leg settles down in its place, ivory white and dripping some foul, pale liquid.

The river of sound from the flowing channels of insects intensifies and they begin to rush to and fro, frantically snatching at the fallen garbage, consuming it. The web begins to vibrate.

"flail. i come for you."

It sounds like a cicada's buzzsaw, grinding and grating.

The young heroine makes a noise that is half gasp, half scream as the lid slices through his neck, silver gloves over her mouth. Oh God-had she meant to do that? She hadn't meant to do that. He wasn't dead though, right? Adamant had said he had back ups o-or whatever!

She's shocked still for once-but then the horror show begins. "What the...what the hell...?" Her full lips mouthed rather than uttered the words, the barest hint of a whisper.

And then it twists as she stands transfixed, a single eye in the stump swiveling to stare at her. Jenna stares back, a cold sweat breaking out at the single utterance. She can't draw in a breath, let alone make a crack.

But her feet aren't as glued down as they had felt-he moves to strike and she blurs away from the deadly bolt of energy, backwards and diagonally across the rooftop, her heart hammering hard. She might've been sick if she wasn't so freaked out-what had been her plan again? Die to a crazy fucking bug monster? Bugs and spiders. Why did it have to be bugs and spiders?

"flail. i come for you."

Jenna turned and ran. Not too fast-she needed to draw him away from Elias, not escape-but hell if she didn't want to put miles and miles between them, if her legs weren't demanding she do so. All she had to do was get him far enough away and then REALLY run, get the wounded hero out of this hellish landscape before Paul could sink his creepy crawley legs into him.

A cockroach's hiss follows after Jenna and the rivers of insects shift and bubble. Abruptly they burst outward, thrown by springing spines that erect themselves and draw up thick walls of webbing over and past each other, guillotining the roof into a dizzying spider's maze. The nearest one trembles as a delicate point settles atop it, and her foe rises above on scuttling legs, the last of the human skin shedding away, flapping into the distance from the heavy gusts of wind atop the building. A thick white thorax, and two milky yellow eyes rather than eight - and a tangled thresh of needlelike teeth with no mouth, just a hundred piercing fangs in a shallow gullet, beyond the pretense of biological consumption.

"little fly." It says, and the speartip of one leg splits open into a pronged end as it points at Jenna. Acidic green froth bubbles up between the two, twisting chemical lightning, and slashes out. The spray bounces between the chalk-white walls of the web and reverberates down its haunted halls at Jenna, each drop sizzling as it very nearly chases her - even the ones that finally fall to the ground gently roll after her, burning holes into the concrete until they boil out of existence. "i drink you from your shell. you will be left hollow to scream."

The insects, thrown about by the springing of the trap, struggle weakly in the netting as the spiders begin to come out, crawling from under shadows.

Velocity skids to a near stop before darting to her left, then behind and to the right-the shimmering blue blur outlining the perimeter before stopping short again, looking panicked. Trapped. She was trapped.

Her chest is tight and she can feel her resolve starting to waver-but she ignores it, tries to focus through the dizzying fear. She was fast. She can get out of this.

The monstrosity that is or was Paul climbs over the webbed wall, a thing of nightmares. The heroine's normally dusky skin lost some color, her lips parted and her eyes wide, muscles stiff and frozen-and then she vanished. Reappearing at a zip to the rooftop exit, her right hand seized the handle and turned it frantically at speed. Locked.

It's a heavy steel door she can't possibly hope to kick through, not without shattering her leg. Without thinking she bangs on it with her other hand. There's no one in there. She had evacuated the few left herself.

No, no, no-

"little fly." Jenna slammed her shoulder into the steel door before turning back around-just in time to see acid hurtling in her direction. The girl moves-but too little too late, her hissed exhale tinged with a feminine noise of pain.

Acid had struck her in movement, and while the speed force aura kept her safe from debris and other harmful things while running-it wasn't invulnerable. The acid struck and seeped partially through somehow, eating away at a swath of her protective costume across her mid section and the back of her right calf.

It burns. Not as fiercely or as deadly as it would have been had she not been in motion, but it hurts, bubbling what had been pretty russet, red undertoned skin.

Largely unaccustomed to pain the heroine staggers, her right knee bent and leg lifted slightly, a hand to the side of her midsection as his words add a frightening background to her rising panic and desperation.

"Stop it Paul!" Her voice sounds raw and terrified even to her own ears-high pitched, frightened, and bordering on the edge of hysteria. A slow step back as the spiders begin to appear before she moves again, this time back to the door. A satellite dish is ripped from it's post and hurled into the path of a section of spiders-scooping them up and sending them flying backwards. But it's not enough. It's not enough, and she's too panicked and too afraid to come up with anything else. She was no Laura. She certainly was no Adamant.

The left side of door's outcropping had an unused trellis leaning against it, something Jenna uses to get to the top, a mere six feet off the rooftop. She's too shaky to stand once she gets up there, drawing the trellis up after her. Whether to use as a weapon or as a poor attempt to keep the spiders from getting to her it was hard to say. Maybe both.

No, she wasn't anything more than a college kid who had taken a particularly difficult volunteer position-and gone and bitten off more than she could chew.

The web shudders as the enormous, malign spider climbs up its web to stare down at Jenna, looming in the ash-streaked sky overhead. Those hateful eyes loom against the dark clouds like cursed lighthouses. The words are not spoken through a throat, but thrummed from long ligaments along the legs, like a grasshopper's spurs - impossibly low, threshing up through Jenna's bones. Every delicate step is a threnody, points clicking against concrete as it climbs up to Jenna's perch.

"i am not paul.

your better calls me this.

i have never been man.

his failure is my feast.

your fear is sweet."

Those staring, mad eyes are but feet from Jenna's own, now. The air is hot and fetid, the stench of rot and fresh, squirming life. There's something like static clinging to her, stinging, a manic burn that singes under her fingernails and against her eyes, working its way inside. Her reflection is in its eyes, and in it her mouth is agape, open wide, and something is coming out. The inside is unclean.

"i am ahasver.

speak it.

become putrid."

The command roils in her brain like a fishhook and tries to jerk it back out along with the word.

Through the lens of her goggles and the blur of unshed tears, the monster's horrifying visage warped and waved as her eyes shifted between the two lit orbs of his eyes. She was rooted to her spot and trying to will herself to move, to flee, to do something-but what was there to do? Her usually racing mind was blank, her breathing shallow and quick, the acid burns searing in pain.

Frozen.

"i am not paul.

your better calls me this.

i have never been man.

his failure is my feast.

your fear is sweet."

Her eyes stare hard at the gaping maw full of sharp pointed teeth, unable to breathe in the oppressive air and feeling of fear. She can feel this ancient evil in every fiber, every inch of skin. Her blood was hot with terror, racing faster and faster with the ever increasing pace of her rapid heart-as if it could keep the stinging, the malevolence at bay just by movement. She can see herself in its eyes-neither fear nor horror on her face, just an open mouthed, blank stare a-and-

Oh God. Please. Please, please no...

Jenna closed her eyes tightly and turned her face away, a low sob issuing from her lips-but she can't even escape into her own mind. The energy and his malice are too oppressive-forces her to remain here, present and aware. She feels violated and dirty in a way she can't articulate, a sense of invasion.

Like before.

"i am ahasver.

speak it.

become putrid."

She's shivering despite feeling on fire, holding tightly to the trellis and resisting the urge to part her lips, to do what he commanded. She was crying. Not ugly, wrenching sobs-just a steady stream of tears streaking though her eyelashes, filling the inside of the goggles with water. He was there, the magic was there, inside her head, trying to wrench the name back from her. Trying to make her his.

No.

No.

Her heart rate spiked and eyes snapped open to find the world at rest. She's not moving, but neither is anything else. The spiders are suddenly frozen in their places of scurrying advance, the bright amber energy crackling around the hungry predator stills, the acidic spit in its teeth no longer sheens or drips. Jenna straightened slowly, moved her legs out from under her in what she perceived as a slow, careful motion. Whatever spell she'd been under, whatever coil of influence in the recesses of her mind-it was broken.

She was still terrified, still on the verge of bawling her eyes out-but if he was going to eat or possess or kill her, he was going to do it without her compliance.

"YouandyouruglymugcantakeaHIKE,-PAUL-!" The words wouldn't even be heard until after the girl had driven her silvered left boot clean into his exposed, hungry eyes in a series of rapid kicks-the trellis following after in a downward strike upon his head, splintering into pieces.

The eye bursts and what emerges from Paul is not even a scream, just a vibrating noise that drills against Jenna's head. Instantly he swats at her with one razor-tipped leg, but half-blind he's like to miss, and in any case stumbles backward as the connection snaps and rebounds upon and atop his physical injury. The trellis glances off his carapace as he swings back around and screams at Jenna, and a million hornets and wasps rise behind him, choking the air and the smog-fouled drizzle that's just begun to fall -

And then everything is still and silent again, in a moment between the raindrops.

The door opens behind Jenna. A man in a collared white shirt and black slacks steps out, pocketing a set of keys. His hair is black and falls into his eyes, where care lines and the faint traces of sleepless nights linger in shadows beneath. He glances over to Paul, then turns away without the slightest concern to address the young heroine instead. "Come this way, if you would," he says, holding the door wide. "This isn't a place for you."

On the other side of the door is a hallway with perfectly tiled floors and ivory walls, evenly spaced lights overhead, and more doors - doors as far as the eye can see, infinitely continuous and regular. The monotone aesthetic is perfect and unbroken, and not even a smudge of dirt can be seen anywhere in this sterilized, infinite passage to anywhere.

This, then, would be Bramah - villain locksmith, for whom no door is barred. He gestures into the hallway with an ironic little half-bow. "Quickly," he murmurs. "The time's getting in."

Oh holy hell-Jenna ducks the leg and rolls to her right, catching the edge of the outcropping to dangle a moment before dropping to her feet. It stings the already painful burn, but she's got worse problems-he is royally pissed off.

Spiders on the ground, wasps and hornets a tidal wave behind him, and a screaming noise from the maw of his hellish mouth-and then it stops. Jenna blinks. This...wait, were things actually stopped? She wasn't moving and her mind isn't feeling that rush of speed-

The door opens and she half pivots to see who's there-only to come up short. He speaks as if the world wasn't on fire and seemingly ending, holding the door wide. She must be dreaming. Maybe Paul was already chewing through her temporal lobe and this was the hallucination she was experiencing in her death throes.

"This isn't a place for you."

Her eyes shift to look past him and into the neat, orderly hallway-a completely different aesthetic than what had been in the building previously. She's visibly confused and a little wary.

"The time's getting in."

"I...okay." She's a little numb and out of it, but she steps through the doorway anyway. Her mother had always warned her not to go anywhere alone with a stranger-but she sure doesn't want to stay here.

She hesitates two steps into the hallway, pushing her goggles up and swiping away her tears before turning to look back at him. She didn't think this guy was still around. She can't quite place the name, but she knows of him. Some long ago newspaper article from when she was a kid.

She's not sure what's he doing here, or how he knew she was up here, or why he would help her. She's not going to question it too much though-Paul was definitely about to eat her.

"Thank you." She's wary but not insincere-guileless and clearly rather shaken up.

"I appreciate that, but it really is just business," he says, and steps through the portal behind her. The raindrops begin to crawl downwards as he swings the door shut, time speeding back up until the fat plop of water striking concrete finally sounds as the bolt slides home. There's a reverberating boom as something strikes the other side of the door with tremendous force, but the door doesn't so much as budge or tremble; Bramah turns a key in the lock, and the ambient noise soaks into raw silence. The tremble of pick through handle is the loudest noise in this vacuum of space.

"My employer paid me to see you to safety," the locksmith says, pulling a ring of keys from one pocket and sliding this one back along with the others. There's probably three dozen keys there, but every time one slides out of sight it comes back different - the wedges are shaped different, or the metal has changed. It's a supremely distracting optical effect. "My time is expensive, miss, and you wouldn't be able to afford it. I will see you to your companion, now."

He paces down the hallway, eyes flickering between the many unmarked doors. His shoes, Oxford leather, click on the tiled floor with the steadiness of a metronome. "I will, however, compliment your courage, if not your choice of position for employing it. You have some spirit. I would recommend avoiding the good sir in the future. He will not forget this. "

Just business...?

Jenna anxiously eyes the outside as the door closes-a step back and a return to a fearful expression before he turns the key and leaves them in absolutely silence. Well, whatever it was-she wasn't sure she'd ever been more grateful for anything in her life.

"My employer paid me to see you to safety,"

"Oh." Jenna's mind felt a little fuzzy. Her heart was beginning to slow, the adrenaline dwindling-she was sore, she was hurt, she was dirty. In the pristine hallway and next to the well dressed gentlemen, she must look pretty scary. "Well...I'm grateful to you both, then."

The keys. She's used to being quick on the uptake, but they were somehow different even as she was looking at them, changing without her being able to catch how-at least not while standing still. Her side and leg hurt. That probably meant this was real.

Probably.

"...would it be rude to ask who that might be...?" She inquires slowly, following after him in the same daze she'd walked in with. Companion. Yes, Adamant-she had to get to Adamant, get him out of there.

Alarm brings her to her senses, makes her focus. If they were lucky Paul was-apparently a joke-throwing himself at the roof of the building she'd been on, not returning to his original target.

"N-no, probably not." A wary glance behind her at the door they'd left. It was surreal. Going from the burning city and mass of insects, from facing down a monster-to this calm mannered man with so many keys in an impeccable hallway. "But I've got to-got to get back to my friend. Then I can put miles and miles between me and...whatever that was." Did he know her companion was Adamant? She wasn't sure, and she had no intention of telling him if he did not. The veteran hero was hurt and vulnerable.

Still, it was hard to imagine aggression from the businesslike man in front of her.

"My standard contract offers discretion, miss Jenna," Bramah replies, a touch reprovingly. "It would be gauche of me to breach it. In any case, your mister Halwell is not unfamiliar with my work, and with my clientele. He will know enough, and that is sufficient for the parameters of this engagement."

He stops several doors down, taps on it with his knuckles, and nods. One of those little keys flicks out, and he inserts it into the lock and turns it one-hundred eighty degrees. Then, he rotates it in the opposite direction a full revolution, withdraws the key, and continues steadily pacing down the hall.

"Here is what I have been instructed to tell you," the locksmith says, words soft and precise, and then his speech shifts. His diction is English and exact, without slur or accent - different from the faint Yorkshire he'd spoken before. He's exactly repeating someone else's words, including the peculiar pronounciation thereof, nigh posh in its fineness. "Ahasver will be relocated and appropriately disciplined - he has exceeded his terms of conduct, and requires chastisement. Nergal, likewise, is the Association's to dispense with; he will receive no defense funding and his peership in the Ring will be revoked at the next session. I extend my apologies for this violation of etiquette - I would likewise surrender our other compatriot, but as his containment remains a difficult issue for the Association, I have taken steps to do so in your stead. My regards."

The words echo in the silence of the infinite passage, eerie in their solitude.

Bramah falls silent as he continues to walk for several steps, and pauses at yet another door, identical to all the rest. A key is inserted, the door unlocked, and he swings it wide - it's the door to the manager's office in the ice cream shop Jenna had left Adamant in. "This is your stop, young miss. Take care to recall the message. I shan't repeat it."

Jenna has no idea what that meant, but she felt bad for asking. It was more than a little off putting to think of some shadowy figure making arrangements concerning her. She couldn't grasp the purpose and it felt a little foreboding. Maybe Elias could shed some light-it was also disconcerting that he knew where the hero was.

Jenna watched his back as he passed along a message exactly as he had apparently heard it, the feeling of a conspiracy sharpening. She has questions-so many questions-but she didn't want to press him. Especially not before he let her out of here.

"R-right. Thank you I'll...I'll pass it along..."

Bramah steps to the side of the door, and opens it - revealing Adamant still slumped against the counter, eyes closed now. The sound of the door startles him into motion, and he stares at the brand new hallway beyond the door with furrowed brows. "Wha - Jenna? Wait, where the fuck - what?" he says, just as confused as she.

From behind Jenna, her guide whispers, voice quiet and deft as a lockpick. "Your time is up. Go."

The ice cream shop still stood, its shutters closed, no creepy crawlies inside-or the furious sound of monsters and flurries of insects outside.

Adamant was still there and, thankfully-alive enough to be startled. She steps rather than zips from the strange hallway and back into the sensible world, a half glance and even a wave to the key holding stranger.

And then the door closes, the heroine exhaling. She looks a little worse for wear, but not terrible-the thick, shimmering blue material of her costume has been eaten away in a swipe across her side and midsection, angry red, acid burned bubbled skin visible through it. A smaller acid burn injury curves around the back of her calf.

Her face was a little sooty and had faint tear streaks on the cheeks, the right side of which nearly smudged away. The silver boot opposite the acid burned leg had an unknown, organic looking stain splashed on the sole and the sides of the boot. She'd been in a scrap for sure.

The heroine hesitates, then opens the door-just the alley. She leans out to look and listen-but Paul seemed to have vanished, maybe in search of other prey, maybe due to whatever the keyholder's employer has going on. Either way, thank God for that.

"...you save me any of that ice cream?" The joke is weak and sounds as such even to her-she's tired and more than a little shaken up. She rubs her eyes and returns to him, a worried glance to his chest, his knee.

"We should go before 'Paul' comes back-Nergal's secure, I'm not sure what the hell else just happened." Her hands tremble as she removes a glove and offers him a helping hand. "But I can tell you about it once we're far the hell out of here."

She's pale too. Seemingly traumatized, but pulling herself together, focusing on her next task.

Adamant glances up at her through pale eyes - nods, once. There's a cloudiness in his eyes that's likely from a concussion, and his gaze isn't focusing. Even through that and the gaping rent in his chest, he takes Jenna in at a glance then gestures limply at her burned leg. "When we get safe, run some water on that leg, clean it out," he says, blinking blearily. "Don't let it heal over whatever caused that shit or you'll have a secondary infection when your body tries to burn it out. That sucks hard."

Then he reaches into the counter beside him, to the spare dispenser, and there's about five seconds of industrial droning; and then he puts a vanilla ice cream cone in her hand instead, apparently fresh-made, and levers himself to his feet on his own. Some kind of complicated light construct is bracing his knee now, somewhere between architectural structure and medical compress. It bends smoothly to absorb his weight and glows just a smidge brighter for the force of it, springing back up to bear his load and buoy his failing body. Even so, he sways, the concussion doing him no favors in holding his balance or coordination.

"Compliments of the house," he says, with a wry half-smile, and wraps his bare hand around hers, broad and callused. "Back to the boat, yeah? Time to skedaddle. Let's not wait and see much worse this can get."

It's good advice. Very good advice. Jenna hasn't given the injuries much attention-and kind of doesn't want to given the glimpse of what she did see. Gross. It hurt like hell but mostly, it looked gross. She hoped it'd heal okay. She hadn't tested the extent of her accelerated healing, and Laura's computer didn't have much on it, but she hoped it worked. What Rush had done to her shoulder had healed, but would burns caused by acidic spittle fade without scarring? She wasn't the vainest of women, but damn.

Jenna blinked at the ice cream cone-and exhaled a weak laugh, the corner of her mouth curving in a half smile. The joke cone was abandoned in a hurry as he moved to stand however, the hero swaying a little-she blurs and the cone splats on the sooty tile flooring, a worried expression and a staying hand to the uninjured side of his chest. As if she thought he might fall.

Dark eyes take in the wry half smile but also his bleary, unfocused gaze-and she worries. "Yeah-yeah, we need to go. You need medical attention Elias-" Her voice is both worried and soothing at the same time, the hand he'd captured holding his in turn, if only partially-Jenna was a lot daintier than he was, after all.

She slips from facing to him to his side, ignoring the jabbing pain as her calf tenses and her side twists. She's half worried he'll bowl over-and A LOT worried he might have a concussion. "Ready?"

She didn't wait for an answer, just slipped behind him and bolted. It was a strange thing to be with Velocity when she moved like that-like gliding on invisible, surprisingly smooth skis. The thrum of speed, the impact of her feet and the powerful thrusts of her legs could vaguely be felt-but everything else would be a blur, and suddenly he'd find himself on the beach, the same anxious girl in front of him and the boat bobbing softly in the waves.

"I think I'd better steer this thing." She tells him. "...you going to be able to navigate for us?"

Elias's shoulders tremor in what feels like an attempt at a shrug. "I heal from anything, eventually," he says, and there is a darkness in his stare that is too long. With Jenna's help he makes his way onto the boat, to the padded captain's chair and sinks into the captain's chair without grace, groaning. He fiddles with one pocket, produces a set of keys, and then plugs them into the console - tries to turn them - squints, changes the key, and tries again this time with success. The boat hums with energy as it initializes, the center console spreading wide and unlocking its panels, and Elias stabs at a green button sitting unobtrusively off to the side.

"Return to home base function," he says, leaning back into his chair with closed eyes and letting himself sink into the cushion as the engine revs and the boat begins readying for takeoff. "Useful damn thing. It'll get us home."

He slides a half-open eye over to Jenna and motions limply at her leg. "First aid kit's in the back - red's for shit that's already gone wrong. Painkiller, antiseptics, bandages, in that order, Jenna. Get to it: I'm not sending you home half-charred like a poptart I left in the toaster too long."

Adamant's mouth curls in a weak smile, and he shakes his head. "I'm never going to get over that I took a teenager into a fuckin' war zone. This was - terrible. All of it. What the fuck had Eddie so up in arms?"

Eddie Nelson - Nergal. Adamant was always the only hero who ever broke the code of conduct and referred to other capes by their real names; older than and dismissive of the etiquette that demands anonymity, always having gone equally as easily by his real name as well.

He made it sound like a curse rather than a boon. Jenna frowned internally-but at least he was confident he'd be okay. And good, she didn't have to learn how to pilot the water craft OR work as a motor all the way home-he had it covered.

He gestures to the acid burn on her leg and gives direction-Jenna blurs and returns with the kit in a blink. She lifts her arm and frowns at the swipe across her middle, and then sits and grimaces at the one on her calf. "It'll heal quick enough." She says absently, popping open and sorting through the container for the indicated items. Her bare hands are graceful and quick, russet skinned blurs as she looks through. "...I think. You want any of this stuff? I know you're you, but..."

"I'm never going to get over that I took a teenager into a fuckin' war zone. This was - terrible. All of it. What the fuck had Eddie so up in arms?"

Jenna straightened up with a darting glance to the weary hero. "I am twenty one years old." She says stubbornly, an apparent sore point. Given her size and youthful appearance, it might come up a lot...and given the bit of stiffness to her shoulders, it was probably often leveled as an insult.

She doesn't let it rile her up too much though. It'd been a long day, and it was Adamant she was talking here. Given her druthers, she'd let him get away with just about anything.

But she was no kid, dang it.

She continued, a bit softer and more like herself. "I don't know. The key guy...he made it out like the both of them had acted out of turn. That Nergal's...Eddie's peership? was going to be revoked in punishment. Which...I mean, what?" A thought occurred and somewhat distracted her.

"...is that Nergal's real name, or... I mean, Paul said that wasn't his real name." Was right irritated about it too. "And Paul isn't what the key guy called him, either."

Elias waves off the offer. "It'll get burnt out of my system before it kicks in," he says with a scowl. Even now, faint shimmers of light are still peeking out of his sundered chest, the wound stretching from just beneath his collarbone past his nipple. The stitching inches closed one millimeter at a time, searing away foreign contaminants with its radiant heat. "Best to let it heal on its own."

Then he hears her indignant response, and he rolls an eye over to Jenna, incredulous. "What - really? Twenty-one? Shit. You look maybe - well, you've heard it before, I'm sure."

The big man chews on the thought for a moment, then nods, apparently reassured. "That's better, even if thinking so does make me kind of an asshole. You're good enough to stand here on your own, in any case, now I just know you're legally allowed to."

As the boat begins to pull away from the scorched shoreline, Adamant peers over at the docks. The water's flowed back over the wretched hellscape he'd wrought with Nergal, though bubbles still flow upward as the superheated rock boils the water passing over it. The docks are simply gone, blown to bits and washed away, and there's a whirlpool forming over the crater where he'd been struck by Paul's bolt. "Peership gives a villain access to their secret treehouse shit: gadgets, suits, resources, ways to talk to each other safely. Legal representation, all that jazz. It's a big deal. Losing it means they're getting thrown to the wolves. It'd be like getting fired from the League, except all the other heroes want to kill you now and you top ten wanted on the nightly news."

Adamant shakes his head. "I - stick to the names. Bad habit of mine," he says. "Yeah, that's Nergal's name. Welder from up in Minnesota, way back. I don't do this - cape game, like Cid does. I don't want to forget who anyone is. I learn their names and who they are, even if they forget."

He gestures out the window at the roiling waters as they're left far behind, the boat speeding away over the lake. "You forget, you get shit like this. Pretensions of godhood, empowerment fantasies. He's just a guy in a cool suit with a chemical converter in his head - no fuckin' ancient Mesopotamian god come from the underworld. No one kept his shit straight for him. Eddie believed his own hype and now he'll ride a wheelchair for the rest of his life, probably. 'Less a healer gets to 'im, but -"

Adamant grimaces, and looks north.

" - Well. Not many of those left. Anyways, Paul's not his name, probably - Senor Grasshopper doesn't seem to like being called anything. He brags a lot about ancient Biblical shit, and we managed to link him to some old figure called the Wandering Jew who supposedly spat on and cursed Jesus on his way to the cross, but fuck knows if he's serious about it or not - I think he's full of it." Adamant flicks a hand dismissively. "He's bad news, no doubt, but he acts like he's out of Solomon's Key or something. I refuse to give him that kind of respect. So I looked up what was supposedly the Jew's name, and it's Paul Marrane, so I call him that. It ticks him off pretty good."

Adamant blows out a breath. "I can't stand him, and I can't kill him, and he won't leave me alone for some fuckin' reason, so I may as well irritate him while he's around, is what I figured. Little victories, I guess."

The red undertone of the girl's face had gotten a bit more apparent as she flushes, the usually bright, cheerful girl looking briefly sour. The blurred movements of her hands become several ticks faster, but she doesn't say anything more about it.

It wasn't his fault she looked like she did, but it didn't help her mood much. No one wanted their heroes to think they were some...junior ranger side kick or something. And there probably wasn't a woman on the planet that wanted to look like a kid.

Luckily for her pride, the topic is dismissed in short enough order.

Jenna mulls over the information about the Peership, but doesn't speak on it just yet, wanting to compare it to the message that had been passed along, wanting to think. She works at wrapping her leg, moving at normal speed and seeming a bit far away for a moment as she listens. Elias thought people needed to keep things grounded. Real. She could understand that, but there was also a reason for aliases and secret identities."Maybe. But for my money..." Her voice gets a little small. "I would have really preferred if the world had never learned of Jenna Paige."

Quiet a beat. She waves the melancholy thought away, returning to the topic at hand. "So this shadow club...it's like the League, but...for the bad guys? And it's the bad guys that are expected to keep tabs on the bad guys?"

Jenna frowned. "Because that's what the key guy...no, the key guy's employer said. That they were apologetic for this 'violation of etiquette'." Jenna's tone turned flat. "People died. You almost died. There's millions or billions of dollars in damage, half the city is on fire- and this shadowy group thinks it's enough to turn over ONE bad guy, and chastise the other...like they broke corporate policy and not committed war crimes?"

Was THAT why they'd kept her from getting eaten? To lesson the damage not out of the goodness of their hearts-but as a peace offering? To...who? Heroes?