Athwart History (Closed)

"Mm?" Jenna's confused, a slow glance around at the boat-oh thank God, she hadn't dreamed her escape-and then she sat bolt right-or would've, were it not for the seat belt.

"We're here?" She fights with the harness a minute and gets it off, instantly awake, wired. Ten minutes-they were really here, they were going to do something.

She grabs the protein bar-two of them, actually, she was going to eat poor Tony out of business later-and tries to sit at least a little still. She's ready to go. She's beyond ready to go. "Why not five?"

"Roland's there." Protagonist answers immediately, straight to answers, to information. He was an old name-she'd beaten the hell out of him a few times back in the day. He had served a chunk of a jail sentence-and had had to rehab his knee after what she did to him the last time. If you were going to be foolhardy enough to enter her city after the first go round...

"Fugue. Whitfield flies in for the day shift but radar hasn't shown him in two days."

In her buried base of technology, Protagonist looks at information she's already memorized, then the live satellite images flicking across the screen. It kills part of her that she's here and not there, but it doesn't matter. The kid and Elias were there in her place, it was as good as she could hope for.

Adamant nods, reviewing the competition present for the surprise party. Roland was going to be a joke - the villain didn't pack even a tenth of the power he himself did, and didn't have the durability to match either. Elias was relatively confident that he could break him in the first exchange. Fugue would be a pain to catch up to, but with Jenna matched up against him the speedster should be able to lock him down until his next jump. If she could hold him still for just one loop, his power would become much less intimidating.

"Let me know if Whitfield shows up on your radar anywhere," Elias asks, rolling his shoulders as he begins a light stretching session. Each muscle group flexes and then slowly glimmers with light as he begins flowing his power through his body. "These two shouldn't be too much of a problem, but I'd prefer not to get surprised by anyone new. I'll just have to live with whatever shitty surprise Fugue's already got."

He glances over at Jenna and offers a half-smile. "You may be ready, but I'm not a speedster. I want to have a little time to ramp myself up first so I don't get popped first thing by a hydrogen bomb, like last time." Elias's face flickers in dissatisfaction. "That was less than optimal. I'm starting off harder this time instead of letting them get in a sucker punch first and riding it to the hilt."

Adamant's not wrong - each glimmer of light continues to tint his flesh, ghost-lit from within by stellar force. The pale skin turns almost translucent and in the distance faintly can be seen points of light, constellations drawn in microscopic relief. They twinkle and shift with every movement, vaguely hypnotizing.

"I'll try to take Roland - he's a brute like me, but he's a pussy," Elias says, summarily dismissive of the other man. "Fugue's a trapper and time walker, phases backwards in time periodically. Lock him down, he can only phase back about ten seconds, so if he can't get far in ten seconds you can slowly lock down his range and mobility. Sound doable?"

"Hn. Watching." And the connection ended until he had further need of it-or she needed to issue a warning.

"Oh, yeah, sure." Jenna felt a mixture of chastened and assured. Yeah, she didn't want anything like that to happen again. They had time, right?She waits, practicing patience, thinking about what they might be about to wade into-and then becomes immediately distracted by his changing skin.

Whoa.

Without really thinking about it she reached out and took his hand in her much smaller one, lifting it up to look at the starry universe in closer detail, her brow slightly furrowed and lips parted, curious and wondering. He had glowed before, but it'd been brighter or different-maybe she just hadn't gotten a good look at him? She was pretty sure she would have noticed Elias going pretty, but she'd been really freaked out at the time so-

It suddenly occurred to her he might not appreciate the touch or the study. Her eyes snapped up to his and her face colored, releasing his hand and quickly averting her eyes back to her silver gloves, pulling them on in a hurry with a mumbled "Er, sorry."

Yeah, it'd be great not to act like a weirdo, but sometimes she just didn't think before she did things. Was that ADD? Might be ADD. Still-what exactly was Elias? Maybe from space? She didn't dare ask, seemed super rude and maybe xenophobic-but damn.

Jenna's feelings of extreme awkwardness were interrupted with his next statement about Roland-a surprised, muffled laugh catching in her throat, one of her gloved hands flying to her lips.

She's quick to nod to the strategy for Fugue. "Yeah, ten seconds won't do him any good with me. So how're we getting up there? Must be stairs or an elevator or something-" She's turned around in her seat, trying to discern their entry point.

A low chuckle bounces up from Elias's chest, but he doesn't otherwise react to the involuntary caress, he being the last person to complain about anyone being touchy. "I'm shiny - I know. Don't worry about it. I've never figured out why it does that, but it's damn pretty."

He glances down at himself, momentarily bemused, staring at a constellation that just so slightly resembles Ursa Major. Then Adamant cracks his neck and nods. "Alright. Here's the plan: the communications antenna - see it up there, with the red light blinking on the end? - that's the only method of communcation out of here, because the depot is blackboxed; no signals in or out through unsecured paths. It's a great idea, because it means we get to bushwhack them. I'll throw you up there, you take it apart, and then you work your way down through the facility - use your speed, stay stealthy, take anything that looks important and break what you can't. This is a gimme raid: we're here to make sure these guys don't have anything we don't either."

Adamant jerks his head up at the salt-rusted underside of the Rig platform. "Meanwhile, I'll punch through the underside, make as much noise as possible, draw them down and away from you. I'm not sayin' you can't handle yourself, but I will be fucking obvious no matter what I do, so I might as well play bull in the china shop and let you get things that matter done."

He reaches over and taps Jenna's communicator. "Marie's got our back on comms, so you got any questions, ask her or me. Whatever she asks you to pick up, get. She knows better than I do - honestly, my first idea is to break this thing's supports and throw it in the ocean, but she can take whatever we gut out of here and aim us with it just fine."

Adamant claps his hands. There's a faint spark of light between his hands when he does so, but he doesn't notice - light is arcing between whatever lengths of bare skin touch on his massive frame, dripping lubricious loops of curling plasma. One long contrail brushes Jenna's forearm. It feels softer than silk, warm, and slides through her skin and arm like they don't exist, warming her from the bone out. It feels like courage, like a breath of mountain air over victory.

"Ready?" Adamant asks, and pops his knuckles.

"-but it's damn pretty."

Yeah, but -I- wasn't going to say that.

Jenna tipped her head back to see what he was referencing. "Yeah I see it-wait, throw me?" She dropped her head to frown at him, her brow furrowing. She didn't like not having her feet under her and on something, and DEFINITELY didn't like the idea of being THROWN up there!

He continued on and that all sounded good-except the throwing part.

"Steal things while you make noise, disassemble anything that looks remotely interesting but not interesting enough to make off with, and don't be on the rig when you throw it into the ocean. Right, good-"

She opens her mouth to ask about that throwing bit again, but then one of the curling plasma looking tails brushes her arm and through it, a short intake of breath and another glance upward towards the distant antenna.

Man...

Jenna pulled her goggles off her forehead and firmly over her eyes. "Why the hell not, I've always wondered what it'd be like to flippin' fly."

Elias laughs. "Yeah, used to do this all the time with Laura. Don't worry, I got a good underhand throw. You know how the Speed Force insulates you from air resistance so you don't get windburns? Laura could use it to alter air resistance selectively so that she could choose where and when she fell. The Fastball special, she called it."

Adamant clasps Jenna's shoulders and draws her into a mountainous hug - braced against his starlit frame, Jenna can see galaxies twinkling past his collarbone, a million stars that glitter beneath his cheeks and behind his eyes. There is a scent warm and fresh and free, and static lifts the fine hair of her arms in electric sensation, raising goosebumps all down her body. "Good luck," he says, firm and confident.

Then he lifts her up and throws her.

The transition is abrupt, but Elias had an underhanded toss that's a smooth ride, arcing Jenna high up into the air and up past the safety railing on the edge of the platform, then past that and over the rigging. Her arc peaks right as the antenna comes into view, and she comes down right on the maintenance shaft up to the power coupling of the antenna, as Elias's booming laughter echoes up after her, annoyingly loud in the predawn.

Then the entire rig shudders and metal screams. Elias's laughter goes tinny with an echo, and people start shouting back, screaming. Bootsteps begin to pound.

"Well, I mean, that aura sure, but I don't know how to-" His big hands come down on her shoulders and he pulls her into another engulfing hug-though not quite as crushing as before. He's just big. And solid. And able to launch himself like a freaking cannon ball.

He was also some kind of freaking magic, and not just his personality-the twinkling stars and light behind his eyes-she feels that odd energy rippling over her skin even under the suit, goose bumps and a near shiver.

Magic.

"Good luck."

Shit

To her credit she doesn't scream, but there was definitely a very unherolike, feminine, dismayed squeak-this new Velocity weighed all of a hundred pounds if that, stupidly easy pickings for the super strength Adamant.

Her mind speeds up on it's own accord as she flies, and for a minute she can't decide if that's worse or better. But he had good aim-she fails to splatter against anything, and instead curls her body inward as she arcs, landing in a roll on the maintenance shaft.

Oh sweet merciful Jesus, she was alive and not plummeting to her death. Her legs were a little shaky and her eyes narrow at the sound of his laughing, scowling.

"You enjoyed that too much!" She accuses over the channel, one gloved hand reaching out for the thick bundled wires-and yanking back at speed. She didn't have super strength, but damn if it wasn't something to pull at hundreds of mile per hour. They don't snap, but it lets her scramble up to the antenna-her thighs clamping together on the bundle of wires so she can take her hands off it. Jenna grasped one end of the antenna-then felt the rig shudder. Holy shit-she quickly brought her elbow crashing down on it at speed. It snapped clean off, and she hurled it off into the ocean.

Ha!

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While not the wrecking ball that Elias was, Velocity could certainly do some damage just by virtue of being fast. The shimmering blue blur moved in and out of the offices located inside a large building on the west side of the rig, the guards and normal crew elsewhere dealing with a bigger threat-so she had plenty of time and space.

Time enough to track down a toolbox and disassemble computer towers at super speed. She knew what a hard drive looked like and just went to town until she could remove it. By the fifth machine she was a pro.

She emptied one entirely and used it as a basket, popping from various lab counters and work stations to stack them neatly inside the case. Sweet!

In the span of fifteen minutes, it looked like a crew of a hundred had set to work wrecking damn near every room in the place, papers and pieces of equipment scattered everywhere, servers and delicate work benches overturned, a score of hard drives missing-among a few other things.

She set the computer case on a desk and headed up the back stairs, slamming through another fire exit and into the center of the room-just at the exact same minute the elevator on her left dinged and a man stepped out. A rather intimidating looking man, as it turned out- easily six foot six and built like a bear on steroids, the guy was a heavy, mobile brick wall. Spiked gauntlets and shoulder pauldrons made him even more menacing, his muscled chest bare, his pants held up around his hips by a red belt with a large black buckle on it an R embossed upon it in a dark red color.

Creepiest of all, he was wearing an almost medieval style helmet of dull, blackened metal, the dark red 'T' on the front concealing his eyes and nose.

Even so, she could feel his stare on hers, both briefly frozen in surprise. And then he growled, a rather hellish noise that echoed within the villain's helmet, distorted and very, very deep-as a swirling red energy started to gather around his fists, pulsating in a near heartbeat.

He backhanded air and a red construct tore across the floor at an alarming speed straight for her. Jenna flitted to the right, eyes widened behind her goggles as the swath of energy shoved desks and chairs violently aside.

"So uh, Elias-" He took a step further into the room and tried again, this time a wider, sparking arc of energy. Jenna darted further back and to the other side of the room, her heart picking up speed and a heavy paperweight in her hands. "When you called Roland a wuss-" He roared and Jenna hurled the paperweight for his right shoulder-but a flare of red brightened into existence and it shattered against it as he charged for her. "wasthatincomparisontoyouorjustingeneral?"

Adamant enters the depot by the expedient method of launching himself straight up through the floor. It peels away from the pressure of his light like a sunburn, curling up and away from the immense weight of the Throne. He lands eight inches deep in the ceiling before he can stop his momentum, unburies his feet with two brief kicks, and then drops to the floor. It immediately sags and crumples under the mass.

Half a dozen men in labcoats and business suits gape at him. The room is some kind of laboratory, with a simulated firing range ahead. There's some kind of gaily-dressed cape standing there too, who had frozen in the midst of blasting sparks of electricity downrange. Instead, the cape turns his hands on Adamant and hits him in the chest with a lightning bolt. It hits him in the chest, spits sparks, and accomplishes precisely nothing. Adamant grins a wicked grin, head tilting to the side, then inhales deeply.

"I STAND AGAINST YOU!" he bellows, a war cry as old as the League, and the labcoats and suits begin to flee, eyes widening, mouths beginning to shriek or call for help or swear and none of it matters because the next thing Elias does is reach over, rip an entire floor-mounted desk out of its moorings, and hurl the half-ton piece of rubble across the room. Its spinning bulk clips the rookie cape on one side and blasts a dozen skidding feet to the back of the room. He doesn't stir.

Adamant nods, satisfied, and glances around at the rapidly evacuating room. He notes a pair of computers, takes out a permanent marker, and dots their screens for later removal. Then he picks up another desk and hurls it through the nearest wall - and the next wall - and sending it spinning, crushed and ruined, out past the exterior bound of the rig as it tears through that as well, falling far to the water below.

At this last rent passage, blinking owlishly at the sudden night air, another cape is stock still, just starting to turn towards whatever the fuck had just exploded three layers of industrial steel with a piece of office furniture. He looks at Adamant beneath shaggy black hair and bandages that cover most of his form, weapons and tools strapped beneath various bands of fabric. The overall effect makes him look a mummy or leper, though the air turns and swirls around him in a way that makes it difficult to focus on him.

"Oh, fuck," Fugue says, and blinks out, phasing backwards five seconds in time.

Elias grins and hefts another desk as he keys his communicator's mike. "Eh, pansy in general. Use a fire extingusher or some kind of chemical spray on his face. He's allergic to a lot of stuff apparently. Pepper spray, if you've got it."

Oh awesome, nothing to worry too much about then.

"Hear that Roland? Latest poll results say you're a pansy." Jenna called out half for to annoy him, and half for Elias' benefit before the communication ended.

Roland was wrecking the place even more than she had been wrecking the place, at least as far as disturbed furniture went. Everything she threw at him he destroyed-but how did he always know it was coming?

She decided to look for a fire extinguisher or something else full of chemicals, dodging his hissy fit of red constructs as he tore up the room further, but she wasn't having much luck. Shouldn't those be out and obviously marked? Wasn't that an OSHA violation if they weren't? Well, depending on where the 'business' was based out of probably not, but other countries had versions of that, didn't they?

Jenna for fuck's sake focus.

Ah, here was something-screen cleaner! A really...tiny bottle of screen cleaner. Wait a minute-how allergic? Like, hives allergic? Throat closing up allergic?

And would Elias laugh at her if she asked?

Well...maybe she'd just hold onto this for later, and try this the old fashioned way. He'd called him a pansy, she could punch at super sonic speeds-maybe he was just roided out and that was it.

The heroine darted to her left before vanishing-only for a flare of red to envelope and flare outward from his body faster than the speed SHE was moving for him at-striking her hard and knocking her down. The floor spanked her pert bottom and she slid into a desk she'd vaulted over at speed to deliver a brutal kick. The speedster was briefly surprised, but not still-she turned and darted out of the way just as he hurled a monitor at her, a deeply disturbing laugh within the confines of his helmet. Okay, THAT was impossible-his reaction time could not be that fast. Was it instinct? Did his ability have a mind of it's own? How was she going to spray him if he was able to repel her even when she was moving faster than light was bouncing off of her to him?

"Slow down. Feint." Protagonist cut in to issue the terse advice, revealing she was seeing this, somehow. Oh great.

"What?"

"His constructs. Fake them out and hit him hard elsewhere." There was a vague and yet very present sense of judgment in the tone of Protagonist's voice.

"He just hit me at light speed." Jenna pointed out, a measure of irritation towards Elias. Pansy her sore ass... "I don't thi-" "Telegraph your movements for one action-and then use your speed for your actual target." Protagonist growled, sounding as if having to rephrase her statement was the end of her patience, period. "And hit hard, he isn't baseline."[/i]

Jenna was quick to try and mollify the veteran, anxious to have somehow already ended up on the wrong foot, giving a bad impression. "Oh, right, sure, thank y-"

"Stop with the noise and fight." The transmission ended about as tersely as it had begun, leaving her out of sorts and extremely concerned. She had already pissed off her only other ally, and she hadn't even met her yet.

Jenna resolved to do a good job to make up for it. But...she'd still rather not risk the chemicals. And now she was too hesitant to ask further questions.

So. Guess it was still the old fashioned way, but maybe less...straightforward. Jenna stopped darting around the room and studied her opponent a moment, her eyes narrowed behind her goggles. He was big, but there was an old adage about that, right?

Right.

Jenna darted to the far left and paused there, shaking up the spray bottle before moving for him again, this time slower and in view. That red flared again-and then she really moved, zipping around behind him to plant a boot on the wall and shoving off to launch herself into his unprotected back, hard. She was small, but dammit, she was coming at him like a missile. And that wasn't all-her left hand slipped beneath the spiked pauldron and held on a moment while she slid her right arm around his neck, knees digging into his back as she caught her own wrist and pulled tight against his throat. Kidneys, guy must have kidneys right? She pulled one of her knees back and drove it into the slab o person as many times as she could before he finally seemed to catch himself, reaching back to try and grab her with a grunted growling noise. He was so overly muscled he couldn't reach back enough to grab her-Jenna ducked his attempts to do so easily. "I think you need to reLAX, Roland!" That was...well, that was not one of her better quips.

He growled, but apparently couldn't summon those red constructs TOO close to himself-just in case, she stayed in tight, keeping her arm crushing against his throat. Windpipe would take too long and his neck was so muscled she doubted she could compress it anyway-but the jugular...well.

He was laughing again, something that made the hairs on the back of her neck stand on end, and a kind of...skin crawling reaction to touching him. For good measure, she rammed her knee into his OTHER side, but that didn't seem to have any more effect than the gazillion shots on the first.

Shit.

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

Dark eyes narrowed on the tablet as Protagonist watched the wireframe CGI model representing Jenna torpedo into the larger one representing Roland, the scanned environment and opponent a white color in comparison to the substitute's blue.

Kid was hoping to choke him out? Hn.

More sharp knee strikes than the software could represent but the logs successfully seemed to capture-she didn't spare the scrolling data a glance just yet, her attention on the fight.

The larger model predictably slammed the smaller one into the wall, stepped forward-and did so again, holding the position this time, keeping her trapped. Protagonist shook her head as Velocity's blue wire frame shifted to red in a few spots-the sides of her ribcage in particular. The substitute would lose strength and asphyxiate before Roland would choke out.

She tapped a button and spoke. "Halwell, Velocity-"

Roland's wireframe shifted off the wall, hands coming up to his throat. He staggered, wobbled-and went down to a knee. Protagonist paused, a slight furrow to her brow. Who had taught her to cut off blood flow? The League wouldn't have. So surely not the even tamer association. That was a brawler move. A baseline move.

An effective move.

"...Roland is down." She finished simply as the wireframe toppled, the blue one remaining in place for several moments before slowly pushing herself off of him, a hand to her side.

She'd heal. Damned metahumans.

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

Yep. Yep. That had been pretty stupid. Jenna tried not to inhale too deeply as she gingerly touched at her right side. Broken? No, no, that'd probably hurt a lot more than this-but that didn't make the jabbing, white hot flashes of pain very comforting.

She scowled at Roland's unconscious form, tempted to kick him-but that'd just be mean. He hadn't been so tough, she just hadn't fought dirty enough, or...smart enough.

She studied his creepy helmet a moment, then glanced back behind her into the ruined office. Well, maybe payback was in order...

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

"I think we've got a full load and they've got some serious insurance claims, Elias." She dropped the open computer case over the side of a railing, then descended the ladder in a blur, just in time to catch the gutted tower-and each of the falling hard drives. She set the case neatly down and grimaced as she straightened to glance back up the long, long, long series of ladders. "How're things on your end? Need a speedster?"

An almighty bang ricochets about the rig as Adamant launches himself through the nearest wall to intercept Fugue's path. He bursts through, contemplates the flashbang Fugue's tossed up for a split second, then backhands it so hard it breaks the sound barrier as it exits out the gaping hole in the side of the rig, popping in the distance a moment later.

Fugue blinks out. Adamant stomps through the floor and tears it up by the root through the nearest corner, leaving it lodged awkwardly in a ceiling corner, slanted towards the maintenance catwalks below. There's a bang of impact and a screech of pain as well. Elias rounds the corner to stare at where Fugue has broken his ankle from the violent removal of the ground he was walking on. The villain reaches for an ankle derringer - then pauses, and lets his arm slump to the ground. "If I give up, will you stop trying to kill me?" he says wearily.

"To be honest, you're pretty incidental to all the fun I've been having," Elias replies cheerily. "Here's a cool story: you should lay face-down until you stop hearing things. If I see your face up, I'm going to throw you to Zimbabwe."

Fugue swallows convulsively and complies as Elias trods away, each step sinking a half inch deep into the steel floor as he keys his communicator. "Done about all I can without causing a total collapse. I don't really do building fights well. Get anything useful yet, or should I start ransacking myself?"

"Nah."

Jenna was suddenly at his elbow. It wasn't hard to find people or things when you could cover so much ground in such a small amount of time-and when your target had left a trail of immense destruction in his wake.

"Your boat is loaded up with hard drives and a few interesting looking whatsits already." She informs him. "And I found this thing in a locked vault, so it's probably important. When you can try a gazillion combos in a few seconds, those just aren't quite as secure, ya know? Rush proves that. Course, Rush can phase through walls, so..." Jenna shrugged, winced, then shook her head to look at the device in her hands. It was tear drop shaped and large enough she needed both hands to hold it,

"Kind of looks like one of those gel air fresheners." She muses.

Elias exhales a long breath and rolls his shoulders. His eyes, glazed, stare past Jenna for an uncomfortable second. A frown flickers over his face and he gives a bare shake of his head. "To be honest I expected more," he says, and glances around. "For a depot this was - kind of pathetic, honestly. That was like sixty seconds of effort. I dunno what's up with that."

He glances over at Jenna, looks her over for a second - spots the hitch in her breath - glances over her another time - and then simply nods. "Ribs?"

Adamant's hand, large as a bear trap, settles on Jenna's shoulder, and a little of the coursing light that inundates him passes through the contact and settles in her side. The incandescent energy is electrifying as ever, and doesn't coexist with the pain - it numbs it by sheer sensory overload, the signal blocked out and overwritten by whatever it is that Jenna's body tries to interpret Adamant's power as. "That'll numb it, but it's just a patch job. You'll need either rest or a healer to get back to 100% - don't strain yourself."

Then he glances over at the doohickey she found, and does a mild double take. "Wait, isn't that Blink's belt? The teleporter guy that used to do flyby bombings? It's not identical, per se, but -"

He frowns and pulls out a little mobile phone from one pocket. It's been squashed into a little metal stamp. Elias grimaces. "Okay. Uh. Jenna, you got a phone that does video or photo? Marie needs to see this thing. It doesn't look quite the same, got more twiddly dials than I remember Blink ever having. Also, it was integrated with his power - he'd never just leave it laying."

Adamant frowns. "You think they had him and Fugue here trying to work out functional teleportation? Between the two of them that's a lot of spatial mobility. In point of fact, I'd bet that's what this whole facility was for. Imagine a handful of gooks with this shit and a bandoleer of grenades."

"I don't think they were expecting anyone to ever show up." Jenna points out. Hidden behind the opaque silver lenses of her goggles, Jenna's eyes give the glowing hero a brief study. He might've been looking for a fight, she's not sure. Considering the swirling galaxies, he'd certainly been primed for one, anyway.

"Ribs?'

A blink, and then she dropped her head back to looking over the device, a muttered- "Yeah." Jenna feels her face warm. She hadn't intended on talking about it, wanting to avoid the embarrassment of someone else knowing she had not exactly been...'efficient' in putting Roland down. But apparently she wasn't as good about keeping a stiff upper lip as she thought, or maybe it was just obvious, she doesn't know. If Elias thought Roland was a wuss and then found out she'd taken a minute to figure him out and eventually won through cheating-well, what was he going to think of her?

His hand comes down to engulf her slender shoulder, the contact again sending goosebumps spiraling down her arm beneath her costume. This time however, there's a pulse of whatever it was that powered him directed to the delicate ribcage currently throbbing with pain-now warm and tingling weird, like a hot towel that was also full of dry static? That didn't make any sense-but it feels a hell of a lot better, no jabbing white hot pain when her chest expands.

He didn't ask how, just solved-or temporarily solved-the problem.

"Thanks-" The speedster sounds a little relieved, and not entirely just because of her discomfort.

"Blink? Er, I don't know, that's a girl now, she's this shy redhead at the Tower." Monikers could be a little fluid, for sure. Jenna hugged the device closer to her chest so she can slip a hand away, absently reaching for her phone in the top cuff of one silver boot-but it's not there. Oh, right. "Pretty sure Cid has my phone-" She grumbles, then pauses as her fingers instead find the smaller, curved smart phone looking device that fit so neatly in it's place.

She pulls that out instead, and before she can say much more Marie's voice is in both of their ears. "That's exactly what I think, Halwell." What the-was she just popping in an out conveniently, or listening the entire time?

On her end, Protagonist was pulling up files and blueprints, throwing them on various screens while continuing to monitor the radar for any reinforcements. They had a prototype and had it housed on site. That was more than she could have hoped for. She had always counted on Elias coming back out of retirement-but his reach was limited. It took time to be where he needed to be-and time was always in short supply in this line of work. Sure, the speedster was a bonus, for however long she'd last-but inexperienced and no Adamant.

With something like this though, dispatching the hero could be instant.

"Set it down on something flat with the scanner. I got the shape, but not the function."

"Uh, okay-" Jenna hadn't realized the device was a scanner...actually, she hadn't had a clue what it was when Elias had handed it to her. Maybe she should ask more questions before carrying things around, but meh.

She set both down and had hardly stepped away when the screen lit up, a little wire model spinning in reflection of the device before it. A schematic popped up in the background-Jenna moved the goggles off her face and just past her hairline, curiously watching the screen.

"First two dials set coordinates. Third sets sea level." A few taps on a keyboard. "Beyond that, going to need some time with it."

"That's true," Elias grants. "I just - I'unno, I'm used to shit going wrong. It's a weird turn. Call me paranoid, I just expected something to come out of the woodwork and punch me in the dick."

He chews his lip. "Then again, I've kept my ass stuck in Gary for, what, four-fifths a decade now? No one probably expected me and you to show up here at four in the morning with ass-kicking boots on. The advantage of surprise, whatnot. Alright then, I'll take it."

The similar monikers draw a snort from Elias. "Alright, that's funny. Ain't there a registry somewhere on the Parahumans Board? Marie, check that and see if they have the same name or if I just have a crappy memory. Meanwhile, let's see - I have the Samson lat/long, you want me to plug that in? Give me an elevation here, we'll see if it goes through."

Elias taps Jenna on the shoulder, sliding her a glance out of the corner of his eye. "Hey, this thing works, no more boat rides. Also, you can yank all your stuff from your hometown and be gone before Cid has a chance to yank on his short hairs. Sound good? You came up to the Coulee with not much of anything."

Marie doesn't have to check. "She's just a kid they picked up from New York. Was in the foster care system, the Association picked her up to some small press fanfare few years ago. She's aged out since. Not sure they ever send her out." The ability to teleport in and out of anything-well, that was a useful ability. Marie kept tabs as best she could on the Tower. Cid had an army, and she'd be damned if she didn't pay attention to it, Daybreak or no Daybreak.

"Was indeed the moniker of that terrorist asshole previously. You remember correctly." She checked the elevation of the dock up top, then paused. She had just gained two allies, it wasn't the best of ideas to go using experimental units built by villains.

Hn.

"33 feet above sea level. Your call."

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

"My base has collapsed in on itself, remember?" Jenna says with a dejected look. "I pretty much just have my tennis racket-currently at your house-and a bike."

"But I do gotta get there, check in and...figure out what those mooks of Cid's have been up to. I know it sounds dumb but...I didn't and I don't like the idea of...them cruising around there, ya know? I can be anywhere in minutes, there's just no need..." Elias might be good to have for that. She didn't trust Tectonic-he and Cid had twisted her up so easily, she still wasn't sure what the hell had happened in that office, and it still bothered her.

"Actually, maybe you can help with that...it's slabs of concrete but..."

Coulee. He had welcomed her to stay there. She might have to take him up on it-she couldn't go home to the Phillipines with her father not talking to her, and she was too afraid to go home to their empty house, either. Mindmelt was out there somewhere...he knew where it was.

And so did the rest of the world.d

Elias nods with a sigh. That sounds about right - recruited straight out of the state system, and then kept. Cid likes people with no options - it keeps them docile. "I'll need to send her a card at some point, suggest a few other names. She doesn't need that kind of baggage. Bet Captain Dickhole gave her that tag on purpose. Anyways, yeah, you want to get your stuff, let me know and we'll go get it. No sweat."

He picks up the belt, grimaces, and tries to strap it on. The device looks dinky in comparison, clearly designed for someone half his own breadth, and even when he sucks in his breath and strains Elias can't manage to get it around his waist. He blinks at it in bemusement, then double-loops the strap and ties it around one thick thigh instead, then plants that foot atop a nearby cinderblock and poses like it's the world's most advanced garter belt. "There's a captain in me - going where none have ever gone before!"

Elias pokes the transmit button. "Zoop."

In an acrid flash of light, Adamant disappears.

~*~

The teleporter deposits Adamant with a thunderclap of displaced air on top of the dock. He blinks to clear the colors out of his eyes, and gives himself a shake. "Note," he says into his communicator, a little too loudly. "Teleportation with this thing is very loud and bright. We're going to need ear and eye protection, which means we're not doing combat drops with it, because showing up to a fight deaf and blind is a good way to get dropped."

Elias digs at one ear with a finger with a scowl, unstraps the belt, and slings it over a shoulder as he ambles into the elevator shaft to wait for Marie. "You want a test ride on the magic bus, Jenna, or you want to make your way here your way?"

"She'd really like that." Jenna says with a nod, rubbing at her eyes a minute, then a smile. "Thanks Elias."

She straightens up as he works to try and fasten the device around his waist, the slow bloom of one of her grins.

"Oh my God, you're a dork." Kettle, meet pot. And then he presses a button-and he's gone.

Holy shit.

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

"Teleportation with this thing is very loud and bright. We're going to need ear and eye protection, which means we're not doing combat drops with it, because showing up to a fight deaf and blind is a good way to get dropped."

"Hn." Marie's looking at the energy signatures that had just taken place on her door step, leaning forward to flip a switch and shut the sensory equipment down before it crashed.

He'd hear the locks once again disengage as he approached the building, Jenna's voice coming over the communicator. "Yeeeah, fun as being half deaf sounds, think I'll take you up on that couch offer for a solid eight, if that's cool. Your boat's good to go right? Hard drives for you, Miss Ma-er. Protagonist, ma'am."

Marie said nothing more than "Good." No need to add to the speedster's noise.
"Just toss it in." She says to Elias as the elevator comes to life, the doors sliding open.

Tapping away at one of the four keyboards, Marie notes with a scowl that Elias had stepped into the elevator too, sans invite. Because of course he did.

The watch was in carefully arranged pieces on a small sectioned tray, a cord running from the minuscule chipboard and LCD screen to a slot on the console, green text flying by faster than she can read it-damned speedsters-but slowed down on one of the monitors. She pauses just long enough to check the GPS coords of the Velocity substitute-a blip quickly making its way across the map and away from the oil rig. Good.

The elevator doors slide open and Marie wheels back with a strong pull on her wheels, pivoting to face him with a displeased expression, lips pressed together, dark eyes slightly narrowed. She decides not to comment-it'd only invite more conversation.

"Instantaneous, or did you travel through some other reality?" You never knew with this kind of stuff. By nature she distrusted magic, but Blink's talents hadn't been magic based, she did not think. The girl's were, of that she was certain.

At least he made it back in one piece.

"Aff, Jenna," Elias says, his fist pounding against his chest hard enough to be audible over the mike. "The Coulee and the Silverfish will open to your League communicator - there's a port on the bottom that shines the proper spectra of light. Just shine it into the keyhole to get in."

He worries, a bit, about Jenna - but she also needs some space after having hers violated so thoroughly. He honestly kind of expects her to need a moment or two of frustrated tears and a lot of sleep, and that he can give her. Marie doesn't need his help, nor want it - but then, Marie has always cut close to the edge of survival. She needs reminding that her life has meaning beyond purpose, and some groundwork can be laid here.

So, he lets the expression fall off his face back to mild blankness as the elevator descends, then sets the belt on a table after unstrapping it. "Instantaneous," he answers. "Took a quarter-inch slice of paneling with me through the teleport - it's less exact and estimates bodily dimensions generously, I expect. If anyone uses it to teleport multiple people, they should absolutely have skin-to-skin contact, otherwise it'll just shave off whatever's touching, I'd guess. Not deep enough to be a danger."

"Roland, Fugue, and Blink," he notes further. "Third-string at best. Weak security. I expect reprisal soon from whoever is actually in charge of the facility. None of them would be so."

Necessary information delivered, he seats himself by a nearby table, back up against one leg, and sinks into himself, letting the quiet absorb him. Marie's likely to ignore him until the human presence finally pricks her into sniping - that or ask questions. Either will work. She needs to wear away some of her sharp edges, the raw thorns she's extended in her long self-exile, and there is no one better than he to absorb that kind of punishment. For right now, he just needs to invade her space as little as possible - allow her to possess space alongside another human without losing it.

Healing Marie will be a mountainous trial, just as much a challenge as it would have been for her to survive her ghastly injuries in the first place. She's worth that much, though. He's ready for the hard questions.

He answers the question and sets the device down on a table, giving her the facts and some speculation, nothing more. Good.

"Hn." She turned the chair back around one handedly, her other one lifting the tablet off her lap, a swipe of her thumb turning it on. Dismissing him, returning to what she was doing as he continues the debriefing. She'll tear into that later. It'd take more than her technical skills to pare it down, most likely.

Reprisals. It'd take them a minute to realize what had just happened, that they were no longer alone in this game. That Adamant was no longer content to sit in the wings. She hoped the realization was as alarming as she intended it to be, the scum.

There were other tasks she could send him on, but she wants this one to stand alone, make its impact first. She hears him shift and settle in behind her, her fingers tightening slightly on the tablet, jaw setting. Fine. Let him sit there.

Her hands moved between the keyboard and the tablet as she continues working on the watch, intensely focused...for a time. But after the first hour she could no longer obstinately ignore his presence. What was he doing? The debriefing was over. He had no further purpose to be here. He wasn't welcome, either. She had work to do. He could waste time elsewhere.

The Hispanic woman rolls back a few feet and opens another drawer with a press, a sticker sheet of black circle dots with a chip of some kind beneath it. She gives another push on her wheels. Given the half backed nature of the chair, it's easy to see that she's kept her upper body in the same shape it had always been-toned muscles line her spine, definition to her shoulders and arms. She had packed a wallop back in the day-and probably still did.

Dexterous fingers begin to piece the watch back together, pressing the stickered chip on the inner back wall of the device before screwing the various components in place, carefully setting the entire thing back in it's housing. She'd weld the damned thing shut, an extra deterrent to someone ELSE tampering with it.

Despite her determination to ignore him, her eyes catch the clock. It had been even more time. He wasn't saying anything, wasn't making noise, but it's distracting all the same.

She wanted to be alone, and him being there grated on her nerves in a way she couldn't entirely ignore. Her back still to him, she tested the alert system. It was now on a broader scale-worldwide events as well as the happenings of South Bend.

Marie knew what it was to stand in a city...that much she understood.

Unlike whatever the hell purpose Elias had for remaining here.

She moves on to something else, back reading the chat logs between two subjects of interest, unencrypted and updating in her hands in real time. Then a report over here. Data coming in on several screens and in several formats, her brain organizing, processing, fingertips calling forth and filing away at the keyboard, the tablet.

She glances at the clock again, and her resolve splinters.

"What." It's a question but sounded like a statement, short, terse, and almost forced sounding. Stupid utterance-she doesn't want to ask questions, questions invite answers and talking. She still doesn't turn around. Work to do-but she can't focus on it with the nagging annoyance of him still being there hours after he should have left her alone, gone home to his stupid pond. She had never been there because why would she have? No purpose, no time. But he lived there, it was time to go-not linger in this dark pit of black plastic and gunmetal steel.

"Nothing more today. Want this incident to stand." But she knows that's not what he's waiting on. Her irritation, aggravation-she doesn't want that either. Served no purpose. She doesn't want to talk. She doesn't want his company. She doesn't want ANY company. He should know better than to make social calls, as she had said before.

"It's not about you," Elias says, without moving or opening his eyes. "Jenna lost her home. Lost her family. She needs space to accept that. Needs time. She'd stiff-lip it if I showed up. Pretend everything is okay, because it's me. Because she needs to show she's okay more than recognize that she's not. I don't want that hurt going sour, turning underneath her - so I'm giving her room to cry it out now, before she gets used to pretending it doesn't matter."

A beat or two, as Elias continues to sit still. "She's young, and she didn't start like us. She had a chance to be normal first, and that means this shit hurts her more."

Like us - like Elias and Marie. Elias, who had walked from nowhere to smash drug rings with his bare hands and his ragged clothes in the Indiana winters, lips blue with hypothermia in the nights as he shivered beneath bridges, nowhere to go and no one to matter to. Like Marie, who'd burned her bridges and her heart out to tear into crime with nothing but the fury in her heart and the savage discipline of her mind. The rest of the League had families, had starts and homes and lives before it - but they two did not and never would.

Maybe Elias had adopted the League as a family, but he alone understood what it meant to have, and be, nothing. He also knows that's part of what pisses Marie off about him so much, that he could understand and even still, do nothing. Fade away, like the rest. Better to get it out here than let it fester.

But she needs to let herself hate him of her own accord, to recognize that it's pain before he can do anything about it, or explain himself. So he remains still, and lets the ugliness in Marie unfold itself from where it's crammed down into her soul, malignant and wretched.

"Can go sit up on dock," he offers, bland. It's not an offer to leave, and unsaid goes the statement that he's staying not for his own enjoyment, but for Marie's safety.

He doesn't imagine that if she figures that out it'll go down well, but he honestly doesn't know if they can backtrace the teleporter.

"It's not about you." Good. She infinitely preferred that

He continues on and she listens, still scowling at the tablet screen. His voice carries over the sound of servers and processors, real and present and utterly foreign. He talked about the substitute losing a home and a family-but neither had any meaning to Protagonist. Irrelevant distractions.

Even before, in that far away, other lifetime the words had hardly had any meaning-Marie's father had been shot and killed in a drug bust before she had ever known him, and her mother ended up addicted to heroin and God knew what else before she was five. They had lived in abandoned buildings and run down houses with a string of likewise addicted boyfriends until she lit out on her own at 15. Once. Just once, she looked the woman up, just before graduating from the academy. Fatally overdosed the year after she had left. And that had been that.

Then again, there had been Anthony...

But that frightened child, the angry teen, the determined young cop. even the vengeful widow- it was some other, distant life, someone she barely remembers being. Buried.

"Hn." She swipes aerial photos aside on the tablet, one after the other. She's still tense, her jaw clenched. "If you think it'll make her more effective." She finally says in a flat monotone-or tries to, but there's a sharp edge to it, that same feeling of agitation.

An attempt to be dismissive(which she was) and disengage (which she was failing at). "Other places to wait." She grumbles to the tablet.

"Can go sit up on dock,"

"Places not here." She growls, setting the tablet aside-practically dropping it on the console as she rolls back at an angle, her and the wheelchair now in profile as her eyes briefly light on the monitors showing live feeds from old cameras, flickering, changing images of the cesspit.
Her cesspit.

"Adamant doesn't belong in Samson, Halwell." She says clearly and with venom, a glance to her own useless legs before she wheels herself away from the screens and monitors of her command center, an angry gesture to the elevator. It made little sense for the wheelchair bound woman to round on him-what was she going to do, throw him out?

Wouldn't put it past her to try.

"Especially not these days." God she hated this place. She hated the power vacuum she had left once the scum had realized she was gone, once they had lost the fear. Everything she had kept firmly crushed beneath her boot had come back-along with transplants from everywhere else. She had known it'd happen once she died-she had never set out to heal this city-but she never thought she'd be alive to see it. And to watch it sink and sink and sink... It'd always been a hard city even in the best of times, but now it was an organized criminal wasteland; there was no saving it. Staying here was as much penance as it was necessary.

"Nergal decimated a city and you finally woke up. Great. I can use you, and I can use the kid if she holds up-but it's been a decade." Her dark eyes glitter with bitterness and betrayal, anger. "It's been a decade, take your nap someplace else."

A moment of silence - Elias never answers in haste, not anymore.

"A decade of nothing," he says, eventually, voice soft as his eyes slide open, lidded stare burning across the room at nothing. "A decade of no one. No heroes, no friends. No one besides me. No bravery against the silence. No one that reached out."

"It was survivable. It had no other merit I would recommend to it."

"I will not return to it again."

Elias stands and brushes himself off. He nods once to Protagonist. "I'll be on the dock."

He leaves by the elevator, and does not look back when it closes.

The doors close on the giant of a man, and Marie huffs a sharp exhale, wheeling back and returning to the command center. She didn't even want him on the fucking docks, but at least he was gone. Just the servers again, the uncomfortable heat and the whir of technology. She could work now.

She glares at the keyboard, her hands tight on her wheels.

A decade of no one...

God dammit.

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

There's the loud noise, the displaced air-and then there's Marie in the chill night air, ripping the padded noise canceling headphones off her head and throwing them at him. The belt's teardrop center was in her other hand, the cover removed and a thin, straight piece of metal sticking out, clearly a new addition.

"I said, Adamant doesn't belong in Samson." She starts, dropping the device onto her lap to close the distance with strong turns on the wheels. Everything about her screams angry and hostile.

"I was never a hero Elias but God dammit -I- didn't retire, -I- didn't relax, I came here to my cesspit of a city from a hospital bed and watched everything go to shit. I've kept tabs on the scum, I've kept an eye on his Glorious Highness, I've laid the ground work and played gatekeeper so there's something for heroes to come back to that isn't that impotent tower."

She was angry. This was noise, noise, and it's time away from shit that needed done and utterly useless to anything that mattered, but she was angry and she was determined to have it out right here, right now, and if someone tried to mug them she'd just murder them before Halwell ended up enmeshed here.

"Except they didn't. Not even the League's surviving first stringers! Daybreak is sleeping with the enemy, Lana pulled me out of my coffin and then left, and you, YOU even went home." The venom and the anger lashed inward. "And I'm in a fucking wheelchair."

Dependence. No longer a force to be reckoned with on any playing field-she couldn't go out there and force anything out of anyone anymore. There were no stealth missions in enemy facilities, no asskickings, no boots on the ground for Protagonist. Not a demon, not a demigod, not an Atlantean princess-just a woman in a goddamned cloak...and now a chair.

Silence.

She's looking across the bay at her city, following the dark shoreline and the illuminated, old redstone buildings, the mismatched 70's skyline architecture she'd spent years scaling and walking across. "You talk about silence, you talk about friends, you talk about nothing- but what did you expect? An invitation in gold fucking script...?" She sounds almost tired. She is tired.

The cool air is on her skin, her scars. She's vaguely aware that the rough removal of the headphones had messed up her tight bun, dark unruly curls caught in the breeze. God, she is tired.

Elias sits on the edge of the dock, legs swung over the edge. He looks straight on at Marie, unflinching at her anger and her stare, her rage and seething indignity. He witnesses it and does not back down. Now is the time for truths too terrible to look away from.

"Rahab crushed my entire upper torso, I'm told, just a half-hour before the end of the fight," he says. His voice is still soft, like the wings of a death's head at your ear. "I don't remember that part. I don't remember the rest of the fight. I don't remember anything for a very long time, in fact. Memory doesn't work when you don't have a head to keep it in. And then I could remember, but I couldn't move while whatever moves me stitched muscle and nerve back together until I was a good puppet again. I don't know how long that was, buried in stone and ice and the blood of the dead thing we killed, knowing how many - knowing who - was dead. And then Укриття found me, and took me, and I had to kill them all before I could escape. And then I walked all the way down to Kansas, and found Cid marrying Sarah. And for all that I had fought the vilest, most monstrous thing I'd ever seen and died for it, was denied death for it, and crawled back home alone - I was sent away. I was not welcome in the house of my family. And so I went back north to the same place I started, and did the same thing. I fought alone, until someone came."

Elias's eyes are awful. He doesn't blink and doesn't scowl, face empty as a mannequin's, expression porcelain and smooth as he talks. His stare goes right through Marie. "I did not retire. I did not relax. I did not go home. I crawled from my grave, Marie, and I walked here to see my family turn away from me and my works undone by spiteful men. And I left because I could lose no more."

There is silence.

Elias finally looks away, staring at the distant, tinny streetlights.

"I know what it is to suffer alone. I got to do that for eight years. So did you."

He shakes his head, weary certainty wearing through that docile, matter-of-fact tone that's so terrible to listen to. "Enough. It's enough. You may never want my company, or to hear me speak, or to know I'm there at all. But you should at least have the choice; so I'm here. I've cradled my misery long enough. It's time to bury it, rather than myself. Time to let it go."

Protagonist had come up for a fight. To make it crystal clear that the war was all that mattered, all that was going to matter, and she would not be distracted from it. She wasn't concerned with being overly harsh or antagonistic-there wasn't anywhere else to go. She and Cid were the only game in town.

Instead, Elias wants to tell her about his end in Immolation. A literal death he somehow recovered from due to what sounded like powers beyond his control, given his use of the term puppet. It's so unexpected, so utterly out of left field it sends her mentally spinning. Her eyes widen a fraction, narrow, then avert themselves as she tightens and loosens her grip on the wheels of her chair, agitation apparent. No one escaped Immolation unscathed. People had died, some people might as well have died, and some people should have died-and she can't take it in or find anything to say.

She can't. She just-can't. Not her element. Nothing left.

But you should at least have the choice; so I'm here.

"This is all that I am, anymore." She says short but without the growl, just a plain fact. She wheels backwards, retreating. "There's no point pretending otherwise."

She needed to look at the teleportation device, she needed to see the fallout of their actions today, she needed to plan their next move. The war was all that mattered, all she could stand to focus on. All that she had.

She pauses, turning her head slightly to speak over her shoulder. "You came back. I knew you would...and you did."