Athwart History (Closed)

[Obuzeti]

Elias exhales, in a long breath. Breathes in again. Counts the breath, each time it passes.

There would come a day when this would no longer be necessary. When his form would achieve perfection, beyond sentience, beyond frailty or mortality, serene and undisturbed in eternity. Where he would pass into the shadow of that which has shaped what he walks in, and it would raise his hands in his stead, and wear his face. Elias knows this, bone-deep.

But this is not that day.

He reaches out, with those big, broad arms, and gathers both women under one. His weight is firm and reassuring, even if he has to be careful that his grip does not crush flesh or bone. In his hands, their fragility is precious - these mortal shells he is so careful not to see, cradling the souls he adores above all else. Shining lights, beyond physicality. Free.

Elias swallows, and inhales again. His breath steadies. His eyes firm.

"Well," he says, "We've got a lot to do, it seems. It's going to suck. I'll ask now, because it needs to be said: are you two willing to help me find these people? Put together a League to save whoever's left? Also, beat the fuck out of Paul, whenever he pops back up for a midnight snack?"

His smile is a little wobby, but there is viciousness in the baring of his teeth, and his body warms with adrenaline as he conceptualizes the task ahead, breaks it down into parts that he can attack. The Tower is one; Paul, the other, most difficult to pursue. The eight last heroes, each in their unassailable realms. Caliban, master of shadows, hidden where none can see.

Start at the base. Build from the foundation. Secure what is yours.

These two, first.

Elias swallows.

"Please. Will you help me?"

 

[CurtailedAmbrosia]

Marie went so instantly stiff, her arms and shoulders immediately tense and angry, a jerk of some violent intention she represses just barely. Here it all was, his pain and his suffering on display and he again turns outward, he takes his stand and it’s blinding. It hurts her, cuts through everything that made her her anymore.

She can’t. She can’t. Marie grinds her teeth down together against the growl and tries not to act like a feral fucking animal-which was exactly what everything about her wanted to do right now. The edges of -something- was cracking, and only her rage, only her hate only her venom could keep her together, brace the shell of all she could stand to be.

She doesn’t just roll backwards when she ducks out-she about shoves him.

Not Jenna though. Jenna’s going to cry. Jenna is crying.

“Of course I’ll help you.” It about breaks her heart he had to ask, it breaks her heart the way he asked-he was all alone, so much of his family in ashes around his feet. All he wants to do is save what remained and stop this insidious, slow rampage of evil-and she would help him. Everything that she was, everything she could do-she would give it, she would do it.

“The good fight. I promised to fight the good fight, I promised, Elias. I will help. However I can.” And she meant that with every fiber of her being, a sort of sincerity no one could have falsified.

It’s too much. Marie’s got her ravaged legs tensed and reminding, her hands gripping and loosening on her wheels. They were both too much. The cracks are happening faster.

“Vengeance.” She grounds out, hands tightening and loosening, tightening and loosening on the wheels. Her eyes are mildly terrifying and she wasn’t even looking directly at them. It blackens the soul. Sullied it. She thinks about the fungal sample and she thinks about Paul moving through the best humanity had to offer, those who had earned their respite-and murdering them. One. By. One.

And someone had made it easy for him.

“Someone played me at my own game. They’ll regret it.” It’s all she can offer either of them. Her vicious flaming poison sharpened to a deadly point and prowling for a target. It doesn’t matter she’s in a wheelchair-her mind was her most dangerous asset, it had always been her most dangerous asset. She would fight to the last. She would find the means to make them pay.

She finally looks at these two shining beacons of light and hope, the old and the new. Full of love and hope, exemplifying perseverance in the face of evil, standing for all that was good and doomed in this cesspit of a world. She doesn’t belong alongside heroes. She never fucking did. She re-centers, focusing on this, on what she was, on what she really was. She meets Elias’ gaze, his vulnerability. She briefly hates herself for being so utterly useless at anything but this unending war.

But even monsters could have their uses.

Her eyes returned to one of the monitors, the unending list of those long gone.

“We know what they’ve done, now.”

 

[Obuzeti]

ACT II

CONVERGENCE​

The Tower is getting worse, Peter Vavily knows. It was never welcoming, precisely, but since Jenna had taken off, things had gotten bad.

He looks at it like a job, which helps him stay practical; he doesn't stay extra hours in the gymnasium, practicing under Tectonic's wary eye, because no one can see him under the Blur anyways. He doesn't snap to and salute when Cid shows up in the halls, touring the facilities to bask in the awe of the Wards, as he periodically does each Friday. He doesn't go on the group missions where they dogpile and thrash some sucker robbing a store for less pocket money than he'd made in two weeks at a Walmart.

He sits in his crevices and on his perches, and watches, and what he sees fills him with unease. When he'd started there'd been maybe a dozen Wards, and they knew each other by name. Now, he can't even guess; they live in squads on separate levels, and there are new floors beneath the ground, with a different squad on every floor. He'd conservatively estimate maybe eighty kids and young adults living within the Tower's walls. Peter doubts even a dozen see daylight each day.

Each squad, maybe four or five, is divided into their own rooms, with a floor supervisor from the squad of Veterans that Tectonic runs (yes, with the capital). If he listened to his floor boss, Peter would be in his room eight hours each day, followed by four hours of schooling, Wards exercises, and ethics classes every day, with the last four hours split among meals and generalized free time - if you count not being able to leave the floor as 'free' anyways. Four hours of ethics thinly disguised as propaganda, also; filtered statistics, population surveys, human studies in powered biology. He does none of it.

He shouldn't know any of this, and get away with far less, but his saving grace is the Blur: his ability to fade from anyone's perceptions, not so much invisible as totally beneath notice. Under it, he moves through camera fields and the unnannounced security checkpoints, where Veterans just happen to stand in groups at the elevators. Jenna might be persona non grata since her blaringly loud escape, but in these claustrophobic, sterile hallways, Peter is by far the most elusive prey, and they don't even know it because they don't remember to look when the Blur is running. He's someone else's problem, after all.

Meanwhile, he documents evidence, sketches pictures, and watches the elevator get deeper and deeper without work crews ever coming in, and wonders where the Tower is going, and why no one is allowed to leave since Jenna vanished. There aren't any good answers.

There is one thing he can do, at least.

His knock on the door is gentle; this room, and the entire second floor, is a private residence, open glass walls and sweeping windows like nowhere else in the Tower, lit by soft golden light caught in graceful glass vases and suspended like stars. If there is any light in the Tower, it's Sarah, and he does his best to keep her burning bright.

Once a week, he brings her the most dangerous contraband of all in the Tower: news articles and clippings from the outside world, about any of the other heroes and villains outside he can find.

Here, in the Tower, truth is the most precious resource of all.

 

[CurtailedAmbrosia]

The door opened almost immediately, the scent of some sort of sweetness inside. A long graceful finger held to her lips and then a smile, stepping back to welcome him inside. “Hello, Peter.” Sarah always seems to be tired, but it detracts nothing from her warmth or maternal aura. She was always happy to see him, always had some kind of comfort food or drink on hand.

Ellie, the young ginger haired, mousy trainee known as ‘blink’-a supposed lifer in the Tower-was curled up on one side of the couch, fast asleep. She was wearing her usual oversized hoodie and jeans, her tennis shoes neatly tucked under the edge of the couch.

Sarah herself was comfortably dressed in a pink cashmere sweater and jeans of her own, blonde hair loose around her shoulders. She pulled him into a hug before turning to pad into the kitchenette, the shiny black tile poured with glittering specks to resemble starlight, the glass surfaces providing for a minimalist appeal. Today’s comfort food looked to be brownies. Here, things were quiet, removed. Here, she hid from everything.

She poured them both a glass of milk and settled in at the small glass table, relatively serene. “What have you got today?”

 

[Obuzeti]

Peter feels the Blur draw back into his mind as he sinks in Sarah's arms and squeezes as tight as he can - the maternal powerhouse far beyond his own strength, so he never has to worry about accidentally hurting her. She's always given the best hugs. Every Ward knows it.

He hangs on for a moment, and releases her to slink by, passing up the brownies to glance at Ellie from up close. There are shadows under her eyes, and faint bruises under the hem of her shirt. She'd been in double training again, earlier today, he remembers.

After leaving a blanket on her, Peter perches at the table (never sitting like an ordinary person, both feet up on the seat like a gargoyle, awkward and lanky and folded in the strangest ways) and takes one of the brownies to nibble at it. "Vivian's lastest painting went up for sale," he says, in that soft voice. "Where Water Runs. It's a big waterfall that goes in every direction, I think. Like the edges of the world. She's standing in the middle of it."

He drinks some of the milk and pushes one of the articles at Sarah - the clipping of the auction, where, as per usual, the painting had sold for multiple millions. No other artist in history had Vivian's flare for absolute and perfect detail; a fact that stands to reason, as she paints from the inside of the painting, and projects the current world onto the canvas. Of all the former heroes, she is the most well-off thanks to her painting auctions, though equally difficult to get ahold of, operating only through her agent and multiple levels of security.

Then he offers the other one, that he knows will hit harder. "Big fight at the Texxon offshore oil rig," he says, glancing up beneath his eyelashes. It's hard to look at Sarah straight on, sometimes, and it has nothing to do with physical light. "They said they got hit by a couple rogues. Um, a speedster and someone that tore out an entire floor of the rig. And, uh, threw it."

Jenna he can believe in. He's seen her powers, how ridiculously fast she can move, the things she can accomplish. Jenna he can believe would beat down the giant, tuxedo-clad brute he'd seen in bandages in the news article, talking himself up as security even if every quote he'd given had been paraphrased, because he barely knew how to talk himself. Roland was a thug, and Peter knew it.

Adamant, he's never met, has never seen in person, but he knows the stories, and has even seen the footage, rare as it is and prohibited by everything Cid can do or threaten.

"Story says they beat up two guys and took a prototype. Called it corporate espionage. Wants them arrested," Peter says, with a careful shrug.

Hero arresting, of course, is easier said than done, especially between extradition, actually arresting them, and dealing with the strange extra-legality that heroes exist in. Technically, as Jenna is still under the nimbus of the Tower, anything she does is legal until Cid disavows it, and as he refuses to admit she's a rogue cannon, she can't be arrested, even if he goes purple in the face every time someone mentions it.

Adamant is, again, a stickier issue, but by and large the general sentiment seems to be if he comes down on you, you probably deserved it.

 

[CurtailedAmbrosia]

Sarah represses an amused smile at his once again perching on the chair-the young man finally opting for a brownie. She waits patiently, companionable. There’s no rush. She would never rush a visit with Peter. These visits were important to him-and they were important to her, too. She worries...she worries about all of them, but Peter was particularly at risk of ‘falling through the cracks’, and she doesn’t want that to happen.

She tilted her head slightly to look over the article. “Vivian’s talent is unequaled the world over.” She comments pleasantly. “I don’t think there will ever be a better painter. I’m glad she’s doing well.”

And then he slides over a second article, this one longer, of more importance. Sarah sat back in her seat, expression more serious, hands clasping together on the tabletop gracefully. She’s looking straight ahead into the spacious flat, but not actually seeing it. Mistress Rush was very much still in prison. There was only one other speedster, and she didn’t know of a lot of people that could complete a feat of strength such as tearing up an entire floor and throwing it.

One of her loosely curled fists came up to rest against her lips, elbow resting on the table. She hesitated, but then her other hand took the article and she read it. Roland, one time villain in Samson before Protagonist had viciously beaten him, breaking his left knee and running him out of her city on a stretcher. She was almost surprised he hadn’t gone back there after…

After.

She wonders what the prototype could have possibly been, how they knew it was there, and why they would want it. It seemed odd. Jenna hadn’t ventured outside of Benton Harbor except where Elias was concerned, and Elias wasn’t the ‘corporate espionage’ type.

Her stomach twisted and she lowered the article. Jenna was still an Association member. She had kept her from quitting, which was good-she didn’t have a secret identity to hide behind. Luckily, there would be no arrests. Cid simply wouldn’t allow it, even if he was just as worried as she was about her being out there.

And Adamant...no one would think to really arrest Adamant.

It occurred to her that the incident took place one day after she had left the Tower. Velocity hadn’t waited long to get back out there.

“...what do you think, Peter?” She’s not sure what to say about it, and finds a smile to favor him with, somewhat fragile, weary-but making it safe to share his opinion. “That’s certainly some news, metahuman activity offshore.”

 

[Obuzeti]

Peter glances up. There's a long moment where he judges Sarah, considering - not of her value, but of her capacity to believe him. It's a stepchild's habit, one they all have, learning what adults to trust and how much. But Sarah is the best one (no holds barred, no qualifiers; the best), so he shakes his head slowly.

"No," he says, soft. "It isn't. We just don't do a lot of news stories on it here in the States."

His clothing is soft and grey-black, a lot like an orderly's scrubs, and in perhaps the most depressing note about him, the boy carries a backpack everywhere he goes. He sets it down, and digs through it for a moment, then comes up with a wide digital reader screen. A moment of flicking through it finds the article he wants, and he slides it over to Sarah, watching her with wary eyes.

"When Nergal got caught he was supposed to be down in New Zealand, on contract to Whitewater Industries," Peter says. His voice is still soft, but when navigating the world of papers and facts it firms, steel under the velvet. "But Whitewater is a private military company that runs sorties out into Syria, Jordan, and Lebanon. They do clearing. It's a euphemism for where they kill everyone in a town and burn it so that nothing is left and nobody can find anything of it."

Peter shrugs, as his eyes flick down. "The locals call it samūm - hellfire, translated literally. The entire town is sent to hell, and nothing is left. That's why there aren't wars there, anymore. Anyone that rebels gets to burn."

Unsaid, is Nergal's power - fire.

Peter fidgets with his hands for a moment. "I don't know about Mister Adamant. But if Jenna saw someone - getting ready to do something like that, I think she'd stop it. I think she'd do a lot of good things, if she had the chance to do them. And that the newspapers are -"

His eyes flash, as he gets to his one real passion: journalism.

" - They're in someone's pocket," he says, voice strengthening with indignity. Still below what anyone else would call normal conversational volume, but louder than the boy ever lets himself speak. "They don't say real things. They lie. So if Jenna shut them down, and Mister Adamant helped her do it, then they probably did something awful or stupid and they needed to stop doing it anyways."

Peter sniffs. "And Roland is a thug anyways and deserves to get his face punched in."

 

[CurtailedAmbrosia]

Sarah frowned, taking in what Peter said and trying to steady herself. She doesn’t want to read anymore, but he’s watching her, trusting her with things that troubled him. He was a very clever boy. Journalistic integrity mattered to him. She could do this.

But if Jenna saw someone - getting ready to do something like that, I think she'd stop it.

She couldn’t do this. That’s what made this and the incident at the docks so terrifying: Jenna would try to stop it. She was compelled, believed in Laura’s ‘good fight’ with all her heart-but she was so terribly inexperienced and with her not living here in the Tower...

She’s running with Elias, she’s not alone, she’s fine, she’ll be fine.

Elias would keep her safe, would look after her. She was safe in Benton Harbor, and so long as she was only venturing out internationally with Elias, she would be safe.

So long as she didn’t overclock and fade away as Laura had.

Her fingertips are glowing, hands trembling. She set the tablet neatly back down on the table, returned her hands to her lap.

“Adamant coming out of retirement is a good thing, then.” She says softly, slowly. These are things she doesn’t want him to have to worry about. These are things outside of them, outside of their immediate concerns and...and she doesn’t know what to do about them.

They hadn’t been limited by borders, before. The kids aren’t ready for the likes of Nergal. None of them. They were safe here, and so long as they were here she could protect them. She loves Jenna, but she doesn’t want any more of her kids out at the mercy of whatever monsters might be left out there.

Whitewater Industries. Maybe Cid could look into it. Maybe there was something he could do. She hoped Jenna checked in soon.

And how-for Peter-harshly he spoke about the newspapers… It did seem...off. Ten years ago, this would have been a story of praise. Jenna was no thief, Elias no terrorist. They had gone there for a reason, and anyone willing to hire Roland, reformed or not-

“You’re very clever, Peter.” She comes back to herself, reaching to touch his hand, a squeeze and another fond smile. “We’ll see what can be done.”

 

[Obuzeti]

Peter watches her fingers tremble, and hates it. Hates watching the best person he knows crumble under her uncertainties, her doubts and fears. There's a lot of things he doesn't know, and a lot of things that aren't true: so he's decided to follow his twinned north stars, and hope for the best, and that by the end he's done something right.

He looks down at Sarah's hand; the glow through her fingers, the muted trembling she's trying to stop. Then he gets up, slipping away from her grip, and comes around the table instead where he can kneel down and wrap his arms around her waist in another tight hug, ignoring the distance.

He wants the right words to say, and doesn't know them; doesn't have the gift of making the right things come out of his mouth, and rarely the courage to say anything at all. But Sarah matters, and here she is the only one that can hear him. "I love you," he says, soft.

It's not the first time he's said it; his stepmother drinks, and he has never felt safe near her. Sarah is everything he dreamed a mom should be, and it was to her he first articulated those words years ago, after a long and sleepy movie marathon, piled up with the other kids on the couch, drowsily echoed by Jenna and Ellie as they passed out in a pile. But he remembers to say it, that he should, that people need to be loved as much as they need the truth.

He squeezes her and rocks back onto his haunches, looking up at her from the floor - a gawky, greyscaled gargoyle, hunched over next to her; awkward, and usually invisible. "I don't tell you stuff because you'll fix it," he says, slow, putting together words so that they'll mean something, so that they'll help her. "I talk to you because - it's you. I want to talk to you. And maybe it'll make you feel better."

Peter shrugs with a sudden grimace. "And maybe it won't. But it'll be real. You need real things."

Sometimes he feels like he's Sarah's only thread to the real world, outside this sterile, walled-in world that Cid rules in the Tower. That she's a firefly to light these cold halls, but the walls are closing in, and she's choking out, her light reaching less and less far as the walls spring up. Like the only air she gets is from him and Jenna and Ellie, but Jenna's gone and Ellie's always hurt and most the time people don't even remember he exists, just a figment, a memory they don't recall.

Sometimes he feels pulled out, being that slender thread, but if there's anyone worth everything of him, it's Sarah, and he'd give that everything if he could just to see her smile.

 

[CurtailedAmbrosia]

Sarah wraps her arm around his shoulders and is almost surprised by the suddenness of the movement-but it’s anchoring. A strong protective instinct, a fierce and unconditional maternal love cuts through the fog of her exhaustion and the cracking facade of calm, steadies her in the mounting anxious worry for her charges within and without the Tower.

“I love you too, Peter.” And it would feel like no truer statement had ever been uttered in all the history of the world. It’s not a vague and well meaning platitude-it’s a promise, and that love rolls off her in soft, warm waves.

It’s all that keeps her going, anymore. Her love for her kids-especially and most of all those who hadn’t really known it before. If she didn’t look after them, who would? If she wasn’t here to protect them from the dangers out there-she can’t even fathom it. Not one of hers. They were safe here. She’d keep them safe.

But then she thinks about Jenna, and how Jenna had rejected the promise of that safety to make her own way, to be out there. She thinks about that last conversation, how upset the young woman had been, how angry.

How she had tried to quit. How she had recoiled when she tried to touch her. And then she thought about how it all had wound down, leaving her no longer suspected in Jenna’s mind but...pitied?

And now Peter was worried about her, too. It’s etched into his features. She feels a pang of guilt. She felt as if she had failed in some way, that he or anyone else had reason to be concerned. Something real…

“...you’re right, Peter.” She’s so tired. So very, very tired. She runs a hand through his hair like the treasured son that he was and rose to stand. “And you can always talk to me...I want you to talk to me.” Assurances that she means, but the words of the news articles swirl slowly in her mind alongside the ones Jenna had said the last day she was in the Tower.

“I’m glad that you do.”

 

[Obuzeti]

Peter glances over her carefully - notes the shadows under her eyes, as thick as Ellie's; but Sarah has nowhere to run and hide like they do. She lives in the shadow of Cid, and that man has no mercy to spare outside of a photograph frame. He wants to says something soothing, but doesn't; forgetting doesn't solve anything. Distracting her won't make her better. Ellie likes to talk about her day and her television shows, and that's nice for awhile, but he can't do that.

Instead, he looks up at her from his haunches, and says, "You should call her. You would feel better."

As much as he loves Sarah, he is not the cure for the weight on her shoulders. She sees shadows and absent faces anytime she looks away, and he can't stand to be around anyone all of the time anyways. The least he can do is try to fill in one of those absent faces, even if it's only with a voice.

Peter straightens up and dusts himself off reflexively, then creeps back to his seat and finishes his brownie with little nipping bites, more like a raccoon than anything. His arms and elbows always float close to his chest, and his shoulders hunch - folded inward and closed off, even here. He's not in a corner, though, which is an improvement over how he'd been when Sarah had first picked him up.

He needs something else to say. The words coming out of Sarah are nice words, but they don't mean anything. She's moving her lips to please the people around her. Sarah does enough of that everywhere else. He does have one thing left, but it's his last trick. He doesn't have anything left to say after this. His words dry up so easily.

"Here," he says, a little awkward, and pulls one more thing out of his backpack, this one carefully concealed within the reference pages of an ethics textbook. It's a card, like a Hallmark card, with no words inside or out. On the front cover is a picture of the sun over the clouds, and inside is a yellow-drawn figure with little rays coming off it, and a stick figure beside it.

It's signed with a smiling face, and a name in braille: Anna. His sister's name.

"She made you another one," he says, a little embarassed, and passes it over.

 

[CurtailedAmbrosia]

Peter was right. She should call Jenna. It would make her feel better.

She’s just so tired.

”Here-” Her eyes refocus on him, watching him get into his backpack he takes everywhere, retrieve something he’d squirreled away. She worries about Peter. Once a week was not enough.

Sarah accepts the card, opens it with her graceful, careful hands. And then, finally, she smiles at him. And in all her exhaustion, there is joy.

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

It turned out she didn't have to work herself up to contacting the speedster-Jenna reached out first, and Sarah was relieved for more than one reason.

And so it was that Sarah had left the Tower for two hours and thirty two minutes earlier in the day. She’d chatted with a few of the Wards in the lobby on her way out, but not on the way in-moving immediately for the elevator and pressing the button for her floor.

An hour and three minutes after that, she used her keycard to take the elevator up to Cid’s floor. The blonde beauty stepped off the elevator, resplendent in her costume, as radiant as ever with the sunlight coming in on all sides around them, catching the gold of her hair and the accents of her costume.

It was new. Or rather, a palette swap of her original, traditional costume. Instead of white accents to gold suit, it was now a white suit with golden boots. The sash belt was now a golden metallic color to match the boots, the rich fabric knotted loosely at one curved hip.

On her chest was the golden sun emblem, the circle surrounded by golden tendrils.

She’s holding a small piece of purple paper folded in half, and a sheath of typed pages that looked to be in a familiar format...another witness statement.

She was very pale, the usual peach tint to her cheeks and lips all but faded away, her eyes a little red. Most telling, however, is the softly ebbing light to her trembling hands. But when she speaks it is soft and controlled, effortlessly graceful, ladylike. Like so much about her.

“Cid...we need to talk.”

 

[Obuzeti]

Cid's floor looks a little different.

The open area is interrupted with a half-dozen monitors scattered about that display different things - news articles from blogs online, a Senate report on one, one that's currently composing an email to what is faintly recognizable as a major sponsor of the tower, and one in the corner dedicated to answering an inquest from CPS. Cid sits behind his desk and his chair smoothly rotates to face each one (not the standard swivel chair - it's bolted in place and rotates 360 degrees naturally, to match his monitor spam) as his thoughts squirm, bouncing from one to another and typing out on a holographic keyboard that follows his movements. When Sarah enters, he hardly notices in all the things he's juggling, and even when she speaks it doesn't get his full attention.

These days, it's rather hard to get that at all, honestly.

Instead, he flicks one monitor at her that displays the full article Peter had given her - and three more that are far harsher, calling it not just vigilante but terrorist action, condemning their destruction of the platform that supplies Northern Africa with almost a third of its oil. There are photographs of car lines at gas stations hundreds of cars long, and protests forming outside the American Embassy in Egypt, Libya, Morocco, and Sudan.

"If it's important, summarize it," Cid says, terse. "But otherwise I'm busy making sure we aren't all put under house arrest for harboring dangerous criminals and having all our Wards investigated for potential diplomatic disasters. Like crashing national economies."

There are four coffee cups on his desk. He'll only drink one cup every two hours, and he meticulously washes them every time he leaves his work station. It's been awhile.

 

[CurtailedAmbrosia]

He’s surrounded in information and God only knew how many tasks-it had never really been her scope. She’d been front lines same as Elias. Still, she again felt that measure of guilt as she looked at all he was doing so that she wouldn’t have to.

She hadn’t gotten the scoop about that particular mission-it wasn’t what Jenna had wanted to meet about. But at a glance, she sees the derisive, nastier tone of the two articles, ignoring the one she had already read. Protests...pushback...

Thoughts about the suspicions and offense taken by Peter over the news returned to her, her own sense of powerlessness. This...this might be a good addition to her argument. If everyone was communicating, no one could be blindsided. Cid wouldn't be blindsided.

Sarah turns the monitor away, steps to be in between displays. She needs to focus. Keep her resolve. “Cid.” She repeats. He’s still distracted. Glowing light was beginning to gather around her entire body now before she released a feeling of power and a sense of demand.

They need to talk. “The lockdown might be serving a dual purpose we didn't realize." A hunter, a prowler... "Something’s happened.”

And she held out the sheath of papers to him. The contents of which were objective and factual, making what she imagined had been a very intense fight dry and boring. She didn't want to imagine it, however. Forcing herself to read through the entirety of the report had been hard enough.

 

[Obuzeti]

Cid gives her a flat look, but takes the sheets anyways and starts to read. Within about two sentences his body tenses and he swings around to focus; by the second paragraph stress is in every line of his body, and he takes off his helmet and sets it to the side, running a hand through the buzz-cut scruff of his hair. "Alright," he says, exhausted. "Alright."

He flicks a hand at one of the monitors, and it changes to blank - another swift gesture turns it to the list of active heroes, separated by allegiance to the Tower. Rowan and Maestro float to a third category to the right, and darken to grey.

Cid is silent for a long moment. "I liked Maestro," he said, eventually. "Put on performances a lot. Composed his own music, I understand."

He stares out at nothing, pale but for the bags under his eyes. "Goddammit, of all ways to go out, though," he says, regretful. "The Jew. God."

The leader of the Tower shakes his head, then glances back to Sarah. "Is this a private communication? I need to publish some version of this, at least enough to put out an all-points bulletin about Marrane. No one else needs to die like that."

 

[CurtailedAmbrosia]

"I liked Maestro. Put on performances a lot. Composed his own music, I understand."

Sarah immediately regrets just handing the report over. She should have tried to cushion the blow somehow, like Jenna had tried to do for her. “I’m sorry honey.” She steps to stand beside him, can see the stress lines across his forehead, at the corners of his eyes. She touches his shoulder-her hand is warm and the waves are lightly soothing.

"The Jew. God."

Her graceful fingers tighten a fraction and she has to look away, her eyes drifting to the skyline. She wishes, for a moment, that she had been there. And then the thought wisps away as Cid speaks again.

“No. Jenna wrote the report for us, hoped we would take warning and, I would think, warn whoever we could.” Her eyes remain on window, speaking even softer. “She’s convinced-” Elias was convinced, “-he’s hunting heroes. And with everyone spread so very far and thin…”

Cid was here in the Tower. Her kids were secured. But the rest of her friends and former allies were scattered across the world, nursing their own pain and trying to find lives in the ‘after’. In addition to those concerns, it was Jenna’s second encounter with the monster, which made Sarah physically ill. Paul did not like to be denied.

“I think we need to establish some form of open communications, at least periodic check ins.” Her voice was grows even softer, eyes widening slightly on the window. “I didn’t even know Marie was still alive.”

It occurs to her he wouldn’t know who that was. Her eyes shift back to him, a little lost as she slides her hand from his shoulder.

“The Protagonist.”

Sarah’s honestly not sure how that was possible-she had seen the jet go down. It had crumpled like paper and rocketed into the ocean. She knows Marie’s baseline human. Jenna hadn't said, but Sarah figures the vigilante must be very grievously injured to not be on the streets of Samson. Without The Front to level her out, it was perhaps for the best-she can’t imagine Rahab had made her any kinder.

It also made more sense, now, why Jenna and Elias had gone to the Oil Rig. Marie had the same penchant for information that Cid did-data was her opiate, her weapon. Whatever it was that caught her interest or her ire, Sarah was sure the mission was not for nothing.

 

[Obuzeti]

Cid's mouth closes. He swallows.

"Protagonist," he says, unsteady. "I see."

His fingers ripple nervously across his desktop, and he leans against Sarah's hand for a bare instant - all he will allow himself, before he waves at the monitor and opens a composition for a CC notification to all currently active heroes, even those in his own Tower. He scans and copies over the document she showed him with the details of Wandering Jew, and then glances over as he starts to type actual text. "Did anyone ever figure out what his actual power is? Something to do with insects, I thought. I fought Marrane no more than twice."

It had been a bad matchup, usually. Cid's advantage was in big team fights, taking minor metahumans and empowering them to punch above their weight limit, and the bigger the fight the better. Marrane had been the biggest ambush predator of all, and had even proven capable of hijacking control of a hero's body while Cid's mark was still on it; stealing the power boost, effectively. He had done his best to avoid that ever happening again.

"I'll establish check-ins with all Wards we send out, and contact everyone on the retired roster," he says, as he resumes typing - leaving a blank spot for details on Marrane. "Can you do a public press release about what common citizens should be looking for? Above all, we don't need some civilian thinking he can take on Jew with a can of bug spray and a butane torch. Though, to be honest, if he goes after anyone ordinary they're just going to be dead."

 

[CurtailedAmbrosia]

Sarah runs her fingers through her blonde hair, remembering. “Some of the foulest magic attacks I’ve ever seen.” She says, a little distant. “Some kind of communion with insects, correct. And, obviously-the ability to infest others. I’m not sure anyone’s ever seen the full picture or the real...whatever he is. We’ve burned through his insects and various bodies time and time again.”

She looks to his email blankly. “He’s significantly more than most can handle, one on one.” No contest. He had preyed on two of their number already. She wondered if there were more victims, and her heart hurts to think it. Hadn’t they deserved their rest, their retirements? For Paul to want to rip even that away…

“Yes.” He would organize something and she would pull, at least, a little of her weight in the wider world. “Of course. Thank you, that's exactly what we should do.” Reach further. She's sure many retired heroes were no longer tracking their past identities' messages.

He’s typing. It makes her feel so empty to look at him at times. So...tired. Just so tired. She knows how well he will probably take what she wants to say next.
She briefly considers returning to her floor, her space until he called on her for the press conference.

Sarah absently touches at the sun motif on her chest, and she focuses on the dire nature of the situation. Paul was targeting their old friends. Her Wards might want to someday leave, branch into careers of their own. The League had had it's teams, perhaps it was time to consider this again. Perhaps it was time for old divisions to be mended.

“Cid...I thought maybe I-” She reconsiders. “We should meet with Adamant.” Her old friend was clearly back in action, Velocity in tow-and most certainly being supported by Marie. Whether Protagonist had ever really retired was beyond her-she doubts it. There could be valuable information, there, if they reached out.

Assuming she'd cooperate. Something she's not certain of, without Invincibelle to bridge the gap.

 

[Obuzeti]

Cid stops typing. Stares at the monitor, blank and empty. In the stillness, something is boiling.

"If you want to cooperate with Jenna," refusing even to give her the honor of her name, because he had known Velocity, the real one, and this girl was no replacement, "That's fine, she doesn't deserve to die because she doesn't know better than to run around with psychopaths and criminals. She's still one of ours, even after - all this."

Cid flaps a hand at the wide set of monitors, frustration brimming over. "But Adamant? Adamant? That frothing - "

He cuts off and closes his mouth and his eyes. The teakettle calms and he exhales hard through his nose before he glances up at Sarah through hard eyes. "I don't like him, but that's irrelevant. I don't want our people, or us, cooperating with him because the man has no fucking sense at all about what will kill ordinary humans. If he sees Marrane or Nergal or Caliban or who knows the fuck whatever villain is around, sunning on the beach or something, he will go after them. He will take anyone around him, with him, because family, right? And then he will get them killed, because none of us are him, none of us can keep up with him, and it doesn't matter how many fucking sad faces he makes afterwards when he keeps getting all of our people killed!"

Cid bites off his sentence, scowling, and turns away to stare out the window. The sunset glimmers through the glass and casts his office in orange. He licks his lips and continues.

"He's already taken Jenna into two separate combat operations far above her experience level. He is not going to stop doing that, and he'll take as many new people as he can get and lead the crusade into the danger zone just so - I don't even know why he does it. But no one can survive the shit that gets thrown his way, and he can't save everyone. If he was half the leader people built him up to be he'd just walk in and level these cretins himself while everyone else sits at base and pops a wine bottle. What can even be done to him to stop him? What can't he walk off?"

Cid flicks a hand in disgust. "I'm off topic. I'm not giving Elias one goddamn minute with my Wards because he'll convince them, accidentally or not, that's it okay to do what he does. No one can. And they'll die like goddamn fools to live up to him, just like most of us already did when Rahab showed up."

He grimaces and plants one hand on his hip, and glances back to Sarah, eyes worried. "He's dangerous because the only person he can't get killed is himself, Sarah, and until he owns up to that I don't want him anywhere near my Wards."

 

[CurtailedAmbrosia]

"But Adamant? Adamant? That frothing - "

Sarah already regrets this conversation. He was still too upset, too hurt by the actions at the wedding. But couldn’t he try to understand? So many of their friends, their family had perished! She had even thought Elias lost, and he had to know that Grace-

Grace.

The hurt strikes for her heart and Sarah reels, stepping away from him, retreating. His words wash over her, snippets registered with and without meaning, that hurt in her heart, in her soul suddenly a crushing, unescapable weight.

“And me?” She hears herself say, voice tinny and far away. “Should I have told our friends to stay home, that I’d take care of it?” She wasn’t as durable as Elias. She wasn’t the literal God that he was, but there was no denying her power, her strength. She did not have to worry about Paul Marrane finding her in the night. She did not have to fret about being outmatched, out stripped.

Her voice chokes up and her hands tremble, tendrils of weak yellow light at her hands, along her forearms as she hugs her upper arms as if cold. Her eyes are a million miles away and haunted, wet. “Should I have somehow forced Grace to stay behind? Tommy?”

She forgets what she had come up for. She forgets that the purpose was to be allied, to know what he was getting into and where Jenna was following him. Paul was above Jenna’s paygrade, but Jenna had also made it very clear she didn’t want to be protected. She didn’t want to be a Ward. She wanted to be Velocity.

And her friends, her family so ravaged by the battle with Rahab...they had been her equals, not her inferiors. But…maybe. And that weight, that crushing responsibility so many of her family had helped her shoulder, had refused to leave with her and her alone, with Elias-it’s suddenly there in full force.

Her kids weren’t at that level. They weren’t ready, she could never let them stray into danger, she had to protect them, defend them from whatever remnants were still out there.

 

[Obuzeti]

Cid looks at her, and for a terrible moment he's actually thinking about it.

"No," he says finally. "No. At least you can die. You understand fear. What it means to worry for other people. No one doubts that, here. You love every one of the kids that live here."

Even he - jaded, terrible, a monster of logic - can admit this. Sarah's love for her children is complete and unswerving, and he has changed his mind many, many times in light of that absolute fact.

He stands up and pulls Sarah to his chest - awkward, as always, in personal affection. Admitting anything that can be used against him is a struggle for the man. Still, his hands settle over Sarah's and keep them warm, even as the blood inside them chills. "I don't blame you," Cid says. "You didn't make the call. Your only mistake was to have faith in him, to come when he called. You were loyal, and you paid the price. I'm sorry that happened to you."

His chin sets on her head, and he stares past her. Cid's skin is clammy, as he considers the future in front of him.

"Just - no more. No more people on the altar of his arrogance. Whatever Adamant does from this point on, let him bear the costs alone. No one else needs to pay for him ever again."

Unsaid, is Jenna's name.

And not forgotten, but willed away, is Protagonist's.

"We can make a better stand here. Let's make the best of it," Cid says.

 

[CurtailedAmbrosia]

The pause is too long, and Sarah shatters. He doesn't like it when she cries, she knows it-but she thinks about her sister and her friends and her family and she despairs.

There's no comfort in his arms. Emptiness and sorrow are all she feels as he speaks of things he knew nothing about, as he paints a horrific disaster and the costly price paid by so many as Elias' personal failing. They hadn't known. And had they known, she's not sure they could have managed it. Did Cid think lives were lost for nothing? Did he think the sacrifices made did not help to win the hell that was that battle? He himself was there, he -saved her life-, and that in turn had allowed her to finish the battle once and for all with Adamant's help.

Didn't he know, remember what her friend had looked like, blinding light hurtling itself at the unthinkable? Elias had died in that battle. He had -died-, and neither he nor anyone else could have expected his return.

Cid had no idea what it was to be him. What good was strength and God like powers when those that you loved perished around you? When all was ash while you remained?

But she cannot articulate any of that to Cid, and she cannot find the love for him he deserved as he frets about the safety of their Wards, their kids in a world that had sent its heroes to die and then turned on what remained.

All she can do is cry and nod against his chest so he would stop talking, so he would leave her alone to her numbness and her isolation.

So that she wouldn't have to feel so ashamed for not loving her husband.

 

[CurtailedAmbrosia]

Atlantis

Lana paced out in the hall of the King's quarters, trying to amp herself up. She was her own damned person, she could go where she damned well wanted. If she wanted to venture to the surface that was her business.

Right? Right.

And then her brother came around the corner, nearly colliding with her. Both of them froze, a moment of silence before he lowered his hand, a ghost of a smile flickering across his lips. "I...was trying to decide if you would say anything or not, before going."

"I told you the last time."

"I wasn't King the last time."

"You're right. You were still just my brother, then." Lana said sardonically, watching the immediate conflict in his face, his eyes. That had hurt him. It made her feel a little guilty-they hadn't really argued since they were kids, and here she was hoping for...what? That he'd be an asshole, make it easy to leave?

Instead, he made a pained face and turned away from her. Moved back into his chambers.

"We fought so hard for this peacetime." He threw over his shoulder, looking through the various bottles on his shelf, colorful, scavenged relics from their days exploring near various coastlines together.

"Yeah, I know." Lana agreed, adjusting the capsule's rope over her shoulder.

"So how can you turn away from your own people for the second time?"

Her turn to ignore the bait. She didn't...she didn't want to argue after all. She wouldn't take the easy way out. They were better than that. "Elias is my people, too. And I think he needs my help."

"If he's in such dire need, bring him here. We'll take care of him."

The offer was kind, unprecedented. His resistance to the bigotry of their elders. She briefly tried to imagine Elias in their midst-it was on one hand amusing and on the other a terrible, terrible idea.

"He needs help up there Laurent. What's more he's got this kid under his wing, she's using Laura's name, her costume, her powers-it sounds like she needs help too...and Laura's not around to look after her. I am."

"After everything that's happened..."

"It all happened to him, too."

"I need you here."

"No, you don't." Lana shook her head, closing the distance to take his shoulder, make him look at her. "You're the King. A king who has been training his entire life for this role, this responsibility. Look at all you've accomplished since you've taken the throne. You -don't- need me in the political side wing, half an outcast, a second born without a war to fight. I might as well be a land dweller."

He frowned at her, ear fins flattened. "No one thinks that, Lana." He interrupted quietly. "Not I. Not them. Our people love you."

"But your advisers think I'm a liability."

He didn't deny that. "...maybe if you considered a suitor..."

She leveled him with a look. "That still wouldn't help Elias."

"...alright. Alright-but let's...let's give it legitimacy. An official capacity. It doesn't have to be like before."

"Yeah, I'm a little old to be a runaway."

"...you wanted to bridge the gap between our peoples, before. Perhaps an ambassador isn't the worst of ideas...c'mon. Let's figure out what the hell to say so the old bastards can't make this something it isn't."

"Deal."

 

[CurtailedAmbrosia]

The Coulee

Two days time as promised, Marie sent Adamant and Velocity on another mission, this one also about data collection. In working out the mechanics of the teleportation device she’d traced the parts to a factory in Bangladesh, and in addition to mountains of paperwork and useful data for her to sort and compile they’d found shipping manifests to a local enough location. They hit it next, essentially removing a source of lethal gadgets and weapons of war, a stockpile turned into the authorities-for all the good it would do.

And, of course, a small collection of examples for Marie to tear apart, too.

For her part, Marie was looking for the source of what she was mentally calling the ‘Interloper’. Several hero personal computers had been scrubbed of data, their security measures somehow no obstacle. It was maddening, piecing together the various bits of the interloper’s interference.

But always as she worked, she was careful to hide her own tracks. Whatever was out there, she doubted it could trace her back-but something was playing her game, and hell if she’d lead it back into her lair and risk what she had on the wires.

Worst case, the most sensitive, volatile data was offline completely. They’d have to physically come for it.

Over her dead body.

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

This was the place.

A woman in a long coat, scarf, hat AND sunglasses approached the dwelling, memories flooding in of firelight conversations and wiped, exhausted camaraderie after a mission. Memories of her friends...her people.

She loosens the scarf and removes the glasses, uncovering a face that was human enough and yet utterly alien. Dark blue skin with the feel of softened snake scales and luminous yellow eyes with slit pupils. She had fanned fins on either side of her head in the place of ears near the canal, and no nose-though the face seemed to somewhat suggest one, like a mask over a human face. She was also very tall, six feet at least.

She loosened the jacket, a black turtleneck and green fatigues beneath it. She’d left everything else in the hotel room she’d rented. She was trying to be as low key as possible until she knew the situation. Until she was sure she was welcome.

...she would be welcome here, though, she was certain.

Lifting her right, partially webbed hand, Lana knocked on the door, her heart in her beating fast in her chest. And she waited.

 

[Obuzeti]

The Coulee's door swings wide, and Elias backs out, apron on, Fleetwood Mac blasting somewhere in the background as he raises an eyebrow out the open door - never having needed to check before opening it. The apron is bright green with about four dozen dogs scattered across the front, and his bare feet squeak off the warm wooden floor as he steps right past the mantle and swoops Lana up in a hug that swamps her in knitted puppies. No matter their size, Elias picks everyone up in his hugs.

"Lana," he murmurs, and his cheek rubs once against hers, regardless of the scales and fins that could draw blood from a normal human's skin, and don't so much as dent his.

The big man sets her down and steps back to glance her over, and then smiles as he steps aside. "Come on in, hon. You've always been welcome."

The interior of the Coulee is warm, lit by firelight as always that dances along the warm heartwood of the walls. Completely unashamed, Elias rocks and bobs his way back over to the oven, where he's watching a set of blueberry muffins on their way to completion. "I haven't done your cuisine in years, but I can probably do sashimi easy enough," he says. "How's life under the sea? Is it better where it's wetter?"