Athwart History (Closed)

[Obuzeti]

"Thank you," Theron says, grave, and returns to watching the visitors. Unlike the vast majority of those present, he doesn't even really glance at Vivienne. He watches mainly Elias and Lana, eyes flicking between him and the two royals as he thinks. As he's introduced, he inclines his head and performs a ritualistic salute: his fist comes up and slaps hard over his chest, on the thick scales there. They ring out in almost a musical tone. Otherwise, he doesn't respond, allowing Laurent and Elias the floor.

Elias rolls his shoulders as he steps forward. Even among the Atlanteans, he's still huge, though it's his breadth that stands out more than his height, now; his broad shoulders mean he takes up almost twice as much room as their graceful forms. "El Cid, one of my former comrades, married my sister and usurped her authority," he answers for the group, with an ironic little smile. "The government claims that our existence is only legal when under his authority, now. I respect neither their allegations nor Cid's capacity for fair rule. I come seeking alternatives that will not fashion what few of us are left into muzzled weapons, released only to be loosed at a target."

"The situation is worsened by Paul Marrane, a foe who commands all living flesh he touches. He hunts all of my family, and someone has been covering his scent. His victims went unmourned and unreported, and while he is not invincible, the form he comes against us in is never his own. The tragedies he has inflicted on my kin has been used as justification for our imprisonment."

Theron stirs, and glances at Lana. "A thorough review of the capabilities of this hunter seems advisable, my King."

Vivienne holds position as the official negotiations begin, though she glances over and catches the eye of one particular Atlantean, dressed in some shimmering fabric, opalescent and reflective, who stares blatantly and obviously. She winks at him as an aside, and his eye nictates back.

 

[CurtailedAmbrosia]

”...muzzled weapons, released only to be loosed at a target.”

Jenna’s eyes return to Elias’ back and it hits her, it really hits her, that that was exactly what some members of congress, what their government wanted for them. Use. And when not useful-imprisonment. El Cid had said the powers that be lumped them all in together-and they were. They really were, except unlike Paul-they could be controlled, under him and in the prison that was the Tower. The skin at the nape of her neck prickles. She didn’t ask for powers. Most of them hadn’t. Ellie didn’t even want to fight the Good Fight, and they’d lock her up just for existing.

They fought as best they could. The old heroes had torn themselves to shreds saving the world. And the reward was...this. It’s racism and it’s scary. Being painted as ‘other’. Being outlawed.

She’s going to be an outlaw, a criminal if she didn’t dutifully report in to the Tower and join all the rest of the up and coming generation of heroes. Her heart picks up and time slows down despite her standing perfectly still, hands clasped neatly in front of her.

She can’t just go hide in the Tower. Not even as a temporary thing-it wouldn’t do anyone any good. She’s not a student, she’s a full blown-she’s Velocity, and they were going to make Velocity, they were going to make ADAMANT a criminal.

Jenna thinks about Ashley’s death. What she had said. Paul had been trying to take control. He had to have been.

”I am my own Ashaver, and I’d rather the pyre!”

And burned to death. God. God, that had been awful, and it’s all she can think about, even at the bottom of the ocean, one of the first and only visitors, ever, to this miraculous city beneath the sea-but the words. The words, and the last burst of power, and then the backlash…

Backdraft...Ashley had chosen to resist. She had chosen death.

And here she was stressing over the ramifications of civil disobedience.

Jenna looks at the frozen room of frozen people and the three allies with her, the back of the best person she has ever known. No, she’s not going to be muzzled, either. She’s going to fight the Good Fight, just like Laura had, just like the heroes always had. She doesn’t work for Uncle Sam-she works for the little guy. She may not have been elected, but she sure wasn’t hurting for approval.

Jenna exhales, settled-and things don’t slowly pick back up-they suddenly are, her perception and her senses back to normal. The brief bit of-whatever the hell happens when her brain does that-had happened in the space of a single syllable-she hadn’t even missed anything Elias said.

~*~

Laurent had heard much of this already-it had fueled his decision, not that he had entirely needed much convincing in the first place. But here Elias presented it in terms the gathered statesmen could easily understand. He told the truth, and it’s a grim truth- and frankly, a vile one.

But Lana had known of the treachery of world governments and resurfaced anyway-for this man. For these people. Her people.

His people.

“I have heard tales of your deeds, Adamant. I know of the losses suffered by your people during the great battle with an unknown beast of the sea. I have been told of the surface kingdoms neglect of its saviors. How this…Cid assumed control from better, rightful leaders.”

Laurent’s expression darkens.

“He has led your people to subjugation, and now you are left to choose between a prison or a monster, and must fence alone with a shadowed enemy that helps him. This is what you speak of.”

Laurent appeared to weigh this all out, listening to what a few council members were murmuring or saying to him directly. Of course, he had already made his decision, declared it in private. But here now was the declaration. Here now was history.

Laurent rose to stand, and all side chatter stopped.

“In times past you assisted my kin, and it is my kin that claims you now and brings you before me. I have sent her as my emissary, and where she goes the full might of Atlantis goes with her-I now extend this to you. If the world of men will not claim you with pride, I, Laurent of Atlantis, King under the Sea-shall do so in their stead. You are of my people, now.”

He could have struck a gong and it would not have rang as sharply as this declaration. He descended from the raised platform, smiled and made a sweeping gesture to the room at large, to the city around them.

“The persecuted metahumans shall also be allowed sanctuary here. I too will claim them as my people, as my sister has done. No monster, no man, and no usurpers shall lay claim to them here for as long as Atlantis stands. We will not fail you, Elias. We will not fail your people in these dire, trying times.”

 

[Obuzeti]

Elias bows his head a fraction as Laurent speaks - not enough to break eye contact, but acknowledgement all the same. It is these fractions of degree that matter most in public ceremony. "Thank you," Elias declares in return. "It is more benevolence than the surface has ever shown us. In light of that . . ."

Elias makes a careful show of reaching into the inside of his bomber jacket, where a hidden pocket rests over his ribcage. He pulls out a sealed black case without crease or opening - the thing has just been sealed completely shut - and pulls it open with a crack of plastic. Seated within is a fiery orange and red gem that glimmers with internal light, casting hot shadows on the walls and the floor. At close range, it feels like standing next to a fireplace, radiating heat. The gem itself is difficult to see precisely, heat shimmers distorting the air around it.

It's a piece of Rahab's eye. The beast is near a decade dead, body dismantled and dissembled, and yet this otherwise ordinary-seeming chunk of crystal still violates physical laws, endlessly producing light and heat, pumping it out into the universe, indifferent to entropy and the passage of time.

"This is my fragment, and my trophy, of Rahab," Elias says. There's something in his voice that's indescribable. Not regret, and not pain. His words are heavy but his face is neutral. Like a man reading a death toll of some foreign country, aware, intellectually, of the nature of tragedy. "The eye burns bright forever, so far as I can tell. It seems right to me that the first hand to reach out to us should share in what victory we found."

He extends it to Lana, to carry to Laurent or to hold onto it for him, either one. Either way, he bears no fondness for the bauble. Spent too long in the Coulee, staring at it, in the long hours of the night, pondering if it had been worth it to leads his friends into battle, into screaming, burning death, just to be left alone and die alone to some horrid monster in the years following.

No, he's come to understand. If he had known what the cost would be, and the price the nations would extract from his bloodied kin after the fact, he would have led them all somewhere else, to some promising paradise, and left the world to burn.

Adamant would sacrifice of himself forever to save the world, but the price had been almost everyone he loved instead, and there is no forgiveness in him for that.

 

[CurtailedAmbrosia]

Laurent slows up in his approach and glances to Lana, but she looks as curious as he is. And then the man cracks open the black plastic-and her eyes widen on the contents as firelight-unheard of in Atlantis, unknown-spills out, and a heat reminiscent of edging nearer to sea vents.

He doesn’t know what the object is, but the way Lana’s mind seems to travel far, far away from here, to another place and another time-and how Elias’ voice changes...

It almost seems as if she doesn’t want to touch it, and once she accepts the offering, she just stares down at it for a long, long moment. He briefly doesn’t know what to say, and it seemed neither did she-those luminescent yellow eyes rose to his face and he can see that she was clearly at a loss for words. Mutely, she held the box out to him.

Laurent forgot the airs he was putting on, the performance and their audience as so small and yet so costly a thing was given over to him. He too looks at it a moment before closing the casing over it again, silent as his eyes traveled from the case to the hero who had presented it.

It’s not his sister’s urging that drives the new and relatively young King. It’s not historic significance, or the possible fringe benefits, the learning that would come from introducing new and far flung citizens. Now, here, presented with this small sliver of a near unstoppable beast, a beast his Father and his people had done nothing to route, that Lana had had to face alone with her chosen people rather than those that had born her, the betrayal that had followed, the silent tragedy in years proceeding...

Something that had already been kindled in him rises, and he reaches out to clasp the broader man’s shoulder, sensing all that was upon him even if he could not and did not fully understand the scope of such unfathomable loss. “Of all the things I have done or will ever do,” He says quietly and without fanfare. “This will always be the greatest of them.”

Compassion.

He stepped back and looked to his sister, then turned his head to the council.

“Our guests and kin must be welcomed.” He states, the plastic case in his left hand, trusted to none but himself. “Let us welcome them.”

 

[Obuzeti]

It's several hours later when Elias returns to Samson and Marie's hidden bunker, the rest of his people settled in peaceably into their new quarters. Peter and Ellie are on schedule to be moved in tomorrow, Tweedledee's given assent that he'll keep around the area - there's not really a way to give him a room - and Laurent's officially brought them in as members of Atlantis. Ironically enough, Elias muses, that makes Atlantis his home country, as he'd never been awarded or given citizenship in the United States, with no birth certificate to prove naturalization and no interest in taking exams.

But it's good. It's a rare kind of good, not just the kind they make for themselves, but a gift, and it's left him a little off-balance. Marie's good at setting his feet on the ground, though.

"Well, we have a standing invitation to Atlantis, now, and citizenship there," Elias says as the elevator opens down to the bunker level. "I honestly don't know how it could have gone any better. Cid tripping off a dock and drowning face-down, I guess?"

Jasper mews at him, but doesn't leave her perch from Marie's desk, where her array of monitors and modems is set up, perched on the eight inches of desk that normally is occupied by a protein shake or something equally healthy yet disgusting. Every time Marie reaches for her mouse, Jasper prods her with a cold nose or a paw.

Meanwhile, the big man himself sweeps by, grocery bags in arms, and heads for the utility stove he'd set up here weeks ago, setting out a range of vegetables and pouring a pot of water (the pot still bearing the glue of the price sticker) to boil. "Teleporters work fine too, round-trip. If we can get one of those hard-set 'porters to everyone in the League, we'd have our own medivac system in place, presuming we - you know. Keep doing the hero business."

Elias laughs. It's a little uncomfortable, and he focuses on slicing the potatoes and onions instead with a chef knife he pulls out of the bag. "Anything new on your end?"

 

[CurtailedAmbrosia]

There was a noise that suspiciously sounded like a huff of amusement-but that impassive mask was in place by the time he was rounding the console. As focused as she is on her tablet though-endlessly working on something-there’s a bit of warmth in the dark eyes behind that mask.

“Maybe a puddle.”

Atlantis certainly was a boon. In a fell swoop they had outmanuevered the government’s attempt to place them under El Cid’s control and secured sanctuary from the likes of Paul Marrane and other scum, at least for now. A measure of control in...less than ideal circumstances.

Outside of the strategic advantages, it was also some actual good news for Elias. His outburst and disgust the other day, realizing the ugly inherent in those in power-hn. It’s a factor she’s trying her best to ignore, certainly doesn’t act on, not feelings, like hell she’d take someone’s feelings into consideration, place value on them-

And yet here she is, cat sitting an increasingly comfortable pet of his-kept trying to bat at the mouse or catch her fingers, was sitting in the way-or maybe not in the way at all-and letting him bumble around in her lair at will, make whatever noise he wanted to at her. She had honestly expected Atlantis to keep him occupied for a while-but here he was again, cooking something on that damnable stove he’d put up and wanting to tell her all about it.

She can’t even find it in her to bother feigning annoyance anymore-not even with the cat. Just keeps at what she’s doing, a nod to what he says about the teleporters, listening to the sound of his voice against the backdrop of whirring servers, the quiet spinning fans of his air conditioner, and the electric static of the monitors.

“...presuming we - you know. Keep doing the hero business."

Marie’s head snaps up just as he laughs, settled nerves pulling taut and her eyes cutting a sharp glance to his back. Her attention was now entirely on him, and even Jasper moves to sit neatly instead, her tail curling around her paws, the tip flicking lazily.

There’s an attempt to change the subject, to shift to small talk she won’t provide and relevant updates she will-but Marie stays zeroed in on the last statement.

Presuming they kept doing the hero business?

The disgust and anger, the feelings of betrayal-they don't come. Even with the eight years of seemingly endless, solitary, silent work and infrastructure maintenance, night after night after night for heroes that hadn’t seemed to be coming-even with that behind her, the anger doesn’t come.

Because if anyone deserved a retirement, it was this apparently amnesiac or maybe even otherworldly created being, this man who had shown up out of nowhere and proceeded to raise havoc, clear the streets-and then join other bright torches of light and lead the charge for good, rise to become the best of heroes-this man who had lost everything he had ever known of family or home, real home, not an empty place to keep oneself in. This man who had died and been resurrected only to be turned away. This man with no escape or promise of death.

But the War. This War. Her War. The one he had come back to. Late, but came back.

It doesn’t quite process, she can’t quite make sense of what he had just said, or her lack of judgment or condemnation. Doesn’t understand how she didn’t feel angry, even after her eyes flicked to the scrolling data on so many monitors, her mind flying through targets and missions and investigation threads, Paul Marrane and the other threats still lingering, on the hundreds of things she was working on, organizing, processing. Eight years. Eight years of this, of untold deaths in the shadows, of impotency in what remained and the self dousing of what few flames remained-and she doesn’t feel angry.

After what seemed like a long time but hadn't been at all really, Marie's eyes slid back to his shoulders. The sharply intense gaze refocuses on him, dark eyes taking in every minute detail-while revealing nothing, utterly opaque. There's a coiled stillness to her that normally bodes terrible things, but she’s not angry. She doesn’t know what the emotion is that took the place of it, but she’s not angry.

It felt more dangerous than anger. Not for Elias.

But for her.

She spoke, slow and flat, no growl and no inflection, just a low, simple question devoid of anything.

"...do you want out, Halwell?"

 

[Obuzeti]

If Elias notices Marie's absolute focus, he doesn't give sign of it - doesn't turn around or even hesitate in his answer, just keeps peeling and adding vegetables to the soup. "No," he says easily. "I want my family - you, and Jenna, and Lana, and what dregs I have left of the people I've loved - to not be violently fucking murdered. If it were just me, alone, I'd never stop, because what could stop me? I'd be the same as I was at the start of all this."

He gestures, vaguely, to the west, towards where the Coulee and the Tower both stand. "Gaining Sarah and - Grace - and all the rest of you, made me more. It made me a better person. Taking care of everyone, finding merit and value and worthiness in their welfare, took precedence. And then I fucked that up and most of them died."

Elias shrugs and smiles. The curve of his lips has nothing to do with kindness, and he picks up one carrot and starts to look at it like some museum treasure, the other hand thrown casually over the edge of the stove.

"So I can't fuck this up. Not anymore. I cannot. They - Lana, Jenna, Vivienne, Ellie and Peter and Tweedledee and especially fucking you, Marie, you most of all - deserve better than what you've received. I know exactly how much the world will take from us if we have nothing and no one to hold us back and give us common ground. It'll take everything, and then we - not just the League, but all of us special and weird and willing to take up the fight - will go extinct and unmourned, except for me. I will be the last, again. And I will be alone."

At the last, Elias's hands fist. There's a faint shriek of metal as the edge of the stove crumples in his grip where he'd been resting an arm on it. The carrot explodes in his grip, popping crisply. He is still for a breath, and then he sighs and wipes up the orange bits, and absently straightens out the metal with a thumb like a crumpled sticker.

"That's not an option," he says eventually. "And I know, because I'm not a fucking idiot, and I'm not Cid - what a fucking difference, right? - that I'm not going to be able to stop you or Jenna from going out here, and trying to help people. I'm not such a coward as to say that whatever happens to you all is on your heads. I'll be at your back, and your vanguard at the fore when you need a shield. But - "

Elias struggles for words, something he only ever does with Marie; looking not for the right words, the ones that will win the argument and convince whoever he's talking to, but his words, the ones that hold true in his heart. The way to knowing what he, himself, wants is not one he treads often.

"I want more than just a list of lives saved, and the promise of another tomorrow, when I come home each day," he says, after a pause. "I want more than the Cause, or the Purpose. I want to have things and to have people I'm unwilling to sacrifice. I want to love someone wholly and without shame, to make their lives better not for some goal ill-defined but for the sole sake of their happiness and welfare. I want to leave my legacy not in a history book, but in a life well-lived."

Elias shakes his head, the unwilling half-smile quirking his mouth again. "I want more, in the simplest sense. I don't want out, Marie, but I'm not going to pretend that it's enough. I'm tired of just being a puppet for an ideal. I can be more than just Adamant. I can be Elias Halwell, too."

 

[CurtailedAmbrosia]

It’d been stupid to go. She had stated as such from the start. Not enough data, not enough information. But civilians were dying and if there was anything to be done-it had to at least be attempted. That wasn’t on Elias, however. He hadn’t fucked anything up. Most would have gone without him, and then they might not have managed to do it. And they HAD done it. It had cost nearly everything, but they had saved the world, this filthy cesspit they saw so much good in. The same one that then promptly turned its back on them.

Was it worth it? So many brilliantly shining beacons blown out, their leadership splintered, the scattered nature and quiet eliminations that had occurred afterwards-so very many sacrifices. Worth it? Marie didn’t think so, and the once again surprisingly practical Adamant did not seem to think so either. Certainly not Grace. Certainly not Sam. Not his family. Not their friends.

And they had been her friends. The Heroes United Front (minus, perhaps, Gideon), Art, Machinist, yet more other, better people than she would ever be. She wasn’t any sort of friend to any of them, not really-but they had been to her. The only semblance of anything good in Protagonist’s...in her life. The only reason she’d remained any sort of sane.

Elias has taken a lot on his shoulders. Taken on, and bore the weight of over the years. There’s something to be said here, but Marie’s not sure what it is. The wheels spin but don’t quite catch, she’s useless for this-and that suddenly is not enough of an excuse, not anymore. But she doesn’t know what to say. There might not BE anything to say.

He continues to speak and she continues to listen, but-Marie no longer knew what ‘enough’ was, or any sort of anything not related to the War. But he speaks, and she listens, and she realizes with a start that she wants that ‘enough’ for him. Because doesn’t Elias deserve more than a purpose? Doesn’t he deserve-she doesn’t know. Peace? Fulfillment?

And it’s hard. Because what people have wanted hasn’t meant jack shit to her since she embarked on this life. Who cared? If it wasn’t useful, if it wasn’t conducive to fighting the War, to hurting the scum-it was to be left by the roadside. Emotions, comforts, people-everything. It’s all that had mattered. All she would acknowledge as mattering anyway, at the time.

There’s something to say here, and she doesn’t know what it is. She sets the tablet aside for once, abandons her workstation for something unnecessary and yet somehow vitally important.

She doesn’t understand his selfless selfishness. The light he possessed, the light any of them possessed. In both lives she had only known that burning anger, that drive, and then, at times, first at the end and then at the beginning-the edge of good that radiated from people far, far, far better of a cut than she was. She was not a hero, had never been a hero…but she knew what they looked like. Oh, there had been strategy and self service there- but there’d also been...she doesn’t know what. It’s the only time she’s worth anything really, acting on the bidding of saints. All she does otherwise is tear down. Fight. It’s all she knows how to do. But with those saints, with heroes...she manages to be more than the ever frothing rage she carried inside, had always carried inside.

The rage that doesn’t let her stop. The anger that powers her, insulates her from so much uncomprehendingly awful bullshit. It eclipses hurt, it banishes fear, it utterly destroys opposition, walls, containment-it dominates near everything that did and probably ever will do, terrible and ugly and destructive.

Rage that had no use when trying to build or buoy anything. There...there is something to say here. She doesn’t know what it is, or even why it’s so important that she figures it out. Deserved better? The others, yes. Him, yes. But her? He has no idea just how terrible she really is, and frankly-she doesn’t want him to. Jasper has trailed alongside and after her. It only just now occurs to her that she’s not cat sitting at all- Elias had gotten her a fucking cat.

She watches him chop vegetables. The social gears finally catch, rusted and never quite functional in the first place, and she asks Elias Halwell another question.

“What...are you making?”

 

[Obuzeti]

Elias shrugs and passes Marie some zucchini and a knife without pausing. "It's vegetable soup, nothing super spiffy. I'd do some creamy French dish, but honestly rich food like that is so far outside your normal diet that you'd probably have trouble digesting it. This is the happy medium: healthy, filling, minimal frills."

He adds olive oil to the pot, and then brings out a range of spices in paper wrappings: thyme, paisley, and bay leaves, portioning out fractions of them and then carefully rewrapping them in their packaging. With the stock mostly done, he sets to preparing the celery and onions, another knife flicking out and chopping through them expertly.

"I'm still trying to figure out how to cook Atlantean food," he confides, with a wry glance. "The problem is, so far as I can gather, that they don't. They just - eat things raw, with their wicked shark teeth. Which I'm sure they're perfectly fine with, but if Vivienne can introduce them to the concept of two-dimensional imagery, I sure as hell can convince somebody that the food in their mouths is worth some attention too. Very robust digestive systems, but because they never do additives, some nutritional deficits are clear. If I can get with Theron and their military boss, dunno who that is, I can definitely sell them on that just for the physical fitness benefits."

Elias smirks, oddly amused. "If it comes off, it'll be the first peer-reviewed study of metahuman nutrition. Probably the first peer-reviewed metahuman anything. Always confused me on why no one saw the potential and tried to exploit it. Would have been an interesting difference from the mook of the week."

He's talking, filling the air with noise, but he also leans back so that his side brushes against Marie's arm, side to side with her wheelchair as he squeezes aside for space at the stove and side-table he's cleared; and maybe that's the communication he finds most vital.

 

[CurtailedAmbrosia]

Marie hesitates, brows slightly furrowing before she accepts both objects, the zucchini in her right and the knife in her left. She holds the blade not like cutlery and more like a weapon, thumb to one flat side and her fingers curled loosely around the other. Without thinking about it her index finger slips around to the same side of the handle her thumb was on-and she absently flipped the knife upside down, open position to chambered. She dubiously eyes the vegetable while her index finger rejoins the other three on the opposite side of the handle to her thumb-and then the counter.

“You act like I was starving myself,” She grumbles, a glance to what she’s done with the knife-and a shake of her head before she holds it like a normal, not constantly primed for violence person. She sets the vegetable down and...starts to chop it up. It’s such a mundane task and she half can’t believe she’s engaging in it-but here she is.

“Instead of maximally efficient.” She finishes, a little twitchy to be in close proximity and doing something so...casual-with another person. She has no idea what she’s doing. Or even really why, entirely.

While not very practiced in chopping-obvious in the almost awkward pausing touch of the blade edge to the vegetable before slicing down-each slice was almost exactly the same three millimeters in width, perfectly symmetrical. She stacked the slices up in short towers and cut them into squares-and then quartered those squares, sliding the curved edges to the side.

It was meticulous to the point of absurdity, and Marie seemed to realize this-and then not quite know what to do about it, hesitating a moment at the results before just setting the knife down. She stays where she is, though, letting him talk about feeding the Atlanteans, now.

“Lana’s mentor was a merwoman named Ianthe Astraea, and it sounded like she was the head of their military-but that’s inferred intel from nearly a decade ago. Could have changed.” And nothing told to her directly, just while she was in the vicinity-and trying to focus, dammit.

"If it comes off, it'll be the first peer-reviewed study of metahuman nutrition. Probably the first peer-reviewed metahuman anything. Always confused me on why no one saw the potential and tried to exploit it. Would have been an interesting difference from the mook of the week."

He’s serious. Which makes sense-he had gone off and gotten a degree in it, it’s a vocation at this point as much as a hobby. Marie sits there a moment, watching him cook from memory rather than a recipe book and without exact measurements of any kind.

At least it’s a useful one, keeping people in fighting form...and a way to coddle people. His thinking about how to interact with his new people was a good sign-and not a threat.

For a moment, a very real moment that she’s still parsing through-it had suddenly seemed like one.

Marie shakes it off. “I’m sure if you better the logistics of feeding their population, that’d ingratiate yourself in a hurry.”

Marie shifts slightly in her chair and then speaks out of nowhere. “Suck at cooking. Burn eggs.” Impatient, no one to learn from. “Even when I was active on the streets-subsisted on toast, cereal, whey protein. Occasional beer.” Never anything stronger than that.

Of course, this is noise, and she’s not very good with noise-but she ventures another, slower word further. “Slept in that ratty recliner, usually while watching westerns.” Those damned things. Henry Fonda, Gary Cooper, Gregory Peck, John Wayne…and of course Clayton Moore. The Lone Ranger...Marie hasn’t thought about any of that in a long time, not even on returning to that spartan apartment, the weathered box set dropped into her lap.

It occurs to her she had just described the entirety of her prior personal life when she hadn’t been in costume, and that life sounded rather...pathetic. And if that was pathetic, what then was this?

What she deserves, of course. And here he is mucking it up. Marie glances at Jasper, but the feline remains seated neatly on the floor, too well behaved to jump up on food prep spaces.

 

[Obuzeti]

"I think you subsisted on protein shakes for multiple years, and unless you had a professional create the mix, that you are by now severely lacking in a number of digestive enzymes that your body has stopped creating because it apparently doesn't need them," Elias corrects without slowing, as he adds some of the lighter vegetables to the soup stock. The smells start to blend together as the water boils - it smells, a hot, powerful aroma that makes the stomach growl. "The same way that if you don't drink milk regularly, lactase transcription breaks down and you become lactose intolerant. Your gut flora is probably starvation level. If I fed you a steak, you'd just get sick because you couldn't digest it. So soup it is."

He pauses for a moment as Marie speaks. "Well, it's more like I'm curious how you feed a whole city at the bottom of the ocean. What the fuck do you even farm? Do they just commercial fish all their needs away?"

Elias shrugs, throwing up his hands, and then quietens back down as Marie abruptly just - talks, forcing something out that isn't business. It is visually, viscerally uncomfortable to witness, and pride burns in his chest for it. Where Marie is concerned, this is harder than taking a bullet or letting someone hate her. It's new and painful, stretching synapses she hasn't used in a decade.

"If I ever see you drinking beer in the morning I will throw every can you own out of this bunker," he says, perfectly mild. "I'll come over and make breakfast every damn morning for you before I let you do that."

Elias ponders the concept of westerns. To be frank, his knowledge of cinema and television in general is sorely lacking. "I never really watched much of anything. The kids keep a movie selection at the Coulee but I never got into it of my own accord. 'Stranger walks into town and blows the bad guys away' . . . eh, was never that simple. Can't find it believable."

He offers a wry smile in apology. "Also, guns. I just never - got the mystique. Personal bias, I guess."

It's not like they offered him any threat.

 

[CurtailedAmbrosia]

Marie vaguely knew about vegetarians losing the ability to digest meat and a bit about things such as rabbit starvation mostly due to survivalist training, but these were things she hadn’t factored in or bothered educating herself on when she crawled down here to die. Maintenance had been a near afterthought, and doing it well hadn’t been much of a consideration.

That said, she really didn’t like throwing up-and was suddenly wary of the soup, but decided to trust he knew what he was doing. There’s a lot of flavor to it though if the smell was any indication-and she’s dismayed to realize the foodstuff was in any way appealing to her.

Her eyes stray back towards the monitors, a bit of uncertainty in the not quite so impassive mask. She’s on edge but not quite defensive. Guilt is creeping in and she knows anger would follow on the heels of it-and as soothing as that would be, she needs to fucking try here.

Thankfully he says something else, and Marie’s eyes flick back in the middle of his apparent solution to alcoholism and the absurdity of anyone, anywhere, coming into her lair and doing anything to her stuff-but more importantly-

“I don’t do ‘dependence’.” Marie states-and there’s a level of judgment there that was different than her disgust and hatred of the ‘scum’, an utter lack of allowance for those that did. Even spoken as impassively as it was, the judgment seemed specific and intrinsically personal.

No, she does not.

Also, he has better things to do than make...she doesn’t know, pancakes in this pit every fucking day. Jenna would starve to death otherwise, she’s decently sure.

Back to the beer-

“Nothing like that here, and even if there was-my piss poor ‘hospitality’ does have limits, you start throwing my shit out.” It’s not a threat-lacks the growl or the opaque screen to her eyes. It almost sounds like...a joke. It’s hard to tell because of the flat way it’s delivered-but that was how someone like Marie would package humor.



“Not those kind.” She sees the wry smile and hears the bit about guns, almost shuts up-and then doesn’t. “Hell, most of what I watched wasn’t even that dramatic-Lone Ranger never kills anyone, not in 221 episodes and two movies.”

This woman, all five feet and four inches of baseline human fucking being, had donned a cloak and terrorized the worst the shithole city of Samson had had to throw at her, fueled by an unending wrath and thirst for vengeance that never showed the slightest sign of being sated-and by God did she extract plenty of vengeance, dealing out punishments magnitudes worse than most, maybe all actions taken by other heroes in other cities-dead would have been a preferable state for some of her victims at the end of some encounters.

Protagonist was a nasty customer made worse through skills gained through the League, and most vicious of all on her home turf. The drug cartels and the pimps and the pushers had to compete with her for territory, and she was ruthless in maintaining what was hers. She routinely reduced untouchably powerful, brutal, lethal men to babbling sobbing maws of broken teeth and had driven out most of her metahuman rogue gallery even before they all ‘reformed’ shortly before Rahab.

And THEN, after a night of being so goddamned brutal- apparently went home and watched what she would have no doubt described as a sickeningly wholesome, unrealistic, half a century old television show preaching mercy, tolerance, and respecting your fellow man.

“...couldn’t always sleep.” She dismisses ineffectively, half wishing she hadn’t brought it up. It was eight years ago and a single, luxurious carryover from...before everything-but Protagonist had not supposed to have been anyone at all under that cloak.

Hn.

“Is it done?” She gave a nod to the pot, sharply aware of the time slipping by again, the things needing doing. She’s also vaguely uncomfortable, out of sorts. Maybe even embarrassed. That doesn't make any sense because it's something she's firmly denied to herself for nearly a decade, but...

This was why she preferred to keep her mouth shut.

 

[Obuzeti]

"I didn't expect you to," Elias replies easily. "I'm just saying, in the same way that if I came in and said, 'maybe Cid has the right idea', I'd hope you have a brick in a sock somewhere around you could bean me in the back of the head with."

No bet on there being nastier stuff, too.

He takes the minced vegetables from Marie, peers at them, and grants her an approving nod before dumping them in the pot. The stock starts to bubble as it comes to heat, and Elias cracks his knuckles and then leans back in his chair as he judges it with a long glance, then adds a pinch of salt from an actual salt shaker he has in an inside pocket, as opposed to, like, a grappling hook or a batarang.

" . . . I actually don't know what you're talking about," Elias admits with a grimace. "All I know is like, Clint Eastwood, and that's because Machinist would make everybody watch his movies when his biker buddies came 'round for a rally. I mean, he's got a good squint and all, but - really?"

Elias coughs a laugh and shakes his head, smiling.

"I guess if it ran that long it was a big deal?"

There's an embarrassed edge to his smile as he pulls the vegetable pot off the oven and sets it aside to cool, blowing on it to speed the process. He reads everything he can to sound informed, but pop culture is one of those things he's never quite caught up on, no matter the year. The inside jokes and references always slip by him.

 

[CurtailedAmbrosia]

Knowing El Cid was a stupid fuck was one of the safer things they had in common, and thus the absurdity of the joke actually makes the corner of her mouth twitch.

She goes a little still when he moves to add the minced vegetables-but he doesn’t shoot her so much as an odd look, just gives an approving nod before adding them to the soup. The vague feeling of...relief might have irritated her under other circumstances.

He has a salt shaker in his coat. Adamant admittedly didn’t have much use for gadgets, but salt? Marie on the one hand approves of his preparedness, and on the other she wouldn’t have believed it if she hadn’t seen it.

" . . . I actually don't know what you're talking about.”

That’s a relief, too. Someone else she might’ve internally questioned that-but...the second day he could remember…

She still hasn’t inquired further about that, and wouldn’t, not any time soon. For entirely different reasons, she also didn’t plan on elaborating about the Lone Ranger, or his creed, or her encyclopedic knowledge on every single one of those damned episodes.

“He invited me to one of those more than once.” Marie states with a slight shake of her head. “Never went.” Unsurprising, Protagonist never participated in seemingly anything aside from business.

She’s seen one of those Clint Eastwood films-hadn’t liked it. She would have just shot him in the back, all told. Machinist having liked westerns though...she hadn’t known that. He used to try and get her to talk more the few times they had worked on something together-such as the jet she’d totaled-given up, and then taken to talking at her instead. At least his noise, unlike most, contained interesting facts and stories about various projects.

"I guess if it ran that long it was a big deal?"

“Or profitable.” Marie states in an evasive, verbal shrug-and then watches him pull the soup off of the oven.

The brief bit of quiet was more comfortable than it should have been, even with the amount of work not being done behind her. Maybe...maybe that was okay. Humoring him this one time, just for a few minutes. She technically had a surplus, given she’d wrecked her punching bag and no longer had a time slot for it reserved-but really...well, she doesn’t know the really.

He deserved this much.

“...smells good.” She offers awkwardly. It’s also exactly why she shouldn’t have it, but she wouldn’t be so cruel to reject it at this late a stage.

 

[Obuzeti]

"Well, it's not like he ever invited me either, he would just show up at the Coulee with a bunch of pals and ask if I had anything cooking," Elias says, dry. "I only had to hear the 'barefoot housewife' joke twice, though. I picked up his biggest buddy and threw him over the house into the backyard pond."

He shakes his head, annoyed. "What is it about black leather that produces idiots, anyways?"

Rather than ponder the rhetorical question, he spoons out a bowl of the soup and hands it to Marie carefully. "Try that, tell me how it tastes. It's hot, so sip it, don't dunk your head in the bowl or anything. I say that because Jenna has had some terrible accidents involved in speed eating things."

Elias makes himself a bowl as well, and tastes it gingerly; he grants it a hum of satisfaction and sets the bowl aside for the moment, as he cleans up all the bits of vegetable left over and washes the knife off. "On another note, how's the work with Peter going? I haven't really heard from him or Ellie since the last big brouhaha, and they actually lived with that girl. They seem alright?"

Peter, to Elias, is completely opaque, and he has to live with that, because the kid's hit the maximum number of people he's willing to trust for the moment. Lifelong habits of suspicion are keeping him at arms-length. Best to leave him alone for the moment.

Ellie, on the other hand, he hasn't seen much at all. He's starting to worry.

 

[CurtailedAmbrosia]

He’s asking her about…feelings. How other people are feeling.

Marie shifts the bowl a little, frowning at the various vegetables that swirl in the broth. She tries to come up with something...someone else would say, but comes up empty. There’s no falsifying competency here, but she can at least deliver what she does know.

“Bordet doesn’t seem distracted, remains competent.” She hadn’t mentioned the footage to him-she doesn’t care how intelligent he is, she’s not turning over video of a girl burning to death-but she had given him the dry, factual run down of what had happened.

Call for aid, League response plus Sarah, Catalyzation of Reynolds, destruction of Marrane’s form, Sarah’s breakdown after Cid informed her of the two casualties-and then the transcription of the asshole’s conversation with Jenna and Tectonic back in the Tower, afterwards. He’d given a summary of what Cid had said before locking down. And then they didn’t talk about it further, because there were things to do.

“No idea on Sanderson. Paige is probably a better resource.” She doesn’t pay much attention to the tag along friend of Jenna’s. She seemed to be another Vivienne, quieter and less annoying, but largely inconsequential. Given her druthers though-she’d rather the kid be in Atlantis than in the Tower, even if she wasn’t much of a resource. At some point they’re probably going to crack that thing and offer wholesale immigration. At some point.

Marie finally took a sip of the soup. It was hot and entirely too flavorful-actual food rather than just substance, and it steams her face a little and spread warmth through her chest on the way down. She lowered the bowl again, another swirl of vegetables. And what the hell-took another mouthful to follow the first.

It's good, but she doesn’t think she’s going to be able to eat the entire bowl. It’s too filling. She also doesn’t want to throw up. If she did it’d only serve her right, but she still hopes she doesn't.

Marie watches two perfectly symmetrical squares of zucchini float by and just...exists a minute, unforgotten, bothered with. She doesn't even have the scrubs on today, but he had sat down next to her anyway.

“...thank you.” A brief moment before she indicated the bowl, despite it not entirely being what she meant. "For the soup." She adds awkwardly.

 

[Obuzeti]

"Welcome," he says, with a simple smile, and otherwise doesn't mention it, simply spooning the rest of the soup into a tupperware container that he seals tightly. "It'll keep for about three days. Try some on occasion. Soup is one of the best probiotics out there, and you need to do some building."

Elias nods, satisfied. "Good. They don't respond well to me - I'd bet money it's just generalized anxiety towards authority figures - so any pressure from me is just going to retard progress. You don't need me to tell you to keep working with Peter, anyways. Keep him busy - it'll convince him he's useful, because he is. That'll let him ease into place with the rest of us, as much as such a thing is possible."

His eyes are distant as he mulls over the soup. "On a related note, I'm going to spend a few days getting everyone settled in and then I'm going in search of Malachite; I'd appreciate it if you could put out feelers for him. Whatever that big goddamn whale thing that Marrane pulled out is, it moves through the earth, and that's his wheelhouse. Hopefully he'll agree to tear it to pieces for us if it comes back out to play. Don't think he'll join us under the sea though. Reclusive guy."

Malachite, one of the last remaining heroes, whose specialty is the transition of various heavy elements into each other. In practice, this means he moves through rock and stone like anyone else would a silk curtain, and in a fight he was actually too lethal to be of much use in the hero business, spraying free radicals and radiation everywhere from horrifically lethal decaying isotopes. He'd disappeared after the Rahab fight, from what Elias had heard, and simply had not been heard from since, but the man could experience time at the geologic scale; he might have just gone to sleep. He'd mostly worked with the Dakota Combine, too, and they'd been annihilated to the man besides Malachite himself.

Elias's brow wrinkles. "His communicator was still active, anyways. Now that we've got a safe fallback point, I really should get my ass moving, grab the remainder still out there. They're all tough bastards, but Marrane is a breed apart."

 

[CurtailedAmbrosia]

He intends to leave the soup, because of course.

The vigilante’s eyes flick to it and she frowns, but doesn’t otherwise attempt to dissuade him from it. She doesn’t deserve that soup. She doesn’t deserve this soup, and she suddenly regrets eating any of it, even if she had done it just so he’d feel like he was doing something, here.

The soup was good, but it was so much more than they had, out in their mass grave beneath the magma.

Marie lowers the bowl to hover just above her ravaged lap before she banishes the thought by way of refocusing on business. She hadn’t considered Bordet’s feelings any more than she had anyone else's, but if Elias thought the mentoring was helping him in some way, good. Mostly, she’s building up the bench-the boy would no doubt surpass even her skills, someday. Technology would only advance further, after all. He had intelligence and a thirst for truth, was intrinsically offended with cloistering lies-and carried none of her temper or her ugly.

He’d be one of the good ones, she’s sure of it. All she had to do was hand him tools for his toolbox and watch what he did with them.

”Don't think he'll join us under the sea though. Reclusive guy."

He’s not the only one.

“I’ve got a few contractors lined up to bury seismic sensing equipment in key locations in the meantime-no behemoth is a good behemoth.” She takes a final sip of the soup but doesn’t want the heat of the bowl against her scars-and sets it on the stove top so she can wheel back towards her console and her tablet.

“Malachite’s a good idea. If we locate infestations, he’d no doubt be able to tank them solo.” It’s probably why he’s still alive, all told. Marie pulls up communicator metadata and swipes to throw a map up on a quad of monitors. “We’ve got an agent synthesized to kill the mold sample you found-factory in India is producing it for us.” Marie’s eyes narrow a fraction. “Marrane’s focused on parahumans, but if that changes we’ll want to get the formula to the North and South American governments. Perhaps before-better to be taking preventative measures, if we can get the idiots to take it seriously.” Something to put Lana on, possibly.

But there’s a lot to do, had been even before this new task. She’s gearing up to dive right back into it, and his mind is on what he needs to do too-and not on quitting.

Marie glances back at him before her eyes flick back to the map instead, leaving whatever...whatever she had felt earlier alone.

Marie considers the map a moment before pulling the keyboard a little closer-and searching for minor geological fault lines. “I’ll scrape together what I can, provide a report to help fuel for your search. Him, Montgolier, Amarok.”

They already know where Prospero is, and where he intended to stay. ...and she knows where Gideon is.

Hn.

 

[Obuzeti]

Elias nods and takes a breath. "Good. That's good. God, I don't want that thing popping up with no forewarning again. I have no clue what it's doing, but - it ain't doing it again, I'll say that much."

He pauses and hesitates, then for once bulls through. "Look - I appreciate all of this. You letting me in here to harass you and cook you food and shit. I don't just come here to make you do shit, that's just like - an automatic function. I do that for everyone. I come here because you make sense, and I don't have to worry about being a fucking hero for you because you know it's bullshit."

He shrugs helplessly, a strained grimace on his face. "I love all of them," he says, "But I have to give them hope and a direction and lead them, and I'm not comfortable doing that. Not really. If Sarah had been with us I'd have handed the keys to her without blinking and gone on punching shit without a blink, but we didn't and we don't. So here I am talking to kings and throwing down with Cid and entire countries because if I back up, all of us as a whole lose something."

"And I wish I could know what I'm doing but I just run on gut instinct. I try to give everyone else what I want. And when that's not enough, I shove 'em off on you or - wherever Ellie's gone, I hope she's alright - and hope y'all have enough of what I don't to make it okay. It's all fucking guesswork. I don't know, and I'm not enough of a shitlord like Cid to pretend that I do."

Elias scrubs a hand through his hair. "So what I'm saying is I want to be here, and I'm not just showing up beside I think you'd fall over and die if I didn't buy you soap, soup, and socks on a weekly basis, because you get it. You know how close the edge is. And it's nice to not have to bullshit all the time like I know better or that I'm some equal to a half-immortal fish-king from under the sea when I'm not even legally old enough to drink, and the sum total of my education is being really good at feeding people."

He'd never even taken the GED. Never gone to a proper school. All of his learning is just voracious reading.

"So," Elias says, and glances straight on at Marie, an awkward smile crooking his mouth in a way possibly no one else alive has seen, "I guess - thanks for putting up with me being less than the big guy."

He shrugs, picks up the pot, and turns to wash it out.

 

[CurtailedAmbrosia]

"Good. That's good. God, I don't want that thing popping up with no forewarning again. I have no clue what it's doing, but - it ain't doing it again, I'll say that much."

Marie nods, trying not to think about it too much beyond logistics, strategy. She doesn’t want to think about the girl again. She doesn’t want to think about burning to death.

She doesn’t want to think about Sam.

So she doesn’t. No, she’s looking at this map, and mulling over Peter’s kit (for the hundredth time), and-

And then he starts talking.

Marie goes still mid tap, dark eyes blinking on the screen as his voice resonates in his chest, words clear even over the hum of servers and his air conditioner. And it’s a lot. He’s done this before, sort of-talked about Grace, talked about things she really had no right to hear or be a part of, down in this pit with her scars and her sins and her ugly.

And now it’s about all that’s bearing down on him, all of it. Did he want out? Was this just a miserable plodding march for him, the strain too much and maybe even cruel? People didn’t talk to her, not to her about feelings, not for any span of time-she’d barely tolerated Sam’s noise, and even then-not always.

Marie doesn’t know what to do, and the uncertainty-strange, on her face-filtered through in small ways, the slight press of her lips and a furrow to her brow, an uncomfortable shift in her seat. She slowly withdraws from the tablet she’d been curled around, sits up straight-there’s only half a back to her wheelchair, nothing to lean back against, no comfort-and casts a glance to the old black and white cctv monitor, its rotating images of Samson’s alleyways and the stretches of road in places that used to be Protagonist’s territory.

She doesn’t know how to do anything else. Doesn’t know how else to be-why was he doing this? Why does he talk? Doesn’t he know she’s no good at it?

She turns her head to look at him as he finishes about his incredulity at shaking hands with Laurent, King of Atlantis, another reference to the short period of his existence-she has her own theories about that-and then finally levels with a thanks and that crooked smile he has, sometimes, here and there.

Then he picks up the pot and goes to wash it out.

Marie stares at him, then the tablet and the monitors and all she’s set to do-and then at him again. He said he comes here because she makes sense? SHE makes sense? THIS place is a respite from all of-all of what he had just said?

“I don’t...I’m not any good with...” She shakes her head and glances back, an empty gesture at the monitors. “Just this. Just the War.” Her gaze gravitates back to the cycling images of Samson and remains there, hand falling almost helplessly to a wheel. And for all the useless, pathetic good it did, she’s sorry.

She’s sorry. Again.

Marie's self loathing and anger flush back in, turn the small bit of soup in her gut into rising bile. She swallows back on it, draws strength in the more familiar steel but no comfort, a visible twitch of her left hand.

“You deserve better than this place beneath my cesspit.” She states, flat and with a hint of a growl. “And much better people to lean on than me.”

So had Sam.

Her legs tense and the pain goes from barely tolerable to agonizing, a harsh, torturing reminder of failure in so many things, in the worst of things-the scars distorting themselves grotesquely, but she doesn’t so much as glance down-just watches the cycling images of her cesspit.

Jasper meows, and the vigilante’s eyes drop from the cycling images of said cesspit to that curled inquiring tail-and Marie exhales, relaxes back to dull rather than jagged pain. This damned thing.

“...Adamant’s useful.” She finally says, a half turn on a wheel so she was facing him again. She’s struggling a little, trying. “But Elias is...my friend. I should try...to be one back.”

Her eyes flick to a spot on the floor, another flat, pessimistic delivery of humor. “Keep expectations low. Bound to be disappointed, otherwise.”

 

[Obuzeti]

"That's what I mean," Elias says, faintly amused. He's not laughing, just sharing the joke. "We're square pegs for round holes. None of this is what we're meant, or want, to do. We just do it anyway."

The pot is polished clean. He sets it back and glances over at Marie with a weary roll of a shoulder. "That's what I want. Not a therapist. Just someone that gets - the absurdity of what we're doing, and isn't going to crumble into a mire of self-pity when I point out, historically, how stupid we're being."

He turns and takes two long strides, settling down in front of Marie's wheelchair on one knee, comfortable as ever at taking the conversation to her level. Sometimes he wonders if she gets neck cramps, looking up at him so much while he chatters. "If it means anything to you - you've certainly aggravated me sometimes, but I've never felt disappointed by anything you've done. You're too earnest for that."

Elias rises again, offers her another smile, then turns to leave, waving a hand over his shoulder. "Try to remember the last time someone called you that."

 

[CurtailedAmbrosia]

“Just someone that gets - the absurdity of what we're doing, and isn't going to crumble into a mire of self-pity when I point out, historically, how stupid we're being."

Marie’s eyes widen a fraction on the final three words, still fixed to that spot on the floor. Yes, Elias was infinitely more practical than she had ever guessed before. Anhinga had been close but-

He takes two long strides back in her direction and drops back into her line of sight, eye contact re-established by dint of proximity and eye levels.

"If it means anything to you - you've certainly aggravated me sometimes, but I've never felt disappointed by anything you've done. You're too earnest for that."

Marie blinks, and the perhaps expected ‘It doesn’t.’ doesn’t reach her throat, let alone her lips-and neither did anything else, because she’s not sure how to respond to that, at all.

So she doesn’t, just stares at him all the way to the elevator. From the last little smile to the final hand wave over his shoulder-watches him until the elevator doors close on him. She briefly doesn’t know what to think about that statement, at all.

Jasper butted her head against her upper arm before stepping daintily onto the armrest of the wheelchair, peering at the closed elevator doors same as she was. It’s a long moment before she finally shakes her head and almost nervously casts her remaining companion a glance.

She picked up her hand and ran her fingers over Jasper’s back before giving the opposite wheel a half turn, the cat leaping down to trot off somewhere and Marie retrieving the tablet because-well, she doesn’t have time for this. Bad enough what time she’s spent on it already, she doesn’t need the distraction of...

Earnest? He thought she was earnest? Marie doesn’t know if that was him projecting again or rose colored glasses or-she’s used to people being either afraid of or exasperated with her, usually a mixture of both and usually with a lot of mutterings about her being ‘crazy’, and here he was calling her earnest.

She doesn’t have to try to remember the ‘last time’ anyone had said that-no one had, ever.

Hn.

~*~

Laurent was lounging-no better term for it than that. The casual king sat with his back to the clear crystal wall that encapsulated this private space of theirs, fingers tracing over the red stitching that held together a large yellow ‘softball’ the little human Jenna had given him.

There were bases, and humans hit the ball and then tried to beat it to each base, he thinks is what she said. There were people trying to throw it back, and if it touched you, you were ‘out’. A strange past time, for certain.

The older of the two royal siblings was back in that loose fitting, tightly woven robe again, open this time and with some kind of shark skin pants on his lower half, scaled, featureless chest bare. The same braided red hair and the same adornments of pearl, metal, coral and stone beads throughout.

Lana was wearing a full bodied suit of a similar material, viciously going after an older, ashier colored Atlantean woman with a spear. Ianthe Astraea was just as tall as Lana if a bit stockier, with long yellow hair pulled through an open faced helm of a greenish abalone looking material, and red luminescent eyes. She had the vestigial fins on her forearms and calves, the ends of which were tapered with longer spokes.

She always seemed to carry herself with a calm, balanced certainty, a confidence that spoke of competence during her many years of leadership on and off the field. Unlike her young protege she remained even keeled, just a small amused smile playing around her lips in the face of Lana's more boisterous banter.

 

[Obuzeti]

"I'm glad Lana's got someone decent to spar with again," Elias says admiringly, watching her go at it with the other lady she'd brought along. Evidently it's her mentor, though the only difference in age he can tell is that she's slightly paler. They're jabbing at each other with spears and bantering. "It's really just me or Jenna at the Coulee, and that's frustrating for completely opposite reasons. Jenna's impossible to hit, and it takes a pretty solid hit to slow me down."

He's back down to sweats, with a selection of - what else? - the local fish spread out before him, an almanac open as he tries to figure out what fish provides what nutrients, and thus derive the basis of the Atlantean diet. They know what things to eat and how often, but the chemical basis for doing so has never interested anyone. If he's going to introduce any kind of culinary innovation, chief among his concerns is making sure it doesn't cause malnutrition in the process.

"You ever go at it with them?" Elias asks the king, frowning as he checks over a broad salmon. This far down, the scales darken as their reflective properties are no longer as useful. They're also slimmer and faster, to reflect the dearth of prey and the speed of the ones remaining, primarily different forms of cephalopod. "I mean, Lana says her super soaker powers run in the family, so you can do the same thing, right? Or is it tied up in making sure we don't all drown horribly in our sleep?"

Vivienne's run off somewhere with her new boyfriend, a fishdude that apparently is the sole representative of the arts down here in Atlantis: a composer. Does whalesongs and shit. She'd looked downright flattered when she left, taking on the young, girlish figure again, a sure sign she's looking to impress or feeling vaguely insecure.

 

[CurtailedAmbrosia]

Elias’ interest in the local, native and farmed fish seemed to interest Laurent, and he watched with great curiosity as the other man glanced between the specimens and his book.

“Me, no.” Laurent reflected with amusement, his luminescent green eyes considering the two women for a moment. “Lana is the Second Born, and Ianthe a true Polemistís.” His eyes shifted back, and he smiles, nodding towards his fish.

“Either one of them could roundly best me in a fight. You would find me flat on my back over there, dreaming of your array of fish.”

There’s laughter rather than insecurity, an easy companionable feeling to him without his regal trappings. It seemed to be that when he shed the ceremonial armor, he also shed his kingship-and was just a man, one of many.

Only Laurent, again.

“Ah. The royal affinity.” Laurent inclined his head. “Yes, I can do this. Were we to practice that against the other, I believe we would be more evenly matched. I might stand a chance.”

“Might. She is like our father in many ways, good ways-strong, competitive, finds a thrill in the challenge of besting her opponent. Simply put, Lana wants it more than I do.”

Laurent considered the softball’s stitches once more, the idea of a game, a sport where some athletics, but not all, were tested.

“We fought a war for three years. Our army against hive minded creatures from beyond the Trench. Lana and I, it was our first, and Father, his last. But we fought, and we found a hard won victory, and I then had the pleasure to return to my books and my studies. My strength had been tested-and found to be sufficient.”

He gave the ball a testing toss upwards of only a few inches. “It is a strange thing, to be powerful. For all of Ianthe’s strength and skill, her experience and years-I would best her. Before your arrival, I could have bested any Atlantean in existence, save for my sister. And even we pale in comparison to Father. He could call not only to the water, but to the molten rock and flowing sand. That is a much rarer trait even in the royal family-there have only been three instances of it ever recorded.”

“But you, Elias-you and the others, your gifts are so varied. Unique to the individual even when similar, but more often very, very dissimilar. How is this? Humans are more diverse than our race, but where do such anomalies derive if not bloodlines?”

 

[Obuzeti]

Elias shrugs. "What it comes to for me is feeling responsible for everyone else, because I'm the only one that can't lose," he says. "I get nervous anytime I see anyone else fight - because shit can happen. So I spend almost all of my free time taking care of them, because who knows how long they have to be happy? For a certainty, less than I do."

He rolls with the subject easily, though, without even a blink. "We don't know, exactly, where metahumans come from - the surface variety, I mean," Elias says, settling into a lecture with ease. "There are a few that don't fit the pattern, but the vast majority occur within a roughly sixteen hundred mile diameter focused in the American Midwest, with less appearing as you go farther out. Powers appear to be conceptual: you get either a singular or a host of abilities related to a theme or concept. Vivienne, for example, has the portfolio of artistic representation, which means anything that is a graphical representation of something else, she can control or create. Jenna's a speedster, and not only moves faster but perceives and reacts at the same speeds. There's a kid you'll meet soon - Peter - whose power makes people forget he exists, completely fail to see him at all."

Elias shrugs. "I don't know precisely what causes them, but it's got nothing to do with genetics, and it only occurs in humans, no other sentients like dogs or dolphins. It also has something to do with psychology, I think; there's a correlation between personality and power, or one bends to suit the other. I have no way to know whether the power suits the person or the person changes to suit the power. There's no way to know without long-term studies, and there aren't enough of us to ascertain that at this point."

The big man grins at Laurent. "I think I actually might be the premiere expert on our kind these days, barring Rowan, so if you're curious, go ahead and ask. There's not really any taboo secrets of the superhero brotherhood, honestly. It's more just a really cool clubhouse with legally-questionable hobbies."