Athwart History (Closed)

[CurtailedAmbrosia]

Jenna’s losing her mind. Her teeth are grit together so hard her jaw hurts, and the only reason she wasn’t screaming uncontrollably was the stronger, instinctive fear of accidentally consuming one of these things, of being infected if that’s even how that works-she’s blind, and being hit with wings and legs and fist sized bugs on all sides, but mostly-she’s being driven back by this impossible swarm, this terrifying tool of a villain so evil she can’t wrap her head around it.

A hand larger than her shoulder catches hold and there’s the telltale warmth of power tingling over her skin and then surging through her limbs, enveloping her in borrowed strength. He draws her in and decimates the immediate area, but they’ve dropped into what looked like a hive. “I’m sorry-” She blurts out, trying to find purchase in the loose dirt and shelled out, incinerated carcasses. Something big rushes out of the dark and he shoves her aside and catches it like a footballer-crackling starlight as he’s pushed through the swarm. His face is still fleshy light instead of anything resembling Elias, and it’s the bright light that she sees before the insects cloud over it. They’re moving fast, beyond a tunnel where insects were now swarming out. Jenna windmilled her arms, still on her knees and trying to keep them from pushing her back out into anywhere.

This was insane. This was planned-he had wanted Elias to jump down that hole, he had wanted him to see those bones, he had wanted to trap him down here. On his turf and in his web, buried beneath the earth under the rotting vineyard of his last victim. Seeking to either bury him under mounds of earth and bug bodies or kill him outright, and despite what she had just seen-an exposed skull and ribcage with rapidly reforming flesh of light-she believes Paul just might do it.

He needed help. He needed Daybreak and the real Velocity, real heroes, and instead he had her- a tasty side snack scrabbling to find purchase in the loose dirt and dead bug filled pit they’d been dropped in, a girl who’d just gotten half his body melted and tackled by a hydra looking bug days after he’d told the entire world he thought she was worth Laura’s legacy.

And maybe this wasn’t even really the body snatcher’s lair! Maybe Elias would best all these nasty bugs, claw his way back out-and find Paul still out there somewhere, mocking him. She’s not going to live to see that if she stays here.

And maybe he wouldn’t either, if the heavy vibrations in the ground meant anything, untold creatures zeroing in on them both from endless tunnels and caverns far beneath the earth.

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

There's a staticy sound of sparking electricity in the mire, the river of flowing insects bulging outward as something displaced the fliers within it-before Jenna burst through with a resounding -crack-, little dancing bits of electricity bouncing in her wake. Elias was ripping a venomous legged centipede apart, a thing possessed.

Jenna went to work on the extracurriculars.

All it took was a blink and it was as if an angry wraith had been there-ants had legs broken off and driven through their eyes, clouds of fist sized incoming insects were caught in miniature cyclones, and a trench of squealing insects had been dug before the mouth of an offending tunnel.

Jenna grabs hold of another leg and drives her elbow through it just as she had with the antenna, snapping it clean through. She can’t do this forever. Even in her perception of a slow moving, sometimes even frozen battlefield, it looked to be an endless gauntlet. She catches glimpses of green acidic spittle and fanged mouths as big as cars here and there, appearing from tunnels and side walls she didn’t know were there. The thrumming is less pronounced, less a rhythm and more a sporadic indication of doom.

And somewhere in the dark, a voice is chanting;

”feast.

feast.

feast.”

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

The eardrum shattering displacement of air sounds like a gunshot in the cool night air of Samson’s harbor district, a tangle of halved giant insects and still twitching legs at his feet and Jenna-filthied, shaking, and seemingly in a daze- staggering away from him before, at the edge of the concrete pier-she moves to her hands and knees and throws up. He wouldn’t even have seen her come up to him, the preceding moment before it-but here they were. And there his teleporter was in her right hand, the teardrop shaped device visible only for a moment before Jenna crushed it into pieces against the concrete in a blurred movement of her arm.

She looked at it a moment as if the action had taken place without her really meaning to do so, paled even further-and threw up again.

 

[Obuzeti]

Elias shudders halfway through another swing, as his breath whooshes through his chest like a bellows. His regenerating eyes haven't quite connected back yet, but the humid air of the trapped hive tunnel has vanished, along with the endless seething and clicking of the insects. He takes several quick breaths, and turns towards where he can hear someone vomiting.

His body trembles. Light burns and seethes under his skin, his power overclocked and maximized until Adamant is more energy than flesh, hot enough to pop a Geiger counter off. He looses a little bit of the celestial rush, and chokes as the sensations of flesh return for a split second before he manages to draw on his mantle again. The damage is too severe.

Instead, he awkwardly staggers over to where Jenna is, blindly shuffling over, and then kneels beside her, guided by the reflected heat of his own aura and her body. Then he loops an arm around her side, and with the other hand, still burnt and deformed by the acid of Ahasver's hex, draws back her hair so she won't get puke in it.

Elias opens his mouth, and wheezes as his raw throat aches violently.

So he just hangs on, and is glad that his wounds haven't healed enough to give him his tear ducts back yet.

 

[CurtailedAmbrosia]

Once her stomach emptied Jenna was wracked with dry heaves, the anxiety having finally reached its peak, but now the adrenaline had subsided enough for it to take her down several pegs. She’s such a little thing, the shakes practically rattle her entire frame. She finally sits back, poor Elias sitting there with her. She’s still trembling, her dark eyes staring out at the daytime smog across the harbor instead of looking at him, having mostly already seen in the dark, but now, here-.

She looks. It’s bad. Elias looks like a monster. He said he’d heal from anything eventually, but it couldn’t feel good, and it didn’t look good, and she’s going to cry.

“I’m s-sorry.” That’s not enough, and she knows it. He was one of the best people she knew, and she’d gotten him burned up. And if he had been someone else, he’d be dead. “I-I just didn’t want you to be alone d-down there-” She’s not sure what she should have done differently, but she figures somewhere she’s fucked up.

She’s not Laura. She had tried, but she’s not the caliber these veterans are, or were.

And here he is helping her puke. God. And she hates bugs. She hates them, and she just killed so many things she doesn’t know what to think, things trying to kill the heck out of both of them. She’s a gross mess-skirt and tights torn, shirt buttons missing, everything stained and gross and evidence of awful, burns she can’t entirely feel due to the warmth still coating her bones and insides, soothing it away.

She thought maybe she would be in some serious trouble, using the teleporter like that, making the decision to retreat for them both. Who the heck did she think she was, anyway? But she hadn’t cared. She doesn’t care. She was pretty sure one or both of them would have died down there.

And Elias wasn’t Cid.

“A-are you g-going to be okay?” She should get him inside. Get him somewhere to heal, get him anything. Anything to help him, he looks terrible, like a brilliantly lit corpse.

 

[Obuzeti]

She asks him how he's doing. Still vomiting, on her knees, trembling. Granted, Elias doesn't look too hot right now, but it's still a hell of a thing. Her father was right to be worried. In lieu of a response he can't really give, he reaches down and squeezes Jenna's shoulder. Then she takes hold of his hand and slowly leads him inside, dodging the lip of the loading dock - his ears come back in about thirty seconds later, reestablishing his sense of balance, though at first all they do is make him trip over his own feet.

Still, they make it to the elevator, and Elias mostly manages to slide down against the wall besides where Jenna is having a panic attack still.

He can't imagine Marie being fond of this visit.

Then his throat finishes stringing back together, and he coughs wetly - red, raw gunk clogging the airway - and manages to say, "You did fine. You lived."

Bar all else, he'll take that. "Thank God, you lived. I was terrified he was going to get you too as soon as he showed up."

The big man is still residually trembling in fear and anger, from the now bone-deep knowledge that this fucking freak is hunting his family, is good at it, and had anyone else walked into that trap they would have been dead in an instant, except for maybe Sarah with her temper up.

He gathers Jenna back into the reach of his arms and squeezes her, absolutely unafraid of his own clinginess in the aftermath of such a brutal encounter, ignoring the vomit and the bug guts and who gives a fuck what else. Marie can just hose them off or something. It's what she probably does in lieu of a shower anyways, knowing her.

 

[CurtailedAmbrosia]

He was alive too, and they were both still alive, a-and they’d warn Marie, and anyone else, and-and…

But it’s too late for Maestro, and years of frozen waiting for Rowan, and who knew what other heroes had fallen in the years since Rahab.

It’s so awful.

Elias draws her in tight and Jenna hugs him tighter. “I j-just don’t understand.” Rush’s sadism had deeply disturbed her, made her question her disbelief in evil. But Paul’s cruelty, his single minded determination and foul magic-he might just be the devil. After the insectoid hell they’d just escaped from, Jenna would believe it.

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

The doors slide open to reveal Marie on the other side, her face looking even more gaunt than before, the circles darker beneath her eyes. The vigilante only slept in six 45 minute increments spaced throughout the day anymore-and she had skipped the last scheduled session, still agitated by the bit of...whatever after Elias’ communication. She had told herself she didn’t have time for it-when really, she just hadn’t wanted to risk dreaming again.

Despite this she’s as hyper aware as ever, the woman taking in their appearances in a piercing, almost predatory scan. It confirms what she’s already seen on the cameras-but it’s worse in person, now that Elias isn’t blinding the monitors.

He’s straight up unrecognizable-the face is filling in but it’s all shimmering starlight, his broad chest something alien and other as it continues to reform into familiar body shape and structure. She’s never seen him this bad, and certainly not in person. There’s a rushing in her ears, a blinding sense of rage that even the tensed agony of her legs isn’t drowning out, pulling her back from. What the fuck had happened?! It’s been five hours maybe since the comm call.

“What.” It’s all she manages to ground out, hackles raised and her instincts placing her firmly in homicidal territory. Was it dead? She hopes it’s fucking dead.

She hates not knowing things. She hates that she wasn’t wherever whatever had happened happened. She has to know so she could plot horrific vengeance against the perpetrators and their families, so she could prevent it from ever happening again. Her mouth tastes like copper and malice is rolling off of her in palpable waves, violence visible in the twitch of her dominant hand.

The girl doesn’t look like anyone Marie’s ever seen before either. Her usually sleek black hair was a mess, her face lacking color. What might’ve once been a light colored button up shirt was now stained a mixture of green, yellow, and black, half torn open to reveal her bronze skin was just about as filthy beneath that. Disturbing burn marks were visible on what she can see of her chest above the black tanktop she was wearing. They look chemical in nature, and oddly-also electrical. A cut on her thigh that looks shallow enough, but there’s always the risk of infection. It’s a cut she can see only due to the conservative skirt possessing a rip more befitting a prostitute than the kid’s wholesome image. Her tights were torn and tattered-everything she’s wearing barely counting as clothing anymore.

Without even thinking about it she shifts her full attention to the ‘weaker’ of the two interrogation suspects, impatient and seemingly on the verge of going nuclear.

“What. Happened.”

Her blood boils-and then it occurs to her, somewhat out of nowhere, that she’s scaring her. The kid looked fucking stricken. Which any other time or interrogation would be exactly what she wants, but-fuck, look at them both. The mirage’s mouth opens-then closes again, her expression crumbling. She thinks the kid is going to cry-might have already been crying. Marie is ill equipped to deal with that on any level.

“No. Never...nevermind. Don’t talk.” Marie twitches as her voice becomes a little less hellish and more of a low growl, tearing her eyes away as she wheels backwards to at least let them off the elevator. It’s difficult to accurately read her expression, right now, but at least she was making a conscious effort to not be terrifying.

She tries to think through the violent impulses and on what she can actually do, right now. She has no idea what, if anything, she can do for Elias’ state. But the kid...she has a shower stall. Clothing Elias had dropped off. Medical supplies.

Yes, these are solvable problems in the interim.

How to articulate any of that when she’s wound this tight is beyond her, though. “You need to clean up.” That didn’t sound very nice. Well, she’s not fucking nice-but Christ, the mirage...no...Jenna, the mirage’s name was Jenna-looks bad.

The nastily scarred woman turns to roll off the center walkway, moving past her cot(the futon padding pulled off and abandoned beside it in a heap) and along the eastern wall just beyond the curve of the monitors and mainframe console. The cavernous space lights up as she moves, revealing Protagonist’s lair was larger than Elias might’ve previously thought. There’s an entire gymnastic training area over there, a few weight machines, a series of boxing dummies. Two different twilight blue motorcycles lean on their kickstands beyond that, and some sort of mechanical looking armor that had Machinist’s handiwork written all over it. Odd shapes with tarps over them, the only recognizable one being a boat. The back of the cavern had a large double door, a few drones parked near it. Aside from a single heavy punching bag hanging on it’s stand and the wheel tracks leading to it, it’s all coated in a thick layer of dust save one of the drones.

Marie ignores all of it, leading Jenna to a small alcove with a lightweight, sliding metal door on casters. It’s pretty utilitarian on the other side. A shower stall, a sink, a commode. Black straps hang from the metal rafters. She pulls a sportier looking wheelchair out of the space-some sort of three wheeled, racing design with a hammock like sling instead of a seat.

She doesn’t say anything. The situation was foreign enough. Just points at the cupboard beneath the sink where she’d ended up putting the scrubs after he’d taken the cardboard box away. Jenna was close enough to her size, just less curved, and the scrubs have drawstrings, anyway.

“...get cleaned up.” She sees Jenna nod meekly out of the corner of her eye, but doesn’t look directly at her again. She didn’t much care for her carefree attitude, but she definitely doesn’t like this dazed staring one.

She closed the door behind her, wheels back towards the main space.

Marie pauses, taking a moment to look at him, slightly less agitated, no longer super nova angry-and more…

“You look like hell.”

 

[Obuzeti]

Despite everything, Elias's ravaged lips move into a smile - even in the worst situations, Marie continues to thrash, to fight. It's a small thing, but it helps to know that these people he knows fight so hard, despite their . . . fragility.

His smile falters, and instead he shifts into a cross-legged seat and focuses on directing his internal light to repair the most necessary functions first - the surface damage on his limbs and chest can be left for later. Adamant's face is red and raw but otherwise unharmed by the time Marie makes it back to him after taking care of Jenna. The only distinct reminder is the pieces of chitin and internal goop that have become lodged in his short hair, which he brushes loose with a grimace and a swipe of his hand.

"Yeah," Elias rasps. "That's a good summary."

He pauses; collects his thoughts. Sets the facts in order, so he can present them to Marie. So she can make use of them. God knows he doesn't know what to do with it right now.

"Jew's been picking off heroes," he says, numb. "Hit Rowan awhile ago, forced him into his - cocoon-state thing. Like how we found him in the first place. Went to Maestro; he's dead. Paul left bits of his skeleton in a floor tunnel. I went in after them and he popped an ambush, with about a billion fucking giant insects. If it had been anyone with me that didn't have a straight physical power, they would have died; they came through the walls and the ceiling and Marrane was jumping bodies constantly to throw the nastiest spells I've ever seen."

Elias feels a chill thinking about it. Only Jenna's speed had kept her alive, in that swarming hive. If it had been anyone else, he would have had to leave two bodies behind. His skin feels cold and clammy, and his throat is dry.

Adamant shakes it off. Glances over at Marie. "He's stronger. I don't know that anyone except me and Sarah could fight him off solo. We can't send Jenna home. He was targeting her specifically and he'd thresh her and her whole family in a heartbeat."

 

[CurtailedAmbrosia]

"How long ago did Maestro fall? Any real indication?" Marie presses once he continued, seemed to strengthen himself. She needs information. It’d clearly been long enough that Paul was able to prepare what sounded like a very lethal trap. She hates magic in general, and the Wandering Jew was just foul. There was scum, and then there was evil fucking wizardry, something she was much less versed in-and didn’t particularly want to be, either. Routing Paul would require two nukes-one of which was not at her disposal-and even then, all it would be doing is staving him off. Fucking body snatcher.

And he’d been dug in, down there.

Marie turns her head to frown in the direction of the metal door, weighing Jenna’s survival. She can very faintly hear running water over the hum of servers. She has no idea if the water heater still worked-she only took cold showers these days.

Hunting heroes...

Wheeling backwards she moved to the lit panel of equipment. It’s a reach, but her fingers just manage to catch at the bottom of a familiar gunmetal staff, tipping it from it's slot and back into her other hand. It feels cool beneath her fingertips, against her palm.

She returns, wheels onto the elevator with him and then presses the 'up' button.

"I think it went from a crime of opportunity, maybe a way to fuck with you to a full fledged vendetta when she defied him.” Which wasn’t any goddamned good. Going from baseline scum to sadistic metahuman fucks to Paul Marrane-Laura had years to adapt, develop her techniques against other powered beings. Jenna had had six months. Fuck.

Marie is still wired for combat and the malice is still there, but her mind is working, putting things in order. Weighing the far reaching implications and possible machinations at work.

She’s also thinking defense. She has maybe three gravity grenades, but otherwise-no. That was ridiculous. Evac and self destruct the place, it comes to it-she’s not stupid enough to fuck with Merrane, or to allow a second encounter for the duo.

“Question is...is he doing this for his own fucked up reasons, or being directed? And just how many have fallen?” Her dark eyes glitter with anger. “We lock down. Assess. I can trace the message you sent out, see who opened it and who didn’t.” At a brush Marie felt the lockdown was absolutely necessary. But really, deep down enough she wasn’t able to process it, refused to acknowledge it-she just doesn’t want either one of them out of her sight.

 

[Obuzeti]

Elias says nothing for a long moment.

"Weeds growing up through the floor," he says, voice oddly inflected and flat. "Mold settled in walls. Bird nests in destroyed cabinets. Estimate eighteen months at minimum, possibly upwards of thirty-six. Bone dessication was complete and denuded naturally rather than picked clean."

The elevator starts, and he rocks under the sway of motion, then glances over at Marie. The sight of her tight face makes him huff out a breath, but he nods and pushes up to a standing position and steps in line with her - wheelchair or no, at her side.

"Marrane's always been a predator of opportunity," Marrane says, analytical and cold, "And so is Caliban, but he's slicker. He probably caught on to what Jew was doing and started covering his tracks retroactively. Caliban doesn't care enough to set that kind of shit in motion, but he's always insisted that whatever operations take place are smooth and clean. Easier for him to run infowar than fight a real one, and there's no way for Marrane to change what he is."

Elias hesitates then, and says, "I think his power is - parasitism. Or something that carries those connotations. He was jumping bodies, and the insects he had infected -"

He digs into a pocket and comes out with a grayish goop that he'd dug out of the head of a nearby centipede when he'd fallen into the pit. In the center, though, is a distinctive mushroom stalk and webbed fibrous nerves, run through what had been an insectile brain before Adamant had pulled the entire inside of its head out.

" - I think he's modifying Cordyceps genii to gain control over them. Y'know, the mushroom spore that germinates in ant heads? I think that's how he does everything. I think he might actually be a spore. Or he makes them. Or something. But this was in every insect whose head I punched in, which is maybe two dozen."

Elias's mouth is twitching a little, and he finally smiles. It's a weak thing, but it's something; it's an edge that they didn't have before. An angle Marie can attack.

"If we come up with a fungicide for this stuff, how quick do you think all his little friends would lay down and die?" Elias asks.

 

[CurtailedAmbrosia]

She absorbs the details and appreciates, maybe even is impressed by the attention he’d given the scene. But...eighteen months minimum…? Something about that strikes her as off. Hn.

“Caliban.” Marie growls, hatefully intense. She despises him and how elusive he was, how little she knows. “I was looking into the retirement and quieting of the costumed scum, trying to piece him together-and then Rahab hit.” She shakes her head, eyes boring through the steel doors. “Eight years later, without the distraction of a nightlife-and I still know next to nothing.” She seethes.

Elias speculates and Marie finds it plausible-and then he produces a sample. Her bad mood freezes, eyes narrowing on the mushroom.

Holy shit.

“That…” Her lips curl into a fainter version of that expression she sometimes makes-nothing anyone would call a smile. Just darkly, maliciously pleased. “...pulls the curtain back on his shit, doesn’t it? We’ll get that into containment, pronto.” She’s already thinking what the next steps are. They have a speedster who could cover a lot of ground in a hurry, and with something like that...

The elevator stops and the doors slide open, interrupting her plotting, at least partially. Marie doesn’t move, though. Just casts a glance into the abandoned, dusty warehouse, her mouth returning to a straight line. There’s a brief expression of irritation and...mild disbelief she was really doing this, whatever ‘this’ was.

A beat. Then two. Finally, she reluctantly mutters something

“...call your cat.” She refrained from calling it mangy OR stupid, but just barely.

And back down they would go, the cat sitting prettily with them after a rub against Elias’ ankles. Marie allows for a brief shake of her head before she punches in a code of some kind and they descend, metal plates sliding over the top of them, fortifying the shaft.

She casts the cat a disdainful glance, shakes her head. She has no idea why he left it here, but she refuses to acknowledge it any further than she just had.

They were both alive. If he wants to keep a stupid cat around then fine. Jenna probably liked animals anyway.

“She’s not vicious enough.” Marie says. “...she’s not vicious at all.”

It sounds like her usual unforgiving harshness.

Almost.

 

[Obuzeti]

Elias shrugs. "Never seen hide nor hair of him myself," he says, soft. "Heard shit, seen his handiwork, but never could find him. Smooth operator, alright."

Caliban - master of the Ring, villain head honcho. Untouchable, impossible to find. A deft hand at politics and smooth enough to keep the world's craziest egomaniacs from killing each other. A lot of what's wrong with the world today can be laid at his feet.

Then he's completely distracted, and he laughs, abrupt, his eyes glimmering with humor again. "Thanks for reminding me," Elias says, sincere, and whistles a fluting note that brings the feline running. Its lustrous black fur blends in with the shadows of the factory - the only things that are visible are its eyes until it slides in the elevator and ambles up to the big man himself.

"Marie," he says, wry, "You pack all the fight you need. God forbid you have an attack pet you could set on people too. Imagine if you had a panther instead. Would you not set that on every single asshole you could?"

He strokes the cat for a moment, reflective.

"Yeah, it'll be good for Jenna though. Animal therapy," he says. "I said it already, but - thanks. I didn't think of it, and I should have."

Elias glances over with one eye at Marie as the elevator hits floor level, and lets the cat go into the basement proper. "Mind if we camp out for the night here? It's not a good night to be splitting up. And Jenna could use the company."

 

[CurtailedAmbrosia]

She hates cats. She hates this cat. The only reason the cat was still here was because it was Elias’ cat. Given the more familiar glimmer she catches-and immediately wishes she hadn’t-it was the right decision, coming up here for it.

“No.” She says about the panther, glowering at the steel doors, counting plates as they descend. Each one makes her feel a little bit better. She tries to be flat and grumpy, hate the cat and hate him for being happy about the cat-but she’s just glad he’s alive. Him...and Jenna.

“...because then there wouldn’t be anything left for me to pulverize.” She finishes. That almost sounds like a joke. Glancing to her face, she looked a little less hard, a little more relaxed. She’s thinking, but she’s not as tightly wound as she had been when they had first shown up.

"Mind if we camp out for the night here? It's not a good night to be splitting up. And Jenna could use the company."

“...longer lock down not the worst of ideas.” It’s not rational. She knows it’s not rational, wanting them in her immediate sight. It’d be distracting and she has things to do.

But it only relaxes more tension, even if she couldn’t entirely face the truth of why. The shower was still running. Hot water probably still worked, then. She leans the staff against her workstation and finds a sterilized acrylic box for the sample. "Here's that." She says before rolling over to the cot, the discarded futon padding. It had been difficult enough dragging it off of the thing, she can't imagine hauling it back on.

“Depending on what energy she expended, probably needs to sleep, eat something.” He had put ice cream in there of all things. They should give her that. It was what Sam would have done.

It's warm down here. Maybe she'd plug the stupid air conditioner in too.

 

[Obuzeti]

Elias sets the cat down. It scampers into the server banks to explore this new, cobwebby world, and he turns to kneel at Marie's side. One big hand takes her own, and he lifts it to press the cool backs of her knuckles against his own forehead.

"For all my muscle, Marie," he says, voice nearly inaudible. "You've always been thes strongest one out of all of us. It's good to know that again."

His fingers are broad, and the calluses smooth. He holds on for a second, then releases her and stands up, rolling his shoulders. "I stashed another box of food when I was here last time. Not perishables, but dehydrated milk, cereal, peanut butter and jelly, so on. Preservatives that hold well, high nutrition stuff. I'll get some of that in Jenna when she finishes showering. In the meantime -"

Elias digs into the supplies he'd left last time, comes out with the dishrags, the towels and wipes, the dusters and the air fresheners. "I'll clean out the corners. You definitely keep your spaces clean, but there's just shit out of your way. I'll handle that."

He spots the look on Marie's face before it even forms. Something in the eyes. "It's something to do," he says with a shrug. "And I'm not barging in on Jenna in the shower. Be like peeping on a daughter, if I had one."

Ronnie Page's face pops up in his head. That scowl of suspicion.

"Oh goddammit," Elias says suddenly, disgusted, as he figures out why the other man'd been so hostile a day late and a dollar short.

 

[CurtailedAmbrosia]

"You've always been the strongest one out of all of us. It's good to know that again."

“...”

There it was again. When Elias suffers, he turns outward-more of that nostalgic goodness shining through.

She’s not sure what to do with the words or the gesture-the physical touch that somehow doesn’t make her angry. Rather than the defensive spike and bitterness she’s just...quiet. She’s not so sure she’d call it strength. ‘Spiteful’ was more in line-she’s too stubborn and too spiteful to quit. All she knows how to do is fight, so she fights. There’s so very little else on offer but her hate and rage and bitterness.

And here he was, knowing this but calling it other things-and glad for it. Not as a necessary evil, not as a person needing to be converted to other things, but just as she was. He’s glad she’s not dead.

She doesn’t know what to say, what to do with that. For all the dark in the world and all that he has seen, he continues to burn so very brightly.

She watches him as he rises, quiet and contemplative.

"I stashed another box of food when I was here last time…”

“I know. I just didn’t look to see what was inside.” A vote of confidence right there from one so paranoid. Her expression was back to its impassive mask. She does not say so, but if it weren’t for his mystifying attempts to make her human again, there’d be no creature comforts to offer Jenna. Marie had only been bothering with the bare essentials-exactly what was needed for maintenance and no more-for a long, long time.

Marie feels tired again, and it’s a weariness that has nothing to do with missing the scheduled 45 minutes of rest or her general sleep deprivation.

She plugs in the air conditioner near the cot. The stupid cat followed along and Marie eyed it suspiciously. Damned thing better not chew on any cords. She considers the corner a moment, seconds ticking away on other tasks. It looks a little barren. It’d have to do. The cat jumped up on the cot and sniffed around before lying down-turning it’s eyes curiously.

Well, suppose that added something to it.

Marie shook her head and wheeled back towards the console. Looking a little grumpy as he talks about cleaning of all fucking things. Shit out of her way... “Well, I got shorter.” She says dryly. Marie pauses mid wheel turn, a blink at the patch of floor she’d been looking at-and then a grumpier look and a shake of her head before she picked up and started in on her tablet, finding the message she had received. Her staff was leaning within arm’s reach.

"Oh goddammit,"

Marie didn’t look up, but frowned. Normally she’d just wait for explanation rather than deign to ask a question-but it comes to her lips unbidden anyway. “What?”

 

[Obuzeti]

"Well to be honest I'm pretty sure you'll go on eating ration bars no matter what I do unless I personally cook it and shove it in your face," Elias notes, droll, as he starts cleaning out the server banks and their twisty network of wires and cables. There are cobwebs and dead things in between the rows that haven't been moved for years. "I, however, have a delicate palate, and I was pretty sure I'd be back at some point."

He starts scrubbing down and blowing away the dust that'd built up in the air vents of the servers - from the hot whining, it was something that they'd needed for awhile. Elias frowns as he begins to consider all of the basic functions that Marie would have had trouble doing, wheelchair-bound and alone, if even her precious computers were feeling the neglect. "When I visited Jenna's family, her father - she's a total daddy's girl, by the by - was suspicious as hell. In retrospect, considering that she started staying at the Coulee awhile ago, he probably thought we're fucking."

Elias's mouth twists at the thought. "I get his reaction, though. She's young. Acts like it, too. It'd be weird as hell."

It's probably a reaction that has nothing to do with fact; Elias has no idea how old he is, himself, suspended in the agelessness of post-twenties no matter what he does. There's no grey in his hair, or wrinkles in his skin, or marks of any kind - his flesh tends to be regenerated without flaw, which means physical imperfections never last. An unexpected side benefit.

"Still has a poster of me up in her room, apparently," He muses. "Should ask if she has any of your stuff. Didn't they do a run of those fingerless gloves you always liked?"

Steel tape on the knuckles, of course. No marks, no insignia. All function. Not much'd changed.

 

[CurtailedAmbrosia]

"Still has a poster of me up in her room, apparently. Should ask if she has any of your stuff. Didn't they do a run of those fingerless gloves you always liked?”

Marie made a noise of displeasure. “I would hope not.”

Marketing. When she’d first rolled out they had tried to call her the Blue Cloak or something like that. She’s still not sure where Protagonist had originated from, but it was what ended up sticking once she was interacting with the others. She was beating the faces of the scum into bloody fucking pastes, and someone had looked at that and thought to make accessories. She hadn’t paid much attention to much of anything regarding that, but Sam had bought a pair of those fucking gloves. Had gleefully made her aware of an entire Halloween costume. It’s something she hasn’t thought about in a long time, and she felt the same level of irritation now that she did then.

“I am no one to fucking emulate.” She says flatly in a growl. She’d never liked any of that. It half made her feel like she was failing in some way-least it didn't sell much, she didn't think. She hoped not. “Not then or now.” She tapped away, grumpily responding to the other bit of that noise.

“Looks younger than she already is and with the hero worship…” She’d argue her maternal instincts leaned more towards ‘consume own young’ than anything, but she’d probably be pissed too. “...hn.”

The metal door slid aside and out stepped Jenna in the black scrubs. She’d scrubbed her skin just about raw, it looked like-the chemical and electrical burns visible on her arms and what could be seen of her chest. She also looked thinner, and it made her a little sickly looking-Jenna hadn’t had much body fat to begin with.

Marie’s frowning at something on the tablet, but she makes a distracted gesture to the cot and cat. Elias had said something about animal therapy, some stupid thing.

“Oh yeah, the kitty.” Jenna mumbles, moving to take a seat, pet the cat. She's still a bit in a daze, it looked like, but better than she had been before the shower.

 

[Obuzeti]

"To be fair, neither am I," Elias says with a shrug. "Like ninety percent of the shit I do would instantly get people killed or arrested. That doesn't mean people can't look up to us, which they apparently do."

He's always attempted to take his fame in stride and simply not comment on it - dealing with individual people, applying his personal touch, as if it didn't exist. So far it'd worked. Others hadn't; case in point, Cid.

When Jenna emerges his focus shifts entirely, and he sets aside the swipes and dust rags to bodily scoop up Jenna into his arms and simply hold her for a moment. She's small in his arms, dressed in oversized sweats, and in his grip he can feel the little shakes rocking the young woman under her skin. Residual adrenaline, fear, and horror.

"You were amazing," Elias says, simply. "I'm glad we both got out. Thank you."

Complicated sentiments have no place here. The warm power moving through his chest has nothing to do with starlight. Here, it's just the human heart, and the hot prickle of tears he blinks back as he hangs onto her, unashamed, just as equally giving her something to touch that isn't from her nightmares.

 

[CurtailedAmbrosia]

“I’m...I’m glad too. You look better-do you feel okay?” The hug is nice. His face was back, body seemingly repaired. It'd sloughed off and the smell had been awful-you'd never know it happened, now. Thank God-he had looked so very awful. “I’m sorry I broke your teleporter.” She’s relieved he hadn’t been angry at the retreat. It’d been a hard thing to decide on, to do-but he didn’t play the kind of games Cid and Tec seemed to, and it didn't look like she'd get any grief for it.

Still though, even if not angry-he might’ve gone back, she’s not sure.

“...I really...hate bugs, guys.” She finally admits, of all things.

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

Eighteen months minimum. That had stuck out. Marie had a mind like a bear trap-things didn’t escape her notice or her memory. Puzzle pieces filed away until she found the places they fit.

She was sure she had seen activity within that time frame. Some snippet of something, peripheral information she hadn’t paid much attention to in the avalanche of data she was constantly cataloguing, splicing together.

She’s not seeing it now. Was she misremembering?

“Sorry I broke your teleporter.”

Marie glances up and over. This was news. Despite herself, she asks yet another question, bringing her total to who the hell knew what for the night. “On purpose?”

“Yeah.” Jenna murmured, glancing back up to Elias. “I was...I was afraid you’d want to go right back.” She says with a faint shrug and then, to Marie- “So after I used it, I smashed it on the docks.”

“Hn.” Marie felt almost...impressed? Jenna had decided on the retreat, acted on it, and then made sure it couldn’t be undone. That took more guts than she had figured her for, if she were honest. She returned her attention to the tablet, scrolling through a stream of data. “Got spares.” And that was that.

 

[Obuzeti]

Elias shrugs. "I'll hurt for some time yet while I stabilize," he answers truthfully. "But it's nothing unusual. Also, I don't give a fuck about the teleporter so long as we got out. I mean, I wasn't -"

He cuts off.

" - I wasn't thinking clearly," he says after a time. "I was furious. So I didn't think to use the teleporter because I had an enemy in front of me, deserving of justice, that I could strike. There's almost never been a reason for me not to do that. So while I wouldn't have done it, that doesn't mean I was right to bull forward. You made the best decision. I respect it."

Elias shrugs, eyes distant. "The thought that Greg - Maestro - died alone, under that thing's mercy, and no one even knew . . . it is beyond not just right. It is wretched. Inexcusable. I should be better than to have allowed such a thing to happen, not to one of mine."

His lips are white, pressed together and bloodless.

"Rowan, perhaps, I can understand. He's always been a recluse. But Maestro gave performances regularly. He should have been able to call for help. His disappearance should have been noted. And none of these things happened, and that tells me something is wrong. Whatever Paul is, he doesn't know shame or modesty. He doesn't cover his tracks. Something else helped him ambush my people and I want to know who so I can crack their skull with my bare hands."

 

[CurtailedAmbrosia]

Jenna gives Elias a tight hug. She can’t blame him for being angry, wanting to wreck Paul’s crap up big time. He couldn’t have known how bad it’d be down there either, at the start. It’d been a trap. She’s glad they had made it out.

They made it out.

“Something…is wrong.” She hears Marie gruffly agree. There’s a lot of typing and swiping going on over there. Towards the center of the multiple monitor display branched out in front of the vigilante, six monitors flickered away from their various data screens to form one large image.

“We need to warn everyone.” Jenna adds, feeling creeped out to think that someone might be helping Paul hunt down heroes. Were they finding them for him? Covering it up? And if so, why? “A message or...or something.”

“That’s where something is wrong.” Marie’s voice had heat to it now. Hero monikers and photos began to appear on the combined display. “These are the users that opened your last message, Elias.” She tapped at something else and the short list disappeared, replaced by a much faster compiling list that soon crowded the display out, overlapping each other. “These are the users that haven’t, yet…”

Her eyes narrowed with an angry glitter. “And these are users who no longer have it in their system. It’s fucking gone. Whether they deleted it on their end or not I can try to figure out, but it’s gone.”

Except-

“Miss Sinister no longer has your message. And for sure she couldn’t have deleted it.” A villainess turned heroine, she had been able to twist shadows into weapons, binds, cages. Marie had figured out who she really was, ever distrustful-and filed it away for later. Adrien Hawkins. She’d seen the obituary, her filters had caught it. “Because she died of cancer three years ago.”

“Someone’s fucking with our communications.” How the hell had she missed this? She rolled closer to the console and tapped away at the keys furiously. “Trying to keep us isolated, separated, ineffective. So many of them are...were still using League Tech. Cid’s upgraded, I was never fully integrated-but everyone else could be infiltrated by someone good, and they've had nearly a decade to get better.”

Christ.

“And that someone is falsifying activity, removing activity-trying to make it hard to detect when someone goes dark.” She was going to fucking find them, too. She'd been played at her own game, and it incensed her in a way she hadn't been in years.

“Maestro had activity, an online footprint after his murder. And now I can’t find it. Who the hell knows how many others."

 

[Obuzeti]

Elias nods, tight. "Yeah. I figured something like that, soon as I had a chance to think. We were never this isolated before. Someone's fucking with the League. I'll have to rely on you to handle that, Marie, because I don't know enough to be useful. In the morning I'll start personally checking on anyone that we aren't sure about. Time to find out what's truth and what's lies."

He exhales, then, and pulls a blanket from the cot over Jenna and sets her down on it, smiling at her. The big man's face has no stress lines or shadows under his eyes, though there should be; nothing but a tired crinkle. "For now, you get some sleep, Jenna. You deserve it, and need it."

The cat, curiously docile, meows up at the little woman and curls up beside her. Elias smirks down at the passive animal and gives its ears a rub, then moves to beside Marie to look at the list of people they didn't know about. It's too long for his comfort. Every question mark, he's certain, is a needle in Marie's flesh, an irritation and accusation that she has no answer for.

"You still on that Ubermensch sleep cycle?" he asks, without glancing over. Nonjudgmental. "It's been a bit since we showed up."

 

[CurtailedAmbrosia]

“Yeah...that’s probably a good idea.” She was very, very tired. Elias was a good friend, and she’s still not positive Marie wasn’t some kind of something, scary as she could be. It’d be safe here. She stroked the sleek black fur of the, as far as she knew, still unnamed cat.

“I’ll talk to Miss Sarah.” Set something up, somewhere. The danger was very real, and if nothing else-this talk of isolation and separation...it was tragic. Friends should stick together.

The cat purred in a steady vibrating rhythm, and it didn’t take long at all for Jenna to drift off. She’d expended a lot of energy today.

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

Marie was back to wanting to kill something. She didn’t like uncertainties, things unknown beyond her scope. All this time, all this data, and she had missed glaring red flags due to what, cynicism? Christ.

Heroes were vital to the war effort. Their numbers had already an taken irreconcilable hit-and then she’d done fuck all while a wolf moved through what was left. Her bitterness and her anger had blinded her to the wrongness of it, and now here she was scrabbling to catch up, off guard and unprepared.

She hates being caught unawares.

"You still on that Ubermensch sleep cycle?" The question drew her out of her fuming. Sleep?

“Forty five minutes every four hours.” She responds, a glance to the time stamp on the camera feeds. She had now missed two sessions. One due to cowardice, the other due to distraction, the lockdown. Her strict regimen, her routine was in the shitter, now. Hell.

“...it’s enough.” The barest amount of maintenance to keep her mentally capable without sacrificing more time than was absolutely necessary. She had to sustain herself only so far as to be effective, and anything else was a luxury she didn’t need. Before...all of this, she'd opt for a solid six with time for training after. A movie beforehand, sometimes, in that ratty recliner.

No time for that now. It was downright decadent seeming.

 

[Obuzeti]

Elias nods as Marie glances at the nearest time display and her eyes tighten. He'd thought as much. "The first bit of this is just going to be contacting everyone we don't have solid info on, and then their emergency contacts," he says. "I can do that much, at least. Take a power nap, and I'll wake you up with the details once I get finished."

He shrugs, glancing over at where Jenna is already out like a light, the cat purring where it's curled up against her chest. "This part is just drudge work; the hard part is going to be tracking down what records have been altered, and you're going to need your wits about you for that. Let me do this much. I'll keep an eye out."

The other hero offers a wry smirk. "Also, honestly, they're a lot more likely to pick up for me than you. Everyone knows my number, on account of having called it for everything from fights at the water cooler to wanting me to pick up more rocky road ice cream next time I hit the grocery store. I can count the number of people you've called on your com on one hand.

Unsaid, also, is that Marie hates talking to human beings, and that he's offering to do this for her, and that this is Elias's forte anyways.

 

[CurtailedAmbrosia]

“I don’t need coddling.” Marie grumbles, but he’s right. Such a sleep schedule was brutally unforgiving when strayed from. She was plenty lucid now, but she can feel fatigue tugging at the edges of her mind, her limbs, her rationality. Anger's keeping her up more than anything. If she continued as is, she could miss something of vital importance, a puzzle piece she might need.

Couldn’t afford that-she's already woefully behind some bastard trying to play her game.

Her determined but very shadowed eyes moved from the monitors to his wry smirk. He wasn’t wrong.

“There’s a reason I waited for you to come back.” No gruffness. She nodded slowly to herself, allowing a hand to rub at her forehead. She'd had a headache for the past three hours anyway. And she did, indeed, hate talking to people. That was not her realm or her ‘thing’, least of all these days. Elias was the beacon they’d fly to.

“There’s two sensors in the street that make a light noise when something turns down this way.” She indicated the rotating camera feeds of Samson. “You’ll see that there. Anything breathes upstairs, we’ll know it immediately.” She leans the staff against her shoulder, pulls the tablet to rest on her ugly, scarred legs, and then wheels backwards with one hand in short stops, heading for the closed elevator doors. She’s not sure she’d be able to sleep with people around...well. Maybe she could.

“Don’t use my name.” She remembers to say, a little stern. “Most of these people have no idea who I was.” Whisper, Daybreak, Adamant, Sam, who then told Lana. That had been it. Cid probably knew...either through Sarah or Jenna, either or.

Her wheels bump into the elevator doors and the staff is set across the armrests of her chair. She crosses her arms on it, gaze drifting to the girl and cat, then back to Elias. Whatever it was out there, the immediate was secured.

She sets a timer for an hour and thirty minutes. It’d be the longest bit of sleep she’d gotten in a long time, but hopefully it’d catch her up proper...and hopefully she did not dream.

She should probably say something. She can’t think of what. So instead she crossed her toned arms beneath her chest and leaned back against the cool metal behind her, idly watching the scrolling data on the monitors without being able to quite read it until…

Marie's face loses something, in sleep. Relaxed, she doesn't quite look the same-not that she looked entirely relaxed. One got the feeling that if they poked her, they'd draw back a stump.

 

[Obuzeti]

"I'll take care of it," Adamant says, firm. "Sleep, Marie. Get some rest."

She finally closes her eyes.

Elias looks at Marie, hidden back in the corner, behind the elevator, watchful and hateful of a world she doesn't understand anymore. His fingers tense on his forearms, where he's crossed them on instinct. Afraid to sleep for longer than a couple hours, afraid to let anyone in, so twisted up in anger and spite that she didn't know how to recognize her own symptoms anymore. The pain has taken root in her.

If he so much as laid a blanket on her she'd hate him for it.

So instead he turns back to the console (he barely knows how to operate it) and, eyes on the screen, starts to dial the first number. It's going to be a long night for the both of them, and he might as well get started on the hardest part: finding out who is among the living and who is now dead.

~*~

Morning brings no respite.

"Eleven," Elias says. He is pale, bloodless, and there is a total, unmitigated fury in the calmness of his words. His normally pale skin is straight alabaster now. "Eleven, and the Tower. If we decide not to count the three of us, eight."

Lana, in Atlantis.
Gideon, hidden somewhere in the Carolinas off the grid.
Prospero, sequestered on his island fortress.
Malachite, forever combing the mines and tunnels.
Vivid Walker, in her paintings.
Montgolier, airborne and unconcerned.
Amarok, wandering the tundras and frozen ice fields.
Tweedledee, on the other side of the mirror.

Lana, Gideon, and Tweedledee he'd known about. Malachite, Amarok, and Montgolier didn't carry their comms, but their contacts had confirmed they were still alive and visited on occasion. Vivid Walker's agent confirmed that her paintings still arrived on a regular basis, and Prospero had never answered, impossible to find as his island.

There's so few of them left, and so many cooped up within Cid's Tower.

"At least Cid's been managing to keep some alive," Elias says, numb.

It's better than what he's been doing.

 

[CurtailedAmbrosia]

It had come to this. She’d been fooled by false activity, echoes of lights long extinguished-and she was furious. With herself, with the world, with Caliban, with Paul, with whoever had been working to keep them unaware-all of it.

Near extinction. And the new guard, kept in the preserve that was the Tower? Impotent, useless, extorted. Marie’s venom was in full force but she was tightly controlled, having withdrawn into strategy and the cold, hard facts of the situation.

Adrift in an ocean of hatred and isolation that had let her survive in the first place. Survive while others died. Again.

She doesn’t think about it. She keeps her mind on the war.

“You were right to want to talk to Daybreak. Too valuable a resource, and in possession of the new-and just about only- guard.” She wouldn’t even consider Cid. Things were desperate, but they weren’t that desperate-he’d had eight years to do something. Perhaps she’d consider him if Daybreak kept him in line, and not the other way around.

“Barring that...Jenna’s our other way in. An unwitting Trojan horse.”

That was how Marie saw the world, the cause-a never ending war with ‘resources’ rather than people. Her focus was chilling-and yet that anger, that malice rolls off of her in waves, the desire to do harm. All she knows how to do is fight. All she knows how to do is struggle against forces greater than she was, unfailingly offensive until it killed her.

“We don’t let this stop us. We know now. We make do, but we don’t let it stop us.”

Jenna was getting up. Marie can’t even look at her. If the speedster hadn’t bumbled into Elias on a hero worshipping whim, maybe nothing would have been found out, ever.

And she’d still be here, cataloguing all the data, maintaining all this infrastructure, tracking the scum and damaging what she could through the dark recesses of the web-for heroes that would never return.

How many had gone in each passing year? How many could she have prevented if she had just picked up the phone?.

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

Jenna no longer looked sickly-she looked skeletal. It was not a good look-muscle tone down to near nothing, her normally athletic, boyish build now emaciated. She’s not feeling terribly hot. This had happened partially before-but not this bad. Least she wasn’t so tired, just kinda dizzy.

The tension in the space was palpable-Elias looked like he had seen a ghost, and Marie was, for once, not doing twenty things at once on the tablet, the console, anything. The vigilante’s eyes were narrowed on a list. They were both angry.

She turned her eyes to the list, names she mostly didn’t recognize. For a moment, she doesn’t really understand. These must be the other heroes Paul has hunted down. And then she realized both Adamant and Protagonist(oddly with an asterisk) were on the list of eleven names.

Her heart sank as her eyes widened, looking to the two veterans, the two survivors before her. “Is that...is that everyone?” Even with the hum of the servers and the steadily blowing air conditioner, it suddenly seems so quiet.

“Your metabolism is in overdrive. You need to eat.” Marie growled. The order jarred with the horrific realization, throwing Jenna off-her eyes flick back to the list, trying to make sense of it-of any of it.

They had to warn Miss Sarah. A-and she doesn't know what else. Maybe the Tower was the only safe place for heroes-maybe that was why no one had sprung up outside of it with any real success in so very long. Somehow, everything had to come together again.

There might not be much chance, otherwise.