Athwart History (Closed)

[CurtailedAmbrosia]

Jenna’s russet bronze colored face is a shade or two darker with red when she’s set back down. “Aw man, I was striving for fire breathing and scaly, too.” Sarah smiles at the three of them, glances to the movie, then back with approval. “These are my favorites.”

“Yeah. Mine too.” Jenna grins, happy to see spark to Sarah, happy to see Elias so damned happy. Her eyes follow them as they disappear down the hall together, and then she sighs with contentment, turning back to the other two.

It’s a good day to be in the Coulee. “I think that was a long time coming.” She says, stretching out and then onto her feet.

“Is there really a bear down there? Is that who Miss Vivienne said would bite?”

Jenna laughed mid stretch, trying to stifle it immediately. “Uh, no. I think uh, I think Protagonist must be down there. Doing something cool, probably. Anyway guys, you gotta help me with that popcorn-I burn water.”

~*~

Sarah’s still angry and taken aback, but seeing the three of them chilling in there watching movies-it’s nostalgic and heartwarming. It’s everything Ellie and Peter deserved. Lounges should be on each floor of the Tower, she decides-it’s a small improvement, but it’d be something.

On Marie-

“Protagonist? That’s...you don’t forget Protagonist.” Lord no, the woman was a force of nature.

But Sarah had seen that plane go down far in the distance. It’d been through rock and steam and magma, a flitting thing in the corner of her vision-the chaos that had been everywhere. The jet had been torn asunder like a paper thing before darting into the ocean-but she had only seen it for a split second, and had no time to even process what she had just seen-another death, one of many.

She has no idea how the woman had survived that. Or why she had come out when she had been running top.

Hadn’t been much of top to run, by that point.

“Jenna said she was in the picture, but not much more than that. She’s here? She’s abandoned Samson?” How long had that been going on? The woman had been laser focus obsessed with that awful city, mirrored it’s ruthlessness. Sarah can hardly believe she’d left it.

 

[Obuzeti]

Protagonist.

Peter considers for a moment, then as the other two head into the kitchen, he steps back into the Blur instead, and turns to follow the older two heroes.

~*~

"No," Elias says, amused. "You don't."

The key slides in and is verified, and then Elias leads the way through the murder alley, past the defunct, enormously threatening gun at the other end. "She didn't abandon Samson, and I would appreciate you not mentioning that at all. I convinced her to set up a secondary base here beneath the fortifications, and she saw a valid point there. I've been cozening her since."

He pauses and turns back to Sarah, touching her shoulder for a moment (God, it's Sarah. He still kind of doesn't believe it). "She was hurt badly, inside and out. Marie's in a wheelchair, and she's bitter about everything. Don't comment if you see something a little off, because I've been edging her towards being kinder to herself. There's a cat down there, Jasper -"

Elias shakes his head, briefly and intensely dizzy. So much is different, and for a moment he struggles with deja vu, with the twin visions of family past and present, coming together. The lines of information cross, and the wheel turns.

" - a lot is different," he says. "Accept her as she is now. Please. She had it no easier than we two did."

Then he heads down the stairs and knocks twice on the wall before the server room door, a pointless formality but one he insists on. Then he opens it and steps inside, glancing over at Marie where she's fiddling with her laptop still, dinner untouched. He can't find it in him to be surprised.

"Marie," he says, with a nod. "Got a tech issue I'd like you to look at. Also -"

Elias smiles abruptly. He can't help it. Every time he thinks about it he gets giddy. "Ah, an old teammate dropped by."

 

[CurtailedAmbrosia]

“Yes. Of course.” Sarah isn’t just humoring him-it sounded like Marie needed all the kindness they could muster....not that she figured she’d get away with much politeness or courtesies. Sarah wasn’t overly worried-she had thick enough skin. She’s not surprised about the injuries, but she is mildly surprised about emotional turmoil.

There had been a woman under the cloak after all, and Sarah accepts this much more readily than Lana had. “I’ll be careful, and I’ll follow your lead.”

If Marie was important to him, she was vitally important to her. She best be careful-Protagonist had been volatile even at the best of times. Short and to the point, every word and action economical and seemingly preplanned-she was a lot like Cid in that way, but had none of his social skills.

At least you mostly knew what you were getting with Protagonist, before Rahab anyway. Sarah glanced down at the two communicators in her hands. Yes. At least.

~*~

Marie was pretty much right where Elias had left her. Jasper was sitting on the corner of the workbench, the last of today's servers reassembled. Software was running on the large screen, windows flashing in and out of existence, overlapping each other as various progress bars filled up and then their windows closed themselves out.

She was barely paying attention to that however, reading one of four segmented portions on the tablet's screen. She already knew Daybreak was here.

Dark eyes flick up anyway. He’s smiling. Genuinely so. No grudges held, only unfettered happiness.

Her eyes flicked to the heroine in question. Cid was probably going to be beside himself-might already be.

"Daybreak." She acknowledges, a noted lack of -too- much growl, just flat acknowledgement.

The tall woman smiled, hesitant but warm. Yet someone else seeing a face that didn't belong to her, not that it mattered, really. She's glad she wore the stupid scrubs-and then very irritated that she's glad about it. She's also irritated that she'd nearly introduced Elias’ fucking cat. Maybe Sarah would stay, and then Jasper could be looked after here. Woman probably liked cats.

Her attention returned to the tablet. She has some tools with her, but not the full diagnostic capabilities of her lair. Not that it took a brain surgeon to figure this one out. Cid had blocked Sarah’s communicator from sending or receiving messages to Elias. Maybe to all former allies. She’s not surprised. Daybreak had been as impotent as Cid the last eight years, and perhaps he'd ensured it'd stay that way.

She makes no other remarks. It was good she had come. Hopefully she wouldn’t disappear back into the Ivory Tower a second time, though she’s briefly not sure if it’s the strategic set back or the emotional impact on Elias that’d be worse. There was still a good chance of it happening. Maybe she wouldn't let her look after Jasper, after all.

…she wishes the reunion hadn’t happened while she was in attendance. A two day allotment, and it had to happen during. Well. At least it was happening, and sooner than she’d predicted.

Had she noted the absence of the Ward that quickly? Or was the movie theater trip the cause of the discovery?

Hn.

 

[Obuzeti]

Elias sets both their communicators on the far side of the workbench with a nod. "When you have a moment, jailbreak Sarah's communicator; anything that ain't stock, remove it. You can use mine as a comparison, because they're the same model. I'm really interested in how Cid got in it, anyways, because the original models were supposed to be standalone units that never received outside frequencies."

He shrugs. "We all use the same model. He hasn't shut any of us off - to my knowledge. The fact he can do that at all really fuckin' pisses me off, and makes me wonder if maybe - it exacerbated other matters."

Sarah still doesn't know about the rest of the League, and this isn't the time to bring it up. Marie can probably get the gist, though.

The big man takes a moment to kneel and pet Jasper anyways. The cat casually walks over onto his shoulder and rides him back up to a stand, then leans over to sniff Sarah's hair. "Sarah, this is Jasper, and he's smarter than all of us put together."

Jasper purrs once.

 

[CurtailedAmbrosia]

“League tech was advanced for its time, but Cid was in the thick of it same as I was. Tower tech is not entirely derivative, far as I can tell, but has advanced past the decade old communicators.”

“There is a lot of newer technology…” Sarah provided, her eyes still on the communicator in question before she glanced back down at the chrome gold one in her hand. “Some R&D department in the government still sends things on to Cid. New metahuman abilities required regulating equipment that the League hadn’t developed yet, buffing security systems...things like that. I don’t know much more about any of it, honestly.”

Marie’s doing something she can’t see on that tablet, distracted (and yet not at all distracted, she suspected), and Sarah takes the time to consider the vigilante’s appearance. She’s never seen her face in full, and there’d always been that strip of grease paint over her eyes in addition to the mask over her mouth and nose. No sharp and shiny teeth, it turned out.

There’s a gauntness to her face, a sort of unhealthy pallor to the olive toned skin-she did not look very well, and seemed sleep deprived. Sarah dropped her eyes to the wheelchair itself, how uncomfortable it looked. No, Marie couldn’t have had it any easier than they themselves had had. Potentially worse, being crippled.

Sarah glances up to see Protagonist watching her over the top of the tablet with a slightly narrowed, intensely focused dark eyed gaze, as alert and determined as ever, missing nothing. “Cid makes all the big decisions, then?”

Sarah frowned.

~*~

“The fact he can do that at all really fuckin' pisses me off, and makes me wonder if maybe - it exacerbated other matters."

The implications of that would downright treacherous, whether or not the consequences of which had been intended. Marie’s fairly certain this was an isolated case on Cid’s part, but the shadow rival falsifying activity, covering Paul’s trail…

If they had accessed old League tech to falsify activity, what’s to say they hadn’t cut off communicators to prevent heroes leaving retirement and regrouping, or discovering the loss of old allies?

Her expression darkens and she set the tablet aside, data still scrolling on three of the four screens while the fourth goes blank as soon as she takes her eyes off of it. She slides Daybreak’s old communicator over, not even bothering with Elias’-she knew exactly what the components within should look like, and had even recently dismantled her own in order to clone the contents.

"Sarah, this is Jasper, and he's smarter than all of us put together."

Marie’s turn to frown.

Sarah let the cat sniff her fingers before gently stroking over the top of Jasper’s head. “A very handsome-”

“She.” Marie says flatly, fingers going still in her selection of the League specific screwdriver. She regrets the utterance immediately-what the hell did she care what they gendered the stupid cat as? It was an it, dammit. She selected the right tool, lips pressed together in irritation. “...your cat is a she.” She doesn’t even acknowledge the other ridiculous statement, even if the cat did seem more intelligent than some random stray off the street.

Sarah blinked at Marie’s back before shifting her gaze back to Elias, a rueful, somewhat conspirital smile she was quick to conceal before Marie might see it. “A very pretty kitty.” The black cat’s fur was sleek and soft. A very graceful thing.

The sound of hollow plastic against the workbench surface, and then Marie slid it back to Elias’ original placement with an air of finality-and as if she had found exactly what she expected to find.

“...well? Was it just broken?” Sarah inquired with a frown, moving over to it just as Marie made a disgusted noise. “No it wasn’t broken-intentional sabotage, the dial wasn’t actually doing anything, someone soldered the damned thing on the inside. The frequency was hard set to 10.4.32 A and the receiver is missing.”

The frequency didn’t mean anything to Sarah, and Marie seemed to pick up on that in short order. “That’s Cid’s old frequency.” Marie finishes impatiently, pulling up something on the tablet and sliding it over-a list of frequencies assigned to individual heroes from nine or ten years ago.

“Your new one probably can’t even send or receive to old League communicators.”

"I don't understand why he would do this. Does he not trust me? Does he think I'm going to run around on him?"

“Who paid for the transportation and movie tonight, Danvers?” Marie’s watching her intently, expression impassive but her eyes sharp.

“I-what? No one did. Mac let me bring a busload for free, and the charter bus company was happy to send over an unbooked bus…otherwise...otherwise I’m sure Cid-I mean, the Tower funds would have covered it.” It was occurring to her that she had no idea how any of that worked, either."

Marie glanced to Elias, then back. She loses the sharp, interrogating tone and tactic to her voice and words, back to flat fact. "...this is cut and dry domestic abuse, Danvers."

"Cid is not abusing me."

"Isolation. Forced financial dependence. Jealousy. Male privilege power imbalance-his 'house' his rules. New communicator probably has a gps tracker chip-Stalking. Five of ten warning signs for domestic abuse, no matter what rationalizations he might make-which, incidentally, would be minimizing and denying abuse. A sixth warning sign."

Marie slid the old communicator back in front of her again, not here to try and convince anyone of anything-just stating what was. "I can fix this one for now, then replace innards at later date."

Sarah was still staring at her.

"Cid wants to exert control. He has exerted control."

 

[Obuzeti]

"I concede the matter to local authority," Elias says with perfect dignity, and allows Jasper to cross back over his shoulders and drop to the workbench, where she pads over to the communicators and waits about a foot away, perfectly composed where she sits.

Elias, meanwhile, is corkscrewing tighter where he stands. His shoulders broaden and his smile fixes; fingers curl and his breathing slows to an almost funerary pace. "Cid," he says with deadly calm, "is not in the business of trust. Only that of certainty."

He closes his eyes for a long moment, then turns to look at Sarah. "The Coulee is always open to you," he says, simply. "I also have - access, to Grace's account from her will and testament. Half of that is accorded to you. So you still do have funds of your own accord."

Speaking of that had cost Elias something, and his lips have pursed and paled from it. He blinks once. Continues. "If you have further kids that are - particularly in danger, I can house them here, or rent a flat for you and them in the meanwhile. I don't expect you to make immediate decisions, but you will know now that you have other choices, and that there is someplace else for you and them to go."

He taps his fingers against his waist in a rolling pattern, and then his other hand seeks out and wraps around Sarah's shoulders again, almost unconsciously. "I suggest - the next time you go back to the Tower, you take Lana or I with you. Just as a friendly visit."

Something bubbles behind Elias's even stare, leveled perfectly at eye height.

 

[CurtailedAmbrosia]

The heroine could end any powered conflict with Cid in an instant, blow out an entire wall of that place and leave anytime she wanted-these two facts might be providing an illusion of immunity in becoming a ‘battered wife’. A harder pill to swallow.

Or maybe she had grown to love him? Marie had been on calls where women with busted lips or black eyes would insist nothing had happened, beg her not to haul their husbands off to jail. Didn’t sound like it if the upstairs conversation was any indication. No, this seemed like denial. Cid had had eight years to work on Sarah Danvers-she was in deep.

Marie feels twitchy. The heroine deserved better than this shit. Shouldn’t have married him in the first place, but she deserved better. Elias makes good suggestions, shows Sarah her options, her outs. Reestablishing she has a support system, no matter what Cid may have convinced her otherwise.

"I suggest - the next time you go back to the Tower, you take Lana or I with you. Just as a friendly visit."

“That...maybe. I need to convince him we all have to work together. Jenna can’t bridge the gap by herself. Maybe Lana could be there when...I try again. I don’t know if..." A shake of her head Marie sees out of the corner of her eye. "I love you Elias, but I think he has to agree to meet before you and Cid talk.”

Marie silently agreed with that-Elias ‘popping in’ at the Tower was a bad idea. The restraining order was still in place, showing up uninvited in Cid’s domain was asking for a war, and there was zero chance Elias could stand there for five minutes and listen to Cid prattle knowing what he had to be doing to Sarah, and not start something.

Hell, she’s positive she wouldn’t be able to sit there, and she barely knew the woman outside of her heroic works and data files. Certainly not on a personal level. Of course, she already despised Cid.

Mostly, she doesn’t want to incite the knight into doing anything insanely stupid-like getting in her way. His impotency offended her enough-becoming an obstacle outright, choosing to oppose her-that would be-

Well, time and place for everything, if you planned well enough.

~*~

The peach pink tint to her lips and cheeks had drained away as soon as he mentioned Grace, a visible recoiling at the words will and testament. Sarah knows that somewhere, Tommy’s civilian identity also had a will-a baffled lawyer had managed to send her a letter, and it still sat in the torn envelope in the hat box, untouched since the first interrupted, tear stricken reading.

Everything said after it comes through a fog, thoughts of Cid’s actions seeming worse than they were drifting to the background, comfort in having Elias’ weigh in still soothing but...but now, Grace...

Sarah’s blue eyes are staring into space, leaning into Elias’ one armed embrace. When the she speaks next, her voice was far away. “...Do you...do you still have the sewing room upstairs...?” Grace’s ‘room’. She shouldn’t go in there if he does. She...she definitely shouldn’t. She needed to go pick up her kids in two hours, she needs to get home and process, she needs to decide if she's going to confront Cid about the communicator, about the message it had just sent to two of their peers.

She swallows, a little shaky. Her emotions were all over the place tonight-the full range she'd kept as insulated from as possible.

 

[Obuzeti]

"I find myself unconcerned with what Cid wants," Elias says. He's not even angry. It's crossed the line from personal debate into a matter of justice, and frothing rage has subordinated to inevitability. Somewhere in the last five minutes Cid has slipped from dubious ally to impending threat and his status continues to plummet the longer he has to think on it, the more he conceptualizes how fucking long he's had to turn Sarah into this stuttering, blank-eyed woman so hesitant to defend herself.

"I'll leave you to your work, Marie," he says, and glances at Sarah, still under his arm. "Come on. Let's go upstairs."

The ascent from the basement is easy - the stairs to the loft, a little harder; Grace's door, at the end of the hallway opposite Sarah's, looms over him like the shadow of death. But he's walked through that before, so he takes a short breath and then unlocks it and pushes through.

The other side is all Grace, untouched. Long strips of fabric, hung up on racks to the left, beside a loom, all dark and subtle colors for clothing or bright and cheerful for scarves and other miscellany. Photographs of landscapes, almost always with water in the distance: coasts, lakes, and rivers. A discarded legging hung over the back of the bed, cast aside for her usual, one-legging style, drawing attention to long, slim legs, what she'd always thought to be her best feature. Huge stacks of books, haphazardly arranged. A vinyl player in a corner, the case drawn on heavily by a pair of young sisters. Nothing has any dust on it at all.

Elias surveys the room, and grief washes past his face and is gone. "It's in the closet," he says, and goes to retrieve the box from there.

 

[CurtailedAmbrosia]

Marie affords a nod, but as soon as the door closes she growls to herself or to Jasper, she’s not sure which. Fucking Cid. Sarah wasn’t in the right frame of mind right now, but vacating the Tower wouldn’t serve The War-it was Cid who needed to be tossed out.

She deserved this fucking chair, but that didn’t mean she found her physical impairment at all tolerable. Protagonist could get away with a lot more than the heroes could-but here she was, forced to try and work through others even on the smallest things.

The old solder was already scraped out, she jury rigged a new receiver that would work well enough-and then she checked the house again, paranoid to be away from her lair with all it’s carefully constructed systems, her alarms and sensors.

She hadn’t planted much on the first level, hadn’t had time-but the smart scanner Jenna had been carrying since the oil rig was doing its job, as was a similar device in her tool kit. Marie paused. Should have been two, two, and two.

Instead it was two, two, and three.

Hn.

She set the tablet down, internally cursing herself for not checking when the door had first opened to admit the two heroes-but she could handle herself. She was crippled, not dead-still, her tongue touched at her back right lower molar, left hand wrapping around the metal rod resting between her thigh and the side of the wheelchair as a flare of anger rose in her chest. Someone or something thought they could spy on her?

She gave a sharp pull on the right wheel, stick against her thigh-and the right not immediately in hand, but waiting for her. With a flick she could extend either, and on top of that-the top and bottom three inches were electrified. It wasn’t her staff, but it she wasn’t unarmed down here.

“I know you’re here.” She growled out, and while her expression was it’s usual determined, impassive state-her eyes are sharp and malicious, a promise of violence should the need arise.

Jasper came to her feet, poised with a little question mark to her tail, luminescent eyes on Marie’s back. “Mew?”

~*~

Her legs have never felt heavier. There’d been a memorial service, of course. A large one, for all the fallen heroes.

She hadn’t gone. Cid had reassured her it was better not to go-and she hadn’t. Her trembling fingers slide over the familiar railing and she’s only half aware they’ve got that ebbing light to them again. She’s not sure she wants to see the room, and if it weren’t for Elias-she wouldn’t have the courage to even consider it.

Maybe she was being cruel to them both in thinking to come up here.

"It's in the closet,"

Sarah nods dumbly despite him not actually being able to see her, frozen in the doorway a moment, her glowing hands on her upper arms. Eventually, slowly, she moves inside.

She touches a dark strip of cloth with tiny little purple blooms printed on it, remembering Grace had held onto it for years, saving it for ‘just the right thing’. Her throat is tight and she can’t swallow past the lump that’s risen, eyes blinking a little too much as she slowly takes each little scene in.

She strays to the record player, touches at one of the drawings. If she’d been feeling Grace’s presence downstairs, now it was intensified to the point of pain. It’s exactly as she remembers-as if she could return home at any moment, tease her for the same silly cat drawing she’d crossed out twice and finally ‘perfected’.

 

[Obuzeti]

Peter does not truly fade in - rather, he resolves from blurriness, like a car window being wiped, the memory coming to the fore. He's stood probably a dozen feet away, and his eyes are on the shock rod, but he's also not afraid. It's how a fox looks at barb wire. His backpack is still slung over his shoulders, and his hands are tight on the straps.

"You're Protagonist?" he asks, because the image is a dissonant one; this olive-skinned, small woman in a wheelchair, being one of the most terrifying of the old heroes. But there's no real doubt in him. "I wanted to talk to you."

~*~

There's many keepsakes, but it's to the closet Elias himself is drawn, and he opens it up with painful care, because he remembers what's inside.

Their costumes. The first ones, the homemade ones it had all started in. Grace's dark leggings and shrouds, Sarah's sweeping white fabrics like a toga, and the stained-black fatigues Elias had worn at the start of all things. He had worn a mask back in the day, a leather flying helmet with a sealed front that left him impersonal and closed off. The straps are still there from where Grace had first pulled it down, then off; revealed him to the world and taken him in.

"I clean," he says, into the silence. "Sometimes. Shouldn't be dusty in here."

The space above the costumes is a shelf stuffed with old board games. There's a Yahtzee cup visible stacked off to the side.

Elias is abruptly aware that his face is wet.

 

[CurtailedAmbrosia]

Marie has never struggled to remember anything in her life-nothing she wasn’t intentionally repressing the shit out of, anyway-and the boy that suddenly apparated before her was briefly and strangely mystifying for a split second-before he’s there in full and she does remember, crystal and clear as if she’d never forgotten in the first place.

Peter Bordet. The tag-along.

Spy after all?

Marie’s gaze remains sharp but shifts to calculating rather than hatefully malicious, the dark eyes remaining fixed and seeming to take everything in about him at once. He’s utterly unalarmed, but not in the way of someone assuming good intentions in return for good intentions shown.

"You're Protagonist?"

Her expression somehow becomes even more of a mask, her eyes narrowing and just as predatory, waiting for something.

"I wanted to talk to you."

She doesn’t move or seem to register this at all-but then she lowers the bar back to her lap, the promised violence in the tightened, flexed definition of her arm remaining unfulfilled as she replaced the weapon on that side of her hip. Her gaze doesn't soften exactly-but it's certainly not as blazingly intense as she glances back and over to Jasper-who was watching the boy with interest. She picks the tablet back up, disgruntled but no longer angry.

“Then talk.” She finally says, flat and with a hint of growl. Not a spy then, but an independent.

Protagonist…Marie- approves.

~*~

Sarah drifts to stand beside him, chest so tight it hurts to draw in air. There they were-the dark and the light and the distinctly masculine, original costumes of their broken triumvirate. Her hand reaches forward, hesitates-and then she touches the flowing shroud, that first costume, so different and so reverse of her own, these first iterations. Oh. Oh, Grace.

"I clean. Sometimes.”

Sarah nods, her own vision swimming, a sheen of tears making everything blur together before the water collects and falls. The triumvirate, the three musketeers. Broken, missing, torn.

“Shouldn't be dusty in here."

Sarah turns to look at him, releasing the material to turn and face him fully, her hands coming to his face, this poor man dead, then resurrected, then turned away from what was left of their family. She had left him alone. She loved him and Grace had loved him and he had loved them both-and then she’d let him come here to nothing, rattle around in an empty house that had once been so full of life-and would be again, because Elias…Elias preserved.

And at what cost?

“She loved you.” He doesn’t doubt it, she knows he knows it-but she says it, because here was the proof and the testament. “She loved you so much Elias.” Her tear blurred eyes stared into each of his, and then she wrapped her arms around the back of his neck, hugged him tightly. No more. No more suffering in silence, wasting away in despair and isolation. Here, together-the two people who had loved her most.

“Grace.”

Grief.

 

[Obuzeti]

Peter nods. His shoulders are a little hunched, and his head is inclined - curled inwards, but it's a reflex. He's not blinking as he meets Marie's eyes. "Something's happened to the rest of the League heroes."

The backpack comes down, and he lays it down and crouches to dig through it. What he comes up with is a foldout spreadsheet, with laminated newspaper articles carefully preserved throughout. He sets it on the far side of the workbench and slides it to Marie, then immediately retreats to his backpack, which he picks up and slides back on. The newspapers are obituaries, spotlights, fluff articles all about former heroes - and Peter's circled sentences that are exactly duplicated between them, metaphors and similes that are repeated across a dozen articles over eight years, and a few particular instances where they've visited the same place or rescued the same people, attended the same events. There's also comparative writing samples by the same reporter, with stylistic notes outlined.

"These aren't real articles," Peter says, soft. "They're generated. Some kind of randomized output - something. I don't know that much about computers. But it's not real writing. I don't know what it is, but it's not real. So something's happened."

His hands are white-knuckled on those worn straps.

~*~

Elias chokes on that, trembles visibly, and - cracks. He leans sideways against the wall and sags against it, where it racks him in steady, silent waves.

There's nothing to say about it.

There's nothing to say.

Grace is dead.

Elias opens his mouth and comes out with nothing but a sharp, strangled sob as he crumples and slides down the wall to a knee, turning his face against it and curling inwards as he hurts, he hurts like he never has in all his days.

Grace is dead.

Almost everyone, is dead.

And this is all he has left.

The enormity of it strikes him like a storm surge and drags him down under the waters, and his hand fastens over Sarah's as Adamant crumbles and leaves the teenager behind; the brutalized man with half the time of his peers, no home and no family but this here and now: Sarah, and an empty closet.

It tears him down.

 

[CurtailedAmbrosia]

The actions of various retired heroes had been on her radar-just as the computer activity had been. The very edges. It had all seemed largely inconsequential because nothing was ever really happening. Adamant was somewhat active in his little sphere, Velocity had popped up, the Wards were sometimes out doing something-but her attention had been on doing what harm she could where she could in the shadows, and waiting for a shift, a change, a declaration.

She had known they were out there, untapped resources to be revitalized in a resurgence, a call to action by the best of them, once Elias returned.

And instead, she found herself played like a bloody fool, the would be army flayed to shreds. The woman’s jaw tightens, a twitch of her shoulder and hand as the names come back to her, each and every one a failure. Vengeance. They would have vengeance. She’s closing in on her counterpart, slowly but surely. Artie had mold signature, she was working on something-they would have it.

She takes in Peter again. Cid was impotent and Sarah an enabler, overly protective and coddling. Fattening her ‘kids’ for the slaughter, in Marie’s opinion, now that she knew what had been happening. Elias had thought Cid more informed. Aware. She draws the carefully gathered evidence closer while Jasper leaps down from the table, the cat moving to sniff at Peter before sitting prettily before him, watching the woman much like he was.

“What did El Cid say? Daybreak?” She doesn’t like to ask questions as a rule. Not for data’s sake-she liked to already know things, and a question was a confession of being unprepared. No, when she deigns to ask, it was less about answers and more to direct and probe, observe the results.

Here he was sneaking down into the Coulee’s basement to present his evidence, aware of something off, paying the attention she should have been and without the aid of billion dollar software and computer systems, without the benefit of years experience. Sneaking down here knowing she was down here, for fuck’s sake. That should have been deterrent enough, but apparently not for this kid. He wants to know things. Not to report back, not on account of someone else-but for his own consideration, his own knowledge.

The little articles remind her of that first year fighting the War. In her patrol car on that dead end beat during the daytime, planning stings and ambushes out of her glovebox. She thinks of the pin pricks in that worn roadmap, notes in a book disguised as the shopping and to do lists of a recent widow. Before she even had a name. When she was still carrying her service weapon into the night, of all things.

Her gaze drifts to her own hands and arms, the nicks and scuffs of little scars earned not in this life but the one before it, fighting other kids and viciously offended by their very notion of recruiting for a gang. She remembers all the times she’d lost, too, at the beginning.

Hn.

“Something has happened.” She confirms, the flat and matter of fact tone the same as it was, sliding the articles back to where he’d placed them, back to her tablet again. Perhaps someone else would have offered praise or complimented his cleverness-but that’d just be noise, and neither one of them were here for noise.

The surviving heroes of Immolation and the fight with Rahab went into retirement, retreated to their civilian lives or what little bubbles they felt safest in. Survived destruction only to snuff out their own brilliant lights, went quietly into the dark...where a monster was waiting. It hadn’t had to be this way. She’s not sure why it was this way. Or maybe she was. The world was a cesspit as much as anything else was.

“Wandering Jew got to them, one by one.” Does he know who that was? She would think so, but maybe not. “I suspect sport more than anything. Convenient sport for the scum, but sport nonetheless.” A tap at something on the tablet. This was not the time for niceties or euphemisms. The situation was dire. Better to know.

“And then someone covered the disappearances, the murders, up. Falsified activity on League tech, AI generated news reports, quiet deaths of unknown civilian identities. Masked their absences.” The growl had edged back into her voice full force, simmering anger and malice beneath the impassive mask, glittering in her eyes.

“We got complacent. Even-” The anger boils. “Even -I- was complacent. But now we know. We haven’t known long, but we know.” She glances up at him, pauses whatever she’s doing on the tablet. “There is very little of the old guard left, and El Cid would have the new guard kept just as impotent as he is, content to watch the world burn to ashes so long as he is thought to be important.”

~*~

Sarah crumples with him, holding him as close as one could hold a man as big as Elias. She’s not alone, she’s not cold, she's not spiraling into nothingness and despair but she hurts, and the hurt was made that much worse by the fact that she had left him to hurt without her, forced him to seek his own comfort in a world left so much worse in the absence of the people they loved. It shouldn’t have been Grace. It should have never been Grace.

It shouldn’t have been any of them, and the world continued to spin almost as if nothing had ever happened, their friends and family mere footnotes in the near end of the world.

She held him and she bawled, because it would never be the way it was again.

But in the least she would never abandon him to the grave or banish him to her drifted memories again. She was here. She would not hurt him anymore than the tragedy and her selfishness already had.

Never.

Never.

 

[Obuzeti]

Peter's shoulders barely move. It's a lifeless shrug. "I'm restricted from Cid's floor," he says, soft. "And Sarah - has trouble caring about anything. Had."

He glances up the stairs, eyes troubled, and turns around with a shake of his head. "I don't know how - that'll turn out. I don't know him. But Sarah can feel something now. It's better than nothing."

Peter knows he isn't eloquent. He never has the words he wants, when he speaks. Pen to paper, the fire comes out, but words struggle in his mouth. They never make sense unless he keeps them short and simple, and it frustrates him that this is how people really see him: simple.

He blinks at the news, not really taken aback, not shocked or dismayed. He just absorbs it. "They're dead, then," he says, soft. "Okay. Who knows?"

His quiet little eyes turn sharp. "Does Cid know?"

It's not the question he meant, but Marie seems to get what he's going for. The rest is just noise. Blame assignation, guilt backwash. Feelings don't change anything. Only the truth. Feelings keep you paralyzed, bind you down, chain you for the people who don't feel anything.

He has to burn clean. Sear all the lies away.

~*~

It was perhaps twenty minutes later when Elias finally ran dry. His face hurt and probably looked like a mess, and he'd halfway pulled Sarah into his side, still sat against the wall in front of Grace's closet. Everything still hurts - it always will - but he's not cringing from it anymore, simply on the basis that his entire capacity for being hurt has been wrung out of him. He feels empty.

His arm tightens around Sarah, and he leans over to nuzzle against her hair. "Thanks," he croaks, not sure what else to say. First time he's seen Sarah in god knows how long and the first thing he does is explode into tears. It's kind of fucking embarassing, but -

Sarah. Sarah, and Grace.

Well, if anyone was worth it.

"You good?" he says, hoarse.

 

[CurtailedAmbrosia]

“Does Cid know?”

Marie sets the tablet back down just as everything on the larger screen finished downloading. She glanced at the five hundred and twenty four notifications, and it took every scrap of discipline she had to watch it scale down unsupervised, the various bits of data sorted through and either dismissed or flagged for later review. The few automated processes she’d gotten up and running over the past few days, a measure of sanity in the aftermath of...everything.

It makes her twitchy and a little tight to delegate anything, after so many years following everything. The hand on her wheel tightens and loosens, tightens and loosens. She can let it alone. She doesn’t need to process every scrap of data herself-she can leave it. Give herself time for sleep she doesn’t deserve, for necessary planning, for one of several pertinent, maybe vital projects she has in the works.

Time for training. A back up system needed a backup operator on the bench, of some kind, or it was just tech with no use until someone could scramble to even haphazardly make use of it.

Her eyes flick back to Peter, hand staying tight on the wheel.

“In the least he knows about the loss of Maestro and the catalysis of Rowan, due to Velocity’s report.” Marie finally answers, matter of fact and flat. “We didn’t share what we found beyond that. He might have followed up and found what we did, he might not. Either way, I don’t expect action.”

Her eyes narrow again, laser focused but not hostile. Determination and rage form the core of this woman, and even in the wheelchair she seemed very, very formidable on wits alone.

“This is and has always been a -war-, Bordet. Previously, Cid had peers to keep his ego in check, to pressure him into doing something actually fucking useful. He was being led, because he needs to be led. Now, sitting in the hot seat himself, he’s little more than a preening bird. His feathers are all he cares about, and all he's cared about for eight years.”

Marie is so bitterly offended by this, by everything that Cid was, that her hatred of him was impossible to mask-and she didn’t care. She had never cared. If Peter Bordet was loyal to him, he was useless to her-because everything and anything Cid touched was near poison when it came to the war, the scum.

Cid was scum. He was just as ugly as she was, but rather than do anything useful with it, he dressed it up and pretended to be what he wasn’t to assuage his ego. Any time he had ever opened his mouth in her vicinity was a time she had to keep the urge to belt him in check. Noise. All Cid ever did was make noise. He had blundered into crippling what was left of the hero community in marrying Daybreak and ousting Elias, whoring himself out to the government for those grants and that Tower and appearances of righteousness.

Jesus she wishes she was in her lair where her boxing equipment was. After this, maybe she’d finally anonymously send Don Richards the emails his second in command had exchanged with his rivals, move on toppling that family for the Binachi crew to take over, spread themselves too thin to resist her plans to splinter them once and for all. Replace a large threat with a series of squabbling gangs, too focused on each other to properly conduct business-until the whole process started over again.

"Meow."

Marie fixes Jasper with a look of ire, but then she breathes-and refocuses, a little quieter, less vicious-but just as matter of fact as ever.

“He’s a problem. One we have to work around, for now, while we deal with other threats. Things are moving, again. And if Daybreak and Adamant again team up, not only is that bad news for the scum-it'll force Cid to fall into line if he wants to save face, remain relevant. If not, he’ll be removed. It doesn’t matter to me.”

No. It doesn’t. But if he was smart, he’d stay the hell out of her way.

“There are plenty of fighters in the hero world.” She continues, finally. Her throat hurts from all the goddamned talking she’d been doing lately-business and noise, information and venom-it wasn’t quite that she resented it, just that she was chafing under the binds of the chair and having to...center stage was not where she wanted to be. There just wasn’t anyone else, right now.

“But the infrastructure and information systems, the data that runs Top and allows deployments to be effective-there are only two games in town, currently. El Cid in his Ivory Tower, doing nothing-” Restricted from his floor? What exactly did Cid do in that place? “-and me.”

She's again considering the fact he'd come down here to talk to her, present his evidence. What he had managed to discern on his own. She reached into the bag she'd carted her tools over in, retrieved a curved, smooth smartphone looking device. She set it on his articles without comment, then sled them back to the far edge of the workbench where he had originally set them.

"The Coulee was built to be a haven for heroes, a base of operations. Other noise I won't bother trying to reproduce." Her eyes flick to Jasper again, then the boy. "It is good to be distrustful. To watch, wait, and form your own knowledge on the facts you glean. It's noise for me to tell you this. You know it." He was clearly competent.

"Halwell-" Hn. "Elias, is sincere in the things he says and does. He makes a lot of noise, but it's noise he means." And that was as much a vote of confidence Marie had ever given to anyone. She doesn't tell Peter to trust him-though if anyone were trustworthy, it'd be Adamant-because she knows what her reaction would be if someone had said the same to her. "More importantly, you seem useful and under utilized in the Tower, as all the Wards are. Take that with you. It has a lot of functions, but for the right now, it's a direct line of communication."

~*~

“No. But better than I’ve been in a long, long time.” And it was true. He understood. He knew this loss, he felt it. She wasn’t alone anymore, and neither was he. “I have to go back. I don’t know...I don’t know how things will go with Cid and I. At this point…” She trailed off, then shook her head.

“But the Tower needs to be doing more. I’ve been drifting without direction for so long, terrified of the thought of any of my kids being out there...but Jenna was right. I can’t hope to keep them forever. And...things have to change either way. Three months. Three months for what? Being metahumans? He called them untrustworthy. He called my kids maniacs.”

Sarah firms up, wiping the last of the tears away. “Maniacs.” She repeats, her earlier disquiet now offense, protective maternal instincts. She still hoped Cid would be reasonable, but she no longer felt all that timid in her approach. They were NOT a prison. And cooperation with any heroes in the field, with the rising neo League-it was vital, with beings like Paul running around.

She hugged him tight. “I read Jenna’s report on Paul. Both of them. I’m glad you’re alright. I’m glad you were both alright.”

 

[Obuzeti]

Rowan is an old name, one that takes Peter a moment to place. He's one of the eldest metahumans alive, and one of the most reclusive, currently settled out in California somewhere. Unlike the rest of the League, he had never deigned to interview or even so much as speak to an interviewer or reporter, which left him a total blind spot.

The rest of the information Marie provides is much more immediate, and his eyes narrow in response. Facts. Information. A decided disdain for opinion. The lines are intersecting, and for once Peter is at a loss because someone gets it, gets it more than even he does and has been seeking all this time. Truth was anathema in the Tower, and here he's found an antidote to that bleak oil.

Elias he knows less about. He'd encouraged Sarah to look into him, reconnect with him, but that was for her sake, not his. He'd do his business as he always would, which is credit enough, Peter supposes, it's just -

- going from one man's mercy to the next isn't something he can so willingly do. No matter what he'd call it. The phone is a line to the outside without contamination, which is almost priceless; he's never sure what newspapers or magazines he's allowed to order each month. Sometimes an issue won't come, and he'll wonder what he's missing, or what game Cid is playing with him - or just what basic, stupid cruelty a Vet feels like inflicting that day.

Peter doesn't like owing anything. He takes the phone up, secrets it away inside the backpack - in a hidden lining at the back. The articles are folded up and put away.

"I can't get to Cid's floor," he repeats. Looks up at Marie, eyes dark. "Is anything else important?"

~*~

Elias nods, exhausted by tonight's events. "Take Lana with you," he says. "You're right. I can't go without - a fucking invitation, or something. There's no way that wouldn't start a fight. But take someone with you, whoever it is."

He exhales and squeezes Sarah, arm warm and protective around her. "He'll show you contracts and laws and pieces of paper that'll tell you what a great idea it is to listen to him. Keep your eyes on those kids' faces. That's your goal. The rest is just pushing forward hard enough."

Elias grins a little. "S'how I do it. Sort of works, I guess."

 

[CurtailedAmbrosia]

"I can't get to Cid's floor."

“I don’t need a spy.” Marie says, flat and serious. Not for Cid, anyway. No, she needs a backup to complete the contingency plan. It wasn’t enough to have the systems in place should something happen to her and her lair-they needed someone to operate those systems. Impartial and effective. Perhaps someone like this boy.

”Is anything else important?

Marie is already picking the tablet back up, her laser focus shifting, finally, away from him. Somehow she seems to approve of the direct question, the move to wrap up business. She has things to do. Perhaps he does, as well.

“Not today.” Some platitude would probably be appropriate here, and she glances up at him. “I’ll be in touch.” Is what she says instead.

Good enough.

~*~

Sarah might’ve protested the advice-but Marie’s flat, uncushioned accusations of Cid...and how hard it was, previously, to work her way into asking him for anything. She feels that pit in her stomach, that uncertainty-and maybe a friend was a good idea.

“The kids would get a kick out of Deep Blue visiting.” She says slowly, a faint curve to her lips. “And company I can talk to might be nice, if I can’t have you there.” She moved to stand up, tightening and readjusting the gold sash knotted at and around her hips, run a hand through her hair.

He was right. Cid would go through a slew of things...explain so much away. Maybe there’d be solid reasoning there. There usually was. But either way, she can’t have kids locked up for months at a time, scapegoats and black sheep and bullying. She thinks about her planned restructuring of the wings and how best to gently redirect the senior Wards. Changes, good changes, were coming. And if it began to pull at her, exhaust her-she’d visit here or take another group on another large outing, recharge rather than withdraw into isolated solitude.

She’s done enough of that. It was time to venture forward-she’s slept long enough.

Sarah kissed his forehead and ‘helped’ him up, the weight of grief still heavy-but a soothing salve applied, warm and healing and leeching warmth into the wound. On the way out she cast another long look into the space-and with another sheen of tears, kissed her fingers, smiled faintly-and touched them to the door jamb before leaving the sacred place behind.

 

[Obuzeti]

Cid stares at the transmitter beacon. He knows the latitude and longitude by heart: it's the Coulee's location. That means Sarah's gone there herself. His hands tremble as something cracks and runs deep inside him, and a tide of adrenaline swamps him until he can't breathe. It's happening - it's finally happening. Elias is moving. He's going to try to take everything away from him. His chest tightens and his vision darkens, blood pounding in his temples.

It's finally happening.

He doesn't know if he's afraid or furious; thrilled or betrayed. It's all one enormous confusing rush of sentiment, of this feeling shit he doesn't get and doesn't understand, and it's where Elias wins every single fucking time so he can't be doing this. He can't get caught like this.

With shaking hands, Cid pours another shot of wine and downs it in one gulp, then stares with rapidly reddening eyes out at the dark skyline. The stars are barely visible past the light pollution of the city below. It's all just dark.

There's still something he can do though. Cid reaches for his phone, takes a shaking breath, and starts to dial in a number he's only once ever dialed before.

He pours another shot, and drinks it. Stares out over the city, into the darkness, towards where Sarah is probably fucking another man right now. In the Coulee. Maybe? He doesn't know. He doesn't trust anyone. Oh god, it's happening.

"El Cid?" an urbane voice says, and a man in a collared white shirt and black slacks steps out from behind the elevator column, pocketing a set of keys. His hair is black and falls into his eyes, where care lines and the faint traces of sleepless nights linger in shadows beneath. "Your transport awaits you."

The wine bottle is empty. Cid stands and walks around to the backside of the elevator, where a door with no room awaits him - except that it now leads somewhere, connected in time and space to an endless hallway of doors unlocked by Bramah, the locksmith to whom no door is barred. He walks past the man without really noticing him, heart beating wildly, as Bramah steps to the side and moves down the corridor of unmarked and unremarkable doors. Everything is white and sterile and empty here.

Cid's heart may very well burst. He can't stop hyperventilating.

"Here," Bramah says, with faint satisfaction, and opens another door. It swings wide. Almost everything on the other side is dark, too, except for a telescope.

It is a telescope larger than an entire room, a many-paneled reflective curvature of glass and light that stares out into the starry night, unpolluted by light from electrical fixtures. The air is dry and arid here, faintly tasting of dust. If Cid were to look outside, he'd see the peak of a plateau and past that, the dead expanses of the driest desert in the world, the Atacama. There are no roads that lead here; no delivery trucks, no henchmen, nothing goes in and out of this place. It is totally isolated, and the only guests that come here, come by Bramah's doors. There is no furniture in the room, and nothing in it but the telescope seat, and the telescope, and the window it looks through. All other space is empty. The doors stand wide open, unbolted into the night.

Caliban cares nothing for the affairs of men. The only interest it has anymore is in the light of the stars.

~*~

The room is too dim to make out anything, really. There's a curved seat that peers up into the telescope's eye, facing away from him. Something reclines there, but Cid can't make it out. He swallows, makes to speak. Chokes on the words. Takes a deep breath, and forces the words out.

"It's happening," he croaks.

Caliban says nothing. Doesn't even notice. The telescope adjusts the slightest bit with an electronic whirr, the only sound against the faint howl of the wind outside.

Cid swallows again. His mouth is dry, and there's no spit left in it. His face is numb, and he feels lightheaded. "It's happening," he says again. Louder.

The figure turns its head just the slightest. "What?" It says. The accent is perfect, unaccented English. There is no accent or unnecessarily stressed syllable. Spoken softly, without intonation.

"Elias," Cid says, in a daze. "He's -"

Caliban turns back to the telescope.

~*~

Cid swallows. He remembered this. "Sarah's joining up with him," he says, desperately. "They're going to team up -"

"Quiet," it says. Cid goes silent.

Seconds pass.

The telescope whirrs. The figure sits up and turns to face Cid. It's nothing so much as a blur in the vague shape of a man, just visual static made coherent by image retention - palinospia by expectation. There are no features whatsoever, and the only thing that sticks out in Cid's mind is the limbs. They are too long. It unfolds out as much as up, looming over the seat it had taken, occupying space that it has no reason to overwrite. It hurts Cid's eyes to look at it and so he doesn't, staring up into the stars instead. They are distant and unbearably cold.

"Summarize significance," Caliban says, in that soft and dreadful voice, dispassionate and empty.

"I'll lose the Tower," Cid says, trying to cram all of his panic and nerves and buzzing hate into as few words as possible. "Elias will ruin everything. He'll hunt down everything. He needs himself to."

A pause.

"He is a disturbance," Caliban says. Something between agreement and acknowledgement. Cid remembers to breathe again, and tries to do so as quietly at possible. He looks back at the (thing?) as it continues to (speak?): "Remove him; others, of motivational merit. Achieve parity. Stabilize. You have my mandate."

Caliban turns again, folding into the chair, becoming smaller, but not in size; Cid's eyes sting as purple blooms across his brain, and a persistent high tone rings in his ears. He tastes saltwater on the roof of his mouth.

"Leave," Caliban says, and Cid can barely walk straight as he staggers back into the hallway of doors. A blood vessel has burst in his eye and spread liquid across his retina, and his brain throbs with sharp pain.

But he has victory.

He can taste it, laughing faintly, deliriously, as Bramah steps to a door and opens it, revealing the Tower again. Cid stumbles out and leans against the central column as the whining noise abates, and blood drips from his nose. One thin droplet slides down his cheek from his eye.

He has the mandate.

Cid staggers past the elevator, and to his desk. He lifts up the phone, after a couple tries; fingers numb and nerveless, tangling together.

The mandate. He can do anything he wants.

Cid wants to win. He wants to take it all back. He wants to take it all away, from the people who want to take it all from him. He wants to be the hero. He wants to look away from (Elias?) and never hear from him again, lose him in the crowds of the faceless masses calling Cid's name, looking up at him and his (beautiful?) wife.

The purple fades. Cid's breath stabilizes, and he stares out at the stars he can no longer see, cloaked by the polluted light of the city.

Things make sense again. The wine bottle is empty. Cid's brain is clear.

He would smile, but that's not a sensation he understands anymore, and he starts to dial a number.

 

[CurtailedAmbrosia]

Three buildings were on fire, tall historical brownstones in an older part of town-nice little flats for a reasonably priced bit of old world luxury. Or had been, before this.

Outside on the sidewalk, first responders helped get people to the waiting ambulances still pulling up, leaving the fire fighters to blast water in through the broken windows in their attempt to quell the flames and save these people’s homes. Inside Velocity was still emptying the building, every man, woman, child-and their pets. She never forgot the pets-as was evidenced when the shimmering blue blur exited the last building and stopped short next to Officer Daniels with a coughing, trembling little old woman in a house robe-before darting back inside. She returned with an ornamental domed cage held in both her hands, a little yellow songbird fluttering wildly within.

“Is that everyone?” The tall officer inquired, unfurling another emergency blanket for the woman and reaching for the bird cage.

“Yeah, I think so-going to do a quick final pass-” The red flames and the spinning emergency lights glittered across the surface of the girl’s mirrored goggles, a swipe of soot across one cheek and the side of her pert nose as she placed a steading hand to the elderly woman’s arm, the other silver glove gently resting on her shoulder, helping her off the curb and to an EMT

“Alright, be car-” But she was already gone.

Frozen fiery tendrils lapped at the walls and curled paint, ate through carpet in the narrow halls-Jenna’s been in a lot of burning buildings and one hellscape of a city, she knew what fire looked like, the way it spread and sealed people in, the heat of it.

And this fire had been for sure arson-she can see the splash patterns of still unlit gasoline, the even way the flames were spread throughout the building, floor to floor-someone had spent a lot of time setting this up. She wondered if all three were owned by the same person, if this was insurance fraud. If so, they had been criminally negligent as hell-it was noon on a Sunday, people were home! And how had no one spotted them pouring all this accelerant?

Jenna darted through the still world and checked beneath beds, in closets, bathrooms, balconies-every possibly place an animal or child might hide, anywhere an adult might yet be trapped, missed in her initial pass. She always checked and double checked-she had time. Heck, she almost always made a third pass anywhere the fire hadn’t completely consumed. It’s not like she could end up trapped-she moved quicker than even the worst fires could spread.

She blew through a fire door and into the side alley, zipping through the mouth of that and back into the crowded sidewalk-not noticing the purple streak that darted out behind her, full body slamming into the much smaller woman the instant she slowed down.

Both women hit the blacktop hard, a nasty rolling tumble that Mistress Rush managed to ‘win’- on top and dropping her weight on her smaller rival, her black gloved hands locked onto and pinned the heroine’s arms over her head, toned legs straddling the girl’s midsection where she remained perched.

Face to face, a mere inch or two separating them as she leaned her weight onto the girl’s pinned wrists, Rush admired her own smirking reflection in the mirrored surface of those goggles, ignoring the gasps and startled screams of onlookers as they realized where their heroine was now-and who had shown up to share the scene with her.

“Wha-get off of me!” The brat sounds so offended! As amusing as it is, Rush pretends not to hear her, red lips pulling back from white, straight teeth in a wicked grin.

“Hello, Little Bird.” She breathes, her green eyes focusing on where she imagines the brat’s eyes to be. The fake pulls at her wrists and tried to throw her off-no dice. Rush laughed, a chilling twill-she guessed she had forty pounds and six inches on the petite Filipina, easy. Just for fun she gives her space enough to twist around, try to crawl out from under her-and just as quickly she drops onto her again, this time with her fingers twisted tight in that spunky little ponytail. She slammed her face first into the street, shifting from the straddle so she could drive her knee into her lower back, right on the spine. The sound the girl makes makes her skin tingle. The police are ushering citizens away and trying to organize, over there. They shout things, but she barely hears them as she leans forward to murmur into the delicate little seashell of the girl’s ear.

“But it’s Jenna Paige now, hm? We weren’t properly acquainted, before.” She ground her knee into her spine and the girl fired an elbow back-only for her to catch it, yanking it back across the girl’s spine, twisting the shoulder as far as she could without dislocating it again. The resulting scream was delightful. “You remember how we first met, don’t you pretty bird?”

“Rachel, you need help. Let me help you.”

“So thoughtful, so selfless!” With each emphasized word she pulled back and reslammed her into the concrete, careful not to get her nose dead on-too much blood and she would ruin that cherubic little face. “Why, I could listen to you talk all day.” She twisted tighter on that shoulder, savored another scream.

“Let -go-, and get off!”

“Oh, I will. Maybe you too, if you’re a. Very. Good. Girl.” She purred, another slam into the asphalt before she loosened her grip on the sleek black ponytail, lazily drew her hand downwards. If the girl had any confusion about her meaning, it was utterly dispelled when those fingers caught at the zipper on the back of her costume. Rush could almost taste her panic.

The little thing tried to twist but only succeeded in wrenching her shoulder more, another delightful noise of pain. “Say please, little bird, and maybe I’ll be gentle.”

The onlookers were uncertain and horrified, the police still bellowing commands and orders and overly done demands to ‘freeze’ and ‘put your hands up’ and all the things police always said, cowering behind their squad cars. She doesn’t pay them much mind, yet. She’s more interested in the delicate spine being exposed beneath her, the toned, lithe, graceful muscle on either side of the indent. Disrobing the little tart in public would be viciously humiliating, wouldn’t it? And all over the news before suppertime. The zipper was about halfway down the little lady’s back, more of that bronzed, russet skin revealed and-my! No bra.

Something gold at the corner of her vision-and she jerked the girl up and into her before flitting away to avoid the trident at the last second, the weapon thunking into a car across the way with a tearing screech of metal.

~*~

“Contact with Mistress Rush.” Lana’s voice is tight over the communicator as she ripped her trident back out of the van it was lodged in, luminescent eyes rolling over the empty street. Both the speedsters were gone-she’s not sure if Rush had taken Jenna or if the two had simply moved. When she’d arrived it hadn’t been looking very good-Rush had been trying to tear the girl right out of her costume, it had half looked like.

Deep Blue was in costume yet again, this time a late response to a fire, coming not because she thought Jenna needed the help-but because she thought it important that they continue to appear together on the scene, show a united front. Her swirled navy blue and black wetsuit was stretched tight over what was already a smooth, scale covered lean figure.

The diadem crown wasn’t the least bit feminine by surfaceworld standards-it was a heavy, gemed artifact composed of crystals and the sapphire colored stones, a sharp point jutting upwards at the center of her forehead and back over her scalp, with two more on either side of her face, jutting back and just over the ‘ear’ fins.

“I’ve got your coords-Velocity’s four blocks away.” Protagonist’s growled response was instant. Lana has no idea when-or if?-Marie slept. She was back in Samson. According to Elias she was still working on modifying additional servers in the Coulee, but not staying over. She was working on some sort of tight schedule, as ever-Lana didn’t really know. They still hadn’t interacted much, and not at all in person since her brief glimpse of the woman down in that pit of hers, her lair.

“With Rush?”

“Alone. Looks like a bank.”

Alone?

Something struck her hard in her lower back, slamming the physically dense Atlantean into the side of the van before flitting away just as Deep Blue shoved hard at the vehicle, ripping her trident back out of the side of it, holding it underhanded as she turned to face the vile woman.

“If it isn’t Laura’s favorite princess.”

The Atlantean’s lips pulled back, a sharp toothed snarl as she swept her weapon into both hands. It was yet another blast from the past, an image of nostalgia-but this time there were no happy memories associated with it, only bad ones as her luminescent yellow eyes took the woman in.

Mistress Rush was exactly as she remembered her-the dark purple, painted on costume with the v cut from collarbone to navel down the front of it, a little gold chain connecting the top edges just beneath her collarbone. Black thigh high boots and long gloves, the coiled bit of leather at her right hip. The featureless black half cowl was tight over her skull, sparkling green eyes glinting with sadistic delight, her red painted smirk predatory in nature.

“Rachel.” Lana bit off. She hears Protagonist relay coords in the communicator, probably to Adamant. Still nothing from Jenna-but Marie would have said if there was suddenly a lack in vital signs, right? The largest of the three sapphire stones glittered in it’s setting beneath the middle and longest prong, Lana sweeping it into her hands just as Rush blurred-the trident flying past to punch through the side of the ambulance with a sickening crunch, held there as the two women briefly tangled-water catching and freezing beneath their feet to send the purple blur off target-before the whip lashed out from seemingly nowhere and caught at Lana’s blocking forearm. She was dense enough the tight coil around her arm didn’t much affect her, her other fist punching through yet another sacrificial vehicle and holding fast. Rush was fast, but predictable-she wouldn’t abandon the whip, nine times out of ten.

“Back from your royal palace? Here I had half hoped Rahab had gotten to you after all.”

Lana released the grip on the car to wrap her free hand around the corded leather, yank the villainess forward and into a flying knee. It connected and Rush’s voluptuous body curled over it-only for the woman to grab hold and begin vibrating, vibrating Lana right along with her and with increasing violence. No-everything went sideways and she couldn’t quite connect her thoughts together, a buzzing noise somewhere in the distance-and then a torrent of water struck them both, forcing them apart.

Lana found herself on her stomach, water running over her wetsuit in rivets, saliva frothed around her teeth. There’s a dizzying, painful throbbing at the base of her skull and she shook her head against it, the tip of her golden trident tapping down just to her right. A hand was at her shoulder, Jenna looming over her, apparently having escaped the bank vault or whatever Rush had deposited her in. She was frowning, the weapon in hand. “Are you-”

“Yes.” Lana slammed her hand down and the high pressure hose Jenna had abandoned suddenly blasted a cyclone of water out of the end, knocking Rush down a second time. Lana pushed up enough to take her weapon from her petite protege, unsteadily leaning on it as she rose to her feet.

“You finally learned to phase. Kudos, little bird.”

Lana sees Jenna tense beside her, body language wary, on edge. The right lens of her goggles was cracked and broken, enough pieces missing she can see the almond shaped eye behind it, the strange, flitting way it moved before Jenna herself was a finely vibrating instrument, probably trying to keep her mind running hot.

“But two on one doesn’t quite seem fair.” The woman cooed. The purple streak sluiced through the torrent of water and grinned at them both, red lipstick smeared and dripping red down her chin-making her look particularly bloodthirsty, some kind of mythical beast of yore-which she probably was.

“And if you’re not going to play fair, I bet I can find somebody else who will-there’s an entire campus of pretty little things, isn’t there? That’s where Mindmelt found a little bird like you, after all....”

“That’s not going to happen Rush.”

“Mistress Rush.” And then to both of their surprise, she bolted!

Lana had a hold of Jenna’s shoulder in a heartbeat. “Take me with you.”

“Can’t-” Her wide eyed, horrified surprise was shifting into determined, grim seriousness, the girl’s stand still vibrating increasing, Lana withdrawing her hand.

“Wouldn’tbeabletokeepup.Mariecanfindmycoordswhenwestopsorrybutamgladyou’realright”

And then she bolted in the same direction the purple streak had fled.

Shit.

“Jenna just tore off after the bitch-” Lana’s swearing was notable-it just wasn’t something the polite, proper woman did, not often. “Think they’re heading to campus."

 

[Obuzeti]

The hate feels familiar, this loathing of his own inadequacy. Elias's mouth is a grim line as he sprints after the pastel streaks anytime they're in sight, but he's not fast enough to touch either of them and everyone knows it. Marie reels off a set of coordinates and he phases to them as soon as he can, but still finds nothing there: an empty street, a broken window and someone sobbing in the distance. Another victim Elias can't do anything about.

Yeah, this is what he remembers all of Velocity's and Rush's fights being like.

"Aim for her legs where possible," Elias says, his coaching smooth and calm over the communicator. "Try to limit her mobility. Rush will be doing what she can to distract you, spread you out, make you weak, but that isn't effort she's spending to damage your capacity to hurt her. If you can manage to so much as make her twist an ankle, you win. I am always just behind you."

Words are all he can offer at this point, because he can't catch up. Marie rattles off another set of coordinates, and he teleports again. Sees nothing, this time an empty cafe, the doors to the bathrooms open, a fire alarm ringing shrilly as something burns in the kitchen. Sprinklers lazily spit water over it.

He can't catch up, but the threat of his pursuit is an edge he can offer Jenna and possibly the only advantage he can offer her in this speedster's brawl.

"Stay calm, Marie, Lana," Elias says, his calm lending him command. "We are the net. We stay in pursuit in case Rush slows down, or Jenna gets hurt. We keep going until one goes down."

The teleporter, though, is getting hot on his belt. He has no idea if it was intended for prolonged use like this.

 

[CurtailedAmbrosia]

“Look, this isn’t like it was before, just give up-” Jenna insists over Elias’ words in her ear-cutting around to skid to a stop in the other woman’s way, an umbrella unfurled and thrust into her face before the heroine darted backwards, the world around them catching up-they’re in some Japanese city. This was some round the world flipping trip-Jenna threw up the now closed umbrella to protect her face as the whip lashed out for her again-the leather tip catching her forehead as it wrapped around the improvised weapon. “Adamant and Deep Blue are right behind us. I’m not alone out here.” Rush jerked the umbrella out of her hands.

She takes off without a quip and Jenna barrels after her.

“Aimingforlegsgotmymeanfaceon.”

And then she’s moving too fast to bother trying to talk-Rush was up to her usual crap and then some. She flung people into the (to them) standstill traffic and threw things at civilians, seemed to be doing her level best to keep her scattered-but not actually seeming to be trying to get away.

It’s weird. But in all of that there’s the messes Rush keeps making, forcing her into a constant state of clean up in her wake. A barber opening his shop in some English? town just as Rush sonic boomed past it-Jenna barely got him the hell out of the way of his shattered windows.

She grabbed hold and twisted a woman’s arm until it broke, dragged her along for who only knew how many miles-before flitting away again. Stole a cop’s mace in an American city and somehow punctured it, hurtling a disabling cloud of pepperspray onto a school bus-Jenna windmilled the hell out of that, a mini cyclone that whirled off the side of a bridge before she got back to it. Raced along the edge of a building, glass raining down on unaware people below-vacated the sidewalk below. Took a gun off a soldier and fired it into a crowd-Jenna pinged bullets aside like a bulldozer, scooping them into her hands where they tried to burn through the thick protective material. Just-chaos. So, so much attempts (and successes!) at chaos.

Throughout all of this they keep getting into little fights-and while she was doing a lot better than she had with Rush before, it just-she didn’t have the power she did. The viciousness. At one point Rush had her pinned against another wall, was dead set on strangling her-and she JUST managed to get out of that by yanking her mask down over her eyes and stomping on her toes. She coulda sworn she saw the pop of the teleporter, but then she’d had to tear off after the purple streak again.

This international escapade was wearing her down. She’s...she’s tired and even sweating, but she has to keep at it-Rush would kill people. It was either play her game-or sit down and let people die.

And Jenna couldn’t have that.

~*~



“She was trying to undress her.” Lana was not calm. Lana looked a cross between furious warrior and concerned parent, sharp teeth on full display, a furrow to her scaly brow. She punched through the thin drywall, her hand closing around the narrow pipe on the other side-a torrent of water forced through the sprinkler heads, blowing them off with loud metal ‘pings’. “And -then- tried to kill me. I have never seen her this vindictive. This-” Lana struggles to find the word and feels mildly ridiculous for stating it. “Hateful.”

She half expected Marie to say something about ‘scum’, but the vigilante was apparently busy. Lana gives a frustrated look to the water pooled around her their feet. “They can exchange dozens and dozens of blows in the time it takes us to blink.”

“Not forever they can’t. Velocity, Rush-nine and eleven years to learn their powers, conserve and channel Speed Force. Paige, eighteen months.” Furious typing could be heard through the comm, the growl back in full force and every utterance punctuated as if she were inflicting a stab wound.

“Readings were off the charts before the software crashed-she’s not as efficient as Rush or her predecessor, and at these speeds-greater risk for Catalysis.”

“Then we pull the plug-” Lana said without hesitation before Marie cut back in, tighter than ever. “They’re in Samson.”

~*~

What the fuck. What the fuck-but no, there they were again, this time not flitting through but actual coords popping up for the green blinking dot that finally materialized from where the satellite had left it. Marie repeated them. None of them, none of them belonged in Samson, but it didn’t fucking matter. Somewhere, she’s starting to feel uneasy.

“They’re not here either.”

Marie growled, waiting for the dot to disappear, the map to update, the data to catch up-but nothing happens. She turns into Jenna’s communicator. Rather than crackling electricity and silence, she can hear the two women fighting.

Lana kept talking but Marie wasn’t listening, trying to piece together what the hell was happening. Sixth street to Washington, cross center to Ninth-if they’re not moving then-

The tunnels. They’re in the tunnels.

The blips disappeared as a flush of heat darts down her spine, legs tensing-the coursing pain registers but only as a dim echo behind her instant and irreversible homicidal rage. She presses in on a drawer and doesn’t even wait for it to smoothly glide open-she yanks it back, eyes rooted to the screen as she withdraws a circular round disk, about two inches tall and four inches wide. She drops it in her scarred and useless lap. Marie tries to remember how far under street level the damned things are-but she’s actually never known that information. She doesn’t want to risk tearing them in half, but they’re in the fucking-doesn’t matter. Doesn’t matter.

“Velocity, turn around.” Nothing, the silence and crackling static, the disappearance of the blips. Chirst-no, there they are again. It’s not a coincidence. She doesn’t believe in coincidences.

“Velocity, turn around, return to base.” Marie tries again, her tone downright hellish sounding.

“Can’t-.”

Marie despises repeating herself, despises when people won’t do what she fucking tells them to do, when they don’t understand and there’s no time to MAKE them understand. She gives it up immediately in favor of tearing open her version of a junk drawer, a slippery piece of black cloth withdrawn as she singles out Elias’ communicator with a stab of a button. Even as she talks her eyes are glued to the screen, fingers moving on their own accord elsewhere.

“They’re in the tunnels. Tear the fucking street up if you have to, head south.” The nearest entrance was too fucking far away. “Don’t let Lana turn down any dead ends or get too far ahead of you.” What?

Too late-Marie’s communicator had been switched off.

~*~

Neither speedster expected an interruption, and certainly not the one that arrived mid fight.

Jenna had never seen anyone look more angry or determined in her life. The woman's eyes were narrowed over the top of her mask, glittering with a black malicious anger that frightened her. But no, it’s laser focused with a clear, single minded determination to do harm to Rush. It raised the fine hairs on the back of her neck-and then everything sped back up to normal, and she realized Marie had something in her hand, was actually in mid throw.

"Who the-" Rush started-but too late.

The hocky puck shaped disc hit the floor and slid in their general direction, both speedsters moving to flit away in the same instant the puck spun open to fire several smaller, sparking discs. In the same motion, Marie's staff touched down-she had planned this attack. She had been poised before teleporting, and the execution was flawless.

Large electrical arcs jumped between the discs, catching both speedsters with a taser like charge-and dropping them like flies. Jenna didn’t do much thinking after that.

~*~


Hateful, sadistic, worthless fucking scum.

Protagonist pivoted and shot forward without so much as blinking, the staff dragging on the ground just long enough for her toned arms to give the wheels a hard push-before sweeping it back into both hands and stabbing the villain in her left shoulder. With a squeeze on the trigger, Protagonist dispensed bolts of electricity into the bitch.

Protagonist didn’t mind the strangled scream, though there it didn’t last long-the blonde bimbo lost consciousness in the middle of it, losing control of her bladder as her eyes rolled back into her head. There. There. Problem fucking solved.

Everything was very, very quiet for a moment-just the sound of rushing in her ears, her blood singing to finally, finally be doing something viscerally effective. She dispensed another shock, less necessity and more to settle her temper. Disturbingly, the villianess’ body even twitched at speed.

"Is…” A hissing inhale, one colored with pain and discomfort behind her. The girl’s voice was quiet but strained. “...is she okay, Marie?"

"Protagonist." The word had weight, sucked whatever else would have been said into a vacuum and dismissed it. She continued her growl. "Maintain your professionalism, Velocity."

She wants to shock Rush again. That might be a bit excessive, however. Other problems to solve.

"When I say 'Return'." Protagonist says instead, her voice rough and growled, deadly serious. Worse than when she'd threatened her before. Flatter. Focused. Targeted. "I mean return."

"But-"

Marie’s eye twitched. She did not like to repeat herself. Inefficient noise, arguing. "When. I. Say-."

“I-I’ll return.”

"Good." The unconscious villainess was still at her feet, and her staff was still tight in her hands. She could crank the charge higher. It was capable of dropping much larger beings than the slim woman before her. Her blood calls for it. Demands it. Too much violence pent up for too long. Too much rage with no outlet.

"Velocity, return to base."

"What about-"

"When. I. Say. 'Return'." Protagonist’s eyes narrowed and she forcefully exhaled each word against her grit teeth. She wouldn’t repeat it again-her patience was stretched thin.

“I...not without Rush, or at least-I mean, until Elias and Lana get here.” Trepidation and anxiety in her tone. Afraid. Of her, of what she might do.

Marie turned her head and fixed her with a sharp eyed, predatory glare, taking her in in full. Left lens cracked and broken, a cut to that bow of a mouth and abrasions to the right side of her face. Clear tenderness to her shoulder, physical weakness due to the shock she’d just received. Rush had done something of a number before she had even arrived, might’ve been luring or planning something far more nefarious-and the kid’s worried enough about the scum, worried enough about what she might do to the piece of shit that she was willing to stand up to someone that clearly terrified her.

She glanced to Rush, then wheeled backwards and rounded on Jenna, tight and controlled. She glared at her a moment.

“Food chain, Paige.”

And then she pressed a white, sticky button to the front of the girl’s chest, a blue light flickering bright. Jenna flitted backwards, an alarmed look. “What did you-!”

And then the preset device poofed the girl away.

~*~

Mistress Rush had been bleeding rather heavily at some point-the cause of which was obvious, she'd been stabbed in her upper right shoulder, the fleshy area between arm and shoulder cap, non lethal but precise. It looked nasty, a gaping wound that was slowly healing. Burn marks radiated in a unique pattern from point of contact and across what could be seen of her chest. For a moment, Lana had been afraid she was dead-but there’s steady movement to her chest, a shallow, labored rise and fall.

One of those spider bindings kept her in place, but this one looked modified-it was designed to descend in rather than ribcage out, the black plastic gadget touching her skin-two clear metal prongs making contact.

If she woke up, if she moved-she'd be tasered right back into oblivion.

Lana stared down at her, then glanced to Elias, then back down.

"...how did...I mean-she's in a wheelchair."

 

[Obuzeti]

Elias does precisely that - tears through an abandoned street and drops to the sublevel through its rubble, then takes off South at a dead sprint. He can't launch off down here underground without collapsing the whole complex on his head, but he can hold a dead sprint infinitely, and does so without hesitation. Still, by the time he makes it to the confrontation, the fight's over.

He catches the tail end of some conversation between Jenna and Marie as he comes up on the scene, slowing to a jog, and shakes his head in frustration - the friction between personalities finally coming to a boil. Still, better here after the fight than in the middle of it.

Elias keys his communicator, is silent for a second over it as he lets the words compose, and then says: "Marie, we don't command each other by fiat. If all you can justify it with is the words 'trust me', then say them anyways. We don't have a chain of command for a reason."

"Jenna, Marie isn't in the business of killing prisoners of war," he says tiredly. "Perhaps enemy combatants, but not prisoners. I don't do hard rules, but if Marie's asking for the same thing so many times, do her the favor of asking why. If trust is too difficult, then at least return the benefit of the doubt to her."

He shakes his head and closes the open channel, then moves up and past Marie to Rush's downed body - looks at her. Remembers the bodies left in her wake, the havoc she'd inflicted on nothing more than a whim. The bodies left burning on the docks, up in Michigan, after Nergal's rampage; the twisted and mutilated forms discarded by Marrane, in the aftermath of his parasitic abominations emerging from their mortal carriers.

Elias's mouth thins into a grim line, and he shuts off his communicator entirely. "Good work," he says to Marie, a little faintly, worried for her some but not in the same, crushing way he would be for anyone that didn't have - desperation? He doesn't know how to explain it. The drive to drag down everything with her. Marie's in a wheelchair, sure, but preparation and hate overcome a multitude of advantages. Instead, he's staring down at Rush. At her legs, specifically.

These days, he's past compromises.

"Communicators off," he says, soft. Then he lifts one boot and puts it on Rush's left knee.

"Marie," he says, quietly. "Do you think we'll be able to catch Rush again the same way, if she gets out again?"

 

[CurtailedAmbrosia]

"Marie, we don't command each other by fiat. If all you can justify it with is the words 'trust me', then say them anyways. We don't have a chain of command for a reason."

Even with the cloth mask over her mouth and nose, it’s easy to tell Marie’s annoyed. She utterly dismisses Elias’ chastisement-noise. People could comply, or she could make them comply. If she wasn’t capable of doing the latter, she wouldn’t make demands in the first place. Food chain.

“Protagonist doesn’t kill at all.” Lana points out, leaning on her trident. She’s still troubled by the entire incident, from Rush’s vidicative hatred of the kid to Marie coming out to the field despite being crippled, to ordering Jenna around in her usual terrorizing manner to be ignored or questioned-but she can give Marie that, at least.

“I-I know, I just-” Jenna hadn’t known that. Marie had looked fucking terrifying, and even so-was in a wheelchair, and baseline, and Rush had tried to spasm Lana to death once already, and-well, Elias was there now. It’d be okay. Jenna turned her back on the elevator door, leaned into it, and slid to the floor with a long exhale. “...you’re right. Should have least asked why.” She pulled her goggles off and looked at the cracked right lens. She should trust Marie, if Elias did.

Marie makes a growling noise in response to the ‘least ask why’, and Lana shoots her a look despite the woman’s communicator being off. “Sit down for a bit Jenna, you were running hot for a while.”

She closed the comm and then frowned at Marie. She opens her mouth-

“Don’t.”

-and closes it, giving a shake of her head. She doesn’t think Marie should have come out here, and she doesn’t think Marie should still be barking orders and expecting compliance just by dint of her being scary and almost supernaturally correct or seemingly all knowing.

"Communicators off,"

Marie still hadn’t looked up from Rush the entire time, her eyes focused on the spider cage trap, the black a stark contrast to the woman’s pale skin. Her eyes shift to the boot now resting on Rush’s left knee.

Well, she hadn’t been the only one considering it, it looked like-she just didn’t have a way to do it in the immediate. She was no stranger to straight crippling enemies. It happened by accident and by design in the thick of things during her night hours, period. The heat of things. With her shocked into a coma and at their feet, the tunnel quiet and the fight over, it still wouldn’t bother Marie. Maybe he expected it to because...well. Because.

There’s that accelerated healing bullshit too, but mostly-Jenna had been afraid to leave Rush with her, had wanted to wait until Elias and Lana had arrived. She had already known Rush was unconscious and eliminated as a threat-in the immediate. And then there had been that smile at the Coulee, the edges tinged vicious.

Hn.

“Team cohesion-” Is what Marie says instead, flat, simple, and without any additional muddying dialogue. “Is your sphere, not mine.” She wheels backwards, still ignoring Lana entirely.

“Rachel McCullogh is wanted in more countries than just ours. Russia is still running Octpor.”

“You want to dump her off in a gulag.” Lana said with disgust, watching her begin to continue down tunnel, stepping up on Elias’ other side. She cut him a glance. “...Jenna won’t like it.” A slight shift as her gaze flickers down to the woman. “...I wouldn’t like it.” She admits.

She glances up to see Marie still moving down the tunnel. “Where are you going?”

Marie didn’t respond, just took the next right.

"We can take her to Laurent." She says, suddenly. "Not like she can escape from the bottom of the ocean-she tries, she drowns, and that's not on us." Lana is a little distracted however. Marie shouldn't be going off alone-and she takes a step in that direction.

 

[Obuzeti]

Elias nods, exhaling. "Well, it's better than killing her," he admits, and leans down to roll up a leg of Rush's uniform, then ties it off above the knee. Afterwards, he reaches up and compresses her carotid for a five count. Then his boot comes down just as easily as climbing stairs, and an ugly crackle echoes around the room as the woman's knee joint is simply and completely pulverized beneath it. The makeshift tourniquet prevents it from bleeding much, and Elias pulls a handful of wound wrapping from within his bomber jacket and wraps it on the ruined joint.

The blood loss to her brain keeps Rush unconscious through the entire procedure.

"No gulags," he says, definitive. "I won't pretend the laws apply much to our engagements, but I'd kill someone outright before I hand them over to some political death camp. I don't do this to watch people suffer, regardless of who they are."

He straightens back up, a grim line to his mouth, and glances over at Marie. "I'll drop her off at ADX Florence soonest. Let's make sure Jenna is alright first. Rush isn't going anywhere fast, now."

It's a hard decision, but to be frank Rush was sadistic and sociopathic, enjoying the pain and destruction she could cause. Out of respect for Jenna and Lara's ethics, he wasn't going to give Rachel the last ride, but he wasn't going to be doing this again.

He moves up beside Marie, matching her pace easily, and glances her over with an assessing eye. "She tag you anywhere? All green?"

 

[CurtailedAmbrosia]

Marie approves, but has said all she had to say on the subject. Rush should have been put down a long time ago. It wasn’t entirely right that she had ended up, however briefly, Jenna’s problem. An image of those readings before the crash flickered across her brain.

Hn.

"She tag you anywhere? All green?"

Behind the cloth mask over her mouth and nose, Marie’s lips purse. He wants to know if she’s okay. Alright. Fine. “Rush was a non-issue within seconds of my arrival.” She finally replies, rather than ignoring an inquiry like that, like she normally would. That should have been the end of it, but-

“We would have gotten here.” Lana says slowly, delicately. She’s walking along a few paces behind her chair. “You really-”

“Legs that work-” Marie growls with an irate glance backwards, dark eyes sparking as she cut through Lana’s hesitant noise for what she was really saying, what she HAD said. “-on a baseline woman aren’t much advantage against a speedster.” She looked straight ahead again, took the turn.

“I executed appropriate actions to end the conflict, and with prejudice. Wouldn’t have gone if I thought I’d be ineffective.”

It’s the chair. The Atlantean was confusing physical weakness for mental or spiritual weakness, and Marie wasn’t going to fucking coddle her, hold her hand through it. Ineffective, weak, useless. Was that what Lana thought she was now? She’s twitchy and needs to focus, probably should just be sending them ahead and going back to her lair, but this was her city, and just because the scum had clawed back what little ground she’d gained, just because it was more of a cesspit than ever-it didn’t mean someone could lead HER operative into HER town and-Marie stops short at the next turn, her dark eyes narrowing over the top of her mask as she sees what she’d expected, what had had her demand Jenna turn around, forced her to interrupt personally.

Her operative, her city, and now, in front of her-her trap.

~*~

Lana dragged a partially webbed hand over her face, shaking her head. Everytime she forgets who Protagonist is, she’s rather brutally reminded. She keeps her mouth shut, not wanting to provoke the woman. She had just bailed out Jenna, she reminded herself. It was also the first time she had her admit or mention being human. Come to think of it, it was the only time Marie ever made a statement on what she was-it hadn't been the vigilante claiming to be anything supernatural, that was just the stuff people said.

Jenna. Were they going to tell her about the knee? Lana voted not to be it. She’s pretty sure Elias could do no wrong in the kid’s eyes, but-

“...that bitch.” Lana breathed, warily entering the space as Marie rolled over the thin, expensive looking panels that blended in almost perfectly with the concrete, especially with the broken fluorescents in the room-all but one, and the one left was in the corner. Lana’s pupils were large, thin strips of luminescent yellow around them.

This was nothing a speedster barreling after another speedster would have been able to detect. She walked very, very carefully in after them, stepping over one of the horizontally laid panels. It was a trap. A trap to capture? Kill? Jenna. “It’s a perfect speedster trap. She would have never seen these, not in time.”

Suddenly, despite the nastiness of it, one broken, shattered knee wasn’t enough.

Marie was at the other end of the cavernous room, had lifted the rectangular switch dangling from it’s hook. The black, thick cabling running back towards one of the panels, the screws on the back. She turns her head to follow the cable, seems to count panels and judge the placements-then looks back at the switch, produces a multi-tool from one of the scrub’s pockets-and began to disassemble the back of it.

“How did you know this would be here? That she was leading her to it?” Lana thought to ask. Marie usually seemed to know things, but-

“Because it’s mine.” Marie said flatly. “Not my equipment, but the same location, the same set up, the same plan.”

“You were compromised?”

“Old plan in old system. Will check it over, after.” She was on the last screw, always slightly more tolerable when her hands were busy.

Lana nodded, looking around again. “Why did you have a plan in place for Rush of all people, anyway? You’ve never tangled with her. Not like she had reason to come to Samson.”

Protagonist did not respond, busy dismantling the switch and prying the back off, seeming to judge the handiwork in what little light there was. Lana glanced at Elias and shrugged-looking away-and then froze up, yellow gaze flicking back on a sudden realization.

"Neptune, it was for Laura."

Protagonist still said nothing.

“You had a trap for Laura.” Lana says again, the blue sapphire stones in her diadem glinting in the light, webbed hands fisted at her side.