Athwart History (Closed)

[Obuzeti]

Elias squints. "That's some Greek thing, right? I'm getting some kind of warrior princess vibes. Am I on the money?"

He looks at Lana's face and reconsiders.

"I guess not. Uh, hospitality or something? Anyways, yeah, it's been a bit. Lots of changes. Pretty much all of them I'm okay with."

Vivienne smiles and leans out of her portrait to reach down and poke Jenna in the side of the head. The painted marble that composes her is hot to the touch, somehow, and not nearly as rigid as its stony appearance would seem. "You found out that you weren't alone," she says. "That made it real. Not just a dream you were chasing, not some other life that couldn't mix with the one you'd had before. We understand."

Elias grins at Vivienne, actually proud of her, and then turns to help Jenna collect the plates. "Hey, there's a plate on the counter for Marie, leave that alone. I'll leave it in her fridge later. She won't eat it, probably, but I'm gonna try."

Impulsively, he swings by Sarah's chair and drops an arm around her shoulders, pressing a kiss into her golden hair with a sudden and blinding smile, and then he's gone and moving again, no match for Jenna's dining-room blitz but gamely trying.

 

[CurtailedAmbrosia]

Jenna tips her head back, her bow of a mouth widening into that unabashed grin-buoyantly happy even upside down- at Vivienne. And then it’s up for those dishes! Gotta contribute somehow, given all she did was eat the food, never made any of it. She slips an extra fruit slice or two onto Marie’s plate.

“Never know, maybe she will! Stress good protein, maybe? Good comfort food, as all cheesey things are-but you know...function over flavor.” Yeah, she’s pretty sure only Elias is brave enough to keep trying. She loves Miss Marie, but she’s also kinda scared of Miss Marie.

“She might half think you’re trying to poison her or something-” Lana lifted her partially webbed hands halfway up in surrender. “That is not even a dig. I am being dead serious.”

“Well, if I had cooked it, that’d actually be a legitimate concern-” Jenna tosses out there.

Elias’ hug banishes the disquiet that had crept in, her anxieties on the coattails. Sarah smiles, and is contented-giving a squeeze to Ellie’s shoulder as she pushes her chair back and moves to stand-following Lana back into the other side of the center counter and to the cozy lounge area. There’d hardly be anything left to clean up with Jenna in there.

“So Laurent is king now? When did that happen?”

~*~

Everyone was suddenly busy, and that was the way Ellie preferred it. She wiped the table off and watched Jenna’s movements a moment-but she was in the zone, had the kitchen on lock down and Adamant was already edging in on that with minimal success-and then laughter when Jenna shook a plate dry and splattered the water on him. This had been a nice dinner. It was nice she got to come.

Ellie waited a beat, but Miss Sarah was busy talking to Deep Blue-a real princess! and no one was paying her much mind. Jenna would later, but for now...

Ellie trails over to the mirror and sits down on the floor before it, somewhat out of view of the others due to the table. She withdraws the piece of paper form her own hoodie pocket. The one that had come from the mirror as if by magic.

She never knows quite how to start things, but since he seemed shy too, it would maybe be okay. If she spoke first, he wouldn’t have to worry about it.

“H-hello.” The girl smiles, gesture to herself “I’m Ellie. Is it...is it alright if I sit here?”

 

[Obuzeti]

A quick jaunt through the teleporter later, and Elias wanders into Marie's underground base. There's a new addition to the complex - a rolling tackboard that's been locked into place against the wall, where Marie can see it from her favorite laptop position. There's a series of photos and printed article clippings, and on a stool beside that board, Peter sits and scrolls through a tablet with a serious face. Still donning his hoodie and backpack combo, he's circling names in ink; not real names, but company names. It's a series of stock and press releases around some Grederman, Inc. company he's never heard of. It's also totally quiet in there.

At least they're getting along?

"Ration time," Elias says, halfway serious, and dispenses two plates to both of the over-serious duo. Peter has a dish that Sarah made for him herself, some sliced fruit salad thing with nutmeg added that actually looks pretty delicious, if you're a vegan.

(He's not.)

Marie gets much the same thing minus the spices on the concession that anything with intentional added flavor is going to remain uneaten.

"I have no idea what you're actually doing, but do you lot feel like you're making headway?" Elias asks, smiling.

"Tracing corporate sponsors," Peter says, voice soft. "Villains are soft. They like money, luxuries. If you watch where offices and facilities show up, you can guess where they're based long term. Gruderman's a technology sponsor, supposedly working on the next computer core. Has a research facility in Utah that consumes 7.6 million gallons of water a year. Only sells government contracts."

Elias squints. "I'm sure there's a way to string that together from just being suspicious to Mindmelt using their P.O. Box but to be honest it sounds more like your wheelhouse than mine."

~*~

Tweedledee glances up at Ellie, and shakes his head. This close the details that give him away as inhuman are more clear - his fingers are longer and have more joints than a human's, and the skin is almost crystalline, growing into hard points that glitter with reflected light. There are lines through it, vitreous traces like agate and cats-eye. He's a walking geology project.

"You're fine," he whispers, and there's a long moment of awkward silence as he stares aside at nothing, and says no more. But then he looks up at Ellie with those sharp eyes, like cracked quartz, and continues.

"Are you one of Sarah's?"

She's just on the other side of the kitchen, but his voice is so soft that it doesn't carry.

 

[CurtailedAmbrosia]

Marie’s dark eyes flicked to the boy’s back as he speaks, before shifting her gaze back to Elias. The look isn’t...fond exactly, (was she ever?) but there’s a sense of approval that was just as foreign.

Bordet was sharp and just didn’t require much hand holding. Marie didn’t believe in luck, but she’s not sure a better deal could have been found anywhere, if one had to have a protege. He didn’t make noise and even better-did not expect any noise in return. Mostly she just set him to tasks, occasionally explained the rationale behind the task-but more often just showed what she did with the information once he’d obtained or condensed it, and then watched him follow suit on his own. He already had a mind for it-all she had really done was give him better tools and an occasional target. She continued to increase his access in a slow trickle, and appreciated the tangents his own investigations took him on. Jasper liked to sit near him when he was here, the cat idly watching the board with the occasional slow flick of her tail.

Overall, the vigilante found Bordet suspiciously tolerable.

Elias takes the boy a plate, then brings one over to her usual place at the console-which she’s half given up trying to dissuade him from, much as it irritates her. At least this time, there was a better purpose-she hadn’t really considered anything by way of foodstuffs, though she had mentioned Elias’ fridge to the kid. That mention had basically been to ‘eat things if hungry. Goes bad otherwise.’ but still.

Her lips press into a line, but she has other things to focus on. His mention of Mindmelt picked the conversation topic for her.

“Possible development.” She says instead, a familiar crisscrossing map of IP addresses and relays popping onto the monitors before her. “Given the seeming relationship between Marrane and our Interloper, the abandoned husks and missing laptop seemed obviously related. Then the use of that trap by Mindmelt’s ex-lover...cozy.“

“Just before Paige was publicly outed, Mindmelt sold her personal details several times on the dark web.” This is old news. “Cross referenced what little data I had on the buyers with the IP relay data and-”

Five new digital pins in the map popped up, more criss crossing patterns-before all but three blinked out, satellite images of unassuming, squat buildings flashing on adjoining screens.

“Targets.”

~*~

Ellie visibly brightens up at the okay to sit and talk, the paper still folded and caught between her fidgeting fingers in her lap. Mostly she just smooths over the fold again and again.

"Yes." Rather meek and quiet herself, Ellie easily matches his softer voice. 'One of Sarah's' makes her feel warm, special-just as the heroine herself always seemed to make her feel. Her eyes drift up to the mirrored background at large but she can’t see Sarah from here-so they settle on Mirror Ellie, who was facing the man in the mirror.

"I'm registered as 'blink', in the Tower? Lower case b." She honestly hadn't had much to do with that. Reflection Ellie didn't look like much even for a Ward-so maybe offering up the moniker was a silly mistake. She wasn’t really wanting to talk about that any-the Tower was just a place she lived and got by in, somewhere to be when she had to be somewhere.

Her eyes moved back to the man in the mirror himself, a small slant of a smile. "What do you like to be called?"

 

[Obuzeti]

Elias's tongue presses against his teeth. "I've never known Paul to really work with anyone - I'm not sure he can even think of it like that. He views humans in such - contempt. Even most metahumans. Thinks they're pretenders, usurpers of powers they don't deserve. If he's deigning to cooperate, I don't know who could be pulling the strings."

A brief, wry expression crosses his face. "For all we know, Caliban's a damn computer and the reason Paul listens to him is they don't step on each other's turf."

"But - no, I don't think there's a relationship. Someone might be picking up on what he's doing, following up on his targets or feeding him their location, but he wouldn't take orders."

Elias stares off into the middle distance. His relationship with Paul is corrosive and difficult to define; the other man (and this is what he will call him, regardless of his pretensions to greater things) delights in assaulting him, taking the things that Elias holds dear. The scrolls he leaves on occasion, though, paint a stranger picture. They include letters, sometimes. Little scripts addressed only to him. And the tone the other man takes in them -

~*~

YOU ALONE
YOU, ALONE

~*~​

Elias huffs a breath and dispels the line of thought for another day. "Well, presuming the enemy is not incompetent, if there's anything sensitive in any of those buildings, hitting one will make them scramble for the other two. Make three teams and hit them simultaneously?" he suggests.

Peter's eyes flick up. "Dangerous," he says, his voice still quiet. The volume never quite increases. For all his intensity, he never raises his voice. Not quite afraid of being heard, but too wary of the consequences. "Especially now."

The bigger man cocks a hip and runs one hand through his hair, conceding the point with a whistling exhale. "I was thinking I could handle one safely, and Lana and Jenna another, but that does leave us short on the third, and I'm not willing to let Jenna go alone so quickly again," he says with a reluctant nod.

"Sarah?" Peter says, but his eyes dart back to Marie as he says it.

~*~

The mention of the Tower puts a frown on Tweedledee's face, and it's very noticeable - the corners of his mouth curve down and black, warping uneasily in a way that human flesh has no way of imitating. It smooths out after a few seconds, though. "Cid," he says, voice barely more than a whisper. "I'm sorry, Ellie."

His eyes flick from point to point. He doesn't make eye contact - indeed, never even glances at Ellie at all - but his attention is completely focused on her, if the way he tenses every time she shifts is any indication. It doesn't even look intentional, just a reflexive recoiling, like a squirrel's. "Dee," he answers, and something in either the question or the answer takes some of the wired anxiety out of his shoulders. "You're very kind, Ellie."

It's not a statement or a pleasantry. He knows, and says it as flat and clear as the color of her eyes.

 

[CurtailedAmbrosia]

“Not a reciprocal relationship, then. Maybe Interloper is just cleaning up after him, and occasionally-they offer Paul a ‘treat’.” A pause, and then Marie taps out of the window on her tablet, scrolls through files on a cloud somewhere-clicks on one and gives a quick scroll to the bottom. It was Jenna’s report on the Dock Incident. The interaction with Bramah.

“Ahasver will be relocated and appropriately disciplined - he has exceeded his terms of conduct, and requires chastisement. Nergal, likewise, is the Association's to dispense with; he will receive no defense funding and his peership in the Ring will be revoked at the next session. I extend my apologies for this violation of etiquette - I would likewise surrender our other compatriot, but as his containment remains a difficult issue for the Association, I have taken steps to do so in your stead. My regards.”

“Maybe just ineffective handlers.” She states as she moves to hand it over-and instead catches the thousand yard stare and the bit of slack (dismayed? disturbed?) expression. It’s very minute and very brief, but Marie’s mouth forms a frown before that impassive mask reforms. Her dark eyes watch him a moment longer, though, flicking away once he huffs a breath and begins to speak again.

“The instant Daybreak does anything official outside of the Tower, the entire game shifts and there’d be no undoing of it.” Marie says to Peter directly. It’s not a refusal or a correction-it’s matter of fact explanation for the both of them to consider. It’s also something of a thought exercise.

“The scum step up, and Cid doubles down.” Marie’s eyes narrow, glancing away from the boy and to the monitors. Her mind flashes on the woman’s instant and vehement denial of the abuse, and something beneath her skin itches. “And given Sarah’s current-” In the presence of the two of them, Marie softens what she would have said, even if it irritates her to do so. “-difficulties, she’s unlikely to sideline him, even more unlikely to abandon the Tower. Could lose what tentative progress has been made on that front.”

Elias was a serious threat to Cid’s prestige. The Knight did not want to share the stage and had done all he could to oust the man, isolate his prize pony, and maintain the fiction that he was at all superior to Adamant or Daybreak. Marie doesn’t want to risk Daybreak disappearing back into that damnable place. Unsettling was the fact the impact it would have on Elias overshadowed her concern for what it’d do to the war effort. Marie briefly doesn’t know what to think of that. She can’t make decisions based on…feelings.

She shakes her head. No, it was definitely the risk, and the statement that would be made once Daybreak publicly acted alongside Adamant or in clear connection to the neonate League. Marie knew they’d need higher numbers before moving onto the next stage.

Adamant having been stirred had alarmed the scum plenty, for now. Daybreak wading in would make it all that much more difficult, and- “It’s not a phase we should enter lightly...and probably not at all until we have Velocity on lockdown.”

A shake of her head. “We either risk the third location being cleared out before a team can get there, or we make it a stealth mission, and don’t visibly hit it at all.”

“Install keyloggers, tracking bugs-if they pack up, we’ll be able to follow it and snag yet another location. If they don’t, we’ll have eyes on everything they’re doing there, potentially a valuable information source.”

She leaves everything as is rather than concluding-learning opportunities come and go, and it was important to utilize them as they arose. It’s how she had learned, after all.

Elias’s thousand yard stare expression moments before, and how she had now raised the possibility of Sarah’s retreat-both made Marie vaguely uneasy. Maybe there’s a reassurance to be offered somewhere, but it’d be noise and potentially worse-a straight lie. She can’t change the facts or the probability of certain unpleasant scenarios. All she can do is point them out when she sees them, because it was better to know.

She’s not much fun at parties. Or...at all.

Her dark eyes flick to the fruit salad. Marie picks up the fork, eyes the stuff dubiously-and then decisively scoops up and takes a bite. It’s sharply sweet with a tinge of sourness, too sweet with too much sourness, texture and flavor she doesn’t need and certainly doesn’t deserve-but if she doesn’t have anything to say, suppose she can at least fulfill his damnable compulsion to coddle people.

Which doesn’t make the least bit of sense and she doesn’t entirely understand why she’s bothering with something that had no strategic purpose, but she does it anyway.

~*~

"I'm sorry, Ellie."

That mostly seems to puzzle her, but the girl doesn’t pursue it, too pleased to be given a name to use-and then blinking when he calls her kind. She never quite knows what to do when people say nice things to her, about her. Mostly, she doesn’t usually believe them.

He says it so plainly though. Like he just knows.

“It’s nice to meet you, Dee.” She opts instead, the unique features of the other man making her curious, making her wonder about the world he was in, over there, if it was one.

“I wanted to talk to you, because-because of this paper.” She doesn’t mention the fruit or the milk disappearing, but the paper, because it’s the only proof she has, a thing no one could deny was there, in her hands right now. She unfolds it, smoothing it against her hoodie covered lap.

“You wrote on it in there...and then left it over here. And I wanted to ask, because-” She’s not sure where to start, all of a sudden. She doesn’t want to rattle off a bunch of questions, that seemed rude. At the same time, she didn’t really talk about...well, she didn’t talk. But that seemed a good place to start, because it explained why she was so curious.

“W-well I can teleport, you see. F-for a few feet, or a few miles-” She glances over her shoulder a moment as she lowers her voice yet further. Only Jenna knows what she’s about to reveal next, and even the miles part had only been discovered by Sarah recently. “Or even halfway across the world.”

And now the part no one knows.

“And the short distances, what people see-they think it’s instant. And it is, kind of, for them. B-but not for me.” She smooths over the paper as she speaks, a little anxious because she feels like she’s talking a lot.

“I call it, s-secretly, I call it stepping. Because that’s what I do-I step out of this place, this dimension, and into another one, and distance there translates to a much farther distance here, so I move where I need to, step back and poof. T-teleportation.” She looks down at the piece of paper. “S-so I was wondering, if you have paper in there, and you put it over here, then in there must be somewhere else, too? Is that somewhere else a pocket thing that...that moves where you do, or when you’re in a mirror, are you like Miss Vivienne?"

She pauses, nearly apologizes for talking so much, but she doesn't think he minds. She prefers to listen too. "Or, and it's...it's okay if you don't want to talk about it, but I wondered if it’s another entire dimension over there, too.”

 

[Obuzeti]

"Sounds more likely," Elias agrees, and chews on his lip. It's true that Sarah going out with them on a combat op would complicate their position immensely - and if he's honest, he doesn't want her out there anyways. She's too fragile at the moment still, and the kind of bombshells that any canny opponent will be able to drop on her (like the League's current fatality rate) will completely shut her down.

He still hasn't told her, and to be honest he's not sure there'll ever be a good time. It'll have to come up, but Sarah is so devastated over the losses at Immolation still, let alone what's happened since. Compounding her anguish would be needless, despite all the power she can bring to bear. She's his sister in every way that matters, and she is more precious to him than the uses she can be put to.

"I won't mention it to her, then," Elias says. "She's not . . . robust enough, for full combat operations. Not against the kind of opposition we're likely to find. For now, she's better off recovering."

He considers for a moment, then reluctantly offers, "You could try and contact Gideon. Cracking a hidden bunker for a technological conspiracy does sound right up his alley. God knows he won't listen to anyone else anyways."

If he's even got a communication line active. Who knows. Elias has an in with most everyone in the League, past and present, but Gideon wanted nothing to do with mankind but to secure its distance from him. Marie had tipped over the line far enough into obsession to be able to have rational conversations with him, which was more than anyone else bar Sam had managed.

"Either way, I'll leave the third base to you and yours, however you choose to take it. We'll go on your call, whenever that is."

Peter glances over at Marie. "It might be worthwhile to set surveillance on the last site and see who comes to check it after the attack," he says. "We don't know who precisely is making moves. Knowing at least one more piece gives us a direction."

~*~

Tweedledee listens. She doesn't ask him questions about him, only his power. About the places she can go, and he can go. The wistfulness, loneliness tinge the corners of his vision, and he lets it because it's so rare that anyone find him something worthy of curiosity, the gentle start of admiration. If all she's had to look up to is Cid and this shadow of Sarah, then it's no wonder. Elias is too much, and doesn't realize it and can't help it.

The slimmest silhouette here is the one that draws Ellie. He understands that.

"We use different methods," he says eventually. "The - motion looks similar, but she has no awareness of the space between openings. She skips across the surface of the pond. I have to be careful not to sink. Away from the openings there is no heat and no light. It's very cold here."

He indicates the piece of paper he'd scribbled on with a minimal gesture. "This will fade. No changes I make can last, though I can press them a little. This is all a reflection. It's not real. It'll go away when no one is watching."

Dee huddles deeper into his hoodie.

 

[CurtailedAmbrosia]

Marie gives a nod about Daybreak. It’s the right call.

Unlike the next suggestion.

“Gideon.” Marie repeats, flatlining. A resource, but without Sam to temper him and with her in a wheelchair...her jaw sets. “Thought I was a demon.” He’d tolerated her less for that and more for the black hatred they both carried, the ugly. His just extended to everyone, rather than the scum. In the absence of Sam, in the absence of her own ability to overtake him as far as intimidation, now lacking the unknown at her side-it seems like a terrible idea. He’d start in on the others (most likely on Jenna first), and that would set off an already on edge Lana, and then the whole thing would be a noisy mess of nothing instead of a well oiled machine.

There’s also the fact he’d been with her at Rahab, had been party to her failure-and then taken off and quit just like everyone else, the coward. “Lana said there’d been contact in the aftermath, but she never actually saw him. I don’t know what that involved. Was comatose.” She thinks of the short list of surviving heroes, and then she thinks about Cid, the media, the fledgling League resurgence.

“He’s a resource, but for now one best left untapped...or at least at arm’s length. Things aren’t...stable enough.” It’s bad enough she was on the team, let alone two monsters.

She takes another bite of the stupid salad, agitated. Jasper appeared on the top left edge of the console, leaping up and taking up her usual vigil. She’s got to say something about the cat sitting, too.

"It might be worthwhile to set surveillance on the last site and see who comes to check it after the attack. We don't know who precisely is making moves. Knowing at least one more piece gives us a direction."

He arrives at the conclusion she had left open, and he answers correctly.

“That’s exactly what we’ll do.” What he was going to do, but she needed to do a fly by with one of the drones first, scope out what she could before deciding on the depth of the mission there. She wasn’t completely out of her Goddamned mind-he’s still a fourteen year old boy.

Elias and the others would wait on her call. She can get the recon done-both a day and night flight-by tomorrow, assemble a kit she’d send Bordet in with based on the results-and then the two crack teams on the remaining targets, after.

Perfect.

~*~

It is another dimension! A dark and cold one, but one nonetheless. Ellie briefly doesn’t know what to think about the revelation. She had thought it must be, but wasn’t sure, and now that she is sure, she almost doesn’t know what to do with the knowledge.

“This is all a reflection. It's not real. It'll go away when no one is watching.”

“But you are.” Ellie says, absently pocketing the piece of paper in her right hoodie pocket, sleeve falling back over her hand. He said it’d disappear, but she’s so used to squirreling things away she doesn’t even think about it. “Real, I mean.”

Would a flashlight work, in the inbetweens? If nothing was there, maybe not-he probably would have tried it already. She wonders how he gets to place to place. She wonders if it’s possible to get lost.

And cold? Cold had been the worst part about the streets in Samson-the nights in the concrete and steel jungle were always so very cold, but it was better to be in the dark and cold than draw attention or join others at a fire, kids or not.

“Have there ever been any other people, in there?” She’s always alone in The Other. Even she couldn’t stay long-the nature of that place was just too hostile. Unsafe.

 

[Obuzeti]

Marie's expression flattens even more, back down to the drawn, tight face she'd worn for months at the start of all this, and Elias hates it. Her progress has been agonizingly slow out of her own mental pillbox, and people are as clear a trigger as any she has; he'll have to handle Gideon now, it seems. Too toxic, now.

He doesn't blame her. Even at the best of times, Gideon's a handful. With almost a decade to molder and curdle, Elias doesn't want to particularly imagine how nasty the Carolina native is now. At the very least, he's staying a long damn way away from the kids if they ever bring him back into the fold, and they may never even do that. All the man wanted was to be left alone, after all, and getting anything out of him involved convincing him that some conspiracy could be crushed with his involvement (admittedly easy).

"Scratch him off the list, then," Elias says with a nod. "We'll hit the sites as soon as you can get surveillance up. Just let me know when."

He touches Marie's shoulder, and then turns to leave; a ritual he's started. It'd be kind of pathetic for anyone else, but her nerves are wired so raw that any kind of contact has to be sparing and short. It's all she'll permit, but he's a firm believer that she needs to know that there are people willing to touch her, to accept and hold and believe in her. It's a small thing, and he believes in small things that create great ones.

Peter, on the other hand - he reflexively reaches up to ruffle the kid's hair, and stops when the kid tenses up. Then Elias backs up and scrubs it through his own hair instead. "Sorry," the bigger man says with a shrug, "Reflex. I'm a touchy sort of guy."

"I see," Peter replies, expressionless. Watching the other man closely.

Elias returns the gaze steadily, and instead offers, "Be careful. Be brave."

Peter nods to this, and Elias returns upstairs, his bare feet silent against the concrete of the bunker. The younger boy watches him leave, and then tucks into his salad with little mincing bites. He never takes more than one, and instinctively scans the room. His shoulders curve around the bowl like he's hiding it.

~*~

Dee inclines his head in affirmation, still staring off to the side. He does exist, in a certain sense, but his being warps to not even the expressed wills of those around him, but their hidden biases. Whoever Tweedledee is depends on the goodwill of those around him, and he has a choice between either total isolation or enslavement to the zeitgeist.

He can't even muster the energy to be upset about it, with Ellie's attention on him. Her curiosity is too strong, and he finds himself equally inquisitive about her, sneaking peeks when she's looking somewhere else. His skin pales, turning from dark and veined in a gradual process to something more like pearl and moonstone, pale and milky. It almost looks like human skin, except for the places where the light will glitter and refract off his gemstone surface.

"No," he answers to her next question. "Just me. This isn't a place for people. It isn't hostile, but - it's like space. Nothing supports life. Nothing creates energy. This place is the shadow of reality. It exists to represent the inverse."

He knows, if someone places a mirror out in the open, and he goes out at night and looks at the sky, it will all be endless black. The stars have burnt cold and out here. There is no light, and there is no heat. This is a world at the end of entropy.

 

[CurtailedAmbrosia]

Marie actually doesn’t tense, this time. Usually there’s a twitch or a reflex somewhere, an instinctive something inherent in a body and mind so primed for violence-but not today. No conscious repression, no anything, because at this point it’s an established ritual, and one she accepts-from him anyway.

She’s tapping through on the tablet, having already decided which of the two locations to hit and which one to ‘leave alone’. The interaction with Bordet and his exit were in the peripheral of her attention-and the minute he leaves she sticks the fork back into the salad, picks it up, gives a half turn to a wheel-and then immediately pops it into the mini fridge with all the bare subsistence nutrient shakes.

Peter’s body language is read at a glance, and it only fits in with everything else she knows about him.

Marie returns to what she’d been doing.

Hn. She’ll have to teach him how to pilot the drones, at some point.

~*~

“The Other isn’t a place for people either. It’s all black and kind of scary, with some kind of red...bad energy crackling through.” Ellie fumbles with her hoodie sleeve. “It tries to get to me sometimes, but my power keeps me safe. Still, I can’t spend too much time in there-I get sick when I do.”

And when she flits through a lot in one sitting-like the training sessions in the Tower-the red seemed to get angrier and angrier each time she popped through. Like it knew she wasn’t supposed to be there.

Ellie doesn’t like to think about it much. She prefers to explore the real world, wandering through places she never would have seen otherwise, alone even in throngs of people, where no one knew her, no one bothered her.

And now she’s curious if she can get into Dee’s world, too-because an entirely different, new dimension was an exciting prospect, no matter how cold or dark it was. Unlike The Other, there was actually some semblance of something-even if it was all a reflection.

She’s going to have to think about it some more.

“Where did Ellie go? She didn’t pop out already, did she?”

“Oh.” Ellie peeked over her shoulder again and then back, that small slant of a smile again. “Thanks for talking with me, Dee. Can I...can we talk again sometime, next time I visit, maybe?”

 

[Obuzeti]

It sounds vastly more hostile than the realm Dee roams, but she has the choice to leave it; between the two options, he'd say she has the better deal. For a moment, he wonders what Catalysis would do to this young girl, as it has to him, but it's not a thought worth holding onto, too distasteful in the soft sunlight of her shy enthusiasm, and he discards it. Instead, Dee inclines his head to Ellie, and says, "When you like. You are welcome."

It's not something he's ever done before - invite someone into the Mirror World. He's never had reason to, of course, but it's also his private sanctuary, for all its still coldness. He wonders what he can show her that's worth her interest; there's a few places around the world uniquely attuned to him. Those might at least satisfy her curiosity.

He doesn't want to disappoint her.

~*~

THE TOWER

Cid rubs at his eyes and stares at the information on the screen. It's just an abandoned house, but what it represents is the Rubicon. Going in, he knows things are going to be bad and then get worse, and this distant from the brain-blasting stare of that dread thing, he knows that this is going to be a price that will haunt him. The others he could stomach - the dross, the citizenry, but yet still citizens of his miniature nation - but now it will be his chosen under the knife's edge.

He hopes they understand.

He hits the alarm that will summon Tyler to the top floor, summoning the currently ready team of Veterans, and then stands and slams his helmet on before he can change his mind.

It's time to save what can be saved.

"Code Red situation, Tyler," Cid says over their mike network as he strides across the top floor and into the custom armor fitter set against one wall. It begins to laboriously screw and weld the heavy plates together over the fitted bodysuit beneath - the finest products of man placed in a suit of armor finally worthy of him. "We've got a lead on Paul Marrane's location. One of the old League members popped a beacon: Modal, the man that designed much of the technology we use today. He doesn't have combat powers, so he's called for help and bunkered down as best he can. I don't know if we can make it in time to save him, but for damn sure we can catch Paul before he flees the scene."

The shoulderplates grind into place and weld shut, the comforting weight of the pauldrons heavy and thick. Inside his armor, he feels alive again. The limitations of mortal power, of agreement and opinion and persuasion, fall away, and for a moment again he feels powerful, instead of pinned against the responsibilities no one else is fit to take up.

He takes a breath. "Bring your best. This is as hot as it gets."

 

[CurtailedAmbrosia]

“On my way.” He’d already been suited up. He usually was-preferred it that way. The other three would be on their way up in response to the initial alarm, but the fourth-well, the fourth was down for the count and had been for the past three days. It’s why he’s heading down several floors instead of up-he needs a fill in, and he knows who he’s going to tap.

Ashley Reynolds, AKA Backdraft. Like him, she controlled an element-she was capable at telepyrosis-fire from a distance. It ran in her family-and so did villainy. Something she’s always been more than a little sensitive about. Particularly in his presence-his grandfather had fought her grandmother..****ice.

And also like him, she’d been on the Junior League team when Rahab had hit. A new recruit, barely a year on the team. She had begged the others not to go. Thought they were defying orders meant to keep them alive. That they were heading off to die. She had been right.

She didn’t regret not going, she had told him once. Only that she hadn’t managed to convince anyone else to stay. Not even him-he had remained because he followed orders. He had remained because his grandfather made sure he was following those orders.

All these years later, Tyler’s still not sure what had made the old man think to call him, especially when he was suiting up to head to the islands himself, well earned retirement or not. His grandson always followed orders. Always.

…

Why hadn’t he told him he was going out there?

Tyler shook the thoughts away, firmly banishing them to the recesses of his mind. He has a mission and he needs to be moving on it. He turned the corner, swiped his right wrist over the door sensor-and entered the Wing without so much as knocking. As it turned out, his mark was doing paperwork just beyond her open bedroom door, the small utilitarian desk a little messy, but not quite unkempt.

She stared at him a moment, a glance to the two closed doors down the hall-and then moved to stand, frowning. “What, are you here to shake us down? Pretty sure Sarah’s called an end to that, hasn’t she?” She wasn’t afraid of him, he already knows that. Too much history. She was also entirely too soft on the kids under her supervision. Worse, she was sneaky. He’s decently sure the Wards in her wing got away with more than even he knew about-but he didn’t go poking around in holes that might bite him, not without a purpose. They were all meek and largely compliant in this wing anyway. Didn’t draw attention, and unlike Ashley-they WERE afraid of him.

“There’s a mission, and I need you on it.”

“I think I have my hands full enough, thanks. Having so many ‘problem Wards’, and all.” She used air quotes when she said it but no REAL bite, rolling her eyes. An ironic joke at someone else’s expense-maybe his, he could never really tell. He met it with a steely, unamused expression, and she lowered her hands to her honey blonde hair, pulling it back into a ponytail with a huff. “What has you so tense?”

“An old hero is under fire. Called for help.”

“So help them.”

“They’re under fire from Paul Marrane.”

He watched her nearly choke, honey hazel eyes flaring wide. “What? That is WAY above my paygrade-Christ, Tyler, why are-you-that’s a pretty big fucking deal. Just because that flighty little girl tangled with him and didn’t die-”

How the hell did Ash know about that? Was it just common knowledge, now? He doesn’t want to think about Paige-that was a whole different can of worms, and his mind is on the mission, the coming fight. He interrupts with the facts, stepping past her into her room.

“I’m down a Ward and can’t go in short. Valerie’s useful but she can’t hit hard-or at all, really-and the other two are good but you have combat capabilities for crowd control AND we already know how to fight together.” He found what he was looking for immediately-her old yellow visor and cushioned earphones, those specialized gloves. “We’re heading into a host of insects trying to kill a veteran, and El Cid says this is as hot as it gets.” He turned and dropped the visor and gloves into her hands, direct eye contact.

“You can do more than babysit, Ash. I need you on this.”

“...then I’ll be there, Tyler.” All sass was absent, now, a serious, accepting expression. Tyler didn’t really have ‘friends’. But if he ever had, she would have counted as one, once. And like before, she was ready and willing to help him when he called on her.

“Good.” He was three measured paces out the door before he stopped, pausing for just a fraction of a moment. “...Thank you.” And then the door closed behind him. That was one down. Though...considering who they were about to face, maybe a fill in wasn’t enough.

El Cid might not like it, but he wouldn’t argue the wisdom in it, either.

Guess he’d go wake Blaise up.

~*~
Backdraft stepped off the elevator and into the suite she’s seen exactly once, pulling a little at her costume. It was a simple enough affair-a yellow angular flame with orange accents printed on a black costume, yellow gloves with metal fingertips and some kind of mesh to them, something that sheens in the light. Oversized head set with an attached yellow visor-the padded phones resting just behind her ears, visor shading her honey colored eyes, hair slickened with some sort of gel that gave it a wet appearance, ponytail a sharp point down her back. Compared to a lot of stuff these days, it feels a little outdated-but to hell with it, it’s what she had and what she’d use.

Valerie casts her a glance-and doesn’t look exactly thrilled to see her. The tall, thin woman didn’t even hardly wear a costume-just that gothic sort of look to her, the leather jacket and layered jewelry, those fingerless gloves-leather pants. Ashley just gives her a nod. She’s dead certain Valerie had a crush on Tectonic, based on how jealous she got about other girls around him, ever-but that wasn’t her business.

Tyler was a friend, but she’d sooner fuck a cactus then get with him-he was boring and liked to throw his weight around. No thanks.

The elevator came back not long after she’d exited-Tectonic stepping off and ready to go-the deep, dark reds and browns of his suit, open faced, open crowned helm in hand, the thick materialed gloves and boots-he pulled on the helm even as he walked just past her, giving a nod to El Cid.

 

[Obuzeti]

Blaise was in the training gym - technically, the only area he was allowed to be aside from his room, not that this halted him in any way. Shackles and locked doors barely slowed him down, and punishment drills were all he wanted anyways. One of the new, specially-ordered speed bags hung before him, and he juked irregularly from side to side as he battered it, short black hair and sweat dripping equally from his head. It also periodically catches fire, which is why the few Wards present have relocated to the other side of the gym.

Blaise has the rangy build of a fanatic - long and slim, with the fat burnt from his bones by raw intensity, perpetually hunched or leaned forward. His eyes are set deep into his skull beneath that raven-black hair, and the muscle stands out on his gaunt frame, laid tense over his forearms and neck. The innocuous t-shirt and gym shorts he's wearing are scorched black in places where friction has nearly set fire to them, and his skin is pink and raw in scattered patches from the same effect. One of his eyes is blackened, and his lip is freshly split, still raw and open. Heat shimmers around him in coruscating waves, the air itself screaming past its own molecules with sandpaper grit. Sometimes when he hits the bag it doesn't so much as twitch, and an awful screech comes out of it - sometimes he hits it and it reverberates so fast it nearly rips off the mounting.

He isn't smiling. He never smiles. But when Tectonic asks him the question, he comes without so much as a moment of hesitation or a word, because this is what he lives for.

~*~

Blaise doesn't have a hero name. Doesn't believe in them. So when the rest show up in their spandex and colored highlights and insets. He hasn't changed out at all, in the same T-shirt and shorts he'd worn in the gym, sweat-stained and ratty. He walks in with absolute confidence and looks straight at Cid, first thing. "I need some armor. Whatever kind. What can take a hit?"

Cid stares at the younger man, uncertain. Blaise's straightforwardness has always set him back. "Why would I subsidize your antics?"

"I'm going to kill things for you," Blaise says without blinking. "And you're going to help me do it, because now you need death instead of obedience."

Cid's neck flushes and spreads red up across his neck and over his face in a slow wave, none of it visible through the armor. He fucking hates this kid, sometimes. Can't stand his attitude, his unrepentant nature, his absolute confidence in a fight. The rest can be bent, but Blaise stares right on through. Rather than answer, Cid clicks a remote inside of his glove, and a floor panel rises up to reveal a set of armor - tactical stuff, padding and kelvar, but none of the technological superiority that his own suits pack. Blaise strips down and starts packing it on without any kind of self-consciousness. The streaks and burns are evident even under the clothes. He has to practice naked to get some of them.

"Make sure you take some kind of sealed mask," Cid directs to everyone else, deciding to ignore the problem child. "Paul's used spores and biowarfare in the past. I've got sealed rebreathers for everyone, but I don't have time to put together a skin-sealed protective system for everyone. I have detectors instead that'll tell you what local particulate count is. If it gets high, evacuate. We survive above all else."

He claps a hand on Tectonic's shoulder, even as his other hand runs through final diagnostics and arms his weapons. A low hum emanates as they come online: a shoulder-mounted, independent turret with three cycling barrels, five self-guided drones that take position over each member of their group, and his massive sword-shield combo: Tizona and Colada. The shield itself is a recoil-dampened double-layer hull with a diagnostic and self-repair system in the side facing him, with a ring of tools and gadgets secured for use, and the sword mounts along his forearm and projects photon blasts either as a shot or as a close-range blade.

Both had been made for him by Machinist, though it'd taken him eight months to convince the other man to swap the black-and-flames paint job for his preferred white.

"Anyone need a spare weapon? Any other supplies? Speak up now, we're not coming back until we're done," Cid says.

The last member of the team, Barricade, is another Veteran, a quiet, larger boy that's usually on the training teams that push the Wards to their limit. His power throws up static walls of varying material, which he can change with some focus. At some point, he'd picked up the nickname Barry as opposed to his real name (Mark Postlen), and it'd stuck so well he'd given up and now answered to it as easily as anything else. "I could, boss."

Cid calls up another floor panel, this one a fold-out armory and tosses him something he'd been careful to keep out of the Tower up to this point: a firearm. Specifically, some kind of modified Remington, which Barry cocks and checks with the ease of experience. "Now's not the time for the soft approach," the Tower's master says. "You get full access. Load up phosphorus rounds."

 

[CurtailedAmbrosia]

There's a beat of silence and Ashley is dead certain Blaise was about to get his ass banished back to his lonely abandoned ward-but the knight waves a hand and addresses the rest of them instead, leaving Blaise to suit up in silence-smack in front of her and Valerie.

The kid creeps her out. Sometimes she almost feels bad for him, but others he just seemed as much a psycho as everyone said he was. Something was just wrong with him. He'd also beat on Sanderson completely unprovoked once, and that alone had kept him on her shit list, even if he had stopped.

She's not sure what Tyler was thinking, roping him in. Then again, violence seemed to be his drug, and he WAS strong, no denying that.

She's starting to feel a little better about the mission. Space Contortionist and Barricade would keep shit off of them, she and Blaise could burn through whatever nasties Paul had festering, and then Tectonic and El Cid would direct the team and clear the bigger baddies with precision.

They'd come out alright. She'd just be sure to keep an eye on Valerie-Tyler was right, Contortionist couldn't hit back.

Ashley has her own rebreather. It's in the pouch secured on her right hip-but she pulls it and lets it dangle around her neck instead. She may have quite a bit of heat resistance, but she can't breathe straight smoke, thanks.

-*-

Tyler might have growled at Blaise about his disrespect-but that'd only be offering the knight more. Still, his expression tightens as it tended to anytime someone spoke out of turn.

He hopes he doesn't regret choosing the kid over Harv-but it was firepower he'd been after, not long term team cohesion. They can send Blaise right the fuck back to his floor and speed bag once they came back-Tyler doesn't need a headache like that-or another P.R. disaster-in his sphere.

Seeing Cid geared up, priming weapons-well, it's been a while. For some reason he finds it disquieting. The mission was clear. Extraction or retribution, potentially both.

Yet the feeling persists even as he glances over the others, mentally compares available soldiers and resources within the Tower, experience levels and combat viability of powers. If they were sticking with a single squad, this was that squad. Lacked nothing, unless you counted-

"No Daybreak?"

Tyler frowns, a glance to Cid's armored continence and then back to Backdraft. "It's possible Modal is no longer with us." He states evenly. "Or soon won't be."

"Ah." The honey blonde haired heroine didn't need further explanation.

The younger Wards don't really know and don't see it, but Sarah's fragility was the unspoken...uncomfortable truth for the few Junior League vets and older Wards. Especially these days.

Perhaps that's the source of his disquiet. Battle alongside the old veteran, risking the general as well as Sarah's husband-he'd just keep his eyes open. They'd handle it and evac if necessary. If Paige had survived the two encounters she'd managed to blunder into with Marrane, he's not sure what he's overly concerned about.

"Jack's sick or we'd take her too, mark or no mark." He finishes the thought, attention returning to Cid. "This is the squad, and we're at your disposal."

 

[Obuzeti]

Barry loads up his shotgun, and glances at a round with curious flechette-shaped pellets, with the distinct shaped flare that lets him channel his power into them, forming barricades midair with all their velocity intact. "I get to use these?"

Cid nods over at him. "It's bad enough. Don't aim them anywhere near where your teammates are, or near walls that could lead to exposed public spaces. Your penetrator rounds are, by nature, overkill. Be careful."

"I am going to blow up so much shit with these," Barry says, reverent, as he loads the shells one at a time into his shotgun. His eyes are dreamy.

Cid catches a glance of Blaise nodding gravely in agreement, and actually rolls his eyes before he can catch himself. He coughs and uses Tyler's confirmation as a segue instead. "I'd like to take Sarah," he says, slowly, "But against the tactics Marrane would use, she has no defense."

He reaches up and removes the helmet, slinging it under his arm. Cid himself looks average - slightly less than typical height, shorter than Tyler, even, with short and cropped brown hair and muddy eyes. He's not handsome, with features too strong for that. There are wrinkles in the corners of his eyes and an old scar that runs down his cheek. "Marrane takes hosts, and that means you're likely to see enemy combatants that are shaped like people. They might still be alive, even. I don't know how deep the depths of his perversion are. But understand me now."

He reaches out, sets one hand on Tyler's shoulder and another to Ashley's, nods to Barricade across the little circle they've formed. "Where we're going, there is no one to save. If Modal's still alive, leave his extraction to me, but don't get near him. Marrane can implant things in people that take weeks to come out, that are infectious and contagious. He can control them from inside. He can do that to anyone that was unfortunate enough to be in the area, or that he hauled along. Everything alive is a weapon in Paul's hands. Trust none of it. Keep your weapons high and your backs to each other. We're coming home from this."

Blaise finishes fitting on his armor, locking on the gauntlets with a snap. He turns and nods to Cid's speech. "We have greater enemies than this," he agrees. "But not by much."

Cid gives him a surprised little nod, and says, "Console, warm the Firebird up."

The ceiling of the Tower retracts, folds back; the central part that binds to the elevator shaft expands and reveals a VTOL pad with a smooth, streamlined aircraft parked on top of it. Cid's never had an actual opportunity to use it for anything, because Sarah tends to handle most aerial deployments. It looks good on photographs, of course, but the maintenance fees are ridiculous.

He's nattering.

Cid shakes off the nervous thoughts and rolls his shoulders as he slips the helmet back on. "Pile in. Let's go launch a rescue."

 

[CurtailedAmbrosia]

Ashley already felt this was a bit above her paygrade-she was here because Tyler had asked her to be. But for the knight to say Daybreak would be vulnerable-good God, what was she doing heading out there? Let alone Barry and Vanessa-El Cid was talking and Ashley pays that much more attention, because the veteran was going to be their lifeline going into this. He knew Paul Marrane and knew how he operated, had faced off with him before.

“But understand me now."

She leans in a little as he grips both her and Tyler by the shoulder, her brow furrowed and lips pursed, expression tense as she listened, watched his eyes move to each of them in turn.

"Where we're going, there is no one to save. If Modal's still alive, leave his extraction to me, but don't get near him. Marrane can implant things in people that take weeks to come out, that are infectious and contagious. He can control them from inside. He can do that to anyone that was unfortunate enough to be in the area, or that he hauled along. Everything alive is a weapon in Paul's hands. Trust none of it. Keep your weapons high and your backs to each other. We're coming home from this."

“Yes sir.” Ashley echos his resolve, straightening back to her full height and giving the grim faced Tyler a glance, then Blaine when he speaks up. Yeah. Yeah, they did, but it doesn’t make her feel much better. Cid would see them through.

And there’s the Firebird. She’s never actually seen it up close before. She flips her yellow visor up to see it better, then glances to a slightly sour faced Vanessa. “After you, ma’am.” Might as well start on softening her up-the field was no place for rivalries, imagined or otherwise.

~*~

Tyler had never much liked planes. This far from the ground, from any usable Earth or minerals-it’s a sense of vulnerability he can’t deny. If it went down, he’d die just like anybody else, powers or no powers. It vaguely occurs to him that none of the metahumans aboard were capable of flight on their own. Even he didn’t dare climb higher than ten, fifteen feet on a slab of rock.

He’s distracted. Better to take inventory again, get his mind in the right place. El Cid was quiet-probably still strategizing-and Tyler wasn’t going to bother him with questions. He’d be given the information he needed when he needed it. “Be right back.” He says, rising from the co pilot’s chair and starting towards the back of the small craft.

Barry was his usual, optimistic self-content with his guns and typically withheld toys. Blaine was...well, Blaine. The girls were in the back, talking quietly, Ashley’s visor flipped up, face and hair slick with protective burn gel. She was prepared to lay waste to any threat that presented itself, human shaped or not, he was certain. Vanessa had been charged before they’d left. He can’t do much prepwise until they were on solid ground again. Inventory taken.

He tuned into what Ash was saying, coming into a conversation about the old days versus now, sounded like.

“-but people saw the merit in teaming up. The solos kept up solo careers here and there, but then they had back up when they needed it.”

“I guess I just never really considered it, wanted it.” Vanessa said with a shrug, content with the way things were now. “I don’t have the kind of powers or...circumstances the old guard possessed.”

“Support heroes can make or break a team in an engagement.” Tyler interrupted, a hand resting against the top right curve of the doorway, leaning into the space. “Soloing these days is just foolhardy.” His eyes narrowed on Ashley a moment. “You’re not considering something like that.”

Ashley shook her head. “Not anytime soon. Nergal showing back up out of nowhere-I mean, that didn’t help my case. My powers are destructive, and I’m out of practice with hand to hand-the only reason I agreed to come was because it was a turn and burn deal.” A shake of her head. “I’m busy with the newbies right now anyway.”

“And Miss Sarah’s putting two other wings under you, isn’t she?” Vanessa ventured, thoughtful.

Ash gave a nod. “Yeah, this redirection is a good change.” Her eyes cut to Tyler, raising a brow. “Isn’t it?”

Vanessa glanced at him in silence, and Tyler felt his lips thin. But…

“If Miss Sarah thinks that’s the way to do things, then it must be.”

“Well, I guess if you’re not going to have an opinion, that’s the best I could’ve asked for.”

He frowned now, a glance to the dark haired third. “Vanessa, check in with Barry.”

Vanessa shifted, opened her mouth to maybe argue-then thought better of it. “It was nice to talk, Backdraft.” She said with a hint of sullenness-before Tyler stepped aside to let her through, then ducked his head and took the seat across from his old teammate.

“She’s got the hots for you, you know.”

Tyler grimaced and waved that away. “She’s twenty, and I’m her commanding officer.”

“We have ranks now?” She ribbed, but when he only looked at her she conceded with a shrug. “Close enough to the truth, I guess, you have the most authority out of any of us. Wouldn’t be professional.”

“You should head up a team, things start heating up.”

“You really think there’s more action to be had out there, that we’re going to start moving on it? Why, because Velocity’s on a team and they’re doing things internationally?”

“No, not because of anything Paige is doing.”

“Adamant, then. Deep Blue. Those are heavy, visible, popular hitters, and supposedly…” Ashley paused, her voice lowering even further. “Well, I hear Protagonist is lurking somewhere around.”

Tyler cuts her a sharp look, because that was not common knowledge. “Where did you hear that?”

“I hear things. Not sure I entirely believe it, given it’s been so long, but I dunno. Maybe they re-summoned her out of Hell or something.”

Tyler doesn’t like the turn the conversation had taken. Talking about Adamant or any of these rogue heroes...and it sounded like Ashley was getting friendly with Paige, if she was hearing about stuff like this-he can’t think of who else. She seemed to sense his disapproval and continued.

“Hey, I follow orders too, but that doesn’t mean I’m not allowed to think. And I’m talking to you, not the younger wards...and you’re talking to me.”

Tyler supposed that was true enough, and for a moment he DID half want to ask her what she thought about all of it. Not about Paige-everyone seemed to like the new Velocity, and he imagined they’d all be plenty upset when she got herself killed-but about everything else, the stirrings out there.

The fact that an entire team was out there outside of Tower control, Adamant no longer content to stay in Gary, running along with Deep Blue-an honest to God emissary from Atlantis. There was no denying the legitimacy of that.

He hadn’t mentioned the full contents of the talk with Adamant. He wasn’t dumb enough to admit to having talked to him at any length, not to anyone-but the points the big man had made had been heard if nothing else. And Wards were growing up, becoming more capable. Heroes could be doing...more.

He could be doing more. But not without orders.

Both of them were quiet for a moment. Ash was watching the others through the doorway, attentive and thoughtful. He’d watched her heart break as the others piled into the little jet and left, her pleas having fallen on deaf ears. She’d been just a kid, then, fifteen. The youngest, newest member. He hadn’t been much older. Seventeen, eighteen? Seventeen. It felt like such a long, long time ago that they’d stood in silence and helplessly watched the world be torn asunder.

He’s vaguely glad she hadn’t gone. Honey hazel eyes glance back to him, and Tyler briefly is uncertain what to say next. Business or silence.

“Just keep an open mind.” He continues, slow. “I don’t know what Cid’s plans are, but I know you’re capable, and could be a good representative of what the Tower stands for and what the future might hold. And...people would follow you, Ash. Orders or no orders.”

“Don’t go getting soft now Ty-that sounded like a compliment.” She murmured with a bit of an amused smile before she leaned forward, gripped one of his toned biceps and gave a bit of a shake. “Hey. We’re coming back. Hopefully with Modal, but we’re coming back. You heard Cid.”

“We are.” He agreed immediately, banishing the disquiet. It’ll be time to fight soon-and they would fight. He won’t allow for anything else-and he knows neither would she. Not again. "All of us."

He rose with a nod and headed back towards the front for orders.

 

[Obuzeti]

The aircraft comes to a smooth stop over a vision of hell. Modal's home had been a classy, three-story glass-and-concrete affair set far back in a hilly forest neighborhood, all smooth surfaces and glittering clear crystal. He'd been responsible for the distinctive look of the Tower back in the day, and had been a famous architect in the time since, able to create masterpieces of steel, glass, and stone more delicately perched and balanced than spiderwebs. Half of the building was still standing, sort of; the other had collapsed into a sinkhole almost twenty feet across, seething black with insectile chitin in a literal living carpet as far down into the hole as anyone can see. They've flooded out over the ground in every direction, terminating in the rim of a circle almost twenty yards away. The insects have crawled up the trees and chewed the leaves and branches to stubs, carrying the pulp downwards and into a widening network of cocoons and webs that cover the half of the building still standing. The buzz of gossamer wings is omnipresent. Marrane, himself, is nowhere to be seen, nor anything remotely resembling a human.

Cid stares at the spectacle. His mouth opens, and nothing comes out for a long second, as he guides the Firebird to a hover overhead, out of the reach of the insect swarm. Then his fist slams down onto a button and a missile basket slung underneath the chassis of the Firebird opens up, and unloads a weaving frenzy of projectiles across the entire area. They crack open with little pops, and then release their cargo: white powder that drifts down in a thick sheet upon everything beneath them. Then it ignites, and the ground fades into a blinding, burning glow. The cockpit of the Firebird polarizes against the glare, and Cid sets the autopilot then wheels to look at his chosen team.

"In and out," he says, stomping towards the back bay. The Firebird will hold its position still in the air, and they can descend and make their way back up via a mechanical hoist it lowers. Its guns will also be useful for suppressive fire. "I have no idea if he's still alive, but he did have an emergency bunker in the basement. We're checking that, and if he's not there, we're gone."

Blaise has already clambered onto the hoist, and he leers down at the ignited carpet of chitin below as it begins to cool back down to the visible spectrum. "Where's Marrane?"

Cid sets his armor's onboard infowar suite to scan. It's all frantic, scuttling movement, and the napalm's ruined infrared detection. No way to tell. "I don't know."

Blaise cackles, mad and cracking. Barricade cringes away from the sound, and slaps the younger man over the back of the head, which shuts him up. "Man, shut the fuck up. On your go, big man."

Cid gives a thankful nod, and glances back down at the ground. It's cooled down into a glassy carpet, the sand and dirt fused into fulgurite and crispy quartz. The seething carpet of insects is frozen beneath the surface, baked into the ground by the scorching heat and pressure wave. "Tectonic, raise us a landing platform and then work on creating a walkway up over the ground - check the ground integrity, I don't want to fall in a sinkhole like that. Backfire, give it a skim and keep the ground clear. Barricade, Blaise, you're on priority targets. Let's go."

 

[CurtailedAmbrosia]

Backdraft steps up to likewise peer down-and feels her mouth go a little dry. The place is teeming with life down there, the creepy crawly, possibly bloodsucking, maybe body possessing kind.

Her alarmed eyes flick up to Tyler's, but his stoic expression was as opaque and flat as ever. Their eyes meet, his muddy hazel green eyes flat and serious beneath that defined brow. No sign of trepidation. These were the orders, this was the mission, and he would carry it out and succeed-or die trying, because he's a good soldier, and good soldiers follow orders.

She tries to shake it off the anxiety. This wasn't really her wheelhouse anymore. It hasn't been for a long time.

She drops her visor as the ground and all the teeming insect life are lit up, turning to face their leader. Thank God they weren't here on their lonesome-El Cid would see them through.

Ashley turns and falls into step behind him, working herself into a focus, swallowing back on her feelings of foreboding. If Modal was down there, they had to save him. They have to try.

She cuts Blaise a disapproving glance when he laughs and then ignores him, grateful to Barry for shutting him up. The fingertips of her yellow gloves are starting to glow an ember red, and as she frowns at the glassy surface below them-she reminds herself that dammit, she's a hero, and heroes do the tough stuff.

-*-

"Once I raise the platform Ness, stay on my six." Tectonic ground out to the young woman, not even catching her wide eyed nod as he stepped into the hoist and waited for it to lower part way. His earth brown costumed arms flex, brow furrowing-and then his dark red gloved right hand made a sudden lifting motion, and a boulder easily the size of the basket came hurtling free of the dirt and frozen earth below. The basket shifts as his athletic frame clears the side-dark red boots landing solid and assured on the craggly surface before he races ahead of them for the ground.

It takes immense concentration to do that, but hell if he wanted to land on any of that mess down there.

A pillar of earth rises and and he steps off the stone slab to walk across the growing surface, earth shaking itself around and beneath him, dirt collecting to the sides and packing into the hardened land mass. The earth calls to him in pulses. Gaps in it below them and before them, less like the blocky expanses of man made structures and more like the winding, irregular caves.

Tunnels. Cid was right to want a solid path and walkway. Tectonic moved forward with a steady, unrelenting stride as dirt collected itself into a sidewalk wide path beneath his boots, just a foot or two above the surface. The ground tremors to his right once he's twelve feet into his path. It's nothing visible on the surface, or even something his five senses picked up on-just that ever present awareness of the earth around him.

The disturbed dirt slides and tumbles within what he's now recognizing as a network of fist sized, intertwining tunnels.

His head swivels as his eyes cut to it-turning and stomping -hard- off the path he'd just made. A four by four roughly hewn square of dirt packs down hard beneath him, collapsing the tunnels and driving him several feet down.

Almost at the same time Backdraft steps out of the basket, rebreather obscuring her face beneath the visor. A burning scent of ozone and clear and obvious heat waves were rolling off of her gloved hands, something Vanessa conspicuously sidles away from. The pale, dark haired young woman beelines for Tectonic-or rather, the path he had started.

Insects burst from the loosened dirt valley on their left, and behind her yellow visor Ashley's honey colored eyes snap to them, narrowing. It's go time.

She breaks away from the group with three quick, decisive strides, a scattering dust of embers dotting the air before the approaching cloud. Power thrums in her fingertips, El Cid's mark. Everyone goes home. In and out. Turn and burn.

Backdraft plants her feet and fists her hands as the locust swarm spirals and turns, the bits of ember sparking into flames at the exact same instant her hands blaze into balls of hot, orange and red dancing fire. She thrusts her hands forward to unleash fiery, concentrated inferno blasts from each, literally lobbing fire into the rush of insects before flattening her hands outward and together and blasting them with a steady stream of flame.

Burned out husks drop into the dirt as a rush of hornets burst forth further down-and were likewise incinerated. Backdraft doesn't even blink-its all tinder and fuel to her, now.

"Ness-". Tyler barks from where he's closing tunnels, his hands thrust into the dirt walls on either side of his hole.

"Right here Tectonic." The slender young woman lifted both of her hands, bangles and charm bracelets sliding back on her wrists and into the sleeves of her gothic looking overcoat-and the space before them was suddenly -wrong-. It hurt the brain to look at, the house both before them and as far as it actually was, but the distance on the path short. The image, the air? -Reality- distorted in a narrow path before them-before her feet slid a little more apart and the heels of her combat boots dug in-and with a ripple of further distortion, the strangeness widened to allow them safe passage. What had been a short stretch of land was now a few quick strides to the house proper, a hop from Tectonic's dirt path to the doorstep.

"Can't make long distances short for long-" Vanessa warns with a bit of strain to her voice.

 

[Obuzeti]

Cid drops down on the open walkway and deploys his kit. The shoulder turret spins up and starts scanning the area, searching for hostiles, while the independent drones split up to hover over his teammates. There's a loud click as his brand applies through the drones to each of the Veterans and Blaise. It burns bright white under the armor, beating in time with the heartbeat of its bearer: a circle overlapping a triangle, its points equidistant and protruding from the curve.

The brand itself, the Lord's Mark, makes everything easier; the muscles ache less, thoughts are clearer, nervousness fades and pain dulls. Coordination is simple between those bearing the brand, as everything seems familiar and in its place, understanding signals that even family wouldn't. Each of the Veterans is familiar with the effects, but Blaise himself, having never taken the brand before, staggers and screeches like a cat as the weight of it settles on his mind. Barricade takes him by the arm without hesitation, lifts him up in a fireman's carry, and makes the jump down to the walkway that Tectonic has raised, then drops the younger man to his feet.

"Let's go!" Cid barks, eyes burning a solid white from the brand's feedback loop, and proceeds down the walkway, shield and sword on a swivel as he watches for threats. There's nothing major yet; swarms of stinging, biting insects that Backfire burns down with swathes of flame, and carpets of insects that Tectonic has lifted them over. No Paul, no abominations of flesh and chitin charging at them. His turret can't even find anything big enough to lock onto.

The hairs on the back of his neck stand up, and he legs it down the shortened walkway as fast as possible. In just a few strides they're next to the abandoned wall of the house, in the shade. Cid glances back at the Firebird and squints against the glare of the sun, uncertain, then turns to the objective. He can see the entrance to the bunker, its metallic carapace exposed to daylight and overturned. "Barricade, blow the door!" he orders.

Barry nods and steps forward, then fires one of his namesake rounds from his shotgun. The flechette leaves the barrel at supersonic speed and deploys its barrier soon after without decreasing its speed - the resulting projectile, the size of a cannonball, slams right through the steel door of the bunker and throws it down in an ear-shattering clatter.

Nothing.

Cid opens his mouth, and then the dread trickling down his spine achieves coalescence. If the sun is behind him, and the ruins of the house in front, then why is he still in the shade? He glances up just in time to shout an unintelligible warning and raise his shield as an enormous bulk descends from far above, well over half a kilometer, and slams into their raised walkway like a bomb just behind them, shutting off their retreat and throwing them all to the floor.

Marrane - thickly armored with chitin, wide, wheezing gills that draw in air and gasp out choking green gas, propped up on too many towering legs that scrunch together like a flea's - glances over at Cid. There's a low humming noise, as rubbery tendons in each draw tight like a bowstring. The face is a pair of protuberant compound eyes, with the pupil divided into three distinct sections by bands. They all blink independently, in a single breathless instant. The turret chirps, whirls, and shoots Paul with a hissing blast of energy that smokes against his chitin.

Then one of those legs snaps up with insectile swiftness, presses against Cid's raised shield, and kicks. The bowstring tendon sings, and Cid vanishes in a blur of motion that blows through the ruins of Modal's house and is flung some twenty feet out beyond that, rolling end over end.

 

[CurtailedAmbrosia]

Ashley shakes her head as she picks herself back up, casts a worried glance to Blaise-who had crossed the bridge with them but still seemed off as hell. “C’mon kid, this is supposed to be your crack.” It’s encouragement tinged with worry-she doesn’t care how crazy he is, he’s still one of theirs.

She can’t spare him more than that glance however-the thing towers over them all and had just rocketed down from fucking space, looked a cross between nasty and nightmarish-. She ignores how the flooring beneath her fingertips peels away and singes black as she shoves hard to get to her feet, El Cid’s turret firing.

Backdraft curls her hands back into fists, relighting them-just as the beast sends Cid rocketing through the wall. Oh, holy shit-she fires off a torrent of flames at one of its legs and it swivels-but then Tectonic’s six cubic foot boulder hits the beast broadside, slamming the half ton piece of granite into the chitin armored creature at around 30 miles an hour.

“Get to El Cid.” Tyler’s voice crackles over the comm, the slim Vanessa sliding from a smaller boulder and landing light on her feet beside her-the rock then also hurtling towards the beast.

“Let’s go.”

~*~

Tectonic was on the move-dirt and stone sediment continue to draw to his form as he strides forward in the same measured pace he’d formed the walkway with. His costume and the ruby studded ‘T’ were completely obscured beneath earth as the magnetized elements pack tight to him, thickening the golem’s limbs and broadening its shoulders, increasing his bulk as he forms an earthen armor around himself. A flatter chunk of limestone thuds to his chest and disappears beneath another layer of dirt-all while other boulders hurtle towards the monster’s legs and body as Tectonic picks up speed, gravel grinding in his artificial joints and each heavy footfall picking up and packing on more dirt beneath and behind and in front of him.

The behemoth charged in earnest, one door sized fist pulling back in preparation.

 

[Obuzeti]

The sheer weight of Tectonic's projectile knocks the beast off to the side and skidding across the glassy ground; it's much lighter than it looks, apparently. The impact crumples a pair of its legs on one side, but it had eight total and looks unimpeded by the crippling blow. The massive hopper finally catches its balance, then pops to the side in a blur-fast motion that dodges most of the rocks being sent at it. On the other hand, there's no dodging Tectonic, who plods after at a steady pace.

That's when things get complicated; the side of the monstrous hopper erupts like a pustule, and a humanoid torso plated with chitin and a single, elongated arm comes out. The eyes are slicing, sick yellow, and it laughs at the collected force arrayed against it, then makes a gesture. Amber light plays over those fingers with too many joints, and then it splatters out over Tectonic's earthen armor. It drips and then begins to hiss as it eats at the soil and earth, then produces potassium and sulfur in creamy, off-putting drips of white and yellow. The stench of rotten eggs fills the air.

Then one of the rocks manages to brain the humanoid form, and the impact smacks it hard enough to draw out a yowl and break its attention.

Behind them, the bunker's dark interior disgorges a flood of man-sized beetles, each on long skittering legs with bulging abdomens that squirm independent of their host body. The first handful skid to a stop at the sight of Barricade, still in front of the basement, then turn to present their abdomens, which blast a foul-smelling liquid so hot it steams at him like a fire hose. He merely raises one of his namesake walls in his defense from the walkway, and then opens fire around it with his shotgun, reducing the first wave to chunky bits and explosive steam as the chemicals contained within violently react.

More insects descend from the sky, a virtual swarm of small, long-winged insects that hurl themselves at anyone and everyone alive. Their bodies are frail and break easily, but their blood both sticks and burns, turning exposed skin red with irritation within seconds. Blaise hisses and tosses his head; a thirty-foot diameter around him abruptly goes thick as sludge for a second, clearing out the swarm by reducing the air friction and letting the inrush of atmosphere crush them. The wet clap of air and chitin colliding echoes through the area.

Cid himself pushes himself up to his knees, shaking his head to ward off the dizziness. His turret chirps and turns to burn another hole through one of the bombadier beetles emerging from the basement, completely independent of his mortal frailty.

 

[CurtailedAmbrosia]

The golem doesn’t slow, just ducks it’s loosening shoulder lower and continues the charge-he hits the slimy protruding fuck dead on with a flying boulder and in its distraction-hurls into it broadside. The striking shoulder cracks and crumbles-but the beast goes flying, and the golem keeps right on going despite the clear and obvious fissure tearing through its shoulder. The opposite massive hand reaches out and grasps hold of a leg even as the damaged shoulder cracks through, the arm tearing free completely. It lands as little more than a long mound of loose dirt and stones-and the strange oozing, rotten egg smelling nastiness.

Dirt collects to the neck and shoulder of the headless golem as if it was being vacuumed up-already beginning to reform the arm lost while the other hand rips back on the leg in an effort to pull it off completely-then goes for another one just as quickly, attempting to reel the monster in so his rapidly reforming arm would get to tear into it in earnest.

But then he takes a full hit to the chest and it rockets him backwards-it strikes and retracts so fast he can’t think to react quickly enough, let the packed earth and stone loosen before it before hardening to recapture it in the armor-something he’s done before.

The second leg rips off but the giant staggers and begins to topple-and then collapses into a pile rather than make impact. Tectonic bursts from the pile as if he had been fired, crouched and balanced on the flat stone that had previously been absorbed in the golem’s chest. Man and stone seperate, the latter rocketing into the chitinous body wherever it might have moved to and the former tucking into a roll and coming up out of it with his arms slightly at his sides, hands splayed out level with his hips-a twisting skid as he stomps a crack developing in the suddenly trembling earth that starts at toe of his dark red boot and widens as it heads for Marrane-the quake concentrated and violent as the ground splinters beneath the legs that remain.

At the same time, the pile of dirt was reforming into a tidal wave of earth-each cubic foot 76 to 110 pounds, not counting the rocks and stones still gathered within it-and it crashes down over the thing. He would bury Marrane, and failing that-rip him apart as a vengeful golem of earth. Despite the decisive use of his abilities, that effort and concentration was no small task-the manipulation of earth, the power that courses through him to the ground for the quakes-there were multiple forces at work here, and it had leaves him briefly vulnerable to the bloated beetles and winged insects both. Dirt had been beginning to collect to him again when liquid blasts into him full force from behind. A spiked explosion of dirt sends the beetle backwards-but he’s been hit, the dirt soaked but lessening some of the damage on his shoulders and arms, but his lower back had gotten the worst of it. Even through his costume it’s blinding hot. He guesses a superficial dermal burn, had definitely been scalded-but he focuses past it and on his reforming armor, a surge of speed to it that nearly envelopes the hero completely.

In the meantime, El Cid was not alone for long-Backdraft full on sprints to be there as Tectonic makes contact with Marrane, snapped forward some impossible way by Vanessa’s distortion. She moves past the knight and her hands become flamethrowers that she turns on the descending, long winged clouds of bugs coming from above and behind him, the licking red and orange flames flaring blue at the widening, vaguely axe blade shaped ends. She’s vicious-her teeth are grit together in a snarl as she keeps him clear of the things.

Space Contortionist isn’t able to pass through the vortexes herself-and while she can’t directly attack anything coming at any of them-she can keep it at bay and cause it to smash itself. Both of her hands move up as she drops to a knee and twists-and she’s suddenly impossibly far from any of them in a little bubble of her own creation-though in actuality it was more of an arc.

The insects enter it and are likewise far, far away-and then a space snaps back to normal and she darts through it backwards, releasing the distortion. The sudden collapse hurls the insects into the ground.

She’s a little out of breath when she makes it to Cid, her brow furrowed in concern.

“Regroup on Barry-” Crackles through the comm.

 

[Obuzeti]

The boulder crushes the humanoid parasite flat against its host, and it slumps, even as the barrage of stones and rubble batter the hopper-body across the ground, keeping it skidding and sliding. With the leg pulled off by Tectonic's golem, its mobility is finally starting to be compromised - but then it bulges disgustingly and erupts in a swarm of those humanoid torsos, each long and flat and pale like flatworms, bounding about on two elongated limbs. They spill out of the hopper's gut, where the stomach and lungs and all the things a creature needs to survive would have been, and pour out in a leaping rush over Tectonic's reforming armor.

Each one has a single, probing mouth-tube that it stabs at the Veteran before bounding away, sharp and pointed like a mosquito proboscis. Each stab ejects a splurt of hissing liquid that binds and sinks through dirt, and a moment of observation reveals it's not a liquid but a seething cloud of larva, chewing down through dirt for the exposed prey beneath.

The hopper itself, crippled and ruptured by the delivery of its payload, dies under the wave of rock, crushed into near-paste by the mass of stone involved.

Barricade loads another rampart round and blasts apart everything in the doorway of the bunker to chunky bits, but has to flinch back into cover to dodge the retaliation of boiling spray that splatters all over his makeshift palisade. He racks his shotgun, and calls out, "Four rounds left!"

At that point, his ability to keep the bunker's steady outpouring of foes contained is going to abruptly cease.

Backdraft's flamethrowers burn away the encroaching hordes around them - but scattered across the ground, inconspicuously crawling closer, are blocky pillbugs. When the fires touch them, their bodies explosively tighten up and shatter into fragmentary pieces that are flung out, turning them into organic grenades. Cid shoulders forward enough to raise his shield in front of Ashley, taking the bullet-like shards, but the impact staggers him.

"Aim high, let me sweep the ground," he says tersely, and he and his turret begin picking off every pillbug in sight, methodic and rapid in their accuracy, working their ways out from their position. He starts backing up towards Barry's location in between shots, knowing that if they swap out Barricade will have time to reload and contribute once more.

Blaise's head whips around, and he abruptly vanishes from his spot with a sound like liquid silk. An amber thunderbolt splits the earth where he had been standing and then saws through Barricade's cover, which the other Veteran luckily manages to duck. A huge, gangly fly the size of a horse hovers above, blinking those distinctive, triple-lobed eyes. Its mouth has been replaced with a nest of malformed hands, and they gesture, twist and twine as a second bolt of sickly energy spawns and whips through the air towards Cid and Ashley, but is safely intercepted on his shield as the Tower commander wheels to block.

 

[CurtailedAmbrosia]

What in the flying fuck-Tyler’s seen things, sure-the Junior Leaguers had their own rogue gallery, the fights could be hard, the opponents fierce-but this was leaps and bounds beyond even most of that-and light years away from anything he’s tackled as a Ward.

That’s not to say he stands there gobsmacked-the forming armor is heavy and it moves heavy, the nasty scald and the focus in building it distraction enough that the golem barely reels as the things jump onto him-and they leap off of him even as he swings a swiping arm at them, bowling them over and sending several flying. Too littler too late, they’ve already injected something into the armor with him, probably more of that damnable whatever it’d been that had broken up his arm last time-

But he immediately knows better as he senses the burrowing and dirt consumption of the larva. His skin itches and crawls, there’s phantom pain as if they were within his actual physical form-a byproduct.

It’s psychosomatic. Priorities.

Dirt rolls and shakes as he attempts to shed layers without losing the armor, cycling the dirt out even as he’s taking more on-but he’s busier focusing his attention on the mansized beetles attempting to get to Barry and the rest of his encroaching team. Scalds could kill people the same as dry fire burns could-shock, deep tissue damage-the big threat is down, time to rejoin and refocus on the team.

Stones fly from Marrane’s grave and become deadly projectiles, bursting bellies and downing some of the bugs by dint of mass and number. Vaguely at the back of his mind he’s aware of the remaining frothing maggots burrowing further in, the armor slowing them down-but not forever.

Priorities.

~*~

What the-but the Knight was faster, shield raised and taking the organic shrapnel the bugs had turned into. If she can’t burn them-

"Aim high, let me sweep the ground,"

“Sir!” Ashley confirms, following the order and backing up towards Barry’s position with Cid. Vanessa sticks to the pair but can’t offer much assistance-she does manage to slow the swarms in starts and stops, but it looked like movement made things inconsistent. She couldn’t do much to increase either Ashley’s or Cid’s effectiveness, not like she could with Tectonic’s projectiles- and her powers had questionable use on their own in the field.

The earthen golem looked sick. The outer layers of it crumbled and rained loose soil in it’s wake even as dirt swirled around it’s feet and rose to replace it, the thing misshapen, not as hard packed solid as it should be. It’s moving towards Barry and that bunker-when the lightning bolt happens.

“That’s magic-” Vanessa breathes-and then the golem stopped pushing forward and suddenly tore itself asunder. The upper half had it’s arms outstretched to slap down or otherwise catch the damned fly taking potshots. It crash lands and this time Tectonic stumbles out the back of it, dirt raining off his shoulders and back and hair-and twists as he goes down, catching himself on his toned arms before he’s staggering back on his feet.

He’s almost completely covered in frothing milk white larva-there’s a swathe of the creatures across his torso and thighs. The bleeding wounds through the newly chewed holes in his costume are still largely superficial, but he was literally being eaten him alive.

“Ash-” He grinds out-and that’s when Backdraft lifted a hand and scorched him with a short hot blast of flame.

 

[Obuzeti]

The parasites that had inhabited the hopper die as soon as they deliver their payload of maggots, then the hovering, beastly fly is swatting by the crumbling remains of Tectonic's golem - and with that the battlefield begins to seem a little more sane. There's still creeping swarms of bugs everywhere, and whatever's in the bunker, but outside at least the major threats have diminished.

Then something else staggers up the stairs; a human body, rapidly decaying. Clear plastic armor encases its torso and body, turning chrome and opaque around the hips. The head is just a solid platinum globe. It's Modal's armor, and Modal's body, but the meat of his torso is collapsing inward, and there's something in his chest that's beating, moving, and it's not his heart -

Modal raises a hand, and his mouth moves. Barricade, behind his walls, starts. His focus shatters at the sight of the other man, barefoot and wounded as he seems. Barry rolls around his wall and advances, shouting, "VIP sighted!"

He slides to a knee just short of the bunker door, glances down past the other man's body - and realizes that just behind him is an unnaturally long centipede, stretched long down the staircase and into the black gloom beyond. Its head is implanted into Modal's back, and when Barricade glances back up at the other man, it's just in time to see Modal's chest collapse as the insect's head shears right through. Its jaws crunch together on Barricade's left arm, and he shouts in pain and slings the shotgun around to pump a round into the thing point-blank. Its neck whips from side to side, and the crunch of his forearm shattering blinds him with pain long enough for him to drop the gun.

Then Blaise is there, abruptly, and he decks the centipede's head with a blow that bounces it off the far wall. Abruptly it slides down the stairs, the tough stone steps seemingly too slick for its many legs to balance on, dragging the corpse with it. Modal's mouth is still moving - his eyes still focused on Barricade.

"Get back!" Blaise hisses, and pushes them both back as more bombadiers fill the empty space and squirt boiling liquid at them. He glides over the ground like an ice skater, easily carrying Barry aside and then unceremoniously dropping him to spin and land a revolving back roundhouse to the head of one of those bouncing torsos, blasting it aside and across the ground in a skittering mess, never slowing down in the least like some kind of zero-gravity skit.

Cid manages to make it to Barricade's old cover, but the two are another dozen feet ahead just beside the bunker entrance, and that's when a second hopper comes down in between their two groups like a hammer, rocking the ground with the sheer force of its impact. He immediately draws his saber, spins the length dial with his thumb, and then lashes out with a sawing blow that shears through one set of legs on the thing's left side. It crashes to the ground, mouth flailing grotesquely. Then it says something.

FUTILE.

One of the remaining legs on the Hopper's good side arches backwards, presses against Barricade's back, and then kicks like a jackhammer. There's an awful, shrieking clatter as he blasts into the bunker's open entrance, bounces off the ceiling and tumbles down a flight of stairs right into the seething hive of insects beyond. There's a flash of chitin in motion, and then he's gone, but for his outraged howls of pain, and the crunch of barriers raising and crushing insects against the walls.