Athwart History (Closed)

[Obuzeti]

Elias has never really looked at the Tower. He's seen the postcards, sure, but Cid always has them aimed up at the bright white walls, impeccable and gleaming, and that glass peak that always catches the sunset, like a fire-tipped spire. What he sees now is that the top is the only glass there is. The Tower doesn't have windows, just featureless white walls, and the entrance is a tiny thing against its immensity, like an armored mouse tunnel into the world's largest grain silo. He's never seen this angle of it - never come within five miles of the Tower, in fact, or even this state. He's been persona non grata in the eyes of the Hero Association since its founding.

Cid had probably meant it to look like a lighthouse, but instead, it just looks like a prison to Elias.

He strides up the sidewalk in front of the colossal building to the little entrance; it's got a set of regular doors and then a cargo bay, where he can unload all the supplies the kids need straight into the building. All the structural weaknesses gathered together in a nice little bundle. There's a guardhouse built directly into the entrance, too, between the two doors, with a switch bay that probably controls either side.

Elias ambles up and taps on the glass. The man within - no one he recognizes - glances up, and starts when he sees the other man's face. His hand darts under his desk, and that's when Adamant pulls the entire chunk of wall his monitor is mounted on right out of the Tower, in a big eight-foot chunk. The concrete is reinforced with steel girder and cable, which pretty much amounts to groaning and shrieking a lot as he tears it away anyways.

"You should probably get out of here," Elias says to the man. "Whatever Cid hired you for, it ain't for standing in my way."

The other man's scoots back in his chair, the brisk morning air pimpling his skin in comparison to the heated atmosphere now spilling out of the hole in his office. "He always said you'd come for him, eventually."

"Then he should have done better," Elias replies, grim. "This's been building a long time."

He turns and goes to the gate. For an institution this size, they're pathetic, barely more than double doors with reinforced mounting. He tugs lightly on one and notices that the panel the door is made of mounts not on hinges, but within the structural supports on either side. Pulling them might collapse this section of the wall entirely.

So much caution for so little care.

Elias reaches up to the top of either door, and peels them down like sardine cans instead, and twists them aside, leaving the tiny little entrance open. Young adults in spiffy blue uniforms begin to assemble in hasty squads within the main lobby on the other side, which somehow manages to look like the booking office of a police station, all concrete and blue and white, comfortless and soulless. An alarm blares somewhere behind the thick, muffled walls.

"Contact," he says into his communicator, "Door's open. Going in to say hello."

A bright lance of energy streaks out, and Elias lifts his forearm so that the blast smacks into it instead of his communicator. It singes his sleeve, but not much else. Elias gives the blonde young man who'd fired it a stare.

"Cease and surrender!" the young man calls across the lobby. His four man team behind him stands, two behind projected shields of the sort Cid likes, another aiming a big, mean-looking rifle. "Adamant, you're trespassing and violating the law!"

Elias stalks forward two big steps, a looming figure in the swirling drywall dust from the ruined office right next to the door. He stares at the kid, unblinking. "You want amnesty and a way out of this place, kid?"

He catches the next beam with his face, staggering aside slightly. It reddens the skin on his cheek. The blonde kid stares as Elias pops his neck and starts looking irritated.

 

[CurtailedAmbrosia]

“Door's open. Going in to say hello."

Lana having departed (with Vivienne’s portrait, because like hell Marie was leaving an open door in her lair for that one), Marie was alone save for Jasper (who, not that anyone had commented, conspicuously had a new perch in the form of her spare set of wheels. It’d recently been moved, and now remained by the console on her right), the body broken vigilante slightly bent over her trusty tablet, which she was currently using to control a non-ordinance packing, flittering bird drone. She set it to automate and flicked over to the feed from Jenna’s goggles-currently skyward.

A glance to the gps marker showed she was a ‘scant’ fifty miles away.

~*~

Jenna’s enjoying a coffee-or rather, a coffee flavored sugar milk. People had stared at her before someone started on her drink and accepted her four dollars and sixty two cents-and then some admittedly cute guy had nervously asked for her autograph. Twenty obliging autographs later, all on the nearest thing at hand-cups-before her drink was finished with a caramel heart on top-and she scooted.

Now she’s half way through the heated drink, grinning ear to ear as she rereads, for the hundredth time, one of the info cards. She’s sporting two bags-one full of Marie’s card reader destroyer do hickies, and the other a cheap purse thing she’d had on hand to use for the cards. They really messed up the streamlined aesthetic of her costume, but she’s about as concerned about that as grass being green.

“Sounds noisy enough, Velocity. Stay away from the top floor.”

“Nobody I want to talk to up there.” Jenna confirms, downing her drink and throwing the cup into recycling, pulling her goggles down and over her eyes. “This is like, the fourth best day of my life guys.”

And then she moved. Everything comes to a standstill as she zips down the center lane of frozen traffic, cutting left to avoid a motorcyclist who’d been riding the line, scaling a skyscraper without so much a blink. She used to be so nervous doing that-a mental block. Same as phasing-though okay, she still holds her breath doing that, most of the time. Through a park, then running over a giant lake, leaving the shore disappearing behind and in the same breath the shining white ‘bastion’ of heroes rapidly coming into view.

She wonders how many people would take them up on it. She’s pretty sure almost everybody. Or maybe she just hopes almost everybody-and then the senior wards would only have themselves to push around.

And whoever Uncle Sam kindly conscripted and forced into the place after...well, they’ll be around. And she’s working on what she can. She’s hurtling for the place, and takes a breath-and explodes even faster, a rush of cold over her body and little, tiny bits of spark in her wake-but she’s not sure she’s actually seeing-or just imagining this. She’s still moving forward but the extra burst doesn’t make her faster-it just vibrates her entire body to a degree she’s not even solid anymore-she doesn’t know how it works. She’s half not sure she wants to, or she might get hung up on it again and not be able to do it-she’d only managed the first time because she’d been so worried about what Rush might do to Lana.

The speedster was in the building, and then she was through it-and then she was back again-down into the sublevels and racing back to the floors above it, zigzagging through place and indeed-phasing through more walls than she could count, doors and furniture and razor sharp turns to avoid hurtling out into empty air-and a nasty plummet to the ground. She half doesn’t even see so much as remember, thrusting the cards into the hands of people frozen in their everyday lives-classrooms, training sessions, recreational time spent in bedrooms and the gym-up and up and up. She sees Tectonic in one of the few private rooms, the simple wooden chair he had been abruptly rising from half toppled behind him, soon to hit the floor-his hand reaching for a walkie talkie in the corner of his spartan, militaristically organized desk. He clearly hadn’t been expecting action today-he was wearing a red plaid shirt and dark denim blue jeans-and the casual attire looked downright strange to see him in. She flits through the next four rooms, one of which was empty...and maybe Barricade’s old room, given the guns.

It only spurs Jenna to be faster. She spots something that surprises her but doesn’t stop, not yet-she’s down to the twenty or so extra cards and moving onto the duffel bag, zipping back over the same zigzagged pattern, floor to floor and room to room-to slap Marie’s ‘hello’ on all the card readers. She does three more passes just to make sure she got everyone and every single door-but she doesn’t see Sarah. Not anywhere. Her quarters are empty, and she doesn’t see the woman anywhere. Maybe the hospital, maybe in Cid’s office-but she’s going to listen to Marie about that one, and not go up-at least not alone. "Sarah'snotanywheredownhere-cid'sfloor?"

She’s done, and before she gives that pause, lets time catch up to her again-she darts back to where she’d seen-

“Ellie?” The ginger haired girl starts, yanking back the hood on her baggy hoodie, other hand crushing the card. “You’re still coming here?”

“I-Jenna? W-What do you-” She reads the card, confused-and then her eyes flare wide, jerking up to Jenna’s beaming face. “N-now?”

“Yep.”

Ellie crushed the card in her suddenly clammy fist, drawing it close to her chest. Her breathing shallowed as it quickened, fair skin paling even further, freckles standing out in stark contrast. “Oh.” She whispers, swaying a little. “I...I think I’m going to be s-sick.”

~*~

Every Ward in the building suddenly had one of the white cards, and the Vet squads in the lobby all had two, sometimes three-they’d been plastered to visors and the wielder side of the shields with scotch tape, and every single one of the mean looking rifles had been somehow stolen-currently piled high three at Adamant’s feet-presumably for stomping.

Here and there, the playful ghost had armed them instead with brooms. It made for a...rather ridiculous looking crack team, all told.

Several floors upstairs, Tyler snatches up the walkie talkie as he bursts to his feet, chair flying and clattering back behind him-and is suddenly holding both the device and a white placard of some sort, something that had most certainly NOT been there mere nanoseconds before.

The fuck? He only half reads it before his door slides open, jerking his attention away, expecting Cid-but no one’s there. The fuck? He moved to step outside, saw Jaqueline’s head popping out of her own door, brows furrowed-she’s also holding a white card, but her focus is on the keycard reader-a black disk. Tyler looks to his own and reaches for the device-it’s hot, and he’s smelling burned out plastic, senses melted copper-it’s fried itself, and the reader has gone dark, the door seemingly locked open.

He glances back at the white card-and then crumples it up and throws it angrily aside as he turns sharply to suit up.

Paige had finally lost her goddamned mind-and now Adamant was knocking on their door.

Shit.

~*~

“Hey, it’s okay-I mean, that’s about how I felt when my double life got uh, discovered too. More crying though, so you got me there.”

Ellie’s stomach heaved, but she hadn’t eaten lunch, let alone much breakfast-so what little there’d been had already been lost. It hurts, and she’s trembling because now, now she has to choose. “C-cid took me in, g-gave me a home-”

“Ellie, I know, really-you don’t have to explain, you’re an adult, okay? You’re my friend.” Jenna carefully swept more of her messy hair back, having held it while she threw up into the small wastebasket beside her bunk. She had been nice, she was still being nice, but Ellie was sure she’d betrayed her somehow, being found here. “I’m not mad. You’re alright.”

Ellie sagged back onto her calves and Jenna dropped from her crouch to her knees, upper body blurring into a hug. “A-and n-now he’s g-going to be so m-mad, and-”

“Ellie, I’m sorry-I know you’re upset, I know it’s hard, but I can’t stay-I have to get people out.” Jenna blurred back to her feet, a glance to her watch. “These other kids, they can’t leave like you can-it’s now or never for them.”

“Wh-what d-do I d-do?”

Jenna looked guilty, and a little torn. “I can’t decide for you Ellie. But no matter what, you and me, we’re alright. Hell, if you just want to hide for a while, I’ll even take you to my lola’s house.”

And then there was a blue shimmering blur-and she was gone.

 

[Obuzeti]

Elias's ears pop as Velocity slides between everyone in the lobby, hyperkinetic and moving far faster than he's ever seen before. It's not individual speed, but the fact she has time to give everyone joke props in between accomplishing the important bits. He frowns and makes a mental note to talk to Marie about that. At this point one of the suited young heroes balloons into a grizzly bear and charges forward, which honestly impresses Adamant. Shapeshifting is a versatile power and it looked very realistic.

"Velocity says you got, what, eighty people here? Plus whoever you yanked in after this detention proclamation?" Elias asks. He just slaps the bear across the nose as it comes in, drawing a high pitched yelp as it jerks aside. Then he shoves it - a furry, squalling pinball now - across the tiled floor of the lobby to slam into another group of Veterans stepping out of an elevator. "So I figure twenty Vets or something. Four or five teams."

"FLARE!" The blond boy calls, and points both of his hands forward, crimson energy crackling between them into a toroidal shape, which then blossoms into brilliance that Elias has to cover his face against, though he keeps striding forwards at an implacable rate. That's when the ground opens under his feet and he falls into a mechanical pit, which then slams closed on him like a trash compactor. Something pops in his shoulder and it catches his head at a bad angle and cracks a tooth as it squeezes down.

This time, Adamant flares up, and he jerks an arm right up through the crusher panel of the compactor and yanks it up one-handed. Something in the piston cracks, and the brawny hero boots the smashing plate up into the ceiling of the lobby above with a crack and crash of rended metal. The two teams - blondie, bear, and their teammates, have retreated to just in front of the elevator door.

"That wasn't a fucking kid's trap," Adamant barks, now steaming mad. Light flares from his skin, rippling up his neck and down his arms. The tooth mends and he rolls his shoulder once, popping it back into place. "Were you going to use that on anyone that tried to leave?"

A pretty little brunette, who'd been armed with one of the rifles, cringes, a ghastly pale color at what she'd witnessed. He awards her a point for decency. "It's not meant to be closed on anyone! I don't know how that even happened, the safety sensors should have stopped it! It's just to - like make a trench or something!"

Elias glowers. "I think safety has taken a backseat today."

~*~

There's a monstrous thud that echoes up through the floors, and Cid grits his teeth. Fucking Adamant here now and today, assaulting and breaking down the Tower like he'd always known he would. Today isn't his day though - today, Cid comes into his own. The armor stand that normally bears his hero suit sinks into the floor as from the ceiling comes a much bulkier, bigger capsule. It opens a little, manhole-like entrance, and Cid hefts himself up and slides inside into a claustrophobic seat, then guns the ignition switch.

"Tectonic, get your squad and any Vets you see, try to retake the lobby or at least block it off. If we can bottleneck the Wards we have a chance at stopping this before the Senate calls in the Guard or decides to bomb us all, God forbid. Fuck, how must this look!"

He'd heard that Lana and Elias had addressed the Senate, but couldn't bear bringing himself to watch it just yet, looking at that smug, defiant fucking face as he openly flaunts the law of the land. He'd heard a synopsis and the arrogance of it all makes Cid's blood boil. As it turns out, he should have been paying attention, even if he'd hated it, because now he's on the defensive.

But this is his Tower, still, and he has tricks to play yet. Keyed into Elias's information, all the disabling defenses present in the tower - taser turrets, self-sealing walls and floors, laser grids - they all go active, safe modes flipping off and blazing with lethal intensity. He spots Elias falling into the floor pit on the lobby level, and smiles grimly as it closes on him.

Then he kicks his way out, and that smile curdles.

Well, he didn't expect it to be easy.

The reactor finally kicks in, and Cid turns back to the command module as the new suit of armor kicks in, metal beginning to shift as it rises to its pilot's command.

 

[CurtailedAmbrosia]

Tectonic pulls on his open crowned helm and reenters the hallway just as El Cid issues his orders. He’s not the most suited for indoor fights, and buildings can take a hit when he involves himself in one. Retaking the lobby was a tall order-it’s Adamant down there. He was more than a match for a lot of things, but Adamant was not one of them.

But he has his orders, and he’s confident he can at least head Paige off. El Cid had the right idea-bottleneck and keep the rogue pair from luring the impressionable away, and maybe they wouldn’t all be arrested as war criminals, fuck. All he has to do is contain the situation until Daybreak and Cid could get involved-he knows she’s been cloistered since...everything-but he doesn’t know who else could possibly prevent Adamant from tearing through and facilitating this supposed ‘escape’-more like kidnapping-of Tower Wards in blatant disregard for the law.

“Paige is also somewhere in the building, handed everyone an invitation to desert.” Tectonic’s voice is flat, but he’s frustrated as ever with the undisciplined heroine, forever bucking the law and Tower authority, and now facilitating a mutiny, Christ. “With permission, sending two teams to attempt to pin her down. I’m moving to block off the Lobby as ordered.”

To the other senior Wards, he barks out orders of his own, then cuts off to speak to his own team. “Jacqueline, with me. Harv, ‘Ness, Loghain-coordinate with Squad 3, cast a wide net. She’s fast, but she’s not sturdy-lock this down before it gets out of hand, her and any would be escapees. Everyone else-Lobby. Don’t use the stairs between the third and fourth floors-and watch for loose debris anywhere under that.”

Moments later, a rumble could be felt on the western side of the building, and up and down the long, single stairwell on that side, the screaming of metal and the sudden crash of stone could be heard, as if a demolition had taken place-which, honestly, it had. Eighty seconds later, the same thing happened, this time on the eastern side.

~*~

Jenna snapped to a stop and Briar swayed, dizzy-before both gaped at the utter destruction three feet in front of them-they were safe on the fourth floor landing, but the rest of the staircase, or at least a big chunk of it-was missing. “Holy shit.” The beefy sixteen year old said, grabbing at a railing and peering down. “I could probably jump down...probably.”

“The Lobby’s hella dense even if you didn’t break both legs-I’m starting to worry about getting through it, I keep having to interrupt fights and figure out who’s leaving, with the signal ruined.” She’d fucked up, talking to Ellie for that long. She had gotten distracted, and while leaving like that had made her feel like a shitty friend-dropping the ball and not providing the instant exit for people counting on it was worse.

“Let’s try the other side-” A stomach lurching few seconds later, and they were looking at much the same thing in the eastern stairwell-except it was nosier. He leaned over the railing, and could see a pile of swirling rock and concrete, marble and stone at the bottom. He lurched backwards, pulling the speedster with him-she was so much smaller than him, it made no sense she was able to push him around like that. “It’s Tectonic.” He hissed. Over her silver goggles, her brow furrowed.

“I’ve only got like, twenty something people out.” The heroine worries, squirming out of his grasp-and then she’s talking to someone else into her communicator, low voiced and kind of anxiously hesitant sounding. “No, I left it with the guys on the gro-yes I’ve got mine. Oh-oh, right! Thanks!”

“What?”

“Change of plans Briar, and awkward fact-I can’t run people UP stairs, only down ‘em. Stomp up to the fourth floor training room, I’ll be right back-” And then she blurred away.

~*~

A purple swirling portal opened on the wall to Elias’ left, and a handful of sour faced (and some pale) Senior Wards filed out-then closed again. A second one on his right-two more Senior Wards, and then a young black woman who didn’t quite fit the ‘clean and conservative’ bill, what with the purple mohawk and all. She wore a tight fitting dress with a window cut in the front, and fishnets in feminine looking ankle boots.

And then, bizarrely-blue portals opened up, three of them at once-and from the look on their faces before him, this was both surprising-and rage inducing, in the one.

“Josephine, you traitorous bitch.” Jaqueline Myers hissed, as her carbon copy twin stepped out of her own portal, HER mohawk dyed blue and sporting a tailored three piece suit, a bright blue silk tie. Into her communicator she issued a “Jailbirds in the lobby!” But didn’t get much further than that, because her sister launched into an attack, both women looking something like ghosts, translucent and grappling themselves through the floor in a sizzling sparkle of blue and purple puffs of smoke.

It didn’t much matter-because from the Eastern and Western stairwells marched cobblestone golems-and they charged forward to throw themselves at both Adamant and Josephine’s rebels, faster than they should be with that heft-and indeed, some lost their legs entirely to fly across the room and slam into the few clear tanks that had exited the blue portals.

~*~

“This is crazy.” Meadowlark was murmuring to herself. Things had gone topsy turvy-she’d been in her hammock when her and her three bunkmates suddenly found themselves holding invitations to Atlantis-and had hardly read through them when Andrea had burst out of her room with one and demanded theirs-getting a little crazier when the doors opened.

She, Lexi and Chyenne had turned theirs over immediately, but then Ria flat refused. That had the three older Wards trying to fight the much younger Ria-and Meadowlark had just pulled the often at odds, often in trouble eleven year old out of the shared dormitory behind her, trying to talk sense into all four at once-when Velocity had zipped up out of nowhere, and asked if they wanted to go.

Meadow was still uncertain what had possessed her to nod. She just knew she couldn’t take the other three in a straight fight in such an enclosed space, and Ria was just a kid-and now here they both were. “Let’s get younger Wards out first-” She hears Becca say, having already tested the device three times-always cautious, Becca was.

That’d be Ria-she was at the young end, maybe one of THE youngest, she’s not sure-there were so many Wards these days, and supposedly even more on the way- “Come with me.” The serious girl says, pulling on her hand. She scoots her forward into the tight four ward cluster about to make the trip-and then melts back into the scattered crowd outside Jenna’s suggested ‘safe zone’.

A tall, thin woman with short blonde hair in a pixie cut, the twenty four year old had been in the Tower only a couple of years-but it was home, or at least, home since she’d decided she wanted more out of life than to be a ‘freak’. She’d been cursed as a child-she didn’t really remember it, but her mother swore some kind of witch had tried to kidnap her, and when she returned home, she returned like...this.

Like a humanoid bird. The upper half of her face looked like a masquerade mask, dark brown and black feathers, the top half of a beak over what should have been a human nose, but was instead just a shallow bump over her nasal cavity. Beneath it, human lips. Feathers covered her body, a black v shaped collar and a bright yellow belly and throat, brown and black feathers down her back and in the malformed wings that reminded her of flying squirrels rather than birds-they extended from her arm to just behind her back, and didn’t allow for straight up flying so much as gliding-a poor ‘power’, and some of the wards liked to remind her of this, and often.

She didn’t care. She’d grown up in an attic, loved but hidden away from the world, a shameful secret. At least here she had some arguable use, and people liked her well enough.

Of course, that was due to her more useful ability-oh, she’d been cursed, but her voice-she could influence others to do things, a subtle nudge in that direction, anyway. It was the most effective when a person was waffling-she could not overcome the determined or the stubborn wishing to do the opposite, for instance. And while she was light boned and therefore a little more fragile than most, she could jump, and made the best use of her abilities through rigorous physical training. On a team, she could someday be useful. But so far, she hadn’t been sent out.

Perhaps the Tower did not need to be represented in public by a feathered ward-and never would, now. But that was alright. She made a difference helping the younger and the more introverted Wards-she was on the 'old' end, after all, but since she wasn't in any kind of authority position, she could move around a bit...easier. And that was exactly why she didn't think she should go. If so many of the good ones were on their way out, what would be left? The bullies and then the Wards too nervous to leave. Someone had to try and look out for them...

Reaching the few 'heavy' front lining Wards guarding the large door, she peered down the long, empty, utilitarian hall, the rows and rows of locked open doors. And then the elevator pinged.

Velocity wasn't using the elevator-the stairs were faster, and supposedly she'd already been through the first two floors before they'd been wrecked.

Meadowlark took a swift step back as Loghain stepped into the hallway-and saw her. Saw all of them.

"Oh, no."

 

[Obuzeti]

Adamant takes in the impendent chaos, the portals opening across from each other and the golems marching into the lobby, and grits his teeth. If there's a time to go all-out, it's now, because this matters, more than his little skirmishes with criminals, or his attack on the Oil Tower, or going to pick a fight with Paul like he has been, pointlessly - these kids are everything, all that's left of his people after they've been preyed upon and jailed and terrorized. His family is almost gone, and here they are fighting like children, with the real predators lurking above and below.

So he turns and lunges forward into the first cobblestone golem as it raises clublike hands and batters him with a roundhouse swing that blasts into his jaw. In return, Adamant seizes it and spins. It slams down onto his back with fucking supernatural force, but his hips are already transitioning, and he redirects the force into a brutal judo throw at the closest stairwell, smashing the golem into its brethren in the way like pins in a bowling alley.

Two more slam into either side of his torso and bear down, and Elias turns and uppercuts one's head off so hard that the stone blasts like buckshot off the far wall, peppering the golems on the opposite side with concrete, but the mass is too little and the distance too great for much effect. In exchange, the ground beneath Adamant flexes like quicksand and parts, and the golems drag him down into the concrete floor until he collides with the machinery powering the floor crusher, almost four feet down. Just his chest and head poke out.

Adamant snarls as the earth compacts, trying to hold him. One arm pulls free of the earth as it clenches tight, denying any leverage, almost pinning him in place. Turrets wheel out of armored compartments, aim and take fire, driving metal-tipped penetrators into his face and head, though they never more than sting before bouncing off or shedding at an angle, filling the room with deadly ricochets.

Then he jams the fingers of his free hand into his own eye, crushing it.

There's a moment as the light within him draws in, like a heartbeat, and then it surges forth, going from a faint twinkle beneath his bronze skin to ghost-lit from within, stars visibly surging beneath the surface, rocketing into some infinite distance. Whatever damage he'd done to his eye becomes irrelevant as light spills forth from his form and he walks up out of the grasping earth like it was a swimming pool, dirt and concrete bits trailing after him in a magnetized trail.

Whatever's driving the golems - Adamant vaguely remembers another metahuman, young, wielding makeshift forms long ago before Immolation - immediately throws them all at him. They blast apart under his touch like salt statues, cobblestone no match for the forces driving him, and even through the remaining chunks crowd and bash into his chest, the huge man just powers through with single-minded intensity towards a group of Wards in a circle around a downed member.

~*~

Brandon Hayes grits his teeth and tries not to scream as his teammate pulls another chunk of shrapnel out of his thigh, behind the bunker his team had constructed. When the turrets had started firing, they hadn't considered crossing lines of fire - two rounds had collected and deflected, and one had nearly torn his thigh in half. The rounds were enormous, specialized .338 Lapua bullets with penetrating tips designed to stop even the toughest brutes, but not Adamant, apparently, who was even now shrugging off the fire.

Brandon, a mere human by comparison, is in real danger of bleeding out. There's a two-inch hole in his leg where the round had tumbled, and the femoral artery is compromised. Listrata, his partner, threw up a wall of elastic fabric and tied off the leg as fast as possible, but with panic in her veins the silk reacts to any kind of stimulation by whipping out with razor-like strands, slicing bullets out of the air.

He has a ghastly thought, in one disconnected second, about what will happen if someone stumbles backwards into the range of the dome.

"The emergency line is cut," Brandon says hoarsely, dropping his free hand from his headset. "It's just repeating Cid's last orders."

"Fucking why?" Listrata demands, and the long silk ribbons that make up her costume and weapon twist with her agitation. There's a sound like a wet towel slapping the floor, amplified by a hundred; concrete dust fountains over the edge of their shelter. She presses down on the ruin of his leg, above the tourniquet, but without any blood reserves to replace his own, the outlook is grim. Her face is probably paler than his. "Why the fuck would he do that?"

"Well I guess he thought it was an emergency," Brandon says with black humor. He blinks twice, and tries to stay focused on her face. It's getting increasingly important to talk to her, and he knows why, but tries not to think about the fact his fingers and feet have gone numb, and his tongue is slow and clumsy in his mouth.

 

[CurtailedAmbrosia]

Adamant seizes the first golem that reaches him, turning and hurtling him into the other constructs coming from the western side-Tectonic lets it go, the former Junior Leaguer tearing through the two foolishly brave rebellious souls that moved for him. He’s encased in stone and marble, a golem he’s wearing like a suit of armor-they had had the extreme misfortune of finding the right one-and they pay for it-the first is already down, leaving his much more hesitant friend to fend for himself. Tectonic pulls back his fist and slams it into him, belatedly recognizes him as Benson. He sends the brawler flying into another construct, which topples forward and lands on him. Rocks roll away from the struggling metahuman’s head, the golem now a malformed pile-after a few moments, it reforms in a surge back away from the kid, slamming into the girl who’d come to help him. She had enhanced durability, she’d live. Energy ripples around her, but he just takes her halfway through the floor and leaves her there.

Meanwhile, even as their untouched brethren slam into Adamant-the fallen golems are physically rising rather than the usual shift and reform that required much more concentration, the lifeless beasts slow and lumbering-as Tectonic slams yet more into the hulking form who’d caused-or at least wasn’t stopping-all of this.

“We’ve got eyes on our would be escapees.” Harv’s voice filters through his comm, crisp and businesslike. “They’re holed up in the eastern training room, fourth floor.”

Tectonic grunts as he bears down hard on the impervious man, reaching out and willing the ground to shift beneath his feet at the same time-drag him under, encase him in it, keep him there.

“Pin them in, wait for orders.”

Golems sink and are trapped with the man, but it only aids his control, having his phantom bodies in contact with the ground. A golem along the wall pins another heavy hitting ‘rebel’, forms around him rather than pulverizing-that one doesn’t have the durability Benson or the girl does. “Velocity?”

Bullets are just bouncing off of him, and a golem self sacrifices into a raised, two foot wall around the man’s head, an unintended instinct to prevent source of damage-but the bullets blast it apart and only add to the ricochet.

“Not yet. Will detain and wait for orders on that, too.”

Tectonic opens his mouth for a curt reply-and cuts off as he has to throw a hand out to block a series of projectiles-which the ultra packed, telekinetically controlled stone fails to stop, blasting apart after three hits, but by then his other arm had swept the Ward aside.

Tyler reflexively back hands the offending turret with a surge of stone to replace the clubbed fist-and forces the gun barrel back, twisting and shearing the turret off of its housing.

“Cid-we’re taking friendly fire!”

Tectonic switches channels to the Senior Wards. “Get against a wall-” A growl of exertion ends the order as he snaps back to attention on Adamant, who was pushing hard against his control. Golems shamble to a stop and some start to lose some of their form, the weaker ones becoming misshapen as he diverts his attention to holding him-and then going for absolute broke as-something almost detonates within the form fitting pit the veteran had been housed in. The golem that was housing Tectonic was suddenly starkly obvious-it reflexively stomps forward for a final surge of strength against that power-but fails. No matter how tightly he attempts to force the earth and stone closed on or over him, Adamant continues forward with single minded focus-even as he regains focus and control over every rocky artifice he’d constructed-and threw them at him, resolving to bury him.

Stop Adamant. He needs to stop Adamant-the turrets and traps are in full fucking kill mode, ineffective against the veteran but deadly for those caught in the crossfire.

“Cid, we’re taking friendly fire!” He blares into the comm again, and for a moment he realizes it’s not Adamant he’s blaming for it. Even his line is repeating the same spiel as it is on the emergency line. The stone blasts apart before the form of the bulldozing god, and even as Tyler pushes back on him, pulls the earth beneath his feet in a churning mess and presses in on the sides of the man’s legs-it’s no more than water to him.

Where the fuck was Cid? Sarah? Was this really the plan, hurl kids at a nonhostile, if invasive force, and pepper the place with projectiles? Tectonic’s mind flashes on Barry’s sudden, violent death-and a word comes back to him, a dissenting thought he kept coming back to again and again when he thought of that mission, thought of Ash, thought about Vanessa, a girl he’d taken into a warzone.

Pointless.

And, were these on upstairs? Were they targeting Jenna?

“Ignore Adamant and whatever’s left of the Jailbirds and destroy the turrets!” He barks over Cid’s last orders on the senior line, rolling out of his golem entirely as it splits in two, surging the rock around two different guns and absorbing fire that relentlessly chips away at the inside layer.

“Halwell, stop. The traps are drawing a bead on you.”

Someone tries to take a gun from behind and a defensive barrier triggers on that one-Tyler opens the ground beneath it and several others, the dull thuds of continuing fire battering harmlessly away into the ground. He crushes those instead, and they are far less a challenge than Adamant had been.

Someone’s on the ground on the other side of that barrier, and Tyler’s priorities shift. He’s already fulfilled his orders, at least partially-but treacherously, he almost doesn’t fucking care. These traps should have never been packing that kind of heat-there’s no way Sarah knew they were there or that strong. She would have never risked them around her ‘kids’.

It was like Cid hadn’t even been there to see her break down over Barry, Ashley. Their deaths were as much his failure as they were his own. Hurting Sarah…

“Listrata-!” He can see a lot of blood, and a hastily applied tourniquet. Hayes had been more than clipped-they needed to get him to medical care, and now.

 

[Obuzeti]

The ground rocks outside, as the reinforced concrete absorbs a brutal impact. Nine feet of glistening, white metal, oddly balanced on two legs like some enormous and flightless bird, turns to face the lobby. Rather than arms, the oblong torso atop those graceful legs mounts two nodules that obviously contain weapons blisters. The entire machine has the pearly-white aesthetic that Cid so favors, but the bulkiness and sheer weight of it is unusual, for him. Naturally, a name is acid-etched in elegant script across the main body: Campeador.

He guns the engine into a loping run as a loud clang and shrieking alarm come from the Tower's lobby, right before the ceiling parts and titanium blast shield slam down inches from the Wards in the lobby, sealing them out and Adamant into a killbox in the center of the room.

"The situation," Cid snarls over the command band, "is under control."

He thumbs the firing stick, and the left nodule opens up as Adamant turns around, glimmering with the starlight that only seems to shine with him. Cid targets that glowing body, and pulls the trigger as he reflexively closes his eyes. The light sears against his eyelids anyways, and it's a long second before he can open them again, fighting against the negative images burned onto his retinas from that scorching ray.

What he sees, then, haunts him for the rest of his life.

The blast shields have held, as expected; they glow orange in spots, with the shield directly behind Adamant having slagged a little but still held in the whole. The man himself has been neatly sliced in half. What drains the blood from Cid's face is the luminous membrane that still stands above the seared meat; untouched by the high-energy assault, it turns towards Cid, and faces him with distant and pitiless stars.

Cid looks into the true heart of Adamant, past the flesh and bone he claims as his own, and feels unbearably cold. His hands start to shake, and he tastes brine on his tongue, burning and unpleasant. His brain rattles inside his skull, and he presses the other control stick forward, thumbing the trigger. A high-energy microwave blasts apart the flesh that twines up that ghostly form, but it still stands, unmoved and dispassionate, and begins to stalk forward.

"Long has this been due," it says quietly. The voice reverberates in his ear drums, driving sharp spikes of pain into Cid's brain. The parallels are getting too obvious to ignore and he bites his tongue so hard that he doesn't even taste the blood in his mouth.

"Fuck off, Elias!" he bellows, and releases a swarm of micro-missiles from a launcher pack on the back of the mechanized weapon. They soar into Adamant's form, and some detonate and blow away chunks of flesh and concrete from the lobby floor alike, but vastly worse are the ones that soar into that luminous and star-lit void, and never come back. They vanish like fireflies into the dark, flickering as they fly away. After a moment, Cid watches them detonate from a vast distance.

His teeth begin to rattle.

Cid smashes the control stick in reverse as his thruster begin to burn, but the ground craters under Adamant as he explodes forward, propelled faster than a bullet. He catches one of the mecha's graceful legs with his hand, and the metal shears and twists under his mere touch, without even the application of strength. The other man doesn't even pull, just holds on, and the force of the jet engines spins Cid in a tight, vertigo-inducing circle around the immobile anchor point Adamant represents.

Then Adamant's other hand comes over and down, and he hammers the cockpit into the ground so hard that the crunching roar of crunching metal on collapsing concrete shatters glass a block away.

~*~

The barrier coming down snags a corner of Listrata's barrier, and the cloth reacts like a living thing, whipping around and delivering a long and dragging strike down the metal, dragging deep into the metal. That structural weakness nearly proves fatal as a moment later, an eye-searing beam of light scorches through the sealed-off lobby and penetrates through the freshly-made weak spot, slagging the far wall instead. The force of the wave splatters molten metal all around the breach, and Brandon grunts and twists in agony as flecks of it fall on his skin and uniform. That's nothing compared to Listrata, though, who has it fall in her hair, and screams as it sets the lustrous mane alight, burning her scalp and neck. Her silk barrier goes berserk, twisting threads in every direction, and actually skitters up a nearby wall, pulling them along in its fabric carapace like cats in a sack. It smells like burning hair and pain.

Brandon, wounded as he is, pulls out a molten chip of metal from his side, then pulls off his armored vest and clamps it down over the back of Listrata's head, using the fireproof material to choke out the fire and pull out the hot slag from where it's burning the back of her neck. He chunks it out onto the floor, but grunts in pain as without that insulation, the razor strands of the silkbeast cut into his skin every time he shifts. In seconds, he's losing even more blood that he didn't have enough of in the first place, and his vision greys to the sound of Listrata's fitful sobs.

Well, he was going to die anyways.

Mouth dry and no longer finding words, Brandon pats Listrata's back with clumsy hands, and listens to the war going on outside.

 

[CurtailedAmbrosia]

Something lands, and Tyler doesn’t turn to look-just sends a pulse of awareness through his feet and through the earth even as he continues towards the silk barrier, a pile of rubble gathering into a shambling rolling ball that trudges loose and at the ready to his left-and then an alarm blares, and he has to literally reach out and jerk a kid out of the way of a three foot thick metal blast shield. If the lobby hadn’t been secure before, it sure as shit was now.

"The situation is under control."

The hell it was-

“Get everyone you can into the western stairwell.” He barks at the older teen, giving him a shove in that direction as the silk shield goes absolutely apeshit, tearing through titanium metal in deep rivets-Tectonic’s expression flattens. If anyone stumbles into that, they’ll be flayed to pieces.

“Listrata, get a grip on-” And then blinding light he has to turn away from, the ball of rubble spiking out in a half wall around him as people proceed to panic.

Cid had fired at that barrier, it’s orange in spots where it’d taxed the metal. He had fired an Adamant stopping weapon in the direction of his own soldiers.

Cid’s lost his mind. He’s lost his mind, and where the fuck was that energy weapon when they went to retrieve Modal?

A woman is screaming, and Tyler snaps his head back up, trying to blink away the white spots-before he surges the rubble forward for that silk shield, moving into a dead sprint as more stone flies to his hands and legs, sticks to the front of him in a shitty, hastily constructed half golem. Her barrier cuts into the constructs and Tyler can feel it as surely as he would have felt someone flaying his actual skin-but he just grinds his teeth against it and continues.

The loose cobblestone rock isn’t near the hardness or the strength as that titanium, so to anyone else it briefly looked like Tectonic had lost his senses as he rushed the barrier-but it’s not stone that silk is really contending with-it’s him. It’s his mind, the telekinetic abilities that allow him to bend and rend the earth with a thought. He packs it together and forces the strips of the silk flat to the wall, and where it cuts through he tightens a hold on it, pinning and sticking to it, weighing it down. His-no, the golem’s-hands grab onto the bag with the screaming, weeping woman inside, and a Ward Tyler’s decently sure might already be dead, a lost cause.

A handful of others move in now that the silk is seemingly contained-and Tectonic rips the fabric violently open for both bodies to tumble into Grizzly’s arms.

“I’ve got a man bleeding to death and severe burns on another-I need a portal and I need it now.” He grunts into his comm, still fighting with the silk. He had called to a cease in hostilities, so where the fuck was-

A purple portal opens and Jaqueline steps out, shoving her sister out ahead of her-where the blue mohawked woman stumbles and falls, catching herself, but just barely. Jaqueline looked rough-she’s bleeding from where an earring had been torn out, her lip is swollen, and her dress is slashed across the shoulder-but Josephine looked like she’d been in the ring with a heavyweight boxer. She’s wheezing through a broken nose and holding her side, face swollen. She’d been the apparent leader of the ‘Jailbirds’ he’d been trying to root out, but he suspects the injuries to her face had little to do with that, and everything to do with their rivalry.

“It’ll have to be three trips, I don’t have the range for a straight shot.” Jaq says, closing and drawing another portal-when Josephine pushes herself to her knees, casting her sister, and then him, hateful, disdainful glares with her unnaturally blue glowing eyes-before she looked at the sobbing, nastily burned Listrata, and a grey, ashen faced Brandon.

“Ah do.”

“Then do it.” Tyler grunts, Jaq shooting him a disapproving look-but he’s past fucking around with this shit. He has no idea if Doc Bot can save Hayes, but he hopes to God he can. He further encases the silk, dragging it down(long, nasty gashes down the wall) and buries it.

When he can finally let go he staggered back a step, and finally let everything he’d been controlling drop and loosen. He tries to ignore the fact he can’t feel his left hand-and sends another pulse through the ground, half wanting-and half not caring-to know what was going on on the other side of the blast shield.

But his focus is on the shambles of the squads here.

~*~

Glass parts in the penthouse, and Marie frowns at what’s revealed-some sort of tall, dense super armor, the like of Machinist but much more advanced-she’s never seen anything like it. And then it jumps.

“The errant knight’s heading your way.” She notes, piloting the bird lower, a flicking glance to Jenna’s monitor-she’d spent another span of time successfully convincing some white haired kid to leave.

She glances to the teleporter. 13 trips on Jenna’s, and 7 on the spare she’d sent, the last of those having been several minutes ago. “Lana.”

“Everything’s going fine down here-36 kids and counting. According to a Miss Becca, there’s only a handful left in that second staging area."

Jenna finally stops, and the feed from her goggles makes sense again-for a split second she thought the hallway had had other kids in it, but now there’s just the one-same kid that’d been at Modal’s. Space Contortionist?

Marie tenses up, opens her mouth to warn Jenna off of that one-but the brief exchange shakes out in the girl’s favor, because Vanessa Hopkins apparently wanted out. That'd probably chap Cid's ass, one of his Honor Guard leaving for greener pastures-of course, who wouldn't, when your glorious leader had gotten two of your number killed in an act of straight stupidity?

Hn.

Back to the hovering drone, back to Cid- and then the fuck does the the unthinkable-he not only full on attacks Elias, but he fires dead into the lobby. Full of kids. Supposedly his kids-Jesus Christ.

Why had she sent an unarmed drone again?

The monitor goes full white as it washes out, and the drone is suddenly dead in the water-the CCD sensors aren’t just showing dead pixels, the screen is flat black-she thinks they’ve full on melted. Marie jabs a button to let it land itself, staring at a screen that can’t tell her anything else-and she doesn’t like it. She switches to satellite, heart in her throat-but the Tower’s been cloaked for years, it was no use.

Jasper meows at her, front paws on the arm of her wheelchair-

And then Adamant’s voice comes over the line, and some part of her relaxes-to a point. She doesn't want to know what that blast did to him...and the thought makes her frown, because why did he wait to take it? Just ensuring El Cid was indeed on the attack?

It’s a fight, now. Or rather-a lack of one. She’s blind, but at least she’s not deaf-though the crunch of metal has her cranking the volume down.

 

[Obuzeti]

Cid wakes when a hand pushes through the armored cockpit of the Campeador like it was made of butter and pulls it apart. The metal screams and bends apart under fingers that have no edges he can see - just dark, oblong shapes through which the light of galaxies shine. His head aches and there's more than just brine in his mouth, now, there's blood from where he's bitten his tongue on impact. Odd dark shapes swim through his vision. There's an emergency message in his ear reporting about critical damage and automatic injections to stabilize pilot health. He feels the sting of a needle, ,and the pain fades a little.

The armor of the mech peels away, and before Cid stands a monster. He tries to raise a hand, or say something, or go for the emergency pistol in his waist pouch, but no part of him is communicating properly. The body is weak, and his mind is sluggish. All he has is the repeating refrain frozen in his brain: No.

"Alphonse Cidolfus Castellanos," the voice says. It rattles his bones like a passing train; he can feel the vibrations of the voice through the skin touching him. It's faintly warm to the touch, but an uncanny lack of grip - he feels like he's vacuum-sealed to that surface, and blind, unreasonable terror fills him that he'll fall through like those missiles, and be lost forever on the other side, wherever that is.

"The things you claim I take from you. Your Tower stands sundered. Your name I call to the world. Your Wards I liberate, and your wife, her family reclaims. Today, you stand free of your chains, be they binding or held. Begin anew, for El Cid I now bury."

It's all roaring in his ears. Cid pulls at the mecha's torn armor, scrabbles at the burned sleeve on the arm before him, staring in horror at the stars that have no drifted so close. Cid can hear them now. He wishes he couldn't. It's a hollow sound, like a scream, like a television left on, like the flatline of a heartbeat monitor. It is the sound of God leaving the room, and Cid can comprehend nothing beyond that absolute and total horror. His vaunted control is gone, and all that is left is weak gasps and futile pulls at anything, just to get away.

Adamant stares down at him, through those sightless depths in the void where his head should have been. In one pit a star glimmers, but the other is dark and endless.

He stands and walks away, as the first hints of blood-stirred froth begin to drip from Alphonse's mouth.

~*~

The pulse comes just shortly before Adamant himself walks through the blast shield like it was a bead curtain, though the remaining heat lets it peel back with relative ease. The dripping and cooling slag runs off his skin without visible result, and he flicks away some that pools in his hair. "Tyler," he says, "Any more casualties? Medical evacuation is available."

Without even questioning what side he's on, he tosses his personal teleporter to the young man and turns to the injured couple on the ground. Brandon looks up at him, gray-faced but still responsive, and says, "Well, I guess you won."

"It was a necessary reckoning," Adamant says, grim, "but not a victory, for me."

He kneels and pulls out a portable first aid kit with a series of pouches in it, then pauses to glance over at Brandon's face. Adamant's skin is starting to become visible again, but it's still translucent, just laid over infinite stars twinkling somewhere in the distance. "What blood type are you?"

"B negative," Brandon says, automatically, flabbergasted enough that the shock comes through on the next question. "Why the hell do you have a first aid kit?"

"Last man standing gets cleanup duty," Adamant replies, and startles a laugh out of the bleeding teenager. He snaps a finger in front of Listrata's eyes, and she starts enough to begin moving again, looking up at him with a dull stare. "You medic-trained? I've got a pack of universal donor here. Find a vein and get him started. He'll live."

Once she understands the words coming out of his mouth, Listrata doesn't even answer - she physically tears the kit out of Adamant's hands and inserts the tube before he finishes talking, then starts applying the topical burn agent to both herself and Brandon, unwrapping bandages at the same time. Every second she gains focus and momentum, now that there's something she can accomplish.

Adamant squints a little at the turnaround, then stands up and backs off a couple steps, glancing around at the lobby.

"You know where Sarah is?" he asks, without glancing over at Tyler.

 

[CurtailedAmbrosia]

Adamant declares it a reckoning, and he moves not to gloat or order anyone around-but to tend to the wounded, or help Listrata do so. Tyler doesn’t quite know what to say to Adamant. Or what the device is, why he’s given it to him. He’d done his level best to pin him in, and then bury him. It’d been rock, but it’d been his mind, and the man had waded through both like they were nothing.

"You know where Sarah is?"

“Must be in her quarters.” Tyler says, brow furrowing. “I expected her to come down to talk-” He stops short. Talk to him. She would have talked to him, and none of this would have happened.

“...she hasn’t been doing well.” He finally says. And how would she take this? His gaze settles on Brandon, then flick to the battered face of Josephine, Listrata’s terrible burns-and his shoulders sag as he rakes his still mobile fingers through his hair. His eyes flicker through the hole in the steel, to El Cid-Alphonse?-his commander, who had raised killer turrets in the same room as his Wards, fired an energy beam in their direction.

Why?

Because he thought they were expendable? Soldiers were, sometimes. That was the way of war-you had to understand there’d be losses. But...

-and Tyler suddenly realizes how fucked it was, thinking about them in those terms. Heroes had put their lives on the line before, their safety-HE'D done it, his friends-but it was the world that had decided they were expendable, not them. Not Adamant, and certainly not Sarah.

These weren’t soldiers. Future heroes, maybe, but not soldiers-like he’d told Adamant previously, the average age was nineteen. Lower now probably, with the recent intakes.

And...it hadn’t been Cid who had held Sarah while she wept, it’d been Elias. It wasn’t Elias who had recklessly led a squad into a hellish insectoid nightmare, it was Cid. He’d been there too. He had failed them and failed Sarah-and failed the Wards as a whole. Failure.

No more. Whatever the hell had gone on near a decade ago wasn’t his business-but one of the two men gave a damn about her emotional wellbeing and the continuation of metahumans in general, and it sure as hell wasn’t Cid.

His shoulders straighten as Tectonic swells back to his full height, eyes sharp.

“Her quarters are on the second floor. Maybe you can talk to her, convince her to come.”

“Come where?” Jacqueline demands, her blood still up. Tectonic doesn’t answer. She’d fall into line, or he’d put her there. “Jaq, find out who still wants to leave. Josephine-”

The blue mohawked young woman was already unsteadily rising to her feet, drawing a flaming blue portal as she rose-and angrily shoving his helping hand away with a nasty look. She hated him, and at the moment-Tectonic absolutely understands why. She looks up at Adamant, nose bloody and smashed in, eye swollen, teetering-and she raises a fist to tap over her heart, a nod. She’s unbowed, unbroken.

“Doh’ ‘eave me here.” Josephine requests, a pointed glance to Tectonic and Jacqueline. She’s royally fucked if he does-and then the portal widens with a wave-and Grizzly ducks his head as he steps through into what looked like a clear and obvious medibay.

The elevator pings just as the portal closes up-and suddenly Jenna’s at Adamant’s elbow. She’s frowning, and doesn’t pay an ounce of attention to the destruction or ‘the enemy’-just Adamant, the swirling galaxy within him. She slides her goggles up over her hairline, draws in a breath as if to say something-and then wavers, opting for a quick debriefing instead, still watching him a little concernedly.

“I got everybody who held up a card or I could talk into going-they’re home safe-but like I said earlier, Sarah’s not here. I looked everywhere but Cid’s floor, six times.”

Jenna slides her goggles up over her hairline, a wary look to Tectonic-and then she sees the teleporter still held in his hand, and she straightens, eyes widening in surprise. “Oh snap, you’re finally ready to blow this popsicle joint?”

Jaqueline, who had been openly glaring at her, interrupts before Tyler can say one way or another.

“No one else is going anywhere.” The woman hisses-and only now soes she have Jenna’s attention. “I don’t know what the fuck you think you’re doing Tyler, but just because a psychopath rolls in and claims rights by conquest doesn’t mean you can just buck everything and go rogue, the hell’s the matter with you?”

Tyler’s jaw tightens as his face draws into a flat expression. The gravel around his feet rises a bare few millimeters off the floor, small, unconscious, lazy swirls.

“And you-are you happy now? Is this what you wanted?” Jaqueline fires at Jenna, who doesn’t so much as frown-just a slight tilt of her head, brown amber eyes flicking back Adamant. “Just join up and then lay waste to everything, you stupid cunt?”

The speedster’s eyes flick back down with a snap as Tyler grounds out a “Jaq.”, a twitch in his right cheek-but Jenna just shrugs, unrattled. “‘Kay.”

And then she moved, that shimmering light blue blur becoming a shimmering blue and dark purple blur as she whisked the hostile, spitting woman through the Adamant shaped hole in the titanium, past the wrecked armor housing an inconsequential man she had once looked up to, through the grassy park-and off into the distance.

Tyler doesn’t comment. Jacqueline was apparently a lost cause.

“I’ll gather anyone under sixteen for transport.” He says to Adamant. “And anyone else I can convince or order to go.”

~*~

Sixty miles into the heart of the city, Jenna suddenly stopped. She had joked about spiriting a foe off and into the middle of a cornfield somewhere once, and today-she’d actually done something similar a few times. The rest of the honor squad to far reaching rooms in the Tower, and this lady, this lady out outside the very coffee shop she’d visited earlier.

Jacqueline whirls on her with a failed flying elbow, but Jenna was simply too fast and suddenly in front of her. People were staring, giving the two metahumans plenty of space as they skittered backwards-and Jacqueline tried again, and Velocity moves, again.

She flashes an easy smile, offering up one of those little salutes of hers.

“I’d get you a book on manners, Miss Myers-but I’m busy.”

And then she was gone.

~*~

"Okay! So, you know how to use that thing?"

Jenna hadn't been gone longer than two minutes, if that.

 

[Obuzeti]

Adamant's mouth thins, and his knuckles pop as his fists tighten, an unpleasantly loud noise. "Yeah. All this noise, alarms going off, and Sarah doesn't even poke her nose out? Bullshit. He's done something to her."

He doesn't react immediately to Jacqueline - just stares at her, imperious and letting her talk herself out, a little fascist to match Cid's regime so long as she got to oppress the right people. The fact it's family makes it infinitely worse, in his opinion; that has to be her sister in the room, and those are bruises from fists. But Jenna liberates him of the need to say anything, and zooms the dipshit off to someplace else where she won't be a problem.

Elias just nods once and turns to the other one, with the mohawk. She's beaten, but still standing, and that's what he wants. People who aren't afraid, even when it hurts. He takes a long step forward to the punk-looking young woman, and gathers her into a hug without even a question or a by-your-leave, sucking her up into that swamping embrace he subjects everybody to at some point or another.

"My door will always be open to you," he says, into the mohawk, which is pretty much in his face. Doesn't address the shitty twin. Doesn't address the injuries. Doesn't acknowledge the salute. That's all shit by the wayside. "People should be leaving the lobby in job lots, but I'll take you with me myself if you want. You got a place to go, hon."

He releases her, takes a step back, and nods. "Also, I hope you socked her a good one somewhere in all that."

Elias turns around as Jenna returns, and gives his compatriot a thumbs-up. "Start getting people out, Jenna. You've got a handle on things down here. I'm going up to tear a door off and I'll be along momentarily."

Finally, he turns, jerks his head at Tyler in a come-hither motion, and then starts for the elevator.

~*~

It's a cargo sized elevator, but standing there waiting for it to come down, in the artificial post-battle quiet, feels like a hell of an anticlimax after the heated action of the lobby.

"Not how I planned this to go," Elias says finally. "Thought it'd be cleaner. I mean, I guessed it'd piss Cid right off, but . . . "

He shakes his head. That laser he'd started with had sliced him completely in half at the chest. Consciously, he's aware that he had to regrow from the waist up, rather than collarbone down, and yet there's no interruption in his consciousness. That implies things that make the hair on the back of his neck rise when he thinks about them.

"Anyone else get hurt by all that?" he says eventually. "You good?"

 

[CurtailedAmbrosia]

Of all the things the man could have said or done, this was by far the least expected of them-and yet Josephine doesn’t resist the hug at all. She lets herself be comforted, and after the past several months, a simple hug is comforting, as well as what he says, what he so easily offers. How he talks to her, all this other bullshit somehow secondary.

She hadn’t intended on staying wherever people were escaping to, trading one master for another-but maybe...maybe she should wait and see just what this...Atlantis place is like. What Adamant was really like.

"Also, I hope you socked her a good one somewhere in all that."

“Righ’ in ‘er mou’.” Josephine tells him with a bloody grin-and then she follows Grizzly through the portal. That was about all she’d really managed, but it’d been something-and mostly, she’d been trying to occupy her more sadistic sibling, not beat the stuffing out of her. That’d always been part of the plan-divide the honor squad, and focus on Tectonic while people got out.

It’s such a weird turn, Adamant and Velocity showing up, jailbreaking in their stead.

~*~

“Standing order-” Tyler says into the comm. “Velocity will be escorting those that wish to leave to Atlantis. Wards under the age of sixteen are to go. Anyone over that-make your own call, but don’t interfere one way or another.”

No one else has the balls to openly protest, and Tyler’s already muted Jaq.

On their more private channel, however, comes Harvey.

“...this really what we’re doing? Abandoning ship?”

“Yes.” Tyler doesn’t elaborate further. He doesn’t care if Harv stays or goes, but he’s not going to defend the order. He hasn’t ever required anything but their compliance-and Harv knew better than to continue prodding at him. Jenna returns without Jaq, and after seeing Josephine’s battered face and heard her venom, Tyler can’t find it in him to care. Wherever she’d been dumped, he hopes it’s a ways.

“Alright Tectonic. I’ll round up the littles.”

“Happy fucking trails, traitors.” Was Leonard’s send off.

Tyler had never liked the fuck anyway.

Jenna gives both men a nod before zipping off towards the stairwell. He notes she’s sporting a device similar to the one Adamant had handed him, but doesn’t dwell on it terribly long as he follows after the older man.

“He's done something to her."

Drugs? Removed her entirely?

Adamant starts to talk, and Tyler watches the numbers light up overhead, still tense, but he has a course of action, and he’s following it. His mind is on Sarah. Sarah, and anyone particularly at risk, people he had to make goddamned sure weren’t going to still be here when Cid came to.

Blaise. He needed to particularly follow up on Blaise.

"Anyone else get hurt by all that? You good?"

His head turns, and even at five eleven, he’s looking up. Tyler drops his gaze back to his right, gloved hand. It’s heavy, and he knows what’s happened to it, fingers stiff and unfeeling-and its only when the elevator slides open and they step in that he speaks.

“We were lucky-” Tectonic says, and there’s a hardness to him that had nothing to do with Elias. “-not to lose anyone to those turrets.”

He’s silent, used to not relaying anything he might be thinking. He wasn’t paid to think-but somehow, standing here with ‘the enemy’-it’s a rule that doesn’t entirely apply anymore.

They had gone to Modal’s without Daybreak and without that mechanized suit Cid had just utilized against Adamant. Today, his commander had sent him to ‘retake’ the lobby, and then turned it into a death trap without warning or pulling their squads back. Muddy green eyes slid to his hand, hefting it up to peel the glove off, revealing a dark colored, rocky appendendage in the place of a flesh and blood one. It’s not as bad as it had been after Modal’s, where he’d pressed harder, keeping so much churning life away, collapsing tunnels and crushing insects as they ineffectively fought a never ending horde. It’s only halfway down his forearm this time-all he can see currently, due to the long sleeves of his dark red and brown costume, is his hand, wrist to fingertip. It’s turned to stone, looks a bit like a darker granite.

Tanking traps and the Jailbirds, trying to stop Adamant and then Listrata’s silk beast with straight telekinetic ability sheathed in stone-it’d all been taxing and completely pointless, needless use of strength in what should have been a nonlethal confrontation, or, frankly-no confrontation at all. At the end he’d been fighting no one-just destroying the stupid toys trying to slaughter Wards.

Tyler’s lips press together, but he doesn’t comment on the granite arm directly.

On top of all that, Cid had fired a super weapon designed to stop Adamant in their direction. The blast shield had mostly held (after trying to flatten a kid), but what if it hadn’t? His jaw sets, eyes flicking up to the numbers again.

Another beat of silence, still holding his half turned arm, thoughts churning. He glances back at the other man, the veteran he had never dismissed in the way Cid had instructed others to do. Adamant was still Adamant-and his mother had approved of him, back in the day. Everyone had. He’d always suspected a tiff over Sarah being the cause of their divide, and now, after today-he thinks Cid had just kept a very one sided grudge for a long, long time.

“I was in the Junior League.” He says after a moment, quiet. “I followed the order to stay put, during the fight with Rahab. Ash followed it. We stayed, but everyone else-they went, once Immolation happened. My grandfather, he left retirement to go out there. When things were the worst they’d been, they all went. Heroes.” Dead heroes.

“We didn’t have anywhere to go, after. Ash’s family were degenerates who’d disowned her for turning hero. Bedrock was dead. This life was...it was what we had. Lifers. So we followed Daybreak and El Cid because that’s who was left and that’s who was organizing. We accepted the changes because at first they made sense-the world wasn’t what it had been, and the Tower was intended to keep the ‘next generation’ safe.”

He bends his elbow, lifts and lowers the arm as he just looks blankly at the different colors in the stone. “And now Ash is dead, too.” Because of him. Because of Cid, but also because of him.

“Her, and Barry-dead. Dead for no reason, because you were right-El Cid has lost his way, and Sarah’s too...fragile to correct him. I kept and keep following orders despite it, because of duty-but he’s resolved to keep risking his own people pointlessly if it means holding on to or carving out more power, and he does it because he thinks we’re expendable.”

Tyler shakes his head before he tugs the glove back down. He’s not sure why he’s talking to him. About any of it. About anything. He’d spent years keeping his own counsel, and now it’s pouring out of him like river churned silt. “...he saw what those deaths did to her. He saw, and if he can’t be moved to protect Wards for their own sake, then at the very least, he should hers.”

And that was it. El Cid didn’t give a shit about Sarah, and the realization had been slowly building after God only knew how many months, but truly solidified when he’d watched him drop that terrible news on her like an axe-and then turn his back on her, dump her on someone else. He didn’t care. Elias, however, did.

For Sarah, Tyler would absolutely become a criminal. For Sarah, he’d defy his orders, brand himself a traitor without a thought. Take the kids, take her, bundle them all up and send them with Adamant, who wanted to lead them not into battle but some safehouse beneath the sea.

And now they’re heading to her quarters to find out just what's been done to her.

Cid could rot. He’d never really been here for Cid, no more than he’d been anywhere for anyone, ever. Just following orders. Down to letting his friends, his own grandfather fight and die without him.

He’s directionless but for this, and what he’d do in the after is nothing he cares to think about, lest he lose his determination now.

“She deserves to be happy. They-they deserve to be happy.” He says, flat. And if Adamant could deliver it, he’d help him do so, and then leave to find his own answers.

 

[Obuzeti]

Elias listens, letting the coruscating cosmic energy radiate off his skin and slowly cool back into recognizable and tan skin. He gets the impression Cid didn't do a whole lot of that, listening. Tyler probably had a lot to say, by this point. And he does.

"No one knew what was best, from what I hear," Elias says, quiet, into the plastic silence of the elevator. "I didn't wake up until some five months after the fight, spent another crawling back out, fighting those goddamn cultists, and walking my way back down to the States. Disaster territory, almost all of it. Areas the size of whole states, burned out."

He hitches his thumbs into his belt loops, the denim charred but still strong. Most of the weapons fire had landed above his waist, at least. The bomber jacket and shirt are burnt to tatters. Some dignity's left, at least. "I didn't begrudge the Tower - but Tyler, Sarah's fiancee was on that field with us, and Cid scooped her up and married her right off the battlefield. I still don't know what he said to convince her, but her whole world was ashes after Immolation. There couldn't have been much fight left in her."

Elias exhales a long, measured breath. "I should have pressed or fought harder, but I figured maybe he learned something I didn't. All I got was melted, and my family dead. Maybe he knew something. I don't know."

He shakes his head. "We all had too much faith. You're not guilty of anything I'm not, Tyler. We move on from here. There's no time to hang ourselves from our own petards. You're as welcome as anyone else down beneath the sea."

The elevator pings and the door opens. Elias steps out, glances around. He doesn't recognize this floor, but it looks like a disaster area, charring and long burns scarred into the gentle wooden paneling and carpeting. A quartet of bodies dressed in Veterans' outfits are scattered around the lobby, unconscious but battered, and one lies near the door with the nameplate overhead: Sarah Danvers.

Elias frowns at the kid, who glances up, rough breaths rattling in his lungs. His skin is shiny and rubbed raw, and his loose black exercise clothing is bedraggled and torn from high friction. He looks familiar.

"Wasn't he one of yours on that fuckin' mess we went through?" Elias says, striding over.

Blaise laughs, hoarse and low. "It is better to know than be ignorant."

The phrase stops Elias in his tracks for a moment, but he keeps going. It always keeps coming back up, somehow.

~*~

There's a pop of displaced air, and - nothing appears, inside of Marie's hideout.

Then Peter sits up, pushing aside the helmet she'd given him, and grumbles a little as he rubs at a shoulder. He looks up and around, spots Marie, and nods a little as he reorganizes his mental checklist. He's still a little disoriented, and the events of the last few hours have left in in a state of mild shock, but that doesn't mean he can't recognize and capitalize on opportunity.

"I was upstairs when Adamant arrived, and Cid went down to fight him," he says. "So, I snuck into his office and used the stuff you gave me."

He looks around in the waistbelt for a moment then produces one of the memory sticks. "This is the memory dump of everything on Cid's console. I inserted a keylogger and left two of those bugs in his office, one under the desk and one on the padding of his chair's backrest. I stuck a GPS tracker on the underside of his suit boot but I dunno how long that'll last."

He shrugs, a little uncomfortable. "Then the elevator came on, and I didn't know where it was going, so I bugged out."

 

[CurtailedAmbrosia]

Five months after the fight. Tyler’s not sure what to make of that. At the beginning, he remembers, Elias Halwell was numbered among the lost. And then he was back, something about a fight at a wedding…? He’d always half written it off as a personal dispute, messy emotional things he strived to avoid himself.

There’s a bigger, broader story to this than he had known. It just hadn’t been entirely relevant, before.

"We all had too much faith. You're not guilty of anything I'm not, Tyler. We move on from here. There's no time to hang ourselves from our own petards. You're as welcome as anyone else down beneath the sea.”

Tyler had been watching again, and the younger man nods. Yes, they moved on. He wasn’t sure what he’d be doing after helping further facilitate this mass exodus, but at least he was moving, now.

Doing more.

The elevator pings and Tyler likewise steps out-and draws up short on the downed third squad, one of the ones he’d initially sent after Jenna. And then his eyes cut to Blaise, and honestly-Tyler can’t find it in him, at all, to be surprised.

"Wasn't he one of yours on that fuckin' mess we went through?"

“I dropped a support and pulled in a heavy hitter.” Tyler summarizes. It’d been a good call-Blaise was surprisingly competent with a team on the battlefield, as well as brutal. He had shred a lot of bugs, and arguably-saved his and Ash’s lives.

“It’s time to go, Blaise-you’re tied with Paige for causing Cid the most headaches, I’m not about to leave you behind.” He offered his left, untransformed hand to the kid, trying to assess injury. “What were you doing up here, anyway?”

And where, was Sarah?

~*~

Marie had replayed the verbal beat down twice, and was considering putting it on a loop. Protagonist didn’t know what ‘happiness’ felt like, not these days and maybe not -ever- in this second life-but there was something here within the viciousness, something she probably didn’t deserve-but it felt good all the same.

Something other than rage or suffering, something other than exhausted, grim misgiving. She’s even almost glad she hadn’t given in and blown her brains out on any one of the countless nights she’d thought of it.

She replays the audio log again, and only half listens to it as she leans forward on the console, fingers dragging through her hair, pulling the unevenly chopped dark curls from their tight bun. Motion, action, momentum-everything had been thrown into high gear, decisive and active and right. Not a retrieval mission, not recon, not a simple, quiet warning to the scum-but actual hero work, bold and shining and good. It was a long overdue comeuppance for a man who had usurped a role he had no business coveting, let alone possessing. A man who had taken the legacy of the League and whored it out for whatever scrap of power and control the corrupt would afford to him.

A man who’d turned even Elias away.

While he had sat preening in his impotent tower, Paul Marrane stalked the remains of their former allies. While he sent out celebrity ‘heroes’ to beat up mall thugs, the actual dredges of humanity and the scum were hiding in plain sight, fattening themselves on the weak and the vulnerable, sinking their claws into the places and people the ‘civilized world’ had no use for and could not be bothered with. He had gathered the orphaned new guard beneath his roof and in his prison, and then he had taught them nothing of the people who had died to preserve this cesspit of a world, to protect the people who lived and attempted to thrive despite it. Passed on none of their ideals, nor did he honor their memory-but sought only to horde their would be successors for his own ends, rather than watch new heroes rise from the ashes of the old. He had done everything he could to prevent a resurgence in his midst, to keep his new status quo-and he had failed.

She’d made it just long enough to see the liar dethroned, the man who should have lead stripping all that the man who did ‘lead’ had hidden behind, survived just long enough to see him abandoned, sniveling and impotent as ever, alone with what little would remain of his fiefdom just as she’d been alone in her cesspit.

Eight years, eight long, grueling years waiting for heroes, maintaining, cataloguing, planning. She had failed to notice the mass diminishing-she had failed in so many things-and it was suffering she deserved, down here-but now, finally, the other non hero, the one who lied about it-was brought low where he belonged.

Validation. Finally, she had her validation.

She stops the audio log and runs her fingers over Jasper’s sleek fur (the cat had been sniffing at her bowed head, because a restful Marie was simply not a thing) as she straightens up, returning to work proper, now, with Velocity’s readings still on a monitor at one edge of her awareness, and the teleporter uses on another-and, as always, the communicator link open and ready to be connected to, should any of her currently dispatched agents need data.

And then there’s a noise, a teleporter’s air displacement noise-which makes no sense, she’s specifically shielded against-

Axiom.

Marie frowns as a boy who hadn’t been there was now there, knocked over on the metal grated walkway. She hadn’t realized he was out. She hadn’t told him NOT to go out, but-

Wait, he’d been where?

Jasper jumps down to trot over and sniff at him, and Marie also abandons her place at the console to wheel a few paces in his direction-when he drops a bomb, and she has to pause so she can parse through what he’d just said, the woman looking surprised for once.

She’d pinch herself, but she didn’t have that kind of problem-she always hurts, so she can be assured to never be dreaming. Still, it felt like fucking Christmas in this place, all of a sudden.

“...that’s some solid work, Peter.” She murmurs-which was a massive understatement. Maybe it’s the fell swoop that had just happened, maybe the sleep deprivation-but she’s almost dizzy. “That’s something to plug into the Containment Laptop first-could have something that, once it hits network on another machine, broadcasts back to the owner.”

She waves in the direction of the offline laptop she used to look over things like that, but mostly- “I’m serious. That was solid, competent work. Took guts.” A single, approving nod. But-

“Don’t go back to the Tower again.”

 

[Obuzeti]

Blaise looks at Tyler's hand; blinks, slow. It's more tolerance than the other man has ever shown him, and honestly on seeing the scene of the crime, a louder reaction had been the expectation. Nevertheless, he takes the hand and stands up. "When the alarms went off I came here. Expected a fight between the Vets and all of Sarah's kids, either here or in her room. Found the vets, at least. Turrets were a surprise."

His hands are blistered and raw. A glance around proves that yes, the turrets have been lowered from their armored divots and now hang mangled and useless.

Blaise is younger than Tyler, but the madness that normally shines in his eyes is dormant as he locks gazes with the other man, and some of that youth comes out as unsteady uncertainty. "She never came out in all that fighting, and I can't break through. I don't know what that's about."

Elias takes that as his invitation, strides over, and bypasses the door for the expedient method of just ripping through the wall by main force. The other side is recognizably Sarah's, but it's empty. He glances around for any clues before he doubles back, widening the hole he'd torn so that anyone can get through. "Nobody," he calls through, grim. "Get over here and help me look for - anything. Some kind of clue."

He palms his communicator and flicks it on. "Marie, Jenna, Sarah's gone. Her rooms are empty and I've got a guy up here - Blaine? Right, Blaise - that says he had a pitched battle right outside, didn't even get a peep. She's been moved."

Blaise just looks at the empty room, eyes dark as pitch, fixated on the I.V. stand left innocuously by the bed.

Elias strides over and lays a hand on the teenager's shoulder, those his hackles rise at the touch. "Probably at a private hospital. I loathe saying it, but it's better that she wasn't involved in this - though I'd've liked to find her. She's been through too much already."

~*~

"Yes," Peter says, grave, and struggles out of his helmet. It's his size, but with the bulky gloves, he's not particularly good at it. "But I didn't think I'd be getting another shot at his office. If he was paranoid before, I don't know what he'll be after this point. Besides - "

Peter's mouth moves for a second, but the words don't come. He hesitates, and bows his head for a moment as he works to verbalize something he's never said before.

"I don't know where I'm going," he eventually says. "But I'm never going back there again. Never."

There's too much baggage there, squeezing on him. To be subjected to Cid's careless cruelty as his only Ward - no. And that reminds him to make sure that Ellie doesn't go back, either, for as much as she imagines Cid as a foster father, the relationship is hardly mutual, more Stockholm Syndrome than anything healthier.

"Can you check if Ellie made it out?" he asks, abruptly. "The other - Tower orphans, too. I have a list. Some of them might try hiding away in the Tower, and if anyone stays that isn't a Vet -"

Peter shakes his head. Things weren't good before, but with a population consisting only of a maddened Cid and his most zealous Veterans, the prognosis for anyone left in the Tower is grim.

 

[CurtailedAmbrosia]

Ellie tried to breathe as little as possible as she hid behind Sarah's couch, listening hard to the three men currently in the apartment. There was Adamant, of course, but also Blaise, who scares her, and Tectonic, who REALLY scares her. She can't think of why either would be with Elias, or why all three were here for Sarah at the same time-and for some reason that only heightens her anxiety. They'd broken a wall in. Was she supposed to try and stop them?

Ellie hugs her knees and tries not to shiver too much-she's not in the apartment proper anymore, she's in the cold blackness that was mirror world. There's the barest hint of light shining through from one of the dozens of mirrors and reflective surfaces in Sarah's room, and she stays cowering back here to make sure she isn't seen. As soon as she heard voices outside she'd slipped away, not into The Other-but straight through the silvered glass behind the televsion so she could listen.

So she listens, and she worries. Her face still felt puffy from crying, and even now she's sick to her stomach-but maybe they'd find or think of something she hadn't. Sarah had always been here when she needed her. Always.

And now she was gone. Gone without telling her.

Her eyes well up with fresh tears and Ellie quickly rubbed them away, swallowing back on the sob because-because! Sarah wouldn't do that. She wouldn't leave, and if she did leave she'd at least want her to visit!

She hears Adamant say something about a private hospital, and that maybe makes sense. There were a lot of those, weren't there? Would Cid tell her which one? But without Sarah interceding, she's not sure she's brave enough to go ask him. Not with everything she's done.

But where would that leave her?

-*-

Turrets?

Tyler frowns, eyes flicking to the machines currently half torn from their moorings and mangled besides. That didn't make any-

Elias tears through the wall and that snaps his attention back in that direction, though it only confirms what he had figured on-she's gone.

That's not how El Cid had been talking, but she very clearly wasn't here.

"Yes..." Tyler says, frowning. "It is probably better she wasn't here."

"I don't know the state you left him in-but would it do any good to ask El Cid?". He gestures to the empty bed. "He spoke as if she was in the Tower recuperating-". A helpless wave of his hand, frustrated.

-*-

Marie watches Peter struggle, a slight furrow to her brow as he does so. Other people make noise-not Peter. When he speaks, Marie ascribes a lot more meaning to it. And sure enough, what he says makes even her pause a moment, that bowed head of his.

"Knowing where you -won't- be is often decision enough." She says slowly, a little softer than usual, a mixture of uncertain-and knowledgable. Speaking from experience.

She's edging out onto that branch again, reflecting on someone else's memories. She's quick to shake it off. Better to keep to business. Still-

"You have options, though. Rest assured." She wheels backwards, heading towards her console again. Atlantis, the Coulee, hell, she'd set him up in the Front's Flat in Albany if he really wanted. Of course, that'd be a fourteen year old boy unattended...but hell, she'd been fifteen when she lit out, and in Samson.

...perhaps she should run that by someone else, maybe.

"Place wasn't good enough for a kid like you, anyway." She muttered. Sentiment from anyone else, but from Marie-straight fact.

Marie pushes Jasper's wheelchair out a bit, a gesture for him to sit at the wide console, too. That was new-he usually worked at his own tablet off on the side, that large whiteboard over there.

"Velocity made contact with Sanderson. It...took some time, and the end result wasn't clear." Marie's not sure how to elaborate on it without sounding annoyed. That girl was a god-damned mess, but Peter clearly cares. And it's good that he does, and the fact he has a list of other at risk individuals-well, he's not just concerned, he's prepared, and Marie would never argue against preparedness.

Besides-she didn't want to leave anyone in that damnable place either.

"Deep Blue was taking names. Could run the list by her, and if anyone is missing-push a name and description onto our speedster."

Elias filters in on the speaker, and he uses her real name. Marie scowls, but Jenna follows up before she can growl at him.

"Yeah, I looked -everywhere-, top to bottom, three times. She's for sure not in the Tower. Which-well, that really sucks. Also, I've had to cart off a bunch of less than happy Veterans-I dumped them same place I ditched Jacqueline the potty mouth, but if they catch a taxi they'd only be an hour out."

 

[Obuzeti]

Elias's lips thin. "If Alphonse lied when he thought he had all the power, he'll keep lying now that she's the only bargaining chip he's got left. You lived with the man for years, but I tell you now that he'll get more use out of the idea of Sarah than he ever did the woman herself. And that's a fucking shame."

Blaise stops, and turns to look at a nearby couch. Then he turns back to Adamant. "Check with Peter. He'd know something, or have a lead on it."

"Vavily?" Elias says, confused, then keys his communicator again. "Eh, it's - Marie, you know where the kid is, if he's got any leads?"

"Who's Marie?" Blaise asks, brows furrowing.

"Protagonist," Elias replies absently, and misses the total glee that washes over Blaise's face before he composes himself. "Not much else we can do here, honestly - we'll do a sweep for Sarah's communicator and check our other resources, but if she's not here then lingering only gives the National Guard a chance to collapse on us. She won't stay lost long."

He glances around the empty room, and then jerks his head to his flock. "C'mon, there's a party under the sea waiting for us."

Sarah's suffered a lot, but wherever she was, he wasn't going to get the location out of Cid or his tower. Secure the kids she protected, and then go after her with all the powers at his disposal. That's the game plan.

It still leaves a bitter taste in his mouth when he triggers the teleporter and heads for the Atlantis staging area, landing in the midst of a huge crowd of teenagers and young adults.

"Quiet down!" he calls, over the general furor of confusion and worry. "First off, anyone that needs medical attention, we've got medics on the left side in those tents, move! Everyone else, on me, we're going to get y'all briefed on what just went down."

~*~

Peter has a brief, flickering instinct. The protectiveness is there, corroded perhaps, but this is a woman of principle - and for a moment he wants to hug her like he does Sarah, to say all the words that won't come out of his mouth, and express them the way Elias does, so easily. He says so much with his mouth and those big hands, and Peter can't help but be a little jealous.

But that's not him, and Marie isn't a person who would tolerate that kind of thing, so instead he takes the seat besides Marie and tries to swallow down how grateful he is to be treated like an equal instead of a fucking oversight, or just another article pinned up on the fridge.

"Don't try to trap her. Just - make her welcome," he says eventually. "Losing Sarah and Cid . . . she didn't have much else."

He doesn't either, but he knows where he comes from. Peter has a sudden and intense desire to call his sister, and resolves to after this whole thing wraps up.

"What's next?" he says, focusing back on the now. A beat, and then he waves his hand. "I mean, Mr. Halwell's got everyone down in Atlantis. He'll handle that. What do we do next?"

And it escapes his attention that he crosses two milestones in one sentence: he assumes an adult will handle it, and he includes himself in a we.

 

[CurtailedAmbrosia]

Ellie waits, counting the seconds until she felt it safe enough to venture out of her hiding place-it’d been long enough that they probably weren’t coming back. She crawls out from behind the mirrored couch, fumbling with her flashlight-and illuminating the copied room, making her way to the bedroom door on all fours before-after another moment listening-she stood up, flicked the light off-and stepped in front of the mirrored closet door.

Empty.

Ellie took a breath and stepped through and into the real room again, turning back to the doors and sliding one open as carefully and as quietly as possible. It was a reach, but she found the weathered hat box Sarah kept tucked up on the shelf, fingers catching at the sides as she gently took it down, hugged it close to her chest.

Her eyes caught on the shimmering white costume with the gold accents, the ‘new’ one-and she hesitated a moment, worrying at her lip. Well. Sarah would want that too, she thinks. Ellie pulled the hat box open, then gathered the slinky fabric into it and closed it shut again. She went to the empty bed, pulled a pillow case free-and slipped the hatbox into it, knotting the open end on one side.

Hugging the bundle to her chest, the ginger haired teleporter took a step backwards-and vanished into The Other. She’d collect what very little she had-a sketchbook, some threadbare clothes, a proper coat-from her own room, and then, all over again-she’d be without a home.

~*~

“Marie, you know where the kid is, if he's got any leads?”

Her eye twitches as he does it again-but she’s still reeling from that validation and Peter’s initiative, and she finds herself focusing on that, instead. Can’t say too much about it, however...she doesn’t trust Tyler Moore as far as she can throw him, and frankly thought it a bad idea to bring him anywhere without an interrogation.

She’ll leave the trusting with the expert, she supposes.

“Yes.” She confirms simply. “We can talk later.”

She flicked the switch so they weren’t broadcasting, a shake of her head as she focuses back on Peter, and his pertinent question.

“We have several high priority projects, some of which will most certainly be furthered by what you’ve brought in, not the least of which is locating Daybreak.”

“...the accomplishment really can’t be overstated. Six and a half years ago, Cid upgraded his systems. I’d been…’capturing’ League systems and accompanying data almost as soon as I learned how-so we still have much of it from before, but anything new he gained I was in the dark on. Could sometimes piece things together when I possessed the government side of things, but not always.” Marie nods. “Pouring over his data will take time, but we can run it through a few programs to glean what might be immediately useful for said priority projects. One of which, is locating the exact facility EMSIAC is being housed.”

Dark eyes flick to the monitor tracking Jenna’s heart rate and speed force usage, though it wouldn’t look like much more than a blue and a white line on a graph to Peter.

“...EMSIAC is what’s left of Arthur Ingenito.” Marie tells him. “He was the artificial intelligence housed in an android body? Died in Immolation, working triage.” Well. The person he had become, anyway. Marie shakes her head. “Art taught me most of what I know about computer systems. Enough to get me started, anyway.”

“EMSIAC is essentially government property. He can’t tell us where he is and while he’s sometimes able to crunch numbers for me, the project we need him for can’t be worked on while he’s...wherever he is.” Or ‘it’ is. Marie’s not quite sure if there’s anything at all of Art left in those 1’s and 0’s. Some days she thought so. Others she was sure there wasn’t. Just expensive software in a bunker somewhere.

~*~

Tyler’s lips press together, and there’s something cold in him at the thought of Sarah being no more than a useful object, a name to stamp.

He briefly considers leveling the building.

But...that’d take time to clear it out, and he’s already about to embark on an apparent criminal lifestyle-better to leave it. He could explain taking-or just being in on-Wards to Atlantis to Sarah, later. He’d have a harder time commenting on dropping the Tower in on itself.

...God, he hopes they track her down, and soon. Maybe she’d find them, first. That Coulee place, maybe-she’d probably head there, once she heard of what had happened.

He doesn’t like teleporting, it turns out. He had no idea they had this capability, and dammit-he hadn’t accomplished anything Cid had ordered of him, if Jenna was poofing people out rather than carrying them to a sub or whatever he’d been thinking, earlier.

He glances at Blaise to see how it affected the kid or not, but then he’s facing all these uncertain, excited, nervous faces, and he feels himself close back up, withdraw to a reserved, watchful stance. What happens from here, he’s not sure-but he’d see things settled, or at least in good hands-and then decide from there what his future held.

~*~

It was visible, the divides and clusters in the Wards, not just who they grouped up on, but how they reacted to Tectonic showing up.

Almost to a man kids were wide eyed alarmed to see Tectonic appear in their midst-down to several of the nearest ones taking a step back. Only the few Veteran, uniformed former squad members met his gaze-which made sense, he’d ordered them down here, and they’d chosen to listen rather than stick with Cid. A man stood with them wearing not a veteran uniform but a dark green and brown costume, a small gold shield over his heart, and a domino mask. He stepped up immediately, and Tyler joined him and that group. Across the way and against the curved crystal dome, a dark haired goth looking girl made eye contact with him-and received a nod of acceptance. Despite it, Space Contortionist made no move to join the vets or what was left of Cid’s honor squad. No, she stayed where she was, and idly watched sharks dart by.

Unlike the alarmed wards, there was a battered group of mostly older Wards who openly glared or eyed the few Vets disdainfully. They were gathered around the young, blue mohawk sporting black woman, the clear and obvious leader to what Jaqueline had venomously called the ‘Jailbirds’. Most of these slumped off towards the medic tent at Elias’ proclamation-they had all gotten a pretty good beatdown by the most loyal of Cid’s wards, and Tectonic’s golems, while less vicious, had done a number, too. Most of those offenders were not present, however-which left just Tyler as their main focus of ire.

Josephine herself stayed to hear Adamant out, and didn’t even look at him or the other Vets. Her sister wasn’t here, and that was the more important thing. Doc Bot had helped her out, a little-her face was still swollen and beat to shit, she had cotton stuffed in her recently realigned broken nose and looked like hell-but she was on her feet and plenty of fight left in her, not that she was thinking she’d need it.

A feathered, willowy young woman stood in the middle of most of the younger kids-a lot of whom had flocked to her on her arrival, one of the last in Jenna’s group. The plumage was thick enough to warrant no shirt-though she did wear deerskin pants and moccasins. The feathers were attention getting enough-but they were also mostly a bright yellow, so that didn’t help.

Jenna, the fastest woman on the planet-arrives late. She ports in frowning, but is quick to flash a smile when various gazes turn on her, a new fervent murmur of whispers, including an excited “Velocity lives down here too?!”

She’s quick to zip to Lana, whispering something that gets a shake of the Atlantean woman’s head-and a return of Jenna’s frown.

 

[Obuzeti]

Elias leads them over to a long stone bench with a field of blankets and afghans set out before it, and gestures towards the padded floor. "Pick a spot, sit down," he says, and seats himself on the bench. "First the elephant in the room: some of the Vets are here. That's because I was in the lobby throwing down with them when Cid swooped down in a giant robot and opened fire on all of them. Maybe you all got your differences, but I'm not willing to shut the doors on anybody whose version of 'responsible parenting' is more carefully aimed gunfire."

Elias nods at the realization he can see going over a few faces. "First: I don't do dormitories. Vivid Walker, or Vivienne as she likes to be called, has been creating living blocks for everyone; talk to Deep Blue there in the back to get a room once we're done here. There's singles, duos, and four-man rooms, and I don't care who gets what. Vivienne can make a new room in about half an hour, so don't sweat being picky. Ask for what you need. You don't like somebody, live on the other side of the city. Works just fine."

"Second: this is, in fact, Atlantis. This is under the sea. King Laurent's the head honcho, and he's been awesome about setting up stuff for the rest of us without gills, but if you walk out into the depths, you will probably be squished. The water pressure down here is about 6,000 PSI. Stay indoors. On the same note, most of the people wearing shiny jewelry speak English and will be alright to give directions, but the average Atlantean doesn't speak English, and we can't speak their language at all - got the wrong vocal cords for it. I'm working on getting radios or something so y'all don't get lost, but gimme a day or two on that, still getting shit settled."

"Third," Elias says, looking around to meet as many gazes as he can, "This isn't a conscription. I don't expect anything from y'all in exchange for staying here. You want to be helpful, I appreciate it, but you're here not because you volunteered but because some asshat in Congress decided to take the choice away from us in general. Us, as in metahumans. I don't square with that, so fuck him, and I went to get this place staked out."

Elias takes a moment to pause, glancing around. "That's my bit, but I'm not gonna pretend that answers everything. You got questions, ask 'em. Open table."

~*~

Peter sighs in faint relief, listening to Mr. Halwell speak over the communicator. He's got a commanding, deep voice. It's very different too - personable, informal. He'd been like that at the Coulee, but it's something else to see him apply that inclusive demeanor to almost a hundred people at once. "I'm glad I helped," Peter says, simply, and then starts pulling himself out of his suit.

"Are you going to stay here?" he asks, not really looking up as he struggles with the boots.

 

[CurtailedAmbrosia]

Marie was now clicking through what data she had on individual Wards as Elias spoke, listening less because she needed to and more to see what he might need from her. So far, sounded like communicators for general use, check. They can get an Atlantis specific system set up easily enough.


“Yes.” Marie answers swiftly and simply. It wasn’t a sharp response, as if he had asked a stupid question-it was just instant. As if, not for a moment, had Marie considered leaving either her pit-or Samson.

She was stuck in its mire, and always would be. She envisioned nothing else.

~*~

“There’s got to be more supervision than that.” Tectonic states, his arms crossed over his chest, the man still standing off to the side with the other costumed Ward-but he had, in the very least, gestured most of the uniformed vets to sit as instructed.

Josephine had also remained standing, and she made a disbelieving noise in response to the disciplined tone of Tyler’s, but it was the feathered woman who spoke up, her voice soft and melodious, oddly soothing. “Mr. Halwell, Tectonic’s-ah, well, free reign of the more habitable parts of the city might be a bit...lax? I understand this bit about dormitories, and I think we can all agree that things need not be as strict as the Tower-but there should still be some accountability, an eye on who’s coming or going, and about when.” She had sat down, and as soon as she had a ten or eleven year old dark haired little girl had climbed into her lap. The kids had gravitated to her.

“Yeah, not a control thing.” Briar adds, the beefy young man looking a little ridiculous on a lavender afghan. “A “that’s a lot of children running amok” thing. Some structure’s good for kids. Pretty sure necessary.”

“A very solid point.” Lana agreed with a nod. It’d been considered already, but there were still things to hash out, logistics to be decided on. They hadn’t figured on so many new citizens quite this quickly-but they had been planning, Laurent and Elias. Speaking of, where was Laurent? Still playing doctor?

“There are several former Atlantean Mothers who have agreed to live in or close to these spaces. They’ll be available most hours of the day. As for keeping any eye-there are very few...unsupervised open areas to begin with. Most of our fair city is currently inaccessible, and the parts that are have guards stationed at the gates. What I mean to say is-there’s not much trouble to be had, down here. Once we’re all settled in, some age specific schooling can begin, and..***** enjoyed.”

“With no expectations of us.” One of the Vets said, not acidic so much as double checking.

“Correct. Conduct yourselves decently with one another, but you are all of our people, now-and Alanteans do not want for much.” Lana confirmed.

That helped.

 

[Obuzeti]

Elias makes finger guns at Lana. "See that? This is why she's an actual princess, and I'm a guy that punches things. She's on top of shit."

He shrugs, looking completely unbothered. "Look, all of you. I didn't plan this out like Ocean's Eleven or something. Me and Deep Blue went up to Congress to protest the new bill they were going to pass - this Act Against Needless Destruction. If you don't know about it, it gives Cid total authority over any metahuman, essentially wartime military law over us. In response to Lana declaring Atlantis refuge for metahumans, they decided to disenfranchise her and bar her from American shores."

Elias pauses to let that settle in.

"So the Senate decided to say fuck the haters, let's just throw every metahuman in a camp and call it a day, and rather than bend my neck for the boot I decided to give everyone at least one solid chance to be free instead of a prisoner for crimes uncommitted. What do we do from here? I'm still figuring that out. I'm begging all of you here though - put your best foot forward. This is the best new beginning we're going to get. Let's work together on this, prove to King Laurent that we're worth the chance he took on us, and prove to that fuckin' Senate back home that we're more than walking liabilities."

From in the front, just in front of where Elias is sitting, Blaise raises his hand. Elias nods at him with a faint smile.

"So are we still heroes?" Blaise asks, bluntly.

It's a question worth thought, and Elias ponders it as his smile fades.

"I don't know," Elias says, honestly. "Maybe not in the sense it used to mean. Being a hero meant stepping up, choosing to help people around you be the best they could be. It was more than stopping crime and supervillains, it was about living inspiration, about offering the hope and the joy that could be found in life. And it was a choice, which was what made it powerful. We chose to be first into danger, to save what we could with the talents we'd been gifted."

"And what happened is they decided to make sure it wasn't a choice. I think maybe after that, it's not being a hero, and just being a conscript up for draft."

 

[CurtailedAmbrosia]

The ‘actual princess’ rolls her luminescent yellow eyes before smiling at him-and the casual exchange sends a ripple throughout the assembled young people, as did his point blank reveal the escape had been a little ad hoc. This wasn’t what they knew, and while it wasn’t upsetting, it was different.

“I think, folks, there’s a distinction between how we’re made, and the actions we choose. Most of us, I think all of us? didn’t choose to be what we are. The old guard, most of them didn’t choose either. What they DID choose, just like Elias said-was to put life and limb on the line, to do all they could to better the world. Not just by fighting the bad guys but by living well. Embodying good, and truth, and justice, hope, and love-my predecessor called it the Good Fight.”

Jenna pulled her goggles and ponytail holder free, the sleek black curtain of her hair swinging down to frame her face and drape over Velocity’s light blue, shimmering costumed shoulders. The young Filipina was talking as herself again-not Velocity and not good girl Jenna Paige, but a mix of the two, the person she had grown into since her two worlds had collided.

“And like her, I’m looking out for the little guy more than I’m spitting on people like Mistress Rush. Today was about that good fight, about helping the little guy-because that’s what metahumans are right now-a heavily persecuted ‘little guy’. This AAND Act? Super racist. Whatever faults or successes you think the Tower had, it’s nothing more than an internment camp, now. And you all deserve better than an internment camp, and I hope you love yourself enough to believe that.”

There’s a lot of people looking at her, but she’s not nervous-all these faces, the younger ones and the ones her age, the excited and the nervously unsure, the attentive and the furrowed brows-they need to maybe hear it.

“You have the right to exist. You have the right to try and find what makes you happy. You have the right to be free. Gillesby and his ilk, they don’t believe that, and they’ve made that law. That wasn’t right. It’s not okay. It’s not what the constitution’s promised any of us. We’ve got friends gearing up to tackle that legal battle, but in the meantime-the King of Atlantis believed in your plain basic rights enough to invite each and every one of you here so you could enjoy them in safety.”

Jenna twirls her goggles on a finger, dark amber eyes sweeping over everyone again, warm.

“So check out your new digs, reflect on your new opportunities, and if you still, on your own power and fully informed, wanna hero-hey, you know a guy.”

And then the young woman’s bow of a mouth widened into that dazzling, unabashed grin she’d gotten to be so famous for, when the papers could catch it-and the feeling of welcome really was complete.

The League had liberated the Tower Wards, and their destinies were their own.

 

[Obuzeti]

It takes about twenty minutes to sort everyone out, the speed of the process being aided greatly by Elias's direct nature.

("You! You want a room?"
"Uh, sure?"
"Cool, here's a house key. Anyone you want to live with?"
"Well, I was roommates with Adrian and Tanner -"
"ADRIAN! TANNER! YOU WANT TO ROOM WITH THIS GUY?"
"Yeah, that's alright!"
"Excellent. You! No, the chick with the mohawk - I'm digging it, by the way. You want a room?")

Medical aid is given out, living space is assigned, and Elias wheeled in a grill and started doing hamburgers, directing the business of mass immigration with his spatula. His communicator he sets to the side, and it starts blaring classic rock - Elias thrives in the crowd, and jamming to Rush he takes to the business of caring for his people with all the enthusiasm he's ever had, stars still faintly glimmering beneath his skin and yellow apron. There's some cynicism, and some stupid questions, but he brushes them aside with unflappable confidence. He's where he needs to be.

So it's when the majority of Wards have been sorted that he stretches and glances around at what's left: a couple of Atlanteans, Lana conferring with that soldier lady friend of hers, Jenna hanging around in the seconds between when she flickers off to help someone a half-kilometer across the city. He sighs, shoulders his weapon of choice, and smiles at Lana.

"You know, hon," Elias says, a streak of hamburger grease on one cheek and burnt holes in his classic jacket and t-shirt combo, "This may well have been the best day of my life. Maybe not the happiest - I got one day that'll never top - but as for looking back and being satisfied with what I've done, I think this is it. Today, we've done good. And it feels good."

 

[CurtailedAmbrosia]

It really was a party. Josephine can hardly believe the turn in events. They’d been sneaking their furtive meetings for nearly a year, idle dreamer talk turning to rebellion turning to action-they hadn’t really been entirely ready, hadn’t known where they’d be going or how-but it wasn’t everyday ADAMANT and Velocity showed up, so if there was ever a time to show your hand, it was then.

She’d half tried to talk to him about her and her friends, and he graciously mentioned they’d chat about it sometime-and then pushed a hamburger on her with a comment about needing the protein. So...that’s how she found herself chewing on a hamburger between breaths, listening to him shoot the shit with her and anyone else filtering through. She’d also quietly witnessed Velocity slip up no less than seven times, and where that tiny girl was putting any of that, she had no idea.

He’d even had some kind of veggie burger for Meadowlark and Megha, neither of which ate meat.

She gave him another thanks before heading to go check on the state of her friends again, battered but able to walk themselves to the quarters they’d all signed up for-Josephine had even asked for and been given her own room, no questions asked.

It’s...well, it’s a good day, all things considered. And while Jaqueline had pummeled her face in-she at least didn’t have to lie awake thinking about having hurt her back. Jaq may not have much conscience anymore, these days...but Josephine still did. And despite the ire and antagonism that crept in in recent years, she still remembered pig tailed, happier days.

Sometimes, the former good kept you from seeing the bad, and she’s glad she’s finally done with it.

~*~

“Er, Velocity-Miss Paige?” Harvey had waved her in with a dark green glove, the two men standing on one side of things, watching happily chatting Wards heading off to see their new accommodations, chattering excitedly with one another. The blue costumed woman had just gotten back from escorting a group, intermixed as much as anybody was.

“Jenna! Jenna’s good.” She approached the pair with a quizzical look. “You guys going to grab a burger?”

“We’re kinda...still reeling.” Harvey evaded-but Tyler was less patient.

“How do we get out of here?” He nodded towards Adamant. “We popped down with him.”

That gets her attention, and for the first time since the little...impromptu celebration started, the speedster stands still, eyes slightly widened in surprise. She stepped in closer, frowning. “You don’t want to check it out, not even for a few days?”

“No, Paige, I don’t.” It had better not have been a one way trip. He’s at the bottom of the ocean, and while he can sense the stone here and there, out there-there’s also a lot of...blocked off bits, coral or bone or some material he can’t quite wrap his head around. It’s...uncomfortable feeling. That, and everything that had happened mere hours ago, the changes that had come crashing in on him, Sarah’s being missing to some hospital somewhere-he’s tired, and he just wants some quiet, somewhere to think.

He had a lot of that coming.

“You’re not going back to the Tower, are you?”

“I’m not going back to being Cid’s…Alphonse’s lapdog, if that’s what you’re asking.” He can feel himself bristling-but that didn’t seem to be at all what she was getting at-she looks worried, and somehow that’s almost worse. He falls back on glowering down at her, because otherwise-he’s not sure how to react. As usual, however-it doesn’t seem to do much.

Harvey glanced between them before stepping in to the rescue.

“We’re just not sure we belong here, kid. We were part of the problem. Part of the regime.”

“I mean...but not now, right? You don’t gotta sequester yourselves-”

“We’re reminders.” Harv says with an easy shrug and a wan smile. “And you were right. They deserve better. Down here, they don’t need to trade freedom for security. Down here, there isn’t really a need for...well.”

“Us.” Tyler cut back in, and before she can protest- “We get that we’re welcome.” He adds, hesitating a moment before going on. “Thank you. There are just...things to sort out. Harv said he’d come with, and I’m alright with him doing so.”

“It’s a good thing, what you did today.” Harv reassures. “You, and Adamant, Deep Blue-that Protagonist woman, wherever she is.” There’s a slightly more suspicious glance around at her mention. “It’s good to see something...real.”

“Well...there’s a teleporting...station thing that was set up. It can get you to one of a few cities, on the surface. I think Protagonist is going to expand it at some point. You’re sure, though? I mean, it’s up to you, I just-Paul Marrane’s still out there.” She started to head in the direction it was apparently housed in, and looked a little anxious about the whole affair.

“I’m aware.” Tyler notes, following after her. She’s got that racer striped communicator proudly displayed on her belt, and as they entered another chamber, this one lacking a crystal dome-he gestured to it. “...I still have mine, from the Junior League. I’ll keep it with me, again. Consider us reserves, you need us.”

She lights up, and he’s a little miffed to realize he was glad he said it, just for that. “Really? That’s awesome! Thanks-I’ll let the others know.”

The teleporter wasn’t anything terribly fancy-just a marked platform, a tablet-and box of one use ‘Atlantis’ buttons, apparently. They looked similar to the black discs that had wrecked the card readers. Jenna handed them each one, and he wondered what the hell else Protagonist might be churning out, if she was so freely distributing something like this. Wasn’t she worried about backwards engineering?

...why was this thing so lightweight?

“Looks like we’ve got a few major cities...uh, what’s closest? Where are you going?”

Harv turned to look at him, and it occurs to Tyler that the other man really didn’t have anywhere else to go up there, if he was shrugging his shoulders and following him to parts unknown. He considers how honest to be-and what the hell. Suppose if he was willing to be on call, she might as well know where he is, too. “Whatever’s closest to Powell, Wyoming.”

“To…where?” Middle of nowhere, Tyler knows.

“It’s near Yellowstone. Bedrock-” He pauses. “-my grandfather had a house forty miles north of it. Cabin near Thorofare Trail in Yellowstone, too.”

“Sounds isolated.”

“Well, we’re criminals, now.”

“For now.” Jenna corrects, stubborn. “More like civil disobedience, like I said to Mr. Avenhart. And...bad news, closest is San Francisco. I’d use mine to get somewhere closer, but Protagonist would know, and then she’d kill me-she’s worried about people popping into the middle of the ocean and getting their heads caved in.”

Harv turned a shade to match his costume. “Then let’s not.”

“It’s good enough.” He has money. Hadn’t had much use of it until now, but he has it. Jenna selected something, then stepped away from the platform. “Well...there you go. Just...be careful, okay?”

“You...too, Jenna.” He hesitates again-and then extends a gloved hand. She shakes it, that grin again. “Careful as I can be! Until next time, right?”

~*~

Lana hands her clipboard off to one of Ianthe’s Keepers-and turns her attention to Elias, taking in his apron, the glimmering starlight here and there around the tanned skin, the smudge of grease on his face.

“It should feel good. It is good.” Through the crystal dome and down further into the city, she can see a blue torched crystal tunnel, small figures of humans marveling as they headed to and returned from their quarters. “It’s a family, again. That’s what the League...what all of us, were.” Oh, there were a few divisions, pockets of future bickering, she’s sure-but they were somewhere safe, and no problem could truly be insurmountable if you had a solid foundation beneath your feet.

That’s what Rahab had done...it had robbed them of their safety, and then they’d gone home to traitors who had torn what was left of it. And now, things could be soothed. It could be their own, again.

She looks back at him. “It’s...you feel it, don’t you? The warmth and satisfaction, yes-but also...the hope. It’s hope, again. Alive and well and breathing, liberating our orphaned guard.”

The dense Atlantean huffed a laugh. “It’s healing stuff.”

Jenna zips up, and she’s the happiest she’s ever seen the kid. “Man. This was a freaking great day, the best damned day in-”

Lana doesn’t hesitate-she just yanks the girl into a hug.

 

[Obuzeti]

"Oh, yes," Elias says, with a heavy breath. "That's what we were. All started with me and Sarah and Grace, you know? The three of us against the world, two teenage heroines and an immortal hobo against the nastiest criminals and cartels ever seen. I loved it."

He smiles, a bit embarrassed, and leans in to hug the other two women. Lana always smells a bit like fish, to no one's surprise, but Jenna has a faint odor of cocoa, ionization, and, of course, hamburger grease. He squeezes them carefully, and then lets go.

"It's what you all were owed," he says, smiling. There's a suspicious glimmer in the back of his eyes, watery and gleaming. "Both of you, deserved so much better than what you were getting. All the Wards we got out, deserved the choice of their future. It should have been better, and I hope this, at least, pays a little of that back for you. The world should have been a kinder place when you came. I hope that we can see something of that better future that should have been, here."

Adamant loathes that this is the world they had to come to know, this broken and bitter realm where heroes are prisoners, where the gifted are lepers and the hope that remains is an ivory tower crowned with a hateful man. The world he had been given at the start had been so much better than what Jenna and Lana received. The fall from grace had been precipitous, and now only on foreign shores can he offer what should never had been denied.

But it is enough. By the grace of God, it is enough.

He takes a breath and releases the two, then plants his hands on his hips. "Now all I have to do is get Marie down here. God knows that's about to be a trial as bad as anything I've faced to this point."