Torch - 7.8
Author: Wildbow

Torch - 7.8 - Parahumans 2

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The arrival of Chris’ train at the G-N portal station had Kenzie running off to go get him.  The initial wave of trucks and cargo from the train began to flow from the station and out into Earth N.  I’d seen the process before, but it had been as part of the Patrol block, and I’d usually had duties, or I’d been a part of the convoy.

Sveta sat on the hill, while Tristan stood near me.  There were other people sitting around the slope or hanging around in the shade of the station, but we were mostly clear of eavesdroppers.  It was a question of waiting for a few people to walk away before speaking.

“Chris and I had a disagreement,” I said.  I watched the trucks go.

“I was wondering why you looked pissed,” Tristan said.  “I didn’t want to say anything.”

“He didn’t like that I showed up unannounced.”

“I’ve run into that,” Tristan said.  “He complains if we turn up unannounced, he complains if we don’t invite him to stuff like our group’s visit to the Wardens’ headquarters, when we were asking about hiring a lawyer and sounding people out on Hollow Point.  I think he likes complaining.”

It bummed me out a bit that Cedar Point’s name hadn’t survived, with all we’d done.

“It wasn’t complaining.  He was pissed,” I said.  “I’m telling you guys so you know.  He might be bothered enough to bring it up.”

“How pissed was he?” Tristan asked.  “Scale of one to ten?”

“Pissed enough to weaponize things I told the group in confidence.  Seven?”

“Okay,” Tristan said.  “Did you get the rage vibe from him?  Do we need to disinvite him from the meeting with Lord of Loss?”

“That’s- no,” I said.  “My first instinct is no, we don’t, but I don’t want to go by first instincts only.  The situation made it hard to tell if it was lingering rage, and… the more I try to find words, the less sure I am about disinviting him.”

Sveta was quiet, “It sets a bad precedent.”

“Yeah,” I said.  “Shutting people out, and I don’t think he’d forgive it very easily.  I could have handled it better, but Chris isn’t the sort of person I really ‘get’.  I feel like every time I find out something more, I just have more questions.”

“I think if you asked him,” Sveta said.  “He’d say you don’t need to get him or get answers.  You should just respect his boundaries and let him do what he wants.”

“People in his day to day are scared of him,” I said.  “Teachers, kids.  I need some answers, just to make sure I’m not standing around doing nothing while missing something important or dangerous.”

“Yeah,” Sveta said.  She looked up at me, and said with grave sincerity, “I totally, one hundred percent get that.”

“You’re thinking about the Irregulars?” Tristan asked.

“Yeah,” she said.  “It gives me the worst feeling, when I look back on things in retrospect.  So many stupid things we should have paid attention to.  So many.  We let a lot of things slide because we were worried about how it would change the tone of things, and because of friendship, or what we thought was friendship.  I’d rather see people get upset now than have it all go wrong later.”

“Yeah.  We’ve talked about that,” Tristan said.  Then, like he was remembering I was there, he turned to me.  “Both of our teams capsized.  We’ve done the whole thing before, where you go out, get drunk, and rant about the past-”

“No we didn’t,” Sveta said.

“Let me finish.  We did it without the drinking part, I mean.”

“Oh.  Yeah,” Sveta said.  “I guess.”

“Yeah,” I said.  “A good rant can be healthy.  Get it out.”

“We’ve done that.  The drunken bemoaning of existence, without being drunk,” she said.

“I wasn’t able to talk,” I said.

“Still.  You worked that keyboard.”

“I’m trying to be balanced about this,” she said.  “I made this mistake once, and I don’t want to be blind, but I feel like pushing too hard or prying might make things break down, and that doesn’t make it better.  I’m not going to say you’re doing it wrong, Victoria.”

“I don’t know if I’m doing it right.”

“Yeah.  But… you do what feels right, because I don’t know if I’m doing it right either.  I want to help people stay together.  That means protecting each other, being supportive, that’s my priority.  We have to know each other, that’s part of it, and it’s the part where I don’t necessarily sympathize with Chris.”

“I don’t want to repeat my error from earlier and pry,” I said, checking to see if Kenzie and Chris were coming.  “But… has he talked about his background?  His deal?”

“No,” Tristan said, at the same time Sveta shook her head.

“Some,” Sveta said, “But hypotheticals.  He’s real about the stuff like the center he’s living at now, and his health issues, his power, but even that’s…”

“Yeah,” Tristan said.

“He doesn’t leave you very sure about it,” I said.

Sveta nodded.  “I’m not going to pry or dig, but I am going to pay attention.  Not just talking about Chris, for the record.”

“I’m not good at that,” Tristan said.  “I hear you two.  I get it, we made a mistake with Ashley.  That hard conversation with Rain took far too long, he left, and he didn’t really reconnect until the whole thing with the Fallen camp ended… and he went straight from there to jail, pretty much.  Ashley… I felt like utter shit, sitting there in the pre-court thing, knowing we put her in that position.”

“Yeah,” Sveta said.  “Definitely.  Especially when I helped set her up to do it and then made her turn herself in, too.”

“She turned herself in herself,” I said.  “She went to the patrol block.”

“I get it,” Tristan said, repeating himself.  “We have to watch out that it doesn’t happen again- that’s why you’re talking about this stuff, right, Victoria?”

“Yeah,” I said.  “A part of it.  I think it’s what Jessica wanted from me.”

“So I’m not good at that,” Tristan said, repeating himself.  His fist smacked down into the flat of his palm.  “I want to chase the parts where we click as a team.  We had a few of those good moments.  If we have more, that could be where the walls come down, or where the team members who don’t click.”

“You’re reminding me of Kenzie’s seating chart,” Sveta said.

“Figuring out the group relationships,” Sveta said, smiling.  “It started out normal, having to do with who sat where in the group therapy session, but she kept working on it.”

“It looked like a tinker blueprint at one point.  Mrs. Yamada ended up banning the chart and the topic of the chart from the room,” Tristan said.  “If you ever need to distract her from something, you can mention the chart.  She’ll talk about it until someone stops her.”

“She’s not a dog you distract with a toy,” I said.

“No, but-” Tristan said.  His head turned.  “Ey!  Taking your time!”

Chris and Kenzie were approaching, as part of a loose crowd of sixty or so people.  Most of those people wore work clothes.

“We had to wait for trucks and stuff to unload,” Kenzie said.  She wore a navy gingham dress with a folded white collar, and a heart hairpin I’d seen before.

“If you wanted me to show up sooner, you should have sent your messenger sooner,” Chris said.  “You were talking about me?”

“I mentioned we’d argued,” I said.  “That led to talks about group dynamics.”

“What?” Kenzie asked.  “Argue?”

“Did you mention that you threatened to kill me, or do worse?” Chris asked.

“What?” Kenzie asked.

“No,” I said.  “Because I didn’t.  I said the kind of thing you were talking about-”

“Can I bring this up here?  Do you want to rehash this with these guys here, or do you want to let this be?”

“Go on.  I really want to hear how you justify it,” he said.

“Going to Bonesaw for help before you went to me, out of spite?  That’s the kind of thing that gets you killed or worse.”

“I can’t remember how I worded it, but that was not what I meant.  I’m sorry, if it came across that way.  I’ve hurt people badly enough to risk killing them, like Valefor, but I don’t set out to kill.  I- I definitely don’t set out to do worse than kill people.  That’s not me.”

He continued to stare, until Kenzie elbowed him.

“Don’t do that,” he told her.

“Say something to her.”

“I’m not cool with you showing up.”

“Chrisss,” Kenzie said.

He glared at me.  She elbowed him again.

“Stop, Kenz.  And I believe you,” he told me.  “I buy it.  That in no way is me being okay with you showing up.  I’m still ticked.”

“That’s fine,” I said.

“You and I can talk about it after,” Tristan said.  “You’ve had a few times where you were incommunicado.  We had to do something.”

“I could do a phone thing,” Kenzie said.

“You’re doing too many things,” I told Kenzie.

“It’s important that we can stay in touch, though,” she said.

“There’s got to be a simpler answer or policy than you going the extra mile every time,” Tristan said.  “Chris, your phone isn’t working at all?  Was it an outage?”

Chris shrugged.  “It wasn’t charged.  I was stressed, so I went out last night, went to the middle of nowhere, changed to Quiet Awe.  I put on some music and lounged, tried to shut out the world.  I spent too long like that, changed back by accident, went straight back to that form.  Came back at one in the morning, probably, power was off, I couldn’t charge it.”

I met Sveta’s eyes.  Quiet Awe didn’t sound like a derivation of anger.

“We’ll figure something out,” Tristan said.

“Alright.  Are we changing here?” Chris asked.

“We’ll go down into the town, find a spot, and then change out,” Tristan said.  “We’ll stand out less, and there won’t be as many cameras as there are here at the station.”

I turned my head to look.  Kenzie pointed at two.

“Don’t point at them,” Chris admonished her.

“They’re so shoddy it’s barely worth calling them cameras.  I’m scrambling our faces so they can’t track our secret identities.”

“We’ve got two team members without secret identities,” Chris said, looking at Sveta and I.  “And Tristan looks so much like a hero out of costume that it doesn’t fool anyone.”

“No I don’t,” Tristan said.

“You look like Legend probably did when he was a teen, except light brown with a modern haircut.”

“I don’t-” Tristan started.  He stopped as the last few passengers of the train and the people who were picking them up emerged.  As the crowd fanned out, they approached the point they might be in earshot.

“You know it’s true,” Chris said.

“Whatever.  Let’s disappear into this crowd and find a place to change.”

“I’ll try to scramble recording devices pointed our way,” Kenzie said.

The road down to the settlement proper was a bit sloped, so I gave Sveta my good arm to help her keep her footing.

Earth N was not a very populated Earth.  This settlement and the surrounding area were more or less it, with a few stations at key points around the globe, harvesting the most accessible resources that lined up with what we knew about from other Earths.

But with roughly one hundred and fifty thousand people settled on this world, ninety percent of them within twenty-five miles of the portal, it didn’t take much clout to control it.  Lord of Loss and his clique managed that.

Things weren’t as nice as they were in the megalopolis.  Roofs were often corrugated steel.  I saw houses with additions that were plywood with plastic tacked to them.  Others were best described as cabins.  It marked a stark contrast from a city where vast quantities of materials had apparently been arranged and even brought to key locations before Gold Morning.

The stores were basic, and any design beyond the bare bones had clearly been tacked on after the fact.  A long lineup outside of a larger building made me think of a soup kitchen or other kind of rationing.

There were two people with visible injuries in the loose crowd that we’d joined.  People from the train station.  They were young, they might have been friends, and one sported a black eye, while the other had a cut on his cheek that extended to his ear.  The injuries hadn’t seen enough attention- left to heal with the weight of the skin pulling the injury open, it would scar into an open line.

Both those two and roughly half of the remainder looked like they were denizens of Earth N.  Their clothes and hair reflected the same standards and ideas that the buildings did.  A lot was being done with very little, and that little was already a bit worn around the edges, strained by hard living and a lack of infrastructure.  I saw clothes which were clearly less than two years old, yet worn.  I imagined they had been washed with hard scrubbing in water outdoors.

“Fresh air,” Kenzie said.  She drew in a deep breath.  “It’s so nice.”

“It’s not like we don’t have fresh air in our neighborhoods,” Chris said.  “There’s barely been an opportunity to screw anything up.”

I wasn’t sure I agreed.  I’d been here before, but it had been in the winter, and I barely recognized the place now.  I’d seen other places like it, and it had always felt strained and desperate.

Sveta squeezed my arm.  I looked past her to Tristan, and I saw that he was indicating a route.  Off the road, into the midst of houses and high fences.

We found a spot where the fences met in a broad ‘v’ shape, not really in full view of anyone standing at the main road looking down our way.  Tristan and I put down our bags.  Kenzie began unrolling the sleeves of her costume from beneath her dress to her ankles, kicking off the shoes she wore over her costume footies.

“I’ll wait,” Chris said.  “I’ll use this spot when you’ve vacated.”

“I can leave you a cloaking thing, if you’re worried about dropping trou in public,” Kenzie said.  She messed with her phone, and the cloaking dropped away from the bag she wore at her back.  Her helmet hung from the outside of the bag, her gloves stuffed inside it.

“Sure,” Chris said.  “So long as you can’t watch me through it.”

“Stop saying that!  I wouldn’t!”

I put my breastplate on, strapping the two individual halves, which were curved out so I could bend over without it being too rigid.  The upper twenty-five percent of the armor was already attached to the upper half, needing only to be pressed against my collarbones and the inside of each shoulder.  The front corner of my hood that might have clipped up beneath my chin hung over most of that band of armor.

The spiked attachments on hood, sleeve, the center-front of the breastplate, and at either side of my boots were last.

I had only one good arm, which meant that I was only about as fast as Tristan putting on his whole set of armor, and I was only doing my armor and decorations over top of the costume-ish outfit.

“What form are you doing, Chris?” Kenzie asked.

“Strained Peace,” Chris said.

“Strained peas?  As in baby food?” Kenzie asked.

“You know how blind people can train their minds to emphasize their hearing?” Chris asked.  “Well, you’ve done the opposite.  You’ve stared so much at your cameras and screens that your ears stopped working.”

“Made worse by you being a dolt.”

Kenzie smiled.  “So harsh.  Is peace on the awe or happiness line?”

“Happiness,” Chris said.

“Why ‘strained’?” I asked.

Chris shot me a hostile look.

I didn’t press, leaving him be.  I finished sorting out the straps of my sling and thought about getting a cape that would cover the one arm.

I hadn’t ever really loved full capes, though.

“Strained is a modifier for forms, it goes around the circle with Repressed Anger, Tense Acceptance, Paralyzed Fear, Stifled Disgust, yadda yadda,” Chris said.  He took Kenzie’s cloaking device.  “All of which are the bases but with faster reactions and movements in a pinch, like I’m made of elastic bands that are all taut, ready to release, or I’m a gun with a trigger that needs only a light touch to fire.”

“That’s not a good thing,” Capricorn said.

“It’s fine.  Faster action, lower stamina, lower strength, more durability.  Changes the abilities that manifest.  Strained Peace doesn’t really have much in the way of special features, so there isn’t a trigger to pull.”

“Why choose it then?” Sveta asked.  She’d attached the last of her stylized additions to her exterior.  They’d been painted, much as she had, but it was the same mandala-style effect, where some hadn’t been filled it, and the absence looked like a conscious choice.

“Because we don’t want a fight and peace works for that,” he said, and the easygoing tone from before was gone. “I need to get it out of the way, it works.  Trust me when I say it works out.”

Sveta put up her hands in surrender.

“We’ll give you a minute,” Capricorn said.  He stuffed everyone’s bags into the big gym bag.

“I’ll hold that,” Chris said.

“Sure,” Tristan said.

Chris held up the tinker device Kenzie had given him, and hit the button.  The camouflage effect crept over him.

The guy with the black eye from the crowd was hanging out at the front of a store, talking to two others, and he saw us as we emerged from the residential side road.  He wasn’t the only one who seemed to notice, but he was the most blatant about his reaction.  Instant hostility.  A glare.

Even the low-level hubbub of the street and the workers on the street changed, conversations dropping in volume, others stopping talking to see why.

“Wow,” I said, under my breath.  I kept my back straight, my apparent confidence up.  It would not be a good look if we gave the wrong impression and Lord of Loss’ town picked a fight with us before our meeting.

“I remember times like this with the Irregulars,” Sveta said.  “Especially when we turned up without warning.  Except you guys aren’t Case Fifty-Threes.”

“Bit of a gut punch,” Capricorn said.

“I’d say we get out of here, but we can’t bail on C,” Capricorn murmured.  “I feel like this is going to become something.”

“Anyone noticing the injuries?” I asked.

The one with the shiner was the most obvious and the closest to us.  The silence on the main street had drawn a few people outside, and it had brought others from side areas and streets.  A dozen of them had their wounds.  Arms and face more than legs.  Some skinned knees.

Looksee raised her hand, giving the crowd of stone-faced glares a little wave.

“Easy does it,” Sveta said.

Looksee dropped her hand.

Then, because the last thing we needed was a monster showing up, Chris materialized, dropping the cloak.

The indulgence form had apparently been derived from the happiness line, as far as I understood things.  There were similarities.  The form was tall, but where the other one had been broad in the gut, shaped like a teardrop with a tiny head and thick elephantine limbs, this one was… shrouded.  What I thought was a shawl at first was loose skin with no pigment, draped in a fashion that resembled a hooded robe.  Hair and a whisp of what should have been a beard hung down, long and growing as I watched, the length of hair and the hood hiding his face, even though he loomed a foot or two above the tallest person present.  The long, narrow limbs and frame within that shroud were gaunt, and stood tense with muscles strained and tendons standing out.  By the way the joints came together and the weight of the skin shroud, it was forced into a permanent crouch, hands bent in and back toward the body, head bent and turned toward the ground.

The teardrop shape remained, but it was well hidden.

“Looks good,” Looksee said.

It was something.  But Chris’ ‘peace’ form had raised the local tensions to a palpable degree.

A long finger with a raw nail bed instead of a fingernail reached down into the dirt of the road, scratching out two words.  The red nail bed had grit caked in it when the finger came away.

“We’re supposed to head east from the camp,” I said.

“He said it was a ten minute walk away, past a hill,” Capricorn said.

‘Peace’ Chris turned his head slowly, until he looked down on Capricorn.

I could imagine his expression, were he normal.  The unimpressed glare.  This form lacked in stamina, he’d said.

“What were you going to do?” Capricorn asked.  “Not change?”

The ‘peace’ form turned to look in the direction we were supposed to go.

The robe billowed out slightly, puffing.  The form’s head seemed to lack a mouth, or even any clear features besides maybe eyes and the waves of brown hair that hung in front, but something in the midst of the shroud had served for the exhalation.

I could have flown, but as I’d observed a few days ago, flying had a way of disconnecting me from things.  I floated alongside the group.

“You saw the injuries?” Capricorn asked, when we were a little ways away, walking along dirt and grass with rocks at irregular intervals.  Up to a point, trees had been cut down to use for the building of the settlement on this side of the G-N portal.  Past that point, the woods were dense.  From the looks of it, we wouldn’t necessarily get that far out.

“Soldiers?” he asked.

“Soldiers would have run off to tell their bosses,” I said.  “Made a phone call, even texted.  They didn’t.  They didn’t run, they didn’t care enough to challenge or confront us.”

“Are they not locals then?” Sveta asked.

“They’re local.  The clothes,” I said.  “They fight, but they’re not soldiers.”

“Lord of Loss might have a situation going on,” Capricorn said.  “It could be tied to our suspicions.  Another faction in his territory.”

“If it is tied to it, he can’t not know about it,” I said.

“It’s times like this that I feel really dumb,” Looksee said.  “I don’t pay much attention to any of that stuff.  Um.  But someone did make a call, though.”

“What call?” Capricorn asked.

“Uh, from the city to one of the local towers,” Looksee said.  She pointed off into the distance, where something I’d thought was a tree stood out against the sky.  “This is unfamiliar ground so I don’t know where call went after the tower got it.”

“Probably someone calling Lord of Loss to let us know we turned up,” I said.

“Or, if the portal attackers are really here, they’re passing on word,” Sveta murmured.

“Looksee, You mentioned the cameras at the station,” I said.  “Did you tap into them?”

“I did, but it wasn’t me being sneaky, I swear.  I was bored, because Mr. Peaceful here was being so slow and we were waiting so long.“

Chris moved, skin billowing around him as he dropped into a crouch with a jerky snap, then moved forward with another, until his face was a few feet from Looksee’s.

She barely flinched.  “Yeah.  You were slowwww.”

He straightened, standing taller than he had been before turning away.

Looksee reached out to pat his leg.

“The cameras?” I asked.

“I was curious about them because they looked analog and low rez, and I was wondering if they were trying to be clever and hiding something fancier.  Nope.  They’re just crummy cameras that were out of date when I was in diapers.”

“Can’t talk, huh?  Bet you had a line,” she said.  To me, she said, “Four-eighty-p, black and white, record to tapes in the station that have zero security.  They write over the old tape after an hour and a half.”

“Can you use them?” I asked.  “Keep an eye out for anyone running for it while our backs are turned?”

We reached the top of the hill.  The wind was cool as it blew past us.  The sky above was blue, the sun shining, but it didn’t penetrate the ambient cold air.  At most, I just felt cooler when we were in areas of shadow, like the side street and beneath the buildings.

The area was a dozen buildings framing a kind of cul-de-sac, where a lot of people had gathered on the road.  More uniformity to the materials and construction than we’d seen in the last spot.  No road ran from it to elsewhere- there was only the road to it, as if it was a defined endpoint.

There was a nicer house at the far end.  I could guess who lived there.

The response to our arrival at Lord of Loss’ site was as cold as the send-off from the portal station had been.  Every step of the way, things caught my attention.

A lot more injuries.  More defensive wounds.  The injured were corralled, kept in groups with capes or intact soldiers in front of, behind, and to either side of each group.  They kept their eyes down.

Nursery and Lord of Loss were standing at the path leading between the manor and the dirt road.  Lord of Loss was in his human form, massive.  There were a lot of people standing to either side of the path we had to travel to reach them, and he wasn’t walking forward to meet us halfway.

“Be careful,” Sveta murmured.

Capes aplenty.  I recognized a few.  Bitter Pill was one.  No Prancer, and none of the hyperviolent capes I’d come to think of as being the red-tagged, like the old capes on the parahuman online site who’d had the ‘do not approach’ banners across their profile.

Not that anyone here looked friendly.

Several in dark clothes with loose threads and designs bleached into them, like fishbones and snakes.  Teenagers, at a guess.  They stood opposite a couple in white armor with crisp black designs painted on them.  That armor hadn’t seen a fight in recent memory.  Moons and astrological symbols.

Three men were staring us down.  They wore simpler costumes with maximized utility between the belts, pouches, and bandoleers they’d strapped on.  As I walked past, I realized that they weren’t focused on me, on Chris, or Looksee.

Sveta was between me and Capricorn.  They were looking at her or him.

Not her, I realized, as I saw past the eye-slit in Capricorn’s helmet and saw his sharp focus on those same men.  Sveta didn’t seem to notice them.

We walked further.  We were effectively surrounded, because the people we’d left behind us were free to come at us from behind, and there were plenty to either side of us.

Lord of Loss raised his hand, indicating for us to stop.  We stopped, and Chris immediately dropped into a sitting position, hunching over.

A hundred feet still separated us.  A man stepped out of the crowd to our right, bearded, with parted hair, a hard mask and crisp clothing- a button-up shirt that was rolled up to the elbows, and a vest.  He walked with his hands clasped behind his back.

“Any guns?” he asked.

“Flash gun,” Looksee said.  “Nonlethal.”

“Would you set it down on the ground?” he asked.  “It’s symbolic.”

She looked at us for confirmation, got a nod from Capricorn, and then drew the gun and set it down on the dirt road.  A little too fast a draw- in another situation, that kind of recklessness might have provoked a reaction.

“I’d like to use my power to search you,” he said.  He held up his hand, and a shape manifested in his palm, swelling to take the form of something that looked like an origami onion, the layers folding back and into themselves.  “I would sweep it over you and become aware of anything on your persons.”

“No effect?” Capricorn asked.

“I’m fine,” Capricorn said.

“No objection,” I said.

“I’m pretty much all armor,” Sveta said.  “It contains me.”

“That’s fine.  Can I look?”

“I’ve got more stuff,” Looksee said.  “I can put it on the ground.”

She began unloading.  The heart hairpin, phone, batteries, the eyehook, the projector disc.

“And you?” the bearded cape asked Chris.

Kenzie put a pair of the little boxes like the ones she’d used to hack the keypad lock on the ground.

“I must insist.  I could do a physical, full body search if you wanted,” the bearded man said.  “You would have to adjust your robe.”

“It’s skin,” Capricorn said.

Lord of Loss and the parahumans of Earth N were patiently waiting while we were investigated by this man.

Dangerous territory indeed.  If they took issue with us, we wouldn’t have a great shot.  We’d been promised safety, but promises were thin, and at least a few people here could have grudges against us.

“I must insist I be allowed to search you.  I’m circumspect.  I’ll only tell Lord of Loss what he needs to know.  What I want is for this to go smoothly.”

What the hell were you doing, Chris?

Chris nodded, giving his assent.  He stooped down lower, head bent.

The origami onion unfolded into a whirling frame of lines and flat planes.  Where it passed over Chris’ leg, the leg on dirt, the dirt settled, flatting down, like there was a gravity or space warping effect in play.

Meanwhile, Looksee was putting a pair of pens, a few marble-sized metal spheres, and a glass case with what looked like three memory cards inside it down on the ground.

The man with the beard and parted hair walked behind Chris, the effect sweeping up and down Chris’ back.  He searched Chris’ midsection.

“There we are.  I see the shape of things, now,” the man with the parted hair murmured.  His eyes were alive behind the hard ivory-white mask.  “I can extend you a measure of trust, I think.  Do us a favor and stay still.  Give us no reason to be concerned.”

Chris was still for a moment, before nodding slowly.

The man moved from Chris to Looksee.  The process was faster- a quick up and down.

From Looksee to me.  I felt my costume rustle against my skin as it swept over me, my hood moved.  The effect passed.

Then Sveta.  He made no remark or comment before moving on to Capricorn.

Capricorn barely paid attention to the power that was sweeping over him.  He was focused wholly on the three men that had been staring at him earlier.  They’d moved from their position, approaching Lord of Loss, and were now leaning close, exchanging words at a low volume.  Nursery had stepped away to give the three and Lord of Loss some measure of privacy.

“Good.  Leave your things where they are and remain still,” the man said.  “Do you have a name?”

“Beg pardon?” Capricorn asked.  He tore his eyes away from the three men and Lord of Loss, all of whom were looking at us.

“A name.  So I can announce you.”

The three men stepped back and walked away, in the direction of the side of the largest house.

“Oh, um, oh Jesus,” Capricorn said.  “No.  We’ve been putting it off for forever, it’d be easier if you asked us to go pick a fight with Goddess or something.”

“We’re not asking for that,” the man said.

“You want our cape names, or group, or-”

“All of the above,” the man with the parted hair said.  “It matters.  This is a place where formality, titles, and roles matter.  The name you choose is important.”

“Can you give us a moment?” Capricorn asked.

“I can,” the man said.  He glanced back at Lord of Loss, then over at the crowd.  No statement to any grand effect, but the point was clear.  This was a large crowd and it would be poor form to keep them waiting.  “I’ll be waiting.  Signal me when you’re ready, and then announce yourselves.”

“Talk to me,” Capricorn said, before the man was even gone.  “Fast.”

“We have you and Looksee hammered out,” Sveta said.

“No,” Looksee said.  “Um.  I’ll be Lookout.  Change me to Lookout, as an inside joke, because of what he said, after the Fallen thing.”

“Lookout?” Capricorn asked.

Beside Lookout, Chris was clasping his hands together, head tilting high with hair falling across his face, like he was praying.  He reached out and gave Lookout a pat on the helmet.

“A bit dark but I’m not going to complain with the time constraint,” Capricorn said.  “Lookout.  Right.  Me, you.  Sveta?”

Sveta said a single word in Russian.  “It wasn’t my first choice, but Weld told me if I didn’t choose, someone would choose for me.  I guess our hands are being forced.  Tress.  Because it sounds pretty, at least.  But call me Sveta when it’s not official.”

Capricorn turned to Chris.

The word was already on the dirt, scratched out.  Cryptid.

No surprise.  It had been the last thing I’d seen on the whiteboard in the hideout, before we’d moved everything out.

“I’m breaking every single rule,” I said.  “Because it’s a name that needs an explanation, and you’re not supposed to do that.  There’s no time to spell it out.”

“I don’t care,” Capricorn said.  “Out with it.”

“The heart of the scorpion?” he asked.  When I arched an eyebrow, he said, “I pay attention to stars, and I looked up some when you mentioned you were thinking in that direction.  That wasn’t on my top twenty.”

I nodded.  I had reasons and explanations, but we didn’t have the time, as I’d said.

“I’m not about to complain,” he said.  “Team name.”

“We talked about Defense Mechanism,” Lookout said.

“We said it was too tinkery,” Sveta said.

“I’m not complaining,” Lookout said.  “But I get it.”

“And we’re not very ‘defense’ oriented,” Capricorn said.  “Calling us ‘defense’ when I’m the only defender is like going with mechanism when you’re the only tinker.”

“It’s a little on the nose, by the way,” I said.

“Anything else?” Capricorn asked.

“When we were talking about names in that conversation where Defense Mechanism came up, we mentioned one, and it might be too on the nose, but Swansong liked it,” Lookout said.  “She’s not here right now, but it might be nice if she got a say, and it suits Rain, which would be nice.”

“What was it?” I asked.

There was a silence.  Capricorn had his arms folded.  The others were quiet.

“At this point, it’s better than no name,” Capricorn said.

“It works with the original focus of cracking the tougher nuts,” I said.

“Let’s do that,” Capricorn said.  He drew in a deep breath and sighed, before turning to face Lord of Loss.  Capricorn gave a nod to the man.

Lord of Loss extended a hand, palm up.  An invitation.

“Team Breakthrough.  Capricorn, Tress, Antares, Lookout, and Cryptid.  We’re here to talk about the state of things, and to see about sharing information.”

Technically, we came to find out about the attack on the portals, but we can’t say that outright.

“Lord of Loss, leader of Earth N,” the man with the parted hair said.  “We welcome you.”

Lord of Loss’ body language was magnanimous, hands spread.  He seemed warm, even, for a giant in ragged armor.  He approached at a walk.  “I’m sorry for the mess.  Things have been chaotic.  I recognize the heroine from the community center.  Antares?”

“We did that to try and get ahead of what we’re seeing today, serving up a scapegoat.  We had a riot two days ago, because we weren’t able to get out ahead of things or give the masses another sacrifice.”

“It shouldn’t be about sacrifices,” I said.

“It all comes down to blood and bread,” he said.  “With snowfall only fifty or so days from now, we don’t have the bread.  Will the community center and its outcome be a problem?”

I shook my head.  “Not especially.”

“Good,” he said.  “What brought you here, Breakthrough?”

“Can we talk about that alone?  Our team and you?” Capricorn asked.

“I don’t know all of your powers, and I won’t call in any of the expensive favors needed to get that information.  You keep your five.  I’ll keep four I trust.  Fair?”

Capricorn glanced at Sveta, then me.  He gave Lord of Loss a nod.

Lord of Loss selected his people.  The others were dismissed with a wave of the hand.

Nursery had an updated costume, I noted.  It was fitted to her slender frame, a curved golden band at her belly highlighting the slight bump.  She stayed.

Oddly, it wasn’t the professional looking man or woman in the white armor with the sharp designs that were tapped for his retinue here.  He turned to the group of teenagers with the bleached animal designs.  One was asked to stay, a boy with fangs bleached into the black fabric of the bandanna that covered his lower face.

The man with the parted hair, too, stayed.  I thought it might be because he was Lord of Loss’ lieutenant.

He wasn’t.  Lord of Loss turned toward the house behind him, paused, then beckoned.  Another cape stepped out, walking down the dirt path, and joined us.  Most of the others in the area were gone by the time he reached us.  The one with the parted hair stood just behind him, as Nursery and the fang kid stood at either side of Lord of Loss.

Tall, with long brown hair that passed his shoulders, carefully cultivated facial hair, and reading glasses that he looked over most of the time.  He had a billowing shirt that ninety nine percent of people wouldn’t be able to pull off, and tight black jeans tucked into boots.  His fingers had a lot of rings, and another ring hung from a simple leather cord at his neck.

Marquis.  Amy’s bio-dad.  He met my eyes and smiled.

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