Chapter 54: 5-4-5 Fortuna

Interlude 5.4.5: Fortuna

2001, January 16: Washington, DC, USA

I stepped into the lab just as Yusung left the lockers. No one else was around and wouldn't be for another six minutes and thirteen seconds.

The now nine year old wore his newly made costume, Winter's Approach, he'd called it. At his side, the Ymelo hovered, glowing a soothing blue.

Two spikes of True Ice jutted out from his cobalt-gray pauldrons, though not long enough to actually be a hindrance. A gleaming blue sapphire rested prominently in the center of the breastplate, shining like an unblinking eye. These three gems drew the eye in more ways than the physical. They seemed to draw in all heat around them, whispering promises of a coming chill that would blacken flesh and scatter armies.

Looking at them stirred something in me, flickering embers of memories of long ago when I was a girl called Fortuna, when all I needed to worry about was the coming harvest and the frigid nights.

How naïve I'd been.

I put on a smile for the not-quite-boy. "Yusung."

"Fortuna," he greeted me back. He made a conscious choice to call me that. "Humanizing me," he'd called it. A flash of blue and my favorite cookie appeared. "Biscuit?"

I bit into it with a grateful nod. Honey and flax with a hint of cassava mixed into the dough. The nutty flavor of the cassava took me back to my hometown on what could have been the Ivory Coast; we used to grow the root vegetable as our primary food crop.

Once, in a bout of curiosity, I tried to find my earth's cassavas on Earth-Bet. I failed, not because the Path was unable, but because thousands of years of agricultural development had rendered the cassava of Earth-Bet nearly unrecognizable to the one I remembered. I could have arranged the dominos for a genetically engineered retrograde version, but that was where I stopped the Path; there were other demands on my time.

I savored the familiar flavors. It never ceased to amaze me how his power seemed to give me the exact flavor I craved in the moment, even when I was so absorbed in the Path that I didn't know myself.

I shook my head to free myself from the sudden onset of nostalgia. There was too much to do. No time for Fortuna, only Contessa.

"How was your therapy?"

"Well enough. I'm getting better," he said tiredly. As expected, his body showed zero signs of exhaustion; all of the fatigue was mental, and entirely self-afflicted.

He'd added these sessions in the past few months, though not for any need to talk out his problems. No, Leviathan's emergence in Naples reminded him of his own trigger, and his thalassophobia. It reminded him of his weakness so he sought to kill that part of himself.

He liked to think of himself as the most reasonable of us, but he was just as broken in his own way.

His idea of therapy was to force himself into the Olympic-sized pool on PRT premises alongside a wave maker and hardlight simulator for as long as he could. He'd begin with natural tropical storms, typhoons, and hurricanes then work up to recordings of past Leviathan attacks. No fighting. No gear. Just the constant fear of drowning and the bright pulse of his Ymelo. Every time his mind neared a panic attack, his Ymelo would blaze, calming him and reminding him of everything he fought for.

Exposure therapy, in arguably the least healthy way possible.

I chomped down the rest of my biscuit with more force than strictly necessary. Even with tinkertech, even for someone like Yusung, there were only so many times a person's mind could be treated like a slinky. He was lucky I had a Path running to make his sessions more effective. One nudge here, another there. With Rebecca and Eugene's interference, we'd distracted him with a number of projects and activities to space out his sessions perfectly, giving his mind time to recover.

'Or,' I thought, 'there is no luck involved. He knows I'm Pathing him and he's abusing it for all it's worth. It'd explain his willingness to let himself be interrupted.'

It was an interesting experience, having someone who so thoroughly understood my power and was therefore willing to exploit my actions on the assumption that I would not act against his interests. Was it a form of trust? Or was I the one being manipulated for a change?

What a curious man Yusung was.

"The Ymelo shines less and less as the months go by. You are now able to remain in the environment without a panic attack for sixteen minutes and twelve seconds."

He rolled his eyes. "Of course you'd know that."

I didn't, my power told me to say so, but that was fine. Expressing interest in a friend's life is natural, or so I'd been led to believe. "Ellisburg went dark three days ago."

And suddenly he was all business. It was in the subtle tensing of his muscles and the clenching of his teeth. "What do you need?"

"One Elixir of Sorcery, one Petricite Elixir, and the Dream Blossom Censer. A box of apple strudels. Oh, and two large pretzels. They should be baked as close to traditionally Bavarian as you can manage."

"Making your breakfast I take it?"

"Quite."

"Fine, whatever. When do you want it all?"

"I'll come pick them up at five-forty-five tomorrow. The Path is clearing around Ellisburg and I'll be able to make my move then."

"Too early," he grumbled.

"Deal. I know you're up earlier."

"Tch, unreasonable woman."

"Door, Headquarters," I said, tossing a parting wave behind me.

X

2001, January 17: Washington, DC, USA

Wednesday morning found me strolling through a Doorway into Yusung's living room. His mother was still asleep and would be for another fifty-four minutes. I walked into his kitchen and helped myself to a glass of tea and a wafer-thin cookie from the jar on the center of his island.

The daily Biscuit did mean I didn't need to eat, but good food was one of the few vices I allowed myself.

"Seriously?" he glared chidingly as I took my tithe.

"Path to munchies," I told him what my power advised. "You know I could get much worse."

He grumbled but didn't protest further. I wasn't sure what he found funny about that, but he was always a strange one. The two of us sat at his island, waiting for the strudels and pretzels to finish, though only I nibbled.

"So, what's the plan?"

"I'm going to use the Dream Blossom Censer to put most of the town to sleep."

"You don't think it'll work on Rinke?"

"It will, but I eventually need him awake."

"Hence the Petricite Elixir."

"Hence the Petricite Elixir."

"Why the food?"

"Rinke's father was Dutch, but his mother was Bavarian. I want to remind him of her."

"And will cooking do that?"

"If presented in a certain light, yes."

He nodded. He'd been rather insistent on the "hearts and minds" approach with Rinke. I allowed it; it wasn't detrimental overall. I polished off my snack and held out my hands. He gave me two vials, one a crystal blue and the other a shimmering silver.

"Need me for anything else?"

I shook my head. "Nothing related to Ellisburg. But you should check on Babylon this weekend. Your little grove of Petricite trees is growing fast."

"Thanks, will do."

X

I stood on the roof of Ellisburg Village Town Hall, roughly the geographic center of the small town. Was "Village Town" redundant? Yes, but it was an unfortunate carryover from back when Ellisburg was an actual village.

It was five-fifty now, but I could see one or two people already out and about. I could remain here for another hour without being noticed, the value of a sleepy, small town with a subculture of "mind your own business." The box of strudels, pretzels, and potions sat at my feet, their aroma tickling my nose.

I cradled the Censer in the crook of one arm and popped the lid off the Elixir of Sorcery. It went down smoothly, tasting like blueberries, but with an indescribable aftertaste that clung to my tongue. A moment later, my body felt electrified as mana ran through me. It was not a feeling I was entirely unaccustomed to.

I initially stole Yusung's Biscuit to lighten the mood. I then continued to demand one a day for their nutritional and noctis properties, but it didn't take me long to realize that they did more than keep my body in peak physical condition: They promoted magical growth.

It wasn't much. It was as though there was a cave in my soul being filled with mana, drop by drop. Over thousands of years, it might one day become a calming underground lake, but as it was now, it was barely a puddle. I could not stir it into action the way Yusung could, nor could my Path seem to figure out how.

I had found another limitation to the Path: It could not manipulate metaphysical energies and ideas. I wondered, not for the first time, if Yusung knew that already.

And that was why, for all the utility of his health potions, to me, the Elixir of Sorcery was the single most valuable elixir he ever made. It was liquid mana, distilled in such a way as to not conflict with the body of the drinker. Instead, it sat in the body, acting as an internal reservoir of mana. The quantity wasn't much on its own, but Yusung never meant for it to be used in a vacuum.

No, the Elixir of Sorcery's primary benefit was not an internal reservoir, it was control. With it, for only an hour, I could manipulate any of his inventions, even if they were not attuned to me.

I took the Censer in hand and focused, willing it to react. The elixir took care of the rest. Fragrant smoke billowed from flowers so intricately carved that the runic matrix beneath was virtually impossible to distinguish. One could get lost trailing a single stalk, only to find they'd made their way all the way around the vessel, outlining runes, petals, and leaves they'd never noticed before.

I held the staff and willed the smoke to travel far, as far as it could reach with my limited mana without being blown away. It consumed the fire station and library first, then the bank Rinke worked at, then his house, and finally the rest of town. Half an hour later, I gingerly lowered the staff and examined my handiwork.

The people of Ellisburg would rouse themselves in a few hours, sleeping the best sleep they'd ever had. A few would miss a business meeting here or there, forget to let out their chickens for the day, but no permanent harm would follow. My business would be concluded by then.

I walked down South Main Street and allowed myself a brief minute to admire the picturesque, small-town ambiance. It had snowed the night prior and a thin layer of white covered the lawns and trees. The early morning sunlight scattered beautifully on the frozen crystals that dusted the lawns.

Soon enough, I reached Rinke's house. It was a two-story affair made predominantly of red brick and mortar. Not small, but it was clear the house was getting on in years, possibly around when the town was first founded, not that I'd bother deviating from the Path to find out.

The house's security hadn't been updated in decades; it sported a tumbler lock that could be undone by a determined child and a paperclip. The lock delayed me for exactly one point two-six seconds. I leaned the Censer against a coat rack, hung my trademark fedora on one of the nubs, and proceeded inside.

The interior of Rinke's house was a mess, as I knew it would be. It boasted an old, Victorian-style fireplace with wrought iron grates. Above it sat a family picture: Hans and Anna Rinke seated on a loveseat with young Jamie on his mother's lap, thumb conspicuously in his mouth.

Hans was a factory man who got a job straight out of high school and worked in a plant in Watertown up north. Anna went to vocational school to become a nurse. That she made more money than him, was busier than him, always bothered the man. Four years after young Jamie's birth, he walked out and never returned.

I was no expert in child psychology, at least not when the Path was focused elsewhere, but I knew I wouldn't find any other pictures of Hans in the house. The only reason the picture above the fireplace was permitted to remain was because every time Rinke thought about scrapping it, he'd remember how his mother used to stare wistfully at the family they once had.

I felt something stir in my chest, empathy, Yusung called it, and I allowed it to bubble up and simmer. It was useful to the Path.

Tragedies often were.

I headed to the kitchen and set the oven to preheat before picking up an alarm clock and giving myself forty-five minutes. I then allowed the Path to guide me to the basement. Judging by the fingerprints dotting the walls and railing, it had recently been cleaned, though by tiny, inhuman hands.

There was nothing to be concerned about. The Censer's smoke could lull any human to sleep through spiritual forces I couldn't understand. And for all their changes, Rinke's goblins were indeed human. Their souls at any rate.

At the moment, only one was in the house, the rest hunting for small game, pets, or other creatures. They were all knocked out like the rest.

I stepped past a tiny, furry goblin-thing. She had short, pale-yellow fur speckled with crimson dots and wasn't much larger than a human head. She wore a shoddy dress made using an old pillowcase and slept on a pile of pillows, snuggled cutely into a ball. Presumably, this was Polka the First, Rinke's favorite minion. Killing her off would make a point, though I refrained.

This was Yusung's show after all.

Instead, I picked up Rinke's sweater and used it to tuck her in, wrapping it around her head gently until the fabric folded over her ears. She clung to the familiar scent of her maker and pulled it close, muffling her own ears.

Rinke was passed out over a workbench, hands buried to his elbows in the cadaver of a boy not much older than Yusung. Ronald Wulf was an opportunistic kill, one Rinke himself had not planned. His goblins were tasked with acquiring biomass without being seen and they did, from any source available.

Whatever he was going to turn young Ronald into, he hadn't gotten the chance before the mystical smoke rolled in.

Jamie Rinke was a chubby, potbellied man with brown hair and utterly average features, neither handsome nor repulsive. He was dressed in a button-down shirt, though long since speckled in the innards of his victims. I knew that he had yet to even change out of his clothes since his trigger.

My body felt the impulse to gag at the smell but the Path suppressed it. Instead, I left the alarm clock on a shelf by his head, tilted so it would tip over when it went off, landing on his hand. The combination of the vibration and noise would wake him without rousing Polka.

Then came breakfast. Specifically, a breakfast meant to remind him of the single mother who worked two shifts to make sure her son had all he needed throughout his childhood. She had been the most important stabilizing influence in his life and though her death to breast cancer did not cause his trigger, the downward spiral his life had taken could be traced directly to it.

That was the thing few realized: Triggers were seldom just one thing. In truth, it was almost always merely the straw that broke the camel's back.

Jamie Rinke had already begun to backslide into a childlike mentality. He was a volatile creature, full of neuroses like land mines. Loneliness. Lack of support. Need to belong. Desire for old, familiar comforts. A paradoxical longing for childhood games and the desire for authority, even if that authority figure was himself. Anyone else trying to navigate this minefield would blow off their feet in minutes.

I was not anyone else. He had his three day's grace but now, now the Path saw all.

The best way to break him from his narcissistic spiral was to remind him of his mother, of the nurse who dedicated her life to helping others. She worked double shifts to keep a young Jamie in a good school. Even when she lay bedridden from breast cancer, she never stopped encouraging him to be better, to help others.

So, I planned to exploit those treasured memories mercilessly. Rather than try to forcibly drag his psyche from his reminiscing, I intended to play on his passions, on dreams long forgotten.

After all, everyone wanted to belong.

The first step to all of this was cleaning. Not exactly glamorous, but his mother insisted on a neat kitchen. I didn't have the time to make it spotless of course, but I moved from place to place, adjusting everything just as the Path told me Anna Rinke used to have them.

I then tossed the strudels and pretzels into the oven to warm. To pair with them, four links of weisswurst were retrieved from the fridge and tossed onto a pan. In another saucepan went five cups of water and four eggs to soft-boil.

Exactly twenty minutes and eight seconds later, I was done. Two sausages and eggs joined a pretzel and strudel on each plate. A slightly warmed cup of sweet mustard was set in the middle. The plates themselves were taken from the top shelf, his grandmother's favorite. Two cups of extra-pulpy orange juice joined the setup, all the better to hide the elixir within.

I didn't have to wait long. The alarm rang and was accompanied shortly after by several curses. I allowed myself a smile and set down a kettle of coffee for the table as well. That bit of banal annoyance would help set the tone for this interaction.

I heard him climb the stairs.

"Good morning, Jamie," I spoke, a warmth I could never mimic without the Path lacing my voice. There was even a slight accent, just like Anna. I leaned against one wall with a friendly smile.

"M-Mother?" he stammered, still shaking off the dregs of sleep.

"I'm afraid not, but I figured this would be something new for the both of us. Please, take a seat."

I could hear the moment his attention sharpened. "Who are you? What are you doing in my house?"

"My name is Contessa, Jamie, and I just want to talk with you."

"Polka-" he started to shout, but I shushed him.

One hand on my hip. Leaned forward twelve degrees. A finger on my lip. Bangs tucked behind one ear. Breathe harshly through my front teeth. "Shhh! Do you want to wake her?" I glared. "I spent a lot of effort preparing this, Jamie. You may as well join me for breakfast. I promise she'll wake up in a few hours with the best sleep she's ever had."

He glanced at me warily. If I did nothing in the next four seconds, he'd figure out how idiotic this all was. Of course he wanted his minion awake. I was relying on the sheer unpredictability of my actions. If I did nothing, that wariness would turn to aggressive indignation. He'd lunge for me, attempting to make any sort of skin contact. Were I walking another Path, I would have let him try, only to trip him, scoop out an eyeball with a spoon, and gag him with the dishrag before leveling more than a few unsubtle threats.

Instead, I turned and took a seat. "I wasn't lying, you know. I did go to the trouble of making us breakfast. Do you mind if we at least enjoy that before we get to the threats and posturing?"

Everything I did was designed to invoke memories of Anna, from the food to the way I lectured, down to the way I asked rhetorical questions. This wouldn't work on a more experienced cape. Everything I did would scream "Thinker!" But on Jamie Rinke, cape for less than four days? On a man who was at the most fragile, loneliest point in his life?

This worked like a charm.

The gore caking the biokinetic's hands sloughed off, leaving him completely clean. He took a seat but stared at me warily. I smiled disarmingly and began cutting the weisswurst. Popping a piece of the veal sausage in my mouth, I said, "You really should try some, Jamie. It's quite good."

"Right, what's it laced with?"

"Nothing. A friend of mine baked the strudels and pretzels. They're amazing."

"I don't believe you." He reached out and switched the plates around.

I shrugged and tore a piece from what used to be his pretzel before dipping it in the jar of sweet mustard in the middle. "Suit yourself. Mmm, your mother had excellent taste. Bavarian?"

He nodded cautiously and took a bite of the sausage. I could see the lines in his face smooth out a little as the familiar flavors lulled his senses. The soft-boiled egg, with a sprinkle of salt, pepper, and paprika for flavor, went next. Then, he reached for the glass of orange juice, heavy on pulp just as Anna Rinke liked it.

I would have smirked in triumph if it wouldn't have compromised the Path. For the next hour, the king was a peasant.

"Polka?"

"She's fine," I promised reassuringly, though with that slight crease to my brow that hinted at impatience. "She'll wake up when we're done, completely refreshed and having had the best sleep of her short life. I told you, I just wanted to talk."

"Then why drug her?"

"You made her. She's protective of you and I felt that she would be too… passionate in your defense. She's young, right? Not even three days old? I didn't think she'd be experienced enough to handle a stranger well."

"She wouldn't hurt anyone."

"I'm sure she wouldn't," I said placatingly. "Just in case. You understand. I didn't want to have to defend myself and turn this into a fight."

He snorted and turned back to his food. "What do you want? Who are you?"

"Like I said, my name is Contessa. As for what I want… I need your help," I said after a noticeable pause, as though admitting it stung. All the better to sound sincere. He wasn't quite a child, but he wanted what every child wanted. Or really, what everyone wanted: He wanted to feel needed.

I set down my fork and looked at him with the same doe eyes as his mother. By forcibly drawing so many parallels between myself and Anna, I was redirecting his childhood fantasies. No amount of social manipulation would make him see me with the same idolized, rose-tinted glasses he saw her with. But I didn't need him to idolize me. I just needed him to see me as a friend, a kindred spirit, even if no such camaraderie would ever exist.

"I need your help, Jamie," I said again. "As you can see, I'm a very powerful thinker."

"You want to recruit me."

"Of course. You're not a stupid man. I don't think subtly manipulating you would work, so, I'm not even going to try. No kidnapping. No threats. No "accidents" that push you towards what I want. All I want is a conversation. Then I'll leave the decision to you."

He reached out for my hand, and I let him, meeting him in the middle. Hands clasped over the table, we could have been a pair of lovers having a heartfelt conversation.

His eyes widened in surprise. "My power-"

"Will come back after this conversation. If I erased your power, you wouldn't be able to help me," I spoke softly. I turned his hand and rubbed his palm gently with my thumb. I withdrew my hand and reached for my fork again. All the better to reinforce the image of normalcy. "Eat, please. You wouldn't want to waste food, would you?"

The two of us ate in relative silence. He was understandably a little stiff, but he made his own stumbling efforts to try and probe me for information. Between vaguely appreciative comments about the food, he asked questions about me, my organization, and how I managed to find him so quickly.

I answered as honestly as I could, whitewashing as little of it as possible. He'd be one of our most senior pawns; a certain degree of transparency made him more useful.

Between bites, I also explained to him the unwritten rules and just why what he was planning to do to Ellisburg was so unforgivable. A few missing people? Fine, a trigger event gone wrong. Three thousand? A different matter.

The Nilbog Yusung knew would have scoffed and spat at the very notion that the US government could threaten him. This wasn't that Nilbog. This was Jamie Rinke, still with the mind of a mostly functional adult, yet to have built a kingdom of monsters. The lack of an army combined with my sudden presence here and the fact that Ellisburg was in Legend's backyard made him far less confident in his own abilities, and therefore far more malleable.

Bit by bit, word by word, I was shaping him using one of the most powerful and subtle tools in my arsenal: social mimicry.

It was prolonged social isolation and rejection that caused his trigger and the same isolation would have caused his backslide into a childlike mindset. Humans wanted, no, needed to belong, and Rinke was no different. And to belong, he would shape himself, his behavior, and even his thoughts and biases, all without his conscious knowledge.

To a man who knew very little of capes, there were only two worth noting in Ellisburg, I represented everything glamorous about cape-dom. I was a cape who had it made: I was clearly well-dressed, well-informed, powerful, and good looking. I headed an organization that could track him to this obscure location mere days after his trigger, before the local sheriff had even begun to investigate the missing persons.

I looked like hyper-competent.

Most of all, I reminded him of the single most important person in his life, a person he could no longer reach.

I placed myself before him as someone to be admired. And therefore, I was someone to be mimicked.

There were no master powers involved, but that was what made the Path so dangerous, so insidious. Everyone practiced social mimicry of some sort, from cults and friend groups to schools and armies. It wouldn't be an exaggeration to say that this single phenomenon defined human relationships.

And with the Path, I was the best there could be. In the span of one meal, one conversation, I'd affirmed in his subconscious mind that I was worthy of his attention and admiration. I was someone he wanted as a friend.

I put my fork down just as Rinke ate the last of his food. "That was great," he said with far less hostility than when he'd started.

"I'm glad you liked it. I'll let my friend know you appreciated his cooking."

"Yeah, so, another world, huh? Why me? You saw Polka. I just…"

"You just made yourself some friends. You were lonely," I voiced his unspoken admission. He stiffened; no one liked having their weaknesses thrown in their face. I smiled, eyes morose. "And that's okay. I was seven when everyone in my village died. Now, only one person alive calls me by the name my mother gave me.

"I… I'm sorry…"

He looked down, unable to see the smirk that flickered across my face. His was the expression of a man slapped with some perspective. At least he still had a home.

"Don't be. It was a long time ago, but trust me when I say I do understand. I am not a perfect person, Jamie. I have done horrible things in the name of peace. I suppose I am here to absolve myself of even a little bit of that blame."

"The heroes…"

"Cannot be everywhere. Two weeks ago, I was in Namibia. I murdered eighteen men and six women, all responsible for running a camp to train child parahumans. They would systematically torture children in an attempt to make them trigger. Sometimes, they would torture brothers and sisters while their siblings watched, all to see if sympathetic trauma could cause what is called a cluster trigger."

"That…"

"I killed them all," I said firmly, voice hard. For a moment, I allowed the boogeyman to shine through. "I killed them all and burned the camp to ashes. There are many parts of the world where heroes don't exist. For all the grandiose promises of the Founders, the Protectorate cannot be everywhere. They want to, but they are few and not every criminal can be locked away with a pair of handcuffs.

"And that is Earth-Bet. What of other worlds? Worlds where the strongest capes are not morally good? That is Cauldron. Cauldron is the witch's brew, the poison no one wants, but we all need. No hero visits the witch because he has other options."

Rinke looked more shaken now. He was starting to get a glimpse of the enormity of what I represented. "Where… Where do I fit into all this? Cauldron is… some kind of… multidimensional police?"

"Not police, we're not that nice. Think of us as an antivirus, the kind that cleans up your computer. You can take the program, put it into a different computer, and let it clean that up too."

"I can't fight."

"You probably could," I hummed. "I don't doubt that you can create bigger, stronger friends than little Polka. But that's not why I'm here. Tell me, Jamie, what do you know about Case-53s?"

"They are monstrous capes. No one's sure if they're mutations or mini-endbringers or what. None of them remember anything except how to speak the local language."

It was almost funny. "Mini-endbringers," as if anyone in Ellisburg had a clue. Then again, perhaps I shouldn't have been surprised at the biases of a small town. This was hardly the first echo chamber I'd encountered. Instead, I said, "No, they're not miniature endbringers."

"Then what are they?"

"Lost. They're lost. No one in Cauldron knows where they come from either, but we do know that they're human despite it all. One of our ongoing projects is to find them a home, maybe even a cure."

"That's what you want me for. You think my power can make them human again?"

"There's a chance. And if not, I think your power might be one part of the cure, a part of the puzzle. At the very least, you should be able to curb some of the worst mutations."

"I don't know…" He looked away, feeling a little awkward at the earnestness behind my gaze.

"I do," I said insistently. "Your mother was a nurse, right? You can be something similar. There is a girl whose bones seep through her skin, creating a form of armor. At least, that's what we think it's supposed to do. Instead, all the sections are wrong, like pieces of a puzzle that don't quite fit. She can't walk ten paces without falling over and we feed her through a straw. Best we can tell, she's not even twenty years old. Doesn't that sound like the kind of case you can help with?"

"I… maybe…"

"I'm not asking you to get involved in the harsher side of Cauldron's business. I'm asking you to give them a home. And ultimately, to give them the chance to choose their own path. Isn't that a good way to use your power?"

I leaned back and gave him his space. His brows were furrowed in thought. "What… What do I get out of this?" he said after a minute of silence. And I knew I had him.

"Whatever you want."

"I want my mother back."

I chuckled ruefully. "Okay, perhaps not that. But I can give you the next best thing: Purpose. Resources. Companions. A home."

"I can have that on my own," he said mulishly. "I can make more like Polka. Leave town. Start my own place somewhere."

"You could, but then what?"

"I just want to be left alone."

I reached across the table and took his hand. "I don't think that. In fact, thinker's promise, I know you don't want that. Powers are oftentimes an expression of our innermost desires. A power that makes companions? No, you don't want to be alone. I think it's quite the opposite. I think that you want people who will stand beside you, people you can trust to have your back.

"And, to be clear, I think your creations can do that one day. One day, Polka is going to grow up, figuring out her own likes and dislikes. But that day is a long time coming and that won't change the dynamic between you two, will it? You will always be her creator, her king. And you know what the problem with being a king is? Kings are lonely. Is that truly the kind of life you want?"

I stood and took slow steps towards the door, where my fedora and Yusung's Censer were placed. "We draw in Case-53s from all across the multiverse. You can be a father and teacher to them all. You can be the petty king of a petty kingdom, forever alone atop your throne, or you can make a difference in the lives of others, reach out to them as I've reached out to you." I gave him a bittersweet smile. "Who knows? When you give of yourself, you may find that the world is not so dark after all."

With my piece said, I placed the fedora back on my head in a jaunty slant and twirled the staff to draw his eye. At two revolutions, my other hand withdrew a business card and flung it through the air. It spun like a throwing star until it landed perfectly in his surprised fingers.

"I won't force you, but I think you've got some soul-searching to do," I said with a final wink. "Door, Cauldron HQ."

Doctor Mother knew to expect his call in a mere fourteen hours.