97

Chapter 97: Interlude 10-c:Fractured Paragon Refrain

Interlude 10.c: Fractured Paragon Refrain

Three days — seventy-six hours, to be exact. That was how long Colin Wallis had been stuck in isolation, ostensibly to clear him of any possible Master power influence. Ostensibly — no one was under any illusions that it was anything other than what it was: punishment for allowing Apocrypha to get away.

Three days away from his lab, unable to tinker, unable to maintain his armor or tune up his halberd, unable to start fabricating and building any of the projects that he was still in the process of working on. Three days without access to the internet so that he might talk to the only person he suspected really understood him, Dragon, and her sage advice, her help and suggestions, her calming presence. Three days away from anything resembling a CAD program, or a modeler, or even a computer at all. Three days without so much as a pencil and drafting paper to sketch out the ideas that itched at the back of his brain, always becoming harder and harder to ignore.

Three days with almost nothing in the way of mental stimulation. A lifetime, for a Tinker.

By the time his "quarantine" was officially over, Colin's hands were cramped from all of the clenching and unclenching they had done, wishing for a tool or even just a pencil to get the plans in his head out and into the real world. His head buzzed with dozens or hundreds of new ideas, so many of them that he had a hard time keeping track of which was which. His eyes were bloodshot from the stress and the lack of sleep.

Miss Militia — Hannah — was the one waiting for him as he came out. When she took in his disheveled appearance and his miserable expression, the slight slouch that no manner of discipline had managed to iron out from his posture, the exhausted air that radiated off of him, her lips pulled into a frown and her brow crinkled with concern.

"Colin?" she asked softly. "Are you okay?"

"Fine," he grunted. His tongue was like lead in his mouth. "Need to get back to my lab. Have plans to start drafting."

She stepped in front of him before he could get very far, holding him back with one hand planted on his chest.

"After you get a shower," she told him, nose wrinkling. "And some breakfast. It's a little early, but the cafeteria should be open."

He opened his mouth to argue — all of that could be taken care of at a later date — but his stomach chose that moment to let out a long, loud growl. Only natural, in hindsight. He'd been stripped of his equipment before they'd shut him in for quarantine, and the food he'd been given was a bland mess only just solid enough to eat by hand, so that it could be eaten without utensils that a Master victim might use to commit suicide. Sufficient to maintain one's health, but nowhere near as efficient or nutrient dense as his specially designed pastes.

Plus, it didn't taste like anything. Even he understood the importance of pleasant flavoring.

"Breakfast first," he agreed.

He let her lead him out of the quarantine cellblock and into the building proper, then down to the cafeteria, dimly lit and all but empty, save for a handful of early risers and one or two troopers coming off the night shift. Neither group was in any shape to spare him and Hannah any more than a sluggish, cursory glance.

Initially, he only intended to grab enough to satisfy his hunger and eat quickly so that he could move on to more important matters, but before he even realized it, he'd loaded his tray down with at least two full servings of what he would normally refer to as unhealthy garbage. The scrambled eggs, of course, were high in protein, but he had no excuse for the toast slathered in butter or the greasy strips of bacon that he'd spent the past fifteen years avoiding for the sake of maintaining as close to peak cardiovascular health as he could possibly manage.

They tasted far better than they had any right to.

"Are you sure that you're okay, Colin?" Hannah asked as she watched him eat. She had selected only a single serving of eggs, a solitary piece of unadorned toast, and a steaming mug of straight black coffee.

"Fine," he grunted again between helpings of eggs. After he'd eaten it, he amended, "Hungry. Frustrated. Off balance from the three days of quarantine. I didn't have much else to do but think about the situation and brainstorm ideas."

"Director Tagg…might have been a little too heavy handed, shutting you into quarantine," Hannah said.

Colin stopped eating and regarded her with a furrowed brow. "Might?"

"You let Apocrypha get away," she pointed out.

"She showed no signs of fatigue," Colin said stonily, "she was on guard, she was prepared. Even in her base Breaker form, her reaction time has been estimated to be twice that of an Olympic athlete, if not faster. Furthermore, I have not prepared any countermeasures specifically designed for fighting a Trump of her breadth of ability. If I had attempted a confrontation, my odds of success were virtually zero."

Hannah shrugged uncomfortably. "Director Tagg still —"

"Director Tagg has allowed his paranoia to dictate department policy," Colin cut across her. "Despite numerous opportunities and access to a power that would make it trivially easy, she has given no indication of any desire at all to subvert or suborn any member of the Protectorate or Wards. Director Tagg's suspicion is unfounded. In fact, it borders on delusion."

"Colin," said Hannah, "she walled the city in."

"And? Are they still there?"

"Well, no, but —"

"Has she made any demands of the government, either of Brockton Bay or the United States?"

"No, but —"

"Has she extorted money or favors from the citizens of the city?"

Hannah sighed. "No."

"Has she attempted to establish her own system of law and order?"

"No."

"Has she disrupted the economy of the city through direct action?"

"No."

"Director Tagg is, as the saying goes, jumping at shadows," said Colin. "His actions with regards to Apocrypha have been counterproductive from the very beginning and based entirely on his own imaginings of her character and motivations. And now, his unwillingness to extend even the basest modicum of trust has driven the most powerful Trump on the East Coast from the PRT and Protectorate."

For a long moment, Hannah was silent, and Colin went back to eating his breakfast. Somehow, it wasn't quite as flavorful as it had been before, but his stomach was still protesting for food, so he continued eating.

It wasn't that he didn't understand her point. Being entirely fair, the castle walls that had risen so suddenly to surround the city had alarmed him, too, at least at first. He himself had started assuming the worst.

The difference was, he was willing to believe in the innate heroism of the girl who had slain Leviathan, the same girl who had tried, with every fight she'd ever been in, to avoid the killing blow, even when no one would have blamed her for it. The girl who had proven to him, time and again, that although she might stumble, all she wanted was to be a hero.

That had been more than enough to extend her the benefit of the doubt.

"Maybe you're right," Hannah admitted at length. "But whatever his flaws, Director Tagg was assigned as Piggot's replacement for a reason. We don't have to know what it is to trust that it exists."

Colin didn't reply.

Did they, he thought later as he walked the halls back to his secondary lab. Was it as simple as believing that there was an agenda behind Tagg's placement and they need only trust in it and follow orders? Were they just supposed to assume that the higher ups in the PRT and the government had weighed all of the available information and come to an informed decision regarding who would be best suited to take over for Director Piggot during her convalescence?

No, Colin decided as he entered his lab. No, because if the Paige Mcabee trial had proven anything, it was that even those who were supposed to make unbiased policy decisions based upon the common good were perfectly capable of disregarding, if not the letter, then the spirit of the law and precedent for the sake of making a point or pursuing a political agenda. Master powers especially, it seemed, had a tendency to make people abandon norms and listen to their worst instincts rather than apply logic and common sense.

Just following the rules and the regulations did not a hero make. There was more to it than that, an essential element that turned a law enforcement officer with powers into a hero.

"Good to see you back, Colin," a voice chirped from the monitor on the wall.

"Dragon," Colin greeted simply.

"Good morning to you, too," she replied cheekily.

"Ah, good morning."

"Has anyone told you the news, yet?" she asked.

Colin, halfway through pulling off the standard issue PRT shirt he'd been forced to wear while in quarantine, paused. "News?"

"Well, I guess you can't really call it news when it happened almost three days ago," she said coyly.

He grunted. "I've been otherwise occupied for the last three days."

She giggled a little. It wasn't a particularly funny joke, but he appreciated her willingness to indulge his anemic sense of humor.

"A woman tentatively identified as Christine Mathers was turned in to the Boston PRT about twelve hours after you booked Valefor."

His brow furrowed. "Mathers?"

"According to the hero who brought her in," said Dragon, "Christine Mathers, alias Mama Mathers, was the anti-Thinker asset employed by the Fallen to protect their largest and most radical cell, the Mathers. Elijah Mathers, alias Valefor, is supposedly her son."

"Apocrypha," Colin muttered.

Tie up a loose end, indeed. Perhaps he shouldn't have been so surprised that she managed to do it all on her own so quickly. She had a certain tendency towards efficiency once she put her mind to something.

"The independent hero who turned her in was Apocrypha, yes."

Wait a moment — "Was? Christine Mathers was the anti-Thinker asset?"

"According to Apocrypha, Mathers' Corona — both Gemma and Pollentia — were destroyed beyond recovery, rendering her an ordinary human," said Dragon. "Several brain scans were taken to verify it, and there's a network of small, empty spaces throughout her temporal, parietal, and occipital lobes. Since cognitive tests haven't shown any signs of sensorimotor deterioration, the conclusion right now is that these gaps are where her Corona was before she was…depowered."

"Her Corona were removed?" Colin asked.

"With a biology manipulation power, or so Apocrypha said."

Biological manipulation? Could she… No. It was far too convenient, considering who Apocrypha was friends with. In fact, the Dallon family's internal feud with their younger daughter now made so much more sense than it originally had.

"Panacea's threat rating may need to be adjusted," he muttered.

"You think Panacea was the one who removed Mathers' Corona?"

Colin shook his head. "It's the logical conclusion to make, given the evidence. While it isn't entirely out of the question that Apocrypha might have access to such a power herself, it's far more likely, given her friendship with Panacea, that Panacea herself has simply misled us and the public at large regarding her limitations. Were there any signs of an incision on Mathers' head?"

"None. She had several bruises and a few marks from whatever was used to restrain her, but the former were on her torso and extremities and the latter faded within half an hour of her arrest."

Not definitive, considering Apocrypha's healing powers, but Apocrypha's answer was perfectly misleading without needing to lie at all. After all, she hadn't said that it was her biology manipulation power, had she?

"How does Boston's PRT intend to handle her prosecution?"

"She'll be tried as a parahuman supervillain," said Dragon, "but unless her powers miraculously resurface, it's likely she'll be sentenced to a simple maximum security prison, if she's convicted. I haven't heard what they plan on charging her with, yet."

Made sense. No point throwing her into the deepest, darkest hole they could find (the Birdcage) when she didn't have any powers that would warrant it. That would simply be base cruelty.

"And the other Fallen?"

"Still in the infirmary," said Dragon. "I think the DA will likely push for the Birdcage for Valefor, although the others may get lighter sentences."

Better than they probably deserved. The Fallen weren't, perhaps, the worst of the worst Earth Bet had to offer — that honor was held by the likes of the Slaughterhouse Nine and Nilbog — but they were a parasite that fed on the lowest moment of people already suffering. Kidnappers and rapists who had stolen away more than one Ward to be a part of their "family," and who now had escalated to outright murder in the name of their "gods."

He could only hope that, with the two Mathers powerhouses out of the way, the local PRT and Protectorate divisions could clean up the ones left. Take out the rest of their clan of cultists.

Colin grunted.

"Good," he said. "Now, let's get back to the Longinus Project. I've had three days to consider the issues we were running into, and I think I may have found a solution for the venting problem."

In hindsight, Dragon's silence should have tipped him off. She was always eager to "talk shop" with him, as it were, and the lack of comment or excitement at the prospect of working on their new anti-Endbringer system should have been a very clear sign that something was wrong.

His access permissions to the schematics file being rejected were even clearer.

"What?"

Colin's brow furrowed. Perhaps he had entered his credentials incorrectly? Three days of isolation may have rattled him more than he'd thought. He put his fingers back on the virtual keyboard and typed again.

Access denied.

"I'm sorry," Dragon said quietly. There was something in her voice that he could only call regret. "All of your files and Tinkertech proposals from the last three weeks have been placed under administrative hold, pending review."

Something in Colin's gut twisted.

"That's supposed to be for new Tinkers whose powers or specialty haven't been tested," Colin protested. "I haven't been subject to that rule for over ten years. Who authorized that?"

It wasn't really a question, or at least not one really he needed to ask. The number of people who could place an administrative hold on the leader of the local Protectorate branch was vanishingly small. The number of people who would without notifying him beforehand was even smaller.

Dragon answered him anyway. "Director Tagg. He cited concerns of Master-Stranger influence and put a hold on all of your projects, to be lifted when the results from your screening came back clear."

More punishment, in other words. It wasn't enough to shut him into quarantine for half a week, completely deprived of any method of relieving the urge to tinker, Tagg had to take it a step further so that it was absolutely, one-hundred percent clear that this was all punishment for letting Apocrypha walk away unmolested that night.

Either you get in line or I'll make you miserable until you do, Colin thought. Is that what you're trying to tell me, Director?

It was heavy handed, but everything about Tagg's actions regarding Apocrypha was just as much so. A degree of caution was not entirely unwarranted — Colin himself had been wary of her in the aftermath of Khepri and the Echidna Incident — but there was a point where caution became paranoia, and paranoia led to unreasonableness. Taylor Hebert was not perfect, but anyone paying attention could see her earnest desire to do good. To be a hero.

Acting on a suspicion, Colin tried to pull up the case files on the Disintegrator, the PRT's rather unimaginative name for the perpetrator in the spate of murders where the victims had been torn apart with increasingly fine precision. Victor and Othala had merely been the first; a number of others had slowly been added to the list, including what was suspected to have once been Alabaster and several members of the Merchants.

Access denied.

"And my access to the Disintegrator case?" he asked.

It was formality. He already knew the answer.

"You've been removed from the case," Dragon said, "as well as all other active cases, pending review and the results of your screening. I'm afraid I've been forbidden from giving you any details on any progress made by the investigation team."

Colin's lips thinned. Something ugly churned in his gut. He couldn't give it a name.

"I see."

Tagg was willing to go this far? No, a stupid question to begin with. Tagg's behavior itself made it evident exactly the lengths to which he was willing to go in the throes of his paranoia. His pettiness and willingness to use and abuse his authority in order to achieve his desired aims made it clear that something like this should have been the obvious result.

The man had done everything he possibly could have to drive away the most powerful cape on the Eastern seaboard, someone who had killed an Endbringer. What was the leader of the local Protectorate team compared to that?

Even if that hero had a stellar record going back over a decade.

"Colin…"

"Dragon," he interrupted, "I'd like to be alone, at this time."

She hesitated. That she cared enough to hesitate only made it worse.

"Colin, I'm not sure…"

"Dragon."

She hesitated a moment longer, and then was gone. He was alone.

His hands were trembling. He blinked down at them. Unusual. Why would they be trembling?

Colin took in a ragged breath. It came out as a long, shuddering sigh.

Sadness? No. This wasn't something so pedestrian and silly. What was there to be sad about? This, all of this, it wasn't sad, it was… was…

Colin struggled for a moment with the right word to encapsulate the storm brewing in his gut.

Frustrating. Infuriating. Yes. That was better. More accurate. He wasn't sad. He was furious.

Not, necessarily, at the actions themselves. Piggot would have done something similar, if she was inclined to punish him for a mistake or for stepping out of line. His understanding of the office politics of a law enforcement agency like the PRT and Protectorate was such that something of this line was not an unusual method for an administrator to punish subordinates. Even as the leader of the local Protectorate, he was still legally subordinate to the director of the local PRT.

But Piggot would have said something. She would have been direct, up front. She would have called him into her office and told him exactly what she was doing and why. She would have done him the courtesy of explaining it, face to face.

Moreover, she would have understood that his decision was the best course. That provoking such a powerful cape needlessly and trying to arrest her by himself, underequipped and utterly outmatched, would have been foolhardy at the very least.

Piggot would not have driven Apocrypha away in the first place.

That, he realized, was what made him angry. Tagg's stupidity and paranoia had needlessly driven away a powerful cape who had been perfectly willing to accept PRT and Protectorate authority so that she could be a hero. And beyond that, the stupidity of the leadership in Washington had put Tagg in place to make that happen.

Illogical. Nonsensical. Taylor Hebert had been cooperating and integrating into the Wards smoothly. The expected rough edges from an independent becoming part of a larger team were being softened. What had driven them to put a director in place who would drive such a powerful cape to quit?

Stupidity. Paranoia. Of a fifteen-year-old girl. It would sound like a bad joke if only it was funny.

And now this. Punishing him for making what anyone with sense could have seen was the right decision. Punishing him for knowing his limitations and when to pick his battles. Punishing him for exercising his better judgement.

Punishing him to make a fucking point. As a power play, a way of reminding him of his place.

You are my soldier. You do as I say, or else.

"No, Director Tagg," said Armsmaster lowly, "I do not."

If the leadership in Washington could not trust in his judgement, then he could not trust in theirs. If James Tagg did not trust his judgement, then he could not trust Tagg's. If there was no trust between them, then he could not do his job.

And when the leadership of your organization prevented you from doing your job, even seemed uninterested in it, there was only one recourse left for an employee.

Armsmaster tapped the interactive table in front of him, pulled up a document, and filled in the header with the proper details and CCs.

To James Tagg, Director, Parahuman Response Team, East-Northeast Division, he wrote.

At this time, having considered the situation at hand and the pattern of behavior evident from local leadership and determined my future employment by the Parahuman Response Team to be untenable, I hereby tender my official resignation, effective immediately, for the following reasons…

— o.0.O.O.0.o —

It was another week before Apocrypha got into contact with him. A week of getting his affairs in order and finalizing his resignation, both as leader of the Protectorate and from the Protectorate itself. A week of fielding calls and visits from friends and colleagues trying to convince him to stay or asking why he was leaving. A week of fighting with the PRT's legal team about the degree to which his own damn armor and weapons belonged to him.

The winning point, of course, was who would wear and maintain it if he left it with the PRT? Kid Win had neither the size nor the experience necessary to field it.

The most difficult part was Dragon. She did not, like the others, attempt to convince him to stay. She did not beg him to reconsider, telling him of the long and respected career he was sacrificing, or ask him to take some more time to think things through before deciding on his course of action. She just looked at him when next he saw her, a little sad and a little somber.

But most of all, she seemed to understand.

Armsmaster hadn't quite understood what to do with that. It sparked a strange…something in his chest that was hard to identify. An urge to do whatever it took to take the sadness out of her smile.

Even so, his mind was made up. He couldn't turn back, now.

That was why, when his phone chimed midmorning on June the sixteenth, he snatched it up as quickly as he could. The text he'd received contained only two words and a short string of numbers: The Docks. 1800

Cryptic, but also abundantly clear.

So, later on that day, Armsmaster suited himself up in casual clothes and drove out to the Docks on his personal motorcycle. His armor and halberd, designed to compact down for easier storage, were packed into the carrying case he'd built specifically for that purpose and attached to the back. A convenient method of transporting what, to other Tinkers, would require a truck or a moving van.

He rode his bike in, passing through the worst of Leviathan's wrath, and eventually made his way towards the abandoned, rundown pier that, in hindsight, should have been destroyed during the attack, and yet was miraculously still standing. The area was deserted and abandoned, and off in the distance, bricks aglow in the light of the setting sun, Apocrypha's castle sat.

The "kickstand" (it was really quite a bit more than that, but the one time he had tried to explain it to Miss Militia, she had shaken her head and admitted her cluelessness before he could even really get started) shot out and kept the bike perfectly level as he swung his leg off of it and dismounted. With one hand, he reached out and grabbed the case containing his armor, even as the other locked up his bike and his eyes and head swiveled up and down the coastline, looking for a sign of someone, anyone, amongst the vast stretch of dilapidated buildings and discarded trash.

She appeared almost as if from thin air between one blink and the next, almost like she'd slid into being in the fractional delay between his eyes' saccades. His brain immediately jumped to the different ways she might have accomplished it — a Mover power for teleportation, a Stranger power to prevent him realizing she was there, or even a Shaker power that bent light to render her invisible — and he had to steer his thoughts away from theorizing before he let himself get lost in possibilities and Tinkertech daydreams.

"You're here," she said simply.

"You said there was a part for me, if I wanted it," he replied simply. "I want it."

Apocrypha nodded like it was that simple. Maybe it was.

"That I did." She told him, "The others are already inside. We should get going." Her gaze slid momentarily to his bike. "You might want to bring that with you, too. This area of the Docks isn't exactly the most crime-free, at the moment."

He grunted. "I pity the fool who tries to vandalize it."

Her lips quirked to one side and she rolled a shoulder. A careless shrug. "Alright, then."

She held out one hand, and he took it with the one of his own that wasn't holding the case containing his armor. She pulled him forward —

And suddenly, they were standing in the courtyard of her castle, as empty as that pier in the Docks had been.

Her hand left his and she jerked her head towards the towering keep.

"Everyone else is in there."

He nodded, and she turned; he fell into step behind her as she led the way, their footsteps echoing off the hallways as the sandy yard transformed into brick and stone.

The scope of her power became all the more impressive the further in they went. He hadn't considered it before, when last he'd been inside this castle, but without the distraction of other people, it was hard not to notice it, now, the expertly laid brickwork, the geometrically perfect hallways, the fine detailing in the woodwork and the tapestries. Powers were incredible, but imagining that she had created this castle in its entirety in the span of what was realistically a grand total of about a week…

Armsmaster eyed the back of her head critically.

It might not be possible for her to do the essential work of laying the foundation for modern electrical wiring and indoor plumbing, but even so, how long would it have taken her to build an entire city completely from scratch?

When they came to the center of the keep, the large, circular room filled with banners and heraldry around that large, round table, five others were already sat around it, all in civilian garb. When they saw him come in, Dennis McKellan — Clockblocker — and Missy Biron — Vista — both startled, mouths falling open. Tattletale's eyebrow rose and Panacea blinked, nonplussed, but Danny Hebert took it in stride, perhaps not understanding exactly who he was looking at.

Armsmaster glanced at each of them, and then at the table, where sat the rings she'd once shown him and an ornate golden cup.

"There's only six of us," he commented.

"Our Round Table is incomplete," Apocrypha answered. She walked around the table and took the seat between Tattletale and Panacea. "We'll fill out the rest of our ranks as and when we can. When we find those worthy of our trust to sit among us."

Armsmaster nodded — it made sense, when one considered the relative youth of this entire endeavor — and took a seat of his own, directly across from hers.

"Holy shit," Clockblocker was muttering.

"Let me begin by addressing the first and most obvious question," said Apocrypha, drawing attention back to her. Her face was bare, but the rest of her costume was in place; compared to the rest of them, she looked more regal, more professional. "In front of each of your seats, you'll find a ring — no, don't pick it up, yet, they're not finished. Each of these rings is designed to do exactly the same thing: allow the person wearing it to temporarily access the powers and abilities of a Heroic Spirit."

Tattletale jolted. "Wait, you don't mean —"

Apocrypha nodded. "Exactly. Each of those rings will allow you to use a facet of my power."

A ripple of shock went through the table. Wide-eyed, Armsmaster looked down at the unassuming band of gold, marveling at the idea that something so simple would, when it was done, allow him to share in Apocrypha's Trump power.

This was… Yes, definitely a game-changer. Trumps that could lend out powers to others existed, and so too did Trumps that could gain a selection of powers for themselves. He had not yet heard of one who could do both, let alone do so by imbuing those powers — or the access to them — into an inconspicuous piece of jewelry.

"Hang on," said Clockblocker, "you mean that these rings… They'll let us do what you did against…against Leviathan?"

"Essentially? Yes," said Apocrypha. "There'll probably be some…limitations, I think, and I'll have to build in something to act as a buffer for the hero's ego —"

"Wait," Vista interrupted, "limitations?"

Apocrypha didn't answer right away. Instead, Tattletale leaned forward. "You remember the Echidna Incident?"

A flinch rippled around the table in all of those who did. Armsmaster managed to keep his limited to a tightening of his lips.

"There's a lot of mystical mumbo jumbo that goes right over my head," said Tattletale, "but you remember how Taylor collapsed at the end?" Cautiously, Vista nodded. "That's because she used too many heroes too much too quickly. And that's after she had four months to stretch her legs, so to speak, and get used to carrying them around."

"Hosting a Heroic Spirit inside your body is dangerous," Apocrypha picked up. "For a lot of reasons. For one, it's like pouring hot water inside a cheap rubber balloon. You're the balloon, in that case. What do you think happens if you try to stuff a gallon into a balloon that's only designed to hold a cup?"

Vista looked faintly green.

"That's only half the problem," Apocrypha continued grimly. "Do you remember Khepri?"

At the Wards' confused looks, Armsmaster clarified, "The hero she used during the Echidna Incident with the Master power."

Their heads jerked back towards her. She nodded.

"And Armsmaster," she said, "do you remember the first thing I said to you on that first night, when you found me?"

He answered her with a solemn nod.

It wouldn't even be an actual fight.

"A Heroic Spirit is something far beyond you and me. When you share your body — and more importantly, your head — with something that is older, stronger, and simply more than you are, what do you think happens?"

"You get taken over," Armsmaster said solemnly.

The way Siegfried had started to during that fight with Lung, and the way Khepri had midway through the fight with Echidna. Battery had quietly brought Apocrypha's concerns of mental contamination up with him shortly after Leviathan — an issue he'd known about, on some level, but hadn't quite understood the true seriousness of.

He hadn't been able to do anything except resolve to keep a close eye for drastic changes in personality. There wasn't much else he could have done, when the source of the problem was her own powers, and he was not so much a fool as to attempt to forbid her using them.

"That is what I have to manage, before I can finish these rings," Apocrypha said. "I have to find a way to fit the most important parts of that gallon of water into just a cup, and I have to put a wall up between you and the Heroic Spirit of your ring to keep them from taking you over, intentionally or not."

"You're talking about them like they're people," Vista said shakily.

"Because they are."

Surprisingly, it was Panacea who said it, this time.

"You'll see it for yourself the first time you use your ring and do an Install," she went on. "But each and every Heroic Spirit was, is a person. They have thoughts, feelings, regrets and wishes… They're not just…just collections of power shaped like characters out of a legend, they're…"

She struggled with the words, like she couldn't quite figure out exactly how to say what was in her head, and her face twisted with frustration as she trailed off.

Armsmaster understood her difficulties. He still had some trouble wrapping his head around the idea of what was basically the mythological Valhalla actually existing. It was simply harder to argue the point when he'd had the chance to talk with Jeanne D'Arc and King Arthur, even if it had been with a degree of separation.

"The rings aren't the main reason we're here, right now," said Apocrypha, changing the subject. She leaned forward, resting her elbows on the table. "If you have any questions about them, I can answer them later on. For now, there's something much more important that we need to discuss. Our mission statement, if you will, or part of it, at least."

She took a deep breath. Everyone at the table sat closer and leaned in, as though hanging on to her every word.

"In two years, the world's going to end," she said. "And we're going to be the ones to end it."

Dead silence greeted her. Armsmaster stared, not quite sure what to make of it, because it simply didn't make any sense. The idea of Apocrypha championing Armageddon… it just didn't fit. But none of the others appeared to have any better idea what was happening, because they all looked absolutely confused, too.

"Oh man," said Tattletale, guffawing, "you even had me going for a second there! Geez, that was terrible!"

Apocrypha smiled sheepishly. "Sorry. That was a bad joke."

A scattering of uneasy laughter answered. Vista and Clockblocker both looked at Armsmaster, as though looking for some cue about whether or not they were supposed to find it funny. Armsmaster didn't, and he wasn't sure what the punchline of the joke was supposed to be in the first place.

"Jesus fucking Christ," Panacea muttered.

Apocrypha took another deep breath. "Alright," she said. "Context."

The table fell silent again.

"According to a very reliable precog," she said solemnly, "a catastrophic event is going to occur sometime in the future. The timeline on that event fluctuates. Depending on certain factors, it could be as soon as two years and as late as twenty. In Khepri's timeline, this event was called Gold Morning. It killed millions — if not billions — of people and rendered Earth Bet all but a barren wasteland. Great Britain was wiped off the map. The East Coast was decimated. The entire planet became almost uninhabitable."

She took in a slow breath through her nose. Her eyes, cold and dead, rose to look at Armsmaster, and he was struck by the sudden sense that she was looking through him.

"Gold Morning started," she went on, "when Jack Slash convinced Scion that he would be happier as a mass murderer than he was as a hero."

Shock rippled through the table.

"Scion?" Danny Hebert choked out.

"You're joking," said Clockblocker.

"The first thing he did was wipe the British Isles off the face of the Earth," Apocrypha said. "After that… It was five days of frantically throwing everything we could at him. And watching him walk through it all like none of it mattered."

"But he's a hero," said Vista. "The hero! The first! He's been around since powers were even a thing!"

"And you don't think maybe that means something?" Tattletale asked pointedly. But she was white-faced and shaken, too. "Dude's been flying around for thirty years, putting out fires, rescuing cats from trees, nonstop. Everyone has a breaking point."

"But it's Scion!" said Clockblocker, like that meant something. And maybe it really should have. Scion might not have been the most reliable hero — in fact, he seemed to have no sense for priorities or for timeliness — but he'd been a constant heroic presence for so long that he'd become more a fact of life than anything else.

It seemed almost impossible that he could become a villain.

"No matter what we do, Gold Morning is inevitable," Apocrypha continued solemnly. She didn't even turn to look at the others, just kept staring straight ahead. Straight at Armsmaster. "We can look for stressors and triggers and systematically remove them, if we want. If we do that and play the long game, then we can delay the end of the world for maybe another twenty years."

Twenty years… If she was right and Scion's turn to mass murder was inevitable, then twenty years would be a significant amount of time to prepare for that fight. Countermeasures, contingencies, plots and plans, traps and tricks — there was much that could be done in that sort of timeframe.

But…

"You don't want to wait that long," he concluded.

"Legend, Eidolon, you, me — we'd all be well past our prime," she confirmed for him. "And in that amount of time, with the Endbringers whittling away at us? We'd have lost too much and too many people. Any victory would be pyrrhic at best."

Armsmaster worked his jaw.

The idea should have been ludicrous. Even the thought of considering something so impossible as Scion turning to mass murder and genocide was utterly and completely surreal, like something out of a fever dream or a hallucination than reality.

But.

There was the problem. The knowledge Apocrypha had gained from her alternate future self, from Khepri, had been right. Not simply about the minor things, such as the existence of his algorithm for predicting the Endbringers or the lie detector in his helmet, but about something as major as the attack by Leviathan. An Endbringer, who was supposed to be invisible to the standard forms of Thinker precognition.

Then, this came down to a simple question, didn't it? What was he willing to put more faith in? A flying golden man who had only ever spoken once and performed random heroic acts throughout the world without any regard for scale, or the girl who, though flawed, had spent the last few months trying her best to be a hero worthy of the name?

Some part of Armsmaster felt he should be ashamed that the answer didn't come to him immediately and easily.

"Would it be possible," he began, "for you to share Khepri's memories of Gold Morning with us?"

Apocrypha didn't even hesitate. "Yes."

"Wait," Clockblocker said a little hysterically. "Just wait a minute. Even… Even if you're right and Scion does turn out to be a bad guy and does all of this horrible stuff… He's fucking Scion! The strongest cape in the world! Endbringers run away from him and you're talking about trying to face off against…against that?"

"If she's right," said Vista quietly, "do we have a choice?"

"Not really," said Tattletale. "End of the world kinda means end of the world, you know? Either you fight it or give up. Your odds aren't super great, either way."

"You're taking this awfully well," Vista accused her.

"That's because I've been expecting something like this for a while." She jerked a thumb at the girl next to her. "She's really not as great at keeping a secret as she thinks she is. I've been waiting for a bomb like this to drop for over a month."

"You didn't think to say anything?" Panacea spat at her.

Tattletale's trademark grin stretched over her face. Even Armsmaster could tell it was colder and more humorless than usual, and he hadn't had the dubious pleasure of seeing it more than a handful of times.

"Would you have believed me if I did? All I had was a vague doomsday scenario, and even that I wasn't a hundred percent on."

Panacea's mouth snapped shut. She looked like she'd swallowed something particularly sour.

"But still!" Clockblocker said. "Scion! I was scared shitless just having to fight Leviathan and now you're talking about…"

He looked at Apocrypha, expression anguished and pleading.

"Dennis," she said gently, "I'm not asking you to pledge your life to the cause. Everyone here right now is here because I trust them and I believe they have what it takes." Clockblocker's face twisted and looked even more pained. "If you don't think you can do it, you don't have to. If you change your mind later? I'll welcome you back."

She swept her gaze to each and every person there.

"That goes for all of you," she said louder. "Right now? None of you owe me anything. You haven't made any oaths. You haven't accepted the ring that would mark you a member of this Round Table. If you think you can't do it or if you just want some time to think it over, then no one here is going to stop you from standing up and leaving."

She spread her arms out.

"This isn't just about Scion," she went on. "What I want to do with this organization is going to span a whole lot more than just him. I'm not going to judge you if you don't think you can dedicate yourself to something this big, especially when I'm dumping all of this on you right now." She pulled her hands back in, folded them on the table. "But once it's time to commit, be ready to commit. I'm giving this my all, and I'm not going to expect anything else from the rest of my team."

A long moment of silence greeted her. Eyes darted about, checking for the reaction of the rest of the group. Several times, Vista, Panacea, and even Danny Hebert looked at Armsmaster's stony expression like they were waiting for him to speak first.

All except for Clockblocker, who Armsmaster watched closest. A war played out over his face — rapidly, he cycled between anger, fear, guilt, self-loathing, uncertainty. Eventually, his head dropped and he couldn't seem to bring himself to meet Apocrypha's eyes. Every time he tried, he looked down again just as quickly at his hands, which were clenching and unclenching, his knuckles so stark a white that they stood out even against his already pale skin.

The entire table seemed to be waiting on him. Not just Apocrypha, who was watching this with a strange expression that Armsmaster couldn't quite place but was tempted to call empathy, but Tattletale and Panacea and even Danny Hebert. Even Vista, whose brow was furrowed in something like concern.

It wasn't that Armsmaster couldn't understand some of his struggle. If he was young and inexperienced, if he hadn't had over ten years of uphill battles and fights to the death? If he hadn't had to face down the likes of Leviathan and Behemoth and the Simurgh three or four times a year for the past decade? He might have just as much trouble.

And even still, the idea of having to face down Scion was daunting.

Suddenly, Clockblocker jumped out of his seat, head hung and lips drawn into a miserable line that wobbled even now. His fingers were curled tight over the lip of the table, so tight that they looked completely bloodless.

"I… I'm sorry," he told her helplessly. He didn't seem capable of lifting his head. "I just… This is…"

Armsmaster shifted. No, he'd been looking at this all wrong, hadn't he? The young man in front of him wasn't Clockblocker, cocky and confident, a jokester who used his humor to lighten the mood of a sometimes oppressive atmosphere. This was Dennis McKellan, still a boy not yet out of high school, faced with the weight of a decision that perhaps no one his age should have to think about.

He was in over his head. Of course he would struggle with it.

"I understand," said Apocrypha. "And if you ever change your mind? Your spot's still open."

He looked desperately like he wanted to say something, chewing on his bottom lip as though barely holding himself back, and then he turned and fled at a brisk walk. Vista looked very much like she wanted to get up and chase after him — to bring him back or join him, Armsmaster didn't know.

He wouldn't have blamed her. She was even younger, had even more of a reason to leave.

Apocrypha looked at the rest of them expectantly. "Everyone?"

There was another moment of silence that stretched. It was as though no one else wanted to break it, to be the first to join or the next to leave.

Finally, Tattletale laughed. "You're not getting rid of me that easily!"

And as though that was a lid being taken off a boiling pot, everyone else followed.

"And if I left the two of you alone, you'd probably get yourselves killed," Panacea drawled. Her knuckles were white and her hands were clenched tight, but her voice was strong.

"W-well, I always did want to do something big as a hero," said Vista uncertainly. "I guess… Fuck it, sign me up."

Danny Hebert looked like he had a lot he wanted to say; as the man most out of his depth, there was undoubtedly a lot he wanted to know, a lot of issues he wanted to address.

Instead, he smiled a wan smile and said, "I'm with you."

Even Armsmaster didn't miss the part he didn't say: Even though I'm the one here with the least to offer.

Finally, she turned to Armsmaster expectantly. He held her gaze for a long moment, and then inclined his head.

"If you're right," he said deliberately, "and Scion will turn on us, then the only thing I can do as a hero is join you and stop him."

He wouldn't be Armsmaster if he didn't.

Apocrypha smiled.

"We'll need to come up with a proper name for the larger organization, later on," she said. "But for now? Welcome to the Round Table."

— o.0.O.O.0.o —

NOTES

Here. Have another double-sized chapter.

It's tempting to blame Dennis for not being strong enough to face up to something like this when there isn't really much of a choice. But not everyone can immediately jump straight to, "End of the world? Alright, sign me up! Feet first into hell! Whoo!" That doesn't mean he won't change his mind, either, but whether that happens is for later.

Don't have much else to say, so... Up next, Interlude 10.d: Name of God. And after that, the long awaited 10.e: The Good Doctor.

Special thanks to all my Patrons who have stayed with me this far, through all the rocky moments and dry stretches. You guys are the best.

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