Chapter VI - Asunder

[IamLEAM1983]

That made Isaacs look over his shoulder and back at Aspasia. "Hm. Widespread mutations wouldn't be outside of any Nexus' behavior models - the area is well past due for a display of Sigma-Wave Irradiation.
- English, please?" asked Melmoth, which made the doctor roll his eyes. He walked off to what looked like an ad-hoc delousing station and began stripping down his surgical layers, the gloves and face mask went into a marked biohazard bag, soon to be followed by the surgical apron and cap he'd been wearing. A few pumps of a potent-smelling antiseptic soap later, both his biological and cybernetic hands were clean, having been scrubbed down to the elbows. His noise having died down, he opted to answer the Broker.

"Via emissions, mister Othstein - the very things that sustained your noncorporeal form before you opted to cross Magnus' gate and consigned yourself to the tyranny of biology. If the world's nervous system is its network of ley lines and Nexus points, then gifted individuals are its neutrophiles. I've always theorized that balance was something the world could maintain without superhumans if magic weren't quite so readily prevalent, but the existence of people who abuse this still poorly-understood wavelength is a given factor. If action begets reaction, then the first power-hungry Warlock begat the first Archmage, and the first opportunistic super-villain gave rise to the first selfless superhero. Of course, miss McConmara here will dispute my claims of via being poorly grasped, but the classically-trained scientists in North America tend to steer clear of what still happens to have forged so much of our world. I tried to get peer-reviewed essays published while in the detention center, but this country's judicial system has no interest in furthering the cause of Science - especially now."

That said, he headed to what looked like a dingy lounge he and Anton had put together for their short breaks between projects. He'd been wearing a rumpled white shirt and brown slacks underneath his surgical garb, briefly pausing to shake his feet loose from the shoe sleeves he'd forgotten at his feet. Dropping these in a regular trash can, he recovered a threadbare herringbone-patterned jacket, stopped to remove and inspect his glasses and cleaned their lenses. Three didn't like the way the scientist looked, both more than a little haggard and jazzed up by a combination of adrenaline and what probably was a lingering sense of professional passion.

"When's the last time you ate or drank anything, Doctor?" he asked. "If we have to defend ourselves, we need everyone in the group to be freshened up for the day."

Isaacs started to indignantly reply that he didn't have to discuss his personal hygiene habits, but Three cut him off. "We're grabbing a ham croissant, an apple and a water bottle from Ben's, before we leave. I want these items consumed by the time we reach downtown, Rupert. I won't have you crash on my watch."

Relenting, Isaacs followed along.

* * *

Bucky's apartment, if you could call it that, had been converted out of what had been one of the previous owner's private parking garages - basically condo-sized mini-fortresses designed to accommodate two or three luxury vehicles. A little ad-hoc work had made the place livable, but it didn't quite feel like someone's household, yet. Still, this marked the first time in centuries that Shamus had his own counter-tops, fridge, cooking amenities and soundproofed personal space. Eric Clapton's Layla throbbed through the front door just loud enough for the British singer's voice to be made out, and for the clanging of pots and pans to be briefly heard. "C'mon in!" called the Automaton.

Considering Bucky's size, the apartment felt normal - if by normal you meant duplicated stoves and ovens in triplicate. Three mismatched gas ranges had been fired off, the smell of what had to be a solid dozen sunny side-up eggs being poorly ventilated filling the space. He looked much like what Miranda might remember, except for how Neasa had torn up and re-stitched an XXL bathrobe together for him to use. The space felt warm, but the surrounding concrete couldn't exactly dispel the erroneous weather's pall of humidity. The patchwork produced clashing tones of downy fabric, but at least the only spot where the robe looked about ready to snap open was the waistline. There was barely enough pull left for him to put together a tiny and straining knot, which didn't help to cover his outie or to prevent the robe from failing to cover his strangely and painstakingly hammered-out sagging pectorals. The armature's original Japanese craftsmen had, it seemed, been dead-set on making Gorobei Iwata look like some murderous cross between a tengu and a smiling and plump Budai.

For now, Shamus had loosened up as much as he could, having unscrewed his helmet's horns and tossed his epaulets on his still-unmade bed. Carrying his massive plate and a huge jug of coffee, he made his way to the dining area - if you could call it that. A single, big slab of concrete had been set onto a random collection of pillars cut from the same unneeded parking space divider, the whole thing being at a decent height if you were Bucky's size and didn't mind eating while sitting on the ground.

Spearing three eggs on the same fork with two massive and oddly dainty fingers, he eyed the girl. "So - you're 'Spasia's kid, right?"

He chomped down on the eggs and noisily chewed, his single-hinged jaw making a bit of a mess of things before he managed to mash things well enough together to tilt his head backwards and swallow his massive gobbet of half-chewed eggs.

[TennyoCeres84]

Neasa, Abdiel, Meris, and Aspasia followed them back to the common area where Issacs could get some food. All four were glad to be out of the gory examination area and quietly proceeded to there.

"Chances are we'll need to be on our guard. Pitspawn might need to take breaks, but they won't neglect the chance to target their enemies. Also, we'll probably have Mayor Doherty come back with us, if he's not being too obstinate about leaving the area. I'm sure his personality is wearing on Sophia's nerves," Aspasia observed.

Her cool gaze slid over to the doctor. "And she's not going to be happy to see you, Issacs. Given that you obviously took some dryad genetic material to change yourself, she'll likely be defensive about your presence there."

***

"Yeah, Aspasia's my mom. I'm Miranda," the young fauness responded after entering his apartment. She seemed a little shy, having not been involved with the people her parents occasionally collaborated with on investigations. "Mom wanted me to deliver this hat to Mr. Holden," she explained, presenting the reconstructed stovepipe Bucky would likely recognize as his friend's favorite. "Everybody else is off doing other tasks, and Mom wanted to get me out of the apartment. Though, Mr. Drake said that I should have you come with me, since Mr. Holden might not be in the best mood or something."

Miranda looked down at the to be delivered item and shrugged. "Ms. McConmara made it with some abilities of hers, after it had been destroyed, from what I understand," she explained, offering her hand for a handshake. "Pleased to meet you, Mr. Wallace. This is really the first chance I've really gotten to personally meet anybody from Shield. My parents were kind of leery about me being around Holden Hall because the Dictator in the White House has a thing for people with caprine features, and they didn't want me showing up on his radar as a substitute."

[IamLEAM1983]

Rupert snorted. "So I beat back a few carcinogenic strings of DNA with a few alleles from the local Dryad - what of it? I'd be more concerned with what Gregory had me do to him, if I were you," he replied to Aspasia.

A bit like Anton sometimes could, Isaacs had seemingly forgotten how hungry and exhausted he'd been. He'd only just slipped into one of the tower's armored vans and eaten half of his sandwich that his head craned back, his remaining eye almost snapping shut. He didn't snore much, instead looking like his body would've forced fifteen minutes' worth of restoration in one way or another during the day.

"Damn," chuckled Three as they coasted past Tom and Herbert's outer perimeters, "I wish I could clock myself out on black coffee, too."

The war zone proper only began downtown. For long blocks, the group would only hear the forlorn pops of distant explosions, the occasional reverberating roar or angelic shout, along with radios blaring in abandoned cars. The emergency broadcasts had lasted only a few days, the Goat's assumed victory restoring some part of normalcy over the airwaves. If you weren't in an occupied zone, things had mostly returned to Business as Usual. If you lived near the D.C. area, business was most definitely being run as usual. The one catch was that the orders had changed: be complacent, be calm and grateful, and this time of transition would only culminate in shared successes. Rebel, and the gift of peace offered by the conquerors would be rescinded.

The closer they got to the park, the more the Army and National Guard's abandoned efforts became transparent. Empty troop transports blocked lanes, relief tents flapped in the wind with no-one to tend to 

them, still-loaded weapons waited on the asphalt and sidewalk. Pride's orders had been simple: walk away. Walk away, head back to your bases or deployment stations - and keep walking. You'd spot them on the Interstate - soldiers stripped of their gear, kept trudging along by groups of demons who'd forgone the freedom offered by the planar mergers to serve as tireless jailers to the war's losers - possessed bodies leading the living along, tirelessly and cruelly beating whoever lagged behind.

Allocer, however, had a different approach. Hope's new acting mayor had ditched his armor and sword as soon as Pride's victory in Rhode Island had seemed obvious. He favored the same expensive suit cuts as Herbert, but reminded Aidan of Harrison Arkham, with whom Allocer now openly worked. Tall and sturdy, even handsome for one of Paimon's folk, he didn't have the Goat's excess of power to afford him cruelty. Instead, he ruled efficiently, setting demons to task in restoration teams and organizing food drives. He embodied the Prince's hope that the defeated would come to be grateful towards their oppressors: what better way to pacify a defeated foe than to show apparent kindness?

Arthur's people filled in the rest of the picture. Allocer could be cruel, callous or even vain - simply never in public. All he had that the Goat didn't was a margin of added self-control. He wasn't trying to work past his own burden of Pride, unlike Herbert, and simply obfuscated it when circumstances called for more than a meathead with a suit.

The sound of blaring police horns made Drake take a left to avoid them, forcing him to duck into a small web of residential streets to stay out of sight. Seeing front lawns and porches looking utterly untouched felt surreal to him. "I'm guessing Elysium's big assault kind of felt like that back in the day, huh?" he asked the Chimera. He parked the van and climbed out.

"We're going on foot for now - no summons or teleports. The HPD could track these now, thanks to our friends' new arcane loaners..."

That thought made Melmoth sigh. "I wonder how Lowell's doing. It all happened so quickly I'm not even sure she had time to join the resistance. It's probably another reason as to why Holden's so bummed out."

* * *

"Smart thinkin'," groused Bucky around another mouthful of eggs, stopping to pick up a stack of six toasted and buttered bread slices and shove it in his gullet like an oddly-shaped videocasette. Again, his jaw's limitations didn't stop most of the slices from falling out of his mouth from the sides in various states of mechanical mastication, but he settled with picking the bigger pieces back up and shoving them back in. It wasn't as though the five-second rule applied to Automatons, after all. When in desperate need, he'd once gorged himself on wood chips alone and had been none the worse for wear. Toast bits picked up from the table wouldn't pose much of an issue, considering.

"Between you and me, though, I don't think you'd be up for possession. First off, you're too young to have had a taste of his kind o' Pride. You're a kid, kids can be ignorant sometimes or just assume things incorrectly - but you can't be seriously prideful so early on in life. Kids aren't snobs outta some perceived superiority, kids get snobbish or selfish 'cause they don't know any better. I'm no Warlock, but Tom's told me a thing or two about Pride needing someone who would've grown into their accomplishments, more or less. Everything else - the goat features, the horns? That's personal preference, but it doesn't really form the hook he uses to draw people in."

Carefully, almost gingerly, Shamus began using the side of a hand to scoop up the remaining crumbs and egg bits, all to better collect them inside his plate's boundaries. That done, he tilted the plate over his opened mouth, some sort of primitive fan's whine soon being heard revving up, somewhere inside. He effectively Hoovered the remaining fragments, leaving tableware that wouldn't need an extensive amount of cleaning. An almost dainty burp followed, after which the Clank stood up and carefully undid his bathrobe's knot. "Besides," he said, "you've got good influences. I'm sure you don't need to know how your dad talks you up, but he sure as Hell does. Take it from an old farm boy; grit like your mother's and father's polishes up somethin' nice, if you give it time. They've both gone through the brunt of it, all you've gotta do is lap up their experience, soak up their wisdom."

As he spoke, he began to fasten his pauldrons and brought one of his horns back to the dining table. "At least we know Archie's funk isn't spiritual oppression. Herbert came back last evening looking like he'd come close to try and slap some sense out of the poor guy, 'an he insisted he hadn't felt anythin' Eldritch on him. The irony of it all is it's helpin' Herb grow as a person: his Pride's gettin' more manageable by the day. I think what's really hurtin' Arch is how big things have gotten. He's a spy, and spies work in the nooks and crannies. Tendin' to a city was workable enough, but knowin' the country's at stake? Even before livin' here, he always had trouble with ol' Regina's two or three attempts to glorify him, to use his likeness like some kinda Steampunk Captain Britain. Now folks in the apartments are expectin' President Ungulate to be one monocle toss an' one indignant eyebrow raise away from defeat, like Arch is gonna swoop outta' his penthouse with his smokin' jacket on and his rapier in hand, ready t' skewer Pitspawn while balancin' a fez on his noggin."

He scoffed as he set his right horn into place. "Didja know Winston Churchill tried to use his likeness to get Brits to buy war bonds? It pissed him off - he told me he wanted to inspire people, not turn into some kinda caricature for war-time industry. He needs perspective, but I ain't never been the one to give it to him. I'm too close - he won't budge if hard truths come from me."

* * *

A string of particularly foul Hebrew words left Rabbi Isaac Ephraim Horowitz' lips. What had started in full Hassidic regalia days ago was now unfolding for the sixteenth time, only now the concrete mixer's produced heat had rendered the ritual space unlivable for someone with as dour a dress code as a rabbi leading a secretive Kabbalistic rite. The broad-brimmed hat and kippa were both gone, the jacket, vest and robes had all been removed, and the old man's beard now was unbearably itchy. He had desperate flashes of envy towards Xavier and his clean-cut and circumstances-dictated casual attire. Father Curran wore nothing except black slacks, sandals and a short-sleeved white shirt. Not being in office at present, he wasn't under any obligation to wear the collar.

"Isaac," gently reprimanded the priest, "maybe it might help if you included us in the process. My Hebrew is rusty, but I'm sure I could work out what I think you're beseeching upon Him-
- Will you just - it's going to work, this time!" spat the bearded man. "If only we'd had one of the Cohanim with us, we might've had some element of response to draw on, some way to send forth for a worthy soul. Unfortunately for us, the only Cohens and Coens in the tower are Elizabeth's dimwit boy and some Gentile they plucked out of Adams Street! We aren't plucking anything holy out of these two, I can tell you that much!"

Khalid sighed. "Look - do we really need this Cohen Godul character of yours, this channel for some kind of Kabbalah high priest? I'll admit the Qu'ran is limited when it comes to Animate creation beyond Adam and Eve and we have a certain policy towards graven images or imitations of the human form beyond traditional art, but if Aislinn and Tom managed to transsubstantiate a Judicator of the Pit into its own body using old Orcadian rites, I don't think Allah would terribly mind if we deferred to someone with experience in the matter. It's enough that Meris McConmara is an Archmage and that this Lucian Rothchild character is basically holding Reality itself in check around here; we don't need either a Linguistics specialist with a focus on Hebrew or a mathematician to somehow crack God's True Name in numerical form!"

Horowitz wasn't having any of it. He looked back to Jarrah almost murderously, but kept trying to shove more wet concrete in the now-seriously distressed empty mold of some kind of plastic Halloween gargoyle. Ben Parsons had remained quiet until then, and only he had stuck to his office's black sartorial tones. If anything else, he sometimes tugged at his collar and liberally took pulls from a water bottle he was nursing. "We've angels amongst us, Isaac. Angels. The Archangel Gabriel himself warned us about invoking God in the hopes of forcing some sort of restoration of our previous reality - there's far too many good reasons as to why our Maker's true nature and capabilities are left intangible to us mortals. We couldn't be trusted with it.
- Then what am I supposed to charge the shem with?" asked the rabbi. "Oh wait, I know; I'll just ask that necromancer in the club to Voodoo me up a rabbit or a dog or a cat's soul, and then somehow not expect this total disrespect of thousands of years of tradition to totally backfire on us!"

Isaac gave the group an almost bulbous stare. "Do you want us to get hexed? By Yahweh? Because this is precisely how one goes about getting hexed for generations to come!"

That was about fifteen minutes go. After further arguing, one of those creatures the rabbi didn't know whether or thank or curse came forth, paired with someone he simply couldn't understand. Now, the eerily polite being pored over tomes he'd always seen as wasted in Gentile hands, his blind gaze infuriatingly making more sense out of the gilded pages than his decades of fervent prayer, long before the cataclysm had struck. And the girl, the selkie girl - so much like Meris, so strangely proficient!

The truth was that Isaac Horowitz didn't know whether to be flattered or insulted. It didn't help that his peers in the local faiths were extremely accommodating. As for the Toymaker, he was entirely entranced. Not only was this needed, it was fun.

"I am in awe," he told Aislinn, pointing to one of the pages. "Here lies almost undiluted Seraphic script, a distant and antagonistic relative of the Black Script, simply compressed down to mortal mnemonic resolutions! The priesthood alone could not be expected to have imbued golems with life, at least not in accordance with these procedures," he said. "In comparison, your own Orcadian approach is gracefully ad-hoc: perfectly ordered, yet entirely achievable within the means offered to you by the Hebrides' shores. This, in comparison, is a monster of rite and ceremony that makes me wonder how one can expect an etheric transference to even arise out of this!"

The rabbi looked like he needed all of his admittedly slightly swollen sense of importance to refrain from snidely repeating monster of rite and ceremony. Curran obviously felt like he was one of the few adults stuck babysitting a bullish and hirsute infant that just so happened to have something that vaguely approached a form of religious mysticism - an oddly needed asset in these times. As a Catholic, he didn't bother questioning his own faith's mysteries, but he also didn't expect all of them to harbor keys to greater Eldritch phenomena. This, particularly, was fairly new to him.

[TennyoCeres84]

Aspasia sighed thoughtfully as she pondered over the Deputy Chief's fate, since she hadn't been seen around Magnus Tower. "Chances are she's fine. She is a werewolf, after all. However, the HPD might have her on their list of people to catch. She wouldn't have bowed to Allocer's demands and is probably in hiding, striking where she can. If Rendell, as big as he is and whatever state he's in, can stay hidden for three weeks, she's likely doing the same. Of course, she and her daughter might be having to rough it," she mused, pursing her lips grimly.

***

Miranda frowned. "What I know about Winston Churchhill is that he gets a lot of glory as a war leader, but he could act really crappy at times," she commented, then looking down at the tophat. "I don't know if I could accomplish such a thing, but he obviously needs some help. He's lost his home and belongings like a lot of people here, so maybe he needs to be reminded that he's not alone. We all have to be here for each other, not just a select few. I figure Mom wanted me out of the apartment so I wouldn't get stuck in a rut. That sounds like at least part of what's bothering him."

***

Aislinn surveyed the scroll and recalled how big of a ritual the Heiros Gamos ritual was. "With any large ritual, you sometimes have to break it down into smaller steps, rather than look at it as one whole. Otherwise, it can seem insurmountable. As for the spirit that'll go into the golem, you need something that wants to fulfill its intended duty. Rhadamantus had his strong sense of justice to act as his motivation for inhabiting the body we made for him. That'll be both the glue and the programming for what we're wanting. It sounds simple, but that's really what we're needing here."

[IamLEAM1983]

George lightly grunted. "We are in no short supply of deceased or missing, those who would have reason enough to seek a return to a corporeal form; but Tom's offered alternative muddles things. I suspect many of the recently deceased would have chosen to remain in Heaven or are planning to cross through Club Ishtar's Gate once hostilities will have ceased. Monsieur Duvivier is having some trouble drawing forth spirits who are not already a part of Alphonse Biggs' guard - those already committed to our defense."

The rabbi edged in closer. "This isn't just a collection of arcane technicalities, I'll remind you. I need to use one of God's Kabbalistic names, as recorded in this book, to invoke the Maker's will and have Him bestow life onto, well..."

He gestured vaguely at the still-goopy plastic mold. "That. The concrete's cheap, it's taking a long time to set, and I don't want to tear the Halloween decoration we're using as a base apart until I'm sure it'll work. Our protector needs structural integrity, obviously."

George produced low noises as he thought things through. "We may either pluck a lesser spirit and wait for it to fill this body's offered cavity, or considering the circumstances, we also have the option of several entirely willing spirits, many among them so charged with purpose and focus that the passing decades have not affected them as starkly as others."

Imam Jarrah followed along. "You're thinking of Alphonse Biggs. You want to give that man a body, after all he's done."

Gammell frowned, or at least nubs of flesh formed above his nascent eyes. "The man has been dead for decades and he clearly has forged his own penance in refusing to Fall and watching over his grandson's ventures. Yes, Alphonse Biggs was a murderer and a criminal, but I have seen and heard enough to understand he remains a man of principles, even in death. Freed of his own empire, we've seen his moral fiber manifest in an unrestrained manner. He may not have been law-abiding and has certainly committed reprehensible deeds, but he remains a good man by my mark. I say that as someone who has been created in order to spread pain and fear, and who in turn opted to torment those who made me as such. Virtuousness is a regrettably rare gift."

None of the priests looked to be in agreement. Xavier, however, huffed out a breath. "Well, Biggs Senior wasn't Rendell or the Goat, at least. He was good old-fashioned mafia: honorable, straightforward, decent - just given to try and whip the city's seedier elements into shape, to civilize them.
- Mind you," said Father Parsons, "our other option involves plucking the soul of a dead animal out of Limbo and hopefully finding a way to bootstrap it into something approaching sapience quickly enough for it to help repel the next few salvos. I might be a man of faith, but this is one of those instances where I have to confess my skepticism."

* * *

"I can't imagine how it feels for her," noted Three, eyes warily scanning the road ahead as they approached the park from a generally obfuscated area. "She loved her job, still loves her people. A wolf doesn't just abandon its pack strategically; it's probably tearing her up on some level. Add Archie and Anjali, and I figure she's working to somehow reconnect with us when it'll be safe. He had them cut through a few deserted back yards and street corners, eventually stopping at a Pedway stairwell on Adams and Levine.

"Let's start with Doherty first," he said. "That way, if he needs immediate assistance, we won't necessarily have to involve Sophia. Her plate's probably full as it is, anyway."

Underground, the main corridor had been turned into another stretch of impromptu shelter. The surrounding din was one of despair mingling with pig-headed determination, as people either coughed, cried or filled the space with the noise of dozens of conversations. Braziers had been lit out of repurposed trash cans and rubbish bins, the Pedway's stores having been ransacked for every bit of food or comfort to be found. This was another corner that seemingly depended on the Freaks' food drives, hoping the path would eventually be clear for them to try and reach Magnus Tower. At least, that was for those who were opting to stay. Many were discussing plans to leave Hope behind entirely to try their luck somewhere westward or northwards. Canada, as it sometimes did during America's times of crisis, seemed like a good idea for some.

Halfway down the main walkway, Doctor Dickens met up with them, looking distraught. "I'm at my wits' end," he confessed, "I've exhausted all common treatments short of inducting mister Doherty into the family, and I haven't decently fed in weeks. Lucidity is becoming a difficult thing to maintain with my patients, I've caught myself short of handing out cocaine doses to children, so you can imagine how strained my resources are with the mayor..."

He looked back to Aspasia. "I had to call in reinforcements. Doctor Jonathan Crane from my kind's Vienna office has been living with us for the past several weeks. He's old enough to need less blood than I do, and he certainly knows more about developing mutations than I do. You'll see..."

They went down a few side corridors and slipped through a few maintenance areas. One of the emergency stations set aside for sewer and electrical workers came complete with a folding mattress and the bare-bones essentials to set an injured person down. The vampires had added a pillow and some covers, turning it into a makeshift bed. There, weakly groaning, waited Hope's legitimate mayor, his shirt partly undone and stained with old sweat, his tie and jacket long gone, pants draped over a nearby chair. Doherty looked like he didn't know whether to toss the covers aside or to bundle himself up to repress violent shivers. He was sweating profusely and had an unusually pallid tone, dark veins showing around his eyes. His stomach didn't look swollen but it looked uncomfortably plump, as if stuck in a cycle of indigestion. Similarly dark vessels crisscrossed its leathery surface, looking as though the body was doing everything it could to irrigate his gut. Sitting next to him in what looked to be the bare esssentials of his sterile pressure suit, Doctor Crane squeezed a washcloth through his gloved and sealed hands, his voice oddly reverberating thanks to his beak-shaped mask. Vaguely fragrant odors escaped it from slits in the beak, along with the faintest possible hint of supernatural decay.

"I cannot perform X-Rays or scans in these conditions," he explained by way of greetings, "so my diagnosis is limited. Clearly, his stomach lining is the focus of his incurred changes. Something to his limbs and skin is also giving me pause, as I have been unable to draw blood samples. Even the sharpest of my lancets only barely sink into his skin; he seems to have developed an anomalous form of dermal resistance.
- How did it happen?" asked Three.

Doherty groaned. "Demons... went for kids. Ciaran and Lucian were on the front lines - didn't see the breach in time. Sophia was too far back. I acted on impulse... I - tore through one of the tunnels' bigger roots with my teeth, drank some of the sap, threw myself at the bastards... She later told me I ended up swallowing almost pure via... I pulled back, splashed some of the kids with it by accident."

He winced. "I got sick first. They needed a few more days. They're getting better, at least two have powers, now - and I'm not. Getting better, I mean.
- And the demons?"

Another groan. "Frontliners're dead. I killed 'em. Bare hands. Don't know how - it's all a blur."

* * *

Bucky stepped out of the ad-hoc apartment before hooking in his second horn. "Welp, Archie's kind of a rut-prone guy, honestly, what with him bein' brought up all performance-focused like. Knock him out of a good stride and he just sorta flails. I guess it's why he likes me so much: I didn't let people get used to expecting a lot outta me when I was alive, so I could always do my best without feelin' like I had pressure. Neasa might tell you it doesn't stop me from havin' doubts, I'm just a tad less paralyzed by 'em."

He glanced out of his single window and seemingly opted against taking his blade out. "First rule of any good con," he said. "Undersell, then look like you're over-deliverin'. 'Cept when it counts, of course. With Arch and you guys, it always counts."

They made their way topside, Bucky somehow managing the normal elevator cabin ride towards Archie's without making Miranda feel too cramped. "So," he then asked, after a bit of silence, "did your friends make it out alright?"

[TennyoCeres84]

From the walrus' description, Aspasia shrugged and guessed, "How do we know that his resilience to things like needles aren't powers manifesting?"

"It's plausible," Abdiel surmised. "Sometimes, Gifted types can exhibit abilities that aren't that common, much in the way invisibility was given to Ciaran and Nigel."

The group would hear a couple sets of footsteps approaching from another tunnel that fed into the one where Doherty resided. "Ah, so you are here," Sophia said as she ventured closer. Her verdant eyes briefly slid over to Rupert and gained a more dangerous gaze, almost predatory. All in all, she appeared both slightly tired and pushed into looking vaguely more like her wilder cousins from Morgana's court. Ciaran sidled up to her, his facial hair a bit fuller, as though he hadn't had much time to shave. "Hey," he merely said.

The other two selkies were quick to join him and give him a supportive hug before releasing him. The former longshoreman couldn't help but also send a glare at the mad doctor. "Does he really have to be here?" he muttered to his grandmother.

Meris sighed. "Since we need to get to the heart of Doherty's abilities, then yes, he unfortunately has to be here," she responded. The young man didn't seem particularly happy about it, but he let the matter go.

Pushing past her own vitriol toward Issacs, the dryad appeared near Doherty's bed. "Children generally receive their powers quicker because of their age. There's generally less tissue to repair than with older individuals. I also figure some of it is how accepting the individual is to receiving powers in the first place, but I can't tell if that is what is prolonging pain and the manifestation of his powers."

***

Aislinn sighed. "If it was Alphonse Biggs, you'd absolutely want to get his approval before placing him in a shell. You all are aware how spirits can be when forced into a situation they're not keen on, such as with automatons. An animal spirit would at least be more immediately malleable in comparison," she explained. "I'd say get Alphonse here and consult him, see if he'd even be willing."

***

"As far as we know," Miranda replied. "Dame Urakawa managed to get them through the Faerie Gate in time to catch a ride to Eien-no-Yuki, before it got caught off. After that, communication has been intermittent with them, though. I hope they're still okay."

The young fauness turned thoughtful. "Wasn't the whole point of Mom and Mr. Holden going to Eien-no-Yuki to train him to not let him be bothered so much by demons? She didn't tell me everything, but that's what I thought was the gist of the trip's purpose was. Why not try to remind him of that, somehow?"

[IamLEAM1983]

"The only power I've earned is the one the citizens gave me when they elected me!" protested the walrus. That, in turn, left Crane and Isaacs to exchange a glance. "Stubborn," they said, almost in unison.

The geneticist stepped closer. "Alright, mister Mayor - let's find out which parts of you didn't get the memo about sharp objects and penetrative force... Evolution doesn't work by encasing an entire specimen in a defensive trait, some weak points are needed to maintain things such as flexibility. If you'd gone completely tamper-proof, you wouldn't be able to sink your own fingers into your stomach, like you're doing."

After looking his patient over, he grunted thoughtfully. "Well, there's a few ways to go at this," he said. "We can either insert a needle through the corner of one eye, try our luck with the roof of your mouth, or hope that the same goes with you as it goes with far-gone drug addicts. That would leave the space between your toes a tad more tender than elsewhere."

The walrus glared. "Do what you have to - just make it stop!
- You can't rush perfection," conversationally opposed Isaacs. "Besides, if your DNA is busy restructuring itself, there's nothing my tools could do in the immediate. If Nature's willed it so that Hope's rightful mayor would develop abilities and take the fight to the demons, then I couldn't expect to reverse that course. Not without extensive funding, years of research and the kind of equipment I sadly left behind in Paradise, all these years ago...
- I'll pay anything!" seethed the anthro, which left the human cyborg to click his tongue in disapproval. "That's cute," replied Rupert. "I suspect God doesn't have that kind of money. Now lie down straight, tilt your head back and let me work."

The needle that protruded from Isaacs' cybernetic index finger didn't look much bigger than what you would've found at a dentist's office. As he extracted a measure of blood while Wallace uneasily squirmed and moaned with his mouth stuck open, his remaining human eye snapped shut, its brow furrowing. "Yes," he grunted, sounding almost like a quiet Olympic commentator, "new protein structures, seven re-written chromosomal pairs... You were always known as a stress eater, weren't you? Pushing success, failure and duress through your gullet because Mother clearly didn't teach you to manage your emotions..."

His mouth freed, Wallace seethed. "Don't push your luck, Isaacs!"

Rupert looked down on the walrus as if his having been insulted was of no particular concern. "Via always goes for what's most easily exploitable in the moment," he said. "Liches in the making are born in trauma, so their entire organism is up for grabs. Superhumans, especially the heroic types, tend to be born in defining moments. You were probably well aware of the risks incurred, you knew that even if you didn't turn, odds were your body wouldn't just forgive you for marring the primary source of your rare moments of peace - and you only really are at peace when chewing down on something, when burdened with just enough sloshing and half-digested food for the moment's issue to not seem quite as overwhelming as it used to... Quite the sacrifice, considering.
- What in blazes are you getting at, you maniac?!"

Rupert sniffed and sat up. "I'm saying you'll soon be able to chew spent bullets like they're salted peanuts, that common knife thrusts won't ever penetrate your leathery hide, and that your decimating five or six of Pride's more butch front-liners means there's probably some form of enhanced strength in the works. I don't know how long you'll have to keep stewing in your own sweat, but if it's anything like what happened to Ethan Alderan in his youth, you'll suddenly feel like a previously debilitating fever just - broke. It'll simply stop hurting.
- When?!"

Rupert rolled his eyes, while Three nodded. "When you'll accept it, sir. The first few times I used the Lexicon on my own, I wanted to bang my head on the walls. It wasn't normal; I thought it couldn't possibly define me. I resented Anton Azardad for having crippled me - or at least, that's how it felt like. I've had better teachers since, and patient friends. That's changed my outlook. What I have isn't a weapon, it's a tool set. What you have isn't a freakish mutation - it's a means to give back to those people you so obviously care for. I know you've rooted for the little guys for your entire stint as mayor, but I don't think Hope needs a determined mundane at the helm, anymore."

Doherty blinked. "I can't - I'm not supe material; I'm just a retired cop!"

Three smirked at Meris. "We're all just something too, sir. I'm just a dumb jarhead, Meris probably wishes she could've stuck to healing locals and singing to her friends and family in the Orkneys, sometimes. I doubt even Abdiel here consistently thinks of herself as representing Fire as a whole. She's her own person, too - the whole Godly mantle has to fall by the wayside, from time to time. We all start as just something, but life finds a way."

The walrus snorted. "Cute. I doubt you go around quoting Jurassic Park to the handful of other superhuman hopefuls around town. Plus, assuming I'm some sort of bruiser-to-be, I can't just wade through the enemy lines wearing this," he said, gesturing to himself. "They'll tear it all to shreds within moments and then they'll have every opportunity to realize they only really need to stick a knife through my mouth."

Melmoth looked back to Abdiel. "If we had time, I'd know just who to refer you to. Nybbas helped Meris to sell her station to the worst skeptics imaginable..."

Something made him hang. "Wait. We're already underground - we could cut through Obsidian Plaza and go back up near Megiddo, smack-dab in Meris' fortress!
- Why, who's over there?"

The Broker grinned at the walrus while gripping his jacket's lapels. "Only the finest suit-maker this side of Pride, mister Mayor! Nickar applied for residency here, but we ran out of space for the kind of studio and manufacture he wanted to put together. Our best alternative was to hide him and his team away in Meris' fortress, where space isn't a premium and where Pride's had a heck of a hard time making so much as a forward approach. You don't rub up against seventy-two of Hell's best and brightest Socratic demons without an insane amount of preparation - and Pride doesn't have that kind of patience."

* * *

"And how do we do that?" asked Xavier, which made George shrug happily. "Why," he said, "we send for the one among us who is the most capable for this sort of summons, of course. That said, I would also send for the younger Biggs, as well. If his grandfather is to be willed into a surrogate for flesh and blood, then I suspect he deserves to be at least made aware of it."

Horowitz grunted. "You have a point, Gammell," he conceded, after which he took one of his young aides aside for a few steps, switching to murmured Yiddish as he did so. The young boy nodded, keeping himself from taking off in a dead sprint until he was out of sight. The old man nodded back to the Animate. "Levi should be back with your witch doctor and the don in a few minutes."

Curran sighed at those words. "Ephraim, please - make an effort! I know these people's abilities don't run parallel to your faith, but Benedict, Khalid and I think we should welcome outside inputs, at this point. Referring to mister Duvivier as a witch doctor isn't helping things - that'd be the province of Aboriginal healers or Forest trolls from Morgana's side of the Wyldfae. Times have changed, and necromancy doesn't have quite the same stigma it used to. Some of our own dead willingly took new bodies to keep defending us, remember?"

Horowitz grunted. "We didn't need a string of ghouls pitching a tent south of here and calling a blown-out apartment tower Zombietown, either!"

Curran rolled his eyes, briefly kept them pitched upwards and fluttered his lips in a silent prayer. "Zombietown" was an odd result of the current crisis, with demons and reincarnated spirits both claiming shells for themselves and acting as a set of shock troops and raiders in those districts Hell now openly controlled. They only fed from corporeal demonic flesh, but many in Magnus Tower were growing concerned with the effects of this kind of dietary intake. Neither quite human, anthro, dead or even demonic, the local ghouls were starting to show features no other reanimated dead had in the past, from erupting spines and horn-like growths to rudimentary forms of Hellfire control. From Magnus Tower, their own tenement was visible a few miles to the southeast, as a jagged peak of blown-out windows and partially collapsed mortar. The twenty-story tenement building was now only habitable in its lower twelve levels, all of them inhabited by former mortals now gone inhuman and quite happy to stock their larders with smoking chunks stolen from peers of both Allocer and Valefor. At least, their leader was someone Three had realized he at least had a passing connection to: Sergeant Major Michael Duke had been part of Drake's Twentynine Palms training group, had survived the Middle East and served in three other campaigns, only to fall in the early days of America's short-lived attempts at resistance against Pride. Offered the husk of a dead Marine who'd looked like a former linebacker, Duke had resumed his use of his former callsign when leading attacks against Allocer's demon-led HPD forces.

They called him Deadline.

* * *

"We'll see how that goes, I guess," noted Bucky with a shrug. "It ain't so much the demons as, well..."

He hesitated and clicked his tongue. "First, the Goat attacked Arch's pride. It worked. We got him fixed, now he's got an Ego that's both strong enough to withstand punishment and flexible enough to not just Wormsworth us out of the picture. Pride didn't cut it, so the Fiends went for his heart. If he recovers from that and they still feel like attackin' him..."

The Automaton sighed. "Was only books an' baubles, this time 'round. One day, they might figure they're better off pickin' at his loved ones. Us. I don't just mean in the sense that they could go for us - they've been tryin' since the Goat claimed Ephesian's old body. I mean they could get smart about it. Surgical. God knows I've got my weaknesses, and I'll be damned if you aren't yer parents' weak spot. Lucian's got Astra, Mel's got Abdiel, the Lucas kid acts like he's a Gammell fan but the way he looks at Nami ain't foolin' nobody - an' they already took Katherine and Aldergard out..." 

[TennyoCeres84]

Meris smiled at Melmoth as she recalled her personal means of entry to Solomon's palace. "We could go through the door of Sophia's apartment and have it be right there. Though, with the HPD's new portal scanners, it would be safer to take a longer route to get to Nickar and Nybbas," she explained, then glancing over at the fauness.

"I think you should come as well. I think Nybbas would be interested in meeting one of his distant cousins," she admitted.

The former commander blinked slightly, a bit surprised to hear that from the Archmage. "So, he's a Faun then? How far back is he from?"

"He's from the later stock, but I think you might have the chance to trade some talk while he's suiting Mr. Doherty up," she explained.

The older roane looked to the penniped. "How easily can you get up and move about? Neasa could carry you, if need be."

***

"I know political correctness can get rather hairy at times, but consider it this way, Mr. Horowitz," Aislinn suggested. "You've earned your status as a rabbi through decades worth of spiritual training, and Aristide has done the same in his own tradition. Rabbi or houngan, I still think you're both doing God's work regardless of the approach. You wouldn't want someone to refer to you with some crass term or another, would you? Aristide's a good man, and he has the compassion needed for his work. Please remember that."

***

"Then that just means that we have to stick together even closer and protect each other," Miranda mused with a little sigh. "I can fight some. I'm not Mom, but I can fire a gun and throw some solid punches and kicks. I'll protect my parents and whoever else needs my help, however I can," she said with some defiance in her voice.

[IamLEAM1983]

"Do we really have to do this now?" asked the former mayor. "My gut is killing me and you're all standing here, looking all giddy at the prospect of sticking me in a Kevlar three-piece!"

Three pursed his lips together. "We've already discussed how some of that pain is psycho-somatic. You're looking to reject a change in status that you haven't asked for, but no Nexus has ever been known to let people it touched relinquish their gifts. Supes get to toss their capes, not what makes them superhuman. Practitioners can stop working with via, it doesn't make them any less sensitive to it."

Doherty gritted his teeth together as his stomach seized up. "I - augh - was worth a damn as a cop when I worked desk jobs or handled human interest cases. My punching demons doesn't mean I could do it to any two-bit crook, if things got back to normal! The beat was Peter's posting, I was the one who handled mundane weirdness or domestic disturbances!"

Three frowned lightly. "Peter...?
- Smirnov, the very same one who called me as soon as he realized you'd moved into trans-planar immigration, and the only one so far who's wondering what's going to happen with ICE once this blows over and we're looking at horned and winged refugees asking for asylum under the Vienna Accords!"

That left Drake grunting. "ICE got disbanded by the Black Goat three weeks ago; mundane border security or enforcing basic immigration laws doesn't come close to being a priority in his book. Step a foot past Juarez as of the last week and you're either shot by willing participants, possessed by demons or torn apart by corporeal ones. If this does blow over, it'll take years for the country's infrastructure to be fully re-established.
- Why wasn't I made aware of this?"

Doctor Crane handled his best deadpan stare, considering his mask. "You've been slowly mutating in some dingy corner of a former subway station, mister Doherty. I'd forgive others for missing out, in this situation. Still, moving about could do you some good; you'll feel better if you stop fixating on the newness of your state."

The walrus seemed uncertain, then cast a look at Meris and Neasa before laboriously sitting up. He still didn't fit the human standards for healthiness, but as far as anthropomorphic pennipeds were concerned, he wasn't too bad. His scrunched-up shirtsleeves revealed solid biceps and forearms; which wouldn't be much of a surprise if you knew how Wallace tended to thrive in times of crisis. Where others would've used a small detachment of assistants to handle document boxes or piles of folders, he'd always been the type to go stomping in the city's archives on his own, fishing for whatever it is the day's issue required. Even now, his slightly bulging eyes and furrowed brow evoked a bullish and stubborn temper more than they did pain, and he snatched his pants from a nearby chair as though the furniture item had personally insulted him.

"Almost two weeks of canned soup," he muttered, "what I wouldn't give for a BLT sandwich!
- We've got hoagies at the tower," said Melmoth, the walrus spearing him with a look that combined resentment, envy, hunger and sudden lust. "You've got demons, too," he said, "and I've had my fill of those. God knows I'm a glutton, I don't want to come anywhere near anything that might use that against me."

Melmoth blinked. "So, you're aware of...?
- My own personal failings?" snorted the mayor. "Of course I am! No human should have my relationship with food, few anthros could so much as handle it without putting themselves in an emergency room. Food is dependable. It doesn't judge, it doesn't state or add facts to the pile, it's non-partisan, it never lets feelings get in the way - all it does is quell the urge. It's there to be torn open or apart, to taste and carry textures..."

He hopped a bit as he cinched his pants closed, not noticing how his being questioned about his weaknesses had taken his mind off the pain. "What I can't fix, I devour. Then, with all the stomach-quailing and anxieties silenced, I can fix them. I might not want to stick around your kind, mister Othstein, but I'm not afraid of my own demons. I think Gluttony would have a hard time possessing me, despite all appearances. I acknowledge it, so it doesn't consume me. It doesn't mean, however, that they couldn't harm me or others."

He stopped, noting Crane's oddly birdlike stare. "Yeah, I know - all I needed was some reason to leave this bed - let's not make a fuss over it, alright? I've got powers to discover, a wardrobe to fix and demons to kick out of my city!"

* * *

The rabbi grunted. "Maybe you're right; you'd be one of the first few to prove me otherwise," he stated. "Mention the Kabbalah to virtually any other practitioner and you're usually given eye-rolls or some insufferably patient look. Where the entire practice embraced Science's approach the moment the Art was ratified by the Accords, we Kabbalists are bound by our faith. I can't break down my spells the way you or your Magnus fellow could, and that earns us incomprehension. As though magic required someone to turn atheist!"

George kept peering through the Sefer Yetzirah, but still chimed in. "I may not be the one to wear robes, rabbi, but I and a few others do still act in accordance with a Celestial being's intent. The Architect dwells in the laws and motions governing this universe, and His steadying hand serves as a tutor does for a growing plant. God may collect mysteries and more emotional shows of devotion, my own master only asks that we chart our reality's boundaries - all in order to protect them. If we survive this, you may yet see Void Weavers following their first office, clad in the robes that were once theirs."

Ephraim blinked. "If you're not praising the Creator or Lucifer, then what's there to praise?"

The toymaker shrugged. "Order. Control, harmony, entropy - call it what you will. Creators have a sense of their own Creation's destiny. They sense how things should be, as an artist sees through his medium. The Architect senses that God should be allowed to Create freely, and so we serve His intent.
- The Architect," repeated Horowitz. "As in the Freemasons?
- Yes and no," replied George, who looked up from the book. "The Freemasons caught a glimpse of the Architect, of the Void Weavers' sacred charge, and twisted it out of shape to better serve social and political goals. They have stolen a simple truth and clad it in gaudy fabrics, half-Black Tie and half of Egypt's Second Empire - mysticism and hokum for bored aristocrats looking for a means to pat one another's backs for obvious successes that required no special congratulations. Nowadays, they are little more than a boys' club whose notions of cosmic order begins and ends with Christmas raffles and bake sales."

Horowitz chuckled meanly. "Sounds like you've had some experience in the matter.
- In a way," noted George. "The Freemasons were too stolid for some, too afraid of change. I was made by a splinter group of men touched both by Masonic rite and the Mad Arts - the Order of Cosmic Machinists. Their game plan was more ambitious, but would have spelled doom to the London of my youth. I followed along for a time, not knowing any better and being the refined monster they had made me to be... A factory urchin saved me, made me realize I had a soul and something to care for. Liam became my son."

The rabbi stared at George for a second. "Liam, as in Liam Gammell? The first owner for your store that we had a record of, until all Hell broke loose?
- Precisely," noted the toymaker. "I'll admit that I do caress some vain hope of seeing my son walk through Heaven's gate in mister Magnus' club... While I do love his descendants, few of them have accepted me. Having the tower's denizens' greater favor has been a boon, but no matter how much I am made a part of this community, there is something cruel in knowing that your own great-grandson does not understand you. Liam made me feel human, and his issue consistently reminds me of how unfinished I am."

* * *

"Atta' girl," nodded Bucky, resting two big metal fingers on Miranda's shoulder for a second. "You've already made your Mom and Dad proud, kiddo - the rest'll be a cinch. All you gotta do is what I do: take it one step at a time. Your job's making sure Aspasia and Coach don't gotta worry none. Past that, the rest's gonna fall into place on its own. It always does."

The elevator doors opened to one of the walkways overlooking the plaza below, Shamus making his way to the three-story complex on the opposite end of the ring. Tom had placed most of the tower's bigger players close to one another, allowing the pair to walk past Gammell's Toybox and the Wizard's Nook along with Ephesian and Associates. With Herbert gone with Neasa, the attorneys' office looked a bit forlorn with its bright lights and clean waiting room. As luck would have it, Leonard walked into his office's lobby, exchanged a few words with his secretary and then caught sight of the pair. Pushing his cabinet's door, he fell in step with Miranda and Wallace.

"Shamus," he said, nodding. He looked corporeal, something behind his seemingly calm gaze belying the tumult of the restless dead that kept him fed. Being freed from his corrupted body had pushed his physical transformation into a state of refinement, his dusky fur now having a healthy bluish sheen. He'd kept the amber-colored eyes the Black Goat had foisted on him, perhaps as a sign of rebellion, and now tended to his horns with just enough of a lax approach to make their notches and tiny missing cross-sections look like conscious choices. To the Goat went the Atticus Finch-worthy white linens, Ephesian and his family had reconnected when Thomas and his family had been forced to relocate to Magnus Tower. The side of him that was still the aging family man he'd previously been was at peace, his newfound supernatural core now adding its own tumult to his personality. It made him less troubled, but also a tad on the broody side, as though he was sometimes pulled aside by the pleading voice of an unseen and unheard shade, briefly sensing some deceased innocent's pleas for justice.

He didn't comment on it, but he heard those whispers constantly. The Black Goat had fostered so much loss and pain he knew for a fact he would never be at a loss for cases to work on. Like Tom, he also seemed to have fared generally well, despite the circumstances, as he now served the exact kind of justice his son had always dreamed of enabling, but had known to be impossible to achieve within mortal society. As Speaker for the Damned, Leonard Ephesian was cold and uncompromising, but fair. As expected, he'd been leaving the monstrous ends of the supernatural judicial system to the Goat - he and Rhadamantus wouldn't have worked well together if he'd abused of his newfound position.

"Ephesian," nodded the Clank. "Still no progress on the mundane side?
- The Supreme Court's been dissolved, and the country's various pockets of resistance can't afford to enable a central body of legal enforcement. Walpurgis is the best we've got, but you know as well as I do that shuttling people to and from Texas is risky. Anything that crops up locally is tied to matters of survival; I can't very well expect Tom to put together a courthouse and a jury duty lottery for pre-teens smuggling beer out of Ben's, and we both know how much we need the Biggs cartel's enforcers as added muscle. Our best option is still active deterrence, and I've scared the handful of potential troublemakers straight already."

Bucky's eyebrows creaked upwards. "How'd you do it?"

The goat shrugged. "I opened my mouth and let fifty or so anguished souls scream in Mickey Toretti's face for thirty seconds. That shut down his nascent smuggling operation fairly quickly. The fact is there's just not enough room or interest here for serious crimes to occur. People realize we need one another to stay alive and fed."

He looked ahead and sighed. "You're trying to pep Archie up, I take it?"

Bucky looked at Miranda's hatbox. "Are we that transparent?"

Leonard smirked as he held the door open for them. "Crystal," he said. "You're not exactly peeving off my few hundred paying clients in the Shadowlands, so yours is the kind of mischief I can get behind."

Shield's new headquarters were compact, if functional. With Gubbin serving as a receptionist and Bagley having his own office labelled Financial Operations on the second floor, most of the first landing was occupied by the team's own workstations. The second floor housed the survivors of Archie's old library and D'Aubignier's gifts, along with the group's technical services and IT office. That last part was still unoccupied for the moment, but Magnus Haraldsson had paid for several unmarked boxes to be shipped there. His assigned technician was sure to be somewhere in the rinks, close to being deployed.

On the third floor waited Archie's penthouse. It was smaller than Tom and Aislinn's, the elevator opening onto a spacious, if somewhat reserved room. The dimensions looked tailor-made for more of a Modernist design, but paisley wallpaper and dark wooden flooring had been set in place, new ferns potted and artfully placed about the room. A modern gas fireplace waited between two baywindows that looked out onto the city's ruined West side, with a large Persian rug waiting underneath a coffee table of some classic Indian design. The kitchen and dining room occupied the same large space, with only four doors breaking the open area. One had to be Archie's room, one was ostensibly Anjali's, one was a utility closet and the last one was an obvious bathroom.

Holden looked like he'd borrowed Zebediah Buck's Distressed Chic dress code, as he was slumped in the living area's couch, wearing a smoking jacket over a vest and white shirt, Tom's purchased copies of his monogrammed slippers waiting at his feet. He'd slipped a fez on, perhaps to counter the way his Victorian self would've found modern penthouses to be on the drafty side. A book was loosely pinched between two ungloved fingers, a glass of Scotch waiting on the coffee table, the flat-screen TV's remote waiting in the other hand. His chin had fallen on his chest and he looked like he usually stuck to soft snores, perhaps occasionally broken by a cough and the errant snort or two. Anjali was seated at the far side of the couch, her feet brought in closer and a book leaning against her thighs. She looked up at the visitors and smiled.

Being a corporeal soul, the recent weeks had affected her in ways even the faith leaders found peculiar. The nine year-old was effectively gone, replaced with what looked like a bony teenager that carried a sense of weariness and latent kindness in her eyes. She'd never gone sullen and had never lost hope, much less her inquisitiveness - but it felt as though seeing others suffer had caused her to literally mature. Judging by Bagley's comments in the past few weeks, she'd acted like the unusually agreeable version of a teenager - or a moody teen who'd been brought up to be self-aware and considerate enough to tone down her moodiness.

"Hey," she said, her voice gone huskier and looser, more Americanized but still marked by her adoptive father's own British tones. "You guys the Pity Party or the Happiness... Hoplites?" she joked, fishing for a rhyming word and slightly wincing at her own corny joke.

[TennyoCeres84]

A ghost of a smile flitted across Meris' features as she saw the walrus get up from his makeshift bed and dress himself. "I understand that you're not particularly in the mood for more demons, Mayor, but I can assure you'll find no temptations with Nickar and Nybbas," she noted, then venturing toward the door that would normally lead to Sophia's apartment.

"I wouldn't think so, given that Nybbas is a part of your court, and Nickar's on our side," Aspasia noted. "Once you sincerely leave behind the chains that bind you, you try to make sure people see you're on the up and up."

The Heiress looked back to the walrus. "The way there isn't long as it might seem, and we'll have you set up soon enough."

The two other women followed after her as she focused her intent to open the way that would lead them to Obsidian Plaza.

***

Aislinn frowned with a bit of sadness. "Maybe the state of being "unfinished" is a relative thing. You might not have everything a human would, organ-wise, but I'd say they're unfinished in their personalities," she groused, feeling a bit defensive for the Toymaker. "You've been friends with my grandmother for centuries, and she's told me you're more human than some of those who are physically human. I believe her and see it for myself, for what it's worth," she opined.

Her eyes drifted back to Sefer Yetzirah, and she added, "And it's certainly better to have understanding types like yourself in contrast to those who might see the golem we're going to be working on as just a thing to be used. Regardless of the spirit going into it, we have to make sure we treat it with respect and dignity."

***

"Team Hoplites all the way, sans spears and phalanx formations," Miranda responded with a bit of cheeky smile and a tilted head. The teenaged fauness was actually slightly happy to see another teenager, or at least someone who seemed closer to her age than someone who would have been in elementary school.

"Actually, we brought your dad a gift and thought maybe it'd perk him up a bit," the horned girl explained as she entered the apartment, her cloven hooves making slight clopping sounds against the wooden floor. She eyed the dozing automaton uncertainly, not entirely sure how he'd take to their presence or being woken up. Still, she presented the hatbox that might seem familiar to the Indian girl.