Chapter VI - Asunder

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Re: Chapter VI - Asunder

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After the short stretch of maintenance rooms and darkened sewers to follow after the Pedway, Sophia's extended domain began with the gentle glow of bio-luminescent moss along the edges of an almost perfectly circular tunnel. One last makeshift door had been erected there, a wooden frame held in place by crossing wooden beams haphazardly bolted together by Arthur Holden's construction team. It was this door that Meris focused her will upon, the world beyond it shifting - and the gentle drone of Mallsoft music suddenly floating through the air.

Obsidian Plaza looked like a shopping mall stripped out of the eighties' consumerist effervescence. Brown floor tiling cheerfully clashed with brightly-colored abstract panes of metal and glass, both along the corridors as standing street art and suspended from wires high above them. Several recognizable brands could be seen, all of them sporting the logos that had been theirs during the Reagan presidency. Bright islands of white tiles, ferns and succulents occupied the corridors' central aisle at regular intervals, complemented with benches, bistro tables and small metal chairs. A few people could be seen milling about, none of them human in appearance. The demons wore everything from JC Penney-approved power suits to janitorial jumpsuits, the paper hats of movie theater concession stands or the Marine blue suits of security agents. Things looked almost serene, if not for how looking above and past the mall's omnipresent domed glass ceiling, the lower surface of the lake of fire churned. Plumes of flame rained down on Melmoth's isolated corner of Greed, strangely never touching the glass. Some sort of force field seemed to prevent the Pit's constant assault from touching the mall, the same way Wolfram and Associates' lower floors had always been spared.

"This is impressive," noted Aidan. "It's just too bad everything looks several decades out of fashion..."

An aging woman's fraying, if powerful voice resonated in the hallway, her own pumps aggressively clacking against the floor. "A deliberate choice, mister Drake," she said, sounding a bit like a rejected Golden Girls hopeful. "Greed tends not to focus on what's passé. Nostalgia has some worth, but none that would qualify as being enough to catch Mammon's eye. If I provided the latest in smart wearables and designer fashion, Greed's hordes would be stomping at our gates within moments. Keeping a low profile matters more in the immediate."

Juno wore a gray power suit and what had to be a set of drab, yet obscenely expensive stiletto heels, along with a thick and showy row of white pearls at her wrinkled throat. She looked almost mundane for a senior citizen from the VHS format's golden age, complete with white permed hair and abstract designs in gold and copper hanging from her earlobes - if not for the two tiny nubs of bone that protruded from the base of her hairline. Looking a little closer would also reveal that her French nails weren't the result of impeccable manicure, but rather looked to be sturdy claws simply formed in a slightly more dainty way than might have been expected.

Looking at her, Drake managed a smirk. "Pride or Greed?
- Both," she said, smiling, revealing a Thatcher-worthy row of pearly whites. "Father was from Pride and Mother from Greed. Visionaries without a patron. They took to raising me on Earth, all the more to suffuse me with one of their favorite eras' swagger and confidence. They envied Melmoth's moxie but couldn't reach him in the Pit, so they groomed me from the thirties and onwards, hoping that I'd one day develop a sales pitch worth listening to.
- That, she did," nodded the Broker. "Finding another demon with a lot of terrestrial experience was kinda refreshing, especially one who understood my fascination with Economics."

Juno's eyes gleamed. "You mean one who wasn't the Goat. I simply wanted to preserve the eighties' confidence and exuberance, place its monetary conditions in a bubble, freeze its political underpinnings. There was no way of doing this on Earth and no practical reasons to do it in the Pit, until now."

Aidan breathed in, taking in what smelled like a diffuse mixture of the food court's offerings. "I take it the movie theater is frozen in John McTiernan's prime?"

The Infernal manager's eyes twinkled again. "Bruce Willis in his youth... If I were any younger, I might have tried possessing something shapely and cute in his sitcom days - Moonlighting was always a guilty pleasure of mine."

Seeing Wallace's eyes briefly glaze over with hunger, Melmoth licked his lips. "We're, um, just passing through, Juno. Where's the nearest available door? We need to open a way to Meggido."

Wallace looked disappointed, but the old woman nodded gamely. "Right this way - we'll take a right to the nearest Security booth, I'll let you use their door to step through."

* * *

"You're too kind," had first replied George, ever the humble sort. "In regards to the Animate's fate, however, I obviously agree, doubly so if the being emerges as sapient from the onset. I would not want to lack respect towards the golem who once would have been Alphonse Biggs - the man was a potent grappler, in his day. A grappler with a heart of gold, or so I was told - but still."

He looked back to the tome. "Now, this is all well and good, but concrete is friable and porous; it does poorly when left to erode in humid weather. More than a few superhumans develop the ability to shatter blocks of the stuff, so I would be remiss to leave our man in a body both resilient on the mundane level, and vulnerable on nearly every other front. I believe it may be possible to add a few more conditional arguments to the shem's desired life-giving effects, we simply have to imbue the clay tablet with them before the rabbi inscribes Kabbalistic runes on it."

Ephraim looked ready to object, but a look from Curran had him hand over a neat rectangle of moist red clay, still wrapped in damp towels. "That looks to be more Aislinn's speed, but what about you?" he asked the toymaker.

George shrugged. "I'll go sub-molecular and perform minor adjustments to the prepared concrete mix's structure. Adding a lattice of carbon-fibre nanotubes should increase the cured solution's resistance and pliability by several orders of magnitude."

* * *

The girl pouted lightly as she appraised her own father. "I'd say he's... coping. Not well, but he is. I wasn't around the first time the Goat cracked his shell, but he knows his character wasn't attacked. It isn't so much about him, this time around, as what he's always tried to represent."

She stood up and rounded the couch, moving to take the hatbox from Miranda's hands. "Dignity, self-control, responsibility... I don't think I can understand it all just yet, but I think he feels like we were all knocked down beneath ourselves. It's like Mister Wormsworth's Pride; I guess we all need a little something to stand up for, and he feels like we've been kicked down in the mud and held there. Grandpa Hiram and Grandma Jocasta had a ton of flaws, but they had things that couldn't just be taken away from them. He had his love of history, she had botany and anthropology..."

In the meantime, Bucky had circled the couch with a grunt and purposefully put a knee down with a noisy clang. Archie started with a snort and a jump, his right foot twitching and upending his Scotch glass, making him frown angrily. "Shamus, you dullard," he said, his speech slurred, "look at what you made me do!"

Bucky blinked in response. "When's the last time you waterproofed yourself?
- A week ago, I think?" he replied, narrowing his eyes blearily. "Didn't shower much - didn't feel like it. I'm not the one in this household who has to worry about body odor," he said, giving his daughter a look he'd perhaps intended to be humorous. She simply held the hatbox and stared.

"Who's that for?
- Lord Holden, my father," she replied, purposefully accenting her own tinges of Received English Pronunciation. "The man who would've brushed his hairpiece two times today already and who would've found a way to make a show out of coating his own wooden bits and bobs with waterproof shellac. That same man would have spiked his bubble baths with half a Coke bottle to make his brass cogs shine."

Archie lightly grimaced. "Oh, don't be obstreperous, girl - hand that over, will you?"

Her accent diminished again. "Go wash and change and maybe I won't ask Uncle Bucky to throw it down the trash chute unopened."

Archie glared, Bucky sent him one of his own. "Better do as she says, partner - I've got half a mind to drag ya by the shirt cuff and toss ya in the tub myself. That aristocratic immaturity bullcrap has gotta end, Arch. We're all hurtin', the Goat's personally mocked us all at least on one occasion - and we're still kickin'. In the meantime, ol' Regina's favorite is actin' like someone's already sold his main spring on eBay."

Archie protested weakly, his emotional charge making his painted eyes gleam realistically. "But I've lost everything! Do you have any idea how that feels, Shamus?"

Bucky merely blinked a few times, looking utterly unimpressed, and looked back to Miranda and Leonard, pointing at the Clank. "He's forgotten I left a body behind when I claimed this!" he said, sounding mildly incredulous. "I left my God-given body behind, my momma's good looks and my pop's arms - just to have a chance to survive," he said, then switching to a passable imitation of Archie's clipped Kentish consonants. "Well, I lost my ruddy, bloody house, I did! Books and masonry and Saville Row cravats - who honestly has a care for mortal coils, eh?"

The British Automaton quietly snarled. "I do not talk like this!
- Holden, if I were 'onna yer old headmasters, I'da socked you on the head once already," he warned. "Do you really wanna act like that in front o' kids?"

Something then made him look back to Miranda almost apologetically. "Well, um, y'ain't exactly a kid anymore, but y'know what I mean, I reckon. Can't see the Tricentennial Grown-Ups throwin' a tantrum - it ain't exactly good form."
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Re: Chapter VI - Asunder

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Meris followed after Juno toward the security door, along with the satyress and the Throne. The Archmage looked over at the 80s'-styled woman. "Sorry that our visit here is going to be so short, but Melmoth's been wanting to have us meet with you and look around Obsidian Plaza," she addressed, surveying the surroundings as they walked past them. "This seems like another place for people to go to get their minds over what's happening topside."

***

Aislinn eyed the moist tablet of clay and then nodded to Ephraim. ""We'll just need to make some tweaks to the words. We're not eschewing tradition completely, Rabbi. I have to admit my Hebrew's probably not where it should be for a practitioner. We'll need your help there, so don't worry about being left out of the ritual. Think of it as reinforcing the success of the golem's creation."

***

The teenager waved her hand dismissively at Bucky's concern. "It's okay; I'm a minor still, so I get it."

Miranda also sent the slimmer automaton an unimpressed look of her own. "We've all lost something, Mr. Holden. I'm lucky that I still have both of my parents, and I had enough time to pack things that really mattered to me. However, the home I was raised in? It's probably a den for Hellfauna now, or it's been razed to the ground. It's never going to be the same again, but I still had the energy enough to come deliver this package to you; Mom wouldn't let me sit moping in our apartment, and you're lucky she's not here. She probably would have already dumped you in your tub and ordered you to wash up and get dressed."

Her brow furrowed, the fauness paused for a moment and continued, "Now that I think about it, would you want your senseis from Eien-no-Yuki to see you like this? Was that trip for nothing, and did you completely forget what you learned there? The whole situation we're in sucks beyond words, but we have to keep going! Try to use what you learned there and apply it here! At the very least, go clean up and change your clothes for Anjali's sake! It's obvious she doesn't like seeing you like this, so do better for her!"
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Re: Chapter VI - Asunder

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Herbert's idea of traversing the front lines was peculiar, to say the least.

From inside the limousine, the war's din was reduced to a murmur, the occasional Hellish or Celestial mortar drop barely rocking the vehicle's suspension. Vivaldi's Spring lightly bubbled through the air, only cut by the occasional soft moan that left the lawyer's lips. Part of Wormsworth's limo interior was now occupied by a genuine massage table, Wormsworth having exposed his back and wings to the energetic ministrations of a strawberry-blonde woman who looked like the city's capitulation hadn't bothered her in the slightest. Her glowing green eyes belied her angelic nature, something to them suggesting she was both immeasurably old and still shockingly innocent.

"Whoever said a Celestial's touch was anathema to Pitspawn clearly never had Shiatsu performed on them by one of the Choir's Higher Voices," he said, voice dripping with sheer bliss. "Only ever acquainted with the best of this plane, shielded from its evils and acrimony... You really ought to try it, Neasa," he told his partner. "It would do you wonders for our meeting."

The angel's wings were invisible, and she wore the whites of a massage therapist. A golden nametag identified her as Raphaelle. Gabriel had loaned her to Tom, seeing as her expertise largely dealt with physical healing. Despite her name, she clearly wasn't an Archangel, merely an embodied aspect of physical wellness. The Raphael tended to settle with nothing less than miraculous recoveries, and there was nothing miraculous about working a winged being's tiny backaches through with an elbow. The girl looked like a recent dropout from Team Uriel, more concerned with everyday booboos than with the tower's salvage teams sometimes returning with broken limbs or internal injuries.

Sitting next to Neasa and looking rather uneased was Etriel, a similarly white-clad and nametag-wearing man who looked to be a tiny bit on the dumpy side. His face was slightly on the cherubic side, more Josh Gad than anything resembling Gabriel's James Cromwell-esque features, and his blue eyes nervously looked outside. Newly brought out of the Host's numbers, he'd never seen the mortal plane before but had displayed enough natural empathy to avoid judging the survivors for their failings. Instead, he'd spent the last weeks looking  overwhelmed by the necessary moral shades of gray the survivors required to so much as survive. One of his peers using her gifts to pamper one of Pride's willing expatriates looked to be something he didn't sit well with, without looking like he had enough guts to oppose it. In any case, he hadn't touched Neasa at all and had settled for nervous small talk, sometimes glancing in the other two's direction whenever Wormsworth's back popped or the demon mingled winces and deep sighs of release.

"So, um, what's Allocer like?" he asked.

Raphaelle smiled at him as she kept working. "If you'd read the intelligence reports instead of wondering how we'll keep the Pitspawn from eating us, you'd know that already," she said, somehow managing to make that abrasive sentence not sound judgmental. "He was one of Paimon's Lieutenant Commanders - the lawful type. Strong, stolid, extremely aware of the rules in Limbo's battlefield. He's never been one to give in to cruelty, saying his Pride is fueled by how he focuses on waging proper wars. The Goat more or less threw Humanity a bone by placing people like him in key positions; people who'd understand that some institutions are better off maintained than eliminated. It's why he and his cohorts agreed to the cease-fire needed for the New Hillard Bridge and the Slab to be constructed."

Etriel licked his lips. "I still think he's gaslighting us.
- He probably is," shrugged the girl, "but in the meantime, it means Mertown and the docks have been turned into neutral zones. There's new beginnings rooted there - we just have to figure out how to eventually bring Allocer's key staff into the fold.
- Do you think he'd follow along, if he's not really focused on destroying us?"

Herbert's big eyes slid open and rested on Etriel. "If you'll recall, his very first proclamation was in declaring our motley group a terrorist organization, depicting us as thieves stealing food and supplies from innocents chiefly focused on rebuilding their lives. If any one of us steps foot outside of Hope, the alphabet's worth of Federal agencies will be required by law to extinguish them.
- So why aren't you out in Washington, pushing for a more Progressive agenda?"

Wormsworth rolled his eyes. "One does not leap from county lines to Federal rule. Building a bridge is a decent starting point - the last few pie-in-the-sky Social Democrats to slither around the White House before the Fall tended to accrue plenty of Twitter followers and very little Congressional support... You can rest assured that the Goat has only bolstered the industrialists' devotion to unfettered Capitalism; there's little more in this world that is more American than being craven or self-serving."

Etriel frowned. "That's kind of bleak.
- Ah, but such is the world, now," shrugged the lawyer, who looked back to Raphaelle. "Be a dear and work my wings in, will you? I might have to lift Neasa's ravishingly Olympic self to vantage points or swoop innocent workers out of harm's way - I wouldn't want my pitch or yaw controls to be defective."

The young angel looked away. "She already worked your wings, mister Wormsworth.
- Details, young man," sighed the lawyer, resting his head in the cushioned support built inside the table as Raphaelle carefully pulled on his wings. "The devil is in the..."

His right wing popped, which made him both flinch, chuckle and sigh rapturously. "...meticulously-researched and exactingly-worked details..."

* * *

"Well, alright," uncertainly groused the priest, which left Gammell to step aside briefly.

"Wonderful. I'll get to work shortly, I simply have a bit of downsizing to do..."

He headed towards the concrete mixer and restarted it, then suddenly turning diaphanous and shrinking. He was seemingly sucked in by the mixer's faintly displaced air, shrinking further as it happened, disappearing somewhere in the slightly gloomier depths of the mixing bowl. Moments later, something seemed to change in the churned mixture, the mixing arm straining as the substance seemingly turned slightly putty-like, suddenly retaining and augmenting its previously fleeting moisture content. Dough-like bubbles formed and popped, the mix then growing slightly more liquid. It felt as though Gammell had begun tweaking the concrete on the molecular level, perhaps in an attempt to find out something that would combine equal parts resistance and flexibility.

A few minutes later, the boy returned with a perplexed-looking Weasel and a rather dubious-seeming Silve, who both looked at the mixture and Kabbalistic trappings as though they couldn't quite make sense of it.

"Hey, McConmara," he told Aislinn, nodding. "I don't, uh, wanna be obnoxious or anything, but did someone honestly suggest sticking my Gramps in that goop?!"

Silve looked like her own dubiousness was rooted in her boss' lack of open-mindedness. As a Banshee, she'd probably seen stranger. "Alphonse Biggs is one of the most stable spirits in the local Shadowlands, his sense of Self is still wholly complete. He's also managed to gracefully balance it with his nature and self-imposed promise. This seems like a reasonably safe venture to me, but I'm no Diviner."

Weasel blinked. "Then why did ya drag your gorgeous ass along with me?"

She stepped slightly aside, crossing her arms and flicking an azure-tinted fingernail. "Mostly because my gorgeous ass is bound by Oath to serve and protect you. Remember?"

Biggs blinked again. "Oh, right - all the Fae shit. Sorry, I've got so many plates spinnin' I lost track of a coupla things.
- I've spun more plates," Silve added on a matter-of-fact tone. "I've seen Winter's edge - this is just a lazy Tuesday."

* * *

"That's the plan," nodded Juno. "I'm sure the Seducers would consider my thesis to be a bit trite, but consumerism at least has the merit of dulling pains. I'm not expecting our offerings to spark desire in a great many mortals, but the object for now is to focus on something familiar and safe. I imagine that recreated goods from past decades could have some value in those economies the Goat's attack ravaged, as even obsolete items hold some use if they're the only ones available. It might be that the entire mortal world has to reset the scales once punishment is apportioned, and I'll at least have done my small part in providing some sense of balance."

She shrugged lightly. "Plus, it gives our hopefuls a few decades' worth of a head start to get acclimated with your cultures. Not all of us have followed Earth's development closely, and not all of us have had tutors like Ahriman or Tom."

Aidan frowned lightly. "The last time Meris and I were in Hell, we had to pay for things using sins or regrets. Would this still apply?"

Juno smiled, the gesture looking both tender and a bit sad. "Aidan, sweetheart - there'd be no value in sins or regrets in a place like this. You all have too many to count and are still gaining some every single day. Bitterness and hatred are part of any survivor's burden. We pay in grudges, here. Pain also works. The only grudge we can't cash in is each and every single mortal's enmity towards the Black Goat."

Three pursed his lips together. "Trading the pain of losing my keepsakes from Afghanistan or my parents' apartment for goods and services feels wrong, somehow."

Juno shrugged. "It's the most I can do, love. I'm not a Seducer, I don't get to ease pains. All I can do is sell you shards of joy as commodities and services. Just be glad you don't have to pay with the pain of losing more loved ones."

* * *

Archie frowned and hung his head slightly. "I didn't forget, it's simply a matter of not knowing how to find the stem or stern of this... ship of abject horrors I find us sailing on. I'm an Anglican, our spirituality is less overt than for Catholics or Protestants, and this catastrophe leaves me unable to parse what needs doing. I thought damnation was some distant supernatural threat, not something that would flatly manifest in my plane of existence and in my time!"

He stood up at least, and turned the television off, moving for the window as something like sobriety crept back into his features. "I didn't forget Kurama-san or Katsumoto. I didn't forget the need for a... dispassionate outlook to any battlefield. If I could apply an ounce of ruthlessness to what's happened, I would. Alas, I cannot. Every morning, I wake up to smoke stacks in the distance, to the distant chatter of gunfire as Tom's men cover the incoming rush of a caravan of survivors - and none of it is due to something I can flatly compartmentalize. I can box in the Goat's supreme lack of care, segregate his mockery of us - but even the Raj did not submit me to such abuses. How can I be ruthless when the apartments' floors almost always carry the sound of someone crying?"

Anjali eyed Miranda and stepped closer. "Nobody's asking you to be ruthless. In all the stories you acted out for me, all those I read, feeling for others was a source of strength. Right now, every one in this tower needs you to be strong, Father. Not uncaring, not ruthless - just strong. Start by accepting your fears, and know that we're all carrying them too."

Luckily, the ordeal in Eien-no-Yuki had made things easier for the spy. His facial features briefly rattled, he closed his eyes and drew in a breath. Collecting his thoughts and fears, he carefully enunciated his words.

"I am... afraid that we might have lost already. I fear I may have miscalculated something in the months leading to mister Ephesian's final possession. I feel no guilt, but the tactician's itch has not stopped since the main incursion. I am as a defeated chess player who replays the losing match in his head, less out of shame or self-loathing and more out of sheer bafflement. How could anyone have known to target us so precisely?"

Ephesian lightly tsked. "All I can offer is that demons with enough experience know their way through mortal hearts. The Goat knew me, just as he knew you, Aidan, Aislinn, Ciaran or Meris. No-one is ever expected to stand before Pride and beat it on the first try. Pride needs to reveal itself first - and then it can be studied. The game hasn't been lost, mister Holden; the game board's only just been set and the rules are in place. Now, for the first time in months, the stakes are fair. Now he has provincial rulers and lordlings, mayors and aldermen - he's slithered and slipped through every nook and crevice of mortal society, not realizing he's given you a playing field you're familiar with. Moreover, he's reversed the roles. Now, we're the ones who get to cheat."

Holden scoffed bitterly. "Ah, yes - the old cheating spy sophism! I suppose you'll expect me to-"

Something made him stop, his voice trailing and stopping. His shoulders then worked as if in a surprised flinching gesture, and he turned around. As he did so, dejection and cogitation had left his features and had been replaced with acute curiosity.

"The box," he said, pointing to it, "may I?" he asked, looking back to Miranda and Anjali.

Bucky crossed his arms in front of his chest. "Do ya have a point or is this just some excuse to keep moping?
- Do be quiet," snipped the aristocrat, "I've a point - or I've rather latched onto yours and I think something is coming along, but I need to see if what is in there is what I think it is..."
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Re: Chapter VI - Asunder

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Neasa eyed the blissed out Pride demon and sent him a lop-sided smile. "I'd be interested in a massage, but I'll play it by ear," she responded, sending a momentary glance at the nervous angel.

Overall, everything around him seemed to be making him nervous. The sounds of distant war was obviously one thing. His anxious looks back at Raphaelle and Herbert made her wonder if he was worried that the Pride demon would pounce on her in an instant and harm her. She wondered if he avoided touching her in order to avoid some temptation that would doom him. The strongwoman knew she was attractive, but she didn't think a harmless massage would lead to a repeat of Iram. Still, if the angel was going to be working with them for the forseeable future, he really needed to calm down. Not to mention, any demons who weren't on their side would eagerly take advantage of his demeanor.

She sent him a concerned expression. "Hey, Etriel, are you okay? I know being on the mortal plane has been a shock, but you're frankly a bundle of nerves."

***

Aislinn shrugged at Weasel and Silve. "Our options are limited. It's either your grandfather, or we find a recently deceased, heroic dog spirit to reside in the golem we're going to make," she explained. "Having someone with sentience will have the materials take better than if it's a ghost without that particular awareness. And we still want his permission before we proceed. Otherwise, it'd be a shitty move to forcibly place a spirit in a shell."

***

"Try not to worry about it too much, lad. That only invites trouble, and we don't need any more of that," Meris added gently. "Focus on one day at a time, and save those frustrations for a time when you need a break or to relieve stress."

***

Miranda skeptically offered him the hatbox. "Sure, Meris is the one who made it, as a fyi," she murmured.
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Re: Chapter VI - Asunder

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The Cherub scoffed lightly. "That's one way to put it. I'm just not a warrior, like my peers. Contrary to popular beliefs, angels don't all get made for the sole purpose of throwing down against anyone who threatens Creation. A lot of Guardians don't have to worry about Limbo or the War or martial training at all; especially those who start out with a really simple premise. A lot of demons start out as noxious ideas - basically demons in the Freudian sense - and a lot of angels do, too."

He looked back to Neasa. "I stepped out of the Host just before all this happened," he said, smiling weakly. "It's kind of crazy, but I started out being supposed to reach down here for Veronica Parsons; a woman here in town. She's a former dancer with a bad leg, and it used to be that when her pain in her right thigh acted up, it reminded her of all the tiny things that led to her not making Juliard. It made her feel guilty about slipping on an ice patch during a drunken bender after partying with a few bad eggs - one slip, three weeks in physical rehab, and it was all over."

Etriel shrugged. "I was supposed to start out small; her heart lifting a little after she'd have remembered to apply some Hot 'n Cold on the sore spot... Instead, I saw her in the second wave of refugees that made it to the tower. Her leg had been hurting her, she'd been limping, and a Hellfire lancet shot through the small of her back, paralyzed her from the waist down. I wasn't there to push her forward, maybe make her run just well enough to make it to safety before that tiny Brimstone slug would make its way between two of her lower vertebra."

Then followed a look at Raphaelle. "So I'm sort of confused, I guess. Gabriel just coasted past my obvious failure and plopped me here, and you're just fine with the idea of working out the kinks in this guy's Ego armor! I know sacrifices have to be made, but I don't think anyone would sit well with the idea of being told their true purpose is suddenly worthless."

He scoffed and self-deprecatingly shook his head, adding in a smirk as he looked back to the roane. "And now, I'm supposed to massage you because Mister Hotshot here pulled us out of the makeshift rehab clinic on the tower's second floor, thinking his being limber would matter against things that would rather be tearing into mortal flesh than working power tools under orders from Allocer."

Wormsworth groaned, this time out of mild aggravation, and crossed his arms under his chin. "And I was born when the Black Goat decided to give shape and form to some tiny bit of preening, five or six hundred years ago. I crawled out from between two Brimstone plates, clad in vanity and self-assurance, and followed what seemed like a faultless disposition throughout your Enlightenment and Gaslight Eras. Then, my then-obviously well-honed instincts saw the need for mediation with the enemy, and I spent more time plying my self-confidence in the art of minimizing losses at the hands of Celestials. I worked the bargaining table for beings who had not a single ounce of mortal proclivity in them..."

Etriel shrugged lightly. "So?"

Again, Herbert sighed as though Etriel were a bit slow. "My boss trampled the very rules he'd asked me to set in place, throwing me into an admittedly wretched state my Pride had always shielded me from, until now. Doubt. After some time spent kicking rocks around a few miles out of Cacus & Bune's campus, I realized there was little I could do about this wanton dereliction except derelict my own duties in response. I knocked on Lord Holden's door feeling like a dog forced to lick his wounds - and then one of Heaven's scrappy up-and-comers showed me I'd eventually balance exquisite vanity greater than the Goat's with some sort of developed golden-hearted disposition."

It was his turn to shrug. "Going by what Raguel showed us, I'm to one day derive no small amount of Pride from our lot's accomplishments while eventually coming across as a mere friendly sophisticate. Being used to the idea of my Ego putting off even minor Pitspawn, that prospect still baffles me, to be honest. The point is, none of us here are who we initially set out to be - and yet, we all still draw air."

He dismissed Raphaelle with a gesture, standing up from the massage table while holding his gray fleece towel in place with one hand. He focused and removed the hand that protected his modesty, the fleece melting along his legs, chest and arms, morphing into his usual suit-and-tie combo, his tie's splash of red more or less winking into being. "I think it's best we enjoy the ride, such as it is, and I say that knowing that my self of a few months ago would have balked at that notion."

Etriel blinked again, this time merely looking perplexed. "Somehow, Mister Wormsworth, I just can't imagine you being friendly."

The demon checked his smartphone and slid his eyes back up at the Cherub. "My dear boy, this is me at my friendliest. According to Raguel, I'll honestly want to shake your hand, someday," he said, as though that thought was absurd, and perhaps just a tad amusing.

The thought sparked his curiosity, making him looked back at Neasa. "Beyond my being an obvious snob, darling," he asked, "would you say I could be someone you'd clink beers with? I've been trying to keep tabs on that odd moral mutation Raguel spoke of."

Raphaelle managed both her radiant smile and odd bluntness again. "I'd sooner expect you to mistake me for your valet outside the tower, but you did trust my skills. Speaking of, is there enough trust for us to cadge a warp back to the clinic?"

Herbert glanced outside. "We're almost here - I won't let you two ruffle those wings in combat, don't you worry. The tower has too much need of you."

* * *

"Yeah, makes sense," agreed the mobster. "Thing is, I can't just make my, um, ghostly chaperone appear out of thin fuckin' air. I've never seen Al since his death, it's just the odd sensitive or two per year who swears up and down that I've got the spookier cousin to a guardian angel lookin' out for me. Can't do shit about the economy and how busted to Hell the Goat's left it, but I hear tell he's bent bullets outta' the path of some of both our guys," he said, referring to both Shield and his own men.

Silve nodded. "The dead have every reason to care for the living, now. Those with enough sense remember similar pains, like enslavement or abuse, and realize they'll welcome more into their lasting torment if they don't put a stop to it. As I've said, your grandfather was and is especially lucid. If only he'd have been properly educated, I suspect Hope would be mob-run in its entirety by now.
- What's that supposed to mean?" asked the mustelid, looking understandably miffed.

"He's always had the wits, but not the required knowledge," Silve said. "Italy is scant when it comes to Faerie Gates, but a main like him would have been a worthy student to our bànfaith."

That looked like an odd chestnut for Weasel to wrestle with. He adjusted his tinted glasses in a way that suggested he didn't exactly know what to make of a statement like this. "Um, sure," he said.

In came another pair, the very-substantial and entirely real Aristide Duvivier, clad in the club's electric purples and a few golden chains and rings - along with a less material colleague. To whomever knew how to proceed, calling forth someone like Alphonse was markedly easier than coaxing something out of more fickle entities like Evangeline Buck. Weasel's human grandfather vanished from sight from the knees down, the rest of him looking like a glass sculpture of the real thing, tinted in linen whites and sack-cloth browns or fleshly pinks in the right places. He wore pants and suspenders, his wife-beater visible underneath his shirt, and had his sleeves rolled up. His flat cap was a bit askew, his rectangular jaw and round cheeks set in postures of focus. Aislinn would be able to feel the tether of power holding the Biggs patriarch in place next to the gorilla, as well as sense how he wasn't fighting it. Only addled spirits took offense to being tethered to the living, a limpet of willpower and arcane energy providing them with a drip-feed of sustenance while they ventured outside of their haunts' typical borders. Ephesian might have boosted the local ghosts into proficiency, it didn't change the fact that Alphonse and a few others regularly stopped by the attorney's office for a top-off in righteous anger.

"So you're gonna stick me in that goop," stated the ghost, his voice carrying his dubiousness in faint echoes, "and that'll make me alive again. Is that it?
- Not alive," countered the necromancer, "but corporeal - much like Automatons. With our defenders targeted for defamation and with more heinous groups pushing for the Goat's policies, we might not always have Herbert's shield of Pride or Tom's barrier spells to repel invaders. We might need someone who combines your qualities, mister Biggs - with a few added preternatural benefits. Your cadre's done amazing work, but if the Goat manages to cut us off from the Shadowlands, we'll both lose you and your soldiers."

The old man nodded, a hand moving up to lift his flat cap momentarily, a knuckle scratching his bald pate. "The Barrow's Deep angle won't work forever, you're right about that. The more my guys get stressed out, the more they lose sight of who they were. It's hard to put that kind of Jack back in the box: on a long enough timeline, Magnus Tower's gonna have me and a buncha loopy ghosts to depend on. I might feel fine now, but I don't know how years or decades of this are gonna reflect on me."

Weasel was understandably shocked. "Holy fuckin' shit. Izzat-"

Alphonse parted his arms amenably, smiling. "I'd hug ya, kiddo, but I'm not entirely there yet, if you catch my meaning. Everything you've heard is true: I've done everything I could to keep the cartel running from my side of the Afterlife. I've seen what's out there, the poisons bein' peddled past the tri-State area, especially what's being hawked right now - and it ain't pretty. You're the last holdout for what bein' in the mob used to mean: we look out for our own, we take care of 'em, and we give a damn about those people whose lives we touch. We might trace it all back to Lansky and Luciano, it really ain't just business. Now, more than ever, there's human interest in what we do."

Weasel scoffed lightly. "Spoken like Grandpa, alright... Back in your days, morphine was the big thing. You were always pissed off when one of your guys scored a shipment."

Al nodded. "I wanted to keep that filth off the streets, seein' as Horn's HPD didn't give a shit about Mickeys and Joeys. If the cops wouldn't keep narcotics out of my neighborhood, I would. That meant going to bat against the other dons, seizing control o' the market... It meant killin' enforcers in back-alleys, but I woulda spilled rivers of blood if it meant I didn't have to see kids with glassy eyes skipping work or school."

The emotional charge made the ghost a bit more solid, his rendered elements soon including his calves and the hint of his upper feet.

Aristide smiled. "Will you do this?" he asked.

Al eyed the ratty-looking Halloween decoration and the mixer of oddly oatmeal-like cement rather dubiously. "Can somehow lay out the more mundane benefits for me?"

Khalid crossed his arms against his chest, smirking. "As much of a Muslim as I am, I think the promise of Cuban pork sandwiches, Scotch and cigars would suffice. I've read a few things about you, sir."

Father Parsons chuckle. "Try sleeping again, first of all!"

The ghost's eyes gleamed with suddenly emerging lust. "Freshly-pressed vinyl records, lowering a brand new cartridge over the grooves, Duke Ellington or Ella Fitzgerald on old BBC Studio speakers... Hearing clearly again, without all this haze or echo."

Weasel frowned at that. "What do we sound like, to you?"

Al withdrew somewhat, his calves disappearing again. "Like you're all the way down the other end of a metal tunnel. The reverberations sound like words and they fit what I know you people sound like - but it asks just that much extra focus to keep track; and it's murder for acoustic music. I'd stopped hovering around Renton's music stores sixteen years ago, the experience had turned painful on too many levels."

* * *

"I know," nodded the young man. "It's just another thing to get used to."

Juno smiled again. "Don't fret - we'll pull through, raise this place up so the sun shines in, and start accepting dollars. We'll all be glad to abide by your plane's rules, when all this is over."

She then opened the security room's door, having seemingly known of Meggiddo's location. Instead of the expected monitors and desks waited an oddly-decorated office, the mesa's sandstone-colored walls patterned in framed newspaper clippings and hanging Platinum and Gold Album trophies bearing the name of a dozen or so artists. A few didn't make much sense, such as seeing Mozart's name festooned on a plaque celebrating his still-increasing amount of sold records, but most were of artists who had actually been celebrated in the Western world's past five decades. Joe Cocker, Jim Morisson, Oliver Jones, Marilyn Manson and Dolores O'Riordan all featured, along with hanging pictures depicting the same hatchet-faced and raven-haired eighties' Glam Rock sendoff Meris had met, a few months back. Amduscias looked to have spent the eons between Solomon's death and Meris' accession gooming and mingling among the world's musical talents, having some sort of eye for those who tended to push the envelope for their era's corresponding tastes. A cover of Blind Willie Johnson's Dark Was the Night floated in the air, the demon's fingers lending sharp, if melancholic undertones to the song. The bridge being filled with humming, the rogue incubus' voice felt like a mixture of honey, Scotch and motor oil. Longing hung in his throat, carefully contained with a disciplinarian's focus, sorrow carefully expressed rather than left to subsume the piece.

He'd seated himself away from his desk, in a corner that probably served as a lounging area. The smell of clove cigarettes and marijuana hung in the air, pale fingerless gloves standing out against his frilly shirt and dark red leather jacket. He played the last bridge, purposefully ignoring the group, before setting his black Stratocaster aside in its rack with a sigh. As he looked up, the idea of him standing as a mashup of the last decades' musical enfants terribles was fairly obvious: he'd taken Iggy Pop's cheekbones, Manson's nose, Morrison's forehead wrinkles, and something to his sadly quirking lips somehow evoked Jimi Hendrix's own upturned grins, even if the skin color didn't match.

"'Ello, love," he told Meris, his tone quiet, reverent towards the moment that had passed. "I just felt I needed to give a little something to the broken spirits under Arsehole's boots, even if they won't so much as hear it. Talents snuffed, songs silenced 'fore they were so much as written... They might not be lost, but not everyone takes to song again, once it's beat out of 'em... Shame, I was lookin' forward to the current crisis' worth of Protest Rock."

Wallace gave the demon a surly look. "And you are?"

Asmodeus' first-scored son sat up. "Amduscias, gov. Patron of the arts, lover of fine things, champion of freedom - and aggrieved critic, as of the last few weeks. Dubiously pleased t'meet'cha," he said, extending a hand.

Doherty didn't move. "Dubiously."

The demon turned the gesture into a wider shrug. "Let's just say I've got an eye for fussocks, sir. Too much order, not enough chaos - you're not one to bend, I'd say, or dance. Gut like that, betcha you just stand yer ground, thinkin' nobody's ever gonna get enough leverage to..."

Amduscias added a whistling noise and a twirling hand gesture, evoking someone who would've been flipped over or tossed over someone's shoulder. "Bad form for a dancer, that," he said sniffing. "Lucky for you, this gal's got connections," he said, sending Meris a sly smile.

* * *

Archie gave the girl an askance look of contained surprise, then curiosity. He'd probably assumed Meris had used a milliner's usual craft and obviously hadn't assumed that of her. As he opened the box and lifted the gibus out of it, various emotions conflicted across his features. Relief almost made him smile, anger and indignation angered a gaze he'd kept anchored on the box, recalled grief pulled at his jaw's hinges, and intense cogitation made his brow furrow with tiny creaks and clicks. Part of him wanted to interpret his resurrected prize had as some sort of insult, another one wanted to express gratitude - and what he'd fished out of Eien-no-Yuki pocketed those aside for the moment.

"Rules no longer apply to us," he said, quietly. "Rendell is one of our unseen allies, the governing body hunts us, we are as thieves building a corporation of miscreants in London's sewers..."

He eyed Leonard. "We can cheat at the game," he said, latching onto something. "We can take back Hope the same way Phineas Sharpe took the American South - with bribery and deceit. For it to work, some of us have to capitulate, some of us have to give the impression of submission, of total subjugation to the Goat's rule. They must act as repentant financiers, humanitarians with a renewed purpose, freshly-convinced zealots. Others must produce, and offer insight into our ways in such a manner as to become irresistible to all but Allocer's staunchest supporters. They must smother in kindness and reliability, to the point where the newfound ally's path becomes boorish in comparison..."

Now pacing in the living room area, he stopped and whirled back towards the others, pointing in declamation. "And the rest, the few left, have to disappear. They have to become demons to the demons themselves, shadows to the shadows, there to strike wherever or whenever Pride's ranks grow mollified or complacent! Look at the more enterprising types in organized crime: all squeaky-clean on the outside, hidden behind a veneer of legitimacy - while utter savagery rules the day of their deeper ventures."

He stepped closer. "Let's be evil," he said. "Let's be devious."

The elevator's chime sounded from behind the door, soon followed by Archie's intercom crackling.

"I couldn't agree more," said Gregory Rendell, his big face giving the intercom's monochrome camera an amused look. Both of his eyes were whole, even the poor resolution made it clear he had no scar tissue left. He held up a paper bag and champagne bottle.

"Brunch, anyone? I couldn't get a hold of Aspasia, so I fibbed and told Silas I planned to have my unspecified ways with young Miranda. Either they both show up or Robertson blows this door off within the next five minutes to attempt a daring rescue."

He paused. "If by my ways you mean finding out if the girl is the fruit salad or Eggs Benedict type, then yes, you'd be absolutely correct." 
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Re: Chapter VI - Asunder

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Neasa placed her hands on her hips and quirked a smile. "Potentially, with time, Mr. Wormsworth. Life's funny and always has surprises in store for us. I never thought I'd receive the compliment of a "bruiser with fairy hands", but I did recently enough. So, I think the idea of clinking glasses with you and the others one day could happen," she replied.

***

"Well, that issue will be soon coming to an end," Aislinn chimed in with a hopeful smile. "All five senses will be yours again, Alphonse. And you can hug your grandson all you want and enjoy life's other pleasures, time and resources permitting, of course."

She cast a look over at George and Ephraim. "We should give him an idea of what the ritual will be like for him. We need this to go as smoothly as possible, so filling him in will help with that."

***

Meris chuckled. "That I do. We need for Mayor Doherty to see Nybbas and Nickar ASAP, both to get new attire and remove that final block that's preventing his powers from manifesting," she said to him.

She then looked back to the walrus. "I understand your hesitation to trust the members of my Court, but I can assure you that they will only bring out the very best in you," she said. "There's a reason King Solomon allied with them ages ago. He wouldn't have done so if they had very much in common with those who have stolen the White House or control Hope."

The Heiress looked over Aspasia. "As I mentioned, I think you're due for a conversation with Nybbas. I think he'll be happy to meet one of his distant cousins." The fauness shrugged. "Sure, I don't see why not."

Abdiel looked reassuringly to the mayor. "If it's any consolation, there were times where I was in your position, Mr. Doherty, when I was much younger. Trust is hard-earned, and I can vouch for Amducias, Nybbas, and Nickar. They wouldn't be allowed to set foot in Solomon's home away from home if they didn't have the proper mindset. However, take the time your need."

***

When Rendell's voice came in through the intercom, Miranda's ears flattened against her head with tension and annoyance. "Fruit salad," the teenager muttered sourly in the intercom's direction, then venturing over to the door and opening it.

She didn't wait by the entrance to welcome the T-rex and wandered back over near Bucky, crossing her arms over her chest in an Aspasia-like manner. "Mom's away on an errand with Meris and Issacs, so it'll probably be a while before you see her. It's better to let you in than for Mr. Magnus to have something else to fix around here. Hopefully, Dad will get the memo."
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Re: Chapter VI - Asunder

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"An encouraging note to end on," sighed the demonic lawyer. "I unfortunately do not find what surrounds us particularly funny. Life, as of now, gets a six out of ten from me..."

They'd slipped out of the open war zone and into relative silence, buildings growing increasingly intact the closer they got to City Hall. They soon reached a security cordon that was manned by two uniform-wearing Fiends. Herbert affected a lack of concern as they were stopped and asked to pull over, but his glancing with relief at the now-absent angels' places and the space the massage table had occupied was hard to miss. He sat down and tried to look the very picture of someone ignoring by what they were passing through, but there was no mistaking it: he didn't like the idea of a mortal metropolis being placed under Infernal rule. There also was no mistaking the extent of Allocer's enclave: loudspeakers had been set up at regular intervals, a clear and deep voice repeating statements over and over.

"Help us help you: report all criminal activity to your nearest Peacekeeper - diligence will be rewarded. Remember: the Peacekeepers are here for you. If you have any concerns, feel free to approach your local officer. We do not play favorites: infringing beings can be mortal, demonic or angelic. Learn to watch out for signs of dissidence - stop by the City Hall for more information."

Beyond the pitted and torn Neo-Classical arches of the city's main administrative building waited the sounds and sights of intense reconstruction. Some office or apartment towers were partially encased in Brimstone, the sounds of power tools or of shouting contract workers heard in the background. The Pitspawn that were allied with Allocer were providing Hope's battered survivors with a scaffold of civilization and leaving them to rebuild. The catch was that you didn't have to be particularly observant to see how Allocer's ideas placed demons at the top of the food chain: Hellflora was choking out the grass in the boulevards' islands, the city's smaller parks now containing plenty of dying trees that served as host to treacherous-looking  vines and ivy-like formations. Eldritch screens had been set up in storefronts and under streetlights in regular locations, showing various glamour shots of Allocer posing heroically, extending a hand to a bruised anthro dove lying on the floor, or proudly standing in front of a crowd of engineers, physicians and scientists. Paimon's former colleague had a longer face and broader chin, a more developed nose and much livelier eyes. It stood to reason that if Pride could be a damning force, it needed to be at least partially more personable than even the Goat or Herbert could be. Allocer looked to be of that particular sort - charismatic Pride, able to drape itself in appearances of humility or care in order to better resonate with those it intended to corrupt.

Allocer, said every advert. Strong alone, stronger with us.

As they got close to Mertown, the demons' Orwellian approach seemed to lessen somewhat. The local supernatural beings had probably been more difficult to pacify, so the self-elected mayor's team had cut the apple in half, literally: eviction notices were plastered on many doors and windows, along with rather pointed notices informing the locals that Seamus Mac Loch and Feargus O' Sullivan had both lost their posting as Deputy Chiefs.

Then came the new bridge over the Hillard, which looked to have been structurally completed except for a narrow and largely inch-wide section of missing asphalt. Both teams were obviously waiting for the bridging ceremony to complete their task. As he stepped out of the limo, Wormsworth allowed himself a quirking of an eyebrow.

"You have to hand it to Allocer; his more pragmatic devotion to Pride does leave room for constructive endeavors. Now, all we need to do is ensure the Freaks get their thoroughfare and that the Goat's loyalists don't simply use the bridge as a supernatural conduit to further corrupt the mainland."

* * *

The rabbi nodded and uneasily cleared his throat. "We're, um, going to invoke one of God's True Names and beseech Him to forego the rules he put in place when creating us, stating that these are times of great need. I'm going to go through the standard Hebrew formulations but at this point, I don't know that anyone minds if two goyim add their own contributions.
- Make that more than two," said Xavier, "I'm not sitting idly by if it means we get a fighting chance if things turn sour.
- Neither will I," said Khalid.

The elder Biggs seemed conflicted. "I don't know that I like the idea of being tossed out into the front lines as soon as I'll get my bearings - if I go through with this," he said. "I've heard tell of how hard it was for the Wallace fella to get used to weighing close to a ton, and he didn't have a teacher or nothing. Does anyone here have experience with this?"

Out of the concrete mixer lightly sprayed a black and gray mist, the droplets coalescing into Gammell's form. "Beg pardon, I only caught the last two words, in my emerging from the mix's atoms...
- Al's worried that nobody here knows what he'll go through," supplied Weasel. "Got any input?"

George shrugged lightly. "I've been a fair few different things over the years: flesh and blood, a fleece doll, chalk drawings... Being an Animate does not negate the reality of what one experiences; it merely colors it differently. I've worked the mixture so that the outermost layer should have human skin's tactile resolution, but you'll still be made out of stone. Having never tried it myself, I've little to offer besides the fact that it looks like you'll be a tad on the ample side, once cured and animated...
- Why is that?" asked Alphonse, who approached the intended mold and essentially answered his own question. The fake stone gargoyle had been set in a crouching position, legs bent under and to the sides of a drooping stomach, the expected leer and exposed fangs looking more mischievous than fierce. The facial features were contorted in a half-wink, as though the creature had been designed to look more thematically appropriate than frightening.

"Wasn't there a nineties' TV show about animated gargoyles, anyway?" he asked.

Weasel seemed surprised. "I didn't picture you as the cartoons type, Gramps."

The former lieutenant rolled his eyes. "You've been dead long enough, you kinda learn to squat unsupervised living rooms after hours, if you wanna stay sane. I'm probably the only ghost in the local Shadowlands who bothers with local news, at any rate."

* * *

"Good," lightly grunted the walrus, "'cause I'll need some," he said, looking uneasily about the room, which made Amduscias chuckle.

"I ain't it, gov. If your yen's bulletproof two-pieces, you've been told who to see. Let's just take a walk, hm - see who's I might find traipsin' around."

Outside Amduscias' room, the same network of corridors connected to the same great hall waited. The sanctum had grown a tad more populated since Meris' last visit, as a fair few subaltern demons in Orcadian blues and greens milled about the place. Meris would hear distant voices calling for inventory, tools or rations, along with what looked like multiple instances of Vassago directing newly-sheltered Pitspawn here and there. The retinue she'd inherited from Solomon had seemingly put together a stringent re-integration program that involved everything from basic pacification to job training. What looked like the leaner cousin to a standard Pride Knight jogged past her while wearing a muscle shirt and tactical pants, a hand on an earpiece.

"I don't care how much they yell, Ludo; that's the point. You don't get to join us if you can't exercise restraint! What's the point of having all these powers if you're just going to use them on anyone who so much as gets too close? Killing indiscriminately is good enough for Pitspawn, and we're above that. If they came to us, it means they're looking to take these extra steps. It hurt me way back when, it hurt you too - but in the end, that pain was worthwhile. I got shacked up in  Pandemonium, you spent the last two thousand years as Nybbas' personal scribe while others from Envy just sit there and Want all day long..."

On and on it went until the demon wandered off, while oddly modern reverberations began to shake the floor and nearby walls. "Ah," noted the former incubus, who crossed the rest of the distance to a set of double oak doors with something akin to Keith Richards' half-suave and half-drunken ambling gait.

Beyond the doors waited more sandstone and more Middle-Eastern sunlight pouring in through slits, the whole of it almost dwarfed by large studio scaffolds and white photographer's canvas, lighting equipment, makeup stations and more. The place looked like the backroom of a fashion show's runway, except perhaps for how another room past that was filled with the clatter of sewing machines and thermo-forming presses, the chatter of mechanical looms and the drone of thread-spinning stations. It looked like there wasn't a single type of fabric known to man that Nickar couldn't produce in his workshop, the demons that worked having surprisingly goblinoid appearances - complete with knobby and yet eerily graceful fingers. The lot of them was a well-oiled machine, throwing pieces on mannequins up for final review seemingly moments after the farthest worker had traced the needed pieces in large swatches of fabric.

Nickar came out of a third door, earpiece on pointed ear, spaded tail swishing and his elongated face evoking pointed aggravation.

"No, you tell that glorified intern with downy fluff for wings that I had an option out for Karl Lagerfeld! I know he's been in Heaven for the past six years, but I've already sent proof of my then having contacted him under mortal guise! It's true that I was working for the Goat back then, but it isn't as though Paris and Milan's mortal luminary could've possibly been part of some concrete plan - half of what the man designs was too outlandish for anyone as conservative as my ex-employer! I need that daring, that spirit, to keep aesthetics up in what looks to be an era of sack cloths and forced starvation for a good chunk of Humanity!"

He rolled his eyes and looked at the group. "Be right with you - Yes, we're both extra-planar, in relation to Earth. Cuts and abrasions don't mean anything, we can both change shirts, suits, looks and lives with the flicker of a thought. The point is, they can't - especially not those who go out there and throw their lives out on the line. You can't inspire your own troops with bloodstains, bullet holes or sword slashes - you need magnificence to make it work! You need an honest attempt at perfection. You're going to tell me that Nickar, sartorialist to the Black Goat, shouldn't need the input of some seemingly ageless Teuton who had the personality of wet cardboard under those specs - but the fact is I need his brands. I need his audience. Nickar isn't a household name to anyone on Earth as of now. It'll change, of course, but right now?"

The demon's tail swished angrily. "Right now, I need a boost. If Lagerfeld snubs me, I'll be up on your case until you get me either Gianni Versace or Coco Chanel - got me?!"

* * *

"I'm sure he will," nodded the reptile, his entire presence more saccharine than honey. He'd healed remarkably well, his skin having the sheen of freshly-shed scales and his eyes having lost that feverish mania of old, having traded it for what looked like cool and tranquil self-assurance. He'd obviously used his new regenerative gift to forego those expression wrinkles Caliban openly displayed, as he now looked rather much the way he had on the day Isaacs had sprung him out of his maturation tank. As expected, he wore what looked to be an obscenely expensive tweed affair, the fabric a pale beige against his black tie, with elbow pads pre-stitched in place and matching with his black leather suit lapels. A few rings glinted on his fingers, with even the damage caused by old tussles with his clone of a brother having been fixed. His large maw of teeth was carefully, even coyly animated, his jaw pointed downwards and his eyes ahead, something in his steps evoking someone who'd only just learned how to go from obsequiously minced gestures to merely severe affectation.

Archie stared for a few seconds, Rendell shrugging lightly. "Oh, do go and take care of things, Milord - we'll all feel much better knowing you'll have freshened yourself up. I'll set the table in the meantime, ensure we're all ready for a nicely constructive round table..."

He hesitated. "Er - one moment, if you please: where do you keep your best plates, exactly?"

Archie glowered. "I believed you would have delighted in this chance to turn this into a game of one-upmanship with a fellow spymaster."

Rendell snickered at that. "I've better things to do than keep track of my former enemies' china, believe you me!"

Leonard frowned lightly. "Where'd you get all this?" he asked, watching as Rendell unpacked a still-smoking and scrumptious-looking plate of restaurant-grade eggs Benedict, the presentation alone suggesting this hadn't been cheap. The fruit salad didn't come in a mere plastic pot filled with raisins and other cuts; there were five plates of the stuff, all of them arranged in ornate circular patterns, held to a tiny disc of almond paste cookie dough with nearly invisible daubs of white honey.

"The Succulus belongs to Gluttony now, so it essentially is off-limits," he said. "Allocer recovered Lucius Bromley and his sous-chefs, however, and employed them in the City Hall's lounge and restaurant. All it took was the right plant with the right set of horns, a few ornately-sprinkled compliments, and I had a cooing Pitspawn in the palm of my hand," he said, shrugging. "I placed an order in his name, asked him to deliver it, and then had my men show him just how little I think of Hell's little sideshow. Pride's numbers tend to go down easy, once you've reduced them to purring cats, drunken with self-satisfaction and unearned praise..."

Bucky wandered over, picked one of the artful little pies and wordlessly crammed it in his mouth in a single gesture. The sustained gaze he placed on Rendell while chewing was fairly obvious: he wasn't impressed with the Transgenic's display of bribery. Surprisingly, Gregory ignored it entirely.

"Heaven packs some nicely solid numbers. Upright, righteous and what have you... They have flaws, but they tend to know how we mortals assume they carry some sense of perfection, how they embody the best of who or what we could be. That makes them more rigid, less easy to coerce. Hell, however?"

He scoffed as he began setting plates and utentils on the dining room table. "Hell is thoroughly human. It thinks it knows better by focusing on bestiality or wickedness, but these are two things one finds here as well as in Hell. I've probably not seen as many Pitspawn as the rest of you, but in my experience, all of them are deeply and irrevocably human. They simply ignore it at the onset of their journey on our plane, and then stare in shock as they realize that lowly mortals like ourselves here can all manage to gain the upper hand with enough work."

Bucky shifted his weight. "Your point being?
- Find what Allocer wants above all, grant it to him, and he will cast the Goat aside without a moment's hesitation. As satisfaction is human, his success is bound to cause his downfall."

He paused. "Or redemption. Tomayto, tomahto - all depending on whether or not the Goat has him killed in the end."
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Re: Chapter VI - Asunder

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"Agreed. Though, mollifying demon engineers should be interesting," Neasa said quietly before getting out of the limo. Once she actually slipped out of the vehicle, her demeanor transitioned from mild uncertainty to a sense that she belonged there, that she wasn't to be messed with. However, her more confident presence obviously would still be downplayed in comparison to Herbert's.

Truth be told, seeing Mertown covered with eviction notices both saddened her and made her blood boil. Given that it had been her childhood stomping grounds, she hid her emotional attachment to the area. She was also deeply relieved her parents had fled just as the incursion had started and knew they were at least safer on the open water in contrast the marina.

***

The roane smiled. "I remember watching reruns of that online," she noted fondly, then growing more contemplative.

"You're flexible," Aislinn observed. "That's the exact kind of perspective that's needed for a transition of this scale. I think you've always had a natural instinct to protect, and as time passed, you learned from your mistakes. That's why you're so lucid compared to a lot of ghosts. Your essence as a spirit is going to fill that shell and give it its realness, the way Bucky and Archie have with their armatures. Besides George, that's two people close by who know what it's like to have a major shift in outlook and form. Once you would be settled into your new body, I think at least Bucky would be willing to lend a listening ear, hopefully along with any other Animates we have here. They know what it's like."

***

While Meris and Abdiel waited patiently for the demonic tailor to finish his conversation, the Archmage eyed him. "If you're needing a boost, I think we've brought you such a case, Nickar! Though, it's not some deceased head of a world-famous fashion company, but someone much closer to home," she said, flicking her eyes to Doherty.

***

"Well, if it gets to that point, I think giving him the offer of "Come with me if you want to live" seems like a pretty good incentive, if you ask me," Miranda responded. "Icing on the cake. Though, it just seems like Allocer wants to protect a group and earn their admiration, and the Goat offered the shinier option, I guess. I mean, you could illuminate the fact he's not really protecting anybody but only following Dictator Bleatbutt's orders. Any gratitude his constituents express is just lip service, an illusion. That sense of protection needs to be real."
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Re: Chapter VI - Asunder

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Herbert took his time, making a bit of a show out of a few simple gestures, such as checking his phone for updates back at the cabinet and briefly texting both his and Leonard's secretaries. It seemingly worked, as an ashen-faced man with jaundice-colored eyes and the faint pall of dead flesh walked closer. His cop-stache looked fairly clean, the anomalously warm weather enabling the workers and foremen to prepare the bridging ceremony in basic slacks and polo shirts. He was obviously a demon riding a dead shell, but he had far more control than the possessed that had emerged previous to the incursion. The Pit had expended its feral berserkers, now those who wore flesh on Hell's side tended to be people who realized they had mortal workers to assuage. Presenting a human or an anthro's face obviously was the least costly option.

"Help you?" he asked, his tone slightly pointed. Wormsworth sized him up and lightly sneered as he pocketed his phone. "Oh, I rather doubt that," he said. "Herbert J. Wormsworth, Esquire; and this is my assistant, Neasa McConmara. We've been sent as part of the other main delegation overseeing the New Hillard Bridge's finalization. The one chiefly affected by the cease-fire in the area."

The foreman frowned. He wasn't the type to leap in and go for the jugular, but he still couldn't pocket his basic enmity for the duo quite convincingly. "I was told Allocer and his aide would get there first," he opposed. Herbert had to shrug at that, giving both his limo and Neasa an amused glance. "We made good time," he said, shrugging. "It isn't as though we've cameras to mug for, after all."

He then cast his glance past the foreman. "Should we wait, or could we at least assess this structure ourselves? We've refugees of our own, obviously, and Providence is packed with people trying to reach family and friends here on Green Island. There is as much at stake for us as there is for those who relented to Allocer's... clemency."

The foreman looked back to the mortal workers, many immediately turning back to their toils. They were obviously terrified. Herbert had to suppress a groan at the thought of the amount of menial abuse cases his and Leonard's cabinet would have to handle, come peacetime. What they really had to check, however, was the bridge's undercarriage. Nestled in the support struts was a box that ran the bridge's length, originally conceived for the purpose of stashing cables out of reach of the elements, having been carefully duplicated in AutoCAD by the Freaks, in the assumption that any basic jobber would simply weld the extraneous box into place as well and not ask questions. That expanse of pitch-black darkness was already connected with subterranean cable sleeving on Rhode Island's shores, turning the State's electrical grid into the shadow-hopping vampires' own personal thoroughfare. All that was missing was the bridging ceremony's last dab of concrete, to fully banish any remaining cracks of light from those conduits.

The possessed man adjusted his hard hat. "Let me check protocol on that. Don't move."

As he turned back, two black SUVs slid into place behind Herbert's vehicle, out of them stepped two flesh-and-blood humans, in possession of their own bodies and seemingly quite intent on their job, along with a few staffers. One of them was a dishy-looking brunette with almost Star Trek-like alien blotches on her temples. She probably wasn't a Betazoid, however, and looked to be some sort of fully-manifested demon, her features hard if still quite pleasant. Allocer left from the other car, clad in a marine-blue pinstripe suit and yellow tie. If he was the fire-breathing type like Paimon, nothing gave any indication of it. He instead removed a pair of black shades, revealing surprisingly expressive dark eyes that lightly squinted in the sunlight. He looked as though he were already trying to project traffic coming and going in the freshly-painted aisles. His gaze stopped on the lawyer and selkie, briefly froze and then turned softer. His bodyguards had already pressed in on him, but he lightly dismissed them with a hand. He towered over them, in any case, and probably didn't actively need protection. The goons were probably some forced imposition from the now demon-infested Homeland Security offices.

"Mister Wormsworth!" he called out, sounding cordial. "Miss McConmara! I'm glad you could make it, I wasn't sure if Magnus Tower would send anyone.
- We could be forgiven for thinking this to be a trap of some kind," noted Herbert. Allocer looked mildly wounded by that.

"There's no denying the fact that you've caused harm to my people's own lot of refugees," he said, "but I also know what Holden Hall used to mean to the locals. I know exactly what it is you're fighting for and while it's commendable, it doesn't exactly give my side a fair share of the proverbial blanket.
- You would have earned your share if you'd emerged peaceably," noted Herbert, "but this is beside the point. We should be glad you, at least, seem willing to help innocents rebuild their lives."

Allocer nodded. "The lives my men and I destroyed, yes - there's no use denying it. Still, I'm of the mind that no mortal would have willingly kept a seat aside at their table for one such as myself. I might have kicked the door down, but I'm at least paying for damages and offering to repair it."

Herbert nodded. "A gracious gesture, indeed. As we're both of Pride, you'll understand how skeptical I am, when it comes to the genuine affects of your response."

Surprisingly, Allocer was perfectly reasonable. "I'm a hard sell for someone who's used to our own kind's old cons, I know.
- It would seem so. It isn't as though your eviction notices are helping."

The former Knight shrugged and sighed. "I have my own people to house, mortals have the benefit of being adaptable... You'll find I quickly reversed many of these motions, if you stop by the Hall of Records, and commuted them to expropriation notices. We're offering to buy those properties back and to assist any relocated home owners with the purchase of a lot or property of equal value. There's a lot to what's been implemented that doesn't quite follow my instructions, I've already informed those parties responsible of my disappointment."

Wormsworth rolled his eyes. "Yes, how easy is it to play the benefactor with Mammon's currency-obliterating horn of plenty! I hope you realize this housing boom of yours will collapse as soon as the world's stock exchanges are reinstated; Mammon's wealth is of no practical use when used legitimately."

Allocer's smile turned brittle. "I didn't realize I'd driven all this way to be grilled by the Goat's former negotiator..."

The woman's voice was terse. "Gentlemen, please. We both have better uses of our time than debating which scion of Pride is the least objectionable," she said, then looking at Neasa. "I'm Abigail Ziegler - formerly Abyzou -  working with Homeland Security. Director Hines asked me to oversee this process.
- Is Nestor Hines human," asked Herbert, "or another one of Pride's plants?"

Abigail smiled sweetly, the gesture looking utterly devoid of compassion. "Nestor is competent. With the United States falling into disarray, we took it upon ourselves to shore up the country's infrastructure. Terrorism, however, matters far less now than illegal trans-planar immigration. We need to assess the bridge's safety standards in this respect."

The news seemed to surprise Allocer, which left Abyzou to turn her smile back at him. "Your efforts on the municipal level don't matter as much as you think they do, mister Mayor."

Allocer pocketed his shock and indignation, but they didn't look to have been lost to Herbert. At the favor of Abigail and Allocer looking away, he sent Neasa the merest flash of a wicked smirk.

* * *

Al grunted. "Wallace, I might talk to. I always wondered what it'd take to get Holden to talk straight."

George shrugged. "Foolish hopes, I'd say. The man is as I am - the product of a specific moment in time. The day I'll start throwing in I'm gonnas into my sentences, I do believe Meris will have me examined!"

The ghost hovered closer to the mold. "I stuck a gun to the necks of the last guys who talked to me like this," he said. "Envoys from Winter, back in '58. I might've been part of the Sicilians' Irish connections in America and I might've had Fae in my posse, but I didn't owe allegiance to no queen.
- Then why didn't I spend most of my time tryin' to navigate Faerie turf wars?" asked Weasel, which made Al smirk.

"I didn't pull the trigger," he said. "Didn't have to - I had cold iron in my hand. Why shoot pointy-eared pansies when you can just give 'em gun-barrel hickies? From then on, they knew the way in with the Commission would be through Sarvin."

He then looked up from the mold and sighed. "Alright, fire up that mixer, people!" he then said, looking back to the gorilla. "Duvivier? I'm leavin' you all ten thousand o' my guys - I'll make sure they know to follow around.
- I don't plan on divorcing you from your community entirely, mister Biggs," clarified the houngan. "My own contribution will amount to making sure you have access to those deceased that Mister Ephesian hasn't already claimed as clients. If anyone still wants to march on behind you, they'll be free to do so. I'd expect a few derelictions, though."

The ghostly gangster nodded. "Yeah, I won't be noncorporeal and all. The loopier ones might not recognize me once this is over - I know the risks."

* * *

A minute or so later, Nickar pressed a button on his earpiece and walked on over. He looked lean and almost avian-faced, with a projected beak's worth of a mouth paired with human eyes, a small pair of horns and a stretch of slicked-back white hair. He wore his beige shirt with his sleeves rolled up, a gold necktie loosely hanging around his throat and slipped underneath a crimson vest. His pants followed the standard Business Casual cut, but the two lengths of fabric that made them were of different colors - red in front, black in the back. He wore sandals, otherwise, along with a few items of male jewellery. Perched atop his head was a pair of currently-unused shades, something to their makeup looking like an Oakley frame rendered in reinforced Brimstone spindles, the glasses' red tint swirling like jets of sand in a puddle of oil.

He grunted. "Classic, bordering on conservative, with enough loose fabric to sell that ages-old lie of just being big-boned... What's your emerging  burden, Mister Walking Skeptic?
- The ability to shut smartass types up with a punch," grunted Doherty. "You're not helping your mistress or queen's case!"

That made Nick lightly lean away, adding a whistle for good measure. "My, but we've got an ornery one!"

Three bit his lower lip. "You probably should go through the basics first, Nick."

The stylist nodded. "Yes, I'd say that tracks," he said, then sighing gamely and looking back to Doherty. "Alright, so... Story Time for Tightwad Pennipeds it is! To put months of effort into something digestible, I'll just say I showed up on Earth expecting a swift kick to the rump after the Goat literally divested me of all my assets, and mister Drake here passed me a loaner's worth of power and a towel. It isn't much, it's all very Douglas Adams-esque, but it more or less shattered whatever preconceptions I had left. Dithering around the tower's basement became bearable, and so did our relocating here after admitting we just didn't have enough space in the old parking lot. Yes, I'm of Pride and yes, I think most of everyone here except Meris has the fashion sense of a dead nautilus making poor house-flipping choices on Home and Garden - but at least you aren't looking to lord it over your fellow aesthetes."

He gestured back to the workshop and studio. "I've been brainstorming for the past several weeks and based on input from Vassago and Samigina, I've got some idea of what to expect, as well as what you'll respectively need."

He looked back to Doherty. "And yes, sourpuss - you're in it too. You'll be running for re-election under discrete ceramic plates and kevlar-carbon meshes. Fit for boardrooms and ballrooms, triple-imbued for moisture wicking and temperature control, plus hydro and oleophobic layers, along with discrete nanotube edges hidden in the hems. Harmless at common speeds, dangerous knife-edges when forced to whip and dodge around. You'll be the first man to slice someone's arm open with a necktie. All of it cut so expertly as to make Rome's sartorialists dramatically swoon. You, my friend, will never wear this off-the-rack tat again," he said, pinching the sleeve of Wallace's suit jacket as though it were carrying something foul.

Anger had given way to befuddlement, Doherty looking like he didn't know how to process all this.

* * *

Gregory set utensils and plates in place, briefly giving Miranda an amused and knowing glance. "Truly your mother's daughter," he said, smiling. "Splendid! I briefly thought about keeping tabs on your report cards, when you were a youngling, as convinced I was that Aspasia's exactingly-designed mind would have issued something of similar stock. I never had the resources needed to infiltrate as lowly an organism as a school board, but still felt compelled not to worry overmuch. I'm glad to see my intuition was correct."

He nodded. "That said, that absolutely is the crux of it. How should we go about turning an oblivious provincial lordling intended to oppress with stability and peace into someone who will be willing to take up arms with us? How could we turn that enforced gratitude into the real stuff?"

Leonard stroked his chin. "The easiest and most dangerous answer involves our providing him with a crisis he can solve. This could further Archie's earlier-stated goal of some of us breaking off from the mold, but my and Rhadamantus' natures would push us to label those involved as criminals. A more complex approach with less risk involves our finding a means to expose him to the ways in which the Goat's own plans stand in opposition to his expression of Pride. It stands to reason that he's already chafing against the established rule; Allocer would only need so much for his disapproval to turn into outright disgust. The tricky part is that some of us have to challenge his authority enough for the Goat's forces to tighten the noose. The more constricted and restrained he feels, the more liable he'll be to consider other options."
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Re: Chapter VI - Asunder

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Oddly relieved to see Herbert smirk so wickedly, Neasa didn't act as though she had noticed the expression. Not comfortable getting verbally involved just yet, she let the negotiating demon direct the topics in the conversation. She figured he would push the matter of the bridging ceremony along.

***

"We'll see how things go. Appearance wise, you won't be the same, but who you are as a person won't change. If you can maintain your mannerisms in your new shell, that might help them adapt," Aislinn noted, then eyeing the mixer and then the rabbi and the other participants. "Time for us to handle our side of things"

***

Meris smiled lightly and clarified for the walrus, "Nickar will essentially be giving you a suit, or suits, that will complement your manifesting abilities. You'll need to be impeccably sharp if you're going to run for re-election, Mr. Mayor, both aesthetically and martially. That suit will be a garment, a weapon, and a shield all in one. You'll be the city's main representative once more, but you'll also be one of its defenders as well."

***

Miranda made an annoyed look at Rendell's compliment, no matter how right he was. Still, her keen mind was still working as she pondered over the situation, but she knew she didn't have all the necessary information. Musing that the attorney would know his former possessor intimately, he would probably have some vital insight.

She looked over at Ephesian and curiously tilted her head. "Is there any way to goad Bleatbutt into going overkill with sending in his troops? I know he's safely planted in the White House, but he's probably still got a fragile ego underneath all that bluster and sheer pettiness. If we could do that, Allocer might want to genuinely protect his constituents and essentially turn him over to our side."
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