Tag Archives: Charlie

Tide: 7.2

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Charlie:

The boy couldn’t have been asleep for very long when a set of light thumps in the surrounding earth saw him roused. He hadn’t been dreaming; not quite, at least. There had been something there when the world around him went away, but it hadn’t been anything quite as solid as a dream. More like an ache; a few sparking wires of his imagination throwing up images of a dodge-ball rolling in smooth, slow circles in a patch of sand. It had been soothing, in a way. 

He wondered where he’d gotten the image of a dodge-ball from. He couldn’t remember ever having seen one.

A shuffling beside him. He lolled his head in the direction of the noise, and forced open one of his eyes.

Oh. It was just the creature back to check on him; gazing at his face with a pair of overlarge blue eyes. The boy liked this creature. He was pretty sure he did, at least. It had brought him food; although he did wish it wouldn’t chatter quite so much. It made sleeping difficult.

True to form, the moment it saw that he was awake, the creature opened up its jaws to resume its noise. To the boy’s distinct surprise, he found he could understand it now.

“Charlie!” it squeaked. “I won! I freaking won! Plus, look!-” It waved its forelegs in the air. “I got clothes!”

The boy turned his eyes briefly to the creature’s form. For some reason, it appeared to have encased itself in a layer of darkened leather.

Weird. 

The creature seemed pleased though, so it was fine. It started jabbering again; something about trees and fights and Batman; each concept barely comprehensible in isolation, let alone in combination. He struggled to parse a meaning from any of it. 

Well, besides Batman. That concept was easier to understand, for some reason.

Something sparked inside his brain. A faint flash of memory. Words a boy had once used to irritate a friend.

“Superman’s better,” he echoed.

The creature fell silent. The boy began to wonder if he’d said it wrong. He wouldn’t be surprised. He wasn’t completely sure he’d been able to speak in the first place, let alone now, in his fractured state. At least it seemed to have quieted the creature dow-

The boy blinked as the creature wrapped its forelimbs tight around his ribs, its forehead buried against his chest. 

“You take that back,” it sniffled.

Ah. Clearly, he had done it wrong. This was worse. Perhaps he didn’t know how to speak after all. He shrugged. Oh well. It wasn’t as if he was currently tired enough to sleep. Besides, the creature was small enough to be easily dislodged should its contact become a problem for him. He resolved to let it have its way, awkwardly raising a hand to pat it on the head. He was fairly sure animals were supposed to like that. The creature cocked its head to the side.

“A-are you petting me?”

The boy shushed it.

His focus turned inward. The thing in the water was still at work within his brain; the slow eddies of its presence gradually shifting more and more pieces of him into place. It was almost unpleasant, the comforting numbness of its presence breaking sporadically as fragments of a past he was unfamiliar with slammed into his skull. New faculties, new notions, every one of them surprising. Every time, he found himself forced to readjust; to take stock; to come to grips with this new thing that he apparently always was. He found it exhausting.

The boy was fairly sure he liked the presence in the water, although, much as with the creature now nestled against his chest, he wasn’t completely sure. The process was uncomfortable, to be sure, but he had to admit, he much preferred the stillness it gave his mind over the screaming that had filled his head before. Much as with the smaller creature, though, he wished it would shut up.

To call it speech would have been inaccurate. The presence wasn’t using words of any kind; at least not in any form the boy could recognize. It was still talking, though; communication parsed by color and intent. It brought to mind the smell of apples, then the sting of loss, then the shock of reconnected memory. He shook his head. It wasn’t the first attempt that had been made, and he still couldn’t fathom what was meant by it. The presence was undeterred. It would try again. 

The not-quite-sound died away for a time as the thing drifted off along his thoughts, passing over fragments and playing back memories, cataloging the pieces of his mind in a way he probably should have found invasive.

When it had learned some more, he knew it would return, and, just as before, the next attempt would be made with greater nuance. He waited patiently for it to return, and when it finally did, the scent of apples bore a new inflection: the memory of an older woman’s face; the echoed recollection of a voice.

For the first time, he was able to parse an emotion. Melancholy. He gave the presence a slow nod, trying, in whatever way he could, to be encouraging.

The presence tried again. Hours passed that way, and, as he and the entity learned more of him in lockstep, it managed to send him its intent.

It was making a request. He considered it. It didn’t sound unreasonable, but as with many things, the boy struggled to be sure. He was, however, aware that he owed the entity something of a debt. After a minute or two of thought, he agreed to try.

He would be sleeping deeply after this.

James:

James stretched his arms out into the sleeves, hoping that, somehow, his hands might make it all the way to the ends this time.

They did not. He sighed.

He shouldn’t really have been surprised. Bors was a large man; a solid six foot two, with broad shoulders to match, whereas James, much to his own chagrin, was undersized, even for a twelve year old. What had, to Bors, been a mid-sized jacket was, for him, closer to a trench coat, the hem falling a short way past his knees.

Well, the important thing was no longer being naked. As for the rest, he’d make it work.

Right. Okay. Just a little bit of cutting.

James focused. 

His powers had been a little weird, since coming to this place. They were more reactive than he was used to, less effort required to achieve the same result; a wind blast produced with what amounted to a flick instead of a punch. It made precision work a bit more complicated.

Take it slow, he told himself. That’s all you gotta do.

He reached into the wind, collecting a few loose strands of air and compressing them into a single line. Then, he held out an arm, and guided that line slowly down into the material around his elbow. The leather shifted to the side against his arm, not severed so much as simply pushed aside.

He sighed.

Screw it. Careful’s for wimps.

He took a fistful of air and clamped it down on the end of his sleeve, then gave the thing a tug.

There was an awful tearing noise as the material ripped open about the shoulder seam. James briefly remembered Bors asking if he’d ever get it back, then did the same with the other sleeve. 

Good. Success. He once more had access to his hands. As an added bonus, he was pretty sure he looked like Rambo now. He considered that a win.

He glanced up through the thin canopy of the clearing. The sun was nearing the midpoint of its journey along the sky. Almost noon – or whatever time approximated noon on an alien magic world. He should get going soon if he wanted to catch another search team off guard before they had a chance to notice that anyone was gone. He shook his head. They probably already had. If everyone had radios like the last guys had, then they probably checked in with each other every now and again. He folded his arms. Batman would plan for the worst in a situation like this and so should he.

Right. One more attack before they all regroup. Use the color of the sky to make yourself invisible, and hit ‘em as hard and fast as you can. If someone manages to hold you back, then run away like you’re Casper playing Dark Souls. Nothing to it.

He nodded. It sounded like a good plan, and he was proud of it. He could do this.

“Hey, Charlie,” he called, glancing across the clearing to where his companion still sat, his back to him. “I’m gonna go for another run. I need you to stay here till I- The heck?”

Something had sparked briefly along the outline of Charlie’s form. James set his other thoughts aside for a moment, and put his focus on his friend.

“Charlie?” he asked. “You doing okay, man?”

Once again, something sparked around his friend; his cheeks and shoulders lighting up with a momentary flash of indigo. There was a sound like a balloon being popped.

James stood up.

“Hey,” he called as he edged slowly towards the other boy. “Come on, dude. Talk to me. What’s going on?”

James had grown so accustomed to his friend’s quiet that he was a little surprised by the older boy’s response.

“Help,” Charlie murmured. 

James shook his head.

“Uh. What?”

“It keeps saying ‘Help’.” Charlie turned around to look James in the eye, his expression oddly distant. “Hey. Did we used to be friends a while back?”

James took a few more careful steps forward.

“We’re still friends,” he replied, doing the best he could to keep his voice calm. “We never stopped being… Who’s saying ‘hel-’”

This time, James was close enough to watch as the next spark made its presence known in Charlie’s lap, a disc of purple light flexing and warping between his hands like pressurized sheet-metal. For a moment, the entire clearing glowed a vibrant purple. Then, something in its structure broke, and it vanished with a faint crack. James gaped. 

Charlie sighed.

“This is harder than it should be,” he muttered. “Can’t figure out how I’m s’posed to make it work.”

James shook himself.

Right. Yes. Charlie had powers. He’d been told about that. This wasn’t the time. He put a hand on Charlie’s shoulder.

“Hey,” he said. “Dude. I need you to stop. Okay? Whatever you’re doing, just make it stop.”

Charlie gave him a confused look at that.

“Why?” he asked. “It wants me to connect us up.”

James shook his head, the concern mounting rapidly inside his brain.

“I don’t care,” he said. “Just trust me. Whatever it is. Whatever it’s saying. Don’t.”

Charlie frowned.

“Why?” he asked. “It’s helping me. Shouldn’t I try and help it back?”

“What the heck are you even talking about?” James snapped, only barely keeping his voice below a yell. “What is it!?”

Charlie raised an eyebrow.

“You mean you can’t hear it?” he asked. “The thing in the water?”

Something leaden fell through James’ stomach.

“Oh, crap, no. Don’t you even think abo-”

Charlie wasn’t listening. Even as the other boy’s words grew loud and shrill in his ear, he returned his attention to the task at hand.

The light came again. It was even brighter this time, the entirety of the clearing momentarily picked out in vibrant neon. The disc in Charlie’s hands was bigger now, flaring almost white as he turned his full attention towards it.

James tried to give the boy a shove. Charlie simply shrugged him off. The disc grew brighter still. James readied his wind.

There was a quiet ‘pop’ in the space behind them.

Someone sniffed.

“So this is where you’ve been hiding him,” said Mr. Grey. “Well, you had a good run, while it-”

That was as far as he got before James’ wind-blast caught him in the face, sending his shield sparking up around him and his body stumbling back. James turned to face his foe just as, with a quiet pop, the man vanished into thin air.

Not good.

James turned, wrapped his arms around his friend, and prayed for dear life that he could hold on long enough to fly the two of them out of there. The light was almost blinding now.

“Hold on, Charlie!” he yelled. “I’m gonna get us-”

Another pop. James felt the tip of something cold press against his head. He froze. Then let out a pained cry as a hand yanked roughly at his hair, pulling him from his friend.

“Bad move,” Mr. Grey’s voice hissed in his ear. “Charles, if you want your friend to live, you’re going to do exactly as I say. Understood?”

James tried to protest, then let out another cry as the man wrenched once more at his hair.

Charlie didn’t even look at them. He simply kept on gazing at his disc, letting the light grow ever brighter.

The light.

As the gun-barrel pressed even harder against his skull, James had a single, desperate thought.

Please don’t see me. Please don’t see me-

Sebastian was flung across the clearing as James’ form exploded. He hit the ground, caught himself, and raised his revolver, now having to squint to see in the omnipresent glare, trying to find a spot of light in a place that held very little else.

Then James punched him. His shield flickered. James punched him harder.

The man teleported again, taking aim this time for Charlie, and made it halfway through a threat before another blow brought him to his knees.

“Stop! Being! EVIL!” James bellowed, raining blow after furious blow down against his foe; Grey’s shield splintering more and more around him by the moment.

That was when the light died down.

The two of them might have kept on fighting, were it not for the presence that encroached upon their minds right then. Like talons latching on the soul.

As one, they turned their gazes first to Charlie, and then to the portal he had just created.

Through that hole, however, all that could be seen was inky blackness, discernible from pure void only by the faint glisten as something a dozen or so feet from the aperture caught the light. For a few moments, they all simply watched as whatever hid below the water drifted closer. James thought it might have been scales. Or leather. Somewhere between the two.

Then, the surface parted, and they found themselves gazing into a milky-pale eye. An eye that was easily two feet wide.

The thing in the water turned its gaze to James.

“No,” Grey said flatly. Then, with a final ‘pop’, he vanished.

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Tide: 7.1

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James:

The bird was odd looking; six broad wings spaced unevenly across a body that had to be three or four feet long. Four were spaced around the creature’s upper mass, a pair at both the top and bottom of a slender set of ribs, with the third positioned at the end of a long, snake-like tail. It cut an unusual figure as it moved, not so much flying as… almost swimming through the sky. Like an eel given flight, its head crested with what, for all the world, looked like armored plates the same off-bronze color as its beak.

It was also on fire.

It seemed to be fine with this. 

James hovered in the air some twenty feet distant from the firebird, watching carefully as it flitted between the branches of the trees that lined their small peninsula. Some of the trees bore fruits, of a sort: large, hazelnut-like things about the size of a mango. James had tried splitting one open, but had been too put off by the way the contents sparkled in the light to risk actually consuming it. 

Instead, he watched the firebird, its wings barely moving beyond occasional flicks as it inspected the contents of the branches. 

The creature approached one of the nuts, its head moving some two inches from the surface, inspecting it by eye. He drifted closer. 

For a moment, the bird looked back at him. He pretended to be doing something else, casting his gaze to the side, and feigning interest in the distant shoreline.

“Don’t mind me,” he muttered. “Do your thing, dude.”

The bird gazed balefully at him for a moment, then went back to perusing its nut. James stopped pretending to care about the shoreline.

After a time, the firebird appeared to decide the fruit was suitable, and brought its long tail around to wrap across the surface of it, the wings flattening into its sides as it coiled around the object like a snake. As James watched, it began tapping at the nut’s surface with its arrow-like beak. The nut made a deep nut-noise. The bird pressed its head against it at that, listening.

James was perhaps half a minute from losing interest when, quick as a flash, the bird struck, a foot or so of its body slithering free of the surface and arching back, before snapping itself towards the nut like a viper striking home.

There was a wet cracking sound as the bird plunged into the nut’s core, then a strange slurping noise as it devoured whatever part of the thing was apparently safe to eat.

The process took perhaps half a minute in totality, the firebird eventually peeling itself free of the fruit, its head and neck now glistening with the same sparkling fluid that had filled the inside of the nut. It hung in the air for a moment, then shot a glance at James. 

He waved. 

The firebird let out a caw, the flames around its form growing brighter and brighter by the moment, before it swivelled in the air, and shot towards the horizon like a bullet, leaving a trail of slowly fading fire in its wake. About a mile distant, James could have sworn it broke the sound barrier.

… I shall name you Jeremy.

He inspected the remains of the nut. It was charred, the hole in its surface faintly blackened at the edges. Inside, however, the thing seemed drained; absent the majority of the fluid that ought to fill its core; the flesh of its interior slightly nibbled.

Right. That should work. He had found his breakfast. He snagged a pair of the fruits, and headed back towards the beach.

Charlie hadn’t moved in the time since James had left him; his body slumped awkwardly against the bough of a beachside tree in the vague hope of keeping him out of sight. 

“Hey, man. Feeling any better?” 

Charlie didn’t answer. He did blink, though. James took that as a good sign.

“Cool.”

He set one of the fruits down and, with a careful bit of wind, sliced the second one neatly down the middle. 

He set one of the halves down too, then, very carefully, dipped the half he was still holding until a few drops of the fluid within trickled from the cavity and onto the sandy ground. 

He waited a few moments. The ground failed to catch fire. He drank the fluid.

It tasted surprisingly good. Halfway between coconut water and orange juice.

He placed the other half on Charlie’s lap and gave him an awkward pat on the knee.

“Try and eat something, okay? I don’t wanna have to figure out how to feed you.”

Charlie didn’t respond. 

James didn’t want to start crying again, so he returned his attention to his food. He peeled a strip of the flesh from its interior and stuck it in his mouth. 

Huh. Juicy.

James turned his gaze towards the ocean, one of the planet’s moons still stubbornly hanging over the horizon, bathing in the early morning light.

The water was intimidating here. There was something else beneath the surface. Something beyond the thousands of sparkling, many-colored fish. Something that lurked.

He could feel it occasionally brushing at his mind, the edges of it grazing at his being like a fingertip sliding along his skin.

He didn’t dare spend too long out there. That was the only reason he and Charlie had remained within the bounds of the archipelago. Better this than whatever had scraped against his mind when he’d tried to truly flee.

It was about a minute later, still munching on his fruit, when a motion to the right made him jump.

It was Charlie.

He had moved one hand from where it rested by his side towards the fruit portion sitting in his lap. As James watched, hardly daring to breathe, the other hand began to move as well.

It was all James could do to keep his joy at the level of a wide grin instead of something vocal.

Come on, Charlie. You can do it! Come on!

Slowly; painfully slowly, Charlie lifted the fruit to his lips and tipped it back, a faint line of fluid dribbling down his chin as he clumsily gulped it down. 

It took everything in James’ power not to whoop at that.

It wasn’t much. But Charlie was alive. More than that, though; at least on some level, he was conscious.

It was hope.

Charlie drained his piece of fruit and lowered it back down. James hurried to open up the second one. This was good. This was very, very good.

Now he could focus on other things. 

Things like the massive amount of danger they were both in.

James passed his friend another piece of fruit, and cast his eyes in the direction of the shoreline, across the wide span of water that stretched between the islands of the archipelago. 

This place was small, the islands all clumped together in a mass no bigger than a couple miles in any given direction. Not enough space to hide long-term. They were probably already combing the archipelago for him. What was worse, though, these guys weren’t like Father or the Family. These guys wanted him dead. 

That was terrifying.

He shook himself. That wasn’t important. What mattered right now was just staying alive and keeping Charlie safe. He took a deep breath.

Don’t flip out. Be smart. You can do this. Just figure out the problem one bit at a time.

Right. Okay.

Problem one: He was outnumbered. Badly.

That was big.

Problem two: There wasn’t enough space to hide for long and they’d probably get the jump on him if he tried.

That was also big.

Problem three: He had to keep Charlie safe.

That one felt more do-able, but he had no idea where to start.

Also clothes. Clothes would be good. He’d left his last set behind him when he went to rescue Charlie.

He needed to think tactically. This was a superhero problem. He had to find a superhero answer.

“Okay,” he muttered, tossing the thought back and forth inside his head. “So… What would Batman do?”

Bors:

Overall, Bors thought, there were worse places in the world to end up stranded. The sun was warm, the food was plentiful, and the view from the shoreline was breathtaking. He could practically feel the ambient energy of this place soaking through his skin, setting his nerves and thoughts on fire as it passed. It was a unique feeling, even stranger when coupled with the idea that all of it was him. His once average shield now felt strong enough to weather a tank shell. For the first time in his life, he was powerful.

It almost made what they’d been through worth it. Almost.

Bors shot a glance towards Liza in the tree-line. She shook her head. No sightings on her end either. He nodded, then returned his eyes to the beach. They were on the side facing away from the greater archipelago now. They’d need to be extra careful. They’d agreed to search the islands in groups of two, at the least, just in case the baby elemental got the drop on them. The plan was fairly simple. Find Charles, or find his captor, and radio back to Sebastian on the double. Under no circumstances were they to try and engage a Toranaga on their own, even an adolescent one. Bors struggled to disagree with that. If his own abilities had been so magnified by this place, he could only shudder to think of what power that half-breed held.

Better to let Sebastian deal with it. Either he’d buy them all a victory on his own, or he’d finally get his comeuppance for being such a prick; Bors would take it as a win either way. Charles’ fate had left a bitter taste in his mouth. Worse still was the vindictive glee Sebastian had seemed to take in it. Bors didn’t think he’d mind too much watching that man die.

The attack came without much in the way of warning. Bors was looking behind himself, checking the tide-line to be sure that the waves were still managing to scrub away his footprints, when an entire tree trunk slammed against his side with the force of- well, a tree trunk.

He hadn’t been wrong. His shield definitely was tougher now. Had he been struck by such a blow back on Earth, it likely would have ended him. Even on this world, though, it was enough to make his shields crack. Lines of light danced jagged across the surface of his skin as his body was sent crashing into the water without even the time to yelp. 

His first half-second beneath the surface was disorienting, his sight obscured by bubbles and the sparking of his shield. He flailed briefly beneath the waves, then found his vision captured by the myriad points of light that filled the water. An odd thing to catch his focus, really; the ambient light of fish.

Then he felt something scrape against his mind.

It was looking at him.

Oh, God, no.

He had to get out of the water. He had to get out right now.

He spun about, then kicked madly for the surface. 

The first thing to catch Bors’ eye when his eyes found air was Liza being thrown against the sand. She rolled shoulder over shoulder for a moment, before stumbling to her feet and sending a bolt of violet light into the treeline. Her shield was in tatters. That was a problem for later. He had to get out of the water first. He would not be food for the creature in the depths. He made for the shore as fast as he could go.

Liza was struggling now; screaming obscenities for all the world to hear as the elemental first scooped her legs from under her, then pinned her to the floor, the shape of a single giant hand imprinting in the sand about her torso while something else tugged the stun-gun from her belt.

Bors was almost to the shore. He fumbled for his radio. He unclipped it from his waist and brought it to his ear, before something carved a gash out of the shields around his cheek, and his radio sliced itself in half. 

“Don’t even,” growled the elemental. “Don’t. You. Dare.”

“Fuck,” muttered Bors by reflex.

It took James Toranaga a few tries to figure out Liza’s taser; a moment spent figuring out its function and a few more trying fruitlessly to penetrate her shields. Bors stumbled to the shore, and, for lack of anything better to do, began scanning the sky for the monster’s core.

A few moments of desperate searching later, he found it; a hint of silver-blue against a far more vibrant sky. He readied a spell; took his aim.

“I said don’t!” the voice yelled, filling the whole of the space around them, before a wall of solid air slammed the agent off his feet. His shot went wide. He tried to stand, but the moment his shoulders began to rise, a vast weight pressed them right back down, his shield flaring dangerously at the strain.

It felt like a foot; the outline of giant toes against his ribs. The elemental was standing on him. 

He was offended. 

The elemental turned its attention back to Bors’ partner.

“Turn off your shield so I can taze you,” it said.

Liza simply swore.

The creature groaned.

“Okay, pretty please let me taze you?”

Liza spat at it, a trail of saliva briefly hovering against the windbound hand above her chest.

“… Fine.” 

Some distance away, the abandoned tree-trunk wrenched itself out of the sand.

“Wait,” said Bors, watching as dreadful understanding dawned in Liza’s eyes, followed soon thereafter by cold acceptance. “Don’t. You can’t-”

“Can’t what?” the elemental snapped, the tree trunk positioning itself over Liza’s form like a pestle above a mortar. “I can’t taze her with her shields up, so now I have to knock ‘em down! You’re the ones making me do it this way!”

Liza didn’t answer. Her shield simply flared amber as she pumped all of her energy into it.

Bors swore.

“I’ll do it,” he growled. “Let me up and I’ll break her shield for you.” 

Liza glared at him. He ignored her.

The monster hesitated.

“You promise you won’t try shooting me again?”

Bors gritted his teeth.

“I promise.”

“… Okay.” The tree lowered itself back down against the sand. Bors felt the weight lifting from his chest. “But if I even think you’re gonna try something, I’ll dump you in the water as far out as I can.”

Bors didn’t respond to that. There was no point. He wasn’t about to take another shot. He shifted across the sand toward his partner, then pressed a hand against her shoulder, a field of glowing sparks laying themselves above her skin as he broke her shield down one layer at a time. Liza glared coldly at him as he worked. He glared back. He wasn’t in the mood.

“Traitor,” she told him.

“We lost, Liza,” he said flatly. “I’m just saving you some broken bones.”

She swore at him. He tuned her out.

He wound up knocking her out himself; he had a spell more suited to it than the taser. It was almost a relief when it was done.

Then it was just him and the elemental. It made for an especially awkward type of quiet.

“How’s Charles?” he asked eventually. “The portal-maker. Is he doing any better?”

“… Why do you care?” the monster asked. “You’re the ones who hurt him in the first place.”

Bors shook his head at that.

“Grey never told us that would happen. Charles was an arrogant little shit, but I didn’t want to see him break.”

The elemental didn’t answer. Bors turned his eyes towards the sea. For a few moments, all was still.

“I don’t have any spells for knocking people out,” the elemental muttered. “That means I’ll have to hurt them really badly if I wanna stop them coming after me.”

There wasn’t any need to finish off the thought. Bors already understood. 

“You want me to keep them unconscious for you,” he muttered. “Save you the trouble of dirtying your hands.” Part of him wanted to reject it, but he was too busy being bitter. Here he was, more powerful than he’d ever been before, and it didn’t change a thing. “Fine. Just tell me how the kid’s doing first.”

“… Better,” the creature admitted. “He’s moving around and eating on his own.” The voice hesitated for a moment there, before adding: “He’s gonna be okay. He’s tougher than you guys are.”

Bors nodded. The news was a relief, if only a small one.

“That’s good to hear, at least,” he muttered. “… Careful with Grey. The man teleports like you wouldn’t believe.”

“Thanks,” came the reply. “I’ll check in on you in a couple hours. Just-… Don’t be lying to me, okay? I don’t wanna have to hurt you.”

Bors nodded. 

There was silence again, then. He was fairly certain the monster had simply drifted off, before a final statement made him jump.

“Also, I want your jacket.”

“… What?” 

“Your jacket,” James Toranaga repeated. “Gimme.”

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Interlude: Waves.

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Sarah:

Sarah Toranaga sat quietly on the couch beside her husband, letting the words and actions flow all around her. A part of her couldn’t think. Another part refused to stop. She was pleading; a low, desperate chant playing over and over inside a mother’s brain.

Not again, she begged. Please, God. Please don’t hurt my son again.

“How did it happen?” Peter asked quietly beside her, his tone less one of rage and more a cold, tired kind of dread. “How did you lose him? He’s my son, Dad. How do you lose a twelve year old boy?”

Hideyoshi’s head was in his hands, the words coming out a little muffled.

“It was a dynamic situation, Peter,” said the older man, his voice a dull monotone. “We told him to stay out of it, but he threw himself in anyway. We didn’t have time to pull him back.” He shook his head. “Binyamin was the only one who had eyes on him when it happened.”

“And he lost him?” Peter asked, incredulous. “Who the hell would even let him out of sigh-”

“James tried to go after the teleporter I was fighting before he could make off with Charlie,” Hideyoshi droned. “The man had an enchanted gun. Binyamin was too busy bending the bullet away from the kid to stop him going through the portal.” He sighed.

“By the time we got there, the thing was already closed. Jacqueline traced it back to an island in Bermuda. Apparently there’s a bridge-scar there leading off-world. She’s already gathering the energy to open it back up. Then we’ll follow them through.”

“Bermuda,” Peter whispered. “They’re with the Whale?”

Sarah’s heart went dead inside her chest. Peter gave her hand a squeeze.

Hideyoshi nodded.

“Looks like it,” he murmured. “…I’m sorry, Peter.”

There was a hollow sounding thud as Peter struck him.

“Don’t you dare,” he snapped. “Don’t you dare be sorry. Being sorry right now means you’ve given up on my son. You can be sorry when we’ve got him back. Until then, we’ve got a job to do.”

After less than a second’s hesitation. Hideyoshi nodded. The pair began to plan.

Sarah wasn’t listening. There was nothing she could add to this. No power, no skills, no history of tactical acumen. She was a sideliner; a supporting role, the one who stayed at home and cared while someone else went out to do the fighting.

And now James was lost. And there was nothing she could do. She hated it.

Peter gave her hand another squeeze. She pulled it from his grip.

The men glanced across at her as she stood. She didn’t look at them.

As she walked towards the hall, she spoke the one thought that she could truly put to words:

“You will not be part of this family until I see my son again,” she said quietly. “However long that takes.”

A momentary quiet, then Hideyoshi inclined his head.

“Yeah,” he murmured. “I know.”

The words didn’t help. She left.

She needed to be somewhere quiet. A place where she could rage or yell or throw things. A place where she wasn’t useless.

A place like that didn’t exist right now.

She moved downstairs into the basement. A part of her, a big part, had wanted to go and find her daughter; hold Rebeccah in her arms and remind herself that something, anything she cared about was truly safe. But no. Bex was in her room. She didn’t know about this. She didn’t need to know about this. To see her mother in such pain would only serve to frighten her. Sarah wasn’t about to put that weight on her.

There was a mattress in the basement; a broad futon resting over the frame of a fold-out couch. She made her way to it without bothering to turn on the lights. She tripped on something in the dark. It gave her an excuse to punch the floor.

She found the futon and sat herself upon it.

It was dark here; open and empty; a void with only the distant thrumming of the boiler to remind her she had weight.

She could yell here, just like she wanted. Peter knew better than to bother her. She could shout, rage, tear things and scream until it somehow made James safe again.

Sarah put her head in her hands, and began to cry.

“Just let him be alive,” she begged of no one. “That’s all I need, okay? Just let him be alive so I can hold him again.”

The darkness didn’t answer.

There was an image that had hovered in the back of Sarah’s mind for months, waiting to torment her when everything was calm; the memory of James in his hospital bed, his eyes full of fear and hurt.

The image that came for her now was so much worse. The image of her boy with nothing in his eyes at all. Cold.

Please no.

She clutched her head.

Don’t show me that.

The image came through again, clearer now. The warmth of her child’s skin cooled to coagulated wax. She screwed her eyes shut.

“Stop it.”

The pinkish brown of his cheeks becoming a chalky not-quite-white.

She gagged.

The air felt heavy on her shoulders. A room full. A house full. The vastness of the atmosphere above.

It felt like it was crushing her.

She needed it to move.

She pushed.

Something in the frame beneath her snapped, sturdy pine giving way like a toothpick under stress.

Not enough. She pushed again.

Something rippled out of her through the shadows. She could hear a distant cabinet tearing itself apart.

“Not this,” she moaned. “Not now.”

Somewhere on the landing above, the door clicked closed. There was someone in here with her.

“Leave me alone,” she mumbled.

“Manifesting, huh?” Casper’s voice murmured back. “It’s pretty intense, right?”

Sarah shook her head.

“Just get out. Please?”

A moment’s quiet. Then the sound of something coming to rest against the staircase.

“He’s gonna be okay,” Casper murmured quietly. “You know that, right?”

Sarah took a long, shaky breath, and pulled her hands from her head, resting her chin against her fists.

“What makes you so sure about that?” she asked. “How do you know he’s even still alive?”

Casper chuckled.

“Cuz I hang out with one of the most dangerous dudes on the planet. A guy so dangerous and crazy that he can molest little kids in the middle of New York without anyone trying to stop him.” Casper hesitated there for just for a moment before continuing:

“But a couple days ago, James punched him through a concrete wall. Just for being a creep. That’s how powerful your son is. Trust me. When Peter or Hideyoshi or whoever else you send gets through there, all they’re gonna find is James and Charlie sitting on a beach somewhere, along with a bunch of beat up bad guys.”

Sarah snorted in spite of herself at that.

“Oh, Casper,” she murmured. “I wish that helped.”

Charlie:

The boy was broken. Shattered was the better word, really; his mind fractured into a thousand smaller segments, each of them firing stress neurons and pulses of randomly selected memory across the surface of his brain, none of it really managing to connect.

His eyes were open; currently beyond the reaches of his faculties, or even his own comprehension of muscle control. Some disconnected part of him vaguely registered a star-scape up above, but there wasn’t an emotion to attach it to, so it held as little meaning as the memories.

Whatever small, infantile fragment of the boy there was that was still trying vainly to collect himself, clawing half-heartedly at the forgotten remnants of a being he could only guess at, was aware that the thing which broke him had been vast. So much so that even the faint memory of it sent tingles of something not-quite-pain shooting down his side.

He was tired. So very tired. But he had forgotten how to sleep.

That was when the thing beneath the water found him.

Its presence was subtle, at first, like the tide; a gentle ebb and flow of water slowly building around the splintered fragments of his mind. A broken window in a puddle. He wouldn’t have noticed it at all, but for how it eased the screaming in his soul. It grew quiet. He could hear himself think again.

Who am I?

The presence had no answer for him. Rather, if it had an answer, it wasn’t something he could presently understand. The response it gave was low and deep, like a thrumming just beyond his hearing.

The boy who had once been Charlie did his best to shrug. The answer didn’t matter anyway. At least the world was quiet now.

Around the many pieces of himself, the water began to flow, like a trickling at the bottom of a bathtub; a single shard of glass drifting lightly in the current. He watched it move inside himself; idly curious. Was that shard the price he had to pay for the absence of the pain? He accepted that. It wasn’t as if the piece had any value.

The trickle bore his fragment on, winding through the wreckage of his psyche, before apparently reaching its destination. His shard slid up alongside another; this one bigger; its edges jagged and wrong. The fragment found a place where its edges aligned with the other, and without a sound, it slotted into place.

It was like a lightning strike had smacked into his brain.

His eyes were open. Right. Of course. How had he not noticed that before? There were stars above him; thousands of them.

He didn’t have much of an opinion on that yet. For all that this newfound shard had given him perception, he still had no idea where lay any of his thoughts. What was he supposed to think of stars?

The water moved again, the trickle shifting to another tiny portion of himself, and slowly pushing it into place within his mind. The boy wasn’t bothered. The water could do what it wanted so long as it stilled the pain.

There was a certain comfort to be found in being numb.

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Charlie:

For a few moments, the room was still; all eyes on Charlie; his own eyes on Mr. Grey. Outside, there was a muted roar, then a crash like glass breaking all around them.

“… You won’t shoot me,” Charlie muttered, trying his damndest to ignore the thudding in his chest. “You need a portal, and that’s either me or my mom. Good luck getting her help with me gone.”

There was a gunshot from outside.

Sebastian reoriented his revolver to point at one of Charlie’s legs.

“No dice,” he said flatly. “You can survive without kneecaps. I told you before. How well you make it out of this depends on what you bring to the table. Drink the damn potion.”

Somewhere beyond the left-most wall, something crumpled as though struck by a speeding car.

No one moved.

Mr. Grey sighed.

“Force it down his throat.”

Two of the agents to Charlie’s right began to move.

The room flashed indigo as Charlie tore a portal open onto a random patch of arctic snow, then simply tossed the potion through it. That was all he had time for before the agents reached him, his body forced against the wall; arms locked uncomfortably in behind his back.

Five seconds, he told himself. Help’s coming. Just gotta make it five more seconds.

One of the agents not currently pinning him against the wall made a dash for the open portal.

Charlie snapped it closed with a thought, at the exact same moment that Sebastian vanished from the room.

Something hit him in the stomach. His vision went white and foggy, his muscles fighting against the men holding him down in their attempts to double him over.

His focus shifted to trying to breathe.

A daze; confusion; eight or nine voices talking urgently over one another. Charlie could have sworn he heard someone shout his name. He felt something small and metal press against his skull.

Then the roof gave out.

Charlie was too out of it to see, more’s the pity, when James Toranaga’s wind-formed hand gouged a ten foot chunk out of the building’s roof, tossing it behind him like a child digging in the sand.

He heard his name, though, bellowed in his friend’s voice as if from everywhere at once.

There was another faint pop, followed by a bellow, and the deafening noise of a dozen sidearms opening up at once.

Someone bellowed. He felt heat. Someone grabbed him by the shoulder. Another pop.

The world shifted.

They were back in the kitchens; himself and a half dozen or so of the guards, all of them looking just as surprised as he was, guns raised in defense against what was now just a perfectly normal ceiling.

The hand on Charlie’s shoulder shifted to his jaw, a thumb pressing against his cheek, forcing its way between his teeth. The scorched face of Mr. Grey swam into view, eyes wide and manic.

“Nice try,” he spat, raising his free hand into Charlie’s view, the glowing bottle clenched between his fingers. “But you need to be quicker on the draw.”

Once more, he heard the distant sound as someone screamed his name. He did his best to answer, only for the lip of the bottle to be jammed between his teeth.

It tasted foul. Charlie tried to gag or fight, but the agents gathered around him simply pushed him against the wall and made him swallow.

Gulp after gulp. Bitter. Nauseating.

He tried to yell. There was no air.

Then, whatever it was began to take effect.

It felt like someone was dumping lightning in his lungs.

Even then, though, there was still more of it to drink. He threw up. They made him swallow that down too.

His eyes ached.

Another gulp.

His bones grew ice and barnacles.

Another gulp.

He could feel insects clawing at his skin; trying to pry their way loose through the half-healed incision wounds dotted about his form.

The bottle clattered to the ground.

Charlie pulled in a pained gasp of air, then let it out in a choked sob. He squeezed his eyes shut, weakly pushing at the agents with his hands even as they began to step away.

It didn’t help. His eyes still hurt. He could still see, even with the lids closed. He saw himself, cowering against the wall, his clothes slowly soaking through with vomit and faintly glowing sweat. He saw the agents surrounding him.

He saw Sebastian standing over him.

He shook his head, the movement grinding beneath his skin as though his neck was made of chalk.

He wanted to go home.

The first portal opened up beside an agent’s waist. He reached for the man’s knife.

Sebastian’s foot connected with his jaw.

He swallowed a tooth. At least it helped clear away the taste.

He let out a dazed cry, and opened another portal. Then more. Then more. Why not? He had the energy.

That was the only thing he was sure of right now; he had energy to spare.

For one moment, the whole of the facility was lit by the indigo glow of over a hundred spatial holes, every single one of them connecting back to him. His perspective opened up high in the sky above. He glimpsed the shadow of a titan wreathed in fog.

Then his head was slammed against the wall and the connections all snapped shut.

The world went fluid.

He felt fingers tangling in his hair.

“–Not for you to use, boy,” a voice said coldly in his ear. “I’ll be the pilot now.”

Then he felt a spike being driven through his mind.

He screamed. In a thousand fragments of a voice, Charlie screamed.

There was someone else inside his brain. Bigger. Stronger. Hateful.

He tried to push them out, clawed at their throat, tried to drown them in the haze behind his eyes. He was ignored.

The hand clenched against his skull tugged him painfully to his feet. Someone whispered in his ear:

“First Bermuda-”

Time stopped. The planet opened up around him; that foreign thing inside his brain forcing him to see across the length and breadth of the world. A journey of five thousand miles slammed against his mind. Then it made him comprehend.

A piece of Charlie cracked right then. His body sagged.

The portal snapped open, bigger and brighter than any he’d ever made before; wide enough for a pair of men to pass abreast.

Sebastian shifted his grip on Charlie’s now unresisting form, holding him aloft by the scruff of the neck.

In his broken state, the boy managed a single quiet groan.

“Get out of my head.”

Sebastian chuckled.

“Not yet. We’ve still got one more gateway left to build. It’s time to follow behind the Whale.”

What happened next was, quite simply, beyond description. What Charles felt as that thing pushed his powers out was a sense of distance that, to put it plainly, could not be held within a human brain.

It was infinite; simple as that. A chasm of such impossible breadth and scope that to encompass it would crush him.

He tried to fight, fevered and exhausted as he was. He tried to shy away. It didn’t help. The thing inside his mind wouldn’t let him.

Charlie no longer had the strength to scream.

Sebastian:

Mr. Grey lowered the husk of Charles Vance to the ground, and shot the agents to either side of him a careful look.

More than one of them was still gazing at the boy, power still bleeding molten indigo from his eyes. He couldn’t blame them. It was never pretty, watching someone break. Least of all a child.

“Well, go on,” he muttered. “Get yourselves through before it closes.”

For a second, no one moved.

“… Sir,” muttered Bors. “Was that necessary?”

Something crashed through the floor a few rooms away. If he could have, he’d have simply teleported them all through. But no. Forcing this thing open had spent the last of his reserves. Sebastian sighed. There wasn’t time for this.

“I told you to move,” he answered coldly. “If you’d rather burn, then feel free to stay.”

He hefted Charlie’s limp form under one arm, and began to make his way towards the portal; pearl and alabaster sands glittering invitingly beyond it. He stopped a single step shy of the aperture.

“Last chance, you lot.”

One by one, his agents stepped past him into the new world. He waited for the last of them to pass him, then turned to give their ruined fortress one last look.

That was when the far wall caved in.

A torrent of wind. A shaking in the earth. A small glowing core amidst a fog shrouded torso. He smiled.

So the Toranagas have another elemental, do they?

He stepped backwards through the portal, and raised his revolver, the tip aimed squarely at the glowing mass, even as it barrelled down towards him.

No. There are enough monsters in the world already.

He pulled the trigger.

Space bent.

Sebastian Grey had half a second to wonder how exactly he could have missed, before James Toranaga slammed into him with a frenzied scream and all the force that he could muster.

The next thing Sebastian knew, he was on his back, sun dappled sand caked about his shoulders; the whole of his body filled with a low, aching sort of pain. He heard yelling, the crack of attack spells being launched into the open sky.

He forced his eyes open, swung his gaze to either side, and caught a flurry of disturbed sand and water as the young elemental fled towards the horizon, their only portal maker now clutched firmly in his grip.

With a sense of dawning horror, he turned back towards the portal, just in time to watch it snapping shut.

… Right.

James:

The new world was beautiful; there was no denying that. It felt… Tropical wasn’t quite the word for it. If it had been tropical, the thick-grouped trees running the length of the peninsula towards the greater archipelago would have been shorter, their branches and leaves all clustered at the tops like the palm trees of Hawaii or L.A., as opposed to the tall, red-boughed conifers that lined this place, looking more at home in a winter shrouded wood than on the shores of some dozy coastline.

A few dozen feet from the shore, the thick forest growth gave way to pristine, faintly salt encrusted sand, sparkling faintly under the wan light of three gently glowing moons, each hanging large and heavy in the sky.

It was this shore on which James sat, his feet just barely touching the point at which the sands gave way to sea; warm ocean ripples tickling at his toes. Beyond those waters, an uncountable mass of sea life swam and thrived in the space between this island and the next, some of them bringing forth their own brief bouts of luminescence, deep blues and reds and electrical greens dancing through the water like lanterns in ballet.

“It’s so pretty here,” he said quietly, gazing at a thousand fish that none before him had ever even thought to name. “The air’s so clean. It’s like I’m breathing life.” He made an aborted attempt to snicker at himself, took a breath, and turned his eyes towards the sky. He sniffed.

“… I don’t think I’ve ever seen so many stars at once.” He tried to smile as he reached for Charlie’s hand beside him. The other boy didn’t resist as he tangled their fingers together.

Charlie didn’t move at all.

James gave his hand a squeeze.

“The sky’s so bright, you know?” he mumbled, half-failing to hide a sniffle, the first tears building in his eyes even as he tried to hold them back. “The sand’s so soft.”

That was as far as he got before the tears began to fall. His voice caught.

“I wish I could share it with you, dude.”

Charlie didn’t move.

The taller boy just lay at James’ side, gazing up at the starry sky with eyes that hadn’t blinked in hours; nought but the slight rise and fall of his chest giving any real sign of life.

“Please wake up.”

James gave the other boy a shake, the tears trickling slowly down his cheeks.

Charlie didn’t move.

James’ next attempt was less than a whisper.

“Please.”

No response.

“Please don’t leave me alone.”

The lunar trio shone its light upon the shore throughout the night, the sparkling sands touched by the lightest trace of a warming summer breeze.


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Care: 6.10

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Hideyoshi:

Hideyoshi Toranaga had never been a particularly subtle man. It wasn’t something that had ever truly been expected, nor, indeed, desired of him. Not even in his youth. He had been taught the opposite, in fact.

He was fire. What use did fire have for restraint?

It had taken centuries for the boy that he had been to address the severity of that mistake; instilling, over time, a passable head for tactics within himself.

Even now, however, subtlety didn’t come naturally to him.

The portal led the trio out into a snowfield, a half-mile or so from their target, and a few feet deep in the lightly falling snow. Laying eyes on the facility took time, half buried by the snowfall as it was; the search aided only somewhat by the slowly building glow emanating from the compound’s upper floors.

When the Egyptian set his gaze upon it, one arm rising to point it out, Hideyoshi simply sniffed. He extended a tendril of his power towards the place, and felt a flicker.

“Shielded,” he murmured. “I’ll deal with it.”

His companions took a few steps back towards the portal at that, their forms cutting waist-deep trenches in the powder, faint trails of lightning-light dancing around them as they first strengthened, then doubled down on their shields.

For his part, Hideyoshi’s feet left no imprint on the ground. Why walk when he had yet to recover most of the feeling in his legs? The man set his gaze upon the place. Then, he began to drift slowly upward.

Below him, his wife quietly winced. He smiled.

Hideyoshi Toranaga had never gotten the hang of subtlety.

For the few men assigned to remain on guard of the facility’s outer wall as the ritual entered its final stages, the first wave was difficult to parse as an attack.

It was closer to the birth of a star.

For the man at the gate-house, there was just enough time to catch sight of a distant speck of color in the sky. Then some buried primate instinct slammed his eyes closed before the light could finish scorching through his retinas.

The attack wasn’t something to be measured in seconds. More like frames; each one a photo in a sequence.

For the first microsecond, Hideyoshi simply hung there in the sky, the lie of that ancient form shucked from his skin. His flaming figure was lithe now; slender, and small. Not quite a child, yet eternally touched by youth.

Had they been able to look on him without being rendered blind, the defenders might have taken him for an angel.

Then came the heat.

It wasn’t flame yet. Fire takes time to catch, and all of this was over in an instant. The heat pressed out from the elemental like a wave, washing the cold from the winter air with the ease of a passing thought.

The heat permeated.

In the next frame, the air around the compound seemed to ripple, catching the light of Hideyoshi’s flame and the distant sun as though the entire building was held within a snowglobe. For its part, the surrounding snowfield had become a lake, sitting like a miracle on flat land as the powder was heated from below freezing to well above boiling.

In the frame after that came pressure; a few hundred thousand tonnes of water abruptly realizing that it needed to be a gas.

To call it an explosion would have been to undersell it. The shockwave was such that, for perhaps a tenth of a second, the landscape was held in vacuum; the weight of the sky itself not quite heavy enough to pierce it.

For the defenders in their fort, however, the results were a mite less cataclysmic. The air about the building cracked, the thunderclap of the explosion rolling over it and sending fissures radiating through the air like lightning caught in glass. Behind that injured barrier, the walls stood firm, even if the very shaking of the ground was enough to shatter every window on the compound’s upper floor.

It almost surprised him when a door burst open on the building’s roof, a single figure darting out towards the building’s edge. Strange. Hideyoshi hadn’t felt any particular heat behind that door, or from anywhere else within the building’s walls, for that matter. Perhaps it was the barrier, partially shrouding the place from his new form’s senses. He uttered a charm to reassert his human eyesight, and the image came through clearer.

The figure had a rifle in hand, eyes covered by dark, heavy lidded goggles.

Hideyoshi chuckled. At least the enemy adapted fast.

The sniper readied the weapon, took aim, and made the shot.

Their aim was perfect. Hideyoshi didn’t move, simply intensifying the wall of heat radiating from his unencumbered form. The bullet was reduced to vapor before it even reached him.

Cute.

Almost lazily, Hideyoshi raised an arm.

It felt so strange, being in this body again. He’d grown used to the feigned stoop of his older self. The slight croak of his voice, the inevitable stiffness in his joints.

The pretense of infirmity necessitated such things.

He’d forgotten what it was like to be this small: the slender god; the dancing sprite at the heart of the inferno.

His movements felt so fluid now.

He flicked a wrist, and a tongue of flame leapt across the gap between himself and the fortification, lashing at the barrier with such might that the air itself thrummed with the force of the blow. The cracks grew; his flame tearing through their wall like claws through an eggshell.

The barrier flickered. He readied another blow.

A faint crack, then a new figure popped into existence on the rooftop; suit-clad, straight-backed, and elderly. The figure was looking right at him, his eyes unprotected.

The light didn’t even make him flinch.

Hideyoshi struck again, the half-mile cord of flame splitting into a hundred smaller skeins to dance in spark and ember on the enemy’s defences.

It was at that point that the steam made by Hideyoshi’s first assault began to return itself to earth; the superheated vapor having risen up, then rapidly cooled itself in the still arctic air beyond the upper bounds of his domain. It sank back down upon them now as fog, light, at first, but building; soon to cover all below in a densely clouded haze.

The man spoke then, and Hideyoshi knew that he was meant to hear, for the words carried, despite the breadth of the gap between them.

“This is your real face, elemental,” he said coldly, the words quiet, despite their clarity. “Not some old wise man, but a monster out of books and children’s tales. The kind of demon that heroes used to hunt; capable of nothing more than holding our species back.” If his eyes had still been physical things at that moment, Hideyoshi would have rolled them. He didn’t care. He drew his tendrils back for yet another strike. Then, the man continued: “That’s why things like you deserve to die.”

There was another quiet crack, then a much louder one as, for the briefest moment, the man hung in the air just a few feet to Hideyoshi’s right, his shield already peeling away layer by layer from just the ambient heat of being so close to the elemental’s form.

The man had a revolver aimed at Hideyoshi’s head.

He pulled the trigger.

What followed bore about the same relation to a gunshot as lightning does to a spark. Instead of the usual flash of light and harmless spray of lead, his form was sent hurtling through the sky by a bolt of raw force that left a trail of silver light hanging in the air behind it. His shield split, his firelight thrown into disarray by the refraction all around him.

Enchanted bullets. Powerful ones.

Hideyoshi responded quicker than a thought, spinning in the air like a top, his hundred skeins dancing towards his foe like a latticework of death.

The gunman was already gone.

His expanded senses were enough to tell him of the change in heat on the ground below that marked the gunner’s relocation. That, in turn, was enough to allow him the very narrowest of dodges as the second round cleaved the sky in two like a lance of solid starlight.

He brought his force to bear on the ground below, just in time for his enemy to vanish once again. He let out a growl, the sound strangely musical now that it lacked the imperfections of age, and bore the gunner’s third shot directly on his shield. He didn’t try to dodge. His focus was on other matters. He prepped a spell.

He swung to face his foe again, and once again, the man was gone.

No room for error here. Another hit would be the death of him.

At the edge of the forest, the gunner reappeared, weapon already raised, thumb to the hammer.

Hideyoshi teleported.

No sooner had the fourth shot left his opponent’s gun than the elemental re-emerged. He was at ground level now, his enemy less than a foot away.

The air parched.

The gunner flinched; his seemingly indomitable focus cracking for but a second as his shield faded to a shred and his skin slowly but surely began to burn.

Hideyoshi reached a slender arm towards the revolver, one finger stretching out, ready to simply melt the barrel down the middle.

The gunner vanished.

This time, Hideyoshi didn’t feel him reappear; his exit point either well beyond the elemental’s range, or obscured by whatever enchantments lined the compound’s walls. He huffed.

Off to lick his wounds. Weak.

Charlie:

“So your grandad’s the fire dude?” Charlie asked, trying simultaneously to both peer out of his cell’s small window and stay as far away from it as the boundaries of the room would allow. “He’s freaking terrifying.”

On the other end of the line, James snickered.

“He’s not that bad,” he admonished. “He’s my grandpa. He just gets kind of intense when he’s doing good guy stuff.”

“Dude. He made the floor explode.”

Whatever James’ answer was, the loud crack as the charred form of Sebastian Grey materialized in the middle of the room was enough to drown it out.

Charlie flinched, moving reflexively to stow his borrowed phone. Not fast enough.

“… So you’re the reason they found us,” the older man muttered, his voice cold. “You’ll pay for that.”

“Wait,” crackled James’ voice, his tone alarmed. “Who-”

The sounds died as Sebastian’s fingers wrenched the phone from Charlie’s grip, his gun hand closing like a vice on the boy’s shoulder.

Sebastian’s skin was burned.

He raised the phone to his mouth, and uttered one sharp phrase into the mouthpiece:

“You can have him back when I’m done with him. Not before.”

With that, he tossed the phone aside, and the world popped out of place before Charlie’s eyes.

In the next second, the two were standing in a medical bay; dozens of people, both vertical and horizontal, spaced around it. Most of the conscious ones were positioned by the doors, weapons at the ready.

There was something glowing on the floor.

“Um,” was all Charlie had time to say before Sebastian shoved him back against the wall, and strode towards the glowing mass in the centre of the room.

“You threw the wrench into this plan, Charles,” he said, quiet fury etched into every word as he picked whatever it was up off the floor. “And I will make sure that you’re the one to fix it.”

He tossed the thing to Charlie. Charlie caught it.

It was a water bottle, filled to the brim with a glowing, oddly pearlescent fluid.

Sebastian leveled his revolver at Charlie’s chest.

“Drink it.”

Hideyoshi:

A glance towards the forest, and the fires stilled as quick as they had started. The light and heat around him dimmed to that of a campfire; barely visible in the fog. No point in leaving the landscape scarred. No doubt it was his light that had allowed the gunner such an easy target.

“Interesting enemy you’ve got there,” murmured Tsuru’s voice. He didn’t bother looking up. He could feel her presence drifting toward him through the mist; still a few dozen feet away, Binyamin not far behind her. “Precision teleporter. It’s an admirable skill, to achieve so many in succession like that.”

Hideyoshi grunted, absentmindedly pumping fresh energy into his wards.

“Weak shields, though,” he muttered. “I didn’t even have to hit him to burn them out. I doubt he’ll be capable of much once he’s out of ammunition.”

His wife chuckled.

“Ah, Yoshi,” she murmured, her voice shifting to archaic Japanese to hide the words from their companion. “I’d forgotten your voice could sound so young.”

Hideyoshi gave her a smile.

“You should do the same from time to time. The mind forgets how much more easily the body moved in youth. I find it helps to be reminded.”

“I will, dear,” she replied, crossing the last of the distance between them and resting her hand on his head. “Just as soon as Bex learns the truth. No use pretending to be mortal after that.” She tussled the flames that presently constituted his hair, her shield flickering almost imperceptibly. “I think I’ll wait it out until then.”

Hideyoshi shook his head.

“Twelve years in the body of a crone,” he muttered. “Your patience astounds me, love.”

With that, the moment broke. His words returned to english.

“The two of you finish breaking down that barrier. Get the hostages out while I deal with the gu-”

That was as far as Hideyoshi got before, with a roar of pure, panicked rage, James Toranaga slammed his titan form into the compound’s shield with all the force that he could muster.

The barrier shattered.

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