Akomish No Longer

Augustine had come to Seattle with a plan. To spread fear, panic, chaos… Make herself out to be a hero. But her plan was soon shattered… by "monsters" she had made… Fetch, Eugene… and me. For two weeks Augustine had controlled Seattle… Now it was our turn. Who the hell was gonna stop us? Oh, and the hundreds of Conduits Augustine had locked away at Curdun Cay Station? I'm gonna shake each and every one of their hands on their way out the door. So many different powers… all in one place. Heh, I'll be the kid in the candy store. But first, I have a promise to take care of.

Put this in your history books: I am Delsin Rowe, greatest conduit ever conceived, new ruler of Seattle, and one badass tagger, if I do say so myself. And I do. But standing here, in front of the Longhouse, reminds me of what else I am: Akomish. Oh yeah, in case you hadn't noticed the noble features and dark skin, I'm Native American. Pretty awesome, yeah? I like to think so.

Being Akomish means everything. Ever since I was a small boy I was taught that the tribe takes care of its own. Do it for the vine? Nah. But I'll do it for the tribe. And I did. I went to Seattle with just one goal in mind: get Augustine's powers and remove the cement she had impaled in my tribe's bodies. But I had come out with so much more. That didn't make me forget my people.

There is no word in Lushootseed, the language of the Akomish, for love. Instead, we show it in our actions. Like I said, we take care of our own. They had raised me and Reggie when our parents died and they had taken one for the team when Augustine had forcefully interrogated them a few weeks ago. Those were debts worth repaying.

"Hey, Akomish Nation. Local hero's back home," I say, running up the steps and pushing in the Longhouse door. Betty coming at me in a wheelchair brings my momentum to a full stop.

"There's my girl," I start to say, but her brakes must be broken because she damn near mows me down.

"Who, whoa. Slow Down." I take a step back, my shins stinging from her foot pedals.

I keep expecting Betty to bust a smile my way like she always did when she caught me tagging, but instead her face is pinched, like she just ate something terribly, terribly sour. "Come back to save the day," I say, weakly, almost as if it's a question.

"The TV news showed everything," Betty says in a tone of voice I've never heard her use before. "It showed… everything."

Oh. Well. Yeah… I made some difficult choices. For the tribe. I look down, wondering what she saw that would make her act like this. I reach out and brace myself against the doorframe.

"I saw you kill dozens of innocent people."

Innocent? Hardly. I had killed DUP agents, drug dealers, protestors, militia, and anyone who got in my way. I won't even justify the DUPs or drug dealers, though I guess you'd had to have seen some of the stuff on to understand why I sicced Fetch on those protestors. Not that Betty would know- the internet isn't exactly popular out here. She hadn't seen what I had seen: the bodybags, the hate on , all the damage so called "normals" were inflicting upon people like me… truly innocent people who hadn't done anything except have some proteins that were a little different from everyone else's.

And that general and those military guys? That was all Celia and her… whatever that was. I still haven't found her, though I will, soon. Anyway, I'd read a document saying the military were in shoot-to-kill mode when it came to active Conduits. That was definitely kill-or-be-killed. Alright, so maybe I did end a few street musicians, but playing that poorly was a crime in and of itself anyway.

"What did you want me to do?" I ask. "I wasn't going to let anybody or anything stop me from getting back to you." I gesture at her, at the tribe inside. "To save everybody. We're Akomish. We take care of our own, right?" I know I'm being incredibly sarcastic right now, but even a two year old in our tribe knows the answer to this question.

Betty doesn't answer. Instead, she raises herself up, slowly, painstakingly, until she is standing before me.

"Hey, hey take it easy," I say. That cement is still in her leg, after all.

When she is fully standing, she stares me in the eyes and says, clear as day, "You have disgraced our people, you have disgraced our ancestors…"

I break eye contact, looking down. In all the years living on the Akomish Reservation I have never been chastised so severely, even when I tagged the most obscene things on the billboards. I guess the folks back home felt more like Reggie did about my methods.

But she's not done.

"And you have disgraced the memory of your brother."

Now that was too far. Reggie was with me for the entire trip. Betty didn't see what I had to deal with, but Reggie did. He didn't always approve of all my methods, but his dying words were how proud of me he was. How dare she try to ruin that.

But I'm sure once I explain things, I can get them all to see, to understand. Just like Reggie did.

"You are Akomish, no longer."

Excuse me? Being Akomish isn't like some sort of paltry namesake you can just rip away from someone. I may have been named for a cowboy off some old Western, but I am Akomish through and through. None of this one sixteenth crap that people abuse to get college scholarships. I am a pureblood descendent of Chief Seattle himself. I spent my entire life on the Akomish Reservation. I know ancestral dances that no one outside the reservation has even heard of. I memorized story after story, following our tribe's oral history. I even learned how to prep and cook all kinds of traditional food: bear, elk, rabbit, duck, shellfish, crabapples, berries, nuts. All natural ingredients from the surrounding area. Maybe not exactly that whole "use everything the land provides" stuff but close enough. Enough to contribute to the Potlaches which were so amazing and abundant we could eat from them all week long.

Did I grow up like the Amish, completely cut off from technology and the world? Hell no. But none of us did. We still had managed to keep our traditions alive. And we still take care of our own. And for me, that meant getting this damn cement out, whether they were happy with my methods or not.

"You, and everybody else will die without me. Or have you forgotten that?"

"We haven't forgotten. And we will never forget," she says, closing the door on everything I ever knew.

I test the door. Locked. I stand there, stunned. They would rather die than have me remove the concrete from their legs? Really? Well, fine then.

I'm not Akomish? Well you know what? I'm something more now: Conduit. I'm part of a much bigger family. We may not have songs and dances, we may not have centuries of tradition, heritage, and culture, but there are far more of us. And after I absorb all the powers from all those inmates at Curdun Cay, I will be unstoppable.

But I still have a debt to repay.

I smile as I make my decision. I absorb smoke from the chimney nearby, bend down, gather my smoke powers about me. Flicks of black and red sweep around me and I lunge into the air, transforming into three flaming red balls of pure smoke that swirl around one another until I am high above the longhouse and reform.

I call this move the Orbital Drop. If my tribe doesn't want me to use my concrete powers to save them, I can at least use my smoke powers to give them a quick end.

Really, it's more merciful this way.

Author's Note: I don't own a thing and actually used research for most of the stuff that isn't recognizable. I took inspiration from the Evil Ending as well as the Paper Trail missions. Intro paragraph is lifted entirely from the Evil Ending. I just tweaked the tenses to fit my story better. Lushootseed is actually the language of the Duwamish, the actual name for the Native American tribe located near Seattle. Anything about Delsin's heritage I pulled from a site about the Duwamish. Correct me if I got any of it wrong, please!