O00000O00000O
Chapter 14: Revelations
O00000O00000O
A few days later, Alex and Delsin were standing outside Eugene's hospital room where the Video Conduit was still sedated and unconscious. Ozpin walked in.
"Everything is ready. We had it prepared just as you specified," Ozpin said.
Delsin turned back to him.
"Ok. Then I guess we're ready," Delsin said.
"Good. I will have the nurse discontinue the sedative."
Ozpin opened the door and went inside.
"You sure you don't wanna do this yourself?" Alex asked.
"If he wakes up and sees me, he'll bust out and start destroying the school trying to kill me. Again," Delsin replied.
"So why Ozpin?"
"You try keeping secrets from Ozpin. Go on, I dare you."
"Point taken."
Ozpin reemerged.
"Alright, the sedative should be out of his system in half an hour," the professor said.
"Great. Let's get started," Delsin replied.
The three of them went into the room. Alex telekinetically disconnected Eugene's IV as well as all of the restraints that tied him to the hospital bed. Delsin followed and lifted Eugene off the bed in both arms. Ozpin held the door as the two of them exited, he himself following just behind them.
In ten minutes they had arrived at the newly constructed interrogation room.
Over the last few days, Ozpin had brought in a construction crew to build it while Glynda and Alex repaired the courtyard. With Delsin's help, it was designed so that even a Conduit couldn't escape. Reinforced steel doors, three foot thick concrete walls with a layer of steel mixed in every foot. The observation window was three inches of unbreakable glass. Ozpin had wanted to put in a securitycamera, but Delsin had voted against it on the off chance Eugene could enter the video stream and escape that way. For that very same reason, the entire room was a dead-zone where the CCT system couldn't reach. Delsin wanted to make sure Eugene couldn't get out.
Ozpin opened the door. Delsin followed and sat Eugene's unconscious form at the table. Then he quickly attached a set of restraints to his hands and sped out of the room. When Eugene woke up, Delsin didn't want to be anywhere near him.
The Conduit walked into the observation room where his partner was waiting for him.
"So, now we wait?" Alex asked.
"Now we wait."
O00000O00000O
Eugene was feeling very groggy as his eyes slowly crept open.
As he slowly returned to consciousness, he tried to stretch his arms but found he couldn't move them. He looked down at his wrists to find them locked in heavy-duty steel cuffs and latched to a table. His eyes snapped the rest of the way open and he jerked from the table, though he didn't get very far before he fell back down into his chair.
"I apologize for the restraints, but seeing as you destroyed a large portion of my school, I believe they are a necessary precaution," A voice said.
Eugene looked up to see a man sitting across from him. He quickly searched his memory to see if he knew the man but found nothing.
"Whoever he is, maybe if I keep him talking I can find a way to break out of here," he thought.
"Where am I?" Eugene asked.
"A room designed so that we may talk safely," the man replied.
"You think this room can hold someone like me?"
"A Conduit you mean?"
Eugene nodded.
"I should hope so. We did check."
Eugene sat back.
"So, who are you? Some kind of new DUP agent?"
"DUP... That would be the Department of Unified Protection correct?" the man asked.
That got Eugene's attention.
"Has this guy not heard of the DUP?" he thought.
"No, I'm not with them. As I said, this is a school, not a government building."
"A school?" Eugene asked, his subtle attempts to break out of his restraints momentarily ending.
"Yes. A school where I train students to master their abilities and help people."
"So you're what, a Professor Charles Xavier that still has his hair?"
The man glanced at the observation window and smiled slightly.
"While I have no idea who that is, I was told you would make that comparison. I was also told to say yes."
O00000O00000O
"Who's Professor Charles Xavier?" Alex asked.
"Do you really care?" Delsin countered.
"Not really no."
"Then why did you ask?"
Alex shrugged.
Delsin sighed.
"Just shut up and pay attention."
O00000O00000O
"Mr. Sims, when you were found, you had been shot six times in the chest. Could you explain to me how that happened?" the man asked.
Eugene just looked at him.
"You don't know?" the Conduit asked.
"Know what?"
"About the DUP resurgence," Eugene continued.
A troubled look passed over the man's face.
"No, I did not know about that, but it sounds very serious. Please, go on."
O00000O00000O
The moment Eugene uttered the words "DUP resurgence," Delsin's eyes widened.
"DUP... those are the Conduit hunter guys, right?" Alex asked.
Delsin cleared his throat. It was a trick he'd learned back in Seattle when he was learned his powers wouldn't solve every problem. It let him buy a moment or two to collect himself when recovering from bad news.
"Yeah. Yeah, it's bad," he said, his face in his hand, "Means things fell apart after I disappeared. Means I didn't do a good enough job."
Alex looked back to the window.
O00000O00000O
"Three months ago, my best friend vanished. No signs of a struggle in his home, no note saying where he'd gone, nothing. Me and Fetch checked around the entire city, even his hometown. Not a trace. After a couple weeks, we gave up. We had a funeral service on the Akomish reservation, his home. Then things started to fall apart," Eugene began.
The man across from him took a sip from his mug, then placed it back on the table.
"Go on," the man said.
"After the funeral, the two of us made the announcement. Looking back, it probably would have been better if we'd just made up some kind of story about how he'd left to go free more Conduits or something. The whole city was in shock, but for a while everything was fine. It didn't last for more than a few days.
"Curdun Cay was a terrible place, no question, but that doesn't mean that at least some of the Conduits locked up there didn't deserve it. Without Delsin to keep them in line, a lot those Conduits started running amok.
"First, it was just some of your run of the mill stuff, like purse-snatchings and muggings. Fetch and I could handle that well enough. Then they started getting together and making a bigger mess.Pretty soon, the two of us were outnumbered, and there's only so much two Conduits can do when they're up against a dozen other Conduits, and since all of the other Conduits just wanted to get back to their normal lives, we were it.
"We fought for almost an hour the first time. The next time the cops came to help us. Hell, even the gangsters came to help us eventually because they didn't want the competition, but it didn't help much. We were struggling to keep the collateral damage under control, and with street battles becoming a daily occurrence, the damage was starting to add up. Then, the unthinkable happened."
Eugene took a deep breath before continuing. If his pained expression was any indication, the next part was going to be tough for him.
"During one of our fights, one of the enemy Conduits had psychic abilities. He used them to worm his way into Fetch's head, find her breaking point," he continued.
Another deep breath.
"We can take a moment if you would like," the man offered, a faint look of concern on his face.
Eugene shook his head, though his eyes were starting to tear up.
"He got in her head and made her relive the moment when she killed her brother. He thought it would break her," he said.
A single tear fell from his eye.
"He was right. In her rage, in that moment where she was forced to relive her most painful memory, she snapped. She used every bit of her power and threw a Singularity at them, one that was easily twice as big as she normally could have made. The massive ball of Neon energy destroyed everything it touched. Cars. Buildings. Even people. When it exploded, it leveled an entire block of downtown Seattle.
"Without a word, one of the cops shot Fetch in the head. She was dead before she hit the ground."
O00000O00000O
On the other side of the mirror, Delsin sank to the ground, his face in his hands.
"You ok?" Alex asked.
He reached out to try and comfort his partner, but Delsin slapped his hand away.
Alex only saw it for a brief moment, but that was all it took.
Delsin was crying.
O00000O00000O
"The whole city was against us now. Pretty soon, the DUP came back into town and started rounding up Conduits all over again. I tried to stop them, but I was one guy against an entire city, and a small army of soldiers with guns and Conduit powers," Eugene continued.
A small stream of tears was falling from his eyes, and his face became distorted in anger
"They forced me to run like a coward. I couldn't do anything. The DUP hunted me for days."
He clenched his fists.
"Just when I finally thought I had escaped, I was surrounded. I fought with everything I had, and I killed as many as I could, but there were always more. When I couldn't fight anymore, I fell to the ground and they shot me. That's the last thing I remember."
O00000O00000O
Delsin sat there on the floor of the observation room, not moving. On the inside, his emotions were running wild.
Fear. Anger. Sorrow. Hatred. Confusion. Despair. All of these were welling up inside him, but he just couldn't take it. He slammed his fist into the wall, cracking it.
"Whoa! Delsin, calm down!" Alex shouted.
Delsin wasn't listening. Instead, he slowly stood up, his face blank. Without a word, he wiped his face on his sleeve and walked out of the room. Alex didn't stop him. There wasn't anything for him to do.
O00000O00000O
When Delsin left the room, he didn't know where he was going, but he wasn't surprised when he found himself on the roof of the dorms. High places had always felt safe for him. It was one of the reasons he'd learned how to free-climb in the first place.
While he laid on his back with his hand on his brother's badge, he played back everything he had just heard.
Seattle was in pieces.
Conduits were being hunted again.
The DUP had come back.
All that, and Fetch was dead.
Everything that he had done, everything he had worked for. All of it was gone, and all it took was a few months. Had he been in a more humorous mood, he might have found it comical how quickly it all went to shit. Instead, he simply sat there, staring at the sky.
In the background, he half heard the rooftop door opening.
"Delsin?" a quiet voice asked.
He didn't hear.
"Delsin!" the voice called.
This time, he heard it. He tilted his head back to see who was there. His eyes fell on to the visage of a certain brown haired rabbit Faunus. He said nothing and moved his head back. A small part of him felt bad for not saying anything, but he genuinely had no idea what to say.
Velvet didn't know what to make of his expression, but she walked forward and sat down next to him.
"You ok?" she asked.
Still no response.
"I'll take that as a no," she thought.
Velvet gave him a small, friendly smile, then turned away. He would talk when he was ready.
She was right. For over an hour, she sat next to him. And then, he spoke.
"Why did you come looking for me?" he asked.
Velvet smiled again.
"Ozpin messaged everyone, asking if anyone had seen you. I was about to say no when I heard the door to the roof close. I had a hunch, and there you were," she explained.
"Hm. Good instincts," Delsin commented.
"Thank you," she said.
Strangely enough, this time, when Velvet had the urge to keep talking and press just a little bit harder, it was easy. It was like the words just bubbled up ready and waiting, and she felt no hesitation at all.
"Delsin, what's wrong?" she asked.
The Conduit turned away.
"I don't want to talk about it," he said.
Velvet frowned a bit.
"I know you don't want to. Nobody wants to talk about things that hurt The point is, you obviously need to," she said.
He said nothing. Velvet's frown deepened slightly.
"If you're giving me the silent treatment to get me to leave you alone, it's not going to work. Fox does the same thing and it's never worked. I'm not leaving."
They sat there again. For just over forty minutes, neither of them said a word. Then, Delsin gave up.
"You sure you wanna know?" he asked.
Velvet nodded.
"Well alright."
He sat up.
"Where should I start?"
O00000O00000O
It was a long tale. It took him a few hours to explain it all.
He started with his past. The truth about where he was from. Then he told her the truth about who and what he was. She took it surprisingly well, though he suspected that she knew at least a little bit of what he was telling her before he started. Even his time in Seattle barely phased her, though she did cringe a bit when he got to the more… graphic parts.
When he was done, she turned away, her gaze drifting to the horizon.
"So when you said you knew how it felt to be put down for what you were, you weren't just saying that were you?" she asked.
"No. No, I wasn't," he replied, a small smirk on his face.
Velvet smiled.
"So, what made you come up here?" she asked.
Delsin sighed.
"You remember that big angel dude from a couple days ago?" he asked.
"Yeah?"
"He's a Conduit, like me. He's from my world."
"Well, that sounds like a reason to celebrate! You get to see an old friend again!"
"Yeah, you're right, it should be frickin' awesome. But apparently, when I disappeared, he got left behind and tried and keep going with what I'd been doing."
"And?"
Delsin took a deep breath, "And apparently everything went to hell in a hand-basket. Everything I'd done. Everything I'd built. All of it went up in smoke."
"Oh."
"And to top off the misery sundae, one of the best friends I had in my world is dead. So all in all, not a great day."
Velvet placed a hand over her mouth.
"Oh, Delsin, I'm so sorry," she said, placing that hand on his shoulder.
"Thanks," he said, placing his hand on hers.
"But wait, why did he attack you? That doesn't make sense," she said after a moment.
Delsin sighed.
"He thoroughly believed I was dead, and with everything that's happened to him since I left, he thought some other not-so-nice Conduit was disguising themselves as me to get to him."
"That's possible?"
"I mean, it's not impossible, or anything I guess."
"Well go talk to him! He needs to know it's really you!"
"Velvet, if I go see him again, he's probably just gonna go on another rampage and destroy even more of the school! They just fixed everything too!"
"But if you don't go talk to him he's going to sit there and be in pain thinking his friend is dead! You have to go!" she said, pleadingly.
He turned, his mouth open to speak, but when he saw the heart-meltingly adorable look on her face, his words caught in his throat and then immediately evaporated. He sighed, his will to argue gone.
"Fine. I'll go talk to him," he said, relenting.
Velvet only smiled.
O00000O00000O
Eugene was still sitting in the interrogation room. The man, who had since introduced himself as Professor Ozpin, had left a while ago without saying why. Once he was gone, Eugene tried to use his powers to get out of the room, but as Ozpin had said, they didn't do him much good. Whoever had built this place had certainly had the right idea. He couldn't even break out of the shackles keeping him stuck to the table.
When the door opened again, he was expecting Ozpin back. That's not what he got.
Delsin walked in without a word. Eugene felt his anger rising, but when he took off his jacket to reveal a Sheriff's badge, a chill ran up his spine as his anger all but vanished. Delsin placed the badge on the table, then sat in the chair across from him.
It took him a moment, but Eugene managed to get the badge in his hand. He turned it over and over, he inspected it every which way he could. The conclusion was obvious. It was definitely Reggie's badge.
"Where did you get this?" he asked, still skeptical.
"You helped me find it. You and me had Wingmen searching the area for two days. We finally found it floating on the surface, a few feet from one of the leftover pillars from the island," Delsin replied.
Eugene sat back. His brain simply couldn't form words. Delsin reached forward and undid the cuffs. Eugene absentmindedly rubbed his wrist where they had been, his brain still basically short-circuiting.
"Look. Whatever happened after I disappeared, I'm sorry you had to go through that. If I'd had any choice in the matter, I wouldn't have left. But after I woke up that morning, I was just here. No warning, no nothing, I was just here."
A small part of Eugene heard and processed that information. That small part pushed through and asked a question.
"Here? What do you mean 'here'?" he asked.
Delsin sighed.
"Right. I told Oz not to say anything about that," he said.
"About what?"
Delsin took a deep breath.
"Eugene, do you remember what you told me after you got me to binge-watch The Flash on Netflix?" Delsin asked, "When they were dealing with that guy in the black suit with the blue lightning?"
"Zoom."
"Yeah, that guy. Do you remember what we talked about?"
Eugene searched back in his memories for that moment. When he got there, the realization hit him like a ton of bricks.
"A parallel Earth?" he said, just above a whisper.
"Yeah. Only here, it's not Earth. It's Remnant."
Eugene's mind was still racing. A new world? Who wouldn't be confused? But the more he thought about it, the more he looked back through the few memories he had of being here, the more the pieces fit together. After two minutes, in his mind, it may not have been certain that he was in a new world, but it was at least plausible.
But all that aside, with everything the two of them had talked about, Eugene felt one thing. It was one thing he hadn't let himself believe because it just hurt too much to hope for it.
"It's really you, isn't it?" Eugene asked, his voice shaking.
Delsin smiled.
"C'mon. You know anyone else who looks this good?"
In that moment, Eugene no longer cared if the Delsin in front of him was the one he'd lost or an imposter, wearing his face. It just felt good to finally have his friend back.
O00000O00000O
A while later, Delsin carried Eugene back to his and Alex's room. After their little talk, they'd spent a few hours catching up, but pretty soon, Eugene had talked himself out. The rush of emotions he'd experienced really knocked him out, so Delsin brought him in and placed him on one of the beds in their room.
With Ozpin's permission, Eugene was going to be a new addition to Team CNDT. Of course, that was conditional on him passing a small combat evaluation to make up for him not attending initiation. That meant that he and Delsin were going to have to train.
After he'd set him down, Delsin himself plopped down on his own bed, after he took a moment to separate the two. But with a smile, he pulled out his Scroll and opened a conversation with Velvet.
"Hey. Just wanted to say thank you. You were right," he said.
"You're welcome. Anytime," she replied, "How is he?"
"He's fine. Took him a minute, but he's feeling a lot better. And so am I."
"I'm glad."
The two of them kept talking until Delsin fell asleep, his heart and mind finally at ease.
O00000O00000O
Far away, Joseph Bertrand was not happy. He walked through the halls of Salem's palace and quickly arrived at the conference hall.
The entire group was assembled, or rather, all but one. The one that was missing was on her way to Vale. Either way, Bertrand quickly entered, his displeasure written plainly across his face.
"Ah, Mr. Bertrand. How fares your investigation?" Salem asked.
Bertrand stopped at the edge of the table and pulled out his Scroll.
"Unfortunately, it seems the reports of a Conduit appearing in Remnant, specifically the Kingdom of Vale, are true. While there was no conclusive information to be found in Rintah, I did a secondary investigation of the kingdom itself."
He placed his Scroll on the table. An image sprang up, projected in 3D from the scroll. It was an image of two hands, holding a city.
"It seems a vigilante has been running around Vale stopping crimes with powers that no normal person can use. He leaves this image spray-painted on a building near every crime he intervenes in. They're calling him-"
"The Banner Man," a female voice said.
Salem turned to the woman who spoke.
"You know of him?" she asked.
Brooke Augustine leaned forward, her elbows on the table in front of her.
"Yes. I know a thing or two."
CHAPTER END