They let me through, but I didn't get to see Mantellum right away. Instead, I had a brief walk through what could be considered the "courtyard" of this community - a wide place filled with vegetable gardens and a small park to the side - and I noticed that no one was out. Even though the sun sat high in the sky, no one came to play or tend to the garden.

Was it a security precaution against me or did this community just not have a lot of people?

My ground radar showed me that there was a lot of people looking at me from windows, though their total number seemed to be around fifty at best with most of the people within my ground radar's effective radius possessing abnormal forms. This was truly a Case-53 community.

I looked up to the sky and finally noticed the wonky space distortion Lisa warned me about. Inception the movie came to my mind with how I could see the rest of Boston from here. Oh look, there was a patrol of Protectorate heroes not too far from where I entered this place. Let's hope the Dragonteeth soldiers I brought with me were not trigger happy.

The slug-slime and snakeball-head led me across the courtyard to the other side, where there was a double door entrance into one of the buildings surrounding the courtyard. These doors opened as soon as I was within arm's reach of them.

On the other side of the doors was a set of bland, concrete stairs leading up.

The two Case-53's who led me to here stopped. "Up you go," the snakeball woman said.

I hummed as I walked forward, not really having stopped when they did. I passed through the doors and walked up the stairs. After what seemed like fifty steps, I came upon a short corridor with another set of double doors at the end of it.

There were more Case-53's on the other side, and these guys looked far more intimidating than others.

Not that it mattered; no one could hurt me unless I let them.

I stopped in front of the doors and pushed them open.

-VB-

Interlude: Skara

Skara looked at the man who entered the room in a billowing cloak of his trenchcoat. Staring at the man, crystalline leader of the Boston's hidden Case-53 community felt anxiety. There was power to this man, a subtle difference that those in power showed but didn't seem to realize.

Her power also told her just how dangerous this man was. The more and more she stared at this man, the more and more her power responded to her demand at analysis with a mental picture of a mountain.

Considering that most non-capes were a fistful of rock at best and most capes being a small hill, a mountain of a cape, figuratively, was a dangerous and powerful man. But just how powerful was he in comparison to her and the rest of the Case-53s here?

He walked into the room where she and five other strongest members of their community sat waiting for him. Despite this show of force, he walked in without even blinking an eye at them all. He did glance and then moved on, dismissing the strongest Shakers, Movers, Blasters, and Brutes of the community.

'But then again, he's supposedly here as a representative of that dragon that sent Leviathan packing' she thought to herself. Skara remembered how terrified she felt when she saw Leviathan for the first time… and how everything everyone else but Wyrm did was pushed aside as weak and useless as the two titans fought, devastating the land with each swipe of their arms and tails. She was still surprised that Boston was relatively untouched despite their earth-shattering battle.

Wyrm's representative stopped in front of the table where six of them sat.

She smiled, extended her hand in a gesture for him to sit. "Please, let us talk."

He observed her for a moment before he sat down.

"Greetings to you all," he spoke up. "I am Wyrm's representative. My name is Dlavik." He made that name up on the spot.

A pause.

Skara thought she heard something wrong.

"Excuse me?" she asked, nervously.

"I am Dlavik." It is a lie.

"Please don't lie," she bluntly responded. "I can tell that you are lying."

That seemed to catch the "representative" off-guard. And then, to her surprise, he rolled his eyes. "Of course, you are," he grumbled irritably.

Jeffery, her six-armed and red-skinned right hand man, was about to growl and demand some respect from the so-far disrespectful cape. Skara quickly put her hand out, telling him to stop. He looked at her in surprise, and his reaction wasn't without cause; she normally let him beat up anyone who was too disrespectful, including other Case-53s who haven't exactly gotten to learn manners yet.

Against a man who her power considered a mountain (when Jeffery was was considered a large hill), she decided that being diplomacy was crucial.

"I know that you aren't who you say you are," she replied. "In fact, you just made up that name on the spot."

The cape sighed. "I didn't expect you guys to have a Thinker," he replied as he relaxed a little in his chair. "Alright, my name is Wyrm."

For a second, she thought she heard wrong.

"What?" Jeffery asked, muttering out with a pale face.

"I'm Wyrm, and I really am here to just talk," the cape replied with an unrepentant bored face.

Skara felt her crystalline body lose color, and a corner of her mind noted that her hands - also crystalline - went from dark green to really light lime green, a sign that she was very close to panicking.

"We…" she gulped. "We heard that you were here to talk to Mantellum…?" she asked slowly.

"Yep. I originally thought about just burning your entire community to the ground. Harboring my enemy and all that."

She stiffened.

"But my second wife talked me out of it," he added, making no changes to his expression or body language to show that he had noticed her rising panic. "Made me even promise that I wouldn't attack unless physically attacked first. She thinks I'm a mad horndog, so I guess it kind of makes sense why she made me promise that."

'Mad horndog?' she couldn't help but repeat those words in her mind. "Well, I guess if you only want to talk to Mantellum, I guess I can let you do that…"

He smiled. "Great," he said with a small smile. "Where is he?"

"To your left."

Mantellum, bipedal ray-like Case-53, looked at her in great betrayal, and his paling face spoke volumes about what he felt about the situation.

Skara shrugged, even though she was apologizing and panicking on the inside. "He says he just wants to talk." She turned to him. "It's not anything that can't be said to us, right?"

"Nope," Wyrm - oh God, Wyrm was right in front of her - replied. He turned to Mantellum. "Are you sure about taking part in the Coalition?"

"I-." Mantellum's words failed him. Faced with the genuine article targeted by the Coalition, the ray Case-53 lost his words.

"Look, I get it. I'm threatening."

No duh!

"But have I ever gone out of my way to butcher people and capes like the Coalition makes me out to be?" he asked.

"You killed Kaiser."

"You want to feel sorry about Nazis?"

Skara thought that was a good point.

"I am a little violent. I get it. What I can do is pretty big and destructive. I get it," he said and then leaned forward towards Mantellum, who leaned back and away from the forward-leaning Coalition target. "But I have defended humanity twice while many of you in the Coalition haven't even done that."

Skara didn't know whose side she was supposed to be on, but that remark kind of burned. Mantellum seemed to think so too with the involuntary twitch.

"I...I can't help in an Endbringer fight. I'll make it worse for people. Power canceling and all that," he replied.

"Right, right. So why are you joining the Coalition, which targets me, when I am defending everyone?"

Skara wanted to know too.

"They … they said you were going to cause destruction."

"For who?" I asked. "For some villain's economy? For some heroic independent with black and white world view? For who? You?"

Mantellum curled up on himself, obviously embarrassed by the invalidation of the ideas that he thought were right.

"I… I was just scared."

"Yeah, and the first thing you did was threaten me and my family instead of calling me up and asking me to stop."

Skara winced in sympathy for Mantellum when the Case-53 man looked like he wanted to hide.

"Has anyone in the Coalition come and talk with me about myself?" he demanded.

"I r-read that some of them did…?"

"Lies. All of them are fucking lies. No one talked to me. I have hired some capes so far, but none of the Coalition members came and talked to me." He stood up. "If this is the level of 'thoroughness' that the Coalition goes through, then they obviously just want to fight me, even though any fight with me will always mean a loss for them. Is that what you want Mantellum? To be part of an offensive against someone defends humanity?" He spat on the floor. "Disgusting. If that's the level that the rest of the Coalition is on, then come. I'll at least clean this world of filth like you."

Then he left abruptly, slamming the doors open as he left.

Skara looked to Mantellum, who looked forlorn.

"I … think you should leave the Coalition, Mantellum," she said quietly.

"Me too," Mantellum replied quietly.