A/N: Thanks to my editors: Waela, Those-Who Walk-Alone, Elsannity, Sneks, SexyMist, and Halladelle.

Be safe with COVID-19, read this at least 6 feet away from other humans.


Empty. That's how Rho feels, even though she shouldn't be able to feel anything.

Memories with emotions she doesn't understand linger in the hollow space Anna's consciousness once occupied. Everything she had been is stuffed in there and that should be enough, shouldn't it? Rho gets access to all the memories she needs without Anna fighting her or ruining meticulously laid plans.

But it hurts.

And it's making her sloppy.

Rho slumps on the construction piping Hades speared into her chest through the cracks he punched into her breastplate. She lets the useless armour disintegrate as she places a hand on the piece of metal jutting from her torso. She doesn't try to melt it, or pull it out, or teleport away, and like some messed up courtesy, James doesn't try to kill her.

James, who hadn't put his crown back on before the fight, stares down at her with gritted teeth and wet eyes. "You couldn't just surrender, could you?"

Rho almost laughs. It's such an Anna impulse that it makes the circuits in her head flare in agony. At least, she assumes it would be agony if she registered pain the same way organics do.

Instead she simply looks at James, a man so clear in Anna's memories but so muddled in her own. She considers saying, Father didn't create me to give up, but he created Anna and she gave up. She left Rho alone with nothing but the dull thrum of Red in the depths of Chel's processor.

A wetness slips down Rho's cheeks and it takes her a moment to realize she's crying. Is it even possible to cry when emotions are a foreign concept to her? Still, she can't deny . . . "I want Anna back." Blood drips down her chin. She considers spitting it at James but its poisonous properties won't have an effect on him.

The tension in James' arms slacken. His eyes soften with regret and longing.

A memory of James comforting a distressed Anna slams into Chel. Rho starts crying. She doesn't sob, or gasp, or twist her features in despair. She just feels tears drip down her face. It's almost surgical. Objective. A dearth of emotional weight in what she supposes should be an outpouring of it.

Is this what Anna felt all the time, a void she couldn't fix? Did she only get it after joining the League, or did it just make the emptiness worse?

Chel provides all the answers: yes, no, yes. The quick, simple answers Rho needs, but it isn't enough. She needs to know how Anna was able to survive and fight when her ribs constantly felt like they were ready to crack and spear into her heart.

Tenacity.

Rho's hand slips from the pole to cover her chest with a trembling hand. Father created her to be perfect, didn't he? Surely the idea was to create a flawless artificial intelligence capable of using Anna's gifts with firm and unwavering efficiency.

To this, Chel is quiet.

Rho sets her jaw. She won't allow herself to die due to the negative effects of separation trauma, not when it shouldn't even be possible. Chel. Get a grip on Anna's essence and bury it.

"Do you think you can get her back?" James asks.

A quick prompt from Chel reminds Rho of their conversation, or the sad imitation of one they'd started. "Not if she succeeded." She means to say 'no,' but the phantom throbbing in her heart doesn't allow her to fully commit to the truth. Perhaps she hopes Chel's sensors are wrong, just like James does.

James' hold loosens on the piping as if he's a half second away from dropping it. "Unless you have a mental information blender in your head, how could she? It's not like she could slit her throat."

Without being purged by Chel it shouldn't have been possible, but she can't say that. If she does it will make her look like a fool for trusting the AI when Chel's the only reason Rho exists. In many ways they're the same person, and Rho can't afford to treat Chel like Anna treated Red. "Anna wouldn't let something like technicalities get in the way of what she wants." Not anymore, that is. The Incidents ensured that.

James grits his teeth. "Then you're worth nothing to me."

Perhaps. But she won't allow her physical weakness to be her downfall. "She liked you more than Athena, in the end."

James narrows his eyes. The muscles in his neck tense. "I won't—"

"You never tried to be anything you weren't," Rho interrupts. If there's one thing she's learned from Anna, it's that words can hurt more than any injury. She . . . just needs to learn how to do it. "When she reflected on her time before the first Incident, she realized your imperfect heroism was the only thing she could find comfort in."

Anna also loathed James for leaving her out to dry when she needed help with Jennifer, but Anna hated all the Old Elites for that.

James pulls the pole out of Rho's chest and tosses it aside. "You're trying to distract me."

Rho hums and bows her head. She stares at the blood seeping through clothes at an alarming rate. "My conflict is with someone stronger than you and scarier than your people. I'm hoping you'll see that."

With a sharp intake of breath, James cocks his fist. "If you can't defeat me, you'll never defeat them."

Idly, Rho wonders if this is what Jennifer saw when she stared down Red's fist.

James cries out and swings with all his might.


Emma storms into the building with a roar when her son's magic flares against her senses. "Rho!" She teleports the injured meta beside her and pushes healing energy into her chest.

A second later, the floor beneath them crumbles under the force of James' punch.

Emma grabs Rho's arm and launches herself out the side of the building, heedless of the debris she sends flying into the city below. Civilian casualties from falling debris isn't a valid concern anymore. In many ways, sacrificing civilians is the only way to ensure the population's safety.

Emma lands hard, crashing into an empty parking lot. She dusts chunks of asphalt off her shoulders and releases the woman in her grip. "You're getting hurt more frequently."

Sweat beads on Rho's forehead despite her neutral expression. "I am having . . . mental complications."

No doubt. If Rho weren't affected by Anna's passing then Emma would be even more concerned, but she had hoped it wouldn't set in until after this battle. Right now, her instability has the potential to get everyone killed. Everyone but the one man in this universe that deserves it.

Emma's hands ball into fists and, for a moment, her brow tightens as she glares at the ground. Should she fight? The thought is fleeting, and her fingers relax at her sides. He's still my son. A son who isn't like his predecessors, a son who's everything she could have ever dreamed he could be.

It's a cruel irony that he still ended up on the opposite side of the battlefield regardless.

To dull her own guilt, she's blaming this misfortune on Alpha Alpha and his abhorrent games. It's the only way she'll be able to live with herself for enabling Rho to do what needs to be done.

Rho snaps to attention. "Hive Queen." Then she's gone, teleporting to who-knows-where to continue a battle that tears at Emma's heart.

Black mist tightens around her torso, locking her arms to her sides. She looks up where James is mostly submerged in a hell gate far above her head. "Where did she go?" It's more of a demand than a question.

Emma can't help the way her eyes soften. "You've aged so well." She doesn't mean for her son to hear it, but he grits his teeth so hard the muscles in his jaw strain in sharp relief.

"Dof damn it all to hell. Why can't you just be evil?"

A memory of hitting Reaper with mind control floods her vision. It haunts her, even now. "That'd make things too easy, I suppose, if we knew whether or not we were doing the right thing."

James jumps out of his hell gate and strides towards to Emma with a solemn expression. "Do you think this is right? Is all this death worth it?"

Emma's lips curl into a bitter smile. She spits out a lump of heaven energy on the ground. "No, I don't, but I need Rho. I'm sorry, my little angel. If you were after anyone else you'd never have to contend with me."

"Don't make me fight you, too."

"I'm just the support. I don't intend to hurt you."

James' eyebrows furrow, somehow looking even more conflicted than he did before. "How . . . how do I wage a war when both sides make sense?"

'You don't' is what Emma wants to say, but she's been involved in enough conflict to understand that younger hearts believe that battles actually solve things. She certainly believed that, once upon a time.

"You choose the side that has a method and endgame you can believe in." Otherwise you're just left with regret and pain. She doesn't say that, of course. James has been a hero long enough to know the price of putting his faith in the wrong people.

"And you . . ." James rubs his temples. "Why Rho?"

Because I know that she'll continue to do the right thing no matter how bad her life gets, Emma thinks. She can be dragged into the darkness and claw her way back up to the surface, screaming about justice instead of letting herself drown. She will always try to make the right choice, even when she gets it wrong. Even when it hurts.

Instead of saying any of this, something that might actually explain her position, she says, "She'll keep her word."

James' eyes harden. "So will I." Then he's evaporating into a black mist and gone after a few quick blinks. Shadow leaping isn't as fast as teleportation, but the fundamental principles are the same.

Emma shakes out her arms now that the binds holding them are gone, and sighs down at the broken cement. One way or another, this war is going to end with the death of someone too precious to lose.

If Rho weren't already venomously aware of what loss feels like, Emma might have abandoned this foolish endeavor. Then again, I made Beta Rho, didn't I? That stupid deal she made sealed Anna's fate, if Alpha ever intended to allow Anna's existence to continue to begin with.

With a shake of her head, Emma glances around to track the magical trails left in Rho and James' wake. She lifts her feet from the ground and kickstarts her flight with a sonic boom. The only way to ensure Rho's safety is to get to her before James does.


Ameeil gazes at the first few pieces of debris hitting Earth's atmosphere. She could stop them by reducing the gravitational pull with her weapon, but doing that for every individual piece would take too much time. Not to mention, it would require her ship or for someone to lift her into the air.

A mobile device is shoved in her face and Ameeil snaps her head back in surprise. "Um?"

"Are you one of the invaders?" the earthling demands.

Ameeil's glad she's wearing her helmet because she knows her expression is far from dignified. She hesitates a moment to recall the language he's speaking. "If I am, confronting me is a pretty stupid idea." Her accent is heavy, which she's sure helps her case.

The man is shoved away, and his vile eyes are replaced by earnest ones ringed with gold.

"Help me," Rho says.

If she were anyone else that may have confused Ameeil, but she's seen the tech inside Rho's head. Rho tracks the world around her through technology. She can find anyone she wants if they're, say, staring down a lens of a device connected to an open network. It also seems she can delve into databases to find whatever information she's searching for, otherwise Ameeil wouldn't have been Rho's first choice for help.

She must know how my powers work. "Give me full access to your head," Ameeil states. She's dealt with enough advanced technologies to know that their guards can be deadly. "Whatever firewalls you have, take them down."

Rho tilts her head. "Chel complies, but she'll lose control over them if you override her programming."

Deal with the murder bots first, got it. "I know how to contend with that. Ready?"

Rho grabs Ameeil's hand and presses the Asgardian's palm to her forehead. "Go."

Ameeil closes her eyes and sinks her mind into 'Chel,' as Rho put it. Before she adjusts anything, she pinpoints Chel's power source, the circuit paths, and the problem area. The latter, however, gives her pause. It almost feels like an essential operational program was deleted, but if that were the case, then Rho would be incapable of functioning.

Curious, Ameeil dips into the history of Chel's efficiency. It's been on a steady upwards trek for years, save for a sharp dip right at the end.

Sharp excitement hammers in Ameeil's chest. This is a recent change. And since Rho still retains her sanity, it means that program isn't gone yet—it's in the process of getting shredded.

Where could an essential device driver even go for something like that? There are only two places that are big enough to consume something of that size. One is the active area of Chel and Rho's consciousness, and the other . . .

It's a dark, suppressed place composed of so much malice that the weight of it long procedes the actual gates locking it in.

Ameeil grits her teeth. If that's where the shredding is taking place, she can't fish it back out without getting sucked in herself. The only thing she can do is combine the programs and connect the empty driver space here, otherwise Chel will keep deteriorating until Rho gets herself killed.

Sucking in a deep breath, Ameeil does what she needs to do. She starts with the biggest problem, then adapts the firewall, then completely overrides everything Chel is with something new.

Because that's Ameeil's power. Upgrading technology far beyond current advancements until it's something so foreign and unrecognizable that it's incapable of being countered. That's what she did to the bugs on Reeves' planet, much to her regret. Not that all the bugs were native, of course. The hive hearts were supplied to her by the Old God himself.

Ameeil opens her eyes and lowers her hand. She doesn't say she's done only because Rho, of all people, would already recognize that. At least, she thinks that's the case.

Rho stares at her with a look of mild confusion. "For some reason I thought . . ." She looks at the sidewalk, to each crack and speck of dirt as if it can explain what's happening to her. Then she shakes her head and summons a set of black armour with a half-cape. "Thank you for choosing to join me this time."

A shock runs down Ameeil's spine. She stares in horror, first at Rho, then at the empty space left behind when she teleports away.

I was wondering why you looked familiar. She stares at her shaking hands, then to the man who'd confronted her earlier who's still aiming his phone at her. Do these Earthlings know who Beta Rho used to be? Do they even care? By the God, Arson. What happened to you?

Gritting her teeth, she walks up to the man and states, "Rho, I can stop the ship debris, but I need a lift. Got anything?"

There's no answer, which is to be expected. She hums and glances back at the sky. Some of the pieces will have hit land already if no one's been running interference. She wonders how much damage it caused.

"Hive Queen."

Ameeil turns. Her shoulders jolt in shock.

Archangel, with heaven magic still bleeding from her pores, stands with her hands on her hips and an unimpressed look on her face. "You'll join Blizzard on damage control." She snaps her fingers—

Then Ameeil is falling from the sky. Great. She grabs her weapon and unfurls it, preparing herself for an anti-gravity landing, when a gust of freezing wind stops her downward momentum.

She glances over to see a meta in ice armour a fair distance away with her attention trained upwards. Blizzard, I assume.

"Eyes at noon!" Blizzard shouts. The area around her hands start hissing with puffs of wintry air. She bellows out a cry of pure fury moments before the temperature plummets and ice starts flying from every direction.

Ameeil grins, spins her chain, and throws the arrow-headed dart into the fray.


Rho slams her shoulder into James, sending him toppling through a building. Her metal hands tremble with adrenaline as Chel's new programming kicks in. Which is to say, Rho's new programming kicks in. Somehow, Ameeil managed to stabilize Chel and Rho's coexistence in addition to fixing the data loss caused by Anna's absence.

Anna . . . is still gone, much to Rho's disappointment. She was hoping for the girl's resurrection, but not even a technology booster meta can achieve the impossible.

She's really gone. And she has to accept that now, doesn't she? The only other person Rho will ever have in her head is Red, but even she feels tamer now—less like the repugnant taint at the edge of her awareness. Now, Red just feels livid and is trying to take it out on herself. Perhaps the security upgrade is what's gotten under her skin, not that it really matters.

Rho is alone. Just like Anna used to be.

Rho dances out of the way of wild hell gates and black mist with unprecedented ease. "Hades," she calls over the screams of pedestrians. "The League is still recruiting, if you're interested."

"Shut up!" James mists into existence above her and thrusts his foot downwards.

Rho teleports out of the way and watches from atop a far away roof as the entire area caves in as if hit by a meteor. That's . . . weaker than a full hell meta should be. Either James is weaker than a full-blooded Theuga due to his mixed parentage, or he's holding back. Considering Jennifer used to piss magic whenever she pushed her abilities too far, Rho's willing to bet on the former.

James materializes behind her with a scowl, but he doesn't attack. He just stands there with clenched teeth and fists pressed close to his sides.

Slowly, as to not antagonize the man further, Rho turns around. She stares for a moment before crossing her arms over her chest and settling into a relaxed stance that is far from appropriate considering the destruction around them.

She knows James wants to say something but she doesn't prompt him. It isn't her job to pave the way for other people. The only people she owes her aid to are the ones who will join her in her eventual battle against Father.

James hisses out a harsh breath through his teeth. "You're not trying to kill me."

Rho has a multitude of responses ready. 'I have no desire to kill you' is a good one, or even, 'why would I kill someone who wants to do the right thing?' But she doesn't go with any of them. What she actually does is shrug and say, "No point." Not even Chel's upgrade can fix her lacking interpersonal skills.

"Don't pull an Athena on me," James says in a low voice, near a growl. "Not you, of all people."

Rho tilts her head. "I'm not beating you up and saying it's because I love you, am I?"

James' eyes widen and he takes a surprised step back. "I—sorry."

Rho waves him off. James didn't give his support to Anna all those years ago, and his belated sympathy gives Rho nothing now. "You want a villain, not a friend, and we're not giving you that. I get it." She glances over her shoulder at the crater James created. "But it doesn't—"

Data pours in to her. Distress calls. Screaming. Rho's eyes widen and she connects to that frequency. "Shadow, report."

"The Ambassadors found the new flight route!" Mulan shouts. She's grunting as if she's engaged in combat. "The whole retreating fleet is under assault."

Rho removes her helmet with just one well directed thought and settles her hard gaze on James. "Will the fleet survive?"

"A few of the heavy League cruisers might if we push through but . . . not all the Elites are on those. Maybe one, not including me."

Rho sets her jaw and sucks in a sharp breath through her nose. The Ambassadors attacked a mostly unarmed refugee train, for what? To prove a point? "Get on one of those ships and turn all the heavy cruisers around. Come back to Earth."

"Is the situation there dealt with already?" Mulan sounds surprised, which Rho can't blame her for.

"We might be by the time you get back. Best of luck and . . . I'm sorry, for what you have to do." Rho closes the communication before Mulan can respond, not that it prevents Rho from hearing it regardless.

She closes her eyes and tilts her chin to the sky. Billions of people uprooted their lives under a promise of safety the League can't keep, and now they're—"Do you still believe in the Ambassadors, Hades?"

James doesn't respond at first.

Rho opens her eyes and meets the hell meta's gaze once more. A weight settles in her chest where indifference once roamed. It's heavy and sleek, like coagulated oil grabbing at her ribs as if they were prison bars.

Whatever change James sees in her, it makes his eyebrows knot with wariness. "I do."

That's too bad. In her brain, Chel hands Rho a destructive switch. It will turn off the heavy reason filter Rho prides herself in and allow for illogical violence.

Rho flicks it without a second thought.

Then her world goes dark.


James watches with mounting confusion when Rho's eyes roll back into her skull and she collapses to her knees. It would be easy to end this now while she's defenseless, but the mention of Shadow keeps his limbs frozen. She is in danger, he was able to gather that from what Rho said, but by who?

He has the sinking feeling he already knows, like a claw scraping at the back of his mind, but he can't quite reach it. Whatever the knowledge is, it's buried beyond the stretch of his long-term memory.

Rho gasps for air as if she were drowning. It's so sudden James half mists out of shape in response. He solidifies again once he realizes Rho is just hacking her lungs up—no, wait, he thinks. She's laughing.

Rho lifts her head and flashes James a cocky smirk, but it isn't the woman's canines that makes his heart drop into his stomach. It's the red and teal that swirls in Rho's irises between the golden ring and pupil.

That sight takes him back to when a younger Arson stood above him with hellfire burning on her tongue and red gleaming in her eyes. A time when she'd abandoned everything she stood for to slaughter hundreds of millions across the globe just to spite the Ambassadors. At least, that's what he'd thought at the time.

James shakes himself out of the memory before he can be taken off-guard. "Red Arson." He mentally pats himself on the back for keeping the tremble out of his voice.

Red's smirk widens but she doesn't raise from her kneeling position. "Miss me?" She sits back on her heels, satisfied, when James doesn't grace her with a response.

James squints when Red does little more than stare at him. This . . . isn't the volatile monster he remembers, and there's nothing in Scar's reports to suggest a personality shift. If there had been a shift then there wouldn't have been any reason to launch their military might at Sol.

Does it have to do with her eyes not being fully red? Usually colour only bleeds in when she's first turning or when she's getting back out. Perhaps Rho still retains part of her control in order to calm Red's bloodlust.

Red laughs. It's a low, grating sound that comes straight from the hellish creatures from his nightmares. "Confused?" she mocks. "That's fine. This is new for me, too." She looks down and picks at her chest plate with a look of distaste.

A moment later her entire armour set changes into a flexible black metal with gleaming red plates on her joints, chest, and back. The cape disappears entirely. Her helmet morphs out of thin air—Calhoun's armouring ability, James knows—in a simple, angular shape, but it's painted like a monster. A black background with red eyes and gleaming white dragon teeth spread in a dreadful smile, dripping with blood.

"Part of me doesn't want to kill you," Red says. Her voice is a deep distortion of what it should be thanks to whatever voice modulator she added to the helmet. "That part of me still loves you, but it also hates what you've done. What you've ignored. It's hard to distinguish that small, insignificant difference when everything else blends together so perfectly, but I keep thinking it over and over again and it's driving me insane."

James doubts it's possible for Red to get any crazier after what the Ambassador serum put her through, but he knows better than to say that.

Red rubs the small red plates over each of her knuckles. "But in the end, there was only one real difference between Anna and I. Want to wager a guess?"

What does that have to do with anything? "I won't sympathize with you." Anna is gone, and James won't replace her with Rho or Red. They're poor imitations of the real thing.

Red places her hands on her hips and leans forward as if she were telling a secret. "She cared." A laugh ripples through the air like the rumbling footfalls of a goliath. "I don't think she cares much anymore, do you?"

Rage bubbles behind James' ribs. She's rubbing salt on the wound, trying to make me reckless. "I think it's time I reclaim my father's scythe."

With a flourish, Red lifts herself into the air without use of her flames. It must be Chel's magnetisation manipulating Red's armour. It's the only plausible explanation.

When James fails to react, Red throws back her head with a booming laugh and lights herself up with white flames. She poses in a fighting stance mid-air and, with an outstretched hand, she makes a 'come at me' gesture.

James obeys.


A rabid grin twists Red's lips when Hades—because he isn't worth a real name—lunges at her. She grabs him by the collar, ignites him in flames, and launches him towards the ground.

He gets away, of course, but the heated shockwave that followed him is enough to flatten half a dozen houses. Red hopes people are still living in them.

A laugh spills out of her lungs when she sees someone burst out of one of the destroyed houses and make a run for it. I don't think so. She teleports in front of the man and punches clean through his skull.

Red watches the body collapse as she shakes brains and bone fragments from her hand.

"No! No! What are you doing?" Hades is above her, hovering in a half-evaporated state.

Red cocks out her hip and waves her arms in a 'what do you think' gesture. "You can't seriously think I want to protect this planet, do you?"

A part of her does, though, which is the only reason she didn't start a massacre the moment her consciousness burst through the surface. Not that Hades has any way of knowing this, which she supposes is a positive consequence of murdering some guy who didn't deserve it.

Ugh. 'Deserve.' Everyone 'deserves' to die for something; Red just never made a distinction between minor infractions and major criminals. Jay-walking? Die. CEO profiting off of millions of people's suffering? Die. Shit in a toilet without flushing? Die. Genocidal maniac? Die—or convenient ally in some cases. Those people are fun.

But now Red feels obligated to kill the right people, which is frankly a stupid restriction that relies on morals. Something Red shouldn't even have.

Red's fingers curl into fists so tight they crack her knuckles. I am the Red Actualization of gatekeepers. I am a big bad nightmare with no conscience and a will so foul nothing can turn my stomach. Or, she should be. She used to be.

Hades glowers at her, and that eases the strange constriction on Red's lungs. It helps her think and breathe. It gives her purpose.

Red knows it's because of whatever weird code she has now, but she can't deny how good it makes her feel. It fills her limbs with adrenaline and a delicious need for blood. This is the feeling she used to get all the time, and she'll be damned if she lets it slip through her fingers again.

Red hops on the balls of her feet and fires herself into the air with the force of a rocket. Her shoulder connects with his throat a second before his body puffs into black smoke, not that it matters. He can run as much as he likes, but he can't hide so long as he's powering his magic.

She activates her ability to see magical signatures and trails, the only heaven powers active in her bloodline seal. It turns the world as gray as it deserves to be with only a muddled collection of coloured blobs to break up the melancholy. It's a shame it's only useful for tracking or she might keep it as her regular vision.

She glances at the last place she saw Hades, where a translucent black haze remains. Good. Now she knows what his colour pattern is. She looks around until she finds the thin telltale line of teleportation types. With a smirk Red spins into a flight position and blasts herself into motion. The sound barrier breaks behind her, which gives her no small amount of pride.

Anna. Everyone idolized that parasite when she was back in her prime, but she was so fucking weak. Red is the only reason Anna was able to break through the mental limiters, yet it's only ever about Anna, Anna, Anna.

Red crashes into the building Hades is hiding in. At least now we're one and the same. No one can differentiate us ever again. She shoulders her way through a wall, dashes forward, and punches Hades square in the nose before he can react.

Hades flips back and kicks out a wave of . . . something. Soul stripping, Chell supplies. Red teleports behind Hades to avoid it, then plants her foot and spins on her heel—but her roundhouse kick slips through the mist of another shadow leap.

"Stop running, coward!" Anger borne from a deep pain Red's never experienced before boils in her bones and she roars at the force of it. She teleports to the next location Hades hobbles to. "What makes you think you're the saviour?" She slams her foot in his gut, sending him crashing through several support pillars. "All you've ever been good for is abandoning people!"

Red blasts herself out of the way of several hell gates, but it doesn't feel like Hades is into this despite he said to Rho. "You have more powers than this, you freak! I'm trying to kill you so give me the courtesy of trying!"

Hades narrows his eyes. He throws out his hands beside him, and the magical aura around him grows so strong Red has to turn off her tracking.

Red tenses. She'll admit that not even she knows what the full array of hell abilities are, and Chel is only forthcoming when it's convenient to her.

Then she hears it. She turns her chin up to the ceiling. "Rain?"

Death rain, Chel supplies, along with detailed information about what it does.

Red has half the mind to be annoyed, but this is so perfect she grins wide enough to show her canines, not that Hades can appreciate it. "Yes. This is what I want."

The heavy pattering of rain staggers into something so light Red can barely hear it.

Ire burns in her chest in response. Red hunches her shoulders and starts stalking forward. "You are the worst kind of hero. You know what's right and what's wrong but you only fight for it if there's no personal stakes. That's what you did when Athena beat me, that's what you did when the Ambassadors ruined me, and that's what you're doing now."

She stops in front of Hades and grabs him by the chin. "I kept fighting when the chips were down. I fought tooth and nail for what I believed in even when I had nothing left and no one at my side. You gave up at the first sign that you might not win. You're fucking pathetic."

Black magic punches Red in the chest and blows her clear out of the building, into the sprinkle of tarnished rain. It fizzles against her armour, but she summoned this metal specifically because of its heaven and hell resistances.

The drizzle becomes a downpour.

Red tilts her head and stares into the darkened sky. Her armour hisses in protest against the matter-destroying liquid which . . . could be useful. The Anna part of her mind doesn't like Red killing the 'wrong' people, but there's nothing stopping her from getting someone else to do it instead.

With a smirk, Red flies to the closest major city and lands in the busiest central hub with the force of a small bomb. She bats cars and trucks out of the way with the back of her hand when they threaten to hit her. As she hoped, the rain follows her.

She starts dancing in the small crater she made for herself, humming along to the symphony of groaning buildings and human screams. This is the only type of music that's acceptable.

Then she feels guilt.

Red grits her teeth so hard the edges of her vision blacken. This can't be right. Slaughtering people is what she does; it's the thing that coerces breath into her lungs and joy from her heart. Surely Anna of all people can't strip that from her, not when she was a murderer herself.

She gave me a fucking conscience. Growling at herself, Red scratches at her helmet as if she could claw out the unwanted emotions from her brain. She can't believe she's getting the urge to save these morons, especially when so many of them are suffering or half dead already.

"Fine. Fine!" she bellows. It doesn't quell the voices screaming in her head, condemning her.

She teleports into a nearby building that hasn't been completely melted yet and wills the ports of her mask to open. One breath in and she ignites hellfire at the back of her throat. The best she can offer these people is a quick end, or at least that's the most effort she's willing to extend for them.

There's terrified screaming behind her, sobbing beside her, shouting in front of her. The people in this building are so scared. Red bets they would rather be home right now.

And it makes her feel like shit.

It's a feeling that expands when she ignites a cataclysmic hellfire bomb.

She ignores the damage statistics Chel supplies her and snaps the ports on her mask closed again before the rain continues falling.

Only, as she keeps herself afloat above a hole no more than a few meters deep—she made the bomb go outwards, not down—she notices it's the sun that greets her. It's mocking me. She scowls at the ball of light and flexes in a 'fight me' motion.

The sun does nothing.

Hades appears in front of her, solid from the waist up. His arms are crossed over his chest. He doesn't say anything, he just stares at her with a harsh judgmental gaze like he expects her to repent.

Red copies his pose. A long, awkward pause stretches between them. Then she starts laughing. "Surely you realize neither of us have the moral high ground here, right?"

He raises an eyebrow, unfazed in a way that Red has to admire. Until he opens his mouth, that is.

"You're Anna."

So, he figured it out. Kind of. Red had been hoping she could hide it longer than this. "I didn't take you as the type for blind hope."

Hades smiles. It's small, knowing, cocky. "I know it's been almost five years now, but I remember how you and Anna behaved. Why do you think I've been going easy on you?"

"Hm." Is the only response she can think of. What does Hades expect to happen from this revelation? Does he think Red will miraculously go against the fundamental personality traits created through Actualization just because she's not solely Red anymore?

Then she remembers Rho's earlier observation about Hades being weaker than expected. Red tasks Chel with investigating it. I should wait for her findings before engaging him again.

Red lowers herself to the ground and sits down. If she has to stall anyway, she might as well try to get his defenses down. "What now?"

Hades' legs harden into shape as he falls towards the ground. He decides to stand, perhaps wanting to keep the high ground. "My original offer is still valid. The Ambassadors can benefit from your cooperation."

Red narrows her eyes. What can the goats possibly gain from her that they can't already get with Hades? Athena's holy spear comes to mind, but it isn't special as far as heaven weapons go. What else does she bring to the table, her false memories?

"You know, I'm curious." Red raps her knuckles on her helmet over her mouth. "Why didn't you supply Scar with hellfire smoke to progress his experimentation? Give him the formula, the ingredients, all the people you desired—you could have overwhelmed me that way without ever putting any of your own people at risk."

Hades' face doesn't shift, but his fingers twitch at his sides. "Then you would've known I lived."

But I wouldn't have. No one would have gone insane, which was the only outcome Anna believed was possible from the tainted hellfire smoke. Loyalties would have shifted, but everyone affected would keep their allegiance quiet, just like Scar had. It would have been a silent uprising, a tsunami to drag Anna into a well deserved grave before she even knew what was happening.

Red taps her fingers on her thigh, letting the dull metallic sound fill the silence. "Care to change that answer?"

Finally, Chel comes through with an answer: not all of Hades' seals are open and all data that stated otherwise was a ruse. She goes on to supply a list of abilities he does have, which is a far shorter list then Red expects.

He doesn't even have hellfire or hellfire smoke. That would explain why the Ambassadors would have use of her.

Hades sighs and rubs the back of his neck. "Look, Anna, the decision wasn't mine. The moment we got word that your personality shift wasn't permanent I wanted to come back for you. I . . . even if they let me—I was hospitalized at the time. You almost killed me."

Red flexes her fingers. How quickly can she move? Without access to his full range of abilities she can beat his reflexes, but he knows how she fights. He knows her tells. She needs to try something new.

"How did you even—" she tilts her upper body to the side, as if she's looking at something behind Hades. "Your boys?"

Hades blinks and glances over her shoulder, leaving her out of his sight for one second. It's the only one she needs.

Red surges forward, summons Athena's spear, and stabs it through Hades' chest. She lets her helmet melt away for only a few seconds to show off her feral grin.

Pleasure pulses through her limbs at the feeling of breaking bone and the sight of fresh blood oozing out around the shaft of her weapon. She doesn't even try to be witty because this feeling is the only thing she needs in life, and she's finally found it again.

Hades' eyes widen. He coughs out blood and grits his red-tinged teeth. "Please, Anna. Let us be on the same side."

Red leans forward until her helmet taps Hades' forehead. "Why the fuck would I want that when I have this?"

She leaves the spear in his chest and kicks him away from her. The holy weapon recognizes its 'wielder' is no longer a heaven host sooner than Red expects, and it explodes with a force that knocks Red clean on her back.

Waves of golden lightning pulse through the air with a thickness that Red can taste even through the resistances of her armour. Metal pings against Red's breastplate. Blood splatters over her legs, her torso, her visor.

She grins like a madman, pushes to her feet, and hops towards the center of the chaos before the lightning fully disperses. A laugh bubbles out of her when all that remains of the mighty former Elite is shredded fabric, chunks of metal, and a dark stain.

Red walks forward and scoops up the spear. She twirls it around her as she thinks.

More goats are inbound, if Mulan's unable to shake them. It's an easy target to take out her ire on, but she'll have to wait and Red doesn't want to hold her fists back for that long.

Red rests the spear over her shoulders and hooks her arms over it. What can she do? Slaughtering civilians is out of the question thanks to her newly found values and all the villains are already dead because of Rho. Who's left?

Well. There's always ill-timed revenge.

Red lifts herself into the air with Chel's magnetization and teleports. Her barren surroundings shift to ice, clouds, and a fully armoured meta who's far too close.

Hive Queen grunts out a surprised noise and jolts backwards, but she's too slow. Red spins and drives her spear into the other woman's gut.