A/N: Chap 20 review responses are in my forums as normal. And now? Now we see why Alexandria is so suddenly willing to talk. Yes, it's a flashback chapter. This happens the afternoon following Taylor's New York fight.
Chapter Twenty-One: The Earth and Sea Are Full of Evils
The fucker was gone.
Sanna rolled onto her back across the extra-long, special order bed in her cramped bedroom and stared at the empty spot where Jake from Nackawic went to sleep last night. Young, fit, and just tall enough that he faced directly into her chest when he stood up, she'd really hoped he'd at least have the decency to say hi to her the morning after. After all, he'd done everything right. No comments about her seven-foot height; complemented her hair; talked about her eyes. He agreed that the Canucks got robbed in their last game against the Maple Leafs and even covered her tab.
He kept doing everything right, too. All night long.
But when she woke the next morning, it was to an empty bed.
"Damn it."
She climbed out and made a cursory inspection of her home to make sure he didn't run off with anything. Fool her once, shame on her and all that. After three times in the past five years?
Fortunately, while Jake from Nackawic appeared to be a jerk, he didn't appear to be a thief. She threw on her morning robe. There was already frost on the ground outside in the mornings, though it promised to get up to a balmy 18 degrees today. For once it was everything south of Toronto getting pelted by snow.
Despite it almost being noon, Sanna subscribed to the idea that breakfast was the first meal of the day, even if consumed at two in the afternoon. She grabbed one of her cold lattes from the fridge, poured it into a bowl of Honey O's, and drifted into her living room for some quality, non-voluntary alone-time and the mid-day news. She had two more days of leave before she had to report back in. She'd heard rumors that the newly crowned King of England had reorganized the King's Men and was requesting the Guild to help train them in more advanced take-down tactics. After London last year, the United Kingdom was not so united.
She turned on the TV as she ate her caffeinated cereal and watched Taylor Hebert impale Adamant with a wing.
"Huh, wings. When did that happen?"
She continued chewing on automatic pilot, not emotionally connecting the scene to the girl whose life she helped save. Intellect and emotion finally clicked through the haze of a post-bender night, though. She had just enough presence of mind to put her bowl of cereal down before she jumped to her feet to go looking for her phone.
She found it in the bathroom. When she opened it, she could still see her last texts with Dragon. Feels right this time. Who knows, maybe Jake's a keeper?
You said the same about Paul, Jose and Khamir. And Dragon was right, because she always was. I'm still having to swat down copies of the recording Khamir made before you found his phone. The last time it showed up on CapeHub, it got 1.4 million views in 3 hours.
Ugh. Even with criminal and civil suits, Khamir was still getting copies of the video out. He'd fled back to the UAE, where he made a good living off porn videos.
At least I looked good. She had three standing offers for photo shoots that would pay a million each. She was even considering one of them. Mama needed a better home than what the Guild could afford to pay her.
Just as she sat back down, though, Dragon texted her. Call me right now. Urgent.
"No shit," Narwhal muttered. She started to respond when her doorbell rang. For one insane instant, she imagined Jake from Nackawic stood on the other side of the door with pastries. She quickly squashed the idea because 1) that's not how her luck with men went; and 2) even if it was, the fact he didn't even leave a note ruined everything. He'd have to have a great excuse if he did show up.
She opened the door and froze. "You're...not who I thought it would be."
The consequence of being an unmasked cape (it was hard to disguise her seven-foot frame and platinum-white hair) was that other capes didn't feel it violated any rules to pay a visit in costume. Case in point?
Alexandria smirked. "Am I interrupting?"
"Bitch. Get in here and tell me why you tried to break Taylor Hebert's neck."
Being the head of an international team of government-commissioned heroes made for a small circle of peers. It was fortunate, then, that she and Alexandria were like a pair of friendly cats. Yes, they'd occasionally knock each other off the couch just for shits and giggles, but at the end of the day they had more in common than not.
Alexandria stepped into the room and looked around at the disaster. "I'm going to assume I won't be seeing your night on CapeHub anytime soon?"
"That was one time!"
"Not as I recall."
Narwhal couldn't help but laugh. After a while, the rage and indignity of it just became pointless. "So, I know you don't love me enough to come by for drinks, specially not this time of day. You're here about Taylor?"
"Yes." Alexandria picked her way into the apartment, and then moved a few piles of dirty clothes over to expose a sofa. The moment she sat down, Angelica emerged from the chaos of Sanna's world and plopped her not inconsiderable feline bulk right on the cape's lap, purring as if she'd just won the lottery. She looked about with pleased marble blue eyes from a face that looked as if someone had punched it really, really hard.
"This may actually be the ugliest cat I've ever seen. Did you shave her over her hip?"
Narwhal returned to her own seat, while on television the midday talk show hosts went on a diatribe about irresponsible capes and government oversight. "She had a tumor removed." Narwhal picked up her cereal and kept eating.
Watching Alexandria pet a cat was an experience. The hero was so insanely powerful that she had to concentrate to pet the cat without snapping her spine. That she did so anyway, and seemed to enjoy the admittedly ugly, ancient, piebald Persian cat's purring, was one of the reasons Narwhal accepted the hero as a friend. Like all Triumvirate, Alexandria never removed her mask. The fact she liked cats gave her at least a little humanity.
"So?" Sanna finished her bite. "Why were you and Legend trying to kill Taylor in New York?"
"He was trying to capture her," Alexandria admitted. "She just proved to be...problematic. I only came in when Thinktank announced something had changed and Hebert was about to kill the entire New York Protectorate. Eleventh Hour gave her a numerical threat rating right below an Endbringer fight."
That almost made Narwhal snort cereal. She managed to swallow before laughing, then stood to put her mostly eaten breakfast in the sink. "Problematic. Wasn't that what you said about us going after the S9?"
Alexandria shrugged, but slowly so as not to disturb Angelica. "She overpowered my flight and drove me into the ocean. You saw what she did to Adamant. No cape's ever done that before."
Narwhal made her way back into the living room. "What happened, Lexi? Taylor is a good kid. I mean it. A selfless, kind kid. Why did Legend have Flechette shooting at her? I thought Flechette was on furlough because of her one-shot, one-kill power and a drinking problem? Or Adamant going after her?"
"Best we can tell? A villain thinker was so scared of her that he took steps to set her up as a villain. And he succeeded, all too well. He forced a fight between her and Lung."
"Lung?"
"Lung. And with a Ward named Shadow Stalker shooting her in the back with matter-phased crossbow bolts, it looked for a bit like he might kill her. Until the wings popped out. Then she fought Lung off, bisected the sixteen-year-old Ward, and then had a temper tantrum that flattened ten square miles of White Mountain National Forest, killed a park ranger, and caused a storm that dumped a foot of snow from Maine to the Carolinas."
"Well, when you put it like that…" Sanna winced. "A Ward and a park ranger agent?"
"The Ward had some behavioral issues that only came to light after her death, and was led into believing that Hebert was an Empire 88 cape. The ranger was piloting helicopter that got caught in her wake. His daughter was also severely injured, though later healed."
"Shit."
"Precisely."
"Are you...that's three strikes. Is Rebecca moving for a kill order?"
"No. That's why I'm here. Your television and speaker system are internet connected, right?"
Knowing exactly what she was asking, Narwhal picked up her phone and texted Dragon with the day's VPN passcode. When she turned on the television, she and Alexandria were treated to the tinker's digital avatar face.
"Good morning, Alexandria. Narwhal."
"Dragon," Alexandria said. "Before she attempted to get away from Legend, Taylor Hebert asked Legend a question. The answer is why I am here, but it might help Narwhal if she knows too. Can you tell me, right now, where the Endbringers are?"
The window containing Dragon's avatar shrunk in favor of a Mercator map. The avatar frowned expressively as she went about pulling the data. "Yes, my monitoring programs are… That is quite strange."
The map centered into a high-resolution satellite image of north Africa. Three large symbols, one white, one blue and one red, all seemed to hover within the frame. The white Symbol looked like a four-winged angel. The blue looked like a lizard, while the red showed a single eye.
"I've never seen this behavior before," Dragon admitted. "All three Endbringers are hovering over, near or, if the USGS sensors are to be believed, under North Africa."
"Thank you," Alexandria said. "Now, if you're willing, can you please show Narwhal the enhanced footage from the Morocco attack in August? PRT access code for that file is 6LGNEDD-Ex12."
"Accessing," came Dragon's voice.
The television switched footage of one of the only Endbringer fights not to have heavy media coverage. Despite the international heroism of the civilian-led evacuation of Morocco, the various news outlets had buried the attack for some reason. Watching the video, she suddenly understood why.
The video looked as if it was taken from a phone. The air was filled with ash that fell like snow. "I missed that fight. Is the ashfall from Ashbeast?"
"Yes. At that point, he was less than five miles from the coast and moving steadily north."
Narwhal leaned forward, watching intently, as someone recorded Danny Hebert and a pale, sickly-thin Taylor picking themselves up from a wave. Both were soaking wet and Danny wore only swimming trunks.
The man looked like he was made of solid muscle. His skin was the color of ash except for the faded ochre of a tattoo that ran across his face, skull and torso. He reached up and removed something from his neck—the video footage was shaky.
The monitors blinked into side-by-side comparisons of different videos at different angles. It went back a few seconds on one side, showing Danny removing something from his neck, while the other footage showed Leviathan spinning around and staring like a cat at a canary the moment he removed it.
Nana's charm necklace. At that moment, Narwhal knew what had happened. He'd removed one of Nana's charms, and the moment he did so Leviathan could see him. All the Endbringers could see him for what he was.
"Holy shit," she muttered.
"Since we obtained this footage, we've done additional research," Alexandria continued. "For instance, we were able to recreate the Hebert's' flight path from Maine to Europe."
Dragon brought up a chart at the prompt. The Leviathan sightings were like scatter plot overlaid on a line chart. Once the plane moved over England, it switched from Leviathan to Simurgh.
"We obtained cockpit recordings from the British Air Force confirming that the Hebert's plane was eight miles east of London when the Simurgh attacked and destroyed it, a full two months earlier than any anticipated attack," the Triumvirate cape continued.
"The Endbringers were hunting them," Narwhal said, stating the obvious but unspoken conclusion.
"Yes," Alexandria said. "Costa-Brown was—very quietly—able to confirm with the CIA that the man we call Daniel Hebert is alive and leading a revolt against Moord Nag. All three Endbringers are watching him. We've never seen this type of behavior before. We're keeping a lid on it, but the world will soon notice that the Endbringers are not attacking. And according to Emily Piggot, you know more about what's going on with the Heberts than anyone else."
How much do I say? Sunny never ordered Narwhal not to talk about her or her natural mother. There was just an unspoken feeling and the fear of being labelled insane. But if Sunny had just walked onto the Maxine Show and announced she was a goddess? "What did she say to Legend, precisely?"
"She told him that she knew where her father was, but did he know where his Endbringers were? He admitted it was just a distraction, but one that worked."
And that's precisely what a fourteen-year-old goddess would do, isn't it? For all Taylor's power, and for all her magic, she was still a teenager. Sanna remembered the hell she put her Nana through when she was that age. The urge to get the last word could overpower any modicum of common sense, no matter what. It drove her nuts that Nana never seemed to care; never gave in. Until years later, when she admitted to herself that Nana gave her just what she needed. The only time she ever saw her Nana weep was when she triggered.
So what did a semi-orphaned fourteen-year-old Goddess need?
"They aren't villains, either of them," Narwhal said with absolute certainty. "From their perspective, everything that happened from the moment they had to leave Brockton Bay was the Protectorate's fault. The first confrontation at White Mountain? The Protectorate shot first and Danny ended the fight. That's what...people like Daniel Hebert do. If you start something with them, they finish it. He could kill you without a second thought, but only if you gave him a reason. But he'd never rob a bank or hold hostages. And Taylor is a selfless, brave young woman who would die to save an innocent life if she could. Which is why this whole thing makes me sick. With all due respect, your people completely fucked this whole thing up. Maybe beyond repair."
"I know." Alexandria was like that-she didn't evade responsibility for something. "Piggot is in Washington right now under deposition for how much she knew of her organization's compromised status. A temporary director is in Brockton Bay for now running the show, and Miss Militia is effectively running the Protectorate."
Sanna tried not to bite her lip. She loved Miss Militia, almost like a sister. But the woman's power lent her a certain mindset. She'd deployed more instances of lethal force as a cape than any other in her state Protectorate hero. All could be justified, but it made for a bad Protectorate team leader. Militia was far more of a soldier than a law enforcement officer. The two were equally important, but very different in perspectives. As a former soldier, Sanna knew that better than anyone.
Alexandria sat patiently on the couch, petting Angelica while waiting for Narwhal to decide what and how much to say.
"This is confidential, isn't it?"
"Executive level," Alexandria said with a firm nod. "Triumvirate, Costa-Brown. Possibly the President. Otherwise it'll be contained."
Decision made, Narwhal looked back to the monitor where Dragon's avatar also waited patiently. "Dragon, when I recovered Taylor off Nova Scotia, she had a golden torc and two bone charm necklaces. Did she still have them in any of the videos when she fought Legend?"
"Yes," Dragon said. She pulled up multiple stills from various videos revealing the golden torc and the bone necklaces around Taylor's neck. "Watchdog has been trying to determine what their significance is."
"Yeah, I bet. So…well, one of those bone charms was Danny Hebert's. My Nana gave one to each of them. And you saw what happened when he took his off and gave it to Taylor in Morocco."
Narwhal counted to three. Alexandria never looked away from her. "These necklaces...what, summon an Endbringer?"
Narwhal shook her head. "No. Not summoned. Hid. The reason the Endbringers are following Danny Hebert is because he could possibly kill them. That's why they watch, but don't attack. But Taylor? If she takes her necklaces off, all three will attack. At once. No matter where, no matter when. They'd have to. Because when she reaches her full power, she could probably kill all of them."
Alexandria was not a demonstrative person. It was the fact that she took her hand of Angelica for a moment that gave away her thinking. "Not human," she finally said.
"No. It'll be better to show you. Dragon, could you do a visual search for four items for me. The first is the image of Daniel Hebert taken by Armsmaster last year at the White Mountain National Park. The second is a painting titled Slaughter of the Riverbend Abenaki by Benjamin West. The third is an anonymous painting of the Battle of Roncevaux Pass, you'll probably know the one I'm thinking of when you find it. And finally, I'd like you to find images of a vase titled Deicide of Olympus, circa 3rd Century BCE, discovered in Athens in 1914." She looked at Alexandria. "I did some research of my own last year."
As usual, Dragon's internet skills were superb. The cape's voice sounded uncertain and even concerned over the speakers. "Narwhal, I think I found what you're looking for. I'm not sure I believe it, though."
"It's a hard thing to swallow, Dragon," Narwhal said.
The television screen blinked as a new image appeared. "First is the image from White Mountain last year," the famous Canadian tinker said.
Narwhal wasn't there to see Limelight lose her leg, but she'd read the report and seen Armsmaster's helmet cam of the event. Daniel Hebert looked huge and savage, pale and heavily unshaven with a red tattoo running over his bald head that wasn't visible in his driver's license photo.
"This next is the Slaughter of the Riverbend Abenaki by Benjamin West, painted in 1771."
The busy painting showed a scene of Pre-Revolutionary Colonial militia charging a village of native Americans with muskets and swords, while the native Americans fought back with axes and bows. It took Narwhal only a second to identify the anomaly, though—the pale, ghost-like figure leading the charge with a massive axe in hand. His head was bald and even in the painting, the artist captured the detail of a red tattoo running over his pale scalp.
"The third was more difficult because there are many versions of this setting. I chose one from an 8th century illumination of Einhard's Vita Karoli Magni," Dragon explained.
The image was medieval. Stylized armored knights on massive stallions fell to a line of warriors with spears. One particular warrior was painted sailing through the air with an axe, bare-chested and depicted perfectly white, save for a red, serpentine tattoo that ran over his head and body.
The last image was a vase. An ancient urn with black figures on red fired clay. A massive black figure wielding two impossible swords stood at the base of a mountain with an eagle on it. The artist skillfully used the red of the clay to form the tattoo that ran over the figure's bare head and left shoulder.
The final footage, added by Dragon herself, was that night months ago in Morocco. Of a bare-chested Daniel Hebert, bearded with a red tattoo running from his left eye around his left shoulder. He threw back his arms and shouted at the sky in a pose identical to that depicted on the vase before manhandling Leviathan like no one had ever done before.
"I found more," Dragon added. "Not just of Daniel Hebert, either, now that I know what to look for."
Dragon briefly flashed Annette Hebert's driver's license on the screen. "It was much easier to find additional images of Mr. Hebert because of his distinctive features," the tinker explained over the speaker as pictures began to flow on the monitor. Pictures from past world wars, from the Civil War and the French Indian Wars and then the wars in Europe. On they went, from color photos to black and white to tintype to paintings. The War of the Roses. The Crusades. Until finally they arrived at the Vase, and next to it Dragon brought up the text from Hesiod's Theogony that described the death of the Olympian gods.
The room had fallen silent, and no one had a chance to speak, because Dragon then pulled images of Annette Hebert. A picture of her and her husband in 1914 that appeared in an old edition of the Boston Times. There were others—social events going back to the courts of Charlemagne. Most were paintings and portraits that one could have argued was not her. Annette Hebert had no distinguishing features like her husband, other than a strong mouth and large, compelling dark eyes.
But some of the portraits from the seventeenth, eighteenth and nineteenth centuries were impossible to deny. One, The Shepherdess by Bouguereau, was a painting from 1889 that looked exactly like a driver's license of Annette Hebert taken in 2008.
"So you're telling me that the Heberts are centuries old?" Alexandria finally asked.
"Dozens of centuries, actually," Dragon responded. "According to the later works of the Greek poet Hesiod, Daniel Hebert's name was originally Kratos of Sparta. A son of Zeus and a mortal woman, he was deified and named the new God of War after he killed Ares. He eventually went on to kill Zeus himself, bringing about the death of the gods and the eventual collapse of Greek supremacy in the region. The Romans called him Mars, though as far as we know he never saw fit to kill the Roman incarnations of the gods. Polybius actually states that Mars Himself road with Scipio Africanus during the Second Punic War. It could explain the vast difference in how the Greeks and Romans viewed their Gods of War. Perhaps also the lingering success of the Roman Empire."
"The symbols all over Taylor Hebert's body are not Greek," Alexandria noted in a flat tone. "There was a reason Winslow High School assumed she was an Empire 88 cape."
"No, not Greek," Dragon agreed. "They're Norse in origin. At least those I could decipher."
"Taylor called the torc her mother's Brisingamen," Narwhal said, knowing that would be enough for Alexandria to make the connection.
"The Brisingamen was the name of a magical necklace worn by Freya. In Norse mythology she was the Queen of Asgard and the Goddess of Love, Magic and Wisdom." Alexandria turned and stared intently through her mask at Sanna. "Your Nana made the sun disappear last year."
Sanna shrugged. "Lexi, my nana is the sun. My biological mother is the ocean. At least, for my people. My adopted mother called her Nana. So did her mother, and her mother before, going back hundreds of years. I was never meant to be a cape, it just…happened. Only time I ever saw Nana cry was when I triggered. No one else could have made those charms to hide Taylor Hebert, the most powerful goddess the Earth has seen in the past three thousand years."
The word rang in the room like a clarion bell. .
"Goddess," Alexandria echoed.
"Goddess," Sanna repeated. "A daughter of the Olympian god of war and the Asgardian goddess of magic. And what do you think would happen when a mortal tries to kill a god? You're lucky she didn't blow up the whole fucking city when Shadow Stalker shot her."
"She's a child."
Narwhal snorted. "Scary, isn't it? All that power, and she still gave away something she shouldn't have just to try and get the last word. Just like Odysseus with the Cyclops."
Carefully removing a mewling cat from her lap, Alexandria stood and slowly paced the room. Her weighted cape dragged at some of Sanna's dirty laundry. "Why?" she asked. "Why her? Why now?"
Narwhal gave the woman a shrug. "To save the world, why else? And the world fought back. Taylor was born on Newfoundland, Lexi. That's probably why Leviathan attacked it. Or at least, one of the reasons. We both know they usually have more than one goal when they attack."
Alexandria continued to pace slowly around the room. "I read Hesiod in college," she said. "I also remember reading Aristarchus eviscerating the poet for the blasphemy of suggesting the gods were dead. No other poet ever told that part of the myth."
The second most powerful person in the Protectorate seemed to shake herself from her thoughts. "That said, none of this will help. In fact, if any of it leaked it would only make it look as if the Hebert's were insane. More akin to Glaistig Uaine than Myrddin. We'll have to work on that. Meantime, we need this girl under our control. We need her in the Wards."
It took a moment for Sanna to stare before she realized the hero was serious. "Lexi, that ship's sailed. Every interaction she's had with the Protectorate has sucked. How can she trust you? More importantly, she's a literal, fucking god brought into the world to save it. You said it yourself-she overpowered your flight. She held back Legend and his entire Protectorate team and Watchdog said she was about to kill them. If you push her too far, what's to keep her from removing those necklaces? Or making a storm that blankets the nation in twelve feet of snow? She's not just a flying brute, Lexi. She is an actual, living god. She can control nature. She can persuade the ocean to flood cities. You can't make her do anything she doesn't want to do."
"What is that, Sanna? What does Taylor Hebert want?'
Sanna shrugged. "The same thing she want's every night, Pinky. She wants to save the world.."
Alexandria sighed. "A cartoon reference? Really? How did you get to be head of the Guild again?"
From the television, Dragon's avatar laughed. "I wasn't able to do in-person interviews."