June 7, 1997

Lexington waited apprehensively by his computer, the soft glow of the screen lit up his face and made his large eyes seem even more lantern-like in the dark room. His tail swished against the floor as he nervously waited for a reply.

As the clan had grown considerably in recent months, they'd set up a command station of sorts in an unused room of the castle. One of them would stay behind to respond to emergency calls or to coordinate the different teams and their locations throughout the city.

So far, it had been quiet tonight, and Lex found himself chatting online with a friend to keep himself entertained.

He heard the telltale ping on his computer and quickly looked down at the screen for the reply.

AMP: You should tell them.

Lexington chewed thoughtfully on his bottom lip as he thought of what to say, and after a moment, he typed, his talons clacking rapidly against the keys.

TIN MAN: I can't tell them. What if they banish me?

There was a long pause before another ping .

AMP: You'll always have a home here in London if that happens, but I highly doubt you have to worry about that based on what you've told me of your clan.

TIN MAN: I'm not even sure if I am.

AMP: Mate, you know. Deep down. You know.

Lexington was about to reply when he heard static over his headset.

"Lex?" Brooklyn's voice said over the com.

"What's up?" Lex replied.

"We're going to need assistance…quarrymen…Washington...Park...get Goliath."

The com cut out.

"Brooklyn," Lex said, alarmed, but there was no reply. "Brooklyn?! Shit!"

He grabbed the nearby phone and dialed Elisa's number.

...

...

Elisa studied the chessboard and then looked up at the brooding gargoyle who was currently hunched over it, chin resting on his fist, as he contemplated his next move. She smiled softly as she observed the stoic gargoyle.

They'd been through a lot recently as a couple. Unintentionally releasing Mab, a dangerous former fairy queen from her prison being the biggest one. But Elisa had dealt with her own crisis when she had nearly been murdered by her great uncle, the same man who she discovered had murdered her grandmother. Then she and Goliath discovered that they had mated while visiting a magically protected land that was home to a clan of gargoyles while touring the world via Avalon. When they had left, the protection spell around the valley had been triggered, and they had forgotten about everything.

When Titania had restored their memories, after forcing Goliath to experience another alternative nightmare reality, Elisa was immensely relieved. She hadn't told Goliath out of concern that he would take it personally, but she feared nefarious reasons—like meddling fairies or gods—as the reason why they had mated in Shambahla. She couldn't understand how they had tossed all caution to the wind so easily, but when they had been confronted with another interspecies couple as proof of concept that a relationship between them could work, it had forced them to face their feelings.

It had been a lot to deal with all at once, and it had strained their relationship, but they were stronger than ever now.

She smiled fondly at Goliath as he finally made his move, but then she replaced her smile with a ruthless expression as she realized he had made a tactical error that worked in her favor.

Goliath realized his mistake just as Elisa reached out to move her queen and capture his king, but before she could move her piece, the chessboard jumped, scattering pieces everywhere.

"Check ma—what the—hey!" Elisa protested.

Cagney, who had been sleeping peacefully next to her, yowled in protest and slunk away when a chess piece landed on his back. Ever since his mishap in the Shadow Realm, he had been particularly jumpy.

Elisa stared in shock at Goliath who was trying and failing to hide the mischievous look on his face, and his tail twitched guiltily against the sofa.

"I apologize, Elisa," he said solemnly. "That was rather clumsy of me."

Goliath normally wasn't extremely competitive or a bad sport, and she would have laughed if she wasn't so shocked.

But she rallied quickly. There was only one solution for this, and without warning, Elisa pounced on him, knocking him back with a startled grunt. The fact that she had caught him off-guard was the only reason she had managed to knock him back, otherwise she may as well have tried to push over a brick wall.

"You dirty, rotten, cheat!" she exclaimed as she punctuated her words by digging her fingers into the sides of his ribs as she sat astride him. Goliath squirmed as he fended off his ruthless attacker. He was an impressive warrior, probably the greatest warrior alive, but Elisa knew his weaknesses. She knew just where to strike to render him virtually helpless.

Or, so she believed.

Just when she thought she had him at her mercy, he easily captured her hands with his, and then he surged up and pressed his mouth to hers, stilling her with a kiss. Her eyes went wide with surprise and then she melted into him and eagerly kissed him back. He put his arms around her, one hand at the small of her back, and the other delved into her hair as he cupped the back of her head as her arms draped around his neck. It was exactly the distraction he'd planned, but after a few blissful moments, she pulled away.

"I know what you're doing," she accused.

He started to kiss her jaw and the lobe of her ear.

"Is it working?" he said in a low seductive tone.

The corners of her mouth pulled up in a soft smile.

"I still won, and you know it," she pointed out.

Goliath grinned and then pulled her back down on top of him as he lay back against the sofa.

More kisses followed for an expanse of time that they lost complete track of. Elisa ditched her shirt at some point, and was now frantically unthreading his belt as he worked on the clasp of her bra, when the phone rang.

Elisa glared over the back of her sofa at the phone. Her hair disheveled, and her lips slightly swollen from use.

"Sorry, that could be Beth. I promised her I'd pick her up from the airport tomorrow. Maybe her flight changed," Elisa explained.

Goliath growled softly as Elisa shifted, her hips grinding against his as she attempted to disentangle herself from him.

"Hold that thought," she said in a sultry tone before she extricated herself from Goliath's arms and walked around the sofa to answer her phone.

"Hello?" she said into the receiver.

"Elisa, it's Lex. There's an emergency!"

"What's going on?" she replied, her tone instantly shifting.

Goliath sat up as he keyed into her tone, and he looked towards her, his sensitive ears picking up the other side of the conversation.

"Quarrymen."

"Where?" Elisa demanded.

"Washington Square Park."

"We're on our way."

"I'll meet you there," Lex said and then hung up.

Elisa hung up her end as Goliath got to his feet, his belt and loincloth secured once more like they hadn't been in the middle of something. He held her shirt out to her.

"Quarrymen," she said as she took it and put it back on.

"I heard. Let's go." he replied.

He no longer argued with her to stay for her own safety. He couldn't treat her like a fragile object, no matter how much he wanted to. She was human, she was vulnerable, but he respected her too much to treat her like that, and he also knew that she was capable of far more than many—including himself—gave her credit for.

He stepped out onto the roof and she followed before he picked her up and leapt off the ledge, catching an updraft under his wings with a snap as he and Elisa went to join the others.

...

...

It was a weary and battered clan that returned to the castle in the early hours before dawn. Aside from a few scrapes and bruises, most were unscathed, save for Coldstone whose robotic arm had been shattered by a quarryman hammer, but he wasn't the worst off.

"Easy, Hudson," Goliath said as he helped his mentor into a chair.

The old soldier grunted with pain as he settled in. Bronx whined and sat down by his feet.

"I think your ribs might be broken," Katana said as she lightly felt the side of his ribcage.

"And I don't like the sound of your breathing…you might have a collapsed lung," she continued.

Hudson didn't respond. It took too much work to talk.

"We should call the doctor," Brooklyn told Goliath.

"By the time he gets here, it will be dawn. He's tough. He'll make it. I just wish we could make him more comfortable," Goliath replied quietly.

Brooklyn nodded. His son clung to his side, feeling guilty for Hudson's pain as he felt he was the cause of it. But he wasn't, of course. Hudson had taken a hammer to the side tonight while defending young Nashville from a Quarryman. If anyone was to blame, it was the one who swung the hammer.

Once the Quarrymen had been, rounded up, the ones who hadn't fled, Elisa had arrested the group on charges of destruction of public property, for the damage they caused to the fountain and some concrete benches during the fight. She just wished she could have charged them with a hate crime on top of it, or assault at the least.

But attacking gargoyles and trying to kill them wasn't against the law.

Dogs had more rights than they did.

Brooklyn, Katana, and Nashville had been out patrolling when they spotted what looked like a mugging in the park, when they had been ambushed by a large group of Quarrymen.

The most disturbing thing about it was that the Quarrymen seemed to know that gargoyles had an instinct to protect, they had set up the confrontation luring them out knowing how they would behave, which meant they knew the gargoyles' true motives.

And as Goliath glanced around and saw the dejected looks on the faces of his clan, he knew they had realized the same thing, and it was like a knife had been twisted into his heart.

He wished there was more he could do to protect them.

"Why can't they just let us be?" Angela said sulkily, voicing what everyone was thinking.

"I wish I knew, Angela," Goliath replied as he tossed a log onto the fire in the fireplace. It was past the season when fires were needed to warm the room, but there was something comforting about a fire, and he felt a chill that could not be warmed by normal means.

Angela wiped an angry tear from her cheek, and Broadway gave her hand a gentle, reassuring squeeze, then he voluntarily gathered up all of their coms, including Brooklyn's now busted one, as the others sat around the Great Hall, nursing their own wounds. He took the coms back into the communications room where they were kept when not in use, and as he did, he noticed Lex had left his laptop open. He ignored it, as he should, it wouldn't be polite to spy on his brother, but something, a word across the screen, caught his eye.

Banish.

He looked around briefly to make sure he was alone, and then he quickly read the words Lex had been messaging back and forth between him, and who Broadway assumed was the London gargoyle, Staghart. His brow furrowed further and further with concern as he read. The conversation was cut off, he never mentioned exactly what it was he needed to confess to his clan, and he stared at the screen for a moment, troubled, before he closed Lex's laptop so that no one else could stumble upon it and read it.

What could Lex have possibly done that would make him fear being banished?