"You what-" Mevia was already on her feet, axe out, as if ready to somehow lunge through the communication orb and shred Hadrian to tiny bloody bits, but Ivor put up his hand to stop her.

Mevia glared at Hadrian with the fury of a thousand suns boiling on her face, clearly torn between respect for Ivor and wanting to chop Hadrian's face off.

Thankfully for Hadrian, she opted for the former.

"When I first started, the Storm was... more of a quiet preventative secret society, I suppose. More than classifying it as a 'gang'," Hadrian said, rolling the words around his mouth like candy. "There were people who suspected the lords were corrupt, of course, but most were more interested in monitoring the lords to make sure that corruption wasn't a factor."

"How would you measure corruptness?" Petra asked abruptly, crossing her arms.

She didn't look furious, unlike Mevia, but she clearly wasn't pleased with the revelation either.

It said a lot about the situation that Hadrian didn't snipe at Petra for interrupting, but actually took a moment to consider it.

"We mostly used a system of seeing if bribes, secret deals that weren't known to the public, or clear imbalance of resources in favor of the lords- by which I mean starvation or clearly withholding supplies to the demons of Cosmos, not having a slightly larger house," Hadrian said, cutting off Isa's question before she even had the chance to open her mouth to answer.

"I originally was selected as a spy. Nothing really nefarious, only to report if Ivor- who was and still is the oldest lord- was accepting bribes, backroom deals, or anything of the sort."

Ivor cracked his knuckle, making a few of the October Children jump.

He seemed to be doing it in thought, though, not projected intent to beat Hadrian up.

"So had I started exhibiting signs that I didn't have the district's best interest in mind..."

Hadrian inclined his head respectfully. "I would've merely reported it. Of course, demons in Cosmos are... hm. Temperamental?"

"Violent fucks who tend to beat the shit out of each other," Xara responded flatly.

"I was trying to be diplomatic, but yes, that's probably the most accurate term. Anyhow, demons in Cosmos are violent with each other at the best of times, and over the years, I grew to be one of the more senior members of the group, which eventually defaulted into being one of the leaders."

Hadrian seemed to roll his eyes slightly. "Several times, I was offered to be moved back into the headquarters into a primary leadership role for the Storm."

Mevia scowled. "Well, clearly you didn't decline."

Hadrian shrugged. "Why would I? I had a safe, legal... well, about as legal as legal gets in Cosmos- source of food and shelter, and all I had to do to keep the position without being forcibly ousted was do some paperwork and some legwork occasionally, while just reporting that nothing had changed and Ivor hadn't become corrupted, since... well, he hadn't."

"So... you don't think the lords are corrupted? I'm confused," Gill said bluntly.

"Of course you are, ya dumbfuck."

"Shut the hell up."

Hadrian ignored Maya and Gill growling at each other under their breath at one another halfheartedly. Honestly, considering how often they did it, it might as well have just been white noise at this point.

"I think the lords could become corrupted, of course, but not that the system itself was inherently wrong. That's the reason I remained in my position for a long time."

Lukas's lips turned downwards in a frown. "For a long time implies the reason changed at some point."

"Yes... about the time all the trouble in Jupin started, I noticed I'd stopped getting regular correspondence from the original leader who started the group. Instead, I was contacting a member that shouldn't have had any sort of leadership roles- Abraham? No, Abrecan, I think," Hadrian said, after a moment of hesitation on the name.

Harper frowned. "Not familiar."

Hadrian raised his shoulders in a brief shrug. "I don't know which district he's from, so that's not inherently a surprise that you're not familiar with them."

Radar might've murmured something about looking through some documents, but it was so quiet that only Aiden glanced at him.

Most of the attention in the room was laser-focused on Hadrian, anyway.

"Anyway, Abrecan had been... fairly new, so at best he might've moved from a mere underling to a team leader, but that should've been it."

Hadrian made a face akin to something like a grimace. "When I questioned it, Abrecan said he'd been given leadership by the former leader. Prior to their death."

Lukas's eyes narrowed.

Well, of course, the blindfold made it so you couldn't really see that, but his lips pinched up and the blindfold seemed to scrunch a little. "You think Abrecan killed the leader somehow."

"I think he certainly had a hand in it," Hadrian replied calmly, avoiding Lukas's eyes.

"Anyway, Abrecan informed me that the policy had... changed."

Jack frowned. "What changed?"

"He'd decided that every lord- no matter the amount of evidence to the contrary- was corrupt, and instead the dark energy that had been locked away was the True Leader of Cosmos, and the lords had locked it away in order to take control of Cosmos itself," Hadrian responded promptly, in a tone that very clearly screamed 'why yes, I do think this person is absolutely fucking bonkers'.

Nurm proceeded to sign something that probably translates roughly to "what absolute fucking bullshit".

Harper's eyes had gone quite wide.

"Oh."

"He then told me to assassinate Ivor. About as politely as a brick to the face. Actually, the brick to the face would've been more polite," Hadrian muttered, giving his eyes a roll at the concept.

"I told him that I wasn't agreeing to that, since my entire role was simply to spy, and assassin had never been in the job description."

Ivor snorted despite himself. "Sounds like something you'd say."

"Of course, he threw a fit then, screaming at me that if I didn't like it, I could just leave, and he'd do everything himself."

"What did you do then?" Maya asked, grudgingly interested enough to break the silent argument she'd had with Gill in the corner.

Hadrian's lips twitched, as if he was struggling not to smirk. "Well, he gave me permission to leave."

There was a long pause.

Aiden let out a bark of laughter a moment later. "You are the most petty, goddamn annoying demon I've ever met."

"Why thank you."

The held-back smirk faded a moment later. "I was hoping that since I simply hadn't heard about it for a while, it had fizzled out... the former leader's updates were pretty frequent on the matter, though."

Hadrian kneaded his temple slightly, giving out a gust of a sigh. "Honestly, I probably should've seen it coming, a lot of the new kids were... considerably more radical in how they wanted to handle matters. The former leader was hoping on... I think the best term was soothing people's worries over it-"

"You keep saying 'the former leader'," Ivor interrupted. "It would be easier to simply use their name. I'm sure we don't know them."

Hadrian's mouth twisted sideways suddenly.

His red eyes flickered to Xara momentarily, like a candle flame dipping slightly as a door swings open, then back to Ivor.

For once, he looked uncomfortable.

"You're certain?" His voice was suddenly slow, uncomfortably so, each word practically dripping off his tongue like a leaky faucet. "It... might open something of a can of worms."

"The fuck do you mean by that?" Aiden looked as if his patience with this whole situation was at the end of its tether.

Hadrian was silent for a moment. Clearly debating with himself whether it was worth any trouble he thought it would make to answer.

After a moment, he blew out a slow breath. "At least keep in mind that when the founder originally created the organization, it was only meant to make sure the lord system wasn't corrupt. There was no harm or any real danger to it. At worst, the organization may have alerted lords they found trustworthy anonymously, or stage a minor uprising to at least gather the attention of the general public-"

"Just fucking tell us already," Mevia snapped, tired with his apparent attempt to make himself look better.

Hadrian sighed, kneading the bridge of his nose with a gloved hand and shoving his glasses up onto his forehead, as if he could feel a headache looming in.

"The original leader of the Storm was Fred."

A/N: i reclaim my position as cliffhanger queen :3

Anyway uhh blasted this chapter out in a day. So much stuff to work on rn. hhhgh.

I hope you liked it though :D

Responses to reviews!

ariariaria: Thank you so much! This is such a sweet comment haha

Parakeetlover3: Aww, that's awesome :D

Happygoluckymegami: We'll find out soon I guess :3

jessicanightmarewolf: bhsklnfd;slah sounds like Fiddleford alright. Thank you for sharing haha

Toni42: Heehee :3 / A lot of it was already his job anyway, so it was easy just to be like "lol bye bitch" to Abrecan fhdksal; / :3 Thank u

That's all for now! See ya, so long, and g'bye :D

x.X. A.L. X.x.