A Waken 19.6
It's never too late to see someone again for the last time.
"Hello, Director."
"Former director." Piggot gave me that usual 'I don't have time for this crap' look of hers from inside the car. "What did you go and do this time?"
"Right to business?" I asked with a smile. "No explanation for how you're somehow still working?"
"The Board has been dreading this very incident for months," she noted. "I was asked to serve and I agreed. Same as I always have."
"Ever loyal," I noted.
"Yes."
Piggot pulled herself out of the car slowly while her driver held it open. The young woman looked Sabah's age, her wide eyes looking about the forest like she'd never seen the aftermath of a cape fight before.
The driver pushed the door closed and Piggot did another survey of the surroundings. She looked a bit better as she got onto her feet. Still overweight and clearly struggling with her kidneys, but there was a bit more color to her. She might still be working, but not nearly as much as she used to.
"What happened?" she asked.
I looked away.
The forest was only slightly devastated. Multiple shattered trees and craters lined the road running along Heartbreaker's hideaway. From all the gouges in the earth, a few blood stains, and multiple human-sized holes, you'd think a war had been fought here. Only a single piece of ground lay untouched, barely big enough for four people to stand in.
"We had a disagreement," I surmised.
Piggot scoffed. "Is that all?"
Work crews were busy trying to clear the trees from the road. The FBI wanted direct access to the village for vehicles but that was taking time. I'd offered to simply shrug the trees aside for them but I was given something about 'standards' and 'regs.' It was their choice if they wanted to wait and they had for several hours while someone was found to clear the debris and open the road.
In the meantime, agents from ATF, DEA, and INS had all shown up. I didn't even know why. Specifically. Non-specifically, with the PRT gone and the DPA still putting its pants on, every federal agency was pressing in where they were once forbidden to be. It didn't help that the DPA's enforcement authority was still a bit of an open question.
It was a lot easier to see how the PRT endured for so long when you watched the scramble that followed its end. Something that worked half the time was better than chaos. In its wake local, state, and federal authorities were all shoving like they were in a line for the last meals on Earth.
Piggot walked along the road. She'd wisely put on practical shoes fitted for uneven ground, but her driver stuck close. I walked beside her past Eirene.
"You got here quick," I noted.
"The board wanted someone experienced so they had a mover prepared."
"One with or without a mask?"
"Without. Going to be a lot more of them, I imagine. Now that the glamour of the cape and mask are starting to fade a bit and practicality is coming to the forefront."
I nodded. "I imagine that once the licensing system kicks in and the first few 'incidents' are enforced, the number of people jumping to put on a costume and fight crime is going to drop."
"It never was as pretty as the young and idealistic wanted to think it was."
"No," I agreed. Piggot glanced away from me. "It isn't."
Ahead and off to the side, the Titans nursed their injuries with the aid of EMTs. Most bore broken bones somewhere and those that didn't were the ones who wised up and surrendered. A team of Tierens stood watch over them, along with a gaggle of men and women in suits and ties arguing about whose jurisdiction was where and what they could do.
Not far away, the news crews who'd come with the Titans were contenting themselves to get what they could.
Noémie was in front of the cameras, basking in the attention and using her charm to plaster over her colder true personality. Not exactly pretty on the inside, but she was prepared to play along like her brother and many of her younger siblings. The world was rapidly approaching a state where capes like Heartbreaker would no longer be tolerated or allowed to run free.
If the Heartbroken wanted to survive, they had to adapt and make their own place.
They were fortunate that their powersets were ideal in many ways for neutralizing and dealing with other masters, strangers, and shakers. That had always been a rather valuable niche.
I couldn't even make out the clamor of voices before Piggot managed to cut through.
"What's all this?" she snapped. "Someone catch me up. I don't have all night."
The other agents turned, along with the local sheriff and her deputies. Alec and two of his more socially capable sisters were among the thrall.
The boy turned, a lazy grin matching his lazy gaze. "Miss P," he greeted.
"I've warned you about that sass, Valiant," Piggot retorted quickly.
"Can't help it," he replied. "I'm just too handsome." Beside him, his sisters rolled their eyes.
"You are?" one of the agents nearby asked with a somewhat hostile look thrown Alec's way.
"I'm the one asking questions," Piggot said bluntly, "and getting no relevant answers."
Her driver smiled and fished a wallet from her jacket. "We're with the DPA," she said quickly. "Sorry we're late?"
"Never apologize, rookie," Piggot corrected.
The girl folded her wallet up quickly. "Yes, ma'am."
"The Titans wanted to jump into our attempt to arrest Heartbreaker," I explained. "I took exception."
Piggot glanced back. "And let me guess, you showed them the same tender care you show everyone who gets in your way?"
I pointed at a cape—a woman in a silver suit—who was completely unharmed and was quietly standing toward the back of the Titan's group.
"I didn't hurt the ones who surrendered."
That got me nasty looks from those I had hurt, but I'd thoroughly beaten any desire to fight back from those who could. Damocles still wanted to cut my head off—because she was, it turns out, a bit of a psycho—but she didn't have any working arms and only one working leg. I'd had to break her jaw too because she actually tried to stab me with a knife held in her mouth.
She lay in an ambulance nearby getting her jaw wired shut and her limbs braced, eyes glaring vaguely in my direction.
Some people can't learn at all, never mind easy or hard ways.
Piggot looked around. "Where is Heartbreaker now?"
"No worries," Alec said. He turned and started walking. "Dear old Dad is taking a cat nap for the moment and so long as we keep the gas tank full, he's out cold."
Heartbreaker—maybe the go-to name after the Simurgh for why masters terrified everyone—lay unceremoniously on the ground, surrounded by children keeping watch as Bough monitored the anesthetic. He wasn't an attractive man in truth. I wasn't sure if I found that surprising or not. He just didn't really fit my image of a suave evil mastermind. That was more Marquis' deal I supposed.
Heartbreaker was nothing now.
Just an unconscious body with a few bruises around his face, shoulders and sides from the struggle that caught him. His powers only worked on some of his children, and those it didn't had used theirs to cancel the effect. In a twist of fate, or cosmic fuckery, most of his children's powers didn't work on him either.
So, he'd been punched and kicked until he went down and someone got a medical mask over his face. The gas turned on, and Heartbreaker passed out. An inglorious end to such a terrifying, and pathetic, man.
"The women?" Piggot asked in a more solemn tone.
One of Alec's sisters pointed. A few feet away a cluster of even younger children were clustered together with Nicholas, Candy, and Florence. Beyond them were several tents with red crosses on the sides. Doormaker had delivered our prearranged aid workers as soon as Heartbreaker was disabled.
Things got messier from there.
"We're taking our siblings with us," Alec declared before anyone asked. "That going to be a problem?"
"I'll need to know the arrangements," Piggot warned. "And there will be investigations and follow up. As it is, the DPA has determined to coordinate the handling of former probationary Wards on a case-by-case basis." She gave Alec a pointed glare. "Long story short, don't fuck up and we have no reason to care you exist anymore than any other cape."
"Good to know," Juliette said with a lazy and tired tone.
She kept glancing down at her father, a mix of emotions running through her. They were stunted of course. All their emotions were stunted. A father who used his emotion manipulation power to 'mold' them into soldiers for his own whims did that to a person.
"Um, the women?" Piggot's driver's face paled, as if she'd only just started realizing what she was dealing with. "What—"
"Red Cross," I answered. "We contacted them thirty minutes before we went in. Had them set up a relief team."
I noted the children standing apart from the tents. One, a small girl of nine or ten, had a particularly unflinching look in her eye. She was duller than most of the Vasil children, her emotional range stripped and torn down by experiences that a child shouldn't have to endure. She was watching an older girl, close to my age.
The two of them looked like mother and daughter. Both were too afraid to approach, fear being one of the few emotions the Vasil children still felt in full.
My eyes turned toward the man on the ground.
No one deserved to die, but I'd never cried for the Simurgh or Azrael, the latter already a fading memory. There's just no way around the cruel truth that there really were people the world was just not going to miss.
But he'd live. He'd live because his children deserved the chance to live in the light of day, and they had to prove they could control themselves. That they weren't their father. For once in his rotten and horrific life, Heartbreaker was going to live for the people who suffered at his hands.
If you called decades being strapped to a gurney and drugged into unconsciousness behind a dozen layers of security living.
"And who called the media?" Piggot asked derisively.
"Not us." Aisha appeared nearby, sitting on a trunk laying across the ground with Black on her shoulder. "The assfucks wanted to pose for their victory parade."
Piggot scowled. "I see."
"If we're all caught up"—a man, he was older/elderly and wearing a black suit, stepped up from the lingering agency followers—"how are we breaking this down?"
"If the PRT still existed I'd tell you to get out of my way and have an army of personnel to handle all the details," Piggot lamented openly. "As that milk has already been spilled, the policy is clear and I don't know why you morons are arguing about it."
In retrospect, watching Emily Piggot work was pretty damn entertaining when I wasn't on the receiving end of it.
"The FBI will take jurisdiction of Heartbreaker while Justice sorts out the exact process for a trial," she laid out. "Given that we are dealing with a dangerous master"—she looked back toward Alec—"my advice as a representative of the Department of Parahuman Affairs is that you accept aid from Londo Bell in ensuring he remains secured."
"Dad's power doesn't work on Candy or me," Alec revealed.
"And he can't fuck with who he can't see," Aisha added.
Alec pointed and waved his finger. "We'll babysit while you guys in the fancy suits sort it all out."
"ATF and DEA will do their jobs and try not to fuck it up," Piggot growled. "I assume you're all waiting for the road to be cleared?"
"Yes," one of the agents answered.
"And why are you letting Newtype's robots just stand around when they can clear it?"
The laying down of the law just followed from there. One of the Tierens broke off from guard duty and moved to help the work crews get their job done. It lifted the trunks so they could cut them down faster. They'd already been paid and come all the way out into the middle of nowhere. I didn't want to take their jobs from them.
"What's the status of any fallout?" Piggot asked. "In the past Heartbreaker has controlled local politicians, police, community leaders. Kept his thumb on the pulse of his surroundings."
"He switched it up this go," Nicholas grumbled. "That's how the Foundation tracked him down the last time and how the Guild knew where to strike."
"He went full cultist this time," I concluded. "Isolation using women and children as a front."
The sheriff quickly spoke up. "We didn't even suspect he was out here," she said. "Thought it was just some hippie commune. They kept to themselves and didn't cause any trouble."
"Hiding by not drawing any attention," I noted. Whenever he wanted a woman, he was far more careful about it and usually went far afield to collect. The rotten truth was that the first attempt to put the man out of business only made him smarter about how he did it. "He was far subtler than how he operated in Montreal. Out here in the boonies, it actually took us time to track him down. Veda's not so great where there's no internet."
"Should build a spy satellite!" Aisha suggested.
"I spy!" Black chirped.
"Seems a little Machiavellian," I commented, and I didn't utter a single word about the satellites we already had.
It was weird how little attention Dragon's entire network got from anyone. With lots of old satellites coming online and new ones being planned for the first time in a decade, Dragon's low orbit network was practically an afterthought. A relic of an age when the Simurgh was terrifying and stunting everyone's options.
"Surely he had something to fall back on," Piggot said disbelievingly.
"A few locals," I revealed. "The local church pastor. Some of the locals who otherwise went about their business but were generous and friendly toward his commune. He kept his head down and his mastering far subtler."
"Give us the names." Piggot shook her head. "Can the sheriff's department manage collecting them?"
The sheriff, a woman in her forties, scowled nervously. "What for?" She wore her distrust and uncertainty on her sleeve, but she wasn't mastered.
"So they can get the same treatment the rest of Heartbreaker's victims have gotten," Piggot snapped. Her tone brokered no interest in excuses. "You can either collect them so we can nip the problem in the bud, or I'll task Londo Bell to do it before we have suicide bombers and fanatics to deal with like the last time."
The sheriff paled slightly and nodded.
"Good." Piggot looked about. "Go ahead and lie about why you're calling. No need to trigger anything."
"Or just call a town meeting." Heads turned to look at Candy, who glanced about. "Isn't that what small towns do?"
After a brief silence, Piggot's driver spoke up, saying, "That would work."
"Then get it done. That's the easy part." She turned her attention, finally, to the Titans capes.
As she waited, several whispers and pointed fingers went about. One FBI agent went over to where Heartbreaker lay and addressed Alec about transporting him. DEA and ATF went to their vehicles now that the road was rapidly being cleared by the work crew and the Tieren. That was probably another—non-violent—market for mobile suits. Be nice for them to do more good before someone fought a hellish war with what I'd unleashed.
"It's nice when people work together," I commented.
"After the browbeating necessary to get their heads out of their asses," Piggot replied.
"You've become more like a drill sergeant."
"Whatever gets the job done, Hebert. You know that."
I smiled. "So I do."
"Someone get the media vultures out of here," Piggot snarled. "You." She pointed at someone in a suit who seemed to be milling about. "Who are you with?"
"ICE," he answered.
Piggot rolled her eyes. "Make yourself useful and get the camera crews gone. This isn't a bloody episode of Cops."
The man grimaced. "We were—"
"And I'm going to point out that no politician in their right mind is going to push to deport anyone victimized by Heartbreaker so keep your dick in your pants and save it for another day when everyone is too busy looking the other way."
Piggot really didn't like ICE apparently. I imagined there was a story there but I wasn't going to ask. Also she just rhymed and it was on purpose.
"You enjoyed that," I pointed out.
"I simply find something distasteful about people getting off on the public dime."
"Harsh."
Given my own friendships, I wasn't eager to jump to the poor man's defense. I had inadvertently made friendships and more with a lot of people who came to the United States through less than legal means. I rarely thought about it too much. There were bigger problems on my mind.
"What do we do with them?" the FBI agent-in-charge asked once the group around Piggot had thinned. He watched the Titans as they waited or tended to their wounds. "The PRT used to adjudicate the managing of squabbles between heroes to the Protectorate."
"The DPA doesn't intend to become a pawn in feuds between heroes," Piggot declared. "Those with a license will have expectations placed on them, and failure to live up to those expectations in any way will result in that license and its associated legal protections being rescinded."
"That process hasn't been implemented yet," the agent pointed out.
"Don't remind me." Piggot looked at me. "What specifically did they do?"
"They tried to arrest members of Londo Bell who were in the process of trying to apprehend Heartbreaker bloodlessly and without casualty. I believe they put lives at risk. I was unwilling to overlook it."
Turning my eyes up, I looked toward the horizon and narrowed my eyes.
"As they have continually escalated these confrontations, I am convinced that the Titans want to have a fight… So, I'm giving it to them. I've determined that the Titans are instigating conflict and violence. They will disband of their own volition, or I will disband them by force."
Piggot was not a woman who exuded surprise even when surprised.
That her eyes widened in shock was something.
I smiled at her and clarified, "By that, I mean that I personally am unwilling to allow the Titans to continue existing. This is not a position of Londo Bell, nor is it something I've consulted the other members of Celestial Being on."
The FBI agent and Piggot's driver both turned to her.
"Can she do that?" the driver asked.
Piggot set her lips into a line and watched me for a moment. She knew more than the other two. She knew the truth. As much of it as Seneca and Armstrong knew. The rest of the DPA Board as well, I imagined, and other members of government. What David has done was now an open secret—something everyone privy to the cape world and the collapse of the PRT knew.
It simply wasn't something anyone could make public because it would invite chaos into an already chaotic situation.
Which was precisely how I knew they'd stand on the side and let me take all the blame that would come from what was coming. This was a favor they needed because they weren't sure how to deal with David. Their only real play was to ally with Londo Bell, but that wasn't such a simple thing. Justifying that decision publicly on account of David being completely untrustworthy risked the new agency becoming the real casualty of a PR war.
Given how the PRT ended, I didn't blame them. It was fine.
I always intended to deal with David myself so that everyone else could keep their hands clean.
"Who is going to stop her?" Piggot asked back, her tone dismissive. She looked to the Titans. "At this stage, the reality is that we lack the authority. Laws on this haven't even been written and passed yet."
"The world doesn't need loose cannons obsessed with glory," I offered. "And Londo Bell has too much important work to do to keep being harassed in this pissing match. I'm ending it, one way or another."
"That said," Piggot continued, "the DPA is not a tool for any one cape's agenda. There's no law that lets us stop Newtype, but there's no law that lets us punish the Titans either. Not in this wonderful case of he said she said that would become a popularity contest of conjecture and speculation if it were ever put in front of a jury."
"If it could go to a jury," the driver noted. She glanced about. "There's um, not really a policy on that yet but—"
"The DPA is not the PRT," Piggot declared. "We're not authorized to operate by fiat where capes are concerned. We follow the law, and the law does not extend to where it is unwritten." She turned from the gathered capes and walked away. "Let them go. There's nothing to arrest them on."
"Shame," I mocked. "Oh well. Guess I'll just have to do my own thing."
"It's what you're good at," Piggot quipped.
She moved toward the Red Cross tents, no doubt to check on the status of the women.
I went to the family of masters and crossed my arms over my chest. My eyes glanced to the side, watching passively. Someone had almost worked up the courage to get moving. "Sure you can handle this?"
"Don't worry so much." 'Jet Steel' jested. "So far, it's been pretty cathartic. I wonder if there's a tinker who can condense this feeling into a pill or powder so I can get high on it whenever I want."
I scoffed. "You would."
"Not everyday you get to say 'I arrested my shitbag Dad' with a smile."
Despite his words, I got a sense of a conflict brewing. Not out of love or anything. I could probably put Alec in a room with Theo and the two of them would find a lot to bond over where their fathers were concerned. Alec's feeling was more surreal. Uncertain in a way he preferred to simply never think about.
"Jean?" Candy asked.
"Alec will do," he replied. "Gonna need something other than Valiant too. Never liked that name."
"You're not calling yourself Jet Steel," I warned him.
"What's wrong with Jet Steel?" Aisha asked. "That's a Bond name."
"Exactly," Alec insisted. "See? She gets it."
"Sure she does," Candy replied, a suggestive glance thrown Aisha's way.
Aisha gave her a finger.
Candy returned the gesture.
"Classy," Florence commented.
"Like a high dollar bitch," Aisha replied.
"Is that what you are?"
It was easy to forget how young they were. Alec, Noémie and Nicholas were the oldest three, not counting those in prison like Cherie. They were seventeen, eighteen, and sixteen respectively. Most of the rest were far younger. Aisha's age or below.
"I'm whatever I want to be," Aisha replied. "I'm a strong independent black woman."
"You're fifteen," Juliette noted.
"So I can't be strong or independent?" Aisha scoffed and jestingly said, "That's racist!"
Juliette was a bit too wise to who Aisha was to be flustered by the off-color—is that a pun?—joke. "I'm not the one with a pet robot to do half my job for me."
"Low blow!" Black complained.
"I'll have you know Blackie and me are tighter than Starsky and Hutch," Aisha returned.
"How do you even know that show existed?" Nicholas asked.
"How do you?" Aisha asked back.
"So we're not going to take this chance to comment on how the black girl has the black Haro?" Darlene looked back and forth. "Not suggesting anything by it, it's just kind of convenient."
"One cannot choose the color of one's casing," Black chirped.
"I was running out of colors," I explained.
Eyes turned my way and Candy said, "So black was literally the last color you thought of?"
I shrugged in response. "I figure I balanced it out when I beat the Empire into the pavement. Fuck the Nazis."
"Well obviously," Alec joined in. "But I don't think it works that way."
The black humor—now that was a pun—continued, mostly just as a way to kill time and because it came naturally to them given where they came from.
I worried about some of their personalities and impulses—no one's perfect, but some of us have more demons than others—but punishing them for what their father turned them into? That didn't sit well with me. We'd watch and see and take the problems as they came. If they failed, they'd fail for their own folly and not because the world didn't give them the chance.
I thought most of them would manage somehow. Alec knew how things worked, and the younger siblings had spent less time with Heartbreaker and more in the Wards. That had worked out better for them. Especially now that the Wardens—Flash in particular—were sticking their necks out to protect them.
It wouldn't be simple.
I glanced away, sensing that the decision had been made and now an intrepid young man was just waiting for an opportunity.
I gave it to him by stepping away from the cluster of tweens and their for-fun bickering.
As soon as I'd made it a few steps away toward Eirene, the reporter practically ran toward me.
"Newtype!" he called, a cameraman right behind him. "Do you care to comment on the Titans' accusation that you're protecting villains from justice?"
"If anyone wants to arrest anyone they're perfectly welcome to try," I replied.
"And you think it's your right to stop them from enforcing justice?"
Kati always warned me about loaded questions. It was PR 101. She'd also taught me that loaded questions were a wonderful opportunity to give loaded answers. All's fair in love, war, and rhetorical bullshit.
"I think anyone who spends nine months having a dick measuring contest with a woman was born with quite the handicap."
The man blinked, clearly taken aback by my response and unsure what to ask. He tried, "Aren't you being a bit flippant?"
"Flippant is showing up when heroes try to arrest Heartbreaker and free his victims and trying to make a PR spectacle out of it." I looked him in the eye. "Did you pay your way here? We're a long way from Denver, Mr. Jensen."
By now, the other reporters and cameramen had started moving in, following the lead of the first one with the balls to actually try and get a soundbite. The weight of numbers emboldened them.
"You're harboring a band of dangerous masters—"
"I think you've confused me with Teacher," I interrupted. "Or is he still handwaving away everything he did in the name of stopping the Triumvirate, as if Sam Stansfield's assassination and exposing the identities of dozens of independent capes had any connection to that goal."
Tim Jensen was a hack, but even hack reporters had their usefulness. No one particularly liked them. Not really. They were free targets and a good way to get someone more capable to actually speak up.
"You're saying Eidolon is lying about his motivations?" Javier asked.
A few heads turned, brows raising and obvious questions being silently pondered. I doubted that any of them had noticed him slip into the group while they'd been lingering around. David wasn't the only one who could bring in a reporter he thought might be receptive to what he wanted to say.
"That's more than you've ever actually said in response to him," Javier continued. "You've always avoided answering direct questions."
"Because unlike the hero formerly known as Teacher, I have better things to do than squabble with other heroes over who's more heroic."
"And this incident has changed your opinion then?"
"He crossed the line," I declared. "Asking important questions like who should be punished and for what is one thing. Showing up wherever we are and harassing our members is pushing it. Stepping into a sting with innocent lives potentially in the crossfire and trying to make a showboat about it is a step too far."
"No concerns about Heartbreaker's children?" Javier asked pointedly.
"Not nearly as many as I have about Teacher."
"You're referring to Alexandria's accusation that Eidolon orchestrated multiple crimes and even several deaths in his goal to bring down the PRT?"
"I'm pointing at the glass house he's standing in, yes. Especially since no one seems to be asking how the assassination of Sam Stansfield or encouraging the Adepts to support secession from the United States actually fits into his claimed goal of overthrowing the Triumvirate."
This. This was why David lost before we even began. Maybe in another world where no one like me and no group like Londo Bell ever formed his long-term scheme would have worked. Maybe he could have made it work if all his thinkers hadn't been executed.
But that wasn't the world we lived in.
No plan survives contact with reality. Success was in finding a way to win anyway.
"What are you going to do about it?" Javier asked.
I smiled grimly. "The same thing I did the last time some showboat strutted around like people's lives were his own personal plaything. It's amazing how Eidolon didn't take a lesson from that, especially given all the lives he's upended in the name of so-called justice."
Many of the faces in front of me were confused, clearly unsure what I was referring to. Javier's eyes widened, the implication clearly dawning on him.
I trained my face into a look of solid determination, conviction, and certainty. "I'm done playing this stupid little game with a dangerous master who's sole interest seems to be ensuring no one can be a hero unless it's at his remit."
He brought all these cameras here, but they were mine now.
"I determine that the Titans are sowing the seeds of violence," I reiterated. "They will disband, or I will disband them."
And unlike the tabloid journalists David brought, Javier didn't care to settle for sensationalism or drama. He was an actual investigator, and he'd been talking with Kinue for the better part of the last few days and rushing to put an initial story together.
"Do you have the right to make that decision?" Javier asked.
"If people think I'm wrong, then say so. I've never stopped anyone from speaking their mind. If people think I'm a villain then go ahead and say it."
No one would. Javier and I both knew it. No one would call the girl who killed the Simurgh and Leviathan, and whose team ended the Slaughterhouse Nine, a villain. Well, someone would but it would be someone like Tim Allenson. The loud and obnoxious but who lived by the remit that free speech was a good thing and even idiots could speak their minds.
They didn't decide what turned their world. They just ranted at an audience. People decided what turned the world, and while there might be a limit to how far killing Endbringers went they went pretty damn far if you leveraged it right and didn't constantly brag about how you did it.
"What changed?" Javier asked, suspecting he already knew the answer. "Why this sudden shift in stance now? Eidolon's own controversy aside, he's not wrong. You are protecting a group of capes many thought should be locked up to protect others. You've let the Titans engage in this behavior for months without making any declarations."
"Revenge is not justice," I answered. "Neither is fear."
"You still haven't gone after Eidiolon until now."
"Until now I was willing to move on," I claimed.
Javier's brow rose but someone else finally caught up and asked, "Move on?"
I glanced up, mostly for show, looking at the sky. When I looked back at the camera, I said, "Not even a year ago the world was at the edge. I don't even have to explain it. You all know what I mean. Endbringers. Groups like the Nine. Tensions between people terrified of capes and people inspired by us. It was all falling apart and we all know it."
They did. Maybe what that meant encompassed different ideas and maybe we pointed at different reasons, but everyone knew deep down that the world was coming to an end. As they knew it at least. The damage was too great. The chaos too severe. The system of caped heroes who kept the world chugging along even after it all changed was unraveling before their eyes and in its wake there was nothing but complete uncertainty and fear.
"We all made choices," I reminded them. "Some of them were choices we're not proud of. Choices like who deserved to live and who deserved to die and who should be administering that sentence. Choices about who was to blame and who wasn't helping. Choices we don't even like to talk about, like how we all turned a blind eye to Heartbreaker still being out there because there were other things we were more afraid of."
I paused for a moment, continuing, "We made the choices that made sense. That wasn't wrong. But it's different now. The Simurgh is dead. Leviathan is dead. The balance of power between capes, rogues, and everyone else is shifting and we're going to make new choices because of it."
"What does any of that have to do with Eidolon?" Javier asked, knowing I was going somewhere.
"Do you still think the world is about to fall apart, Javier?" I answered.
He got mildly offended. From his perspective, reporters weren't supposed to be part of the story. They were supposed to be outside observers.
At the same time, he wasn't a liar or a coward. "No," he gave. "I don't."
"And given the same problems, would you make the same choices now that you did before?"
He narrowed his eyes. "No."
"I didn't think so." I looked up again. "We don't get to choose when we're born, or how, or to whom. We live our lives doing what seems best for us and those around us."
Looking ahead for the last time, I declared, "I don't know why Eidolon did the things he did, and I don't care. It's done. The world is changing again and the time has come to move on. To look back at what we've done and admit that no one's blameless. Everyone is justified… It's not time to forgive or forget, but it's time to move on and stop acting like every villain is Heartbreaker when we all know they're not."
I narrowed my eyes then.
"We don't live in paradise just yet, and this is where I choose to be. If Eidolon is so unwilling to let the past go, he should take note of himself before casting stones and if he's really so committed to casting them then he can try. After he manages to get through me."
Questions whirled. They'd been whirling since the first comment of my little speech. People trying to puzzle out exactly what I meant. Even Javier. He had an idea, but he wasn't sure. He didn't know if I really meant to take what I'd said that far because honestly how many people really mean for everything they said to be taken literally?
I was actually surprised when he didn't ask the question though.
"You're talking about amnesty," Alec said. "Aren't you?"
I glanced to the side, seeing him and some of his siblings watching from the sidelines.
I smiled. "I'm talking about peace." I turned on my heel. "Peace has its cost. Would you rather pay in wiping out everyone who's ever done some arbitrary amount of wrong, or in wiping the slate clean and starting over?"
"Not sure dear old dad wouldn't say yes and then try his power on you," he noted.
"He had his chance to start over," I pointed out. "Easy to see how that turned out, but I think we both know some people don't change. They can't even pretend. They're as stunted as the day they decided being an asshole was good enough and they never change, whether they're offered the chance or not."
Alec chuckled, seeing in the comment a lot more than the words themselves said. "Ain't that the truth?"
"Isn't it? David seems unwilling to let it go, which I don't even care to call hypocritical anymore. If he wants a fight, then it'll be a fight. That's his choice to make. The Titans could have gotten people killed here and that is something I'm unwilling to look away from."
I left on that, happy to let the audience—including the ones watching the video streams Veda set up from those cameras—to ponder.
It was only a matter of time before the question started to be asked. If no one else said it aloud, Veda or Dinah or Lafter would. Someone who knew me and how I thought. Someone who knew what I was really asking and proposing.
Amnesty was only the surface of the question.
The real question was a much older one.
Were we brave enough to admit that everyone made mistakes, and were we braver still to abandon our grievances and move onward.
I was pretty sure I'd been loud enough for the Titans to hear me. Many of their faces were confused as the Tierens moved away and the FBI agent told them they were free to go. Some looked pissed. Some shocked. Others like they didn't know what to think. The latter defined their actual reactions a bit better, but some people had funny reactions to their own uncertainty.
They liked shouting and being indignant more than admitting they didn't know.
That was their choice, for whatever choice it was.
Reaching Eirene, I climbed inside and dropped myself in. The suit closed and the GN Drives started up as the HUD came online to show Emily Piggot standing before me.
"Former director."
"That's a dangerous game you're playing," she warned.
"I don't play games with people's lives."
"You don't have the authority to decide who can and can't be pardoned their sins."
"I don't claim to. I only propose that it's time to let some things go."
"You're naïve if you think more than a handful will go along with that."
"And that handful will advocate and push. Those who disagree will push back. The answer will be found somewhere and there too we'll have to decide to let go and move on or keep fighting. Progress isn't constant. It comes and goes."
Piggot watched me, her mind its own distinct myriad of questions. But where others were uncertain or confused, she was calculating. She knew the world of capes better than some capes, really. She'd been in and around it for most of her adult life. On top of that, she knew me from before I was famous. When I'd been more spiteful and less mature.
Where other people saw the cape who slew Endbringers, Emily Piggot saw the bullied little girl who couldn't help but take action.
"You're setting yourself on fire," she realized.
"If that's what it takes."
"Thought you'd grown out of that self-destructive nonsense, Hebert."
I chuckled. "It's not like I'm going to die. There was always a point where I was going to have to step back and let things go on without me. I'm too volatile… It's about time for me to take a seat and stop being the one who rocks the boat. I've done enough. It's time for the world to move on, and that includes moving on from me."
"Not something I'd imagine you saying a year ago."
"I think one of the hardest lessons to learn in the world," I started, "is that sometimes you have to live with that turning feeling in your stomach because you can't fix everything. Not all at once. Not overnight. We make our choices as we go, and we make mistakes. Only an asshole lords that around as if they're somehow different."
"Who taught you that?"
I smiled. "You did."
Piggot grunted. "At least one of you lot was listening."
"More than one I think. Change just takes time."
She glanced back in the direction of the Heartbroken, some of whom had now started talking to the reporters as an armored FBI van was brought up alongside Heartbreaker.
"And what of powers like Candy Vasil's?" Piggot asked. "The PRT kept her semi-isolated for a reason."
Yeah, some powers just screwed you over and no amount of trying to do good really covered for it.
"Dragon's fix still works," I admitted. "And she's made upgrades. Candy's power doesn't like being used on wetware, but she can dump her excess into an unfeeling and unliving mass of gray matter with no negative effects."
Piggot nodded but froze mid-way down. "Dragon?"
I smiled. "Did I forget to tell anyone about that? My bad. I guess she'll just have to come out of the lab and make sure everyone knows she's okay sometime soon."
Piggot scowled.
"I wasn't exactly about to announce the assassination attempt had failed," I noted. "Especially not when she needed nearly a year to recover from it."
"How does an AI n—Nevermind." Piggot shook her head. "I'll make sure the Board knows, not that there's anything they can do about it."
"Do."
I watched her for a moment, even less interested in any old feuds between us than I had been the last time. She'd been right about some things, in the end. Even if the me from even a year ago hadn't wanted to acknowledge them and got lucky enough on the way not to bear the consequences. In a way, I think I owed her more than I ever admitted. Some other director might have coddled me, or tried harder to get me under their thumb.
I wasn't sure what would have happened if it had been anyone running the PRT ENE but her, and in her case… I knew I'd never see her again.
She was dying.
She'd been dying for a long time and she both knew it, and made peace with it, long ago.
"Goodbye again, Emily."
She looked back at me, my tone and choice of name sending a shock through her.
I threw myself into the air, driving Eirene upward into the sky.
"I think that was the best you'd ever be able to manage," Veda offered.
"Easy for me to agree," I mumbled. "I'm not the one who will have to implement it, or deal with the fallout when mistakes are made."
"True," she agreed. "But it needs to be done."
Also true.
Amid the news of surging victories, arrests, and villains being defeated, people were being fed a placebo.
There were still more villains than heroes in the world.
The smarter ones had simply gone to ground or were too busy running and hiding to hit back while the dumber ones were being caught in the surge of change. It wouldn't last. A new generation of heroes had risen, far more aggressive than the last. The next generation of villain would be the same. We hadn't solved every problem in the world yet, and so long as there were problems there would be the disaffected, the broken, and the opportunistic.
But the disaffected, the broken, and the opportunistic—some of them at least—might take a hand if it was offered to them. They too might be willing to move on and even become useful in their own way. The world wasn't full of perfect flawless people, so who had a right to judge?
We'd offer a hand while we had the opportunity to do so, from a position of power where it looked like we had all the cards.
Get some of the bad guys to flip sides and they might be able to help when the next problem arose. If Accord was willing to do it, there would be more. The world's villains weren't all Heartbreaker or Kaiser or Lung. Some of them were just stupid kids in over their heads, or desperate people who never had the choice to be a hero.
It was that, or just keep bludgeoning each other on and on. An endless cycle of violence and grievance. I thought the world would accept the alternative, especially if after the fact the problems that came from it could be firmly blamed on me for proposing the idea in the first place.
Veda and I had been over that of course, as had Relena and Lisa.
This was our scheme, ultimately.
One last chance to change the world before the world took off and started changing itself.
"You've been quiet again, lately," I noted.
"I have been…enjoying the time."
I smirked but not entirely out of relief. Veda didn't say anything and I didn't want to press her. Not yet. We still had some time to have it out.
And at the moment, we had another conversation to converse.
I stopped and turned, waiting as the figure came closer.
He slowed a good distance away, cape dramatically billowing around him.
"Hello," I greeted. "Funny how you and I haven't talked much before, given all that's happened between us."
I looked the man in his eyes from behind Eirene's face.
"Do you prefer Eidolon, Teacher, David, or stand aside before I move you aside?"