Chapter Thirty-Two: Fairytales
March 19, 2011
Fi took a deep breath, then sat further back against the wall, getting comfortable. "There's really no good way to tell you all of this. There's too much, and no real beginning, and it's all wrapped up together. So stop me and ask questions when you fall behind, but know that this isn't a simple explanation."
Jason nodded silently, encouraging her to continue.
When Fi spoke again, it was resolute, all traces of confusion and hesitance gone. "Let's start with my deal, earlier today. As soon as Taylor suggested hacking the Endbringers by upgrading Eidolon, my gut reaction was to recoil. Even though I'd just seen his shame after his name was read off, even though I was profiling his guilt and confusion and self-hatred, even though I knew he wanted them dead as surely as I did, my gut reaction was loathing. That's when I knew that I could make the deal.
"The problem was trying to hold onto that level of gut-instinct when at the same time, my entire conscious mind was trying to figure out if I could trust him. I realized I did trust him to destroy the Endbringers, because when he found out he was the source, I got the impression of self-hatred. That realization put the contract back out of my reach.
"So I focused on the other realization I had: I definitely don't trust him with power. He knew that a shadow organization was torturing people, and he didn't care. Even after realizing that they'd created the Endbringers, he didn't hate them, he hated himself. So he's not worthy or trustworthy of power in general. With that in mind, the first clause of the contract became, 'give Eidolon conscious control over his power in such a way as to allow him to handle the Endbringers however he wishes' with an emphasis on the first half.
"On a scale of 'how much do I hate this' that clause alone was pretty well balanced. You might even say that it was heavy on the cost. But my contracts have a two-clause minimum: they have to consist of both a cost and an effect at least. Additionally, costs can't be imposed on other people without trust. So to create a permanent effect of altering Eidolon's powers, I had to pay a permanent cost, and I had to pay it fast while I still hated Eidolon more than I hated the Endbringers.
"I only had one thing available to me. I'd been working on another contract, trying to get it to balance. A way to give myself offensive power I could draw on regularly so that I could be a useful Ward and parahuman without exposing my true power to the world. I'd already decided that I wanted telekinesis, including a short-range blaster effect or application, and a heads-up danger-sense precognition.
"I threw that into the contract along with the first clause, and then added permanent deafness as the cost. I focused, knew it would work, and knew my window of opportunity was closing. So I threw in one last effect and slammed the contract shut."
Her gaze, already piercing, grew a little more intense. "If I had to trust Eidolon, I wanted the chance to trust someone I actually believe deserves it, too. So for tonight, and tonight only, you and I can do or say whatever we wish, and no one, anywhere, will pay attention to it. We simply aren't important to the world, or anyone or anything in it, right now."
She fell silent, and Jason took a deep breath, processing everything he'd heard. "So, let me get this straight. In exchange for your hearing loss, and empowering an enemy, you got to destroy the Endbringers, get a sidekick, and become a Jedi?"
Fi blinked, stunned. Then her mouth dropped open, and she laughed. Jason found himself laughing too. It was ridiculous, because it was a serious topic, a world-changing topic, but once the tension broke it all seemed to drain out of them as hysterical laughter.
After several minutes, they were both wiping the corners of their eyes and they had stopped looking at each other, trying to get the laughing under control. Jason moved to sit beside Fi on the sleeping bag, leaning back against the wall, thinking more seriously about what she had told him.
This was just the tip of the iceberg, and he knew that. He could sense that there was more to come. After he'd learned that Legend was party to torturing Fi, he'd gone into shock. Then there had been hints that the other two had probably known too, but that had been sort of lost behind the fact that the Endbringers had been Eidolon's fault, and had dealt with. Or at least, put under Eidolon's more direct control.
Then Gallant had reported that Legend actually didn't know what was going on, but the other two most likely did. Jason had shoved that aside for a couple reasons. First, he was focused on helping Fi, and getting pissed at the Triumvirate could wait. Second, Clockblocker had made a good point about the terrifying precog limiting their ability to retaliate or maneuver. Third, Vista and Clockblocker seemed to have being paranoid and angry covered.
The first and third reasons no longer seemed as relevant, at least not right now, and the second was covered by the deal. Still, it didn't hurt to check.
"So… that clause… you're sure it will cover the precog you mentioned?"
"Let's call him Clyde, for now. That's the nickname Ash and I used. I've taken a couple other precautions, in case the contract isn't enough, but it should be."
"Other precautions?"
"Earlier tonight, when I was cooking, I used a tiny accident as an excuse to burn rowan shavings and a little St. John's Wort. Both are useful against all sorts of future sight, and we've found them to be useful against parahuman precogs. If not for the contract, we'd do more. But too much protection can leave behind bad karma after it's removed, since your parents are unbelievers."
Jason felt himself blinking at her, but she wasn't looking at him. She was staring at her hands instead. "This is what I meant when I said it's all wrapped up together. My family… we hunt monsters, fairy tales, and legends. We're part of a legacy that's been protecting the world for thousands of years. Capes are one type of people that can use the future against us, but not the only ones."
"What is this?" John's face is apocalyptic, but my days of being scared by him are in the past, now. He shakes the St. John's Wart in my direction, and I sneer back instead of cowering.
"I'd think a hunter would recognize basic anti-scrying measures when he saw them," I bait him, pouring sarcasm into my tone. I know he's not actually confused about the plant's identity. "We're on the tail of a dementor. You don't think I'm dumb enough to scry him without first protecting us?"
John opens his mouth and shuts it, at a loss for words. Something twists in my gut. I expected more shouting. He is madder, as I thought he'd be, but he's madder in a different way. I don't like it when my profile fails.
"Did we have more St. John's Wart?" Danny asks as he comes into the room. He's holding LeBlanc's journal, and I flinch with him, in near perfect unison, as John sees the (other hunter's) journal in his son's hands. Danny tries to soldier on. "Oh, we did. Good. Scrying turn up anything else?"
John throws down the herb, strides into the room, and picks up the shotgun from where I'd put it after I finished cleaning it. He cycles the gun to load the first shell and both Danny and I flinch again, neither of us sensing whatever immediate danger is causing John to come to full preparedness. John sets himself, facing me but with a clear shot to the door and the kitchen behind him for an exit if necessary.
"When did you scry?" he snaps.
"This morning," I tell him softly, still trying to sense whatever danger has him on edge. "We sent you the info as soon as we verified it."
John slowly lowers the gun into his ready-but-not-trigger-ready stance. "Hours ago?" he verifies.
"Yes," Danny volunteers. "We were about to do another, now that we know enough to ask better questions. Dad, what's going on?"
John glances between the two of us, then grunts. "Not here."
Later, John will tell us that St. John's Wart doesn't work against witches, which we already knew. He will also tell us that dementors are technically a breed of witches, not Eve's children, which we didn't know. He will tell us that LeBlanc died from that very mistake. He will say that it's a matter of luck that Danny and I didn't face the same end.
Much later, I and my siblings will realize that John was wrong on that last point. The firm belief of two hunters, in addition to St. John's Wart's other anti-scrying properties, had been sufficient to protect us.
"It sounds crazy. I know it sounds crazy. We purposefully work to keep normal people happily ignorant of the existence of weird. For one thing, they live happier lives. For another, belief and disbelief are powerful forces. I mean, like, actually powerful. Part of how you fight a wraith or a fairy is to get less people to believe in them. It makes them less substantial."
Fi looked up at Jason, but he wasn't sure what she saw in his face. He wasn't even sure what his face looked like. Part of his brain was short-circuiting and screaming wtf? but another part of him was like, okay, well, if I can believe in lasers that bend around corners and freeze stuff, what exactly is wrong with psychics or fairies?
"Say something," she said, after they'd sat there for an indeterminate about of time.
"Are werewolves real?" his mouth asked.
She exhaled. "Yeah. Unfortunately. We keep thinking we have them wiped out, and then another den bursts open and they infect a bunch more people."
"So… you kill werewolves?"
"Werewolves are dangerous because they go feral. The human inside is dies during the first full moon and never comes back. Before that, there are cures and we use them when possible."
"What about vampires?"
"Vampires don't lose control in the same way. If they choose self-regulation, most hunters will let them live, myself included. If they go megalomaniac though, well, they're killing people so it's kinda a matter of self-defense. So yeah, sometimes, we kill vampires."
"Don't vampires need to kill humans?"
"Not exactly. They are strongest with human blood, but they can also subsist off of donations, certain parts of dead bodies, or animal substitutes."
Jason breathed out, deeply, not quite sighing so much as just releasing some of the tension in his chest. "You're serious."
"I am."
Jason tilted his head back until it hit the wall behind him. "Why am I not freaking out right now?"
Fi chuckled. "You're made of sterner stuff than that." Jason gave her a sidelong glance. "I'm serious. I like you, as a person, but I wouldn't have told you all this if I thought it would break your mind. Some people can't handle weird, but you can.
"You watched me erase Behemoth, and then you still had enough logic to see when I was being railroaded. You accepted the explanation of my powers without so much as a hiccup. You accepted the fact that I had reason to hate Legend without explanation. I was pretty sure you'd be able to accept this."
"What the hell, Fi? You told her?"
"Josh, she saw him re-attach his own head. The cat was out of the bag!"
"You don't just give people the full truth. There is a right and wrong way to tell people about what is out there. Rule one is that you never, never tell anyone more than they need to know!"
"You've got to be kidding me!"
"People can't handle the truth. They certainly can't handle any part of the truth that they haven't seen for themselves."
"You need to give people more credit."
"Dammit Fi! Generations of hunters have perfected the technique of the reveal. You don't give backstory! You don't give details. You explain exactly what is happening to them at that moment, you assure them that you have everything under control, and you explain that this is unlikely to happen to them again."
"Bullshit."
"Fi!"
"Bullshit! You know that encountering the supernatural once significantly raises the chances of a second encounter."
"Statistical correlation does not imply causation."
"Bullshit!"
"Fi-"
"No. The ignorant mind is a shield. I get that. Disbelief is an effective deterrent for most of the population. Whatever. But when you take that away, you have to tell them enough to let them prepare themselves."
"She isn't prepared. She's curled in a ball, suffering from shock! She's gibbering, Fi! People aren't wired to handle the truth!"
"We do."
"We grew up in it."
"I didn't."
"You're a freak of nature. And the next time you find a freak of nature, you can give them full disclosure. Until that day, you abide by the rules, you hear me?"
"Next time you give the stupid speech."
"Fine!"
"Fine!"
Jason sat with his eyes closed, trying to digest what he'd just heard. He felt like he ought to be upset, or weirded out, or even back in shock. Instead, it felt a little like when atoms had been explained to him. Hypothetically, all matter was actually 99% empty space. That was really weird on an intuitive level. But on the other hand, he'd been living in this world for a long time and knowing how the world worked didn't really change anything, did it?
So he sat, and waited for the truth to hit him. After a while, Jason gave up on that. Maybe it would hit him later. Maybe it wouldn't. More importantly, he tried to think about what he needed to do in the next ten minutes.
And that's when it occurred to Jason that Fi never did anything without very good reason. A sinking feeling grew in his gut. When he opened his eyes, she was looking back at him, so he was able to put his thoughts directly into words. "Okay, so the world is weird. Is there a purpose behind telling me, or… I mean, don't get me wrong, I'm glad you can be honest, but…" he couldn't shake the feeling that there was a shoe, waiting to fall.
She chewed her lip. "I need your help. There's a decision I have to make, and I don't want to make it alone." Jason nodded, listening.
"Every other time stuff has gotten weird on planet Earth, there has been a conscious being behind it. We call them B&Bs. Big and Bads. Vampires and werewolves, as well as most other human-transforming monsters, were generated by a figure we named Eve, as in 'the mother of all,' or in this case 'the mother of all evil.'
"Fairies, wraiths, and others of the like came from a four-personality entity named Mob, as in the crowd of people. Demons answered to Lucifer. Several of the older pantheons were more real than you might imagine, and each had an order of priests, wizards, or others that they empowered in exchange for service."
Fi took a deep breath, and let it out slowly. "So when capes showed up, you better believe hunters had just one question: where's the source? We have suspicions about the answer to that question, but no definite answers. From what I overheard, I'm pretty sure my kidnappers know, but they didn't say enough for me to be positive of who it might be. Whoever it is, I guarantee you, they don't mean well for Earth. B&Bs never do."
"We need a name for that organization," Jason mused, while he considered this new information.
"We'll call them Mordor, for now," Fi joked, but it fell flat. She took a deep breath. "This is where I need your help. I have to decide what I'm going to do next. There's a powerful enemy out there, and Mordor thinks they're doing what's necessary to fight them. But in doing so, they're doing shit like creating Endbringers."
She sighed, and looked away from him. He took that mean that she didn't want to be interrupted. "To be perfectly honest, that's not what I thought I'd be learning today. I expected that the answer to their origins would be Mr. Big and Bad. I was hoping there was a way to reprogram the Endbringers, or some trait we could exploit, something Mordor had learned from their experimentation perhaps.
"Today, for the first time, I have the chance to strike a decent blow at Mordor. Knowing that they've got a stake in all three of the Triumvirate… I've got the power to take those three out, and crack open the shell: there are secrets I can reveal, ways to undermine them. I finally, finally can strike out like I have wanted to do for years… and yet for the first time I might have reason not to do so.
"If Mordor did produce the Endbringers… well, I mean, obviously that's bad, but it's also firepower I hadn't imagined before. It might be better to wait to take them out until after we deal with B&B. On the other hand, they accidentally produced the Endbringers, who were a potential extinction event in their own right. I don't know if it's more dangerous to let them live or try to handle them."
Jason touched her shoulder, drawing her attention. "It sounds like you're trying to convince yourself that it's okay to go after them. Like maybe you already know that's not the right answer and you don't like it?"
Fi huffed, but nodded. "It's possible."
Jason inhaled, then. He thought about not pushing her, about waiting, but who knew when they'd have another chance to talk? He needed to ask. "Should we try to work with them?"
Fi outright snorted. "Hell no."
"Put your feelings aside," he urged her, displeased with her immediate response. Fi's face set stubbornly, so he reached out, grabbed her knee to convey his seriousness, and said very slowly, "This is the fate of the world we're talking about."
"And what would happen if we tried to work with them? Option one, there's a good chance they don't listen. They have what they believe to be an all-powerful precog, except he never saw Ash. That means there's a good chance he never saw anything else weird either." Seeming to realize she hadn't told him this part yet, she backtracked.
"Ash was one-fourth vampire. He was a blind spot for every precog or psychic we ever encountered. Since Mordor didn't kill him, and Ash was able to help me investigate Mordor, chances are that Clyde couldn't see him or myself."
Then she came back on track. "If Clyde can't see weird and they're used to relying on Clyde, then they won't believe us."
"Option two is that Clyde can't see us, but they still believe me anyway. The problem here is that no two B&Bs have ever been defeated the same way. Some tricks cross over, but they're never as effective with new weird as they were with the old weird they were developed for. So I can't hand them the perfect gun to just gank B&B, so there's a good chance Mordor decides we know too much to be safe but not enough to be useful. They wipe our memories, keep us locked up, kill us, or otherwise curb us."
"A good chance?" Jason interjected, sensing paranoia. He also sensed a subtle railroading, Fi trying to lay out all her logic before Jason could decide which part to argue with. It probably wasn't conscious, but it was still an effective tactic if he didn't interrupt.
Fi hesitated, then acknowledged his point. "Well, maybe not a good chance, but a higher chance than I'd like. People will justify a lot if you put humanity on the other side of the scale. What's more is that we don't gain anything in that scenario."
Jason had been about to argue about the probability of mind-altering silencing techniques, but decided to wait and see what she meant by that.
"Mordor gets distracted trying to find an answer in hunter records, which hunters are already searching through," Fi continued, and Jason had to concede that it would be his first reaction to discovering an archive of secret histories about saving the world.
Fi wasn't finished yet. "But Mordor doesn't share anything with us, most likely. Not even Legend knew about what they're doing, and he's running their pet national hero team. They're not going to tell another sister secret organization."
"Maybe they would," Jason interrupted her again, "End of the world and all." Jason wasn't sure why he was pushing back so hard against Fi's assumptions. It wasn't that he had a great love of the Triumvirate, or that he really trusted Mordor, or that he didn't trust Fi.
It was more that someone needed to make sure that Fi wasn't running hog-wild in her chain of assumptions and logic, and as her friend and teammate that someone was him.
Fi got a sour look on her face, but didn't immediately argue. She turned it over and over in her head, thinking. "It's a pretty big risk, and one we wouldn't control once it was set in motion. See previous point about them silencing people they don't like."
"Against the end of the world?"
Fi cross her arms, frustrated. "It's not risk free, and it's not something we can just take back if it screws up. If Mordor shuts down the hunters, they could be destroying the only chance to save the world. Hunters live in secret, yes. We keep secrets from the world, yes. But we don't flat out kill people who learn those secrets, and Clyde, or Mordor, does."
Jason nodded to concede the point. "I guess just leaving them alone isn't a safe option either, is it?"
"Not if they're making Endbringers on accident. And more than that, unknowingly."
Jason sighed. "Unless they're batshit insane, they're not trying to end the world. Maybe, now that they know they produced the Endbringers, they'll change tactics." It was probably an empty hope, but someone needed to play devil's advocate here.
"Maybe they won't. They can think they're doing right, and still be playing Russian roulette with the world."
"Well, who are they giving powers to? I mean, you said yourself that Eidolon didn't want to be killing people. He's trying to be a hero. And Legend and Triumph and Aegis aren't bad guys. Neither are you for that matter."
"I don't have an exact roster, but I know it's a lot of capes. Even more than I previously thought, because I didn't know about Eidolon and Alexandria. It's both heroes and villains, I know that. Have you heard of case fifty-threes?"
Jason shrugged to indicate that he'd heard the term, but wasn't very familiar with it. She continued without breaking her stride. "They're capes with body modifications, and often no memory from before they became a cape. Both heroes and villains, like I said.
"So far, neither Ash nor I have been able to track down a single cape with a body modification that didn't come out of one of Mordor's vials. We can't confirm every one of them, but we've never found one that definitely didn't.
"Sometimes they use cat's paws, but Ash traced them all back eventually. Or, if someone else was doing the tracing for us, they ended up dead. Some of the capes do come out normal, too, though. Alexandria, for example."
"As far as we know, anyway," Jason pointed out. "She could be hiding modification under the costume." Contract nodded, conceding the point.
Jason blew out a big breath. "I don't feel like we can answer this tonight. I know it's important, I know waiting is not a totally safe choice, but I don't think we can make a snap decision."
"But…" she protested, but he didn't let her get started again.
"Fi, it's been less than a day since the world got turned on its head for both of us, many times over. Mordor has been around for decades. They're not going anywhere, and they haven't killed us all yet. We need to take the time to do this right."
The door opens cautiously, still chained. "Fi, what are you doing here?"
I can't meet Brooks' gaze. "Jo didn't call?"
"She said you disappeared." He doesn't open the door or remove the chain, and I know that he won't until I prove my identity. Unfortunately, Brooks doesn't stock the usual test materials, especially in his college dorm room. With the rash of shifters running around, code words are insufficient.
"I…" My voice breaks, and I realize that there's nothing I can say to get Brooks to open the door. I look back down at my shoes, and the confession that I tried to run from bubbles out instead, "Jo could have been killed."
Brooks sighs, and then he shuts the door and the chain rattles. He really shouldn't open the door. I could be anything. But Brooks isn't a field hunter, so he isn't paranoid enough. He's a librarian, a damn good librarian, maybe the best one alive, but still a librarian. He opens the door, stands aside, and I walk in, shame weighing every step.
"Fi, Jo knew the risks."
"No. I screwed this up."
"Wendigo are always tough cases. You did the best you could."
"We could have taken another day. If I hadn't pushed, if I hadn't made myself bait, if I had just stopped, and let Danny finish his research, it would have been different."
"Maybe."
I look up, starting to get upset. "Why aren't you pissed?" Brooks doesn't answer immediately. "Dammit, Brooks. I'm not made of glass. You can be pissed at me. If you can't trust me not to break, I shouldn't be back in the field."
"This isn't about the rape." I suppress the flinch automatically, because I'd rather people say it than dance around it.
Brooks sighs, but he continues. "You should talk to Ash about this, not me, but the bottom line is that it's not your fault. Probably. Look, just… stay here for awhile. You can help me monitor the specimens. Let Ash finish his analysis, let Jo and the boys wrap up the current case load. Not everything has to be done today."
"I shouldn't be involved in your study. It's too important to screw up."
"You're not going to screw it up."
I open my mouth to disagree and he overrides me. "Fi, you're not going to screw it up. Jo isn't dead. She's not even scratched."
I glare, but Brooks doesn't back down. "She's not. She told me so. A little bruised from you landing on her, but you took the brunt of the swipe." He puts a hand on my back as he leads me into the tiny dorm room, and I suppress a second flinch, this one from pain.
When I sit on his bed and glance back up, he's frowning. "And evidently you cracked a rib when you did so." I try to shrug casually, because I was kinda hoping the bones were just bruised. But Brooks wouldn't be one of the best librarians if he was blind. He sighs, and starts digging in his dresser drawer. "Okay, take your shirt off. I've got a wrap here somewhere. We can go visit the specimens after you're taken care of."
I don't bother to protest, because it won't fool him. But as he wraps my ribs (and cleans the claw marks on my back, which I wasn't hiding just genuinely hadn't felt yet, damn my scars anyway) I can't help but push my luck just a little in another department.
"What is Ash working on, Brooks?"
"Conflict analysis." He doesn't say anything more, because he doesn't have to. I've been afraid of this possibility for a while now, though I never voiced it to myself. Still, there's no point in worrying just yet.
Ash will find something, or he won't.
Fi scrunched her nose, reluctant to delay the decision, but tipped her head ever so slightly, conceding to his logic. "Maybe you're right." She sighed. "We won't be protected after tonight, though. We won't be able to discuss it again and know for sure that we're safe."
"If we change Clyde to Sauron and B&B to… um… Saruman… we can at least talk in generalities. Not specifics, of course. But it's better than nothing. And we can make another contract, right? I can help pay the cost."
She smiled, looking actually relieved for the first time since their hysterical laughter. "Okay." She gave an even bigger sigh, and he thought she might have actually released some of her tension. Then she smirked, and asked, "How's your head?"
"Depends. Any other world-altering shit to drop on me?"
She chuckled. "Not as such. I do have a mission for us though." Her tone was playful, so he quirked an eyebrow. "We need a friend."
He turned that over in his mind, but it didn't seem world-altering the second time either. "Isn't that what the Wards are for?"
"No, I mean we need a friend who isn't a parahuman. Someone we can trust. We need someone to check our logic, since we're taking the time to do this right."
He ignored her teasing to cut to the heart of the matter, which he still didn't understand. "Why?"
She thunked her head back against the wall. "You're kidding me. The PRT doesn't tell capes that having powers messes with the way you think?" She opened her eyes and looked at him, but he just felt confused. He didn't speak, so she continued. "I thought you knew, because of your name. Intrepid: fearless. I thought you knew that your powers were messing with you."
"Ah…" his brain was scrambling, trying to find evidence for or against the theory. "No. It's just that there's a lot of flying capes. I didn't want to be Iron Sparrow or something ridiculous, and I thought Intrepid sounded heroic. Are you sure about this?"
Fi sighed. "Well, not totally. We didn't have a lot of data to work with, so I should probably talk to Dragon about it. I assume if it was true, it would be well known and because it's not, it might be wrong. It's kinda a nature-versus-nurture argument anyways.
"Capes are involved in a lot of conflict. And overall conflict in the world is on the rise since capes cropped up. I mean, we're not setting off world-war three, but on average the world's daily death rate is higher than it's been in human history except when there's widespread war or plague. Quality of life is on the drop, too. Again, on average."
She took a deep breath and tried to order her thoughts. "Ash had already noticed the trend before I triggered, and he was trying to do something about it, when he wasn't juggling a million and one other responsibilities.
"After I triggered, my family saw the difference in me immediately. I used contracts for stuff I didn't need to. I was proposing more high-risk, violent, and generally conflict-oriented solutions to problems. I used to be a real pacifist, a peace-oriented problem-solver, but after I triggered… well, at first they thought it might just be the trauma.
"But when someone else would propose a peaceful solution, I could admit that it was a better choice. Or they'd forcefully make me stop, wait, think, and keep thinking, and eventually I'd come to the peaceful path and take it. It wasn't that I couldn't be peaceful, eventually. But my immediate thought was always to escalate, to attack, to just keep pushing.
"My power fundamentally changed how my brain generates solutions, or maybe it's better to say that it changes the priority in which solutions occur to me. When we saw that change in me, it cast a different light on the conflict that surrounds powers in general. It wasn't a huge sample size, but it wasn't unreasonable to think it might be happening in all parahumans. It also matched some of what we'd observed in previous B&Bs. It would even explain why Clyde, or Sauron rather, was willing to kill to keep Mordor's secret. He may not have seen another way."
Jason considered not saying anything, but decided it probably needed to be said. "Was there another way?"
Fi's brow wrinkled in confusion, so he hurried to explain his reasoning. "Not that I'm justifying what he did, but if Sauron wanted to keep Mordor's secrets, did he have an option besides killing them? Hunters in general sound pretty hardcore, and they were specifically investigating with the intent to report back to you and Ash."
Fi's lips pursed, but she didn't protest. After a moment, Jason decided to let her off the hook. "If Mordor can't see you guys, then they don't know that you know how to keep secrets and that it wouldn't get out to the world. Heck, you know how important a secret can be and you're still thinking of pulling the Triumvirate apart because of what they might have done. Could they take the risk of letting you find out?"
"I'll think about it," Fi finally relented, but it was clear she wasn't happy about it.
Jason decided to leave that topic alone and circle back to the point Fi had outlined. "I guess the whole conflict thing is something to discuss with Dragon. I've never really thought about it or noticed it. I don't feel more violent, but it sounds like maybe we wouldn't be able to notice it in ourselves. I do get in trouble for leaping before I look - taking on more than I can chew at times.
"In the meantime, we'll keep our eyes open for someone trustworthy."
And someone who can handle it, he added mentally. He'd done pretty well with weird, as Fi had predicted he would, but he could feel his brain starting to shut down. Still, he didn't want to leave the night on this serious note. "Can you answer a question that won't blow my mind?"
"Was there something specific?"
"When did you meet Nilbog?"
She chuckled. "Oh. That. I was chasing a djinn... must have been five years ago now, and he thought he'd run into the briar patch as it were. He liked his survival odds in Ellisberg better than mine, anyway. I had a friend teleport me in, pursued him until the constructs took care of him, then gave the signal to teleport out."
"The other hunters let you go into Nilbog's fortress when you were eleven?"
Fi opened her mouth, and then shut it. "Ah, about that. I did mean to mention this, it just sort of slipped my mind. I'm not actually sixteen. I quit aging when I triggered."
Jason did the mental math. "So, you're twenty-two?"
Fi shrugged. "Or somewhere thereabouts. I was found on the side of the road when I was somewhere in the five to eight years old range. I was tiny, physically, but I had a vocabulary like you wouldn't believe. Eight years later, I was kidnapped by Mordor. Two years after that, I triggered and either stopped aging, or I'm now aging super slowly. Not exactly sure. That was six years ago. So, I'm somewhere between fifteen and eighteen physically, and between twenty-one and twenty-four mentally.
"Added to the difficulty of this math is that I have no memories from before I was found. So I really only have sixteen years' worth of memories. I've also had two brushes with time travel, one where I lived the same day over and over for several months and one where I spent about a month somewhere back in the ancient Rome timeframe.
"Additionally, as a hunter, you're considered an adult once you are capable of taking care of yourself. Everyone has treated me like an adult for at least as long as I've been a cape, so by that logic you could argue I'm definitely twenty-four or older.
She sighed, "You could also argue that I'm mentally older by virtue of association: all of my sibling are in their late twenties to early thirties, and I consider them my peers, so maybe I'm really thirty. Except I'm still in a fifteen-to-eighteen body with all the associated hormones. I also never had a childhood and grew up in a very insular society with its own social code that doesn't always translate well to general America. That lends itself toward social awkwardness and relative immaturity. Finally, I'm now taking orders from Clockblocker, who's sixteen, and I'm part of a teenage cape team, with teenage peers. So maybe I really am fifteen or sixteen after all."
Somehow, this was actually harder for Jason to wrap his mind around than werewolves. "I didn't think your age would be a difficult question."
"I've led an interesting life."
"You don't say," he deadpanned back. "How did you end up in ancient Rome?"
"Well, actually, I was somewhere in modern-day Ireland, at a time when Rome was a major power." She wilted under his mock-glare. "I was making fun of a deity." His eyebrows shot up and she clarified, "A minor deity! Not one from an actual pantheon. Those are dead, for the most part. This was really more of a faery drawing on extra power."
"Well that makes much more sense." He held the serious expression for about a minute, and then they both started laughing again.
Like before, there was a certain degree of hysteria involved, but it did relieve some of the tension. "I have to ask," he said when he could breathe again, "how is it that capes haven't discovered the other sources of weird yet? Wouldn't they be mistaken for capes?"
"Some of them could be. A couple have been, and for the most part hunters leave those cases alone to maintain our own anonymity. But mostly, supernatural beings have a vested interested in not drawing attention. Hunters can find them because they're looking for it, and we have ways of tracking down the various types of supernatural that we've been dealing with for generations. But vampires have no reason to parade down Mainstreet, USA, fangs bared, and draw a target on their backs."
Jason nodded, conceding the logic. "If all the B&Bs have been handled except for Saruman," he mused, and she nodded to show this was correct, "then why are there still supernatural critters for you to hunt?"
"Self-propagation. Most of the B&Bs wanted minions without having to convert every single one, so they made the minions to be self-breeding or made them capable of turning humans into minions. We try to get as many as we can when we take out the B&B, but it's like whack-a-mole. There's almost always more hiding somewhere."
"Makes sense." They lapsed into silence, and Jason thought back over the day, over what she'd just said, and tried to let it all sink in. He thought about asking why she couldn't go home, but he didn't want to bring that up when she seemed to be a relatively stable place.
Of course, it wasn't good conversation for when she wasn't stable either, so maybe he was just avoiding it in general. For now, he told himself. We don't have to solve everything tonight.
After thinking for a while longer, he asked, "How were the other B&Bs defeated?"
"Hmm?" Fi hummed, glancing at him. "What was that?"
Excerpt from a hunter's journal; circa 1920; specialization: broad-spectrum field work
…It is an error to say that humans are limited by the first four dimensions. More accurately, we are limited in the first four dimensions. We are vulnerable in space and in time. And because other forces so easily manipulate these aspects of our lives, we forget that there are other dimensions. We focus on our weaknesses, when we ought to focus on the weaknesses of our enemies.
It is, of course, difficult to quantify that which we cannot observe. But having now nearly five thousand years of lore, records, and experience, we cannot remain any longer in this state of self-denial concerning the higher orders of dimensions. Simply because they cannot be calculated, or measured, does not mean that they cannot be observed. Therefore, I offer the following summation of my life's investigation.
Humans are powerful. We love. We hate. We hope. We despair. We dream. We believe. We create, imagine, inspire. We unite, we overcome, we triumph. These are such an aspect of being human that we overlook it, forget it, discard it. We must pay attention.
The story of human triumph through bravery, perseverance, loyalty, love, etc is such a part of our self that we mock it. But it is not coincidence that we succeed after we are brave, after we believe, after we persevere. These things breed success.
We cannot measure the higher dimensions (not the other dimensions, which more properly should be called worlds or realms, but the higher dimensions, those beyond our ken) but we can see the effects they have on our enemies.
As we are limited, vulnerable, in the first four dimensions, I believe that our enemies are limited in the higher dimensions. They are trapped by our folklore, helpless against our humanity. It was once observed by a contemporary of mine, that our enemies act like players on a stage, growing in strength only to be dramatically defeated at the pinnacle moment.
I don't believe they're acting. I believe they are controlled by the narrative. And we are the narrators.
I don't expect many to believe me. There are certainly other explanations, other contributing factors, other mechanics. But we have been undefeated. We have defended ourselves against superior forces time and again. I don't think this is luck, or coincidence. Nor do I believe it is fate, unless one was to subscribe to the idea that fate is what we make of it or that we control our own fate…
…Finally, it is unsurprising that vocabulary should differ amongst our enemies. Nevertheless, I offer the following hypothesis, to be proven or disproven by those that would follow in the footsteps of my work.
The fifth dimension is influenced by love and hate, hope and despair, death and rebirth,
The sixth: bravery, stubbornness, passion, faith
The seventh: cleverness, innovation, creativity, inspiration,
The eighth: grief, defiance, joy, courage,
The ninth: legacy, triumph, dreaming, sacrifice
You see now the tangled web of reality: for is not passion made of love and hate? Is not bravery the brother of courage, and joy the companion of faith?
Yet the same might be said of time and space. For if one could control time, and thereby exert force over whatever interval he or she might so desire, could they not change the landscape of our world in what seems to be the blink of an eye? Energy and matter, time and motion, concrete reality and relativity: are these not also so intertwined?
…
Examine now, the death of our greatest enemies. For it is death, is it not, to have passed out of our reality? The Angel of Hell, Lucifer, has no body. He has no ability to affect our world. He causes no trouble and his prison has no weakness. Does it matter if he is locked for eternity in a physical realm or a metaphysical hell? Hunters are reluctant to name this "death" and yet, what else is it?
Or consider then Eve, the Mother of all Evil, who does not at this moment exist. She was flung through time, leaving this world in 1234 AD and when she re-immerged in 1840, she fell directly into the prepared trap, again leaving our realm. When her time-suspension ends in 2406, will we not be waiting for her yet again? If, then, she has no body, no influence, no ability to ever come back to any time whose future she has seen, no will, and no life to speak of, is she not dead?
I will not detail them all, but surely you can see that each of our enemies are, indeed, dead. And this is the most critical point. Time and observation will prove the rest of my musings right or wrong. And knowing that we are powerful is not the same as knowing how to use that power. These things we will have to discover in the ages to come.
But this we can do: we can declare our enemies dead. Defeated. Gone. If I am correct, the very act of asserting our dominance is worthwhile. If I am wrong, then there is no harm done. Let us declare then that our enemies are vanquished, destroyed, killed. Fallen before our blades. Leave aside the labels of 'trapped' or 'isolated' or 'contained' (though not, of course, the histories of how this was done; let no record be lost on my account). Do you wish them to break free? Nay, they are dead.
Believe or not in the power of humanity. Ridicule or repeat the rest of these observations. But do not feed the opportunities of our enemies.
They are dead. Declare them so…
Jason swallowed, realized that she hadn't seen his question, and repeated it. "The other sources. How did they die?"
Fi sighed. "Not easily. And this one may be even worse. What some of the capes can do is more impressive than forces we previously classed as B&Bs. The only real difference is dimensions. Humans, and most parahumans, are confined by the first four dimensions." Seeing that Jason didn't get it, Fi elaborated.
"For the most part, we are trapped by the physical world and by time. All of the B&Bs are extra-dimensional. They're outside of time, space… one claimed to be able to manipulate up to the ninth dimension, but considering we either killed him, or we made enough trouble that it was simpler for him to pretend to die and decide to leave us alone, we're not sure how much of that we believe.
"Each B&B has been defeated by some combination of human innovation, a manipulation of their own power, and luck. And never the same way twice, like I said. Getting more specific requires outlining exactly who they are, how they interacted with the various dimensions, the resources we had, the folklore available, and other details that I don't want to get into tonight."
The light dawned, and Jason spoke slowly. "That's why you don't think we can go after Mordor yet, isn't it?" She met his gaze steadily as he continued. "You think we might need them. Hunters aren't capes, so if you need a manipulation of Saruman's own power, you'll probably need Mordor."
She sighed. "There's that. There's also the fact that some hunters aren't even working on the problem. In the past, B&Bs haven't acted quickly. Their minions are usually around for centuries before they make their first move. They aren't inside of time the same way we are, so they don't get impatient. Most hunters don't think the battle is coming for a long while. They're preparing just in case, but there's very little urgency."
"You think this time is different?"
"B&Bs usually don't play with their food, parading around in togas, rescuing kittens from trees."
It took him a moment to put the pieces together. The moment he did, Fi was talking again. She must have read his revelation in his expression. "I'm not certain. It's not sure. But it's also not a risk we can take."
Jason whispered the worst swear word he knew, and then whispered it again. Somehow, that actually made him feel a little better.
"We might need Mordor," he repeated, and Fi didn't actually protest, just looked down at her hands again. "Why do I get the feeling you're going to punch someone?"
"They've got a lot to answer for. And we won't be able to do anything if they don't take us seriously."
"Are you proposing beating up Mordor in order to work together more effectively?"
She shrugged, and chose to tease back rather than be serious. "I did say that my problem solving was affected."
"We need to find a normal sidekick." As soon as Jason said it, he heard the unintended humor in the statement, and they both chuckled. "But not tonight."
Fi nodded, but didn't shift or make any indication that she was ready to go to bed. Remembering what Taylor had said about sleep, Jason offered, "Want to watch a movie?"
Fi's smile was like the sun on a rainy day; weak, dulled, but still a genuine source of warmth.
They wandered to the living room and found a movie that seemed to be a comedy. For twenty minutes they sat in front of the flickering television screen, but Jason didn't hear a word that was said, and after a little while he realized that he hadn't turned on the subtitles either.
A glance at Fi showed that she was staring off to the side, not even looking at the TV. At that, Jason felt bold enough to ask the question that seemed most important at the moment. He nudged her until she glanced up, so that she could see his face.
"If I were to run across a werewolf or something on the street, how would I know? How can I protect myself and my family?"
She sighed, looking regretful, and apologetic. "I've already set up all the basic wards on your house. I broke in here at night the first week after you moved to Brockton Bay to put up protections, just in case. Anyone you saw on the street either wouldn't be a danger, because they'd be incognito, or they'd be acting obviously weird, in which case you'd probably assume they were a cape and you'd do pretty well to treat them like one."
She shifted, uncomfortable with the subject. "I didn't tell you about all of that because I expect it to impact your everyday life. Big cities like Brockton Bay see very little supernatural activity. I was telling you so you'd believe me about Saruman. I don't expect it to change your day to day life."
"It's world-altering," he said carefully, trying to understand. "How could it not change everything?"
"The world keeps turning," Fi replied somberly. "We have to keep up. If something does come up, I'll give you more details then. But I don't expect it to. I'm a cape now, not a hunter. Not really."
"Okay," Jason said, letting the subject drop. He fished for something else, something to ease their mutual discomfort. "Why Phoenix?"
Fi smiled, but it was sad and he somehow knew she was thinking of Ash. "When they first found me, Ellis was pretty sure I was some sort of supernatural creature. The description I fit best was a phoenix, so that's what she called me. They finally verified that I was human, my soul was in my own body, I hadn't experienced any time-travel, and this was my native dimension, but I still had no memories and no name.
"At that point, Ash was the only adult who hadn't thought I was some sort of potentially murderous monster. So I asked him what his name was, and he told me that he was named Ashland Texas. It was a name he chose when he became a hunter, because the town had personal meaning to him.
"Well, I knew that I'd been found just outside of Phoenix, Arizona so I decided that would be my name. I liked that it mimicked Ash, who I thought the world of, and I liked that it was sort of redefining the label that others had used against me. Plus, as a kid, I thought the whole ash/phoenix connection was pretty cool."
"And Contract?" he ventured.
Fi was quiet for a while. "That was Brooks' idea. He's not super creative, but he set up my PHO account and made my mask and everything. He was pretty sure I was going to get kicked out sooner or later, and he wanted me to have a cape identity to fall back on. Took six years, but he wasn't all wrong."
"There's a lot of pain in your past," Jason tried a little gallows humor, hating that he'd stepped in yet another landmine.
"I suppose. It didn't feel so bad when I was living it. Doesn't feel so bad, I should say. The people make it worth it." She smiled up at him, then tucked her head down against his chest.
They sat there for a long time, but he could tell from the tension in her body that neither of them were asleep. He watched the clock until he suddenly realized that he was waiting for the moment when Ash would have been dead for a full twenty-four hours, and morbidly wondered if Fi was thinking the same thing.
It was amazing how much could happen in just a day, and yet the world kept on turning.