AN: Hey, I edited episode one, go back and read it once your done with this.

Drill Chrysalis

Intermission 1: My long shadow, points the way beyond me

Coil was beside himself.

In the literal sense, not the use of his power.

Rather, in pain, pain-painpainPAIN, confusion

-and fear...

No... fear, or any of it's pseudonyms couldn't encompass this feeling.

It was The Feeling of Being Small.

(He was beneath notice.)

It was The Feeling of Being Watched.

(He was noticed.)

It carried with it Scorn.

(He was HATED.)

It promised Agony.

("Justice" had never been such a clear threat.)

Yet... it also seemed to, dismiss him.

(His Tattletale Lisa, free of stress and terror, carried into the sky.)

In a pale reflection of a place lost, built on land that rejected it, Lee stared at the sky.

He had long known he was growing empty.

Now though, with the light of divine fire shining down through him, he could feel how deep the pit within him had grown.

How greatly he had disgraced himself.

As he reflected, he felt the Oni leering over his shoulder.

Waiting for him to fold, to retreat into the numbness of it's embrace, hide from the pain, the shame.

Lee stared down at mask in his hands,

"No,"

At first he didn't know who had spoken, as he barely recognized the sound of his own voice.

The mask fell from his hands, they flexed as if testing a glove.

Lee looked up, and vanished.

The mask lay there on an empty rooftop, half-buried in green and red ash.

"Kayden-"

"No, Max." *Click*

Kaiser pulled the phone away from his ear and stared at it askance, "She hung up on me." he said numbly.

"Kayden... are you sure?" Theo asked as he sat on his suitcase.

She didn't answer immediately, instead staring down her cellphone on the coffee-table and gently rocking her little girl in her arms.

"...no, no I'm not." She swallowed a sob, "But I've figured out that for me, waiting to be sure, in this at least, has turned into looking for reasons to doubt."

At that moment her phone rang with an odd churning sound. Then it lit up, brighter than it should be able, it bathed the room in purple and gradients of blue-gold.

Theo startled at the light, Kayden gasped, and Aster laughed. The sound helped her mother to quickly muster herself, she spoke with as much firmness she could fit in her voice, "Please, help me protect my family."

And was blown out of the water by a voice that, while young, could only be called regal answered, "Ligh-trager is on his way, little light. Hold strong."

Out the apartment window Kayden glimpsed a gray light curve away from what an earlier call had told her was called-

The Chrysalis