"Door," he called into his empty office, then stepped through the glowing hole in space that appeared in front of him almost before he had finished the singular word.
It had been two days and so far, all signs pointed to the Simurgh being... well dead. They probably should have had this meeting sooner but if he was being honest, he was too busy celebrating with his husband for anything else. Then... then he was busy speaking to the bereaved. It wasn't the highest turnover of any Endbringer fight - but it was certainly the highest for a Simurgh fight, where most of the damage was caused after the fight by her bombs. And while he couldn't speak to everyone affected by the fight, he could at least talk to the families who had expected the Protectorate to make sure their loved ones got home.
It was only right that he be the one to inform them because ultimately, he was the one they trusted to do that. A task that he had never once succeeded at completely - but that he always tried to achieve regardless.
Looking fondly back into his office - an office he didn't need, and that was entirely too large for what he used it for - Legend exhaled slowly, before turning away from the glowing portal and continuing forward down the sterile grey hallway in Cauldron's hidden base of operations.
Even if 'operations' was a very fancy way of saying 'held meetings'.
With quick measured steps, he made his way up the hall towards the meeting room. Well, one of the meeting rooms. He was pretty sure the base was using a stolen floorplan for a PRT headquarters, so it inevitably had certain affectations.
Like having more than one meeting room for an organization of seven people.
As he traveled, he took note of the dust devil full of garbage swirling along the hall towards him, and politely stepped out of its way.
"Custodian." He greeted, before returning to walking. He always tried to walk places when he had the chance. Even in costume. Yes, he could fly, and yes, it was undoubtedly faster and more efficient in almost every possible way.
But it was also alienating. A man who refused to let his feet touch the ground while leading sent a very specific message to those below him. It would present him as contemptuous of walking. Contemptuous of getting down in the dirt with everyone else. Contemptuous of those beneath him.
There were, obviously, scenarios where it was helpful. Hovering over a criminal so that your shadow fell over them and blocked the sun was a favourite of his. Anything he could do to end a confrontation before it got violent was good in his book. Still, he wasn't fighting right now - he was just going to a meeting.
So he walked.
"Legend," Doctor Mother greeted him in her usual detached manner as he entered the meeting room and glanced around at everyone. He resisted the urge to roll his eyes at the woman. They'd known each other for years now, and she not only refused to use his actual name - which she definitely knew - but he had no idea what hers was. If it wasn't obvious that she was like this with everyone he would be afraid she was mad at him for something.
"Doctor Mother, Contessa, Kurt, Rebecca, David. Did I miss anything?" He greeted each of those present in turn before moving to his position at the table.
"No, we were just discussing how we should proceed with the Simurgh's apparent defeat," Kurt informed him while adjusting his glasses in a somewhat officious tone.
No one had ever asked the man to track the meeting minutes, but he did it anyway, and at this point, Legend was almost afraid to point it out.
"What's there to discuss? We won - finally - and it was even with a good-aligned team of parahumans! We don't even have to worry about what they might do after this because they aren't villains." He pointed out in confusion. Honestly, everything he had read about Nexus gave him the impression of someone who got it to him. Yes, she was certainly more affected by her agent than most if some of the things she professed to believe were true, but unlike so many of her peers, she didn't seem like she felt her powers put her above normality. Quite the opposite really. Her psyche profile had made multiple notes about ways to leverage her attachment to normality against her.
Honestly, he really didn't understand the difficulty. They beat an Endbringer. Not drove off, not survived, beat.
"Keith, it's not dead," Rebecca told him seriously, causing him to stiffen.
"Rebecca it didn't have a head. How is it alive?" He asked quickly.
"Its body isn't really a body. Just a... doll. Initial research looks like it was never alive in the first place." Doctor Mother took over the explanation. He looked to David for a minute to see how he was taking things and winced at the stormy expression on his face.
"So it's a- what a projection? a golem? Did a tinker make it?" He asked, mind racing. It would explain so much about the Endbringers if they were never alive in the first place. Their strange schedule. The fact that they only existed on this earth.
"We don't know." Doctor Mother said flatly.
"Why the hell not! We have its corpse in our basement for God's sake!" He countered, before calming himself. He wasn't an angry man. Not by nature. But all of his previous good cheer had completely vanished with this news.
"I still can't path her. I can path the corpse, but I still can't path the Simurgh in any way. It's not dead." Contessa put forth in her usual robotic tone.
Then she called for a door and walked out of the room like the rest of them didn't even exist.
He'd be annoyed by that but he knew how busy she was.
"There... you have it," Kurt told him tersely.
"So... what? Do we just cancel all the celebrations? Tell the world 'oops, my bad' and that not only is the Simurgh not dead, but that we aren't sure where it even is anymore? It's not floating around in space right now laughing at us is it?" He asked tensely. He wasn't being sarcastic or rude. He genuinely needed to know. As the Triumvirate, it would fall to them to break the news. He tried not to imagine the look his son would give him when he found out.
"No. We go forward like this. Anyone who tries to get a look at the sky to see if she's there will be able to tell she's gone. If she shows up again later, we'll deal with it then. We can't afford to lose this momentum. Protectorate recruitment is up twelve percent." Rebecca countered sternly.
"We can't just hide-" He started to say in protest.
"Even if she comes back later, no one will hold it against us. I already cleared it with Contessa. Edited footage of the fight is already going to newsrooms all across the country. We can't do anything about it going missing - but we can capitalize on it. We don't help anyone by dashing their hopes like that." Rebecca explained with a touch of tiredness in her voice. He understood her reasoning but still, the damage the Endbringer could cause while everyone thought it was dead...
"David, what do you think?" He asked, trying very hard not to sound like a child asking one parent for something when the first had already rebuffed them.
"...I think I need another booster shot." His taciturn friend eventually said, glancing at Doctor Mother.
"I'll have the Custodian bring one up." She replied with a nod.
"David." He repeated sternly.
"I don't know, okay?! You were there at the end, she could have taken us both out at any time! That fucking thing was holding back the whole time!" David sneered tiredly at him before sighing.
"Look just... let's keep an eye on that girl from Brockton. Even if she didn't kill it, she was more successful than any of us were." He said finally. Rebecca immediately made a face as though she had just bitten into a raw lemon.
"Yes her projection was very forthright about it too." She noted tersely.
Silence reigned in the room for a moment, and then Keith clapped his hands together, drawing their attention to himself.
"Our next order of business. Obviously, we'll still have to dome Canberra-"