Archive Mutants & Masterminds: The Magisterium - Home is Where...

[Dawn OOC]

“I don’t have anyone who can compel you to stay.” David crossed his arms and frowned as he admitted, “But perhaps Rebekka or Sonora can break her brainwashing. If the group of you doesn’t wish to stay, that’s one thing, but I won’t allow you to betray us. And yes, it was a risk. I’d take it again to help you gain your freedom. All war is a risk, and this is definitely a war we’re fighting here. Do you have any further suggestions?”

---

Tyrone was somewhat less subtle than Rebekka. The warper’s hand darted under the table and grabbed her foot. Grinning like a dark-skinned Viking, Tyrone pulled her toward him. With her foot in his lap, he started to rub her ankles, his fingers playing over her smooth skin. “I’m sure you have a lot to contribute as well.”

Jack seemed to ignore his companion’s antics as he said to the illusionist, “Sorona, we’re actually hoping you’d be willing to help. There are a number of things you can do to help, starting with helping us with the mission we have coming up.” He glanced at the young girl, who was rolling her eyes at her brother’s shenanigans. “There will be no shortage of things we’ll need from you. All of you. Even young Ty-ty here does her part.”

“I’m a soldier!” The girl was clearly excited to be one, too, from the pleased grin on her mocha face. “I was born free.”

“And you’ll always be free.” Tyrone had stopped his flirtation with Rebekka to look at his sister and repeated a vow he’d given her hundreds of times. “Always.”

---

“I hate them too.” May’s voice was low and hard, full of venom and anger. “They have done so much harm; there are generations of our people who will always bear the scars that they gave us. And then they took you away from me. I want to make them pay for that. I want to make them pay for that for five years – but I’ll settle for killing them and spend that time with you, instead.”

She drew him closer and held him close, trying to soothe some of the pain caused by her mere presence. She couldn’t fix it all. There was no way to remove five years of loss and replace it. Perhaps in time, this would be a memory that ached instead of burning, but for now, the flames of their pain and anger burned bright.

[Grav]

"I will see if they can help. If they cannot, well, I'm glad we understand each other David."

She nodded. Do you happen to know where they are, exactly? That way we can begin. I'm tired, sore, and Physically need my rest. As that progresses my hold will slip."

[Jeremy]

Jeremy found her behavior reminding him almost of snatches of college lessons and history professors droning. Finally, he came to the decision as he hung around, and started asking questions. "So what recipe are you making? And... sorry if this is rude... how old are you?"

[z024]

She finished the rope and hung up the deer by his antlers, tying it off so that it hung at a comfortable height. One of the larger stone bowls was place underneath and a sharp stone knife made precise cuts on the hide so that the blood ran down in a small rivulet perfectly into the bowl. She glance over at him and shrugged as she began cutting into the animal, carefully removing organs and placing them in one or another of two other large bowls.

"There's not a precise recipe, as I don't know this jungle. Some of the herbs, I do not know their names in this language. They will keep the meat sweet and tender as it cooks, the blood and some of the fruit and berries and spices will make a...a sauce? Something to soak the meat that will be smoked for later in. It, too, keeps it soft and sweet once it has been smoked. The other fruit can be eaten today during the meal and the spices left can be dried for later. I will skin the deer and see what is needed with it, and boil the bones for broth. Then I will grind the bones and hooves and any part not to be eaten that will rot to put in the earth where I will start a garden. The antlers...I think I shall use them for candle-holders in the main room, unless there is another need for them." She nodded, reviewing everything in her mind to make she had portioned out a use for each part of the animal. She had removed all the organs now and began expertly skinning the deer, peeling the hide from the muscle with delicate precision.

She was quiet while she finished that task, then went to the stream and gathered two bowls of water, handing one to him when she returned and motioning for him to help her wash down the carcass. "You wish to know how old I am?" she mused. "That would take time for me to answer exactly. I would have to count many many days before there were records of days and years and centuries. I am old. When I was little, these tools would have been considered the finest craftsmanship anyone had ever seen. There were not so many of us at all and there were not tents or cottages or big buildings like we just left. I traveled with my family and my descendants across the jungle and forest, and we learned how to capture the animals we hunted to keep them close and the secret of seeds and the earth to grow the other foods that we ate. Eventually we grew too many, and we split and split, finding different places to hunt and grow and live. I traveled between the tribes of my children for many generations. Eventually some settled in a valley between two great rivers and began to do many new things." She smiled and began cutting the deer into sections, laying them on the hide on the ground, and crushing herbs in her hands to rub them down with.

"It became 'agriculture' and 'shepherding' and 'writing' and 'cities' and 'kingdoms'. I was old before any of these began." She kept moving as she spoke, putting the herbs, vegetables, fruits, and berries she'd gathered into different bowls to dry in the afternoon heat or be set under shade until the meal. She started a fire in the grill and set the bowl of blood, to which she added spices and berries and some of the fat scraped from the hide, over the burning branches, then returned to cutting the meat from the bones. "Does that answer your question, Jeremy?" she asked honestly, unsure if he desired some exact number or if there was another reference she could give that he would understand.

[Jeremy]

"I... think that generally does." Jeremy admitted. Even with the various mutant appearances and powers present in their kind, there was something astonishing about a woman who had seen it all, older than writing and farming even. "Anything else I can do to help?"

She smiled and directed him to help slice up slabs of the meat for marination. "You know," he went on... "Thousands and thousands of years for you... versus little more than twenty for me. One ordinary young man, white-bread suburbs of Washington DC, etcera, etcera. Until I decided to visit Venice, see the canals, get Italian food from the source- and everything changed."

From the sudden bitter twist in his voice, it wasn't hard to see what he meant by change.

[z024]

"Venice, so that city is still there," she said lightly, stepping around the wounds they both shared. "Washington D.C., that is the American capital, yes? I heard it mentioned during the Zweite Welt Kriege some times, and then after, when I was taken by the Americans." She was putting meat and the edible organs on the grill now, the sizzle and smell of spice meat cooking spreading through the area. She stirred the thickening marinade and added a bowl of vegetables to the grill, this one with a lid to keep in the moisture and steam tougher roots instead of burning them on the open flames.

"You wanted to 'track the food to its source'? You are cook, then?" She was always moving, tending all the food and making sure each part of the large meal was cooked or turned or moved from the heat of the fire at just the right time. She glanced over at him, puzzling out that 'white bred' must refer to his people's skin color and that they kept their bloodlines separate from others, but the other part she simply had no clue to understand. "What is 'suburbs'?"

[Jeremy]

Jeremy quirked his lip, realizing the woman had obviously been imprisoned for a long time, and his lifetime of modern slang and language would need to be much more heavily scrutinized and explained lest Lamia be befuddled. And certainly he knew better than to ask for how long she'd been held.

"To answer the questions in order... I'm not a cook, not by profession anyway, or as a personal interest. The restaurants that served Italian food- restaurants are places where you can come and pay to have a place to sit and they'll cook and serve you whatever you order from the list- the ones I knew in my youth were alright, but naturally the Italian food is better in Italy, I figured. And a suburb... it's a smaller city or a town in the relative vicinity of a major city. In my case, I lived in Gaithersburg, only 30 miles away from DC.... I don't know if you've heard of cars and airplanes, but they make travel much swifter."

[z024]

She chuckled, "I do know restaurants, those have been around nearly as long as cities." Her tone was light and teasing, "It is hard sometimes. I learned this language mostly from the Americans, so I know some from before then and then what I could pick up from the doctors and soldiers and..." She trailed off, some of the light dimming from her chatter. She cooked quietly for a moment, using most of the rest of the bowls to hold the cut meats and marinade she poured over them. She moved much of the meat to the edges of the cooking space on the grill, to keep it warm but slow the cooking, and placed more of the steak cuts for the meal to start cooking in the center.

"So, I understand many things, but I will ask like I did before if I don't know what a word means." She smiled again, forcing a bit of the cheerfulness. "I do remember cars, mostly that they smelled quite foul and I preferred a good horse. Airplanes...they are the flying machines, yes? I remember their sounds and the bombs, mostly. They are used for travel now, instead of war? Or both?"

Softer vegetables and some of the fruits were laid on the edges of the grill now as well, signalling that the main meal would be ready in twenty minutes or so. "We should gather the others soon, or the food will be cold when they get here. It is a pity that we have only water here. I will see if I can find the right plants in the jungle and will start brews for later meals." She glanced over at Matt, "Might a goat or some other milk animal be kept to make cheeses?"

[Dawn OOC]

“No clue.” David didn’t seem upset by this lack of knowledge but then he was a man of action. He proved that by pushing off the wall and offering her his arm in an overly gallant gesture. “Shall we go find them?” Chaos eyed the offering before deciding to take it in the humor in which it had been extended. Taking his arm, she let him walk her into the hall.

It was there that they ran into Mary, already babbling about her ideas. “Slow down,” David laughed. Despite fighting with Amanda, the stress of the operation and the emotional beating he’d taken from May, David was pleased to see mutants here. He was happy to see them excited and brimming with ideas. Oh, they had problems too, but he was going to help them. “Slow down, and walk with Chaos and I while we find Rebekka or Sorona.” He offered his other arm to Mary; when she took it, they went off again, while David’s heart swelled as if he were starting on a glorious, exciting journey. In a way, he was, a journey he’d envisioned when they told him his sister had died. That had been the day he knew that mutants had to be born free.

They found the other two women in the planning room, sitting with Jack and Tyrone and Ty-ty. “Jack! Tyrone! Why are you guys working and dragging poor little Ty-ty along?” The girl in question ran up to David and threw her arms around his waist; her eyes gleamed as she looked up at her crush. David released Mary to put a friendly arm over Ty-ty’s shoulders. “I know that she knows when to stop working. C’mon, put this stuff away and take the night off. We had a good day and we need our rest.”

“Sounds good to me. Wanna come rest with me?” Tyrone asked Rebekka with a raunchy grin.

“Not so fast, I need to talk with her.” David made a wait-a-moment gesture to Mary and added, “Or rather Chaos does.” With his eyes, he opened the floor to Grav’s current occupant.

---

Matt had finished some minor touches on Lamia’s house while she’d been hunting; now he sat casually on the ground, his legs crossed. He had mumbled something about making sure her grill worked right but Lamia was pretty sure he just wanted to relax and socialize for a while. When Lamia asked her question, he grinned and said, “We can just steal you some cheese, if you want cheese.”

“I don’t want you to steal some cheese, I want to make it. You know, craft it with my own hands.” She tilted her head at him. “Don’t you enjoy making things, like this house?”

Matt’s smile softened and she realized how young he was. “Yeah. Yeah, I like this. I was going to be a mechanic – car repairman, before I got the stone powers. I wanted to work for Dale Ernhart or one of the big names, fixing racecars. Wouldn’t have minded driving them either.” For a moment, he looked like a young man contemplating life; then the dreamy look faded and was replaced by a warrior’s expression. “But yeah, working on the house is nice too. I’m happy to work on anyone’s room, adding whatever they need.”

[z024]

The ancient woman rinsed her hands in a bowl of water set aside for such things, then stepped behind Matt and bent over to wrap her arms around him, her chin resting on his shoulder. "You shall be as Vulcan, Ptah, and Ucuetis, Matt - masters of the earth and makers of wonders." She motioned to the newly-born outdoor kitchen and tables. "Already, you make homes and hearths and the places where people become families. This is a great thing."

She squeezed his shoulders, "And one day you shall show me these 'race' cars that you will make and we will race them through the jungle or the plains or in the cities or anywhere we wish." Grinning up at Jeremy, she included him in her predictions. "And Jeremy-who-is-not-a-cook, he will join us and find his place and passion, too. He traveled across the great ocean to taste the foods of Italy. Perhaps he is the younger brother of Min or Neptune or Hasamelis, and will seek out all the untrod paths in the world?"

[Jeremy]

Matt was looking a little creeped out, not by the hug Lamia gave him, Jeremy noted, as it didn't quite emerged until Lamia began to speak the whole allusions to mythological gods. Or perhaps not so mythological in a sense, if mutants like Lamia had been active.

"Gods? That's kinda..." Matt groped for the words he was trying to say, but Jeremy grinned a little to clarify. "She's just saying you'll get the chance to become a master craftsman someday. Though traveling for me... sounds fun, but that's more Mercury, if I remember right."

"Though since you brought out that elephant into the room- so to speak.." Jeremy continued, trying to divert Lamia's past experiences into a more pleasant light, "Have you ever been a goddess at any point?"

[z024]

Lamia's brows drew together in confusion as she puzzled out the elephant comment, then nodded. "Oh, yes." Her lips thinned and she stepped away from Matt, pacing through the gathering area, working her way back to tending the food as she spoke. "It was why Theodosius had me and my children killed or imprisoned. How could he tout the divinity of the dead god of the fish when my priests and priestesses could visit me? When I did not die to Roman justice? When my children played in the world, working miracles for their faithful and reigning destruction on their enemies?"

She sighed as she began transferring food to large platters, motioning Jeremy and Matt both to set out plates and cups for dinner. "We had become decadent, though. Complacent and careless, seeing only one another as any threat. 'What harm could a dead god do?' 'What mortal prince would dare anger the gods?' We never thought of how many they had grown or how much easier it would be for a mortal to wrest the hearts and souls of our followers because his god was dead. He could do no wrong because he could do nothing."

"'Absence makes all things bright and perfect.' A Chaldean poet spoke of such things to me once, after a pilgrimage to meet me as Kishar, mother of the gods." She sighed, "He was a sweet man and stayed with me until he grew old and wished to see his homeland again before he died."

She took the last of the food for dinner from the grill and set the cooling stone bowls on the table. "Yes, I am a goddess," she answered again and nodded to the two of them, "and you are my children, gods. Or mutant," the word twisted from her mouth with distaste, "if you wish to use the words of lesser peoples. It is what we are: we shape the world, give it form and movement as we will. Each child is different, each gift always different in some way. I did not mean to say that Vulcan and Ucuetis and Ptah were all the same man or even men alike. They lived in different times and places and had varied gifts, but they all sought to create and shape the world and their gifts aided them. Likewise Min and Neptune and Hasamelis and precocious Mercury, who all were lent to travel and barely could sit still long enough to share a meal or spend a month with a single lover."

She stepped back, surveying the results of their labors: a simple feast, but a bountiful one, cooling in the afternoon breeze. She wiped a stray bit of charred grease from her hands and nodded, pleased. "We should gather the others while everything cools down to an edible temperature."

[Grav]

Chaos looked at Rebekka, and she nodded. "I have at least nine other personalities in her with me vying for control of a single body. Several of them, including the most dominant one, are direct enemies to this group, and if they are the ones who emerge in control in an unguarded situation, This entire facility and everyone here will be at risk."

"IS there anything that you can do with your gifts to remove, or at least consolidate or confine the other me's inside?"

[Rebekka Van der Vyse]

Rebekka had smiled at the exuberant girl, though the smile was tinged with melancholy at the thought of her being a soldier. She had been born and raised in Africa, and had traveled the continent extensively to extend South Africa's influence - she had witnessed the horror of child soldiers. Even to one who had never had a child of her own - though had the experiences of raising many - and who raveled in degradation and pain, she found the idea abhorrent.

But she didn't dwell on the dark thoughts long, far more interested in Ty-Ty's brother. She flirted back with ease and delight, deft fingers kneading the strong muscles in Tyrone's neck and shoulders, the honey hue of her fingers contrasting attractive with his dark tone.

When David and Grav joined them in the Planning Room, Rebekka gave them a languorous nod in greeting, lips curved teasingly, her aristocratic tones suggestive. "Oh, I'm quite willing to 'talk' and 'rest' with all of you..."

But as Grav - or Chaos - explained her situation, Rebekka sat up straight, holding herself in a professional manner, her accented voice growing clipped and clinical... Which was quite at odds with the hand hidden under the table that she slipped between Tyrone's thighs.

"Directly... no. I'm afraid, my... gifts don't run in that direction. I may be able to negotiate with your alters, to put you back in control in their own self-interest. However, I do have expansive experience in psychology and psychiatry. Depending on the root cause for your Dissociative Identity Disorder and whether it is bound to the activated alleles enabling your mutagenic powers, with time, I believe I can merge your personalities into one. Alternatively, I can craft or control the triggers that bring each alter to the fore."

The exotic beauty smiled faintly, rolling a hand back and forth in thought, a wry glint in her tilted, lavender eyes. "There is another way, perhaps. I can give you - this you - a stronger reason for wanting to stay in control. I assure you, you'll quite enjoy the experience." Her grin widened mischievously. "Likewise - depending on the specifics of your disorder - I may be able to give your alters reasons for not wanting to be in control. However, these would just be treating the symptoms and not the cause."

[Jeremy]

"I'll start gathering the dinner party." Jeremy assured Lamia, before stepping away and heading off. It also gave him temporary privacy to consider her words. It was a little off-putting to hear her refer to them as her children, though in a sense she probably was an ancestor of at least some of the mutants gathering in the shelter of the Guatemalan temple.

The other thing was the word 'gods.' Jeremy didn't disagree that humanity was lesser, but that did not mean they not have teeth of their own. Lamia had acknowledged that in her words, but Jeremy still wondered.

Whatever. Right now, he was hungry for venison and veggies, and he could debate the mutant condition and philosophical linguistics later. Jeremy poked his head in down the corridors of the temple tunnels at the war room. "Lamia made dinner. you might want to get to her cottage outside before the meat gets cold."

They told him where May's room but not to disturb her - fair enough, he could guess that Travis was there and what would be going on - so he began heading back to take up his own advice.

[SalmonMax]

Mary complied with David and held her tongue for the moment, though just walking around the old stone walls of the pyramid was making her excited again. So many questions to ask, and she felt that the answers would, for maybe the first time ever, let her DO new things, try new ideas, maybe make life a little better for people.

[Dawn OOC]

“Let’s take this upstairs.” David’s suggestion was delivered as a suggestion not an order. Command came easily to him, but so did friendship. “I’m curious to see what food Lamia has made for us.”

“It’s not that exotic, just a deer,” Jeremy said.

“Ewwww!” Ty-ty looked horrified. “She cooked Bambi?”

“No, it was Bambi’s mother that got killed.” Tyrone was reluctantly rising, offering a hand to Rebekka to make his interest and hopeful claim on her company clear. “Bambi’s still kicking.”

“So… we’re going to eat his mother?!” Ty-ty asked.

“Apparently, and she’ll be delicious.” David tapped her on the nose fondly as he added, “Just give it a try. You may like it.”

The young girl sighed. “Okkkkaaaay… I gueeeess.”

“That’s my girl,” David said, giving her another hug. He led the group up to the forest. Tyrone helped with Jack, picking him up and carrying him to the surface so that he could join them. Soon, everyone was settled around Lamia’s kitchen, smelling grilled meat. “Mary,” David said as he turned to her. “What did you want to ask me?”

[SalmonMax]

Mary took a deep breath, trying to collect her thoughts. The smell of the food was making it hard to concentrate.

"Okay," she started, "I was looking around, and I found a room with a very loud machine that was basically burning liquid in quick little...puffs...and everything was connected to it with cables so I think it was the generator Matt mentioned. So I made a bigger can of the liquid it burns and I was watching it until I couldn't breathe. I can tell that there's a lot of carbon and hydrogen and all these other things I've never even SEEN before, and it kept breaking apart when the oxygen in the air hit it and making a terrible smell. I just really wanted to know how it works though. Because I feel like...I don't know. When I was looking at it, it seemed like it needed something else to work right. Maybe something in the machine? But then I thought, if I just understood all this, I could do so much more with it."

[Gold]

Gold listened with one ear to the conversation taking place outside the hut. Most of him was inside, watching the flower and wondering how long it took for such a thing to die. And what it would feel like.

He often wondered about that. The pits were always close up affairs unless he grabbed a gun from someone, but as that never led to entertaining battles, the owners quickly banned sponsors from providing firearms to their men. So because of that, Gold got to watch a lot of people die, up close and personal.

In every case there came a moment, a point of transition from where fight remained in them to where they knew their wounds were mortal. Nobody reacted the same way, of course. Some were fighters at heart and responded by expending what they had left in a futile effort to bring Gold down with them. Others broke down and cried. A few just crawled across the sand, reaching, reaching… but for what?

There was this one kid – he was sixteen at most – who entered of his own volition to try and prove himself. Gold saw him from his cage the moment they dropped the curtains, and thought even then that he would be the last to die, and not for any good reason.

Once the collar buzzed and his veins burned with fire it became hard to stay still. He wanted to bounce, to leap, to drive and smash and dance between futures that no longer stayed in the back of his mind. Those were nightmares he lived through. Once or twice there were battles fought with his mind perpetually five seconds ahead of ‘now’, dragging his body behind it like so much deadweight behind a tugboat.

Maybe the kid never came to a fight to see what it looked like. Maybe he just thought he was tougher than he was. Gold pegged him as some sort of gang-banger. Once the first man died he lost his bottle quick. He was begging before Gold came for him.

It was like a Roman coliseum. Gold stood over this kid, still twitching uncontrollably from the shit the collar was pumping into him, and the kid just shook and shook. He remembered making himself look up, as if asking the crowd for the script.

And up there was The Brit. Gold never knew the man’s name. Everybody just called him The Brit, at least inside earshot of Gold’s cage. He was grinning and dancing about like a madman, the ringmaster of the whole deadly circus. There and then he did this queer spin and gave an exaggerated thumb down.

The place went wild, lost in the moment.

To the boy’s credit he tried, realizing they weren’t letting him out. He grabbed a knife from the sand and lunged at Gold’s belly. Gold kneed him in the hand on the way in, breaking all of his fingers and splintering his forearm down to the elbow.

He remembered catching the knife in the crook of his foot as it fell, flipping it into the air. He rammed his forearm into the boy’s face, spun, grabbed the knife out of the air, and rammed it home into the kid’s belly, twisted, ripped sideways, almost did that whole seppuku ritual. He never got to the heart, though. Instead he shredded organs, lacerated the stomach. The sort of thing you don’t get back up from.

And afterwards, when ‘then’ became ‘now’ again, and the collar shut down so he could really think straight, he watched the boy crawl on his stomach, blood pouring from his mouth. He kept trying to say something. And he reached, stretched his arm out as far as he could.

Gold was there, off to one side, watching when the light went out of the kid’s eyes. But he reached until that moment.

He wondered what it felt like, dying. Pain was nothing like dying, he figured. Pain meant you were alive. Death, on the other hand, made itself distinctive by being ever-silent. Zombie apocalypse aside, the dead never bothered anyone. Not physically at least.

Rising, Gold closed his hand on the flower he picked, wondering what it would feel like when he died.

Outside, Lamia was on her own, tending to bowls filled with food that made his stomach growl. It occurred to him that he had yet to eat. For a moment he saw himself strangling her, but he blinked it away.

Gold approached, uncertain of how to address the – apparently – very, very old woman. He wondered if age jokes would be appropriate. Probably not. Don’t know any good ones, anyway.

Then he hit on something, something which should have fit for both of them and might make for a good opener to conversation. He felt it was a stroke of genius.

He found a place to sit, sliding into vision from in front and the side to make sure she didn’t see him as a threat. The smell of cooked meat, fresh cooked meat, made his mouth water and brought his senses alive. He dropped down, still clad in his bloodied and slightly burnt prison clothes, and looked over at her.

“So, you’re really, really old, right?”

The woman regarded him with a somewhat amused expression. “Not as old as the mountains, but old by your counting, yes.”

“Good enough for me. How did they do vengeance back in the day?”

[z024]

She paused, but not from shock. She was thinking. "Well, it would depend on the offense. More minor things, they could go through the justice of whomever was in charge, courts in the later days. That usually meant taking away another's things - lands, herds, other wealth, reputation. Titles," she waved her hand, showing how little she thought of such things. "But true vengenance, not just petty offenses? There's always killing the other person, I suppose. If you're angrier than that, you could maim them, leave them crippled and disfigured to live with their pain. Others might kill the family of the offender as punishment, or along with the person vengeance was sworn on to ensure that their line ended with them."

She eyed the golden-hued man curiously, "Violence, simply. An ending of that which the other holds dear. But in the end, it is always whatever you think will salve your pain and balance the world for you again. It does not always work - there are wounds that do not heal save with time or your own death. What would satisfy you?"

The others were heading towards them now, save for Travis and his no-longer-lost love; Lamia left the plates out for them, to remember to set food aside for someone to take to them. She motioned for Gold to join her at the table, choosing a seat near John Howstead for a chance to speak with him as well. She frowned as the former British knight shifted uncomfortably and refused to meet her eyes when she smiled at him. Perhaps talk will need to wait for later, after the others have left.

She turned back to Gold as the platters were passed around for people to take food from, curious to what his answer would be.

[Gold]

What would satisfy me? Question of the hour, that.

He remembered the answer he gave to someone that never existed, and who was not at the table yet. Travis’ shapeshifting girlfriend asked him that, or something close enough as to make no matter.

Sitting down at the table like a civilized being made him feel a bit strange. Eating with other people made him feel even stranger, like his clothes were scratchy on his skin all of a sudden.

After downing a couple of mouthfuls of deer, he shrugged. “I don’t do vengeance. It’s a waste of fucking time far as I’m concerned. There are a couple of people I’d like to kill, but I don’t know if I’d call it vengeance. More like… spring back.”

Lamia quirked her eyebrow at him.

“Uh, like throwing a ball at a wall. Um, action, reaction shit. Doubt I’ll ever get a chance at those guys, though and I’m not bothered enough to go looking. Just faceless goons for the most part, the ones who caught me and caged me. Doesn’t seem right to get away with a thing like that, especially not when the first round of guys didn’t.” He said the words with no hint of anger, in the same calm voice he always used, and with the same placid facial expression.

“I asked because I overheard you talking vengeance back out in the savannah over there.” He gestured off somewhere at the horizon. “Or wherever the fuck we were. You got any special heads for the chopping block?”

[Rebekka Van der Vyse]

Rebekka accepted Tyrone's hand gladly, flowing to her feet with sensual grace, lips spreading in a slow smile as she returned his interest. In the aftermath of her escape, her body had responded with instinctive desire to the incipient danger surrounding the likes of Travis, Fenris, and Gold. But then again, she nearly always did. It did not mean it was the only pleasure she enjoyed - she craved darker desires no more than she craved air, there was little point in railing against it.

"Agreed," Rebekka purred, licking her lips, "I'm famished."

It wasn't food she was hungry for. It rarely was. She ate more for fun, the experience, the socializing that went on around a meal. She had other means of deriving sustenance.

With Tyrone picking up Jack and carrying him to the surface, Rebekka glided along at his side, Ty-Ty beside her, trudging along with suspicious exuberance. Rebekka grinned down at her, bemused by her crush on Sol. She had had her own childhood crushes, many of them, before her sexual awakening. She had even managed to make a few of them come to fruition.

The sight of the miniscule villa and the garden statuary had Rebekka murmuring appreciatively. She pouted slightly, considering the dismal state of their lodgings in the ruined temple, but reassured that they could be remedied. "Now, Matt's a handy one to have around, hmm?" Rebekka opined with a grin. "Our own personal Michelangelo and Frank Lloyd Wright. I can see you being as busy as Mary here is going to be in short enough time."

Rebekka sat close next to Tyrone, opposite Jack, unabashed about her proclivities. She only took a tiny portion of meat, though the way she ate the succulent morsels made Tyrone acutely aware of what else she would be able to do with those lips.

The deer was good, though hardly exceptional compared to some of the memories she had of spectacular meals. Tuning out the talk of vengeance - she planned on exacting vengeance on one particular person, but didn't want to dwell on it at the moment - she mused that she had never slept with a truly excellent cook - a number of decent amateurs perhaps, but never a renowned professional. I'll have to remedy that.

Mary's excitement over the generator, and the potential it suggested to the sheltered girl made Rebekka smile. She leaned around Tyrone so she give the girl her full attention. "Well then, Mary, we'll just have to see about getting you taught. I've attended several universities and colleges in my time, in a variety of subjects. It would be my pleasure to explain things." Her grin turned mischievous and she waggled her finely-shaped eyebrows, her hand sliding around Tyrone's thigh once more. "Explain any number of things."

[z024]

She thought about that for a moment, pausing with a berry perched just in front of her lips, then shook her head. "No one specific, I think. I killed the doctors and soldiers that had been most recently assigned to me, and the others in that place are most likely in very uncomfortable positions at the moment." She glanced at David and Travis, then shrugged, "Those that are still alive, at any rate."

"My tormentors were human. Time is, eventually, the cruelest weapon I can wield against them. They will grow old and feel their bodies fail them and die. I will not." A hard glitter entered her eye, "Now, for all of them as one? I will destroy their towers and castles, their fields and flocks, their monuments to stolen greatness built on the enslavement of my children. I will tear down the world they have built, the lies and the secrets they hide themselves in and every false hope they have ever had that they could be the masters of my children. I take from them everything they hold dear and make it ashes and dance to the wailing of their despair."

The moment of viciousness passed and she shrugged again, "But individually? They are not worth that sort of thought. Not for me, at least. Far more important are my children that are still enslaved or lost, and freeing them will be the vengeance that makes the humans weep in terror and awe."

[Jeremy]

Jeremy sat, chewing on his food and trying to decide where he stood on this divide. Humanity had its comeuppance coming, inevitably, the DEHA even if revealed, would make its play for paranoia and xenophobia. There was the chance otherwise, and he supposed if it happened, he'd advise against all-out war. For the sake of the mutants dying in such a conflagration.

Still, if war it was, he could deliver support. The concern that bothered him though really. "Except for those who don't want to be freed, I'm worried about. Many, program babies like Mary, haven't been able to see otherwise until we really break the binders. It's those who should know better, have seen and suffered, but still actively try to bring the same slavery to the rest of their kind. I know there's enough of them to make a serious mess of things, and that's the frustrating part."

[SalmonMax]

"I'm not a baby," Mary complained, as she was sitting right there. "And here's something I don't understand. Now, the way this was all explained was that most people don't even know people like us even exist. But you're all talking like everyone is to blame for all the bad things the doctors did. That seems really unfair to me. It's like...you're all going to get back at the doctors...okay...but then you'll start getting back at everyone else too. And they won't know why...so then they'll think WE'RE the bad ones, just like we think the doctors are bad now. And then THEY'LL want to get back at all of the people like US. Even the ones who never even tried to fight."

"Can't you just stop them from hurting people, and leave it at that?"

[Grim]

He was running.

It was easy to lose track of Fenris in all the excitement for the others. Both rescuers and rescued were awash with relief and release of tension when they'd made the final jump to this jungle hideaway. By remaining quiet, responding in the terse affirmative to any inquiries about his injuries, and exuding stillness - never a hard trick for the half-wild mutant - he'd been overlooked as everyone had dispersed. Lamia and a few others had remained above ground, the rest had followed David down into the cave-like entrance of the headquarters. If a member of either party had glanced around for the large man, they'd have likely shrugged and assumed Fenris had gone the other way. But he hadn't - he was running.

The feral mutant tore the fatigue shirt off, leaving himself barechested as he covered the ground with amazing speed, exulting in the freedom - true freedom, not the illusion he was given sometimes on his missions. Another jungle, but no smell of salt air save very distantly. Another jungle, but he ran through this one not to patrol or with an objective in mind, but simply to feel the wind on his face and the scents of the wood in his nostrils. Before he stopped, he was already ten miles from Sol's base, chest barely moving as he breathed easily and looked back down the valley to where the stone pyramind was barely visible even to him.

He could keep running, he realised. He could disappear into these jungles. This rainforest ran all the way down to the Amazon river, to places where civilised man didn't go very often, where even primitive man needed others of his kind to survive. Not so with Fenris, crafted by some immortal hand or eye to survive anything and anywhere. Nobody would find him - those that did would regret it. And yet he paused.

It wasn't the thought of isolation that bothered him. His soul was as resilient as his body in that regard. He didn't need the company of his own kind, he knew that. And yet... and yet he wondered how much more he could be if he did have peers. He wondered how stunted he'd become through isolation in his glass and white stone cells over the years. The old KGB-implanted obedience conditioning was as much a ghost as that long-defunct agency, but how else had it affected him.

If he kept running, he'd never find out.

He took a roundabout route back, learning the territory. He scented every creature present, learned where the edible food was, imprinted the lay of the land on his mind so that he knew where the gulleys and deadfalls were, his mind designing ambushes and kill zones. When he was done, he headed straight for the smell of cooking meat, his amazing sense of hearing picking up the conversation as he approached. His approach was soundless, but more than that it was as though he blended with the movement of the air and the flicker of the flames so that it was almost, but not quite, invisibility.

"It's not that easy." he said in answer to Mary earnest question as he sat down beside her, his shimmering pale gaze sweeping around those present. His quiet voice held a hint of his native accent, but that was all. "We will be fighting a fire with squirt-guns, as you might say. Whoever takes the passive posture in a war will lose, Mary, isn't it?" He nodded as Mary nodded. "And this is a war, and it is a war they have started. How does one put out a fire?" he asked, eyes level on hers, changing from blue to green and back again in the flickering light.

[SalmonMax]

"Stop drop and roll," she said automatically, parroting an old safety film they'd let her watch. Then she added, "Or, with a fire extinguisher of the right rating." The girl shook her head. "I don't get it. But what I mean...like it's what you just said. THEY started it. But who are THEY? That's what I don't think anyone's being clear about. Are you fighting everyone, or just the ones that hurt us and lied to us?"

[Jeremy]

"Right now, it's just the DEHA and their national branches." Jeremy said seriously. "But the fact of our existence once revealed isn't necessarily any guarentee for protection. There are nations that don't have mutants and would want them, and undoubtedly, the DEHA could make the claim they're keeping us imprisoned for humanity's good. That sort of thing tends to play well."

[SalmonMax]

"But now you're just saying 'maybe this' and 'maybe that,'" protested Mary. "You're really going to just attack people because 'maybe' they'd do something bad if they knew about us?"

[z024]

Lamia smiled at Fenris as he emerged from the jungle and slipped onto the bench next to Mary, then shook her head. "This did not start with Deha. It began with Theodosius, an upstart emperor of the Romans that decided to follow the fish-" At the blank looks from several at the table, Lamia bit back some of her bile to say the words, "He followed the teachings of the Jew that has become called Jesus the Christ, and insisted that he was a god and the only god that was allowed to be worshiped in Rome. He sent armies to take the true gods and kill us or lock away those that would not die, so that his dead god would be the only god that the Romans and those they conquered could ever know."

She chewed thoughtfully on a piece of flank, then glanced back to Mary. "You are young and have been sheltered. Humans fear. They most especially fear that which they cannot control. It is instinct. Survival. Even if some small group might welcome our return, most will fear. Deha will use that, just as Theodosius used fear and wealth to forge armies that would defy living gods for a dead one." She shook her head, "It is the natural order that the strong and clever and powerful survive while the weak die out, slowly or quickly. Humans are intelligent, they know this and see it as clearly as us, and unless they have become strangely docile over the past eras, they will not submit to a natural order where they are not the most powerful creature in the world. They have lived too long secure in their position, just as I and my children had."

"War is here." Her eyes were dark, hooded, but her voice was steady. "Deha will oppose us, and most men will choose their blood and their kind over forgotten or unknown gods." She nodded to Fenris, "To put out a fire, you must take from it the air, the earth, or the dry heat. You must take away that which creates it. It is the same in war, which was what he was trying to teach you. You must take from your enemy the ability to fight. You must take the fields and cities that support their armies, the soldiers that fill the battlefields, and the faith of the people to fight. Barring that," again her expression became one of a annoyed distaste, "you must kill everyone."

"It is wasteful, if the people of your enemies will submit, but in a contest of survival there is not the luxury of failure."

[Dawn OOC]

David remained silent, watching the mutants and relishing in the conversation he created by the hard work and execution of his plan. Though he had many opinions about their discussion, he remained silent. When Matt opened his mouth to speak, David caught his eye and shook his head. He wanted to hear what the newest residents of the temple would say. Their point of view would be very important in the coming days - and for David's long-term plans. This conversation would tell him how to approach each of them with his idea.

He needed as many of them as he could get.

[SalmonMax]

Mary just gaped at Lamia and blurted, "That's terrible." She looked around at the others, visibly shaken. "Is that what all of you want? Is that why we were brought here? I can't...do that. I won't."

She pushes back away from the table, getting more upset as the words sink in, and looks at David...who seems to be the authority present. She's clearly becoming afraid, but there's defiance in her eyes too. "I won't lead them to you, but I can't be part of something like that."

[Grim]

"Be calm." the words were softly spoken, but held a firm note that reached the young woman. "Lamia was simply outlining the options to be taken when fighting a war. Genocide is not on my preferred list of tactics - on a pragmatic note if for no other reason." He looked up at Mary. "Wars of extinction are wasteful and inelegant, because the enemy has literally nothing to lose by fighting on to the bitter end. The facisti learned this in Stalingrad - they came to wipe the Rodina clean in the name of their ethnic war, and in the face of annihilation the Soviet Union fought back even though we had not the weapons, the power of our attackers. Consider also what else such genocidal conflict encouraged: Stalin rose to a height of power unrealised since the days of the Tsars. If we were to embark on such a war as the facists did, who is to say that we will not spell our own destruction and give rise to another Stalin amongst the humans, a strong leader who unites them against the enemy that would destroy them. No." Fenris shook his head. "That way lies stupidity, and I will have nothing of such a scheme."

"Look, too, at us - threatened with species slavery, and death if we do not comply. Is our will broken? Are we going to simply go gently, as they say?" A furious blaze entered Anatole's eyes as he swept them over the group, though his voice remained calm. "I will not. I will fight those who would enslave us. I will bring the war to those who support and serve them. I will destroy their heart for the fight, take from them the capability to fight, and force them to surrender their claim over me and those like me." He looked at Mary. "And if that means I need to wade in human blood, to bomb them in their safe havens, to poison their water, to destroy their infrastructure... then I will do all those things gladly. I agree we should let the common herd of humanity know what their masters are up to. We should pursue the psychological war first. Perhaps that may change things, though I think not overall. For all of their complaints about their leaders, humanity is too comfortable bending the knee, too enamored of their comfortable life to risk it for those not like them. They will support their governments - the governments who enslave us - as long as they feel those governments can protect and serve them."

"That support is something we must erode if we are to win."

[SalmonMax]

"I don't understand you," Mary said emphatically. "You all keep saying things...and then turning around and saying the opposite. You're all, 'I will bomb their havens and poison their water and destroy their...infrastructure'...which I think means cities, right? But then you turn around and say you just want to 'erode their support' and 'pursue psychological war,' which is basically just...threats? You're not making any sense!"

[Grim]

"There is no contradiction in my words." Fenris replied calmly, his social-integration conditioning throwing it's mask over the flash of frustrated irritation at his failure to communicate. It was another form of camoflage, another way to hide the beast.

"Keep your voice even, it's cadences level." Yvgenivich had told him. "You may BE an animal, Vanya, but the Rodina needs you to pass as a man. And men do not growl or snarl or pace or crouch. Men control their temper, see the world in shades of grey rather than black and white, kill or be killed. You might not feel stirring as you listen to the works of great composers or regard a beautiful artwork, but I will teach you to appear as though you do."

"Psychological warfare is not 'threats'. It is attacking the will of your enemy to fight. I give you an example: three men confront me alone. I am outnumbered, and my powers are suppressed. My training for combat is sufficient to handle one, maybe two of these men, but not three. Three will beat me... but I can still win. How?" he asked rhetorically. "Because I study the men. They are a group, and groups have a collective mind, just as an individual has a mind. A group can be intimidated, confused, can be made to turn on itself. Acts of violence aid this, as do acts of propaganda. In my simplified example, I could perhaps strike preemptively, down the leader of the group that confronts me as brutally as possible, then let his comrades decide whether they still have the will to fight." He shrugged. "But that is a simple example, and flawed in many ways. One thing is true, though. The larger a group, the more easily it's will can be attacked. It is basic insurgency tactics: the insurgent has little to lose, and is small and hard to find. His enemy is large, with many vulnerable spots, and has much of value that it does not wish to see destroyed or disrupted. The more 'Joe Public' sees that their vaunted governments cannot protect them, control or contain us, no matter what, the more likely they are to bring their own pressure to bear on their leaders to give up their agenda of slavery. It is important that we make sure that the message goes out that our enemy is not the common man or woman, that our fight is not with them, and that if they leave us alone, we shall do likewise."

"The more one has to lose, the less one feels like fighting on."

[Jeremy]

"That, and we haven't agreed exactly on what to do after the genie comes out of the bottle." Jeremy said, cutting a chunk of Lamia-prepared vegetable. "Honestly, the foe we do know for certain is the DEHA, let's focus on them first. At any rate, mass war or not, we need more. More prep, more freed mutants, more everything almost."

[SalmonMax]

Mary looks down at the table, the plates, the food. She's still confused, but Fenris has given her something to think about. She reaches out to pick something up, then grimaces and hesitates. The table and trays and 'woodware' are already starting to get covered in floating particles of organic sludge and collections of peptides she can only imagine must be germs of some kind.

"This can't be sanitary," she murmurs, and creates a little cotton glove around her hand. A quick banishing of contaminants later, she hurriedly takes a bite. The flavor is amazing...fresh and juicy and sweet-sour of an intensity that she's never sampled before. For a moment she just shuts her eyes and lets the flavor seep into her.

Then she has to 'clean' the fruit again before taking another bite, more cautiously.

"Is this okay, eating outside like this?" Mary finally asks after the third destruction of gunk and bite. "You have no idea what's floating around in the air, and covering the table, and...in the dirt...it's everywhere."

[Gold]

Gold ate without pausing in the least. The debate raging on around him held no significance to him. It could have possessed no semantic content whatsoever.

In a break, after Mary’s little eruption came and went, Gold lifted a chunk of meat into the air and declared, with utmost solemnity, “I have come to a conclusion.”

Everyone listened.

Gold pointed the meat at Lamia. “That woman is not someone to annoy.”

Tomorrow was tomorrow, and he had no interest in speculation. It would be more or less the same as yesterday, just with fewer obvious cages and less space between targets. Freedom was not a commodity which could be bought cheaply. They would have to fight for it. Kill for it.

He supposed that at least he could help keep a few other people’s noses clean. “Mary,” he said without looking up from his plate, “if you don’t want to kill someone, just shout. I’ll do it for you.” The thought cheered him in an odd sort of way. Queer thing, that. It would be something else to wonder about in the deep of the night when everyone else lay at rest.

[SalmonMax]

Mary gave Gold a mystified look.

"But if I don't want to kill someone, why would I want you to do it?" she asked.

[Rebekka Van der Vyse]

Make Love, Not War. A trite thought, but Rebekka was most definitely a lover, not a fighter, by necessity rather than preference. Full lips spread in a sinful smile.Admittedly, she very much enjoyed the necessity.

Letting the debate wash over her - and glad there was at least one other who didn't desire the coming conflict between human and mutant beginning with blood, no matter the sidestepping others added - Rebekka had worked herself to lounging in Tyrone's lap during dinner. Teasingly feeding Tyrone the last of her venison, she looked over at Mary.

The exotic, glamorous woman had changed slightly. Golden highlights streaked her deep, auburn hair and soft, lavender eyes had shifted to a piercing azure. Against his chest, Tyrone could feel her high, pert breasts growing fuller, heavier.

"He's only saying he is all to willing kill, Mary," Rebekka expanded, her rich, sensual tones floating across the gathering like something almost tactile. Her gaze swept around the table, her smile turning wry and tight. "Like a fair many here."

She shook her head minutely, disappointed. "I don't doubt there will be blood, but I think you all are underestimating the reaction and its direction from the rest of humanity. Fear will not make them back off, they will not beg the DEHA and their governments to relent in the face of our righteous - maybe even entitled - fury."

Rebekka shivered, stretched, then riveted the gathering with an intense gaze. There was nothing indolent about her now... well, little. "You're right, Fennie, about people wanting their comfortable lives. But why do you fault them for it? I'd like a comfortable life too - that comfort including making my own decisions on how I life my life. While undermining the DEHA and knocking out their support, like in far too many wars, it will mostly innocents and those unaware of us who suffer the most as the DEHA is slowly whittled down."

She sat up straighter, somehow appearing dignified despite sitting on Tyrone's lap, her voice growing passionate, entrancing. "When we are known to the world at large, if first actions of ours that are seen are destructive, aggressive, it will taint their view of us for a long time, if not forever. Consider, once mutants are known and free, then what? We can't simply go our own way afterwards. They won't leave us alone, and I hardly think we will leave them alone, even if we manage to found our own nation." Her lips twisted darkly, clearly revealing what she thought of that. "We will need to find a way to co-exist, instead of starting the cycle anew."

She leaned back against Tyrone's chest, crossing her arms and her legs, lips pursed contemplatively. "Many are saying they started it. Lamia claims Emperor Theodosius I did. I think that is to simple." She arched a brow in questioning challenge at the ancient woman. "I can easily see how mutants long ago could have been taken to be gods, and I don't doubt some of our myths are based on them. On the other hand, I think it is just as likely the myths and folklore were already there and those mutants suborned it for their own uses and profit. And between gods and mortals, the tales rarely have the mortals coming out well."

Rebekka tilted her head to the side, a wealth a luxurious hair spilling down her front. "Perhaps it was just fear Theodosius used or maybe humanity was tired of being lorded over - however benevolently or malevolently - by those who claimed to be gods, yet were every bit as fallible and prone to error as they, hmm?"

Her attention spread out to everyone. "I'm not saying the DEHA and its predecessors aren't at fault - they are, but I think mutants have contributed to it as well. This has begun so long ago, it hardly matters anymore. It's where we go from here on now that matters. Will we keep playing the game, with only who is on top changing, or do we play for different stakes? Instead of playing to 'win,' thus ensuring a loser as well, how about we play towards a stalemate, a tie, where no one loses? We don't need to win, we just need to be on the board, like everyone else, and keep playing."