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DATE:29th of August, the 70th year after the Coronation
LOCATION: Concord Metropolis
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We went downstairs because I didn't want to think of anything else. The elevator reeked of stale perfume and floor wax—two lies layered over each other, the kind you smear on top of a place so you can pretend it isn't full of bodies in suits. For the life of me I didn't get why rich folk preferred scents like that. I stared at the floor numbers ticking down and said nothing.
Pamela followed a step behind me. Quiet. Arms crossed. Like she was trying to remember what humans say normally. Every so often her gaze snagged on my hands, or my throat, or the scars on my face—little flinches she tried to hide. So was she scared or curious? I swear this woman was even stranger than Alice.
She was doing a terrible job either way. But what could I do?
Outside, the city was damp with late-summer grime. Sand filled the air. Nauseating. I flagged a taxi.
The driver was old. Not "wise old," just old—shoulders rounded, knuckles swollen on the wheel. Cautious. Slow. He treated the gas pedal like it was made of glass and every intersection like it had personally betrayed him. Red lights stacked one after another, and with each stop my patience thinned into something sharp enough to cut. My injured knee started that quiet grinding complaint one does for moments where I couldn't do anything about it. It's actually quite refreshing to feel an injury for once.
I stared out the window and watched Concord smear into gray. Buildings, billboards, faces. All of it blending into the same numb palette. I tried to feel something about it—nostalgia, dread, whatever normal people were supposed to feel on a morning like this—and got nothing. Just the itch under my skin where the cold had gotten into the scar tissue.
Like how was I supposed to move on from yesterday?
Whatever.
The Legion's base materialized out of the blur eventually. I'd never once looked at it and felt anything. That hadn't changed.
I handed the driver exact change. No tip. If he wanted kindness he should've learned to drive like time mattered.
I bypassed the accounting floor without slowing down. The last thing I wanted was to meet the same clerks two days in a row.
I went straight to the administrative room.
The room looked like it had been abandoned mid-collapse. Filing cabinets stuffed until their drawers couldn't close, papers layered like sediment, dust hanging in the air in slow, lazy spirals. Desks buried under incident logs no one would ever read unless they needed a name to sacrifice. The kind of mess that wasn't an accident—it was a defense mechanism. If everything was chaos, no one was responsible.
A mechanical typewriter clacked from the far end, each key strike dry and brittle. A lone secretary sat hunched over it like she was praying to a dead god. Kind of a small team to be frank, but I think this room is only meant to keep evidence, not to resolve contracts, so I suppose it fits.
That woman had neat hair, neat nails, and the exhausted posture of someone who'd learned the safest way to survive was to never make eye contact with anyone important.
She looked up anyway.
Her eyes went wide. "Mr. Carter," she said, voice tight. "We weren't expecting you."
Yeah, not even I wasn't expecting to come again to this shack so soon.
And of course she knew how I looked. Like what? Were there pictures of me posted around?? Even the Scarface version? So strange…
I held her gaze for a second too long—just to remind her what side of the desk mattered—then looked past her at the room, at the dust, at the paper rot.
"I need the contact number for the Crusader's relatives."
I didn't say please. Please was for doors that opened on their own.
The secretary stared at me like the air had turned to glass. The typewriter stopped mid-clack. Her hands hovered, uncertain—caught between habit and the instinct to survive.
The air conditioning was still cranked to "morgue."My scar tissue itched under it, that prickling reminder that my body was still insisting on being a body. My knee—newly injured, still tender—pulled tight when I shifted my stance.
"The… Crusader?" she said, as if the name was a curse. "He's been dead for—"
"I know."
Pamela made a small sound behind me—barely a breath. Not disagreement. Just… tension. The kind you get when someone hears a familiar monster's name and can't decide whether to spit or pray. They should be the same age so perhaps she remembers him?
I leaned forward slightly, not to intimidate her—just to shorten the distance. Make the room smaller.
"His family," I continued. "The ones hosting the gala tonight." I tapped the desk once with my knuckle. A single, dry knock. "Get me the number."
Her eyes flicked to my face again. Then away. Then back. She was trying to find the correct script. These people lived by scripts.
"May I ask why?"
I smiled without showing teeth. "Official Legion business."
That was obviously a bullshit reason. Would she catch on? The bitches below pushed me around as if my position didn't mean anything yet something like that was grandiose.
She rolled her eyes at me, but decided not to say anything. The balls! Or not?
Then she stretched towards a dented gray cabinet. The hinges shrieked when she yanked it open—metal screaming like it hadn't been touched in years. The sound stabbed straight into my temple, sharp enough that for half a second I considered ripping the drawer clean off its rails just to make it stop.
Paper. More paper. "Records," they called it, like drowning in pulp was the same thing as control.
Finally she produced a folder and set it down. CRUSADER – DECEASED, stamped in faded ink. A neat label for a man who'd left bodies hanging in public as decoration. But wait? Faded? It wasn't even a month or two. Such importance huh…
Her manicured nail traced a line on the page with careful precision—like she thought being delicate would make the contents less disgusting.
"His widow," she said. "Marguerite Aurelian." A beat. "Would you like me to place the call?"
"No." The answer came instantly. The widow probably wouldn't accept a proxy.
I narrowed my eyes at the page anyway. "Wasn't she in prison?"
The secretary's posture tightened. She didn't look at me when she answered—like eye contact would count as involvement.
"She was released," she said. "Lack of evidence. By the Royal Investigators."
Of course. The Royal Governor's henchmen. Why am I not surprised that their impact in this city is still only negative?
I let the silence hang long enough to make her uncomfortable in it.
"Then just give me the number."
She tore off a jagged slip of paper and pushed it across the desk, careful not to let her fingers touch mine. Like contact would infect her.
My eyes snagged on her nails again—glossy, perfect, absurd in a room full of dust and decay. Was it the lead?
I snatched the paper. No thank you.
I stepped away from her desk before she could change her mind and remember she had a spine. In the corner, on a wobbling side table that looked like it belonged in a museum of bad decisions, sat a massive black rotary phone. Heavy. Ugly. The kind of object that survived a century because no one liked it enough to steal it.
Pamela drifted after me and stopped at a safe distance, arms folded tight. Hovering. Watching. Trying to look like she wasn't waiting to see if I'd start strangling strangers again.
I lifted the receiver.
The plastic smelled like old breath and dust, like a hundred anxious calls soaked into it and never dried. It stuck faintly to my palm. Disgusting.
Still, wasn't this building somewhat new? What the hell was up with the technology in this place? A floor above and we have circuitry of an entirely different era? Like did they place these things here themselves? For design? Agh… why do I even bother…
I stared at the jagged slip of paper and then at the rotary dial, already annoyed. Of course it had to be this. Of course. I fed the first number into the wheel and let it crawl back with a grinding click—slow, stubborn, prehistoric. Every digit was a tiny act of violence against my patience.
Pamela shifted behind me. The typewriter started again somewhere across the room, clacking like a smug metronome.
Ring.
Ring.
Ring.
"Aurelian residence." A woman's voice—trained smoothness, polished vowels, the kind of "helpful" tone that really meant identify yourself, peasant.
A fake Ventian accent. I don't even know why she bothers. These days there is nothing noble about Ventia. It is a language of peasants and mongrels. Does the Crusader's family have Ventian roots?
"William Carter," I said. "Leader of the Legion. Put Marguerite on
No pleasantries. I didn't have the energy for them.
Silence on the other end—offended, measured. I could practically hear her straightening her posture.
"One moment," she clipped.
The line clicked. Muffled movement. The soft hush of fabric over a receiver—silk sleeve, probably. Even their phone etiquette had to be expensive.
Then a new voice hit my ear like a snapped ruler.
"Mr. Carter." Older. Brittle. Not weak—just used to being obeyed. "To what do I owe this intrusion?"
"I'm attending your gala tonight," I said plainly.
Damn that AC. I was itchy as hell.
"Me and a guest," I added. "I need clearance for the pre-party."
A sharp inhale. Dramatic. Performative outrage drawn in through expensive lungs.
"Excuse me?" Marguerite hissed. "You demand access to my inner circle? After the way the Legion treated us?" As if it mattered.
My eyes closed on instinct. Not because I was calming down. Because a dull pressure had started blooming behind my eyes—headache creeping in like a bad memory.
"I didn't treat you like anything," I said. "I don't even know you."
"Exactly!" Her voice rose, vibrating through the cheap earpiece like it was trying to shake itself free. "You never even met my husband! When the Investigators dragged me away—when they baselessly accused us of those… those horrid fabrications—where was your support? Where were you?"
Baseless. Right.
Her husband left bodies hanging from streetlamps and called it justice. The kind of "hero" that is merely tolerated. I'd say it was only because of his status, but weren't there too many of them for that? Hell there are probably still people like the Crusader in the Legion. It's not like I read up on everyone under me.
And by that point, what was UltraMan thinking of when he named his organisation after an ancient military formation? Aren't heroes technically civilians? Haaah. It's too much already.
"Bleeding," I cut in.
She choked. Really? I thought my reply was pretty generic.
"I wasn't even a team leader back then," I said. I leaned my shoulder against the peeling wallpaper, letting the cord pull taut, the coil already tangled like it had always been waiting to irritate me. "I was in the mud. Fighting actual wars."
I could hear her breathing on the other end—tight, furious. I kept going anyway.
"While your husband was stringing up alley-thugs in the ghettos to stroke his ego, I was getting shot at," I said. "I can't bring myself to care about your grievances."
Silence. Heavy and venomous. I think she was at a loss of words. We're the former leaders pushovers or what? SuperiorWoman I could guess, but UltraMan too? She should know "I" was his "cousin".
"You arrogant bastard," she breathed.
"Sure."
"If you care so little," Marguerite spat, trembling with rage now, "if my husband's legacy is so beneath you—why force your way into my gala?"
Because a terrorist is using your champagne mixer to buy an army.
I didn't say that. Not yet. Not to her.
"Politics," I deadpanned. "I'm the new leader. I need to meet the other heroes. Shake hands. Network or something like that." Not even I believed what I said, but whatever.
Still, the word politics tasted like bile in my mouth.
Then I made it simple. People like her didn't like simple, but certainly understood it.
"So put my name on the list, Marguerite," I finished. "Or I show up at the door anyway and make a scene in front of your wealthy friends. Your call."
Another inhale. Then the concession—spat out like it physically hurt.
"Fine," she hissed. "Your name will be at the door. But do not expect any proper treatment from my staff."
"I couldn't give a shit about a red carpet," I said.
I slammed the receiver down.
The rotary base rang a stifled, pathetic bell—like even the phone was embarrassed to be involved.
"Let's go," I told Pamela, turning my back on the secretary before she could open her mouth. "I need to buy a suit."
__________
Another taxi.
This one smelled like wet dog and stale tobacco—like the driver had been marinating in his own bad choices since sunrise. The vinyl seats were torn open along the seams, cracked edges pinching at my trousers every time the car lurched. The suspension was dead. Every pothole sent a dull shock up my spine, and my freshly injured knee answered each one with a tight, hot twinge, like it was keeping score.
I stared out the smudged window. The sky looked like dirty dishwater—gray, thin, exhausted. Concord always managed to match my mood without trying.
"I just can't believe it," Pamela murmured over the rattling of the engine. "That a man like the Crusader was ever allowed to call himself a hero."
Her voice was quiet. Thoughtful. It grated anyway.
"What's so interesting about him?" I asked.
A stray dog was tearing into a tipped trash can on the curb, nose buried deep, tail twitching with single-minded devotion. A better citizen than most of the people I'd met this week.
"The artifacts," Pamela said. She shifted on the squeaky vinyl. "The ones they're showing off tonight at the gala. They weren't just 'explored.' They were raided from ancient Salvian sites. It's blood money."
She kept going, like she couldn't help it. Like why does she pretend to care? Earlier she said she didn't. That "happiness was the most important thing" or whatever.
"We were colleagues back then. If you didn't care to search, most people at the academy were saved from becoming criminals by being educated there. Devin, or how you know him, "The Crusader" was admitted as a gift. He thought it was some kind of club of the elites and went there to network. The family has deep, ongoing connections with Ventian mercenary groups, perhaps even Balmundi."
She made a pause as if it would attract my attention. " At first I was surprised you talked to his wife like that, but then I remembered who I was in a taxi with. You aren't even listening, are you?"
I rubbed my thumb over a sticky patch on the door handle. Something dried there. Sugar? Spilled soda? Old spit? In this city the difference didn't matter.
"I don't really care," I said.
Stolen relics. Mercenaries. War profiteering. Standard operating procedure for anyone rich enough to treat morality like a hobby. The part that exhausted me wasn't the crime—it was her surprise, like she'd expected the world to be caught by its own rules.
Pamela frowned and aimed her next question at the back of the driver's headrest, because maybe it was easier to ask a piece of upholstery than to ask me.
"How does that happen?" she pressed. "How does that sort of behavior not get caught when they're at the Academy?"
Naive. Painfully, deliberately naive.
"What do you think the Academy's actual purpose is?" I asked, still watching the blur of the city slide by.
She hesitated. "To integrate heroes, right? To teach them?"
Come on. If you creeped on that Bitch, Zilliam, for decades, then you certainly should know. Or is she trying to not generalize?
I scoffed. The sound scraped my throat. "It's a holding pen."
I leaned my head against the cold vibrating glass and let the taxi's mechanical misery do what it did best: drown out hope.
"It's just meant to keep heroes inside the borders of the Unified Kingdom," I told her. "Nothing else."
A bump in the road made my teeth click. My knee flared again, sharp enough to be almost refreshing—proof I wasn't just a walking memory.
"From what I see, the old Deans really didn't care how the students turned out," I continued. "As long as the assets didn't join a side that put the kingdom in danger, then all their crimes were excused. Or perhaps they just excused them because they didn't have a way of punishing heroes. If the villains couldn't subdue UltraMan or the Blazer, then what could the state do?"
She chuckled, covering her jaw, but letting her grin shine through.
"Didn't you take out the invincible man?"
I sighed, debating punching her. Like what was this conversation even about? Haah. Ultimately it would have been detrimental.
"You know what I meant."
And that was true. Didn't the Confederacy invest all that effort into artificially making superhumans like that navy guy I killed two weeks ago? It's clear that superpowers are taken into account as national power even if they aren't mobilized.
So why would they punish these criminals who cosplay as saviours?
Morals didn't win wars.
Violence did.
Just like the Crusader. Just like me.
I shut my eyes and let the rattling engine swallow whatever Pamela said next. Even then, the question wouldn't leave: why did UltraMan bring a man like that in? Connections, maybe. Or just taste.
Taste? Yeah right.
Eventually, the taxi dumped us at the curb.
The store.
Funny. It was the exact same place I'd bought the suit for UltraMan's funeral. They specialized in blitz sales. Not cheap knockoffs, but neither the top. Mid-end, pristine tailoring for people who forgot about important events.
You paid a massive premium for the convenience. The price tags were frankly obscene.
I didn't care. It was too late to even keep a budget.
It didn't take long to find my size. I grabbed a white suit off a polished mahogany rack and paired it with a pale blue shirt.
I slipped the jacket on in the dressing room. The fabric was heavy. Good quality. Some kind of silk and wool blend that breathed perfectly against the skin. The stitching was immaculate. It draped over my shoulders like liquid, hiding the bulk of my holsters without ruining the silhouette.
It still felt like a straitjacket.
Pamela laughed when I stepped out.
"You look like a pimp," she said, smirk bright like she'd been waiting all day to land a clean hit.
I adjusted the cuffs. They broke perfectly at the wrist.
"I agree," I said.
Her expression shifted—amusement draining into confusion. "Then why buy it?"
"Because I'm tired," It's not like she was worth an explanation. Frankly I was getting tired of the black ones. Or should I wear the ruined kevlar one from the professor? Naah.
A sales assistant hovered nearby. Kid in a vest that probably cost more than the taxi we came here on. Nervous smile. Twitchy eyes. He kept looking at my hands, then my chest, then away again, like he was trying not to notice the outlines of things he was absolutely noticing.
"What do you have for her?" I asked.
He blinked, glanced at Pamela, then gave me the answer he'd been trained to give.
"Ah… apologies, sir. We only carry men's formalwear."
Useless.
I looked at Pamela. "Find a suit that fits. We're done here."
Her eyes widened. "I'm not wearing a men's suit to a high-society gala."
"You are," I said.
I pulled out some loose Zols and shoved them toward her.
"Because I don't care enough to waste another hour running around this filthy city just so you can wear a dress."
Her mouth opened. Face flushing. She was about to start a speech.
"It's not a negotiation," I cut in.
I stared at her hair—short, jagged spikes in every direction. Angry-woman haircut. Bad cut, too. Like she'd fought a lawnmower and lost.
"Besides," I added, voice flat, "a suit won't even look out of place with that."
She glared at me. Pure venom.
Then she turned away and started aggressively shoving hangers aside on the smallest rack.
Compliant for once. Who does she think she is?
I exhaled through my nose and looked up at the ceiling lights. Too bright. Too white. Everything in here was designed to make you look clean and expensive, even if you weren't. I wanted out.
.
__________
We got the suits and whatever other nonsense they thought counted as "formalwear," zipped up and handed over with the same dead-eyed service you'd give a corpse.
Pamela looked down at the bag in her hands.
"What about the masks?" she asked.
I stopped walking.
For half a second I just stared at her, waiting for my patience to come back from wherever it had run off to. It didn't.
"Message Mike," I said.
She blinked like I'd spoken in code.
"Now," I added, because apparently I had to narrate reality for her. "Tell him to source them and bring them."
I didn't want to hunt down some costume shop. I didn't want to haggle with another clerk. I didn't want to step into another taxi and breathe someone else's stale life for twenty minutes.
Pamela pulled out her phone and started typing. Hopefully it's that hero workshop from last time. I certainly want to see through the damn thing.
We walked.
The street was damp. Everything smelled like wet asphalt and old garbage. In the summer, the city always smelled like something had died and nobody felt responsible enough to bury it. I think it was about 40 degrees outside yet but could barely even feel the heat because of how numb my body was. Only my tired eyes could notice.
I kept my eyes on the pavement. Cracks. Gum stains. Oil slicks. One foot in front of the other. Don't look up at windows. Don't look at reflections. Don't think about what I was wearing.
A café appeared ahead—wedged between a laundromat and a boarded-up storefront like it was hiding from the rest of the city. Small. Dim. Forgettable. Perfect.
I went in.
"Tea," I told the counter girl. "Two."
She started to ask what kind.
I looked at her until she stopped.
I slid into a booth. The cracked vinyl hissed under my weight, sticky with old sugar and cheap disinfectant. I leaned back and stared at the ceiling.
Flaking plaster. A long yellow water stain creeping across the corner like a disease that had gotten comfortable. Something ugly enough to stare at without feeling anything.
Pamela sat across from me and kept watching.
Her gaze was a physical pressure. Annoying.
"You're taking everything pretty well," she said.
I didn't look at her.
"How exactly am I supposed to take it?" I asked, voice flat.
I saw her shift—biting her lower lip, gathering words, loading up some careful little speech about trauma and healing and whatever else people said when they wanted to feel useful.
"Don't," I said.
She hesitated. "I was just—"
"Be quiet," I cut her off.
I lowered my head and met her eyes. The grit in them made every blink feel abrasive, like I'd been rubbing sand into my lids all day.
"I'm tired, Pamela," I said. "Keep your psychological evaluations to yourself." At least for today.
Her mouth snapped shut. Jaw tight. The silence came back and sat between us like it owned the booth.
A waitress arrived and dropped two glasses on the table with all the care of someone who'd stopped caring years ago. Maghrebi mint tea.
The smell hit first—sharp mint drowned in sugar. Too sweet. Too eager.
I looked down.
The tea was clear.
I let out a small sound that wasn't quite a laugh. I didn't have the energy to give it more emotion than that.
Bastardized.
No froth. No aeration. No height to the pour. Just leaves dumped into boiling water by a bored stranger and called "traditional." They couldn't even do the lie properly.
A ruined drink. Fitting for a ruined night.
I picked up the glass anyway. The heat bit into my fingers through the thin curve of it. I drank because it was there. Because doing something with my hands kept me from doing something else.
Silence stretched again.
Then, without planning it—without even wanting to hear myself say it—I spoke.
"You know," I said, staring at the stain on the ceiling instead of her face, "I can't exactly blame the Crusader for what he did in the desert."
Pamela's head tilted. Careful. "Before… or after your resurrection?"
"No difference," I said.
The words tasted flat. Not confession. Not catharsis. Just inventory.
"I know what I did," I went on. "I know who I hurt. Even when I hesitated, I still did it. That couldn't be excused."
Pamela didn't argue. She nodded once, small. "It can't."
Then she did what she always did when she found a raw spot—pressed.
"So what are you going to do about it?" she asked. "Redeem yourself? Turn yourself in? Go back and help the Salvian locals?"
I took another sip. The sugar stuck to my tongue like glue.
"I'm not that charitable," I said.
I set the glass down a little harder than necessary.
"They'll have to be content with me not going there anymore."
The ceiling stain blurred.
I blinked. It didn't help. The edges of the café softened at the corners of my vision — not sleep, not unconsciousness, just the particular gray that crept in when my body started quietly resigning from its duties.
How long had it been since the last dose?
Too long. Obviously too long. I'd been walking around this city on fumes and stubbornness and hadn't noticed until the stubbornness ran out first.
I set the glass down carefully, like I was placing it somewhere important.
"We should go," I said.
Pamela looked up from wherever her attention had been. Her expression shifted — that small recalibration she did when she was deciding whether to ask a question or let it die. She let it die. Good instinct.
I stood. The booth released me with a sticky protest. I dropped enough Zols on the table to cover both glasses and whatever tip the waitress had given up hoping for, and walked to the door without checking if Pamela followed.
She did.
Outside, the heat was a wall. I flagged a taxi mostly by existing in the road until one stopped.
The ride back was nothing. Gray city. Bad suspension. My feet were somewhere beneath me, technically attached, technically functional. I couldn't feel them confirm it.
At the hotel entrance I turned to Pamela and held out both garment bags without comment.
She looked at them. Then at me.
"Carry them," I said.
She took them.
Upstairs, I shrugged off my jacket and dropped it somewhere that wasn't the floor — barely. The aspirin was the night stand. I shook out a few pills, dry-swallowed them, and sat on the edge of the bed waiting for my hands to feel like my hands again.
"Wake me when it's time," I told her.
I didn't wait for her to respond. I laid back, stared at the ceiling for approximately three seconds, and was gone.
Behind me, I heard the soft rustling of garment bags being hung somewhere.
The quiet click of the room settling around someone trying not to make noise.I didn't say anything about it.