ic (IC) Pop Quiz: All You Have Is Your Fire

[Tiffany Korta]

Frostbyte

Riding through a portal, created by Phae who was clinging quite pleasantly behind her, at some speed on her ice slide Frostbyte didn't have time to take in much as she saw what looked like a rampaging Alkahest.

 

"Well this looks very familiar." even she had to admit the humour was a little forced "Sorry we're late we were dealing with something else."

 

Drawing moisture from the air around her she tried to freeze the rampaging Alkahest's feet to the floor, trying to stop her from causing harm to anyone including herself.

 

[Electra]

Raina was panting by the time the portal eked itself closed, the gap in the universe vanishing like the last dot of light as a television shut off. Tension sang up her arms and into the back of her neck, all her senses screaming that the job was not done, or not well done, anyway. She'd seen magic-users like Phantom tear holes in reality and stitch them back up neat as could be, but this wasn't that. The place where the hole had been shimmered like water in front of her eyes, looking as though all it needed was a hand plunged in to open it all up again. She didn't know how to fix it, but she couldn't just leave it like that, either. 

 

"Dad!" she snapped as her father started taking potshots at her teammates. "What the hell are you doing? We have to fix this!" She pulled away from both her parents, wresting her magic rudely out of gestalt at the same time. "Stop shooting my teammates and do something useful!" Grabbing her broom from where it was stowed on her back, she extended the handle and took to the air. "Merlin, call the dojo!" she ordered her sidekick. "We need help, we need Phantom or somebody who can do interdimensional portals!" 

[Avenger Assembled]

As Woundmaker's sidearm blasted a bloody line down the spectral hound's side, Raina's father met her words with a spell! Raina felt the same freezing energy that had briefly snared Robin sizzle past her in the air as her father called "What we're going to do, young lady, is get out of this mess before we-" With surprisingly little fanfare, the other Alkahest caught one of Woundmaker's guards (one that had gotten too close despite the icy bonds freezing the Alkahest's feet to the floor) and tore him in half like a man tearing apart a paper doll. Amid the horrified screams of the other guards, one of whom actually began to flee at the sight, Raina's father went on, "wind up having to deal with your mother's pet project!" 

"Excuse me!" declared Raina's mother, using a voice Raina had heard her use before with her father when in a temper, angry enough to stop casting the escape spell that would have bailed them all out of there. "Don't blame _me_ for this, this was the only way to get out and see our girl again! And stop shooting at her for spirits' sake! This is supposed to be bringing us together and not tearing us apart!" 

[Gizmo]

The towering woman with something like Fred's face snarled as she looked between the rampaging feral and @#$% who'd shot Matt, her left bicep spasming briefly in a worryingly familiar manner. Robin's shout seemed to get through, however and the grimace turned into a toothy grin. "Ha, yeh, Freddie figured we needed something new to deal with a problem like a meaner Alkahest." She pointed a thumb at herself as she took off at a thunderous sprint toward her monstrous counterpart. "I'm the Solution!" A vault over the sticky remains of the unfortunate guard took her around and in front of the cannibal Alkahest, getting right up into its misshapen face. "Chemistry joke, innit, yeh dumb sack!" With that she cracked her forehead into the beast's, sending them both reeling back a step.

 

Shaking it off with a short laugh, phosphorescent green dripping from her nose, the Solution made a grab for the distracted Alkahest. She got a hand on each of its forearms and held them in place for a moment before the larger creature's greater strength threw her off. This time the Solution made sure that wherever it looked, scanning for easier victims, she bounced back in front, forcing it to deal with her first. "Hullo, Missus Smith!" she called over her opponent's shoulder when their dance lined her up with her survivalist friend and his mother. "Nice to meet yeh, hopefully! The Sandersons look to be even bigger @#$%s than Freddie thought and most of the rest of the folks're in the ground so the bar ain't high!"

[Avenger Assembled]

Solution and Alkahest traded punches - and for those close, it was like twin bombs going off. There was a concussion loud enough to make Merlin clap his hands to his ears above, frantically summoning the Freedom League, and a gust of wind strong enough to kick up dust and debris from all around them, and strong enough to knock Woundmaker's remaining guards to the floor. As they scrabbled to their feet, they fled - whatever the Murder League was, it wasn't more frightening than this.

 

As the dust cleared, it became clear which of the two abominations was winning the fight; and it was the outsider. ...Winifred The Alkahest looked at the Solution and smiled a grin that spoke of shattered dreams and murdered hopes; of a world's champions turned into its predators. Winifred! Meat! And then it grabbed the Solution by the side of the head, massive paws on either side of her face, and bit down, hurling away the struggling powerhouse and swallowing what it had taken.  

 

 

[Fox]

Fang flinched but she didn't falter, and what seeped from her side had more in common with ink than blood, hissing as it hit concrete as if the ground was rejecting its touch.

 

All told, it didn't really make the dog less angry. She issued an awful, chilling snarling noise, eyes wild as she rose up to drive her fangs into Woundmaker's arm, letting her weight drag her teeth into whatever he'd foolishly thought would protect his weak, mortal flesh. "HURT YOU," she said.

 

"Y'know if you piss her off enough, you get to fight her again when you die, right?" Grim helpfully supplied from wherever he'd hidden behind cover. The baby was doing okay, at least. He hoped. "You think she's bad now, man. Maybe just lie down without your guns and she'll stop biting you eventually."

[Avenger Assembled]

As the Alkahest bit down on Fred's face amid a gush of blood and cries of terror from the onlookers, Riley was far away from his adopted home. He rose to his feet and fired a shot, a single bolt that zipped towards the cannibal-beast's face and detonated there. He had to be realistic - there wasn't much he was going to do against the Alkahest, especially not a Feral one that would probably only be angered by pain, but even the great beast had eyes, and a nose, and senses. He also knew about the strange chemical hardening of the Alkahest's flesh, something that had to be true for this one too. So instead of his usual cocktail, the azidoazide azides in the bolt blasted it in the face with razor-sharp shards of burning hot metal, metal that sizzled as it slashed open the creature's face and nose inflicting superficial wounds that had to hurt like Hell. 

 

Yeah, that's right! You're fighting woodsmen now! It was the highest compliment he could think to give his team. 

 

"Nighthawk! Solution! The portal! Drive it to the portal!" 

 

He turned as he ran pell-mell towards Raina and her parents, followed by his own mother, and then tried, "Sparkler! The portal! We need it!" 

 

 

 

 

[Gizmo]

The Solution let out a roar of pain as she was tossed away and landed badly against the floor, a bellow too deep and too loud for even her enlarged chest cavity to have reasonably produced. Glowing green seeped through her fingers where she clutched the side of her head, the ruined stump of an ear throbbing with pain.

 

THREAT! a terrible, guttural voice reverberated in her skull while her vision swam. CRUSH! RIP! END!

 

That isn't working, a clipped voice rebutted, darting through the Solution's mind like a needle forced through leather. We need to stay in control and get it through that portal.

 

"Nngh. Yer awake for this, are you both?" the Solution slurred as she gave her head a shake, sending phosphorescent blood splattering in every direction.

 

No but we seem to be experiencing audio hallucinations from the acute pain. The quieter voice hummed thoughtfully. We're not terribly stable in this form to begin with.

 

"Yer face ain't terrible stable," the Solution coughed out loud, spitting out a mouthful of blood and staggering to her feet. She could feel her body knitting itself back together but it was going to be too slow to make much difference in this fight. Too slow to make a difference against the Feral Alkahest.

 

THREAT! DESTROY! 

 

Her vision cleared enough to make out Smith and his mother making a beeline toward the Sandersons, leading the monster. "Gugh. Right, just gotta keep it together long enough to make sure the ugly cuz don't eat Legs 'fore we send her home. You two can shut it til then."

 

Who...? The Solution liked to think she could hear the colour drain from the second voice. We are not calling her that.

 

The Solution grinned and forced her legs to propel her forward, ignoring the urge to lie down and die or fly into a blind rage. "I'm gonna!"

[Electra]

"Are you crazy?" Raina shrieked at Riley, turning away from her parents with fire already sparking off her fingertips. "I''m not opening that gods-damned portal again just so you can run through it and get your stupid-ass self killed by a monster! I JUST CLOSED IT!" The air around her shimmered with heat, a sure sign of agitation that had even her parents taking a couple of measured steps backwards. 

[Avenger Assembled]

Woodsman responded by drawing a hand across his throat, then remembered that of course none of them knew that particular hand signal. "Hell no I'm not goin' through it!" he hissed, his voice reverting to the accent he'd had when Raina had first met him - the choppy syllables of an alien world. "They shove it through, you close it while it's in it." Riley had seen Ferals and he had seen the Alkahest and he knew that killing this thing was going to kill some of them, and maybe more people too, if they didn't use all they had. He didn't say much to the Sandersons, who watching the whole interplay with fascination. 

[Electra]

Raina's eyes widened. "Do you have any idea what that's going to do to my karma?" she yelped, her voice shrill. "I don't want to know what threefold of bisecting somebody with a universe is!" But at the same time, she didn't have any better plans, and they were rapidly running out of options. She couldn't stop glancing over at the new thing that Fred had turned into, now obviously injured. but still in the fight. What would happen to little bitty Fred if big monster Fred  took more damage than it could heal? What would happen to any of them if the feral Alkahest got truly loose to run around? 

 

Spinning away from Riley, she summoned a handful of brilliant, sickly green fire to her hand and pointed it at the wavering place where the portal had been. "We'll live in slow motion and be free," she sang, practically spitting the words, "with doors unlocked and open, doors unlocked and open..." The portal ripped its way into existence like a compressed spring freeing itself, once again glowing malevolently in the room. 

[Tiffany Korta]

 

Frostbyte

Normally Frostbyte would have kept in constant motion to make her a difficult target, but the limited room here made it almost impossible. So instead she poured all her energy in covering this, fake she though, Alkahest in as thick a layer of ice as she could.

 

"Maybe we should try the whole statue look for you again, though I can only manage an ice sculpture I'm afraid!"

 

She could work out what had happened later for not she wanted to make sure that her friends were safe, then she hoped she'd get the full story.

[Gizmo]

The Feral Alkahest's charge slowed to a crawl as Frostbyte's ice encased it, a new layer appearing as soon as the previous one was shattered by twisted grey muscle. Slowed but not stopped as it pushed forward, bulging arms crossed in front of its own manic grin. Whether the accident of science or dark curse powering the monster's insatiable hunger would run dry before the Scot's determination was rendered moot as the Solution caught up to her doppelgänger and threw her momentum into a football tackle that sent them both crashing through a wall of ice toward the glowing hole in space.

 

"Got yer licks in, cuz but it's time to show you the door!" shouted over the din of the chaos around them, gritting her teeth as the Feral Alkahest slammed its fists into her back. She was outclassed in size and strength but in this form she had the wits to use her opponent's own mass against it, doggedly rushing onward even when she felt something pop out of place in her left shoulder and something else snap in her right arm. "Can't say Freddie didn't warn you! I'd feel a bit bad if you hadn't eaten my @#$% ear, loony &$@*!" With one last effort she shoved the Alkahest into the rift up the shoulders and grimly held it there the way she might have held its head underwater while it thrashed.

[Avenger Assembled]

In the end, they all came together. 

 

Sparkler's magic held open the portal, Raina channeling the energy in the room with supernatural potency. There'd been so much death here and so much killing, and the magic in the air could feel it, it _liked_ it - and the power that radiated through her gave her the magic she needed to keep the portal open. She'd be exhausted later, but what did that matter now? 

 

The great dog had Woundmaker down and pinned by the throat, but he was laughing all the same. "Do it! Show me the power of death! I know who's waiting for me on the other side - and it isn't you!" His men were gone now, dead or fled, the eerie wailing of sirens from the hole the Solution had torn in the floor a clue to where some might have gone. 

 

Ardent and Frostbyte's fire and ice drove the creature back, their combined power a symbol of the unity they'd chosen today - perhaps the demonic warning they'd gotten had been sincere but Keith had forgotten one thing. When you worked together with your friends, you could do the impossible. 

 

The Solution and Nighthawk worked together to muscle the former's twisted reflection halfway through the portal, the feral Alkahest seeming to sense what was about to happen. Turning its wrath on Nighthawk, it grabbed her by the wrist with its free hand and began to drag her towards the gateway with it. She could break free from its massive grip, but then the Alkahest would be free to tear its way from the Solution and kill and kill and kill. 

 

And Woodsman watched it happen and he knew what death looked like, because he'd seen it before. He locked eyes with Robin, asked a question, and saw an answer. What would he give up to stop a feral Alkahest from tearing its way through the people and heroes of Freedom City? Everything. "Now!" 

 

And the portal closed through the Alkahest's body with the sound of a slickly wet pop like the bursting of a balloon full of hamburger meat - and its remains crumbled to the floor, dead. And Robin's left arm went with it above the elbow. 

 

And then the Freedom League; and the Master Mage of Earth, arrived. 

 

 

 

[Gizmo]

The blood that splattered across the Solution's face as the portal closed was dark and too thick like sap from a diseased tree. She collapsed to her knees overtop the decapitated body, loudly taking in shuddering breaths. The corpse spasmed in its death throes and began to wither, shrinking back down to its original frail proportions in a spreading puddle of too much blood and viscera. The Solution screwed her eyes shut against a wave of nausea and disassociation, trying to ignore the sensation of looking down at herself.

 

She opened her eyes and tried to focus on the ringing in her ears, the throbbing from the side of her head, the bones in her clenched fists popping themselves back into place. There was more blood on her right hand but it was red, the wrong colour. She stared at it blankly for a long moment, uncurling her fingers experimentally. Finally she looked up and saw Robin. For the first time since she'd been created horror spilled over the Solution's expression.

 

"Wha...? N-no, that-- that ain't fair..." she mumbled, voice sounding distant. "Freddie finally got it right, I was supposed to-- I was gonna-- That ain't FAIR!" Her voice dropped an octave, becoming a bellow before she pitched forward. She tried to catch herself with the hand not splattered with Robin's blood but slipped in the remains of her feral counterpart. She gave a dry heave, scrambling back from the body and feeling the strength leeching out of her limbs.

 

Within moments she too had returned to being just Winifred Wei, smeared in terrible fluids and dressed in tatters, emptying the contents of her stomach on the floor. The ear the cannibal had torn off hadn't quite grown back, the top edge marred with deep wounds and dripping all-too human blood. 

[Electra]

"No!" Raina shrieked, pulling away from her parents as she struggled not to retch at the feeling of power washing through her. So much spilled blood, so much more than she'd ever imagined trying to work with, and some of it belonging to somebody who was nearly a friend. Somebody who was now in serious danger of bleeding to death in the middle of the ritual circle. Without a thought, she catapulted through the air to land in the middle of the circle near where the portal had so recently been, one that was still humming with magic and power. "No, no, no, no. It is not happening like this!" She leaned down over Robin, looked at Fred, and then raked her perfectly manicured fingernails down her own arm, raising three tiny furrows of dotting blood. "Now maybe I'm just thinking that the rooms are all on fire," she sang softly, almost spitefully, "every time you walk in the room. But there is magic all around us, if I do say so myself, I have known this much longer than I've known you..." 

 

The circle flared, and from outside it looked as though a pillar of fire were rising up from the ground to obscure everyone inside it. Raina screamed once, though it sounded more angry than afraid or in pain, and after about five seconds it began to fade away again. Robin and Fred, trapped in the circle with Raina, could both feel a burn that simultaneously hot and soothing over their various wounds, stopping the bleeding and easing the pain. The room seemed much darker when the fire died away, leaving afterimages and ruined night vision all around. In the aftermath, Raina stood in the center of her circle, defiant, unscratched, and completely covered in fine black soot. Her eyebrows and bangs were totally burnt away, giving her a startled expression even as she glowered. 

[Fox]

Matt was worryingly unphased by the gore, eyes sliding past it less with the professional self-control of a Leaguer and more with the triaging gaze of a jaded EMT...or a crime scene cleanup crew. Probably the latter, which he always tried to not think too hard about. No ghosts here, at least right now, though. That was good. He wasn't sure they had another fight in them.

 

Fang seemed to agree, joining him partway across the room; she had very reluctantly left Woundmaker intact, bite marks still on his throat, when someone bigger had moved in to replace her. The Bad Man was Going Away, and that was enough; the red bled out of her side and left her with a calmer, neutral black smoke that seemed less real by comparison. She and Howl would hold each other upright as long as they had to; they almost always had. It was what the pack did.

 

Matt's instinct had been to try to help Robin, but that was...well out of his hands, by all appearances, a couple League members forming a solid wall between him and the disarmed teen. So he went where he could be helpful, juggling the baby a bit to pull his ruined shreds of shirt off of each hand and toss half each to Raina and Winifred. "You feel better when you clean up a little," he said. He felt tired and hurt. He sounded tired and hurt. He was pretty sure he was one of the least tired and hurt people in the room. He sort of sat and mostly fell against the edge of a crate. "I always do, I guess. ....today sucked."

[alderwitch]

For the first time in a long, long time, Robin was in shock. Part of her knew it, recognized it, as the portal shut and took a piece of her with it. It didn't even hurt, Robin noted in utter detachment as she yanked back a stump where there should have been a muscular arm. No arm, though, just blood leaving her body probably too quickly. It seemed like it should have hurt but it didn't. Nothing really did as she rose to her feet, acrobatic training compensating for the awkward lack of a limb. Her pupils were too wide and her eyes too glassy as she turned; reactions slow and dulled. 

 

"Fred," Robin's voice rasped hoarsely as her roommate was sick in one corner. "Hey..." She turned to Raina's palpable distress and lifted her one good arm up to shield herself from the blaze of heat. It shook some of the worst of the shock out of Robin's, even as it made the loss more real, more tangible. She couldn't help but lift her remaining hand up to the almost surgically smooth end of her left arm. Robin forced her hand away from the injury, pushing any emotions about that loss down to be dealt with later. Robin was very good at 'later'. "It's alright," she said, her voice was solid and steady. "I'm alive. We stopped it. We stopped it together, and that's what counts."

 

She held out her one good hand for Fred, "You DID do good, Fred. You all did."

[Avenger Assembled]

In retrospect, Riley remembered the next few minutes not in sequence but in a chain of impressions. He could link them together in his mind but if you asked, he'd have had a lot of trouble linking them together. 

 

Ripping off his shirt and tying off Robin's arm in the precious few seconds before Raina's spell stopped the bleeding. 

 

Raina's parents vanishing between one heartbeat and the next, his own keen senses the only reason he'd noticed anything at all. 

 

The eerie sound of a baby's wails as Matt approached. 

 

Putting his arm around Winifred Wei, because what else could you do but hold onto your friend when the world was falling apart? 

Lots of shouting from the corner where Woundmaker, Matt's dog, and Bowman were squaring off. 

 

Phantom in the air, sweating from the effort as she sealed off the barely-healed wound connecting this world with a dimension that never should have been. 

 

And his mother's voice, looking up at Phantom, recognizing her for what (if not who she was) like a ghost from the past - "You have to send me back." 

 

Riley jerked to his feet, hands still covered in blood, and for the first time since anyone had known him, declared, "What!?" 

 

"It has to be done," said his mother, looking up at Phantom. "If nobody goes back and tells them what happened, then those people Woundmaker was working for? The ones working on Ferals? They'll have the settlement. They'll have everything we...everything we built, all these years." She wiped her eyes with her hand, then said out loud, "None of you...you supers can do it! It's death for anybody else! And I...I don't belong here. I never did." 

 

 

[Gizmo]

The blood on Winifred's ear sizzled quietly in the aftermath of Raina's magic, leaving three thin slices missing from the helix but closed. She sat up roughly, settling heavily into a kneel. She accepted the remains of Matt's shirt with a glassy look, eyes gradually focusing after a few blinks. She noted dimly that her own outfit was in tatters but a good sight more wearable than what she usually found herself draped in after an episode. The rag was left forgotten in her hand as though she couldn't quite work out what to do with it, head craning about to try to spot all of her friends. There was a shirtless Mathew and thank God the infant still alive. Raina for once was too worried to bother feigning indifference and part of her regretted not being in a position to appreciate either of those visuals. She caught Phaedra's distinctive outline off to one side with Cathy. The arm around her shoulders belonged to Riley she realized eventually and the the hand she'd taken in her own almost without realizing it was Robin's. Robin's only hand now.

 

Awareness returned enough that she was able to actually parse what was being said. She squeezed Robin's fingers tightly and let out a series of hacking coughs that resolved into a shaky laugh. "What a time --hnh-- for a 'pep talk', hah." She wiped at her face with the piece of shirt, mainly succeeding in smearing the blood about. The knot her new alter-ego had tied in her top had come undone, leaving it hanging open like a vest but she was entirely too tired to give a damn over modesty. "Still foggy... Oh, oh the baby! And were Raina's parents here? I feel as though I ought to punch them." She was distracted from that line of questioning as Riley jolted upward next to her and she released Robin's hand to rise unsteadily to her feet, placing a hand on his shoulder to return the gesture of support.

[alderwitch]

Phantom had left all tasks other than the fragmenting barrier to other arriving members to deal with. Even after the main rift closed, she remained in the air, silent as her hands moved in intricate patterns, stitching reality closed with all of the power at her disposal. That world was never supposed to come in contact with others as it frayed and fragmented. The first step was to cut and cauterize the connections from Prime and then she'd likely spend the rest of the week flickering from dimension to dimension to excise it from the coil. Only when she was addressed, did she look from her work to ghost down. 

 

"The pathways are not yet fully closed but they will be once my work is done. For the good of the Coil, the connections must be cut," Phantom said, her grave voice more rough than usual. Riley's mother was not the first person Phantom had to have this conversation, nor would she be the last, "When fully severed, it will begin the slow drift towards the Terminus and its destruction; the reason the Terminus actually exists. It will not likely be in your lifetime or your children's lifetime but its death will be inevitable."

 

The metaphysics of it; the unholy union of two dimensions into one unstable whole didn't matter so Phantom did not share the details or the reasons. Nor did she offer her apologies. 'Sorry' was too small a word for the news she had to give and served only to make it more bearable for Phantom herself, and this was her burden to bear. "If I send you back, you will not be able to return. I do not offer amnesty to many; I cannot, but you may remain here on Prime with your child. The choice is yours." 

 

Phantom turned her head away then, turning to sketch more sigils in the area and unwind the magic that had been worked, leaving Riley and his mother to their discussion. 

[Electra]

Raina's skin itched from the magic pouring through the room, sealing the rift she'd slammed shut. It was old, old magic, age that her senses parsed as the scent of mothballs and rare books and cedar, and it was neither good nor evil, it just was, with an implacability that would've disturbed her if she could've collected her thoughts long enough to consider it. Instead all those impressions drained instantly to the back of her mind as she stood in the middle of her magic circle and got a good look at what she'd done. "Sorry," she heard herself mumbling in Robin's direction. "Sorry, shit, sorry, sorry, sorry, I didn't mean-"

 

She took a step back, then another one, taking herself out of the circle, then looked over her shoulder. The place where her parents had been was empty, they were gone. That was... not too surprising, really. "I'm so sorry, Robin, I didnt- I gotta-" Stiffening her back to keep from stumbling, she turned and broke into a walk just shy of a jog, heading for the nearest door. Merlin appeared out of nowhere to leap onto her backpack and scramble to her shoulder as she went. With any luck, she could get someplace a lot more private before she started throwing up. 

[Fox]

The outside of the door was heavily scratched, like a wild animal - or several - had been desperate to get in and had spent several minutes making half-decent progress abrading their way through industrial metal; in what was surely a coincidence, a quartet of smoke-furred hounds were sitting just outside, eyes unreadable like burning coal. They looked at her for a moment, before one of them tilted its head to the left. "There are bushes," said one. "If you are sick as Winifred was," said another.

 

"No one died," one mused; they'd started moving, and it was hard to tell which was talking. "Two deaths." "None of ours died." "True." "This is good." One by one they moved through the door, talking...to her? To themselves? "They could use your support," said one. "You might use theirs," mused another. "Or not. It isn't our choice." "It isn't not yours."

 

The last of them grinned at her; it looked tired, somehow. "Thank you for opening the door."

 

 

Four black bodies managed to slow down just in time to not hit Matt like soot-colored missiles, milling around him anxiously before splitting off to mill around the others, and back again. No one was spared their attention, least of all the injured, though perhaps psychopomps were cold comfort to the hurt. If Matt found it off-putting, he didn't show it, reaching out to quietly pet each before they trotted off again.

[Avenger Assembled]

She staggered, briefly, stunned by the words. "...all of it, then?" Tears were in her eyes as Riley, torn between his maimed girlfriend and his mother, picked the latter because the first was being treated while the former might be leaving him forever, wrapped his arms around her. "Oh..." She swallowed, closed her eyes, then opened them. "I'll do it. I won't leave my people to be the pawns of outsiders - and I won't let _them_ have Feral toys. We thought we were dead before. We'll-we'll find a way out of this too." She looked at Riley and put her arm around him and said "And I know my son is going to live longer than our world does, because he's going to be here." 

 

"But-but you just got here," said Riley, feeling the tears standing out in his eyes and hating himself for it. "I...I have so much to tell you...I love you, Momma." I cut off my girlfriend's hand! I found my mother! All this is happening at once! He blinked hard, then shoved his hand into his bag. "I...I have this!" he said suddenly, pushing a leather-bound book into his mother's hand. "I kept a journal. Every day, for two years. Tactical information; strongholds, equipment stockpiles-" 

Peyton took the book, awkward with one arm, and kissed Riley's head. "Good boy. Good boy. You always were a good soldier. I love you, Riley. You go...you go be the man you always wanted to be."  

[alderwitch]

Robin would have been happier if she'd had something to keep busy with. Studiously not looking at her injury, Robin twisted her head to follow Raina's sudden flight. In a rare moment of self doubt, Robin asked Fred in a low voice, "Should I go after her?" Normally, she'd feel that was her responsibility to shoulder but she couldn't miss the look directed towards her arm - or rather, where the arm should have been. Robin was still studiously not looking but she could hardly miss the looks of concern. "I could have let go. I knew the risks. I've always known the risks."

 

It was weird, Robin thought, it almost felt like both fists clenched. Almost. Turning away from where Raina was, Robin gave a curt, short shake of her head to questions from the Leaguers that had arrived. Her good hand came down gently in reassurance to the dog that passed by her legs. She couldn't tell them apart in the best of times and this was... not the best of times. Mentally clocking Raina's flight to go after her, she ghosted up behind Riley in mute support, her posture a little awkward as she tried to figure out what her stances were minus one limb. 

 

"You don't have to go," Robin reaffirmed because she felt someone ought to, even if her brief interactions with this Peyton has been strained at best. "We could see about maybe getting a message through instead?" Although knowing Riley's level of paranoia, Robin knew that it would likely go unheard. Still, it should at least be said. Her grey eyes were sad in features drawn with pain and loss but her shoulders were square and her voice remained steady, even. Robin was nothing if not a survivor. She'd survive this too. Her left arm moved instinctively trying to put her hand in the small of Riley's back only to jerk the stump back abruptly. "I wish we'd met under different circumstances."