Summus Proelium

Okay, so what the hell was I supposed to do with this knowledge? It turned out Cup really had planned out how to get out of basically all the consequences for her monstrous bullshit. She had one of the best possible get out of jail free cards, literally. Of course the Ministry would agree to throw their resources behind helping her in exchange for handing over those puppets. I had absolutely no doubt about that. The only question was exactly how she would make sure they couldn't just kill her after she handed them over. But something told me she had a plan for that as well. I was starting to think Cup hadn't been nearly as impulsive and unthinking as she had acted whenever I saw or heard about her. There was definitely a lot more to the violent psychopath than she tended to let on. Even her own brother/lover (and yes the thought of that combination did make bile rise into my throat) had been taken by surprise. Just how much and how long had she been playing it up for everyone? Would we ever actually know?

Well, one thing was for sure, Amanda Sanvers definitely wouldn’t be getting the punishment she actually deserved. Between what had already been laid out about how she’d manipulated things to give herself a break by turning on Nick and the rest of the Scions, and now managing to give the Ministry a reason to help her out, I wouldn’t be surprised if she actually managed to walk out of this whole situation essentially free and clear. And wasn’t that just so goddamn fantastic? The very thought of her pulling it off made me want to track that evil bitch down and find a way to break her fucking--

“Cass?” Tomas was looking at me with some concern. “Are you okay? You’re sort of… glaring at that plate like you want to throw it across the room. Or maybe shoot it.”

Shit, he was right, I wasn’t hiding my reaction very well. Fortunately, Mills was too distracted to pay attention to what we were doing. She had stood from the table and moved to see what her husband was doing. But the others were watching me. Ryder looked apologetic, like he’d realized it might’ve been better to wait until we had some privacy before letting me know what he’d managed to use his Mites to eavesdrop on. Still, I quickly pushed all the thoughts and emotions about what Cup was up to out of my mind and shrugged. “Sorry, I was just thinking about my parents and how they’d like to be here for this, that’s all. It’s fine.” Yeah, that was a good reason for me to be glaring at my plate. Even if the idea of using my worry about them as an excuse made a knot of guilt twist itself in my stomach. As if I didn’t have enough of that as it was.

Arleigh reached across the table to pat my hand. “Hey don’t worry, Cass, I’m sure they’re gonna be fine. I mean, come on, they’re so rich they can afford the best doctors in the universe. I mean that literally, I’m pretty sure your family has enough money to pay aliens to bring their super-advanced tech to help them out. The only way they won’t get cured is if that stuff is one hundred percent fatal and that’s--ow.” She shifted in her seat, looking down as though to figure out who had kicked her. Tomas, Maki, and Ryder all seemed to wear identical innocent expressions at that moment.

Clearing my throat, I managed a somewhat weak, “It’s okay, really. I’ll visit them later, after they finish cleaning up the… whatever it was that happened last night.”

Tomas quickly swallowed his latest forkful before giving a rapid nod. “Shit, yeah, did you guys hear about that? Paintball kicked the shit out of Pencil and then Cup killed her own brother just so she could surrender? You saw the videos right? I mean, of the fight. Here, someone put the Mortal Kombat theme over this one.” He was already pulling out his phone. Part of me wanted to object, having no interest in watching a video of myself in that fight. But I knew that if I wasn’t Paintball, there was no way in hell Cassidy Evans wouldn’t want to watch that sort of thing over and over again. It would look suspicious, and I already had enough problems with that. I had to be careful, especially around this place. I couldn’t do anything to make them pay more attention to me.

So, I stood and watched the video of my fight with Pencil with everyone else as we gathered around Tomas’s phone. Actually, I watched it several times over, all with different editing done. Honestly, the fact that people had already managed to do so much with it was impressive. And the amount of views each of those videos had was intimidating. I tried to just act like a normal person right then, reacting the way I would if I hadn’t actually lived through that fight. Partway through, as I saw myself narrowly avoid being killed by that psycho for the fourth or fifth time, I felt someone take my hand. It was Ryder, doing it subtly so no one would see while everyone else was laser-focused on the video, using our bodies to block the view. He squeezed firmly, giving me a brief-yet-meaningful look before releasing me so we wouldn’t draw any attention.

“Damn, he’s lucky to be alive,” Arleigh eventually noted with a low whistle. “But hey, you think he’ll be able to collect that reward money? They wouldn’t give it to Cup, right? I mean, she did kill Pencil, but Paintball caught him. And I’m pretty sure she’s disqualified for obvious reasons. They’ve gotta give it to him. How do they handle that? They can’t just hand over one point five million dollars in cash.”

Her words made me choke, sputtering despite myself. “How much?”

She laughed at my reaction, shaking her head. “Dude, you didn’t know? It was more for both Pencil and Cup together, and I don’t think they’ll count her since she turned herself in. But even Pencil by himself was worth a million and a half, at least. Depends on how many of those smaller private rewards pop up. The one point five mill was just the verified, authorized reward.” She gestured to the phone where the next video replay was still going. “He earned it, don’t you think?”

“Of course she thinks he earned it,” Tomas put in. “Cass is just trying to do the mental math to figure out if that’s a lot of money or not,” he teased me lightly. Somehow, Tomas poking at me for my family being rich wasn’t as annoying or aggravating as Arleigh doing it. Maybe because I’d never spent time making out with her---aaaaand now I was feeling sick again. Change the subject, Cassidy, change the freaking subject!

“They,” I finally blurted, stretching out for something to actually say. This was a pretty big subject change, for sure, and it would distract them. Even if I didn’t exactly want to have the discussion in front of Arleigh of all people. Still, it was better than continuing to talk about Paintball, or about what was going to happen with Cup, the whole reward thing, or anything else to do with the Scions fallout.

So, I told the others that it was no big deal, I just wanted to be referred to as they/them instead of she/her. It felt more like the person I was now, or maybe the person I wanted to be. Either way, it was more accurate. It would help me be the right Cassidy.

Tomas stepped around the table and pulled me into an embrace without saying much about it. He just hugged me and let that linger for a moment. Which actually felt pretty good, to be honest. When I looked at his face, he winked at me before letting go. “Whatever makes you the best you, Cassidy Evans.”

Maki gave a short nod, their eyes on me with an unreadable expression. “Yes, I’m very glad that you have found a way to be more comfortable with yourself.” Which, of course, just made me more curious about that whole situation. I’d been referring to Maki as they in my mind, even though they presented as male in every encounter we had. But I didn’t know if that was more because they didn’t want to let anyone know they could shift sexes or… or what. And it wasn’t exactly an easy subject to bring up without exposing that I knew a lot more than I should.

Of course, Arleigh had to hug me too. Hers was even tighter, less of a comfortable thing and more like she was hugging me because Tomas had and she felt like it was the right thing for her to do. Or maybe I was just being too judgmental again.

“Damn straight,” she informed me. “Whatever you want to be called works for me. And don't worry, by the time you get to school again, everyone is going to know they better not call you the wrong thing. You know, or your family’ll pay for them to disapp--”

“Ahem.” Mills interrupted, having turned away from the doorway to come back over. She gave Arleigh a brief look. “If everyone is done eating, maybe you'd like to go up and play a game or watch a movie? Seems like a shame to end the day already.”

Obviously, part of me wanted to do just that. I wanted to walk away from this dinner, congratulate myself on not letting anything get too out of hand, and go home. Or to the shop. But no, I couldn’t act like I had a bunch of other things to do. Not to mention the fact that I wanted to talk to Ryder about that conversation he’d eavesdropped on and shown me, maybe even find out if he’d picked up anything else useful. And from what I’d heard, Arleigh and he had come together. Not together together, thank every god and assorted deity in the universe. But he had driven her, since there was something wrong with her car, and there was apparently a long wait on replacement parts thanks to the lockdown. Yeah, it was a whole thing. Arleigh had done an extensive and rather profanity-laden rant about it earlier while we were eating.

The point was, I needed to hang out longer and just make it seem like a completely ordinary thing. Which, to be fair, it could've been worse. Yes, Arleigh was there and that wasn't perfect. But she basically behaved herself for the most part, aside from a completely unthinking comment here or there that made me cringe or bite my tongue. It wasn't like she was intentionally trying to be awful. It was more like she just didn't think at all about what she was saying or doing. And from what I’d seen of her home life, maybe that wasn’t all that surprising. Her older brother had been a complete dick whenever I saw him, especially with Arleigh. Maybe if she had grown up in a different family, she’d be a better person. Hell, what if I had grown up differently? What sort of person would I be if I grew up with a brother like him instead of the one I had? Sure, Simon teased me and all that, but I knew he cared.

Well, sure, he’d almost had me killed. But he hadn’t known who I was right then. Which didn’t exactly get rid of all the issues, given it still left him as someone who could have people killed--and kill them himself, come to think of it. And yet, I still felt like he was overall a better person than what I had seen of Micah. The older boy had literally shoved his sister so hard into the wall just to get into the fridge that he’d left her rubbing her shoulder painfully. Worse, it had seemed very casual to him. It wasn’t like he was roughhousing and it got out of hand. It was just normal.

And yet, what sort of environment had he grown up in to see that as--okay stop, Cassidy. I was going to spin myself in mental circles until I got dizzy and threw up at this rate. It was hard to know exactly why someone behaved the way they did, what sort of environment they came from. But that didn’t totally excuse their actions. I just… I couldn’t deal with focusing on that right now. All I could do was try not to arouse any suspicions by hanging out here for awhile and acting as though I didn’t have a thousand other things I’d rather be doing right then.

Okay that wasn’t fair either. Aside from Arleigh’s presence, I did enjoy spending time with Ryder, Tomas, and Maki. They were cool. And if I hadn’t had the crushing weight of wanting to help put together the machine that would eventually lead to fixing my parents, Irelyn, and the others, I might have enjoyed it even more. Instead, every time I caught myself truly relaxing over those next couple of hours, a sharp jolt of guilt would go through me. The fact that I really couldn’t help that much back at the shop anyway didn’t make it go away either.

Of course, Tomas, Arleigh, and Maki spent a fair portion of the time talking about what had happened to the Scions. And, more specifically, the fight between Paintball and Pencil. Even though we’d already watched those videos, they watched them again, and kept talking about it, dissecting every little bit. Arleigh in particular seemed to be a big fan of his, which just left me reeling even more than I already was. Ryder tried to shift the focus to other things, but he couldn’t be too obvious about it. He did, however, shoot me an apologetic look while Tomas was deep in an explanation about how Paintball must have some sort of special aimbot assistance inside his helmet to pull off some of those shots. Which, of course, they had to go back and play again and again, and get my opinion on. And on and on it went.

Fortunately, we did eventually watch an actual movie. Then we went outside and threw a frisbee around. Which I managed to do using mostly the arm that wasn’t attached to a shoulder that still secretly had a medication bandage attached to it. Even then, I had to stop myself from visibly and audibly reacting to pulling it a few times.

Maki disappeared now and then, needing time alone for… whatever they were doing. And no, I still hadn’t settled on a way to talk to them about it that wouldn’t expose too much about my own issues. Maybe I should approach them as Paintball at some point and say that someone I knew had seen them practically get forced into a car by someone from the Ministry? But that would back them into a corner about talking to me. Not to mention potentially expose details to the Ministry themselves. Damn it, what was the right way to go about this?

I had no idea. And honestly, it was probably a bad idea to take on some other problem right then, even if I felt like there was something more I should be doing. This revelation about how Cup was going to be using the Ministry to get herself out of trouble was bad enough already. I felt like screaming until I was hoarse. Instead, I just threw the frisbee hard enough that Tomas had to chase the thing halfway across the yard, diving to catch it right before it would’ve gone into some of his mother’s flowers.

Grimacing, I called out an apology and told myself to calm down. Not that it was easy. And it became even harder a moment later as I realized Kent was standing out on the back patio watching us. God, just being under his gaze gave me the creeps. Not just because of that whole memory thing, but also knowing that he had undoubtedly just been making some sort of deal to give Amanda Sanvers her freedom in exchange for those puppet dolls.

Okay honestly the idea of the Ministry having the dolls felt bad too, I realized belatedly. Those things needed to be destroyed somehow, but something told me they wouldn’t be. Unless we did something about--

Cassidy, no. Too much on our plates already. We had done enough, right? Let others deal with Amanda, the Overseer puppets, and the rest of that. We were already busy. Trying to teleport someone like Pittman off of Breakwater, keep him prisoner, yoink the secret to curing his Sleeptalk bullshit, and not let anyone find out who we were or what we did was enough. Hell, we still hadn’t figured out what was in all those vials we stole from the Ministry base, or finished going through all those files--okay Paige and Sierra probably had, but still.

Somehow, I shut everything else out and focused just on the game. And it was… well, not totally relaxing, but not terrible either. Even Arleigh didn’t manage to say or do anything too uncomfortable. I almost let myself forget, just for a few minutes, about everything else that needed to be done or worked on.

Finally, it was time to leave. I thanked the Jacksons, giving Tomas a hug before heading out with the others. Apparently Ryder was going to be giving all three of us a ride home. Which worked for me. Once the other two were home, he and I could talk.

It turned out Maki didn’t live that far from Tomas, just a couple minutes' drive. It was another nice house surrounded by a stone wall with a guarded gate out front. Probably designed and built by the same developer. Maybe from the same plan. Either way, they thanked us politely and stepped out to go inside. As they did so, I sensed more than saw something slip out of their pocket. Picking up what turned out to be a folded-up piece of paper, I started to say something but they had already jogged up to the front gate. And as I opened my mouth to call after them, I noticed a name on the paper. San Francisco Cavers. San? Why did they have a paper with San’s name on it? My sort-of friend (even if he was entirely too obsessed with trying to ship people in our lives) shouldn’t be on any sort of list held by anyone even tangentially connected to the Ministry.

Carefully unfolding the paper while Arleigh was chatting Ryder’s ear off, I looked at it. More names. A lot of them, actually. Maybe seventy all together. Many were other people from our school, though there were also a lot I didn’t recognize. Some were crossed off or had X’s next to them, others had question marks or nothing at all. Oh and look right there, my name was on the list with a question mark.

Okay, what? Why would Maki have a list of names, including mine, with lines through some and question marks and--what?

I was thinking about that for the next few minutes, until we dropped Arleigh off in Sherwood territory. But neither Ryder or I said anything there. God no. We kept our conversation completely inconsequential until we had made it all the way out of that place and made sure no one was listening.

Only then did I finally look over at the boy and exhale. “Well, this fell out of Maki’s pocket.” I showed him the list, having moved to the front as soon as Arleigh left.

Frowning that way, Ryder slowly asked, “Why would he have a list of names like--wait, some of those are people from your school. Why would he have that?”

My head shook. “I dunno, but I guess it’s something else to check on… somehow.” With a sigh, I waved one hand. “But hey at least the Scions aren’t an ongoing problem. Except for one of them. Speaking of which, the Ministry’s gonna go for it, aren’t they?”

“I don’t see how they can do anything else,” he agreed quietly. “It’s too dangerous to risk letting anyone else get their hands on that safe. And since they have access to you-know-who, they’ll be able to get the puppets out of it. That’s if Cup hasn’t managed to do that herself already. But something tells me she hasn’t. Due to the fact that the city hasn’t devolved into a bunch of Touched fighting each other. Err--” He blushed. “You know what I mean.” Parking the car in front of an old gas station, he looked over at me, expression softening. “Are you okay? I mean, really.”

“I’m… hanging in there,” I murmured softly before letting my head fall back against the seat. “That whole thing could’ve gone a whole lot worse.”

The boy grimaced. “You’re telling me. Wait, are you talking about dinner tonight, or about the fight with the Scions?”

Somehow, I summoned up a smile, meeting his gaze. “Both?” My expression sobered. “Thanks for sharing that bit earlier. I owe you.”

“Oh please,” he shot back. “Pretty sure I’m still the one in debt. So if you ever come up with a way I can actually pay you back, let me know.”

“I’d rather say neither of us owes anything,” I quietly informed him. “Better to just be friends.”

“Friends?” His tone was very lightly teasing. “Sure a Star-Touched can be friends with a Fell?”

A snort escaped me. “I’ll give it a shot.

“Which oughta work out, because as you saw in that video, I have very good aim.”