Book three, EQUAL AND OPPOSITE, will begin next week. However, I will definitely have to take a break between the end of OIM and the beginning of Leviathan. I'll let you all know when the time comes.
Chapter Twenty-Two — Status Quo
Isaac stepped out of Mechaniacal’s tower onto the familiar pavement of Star City, breathing in the concrete-scented air and finding himself relaxing for the first time in weeks. Maybe since he’d robbed the armored truck. Shay emerged beside him, tapping the asphalt curiously with her claws and snuffling at the air as she looked upward at the vast blue of the sky. Sarah squinted at the sun and created a parasol to shade her before letting out a groan as she slumped against Astoria.
“Guh. Let’s just go home.”
“Yeah,” Isaac agreed, not missing that Sarah had included him without even thinking about it. He took a glance back at the tower that had brought them home – he recognized the area, as the pit where Mechaniacal’s old base had been before it self-destructed – and then climbed up the wing-panels to settle into Shay’s saddle. Sarah followed suit on Astoria, with Gratin hopping on behind her, and the three of them headed off through the city.
“—authorities say that there is no further danger, and anyone suffering from recurring dreams of impending doom or similar symptoms should contact a verified psychic. In other news, the Star City Superjump Team secured it’s third victory this season—”
Even the radio broadcast, heard in passing, was familiar, with the usual voices reading it in the professional cadence he was used to. Horns beeped, engines roared and chimed and growled, and somewhere off in the distance the wail of a police siren sounded. All the usual, familiar noises of Star City.
Shay and Astoria attracted a few gawkers as they padded past cars and pedestrians, sometimes on the road and sometimes not. The raptors themselves seemed to enjoy the change of scenery, adapting surprisingly well to the world above, but Isaac couldn’t muster the energy to think about it too much. Whatever brainpower he had left was being used on what had just happened.
The moment he had actually stood up against Star Central and stopped running, all the attempts to assert authority over him were just gone. Vanished, evaporated like morning fog. He knew it wasn’t just that, of course, since his interactions with the Deep Kingdoms and Mechaniacal were really what served to provide defense against Star Central, but whatever grace or protection he’d earned were a direct consequence of proactively using his power. Trying to take ahold of it and make it work for him rather than fearing what would come of it being known.
He had returned to Star City a completely different person, and while he was free of his worries from the past, he still had to consider the future. Among other things, he could actually connect with Cayleb again, since Isaac no longer had to fear Star Central. Then there was Sarah, who was probably the most important point for any future plans.
Isaac made a brief tossing-away gesture with one hand, putting off his worries for a future day. Instead he rode with Sarah in a tired, companiable silence, a weariness less of body than of events. Confronting two supervillains and changing the world in the space of a single day was just too much.
Shay and Astoria carried them along Eighth Avenue, past West Spring Station and up to Park Avenue East. The Humbert Building perched at the edge of the greenery, with the exact same gate guard as always. The man lifted his brows at the raptors, but Sarah dispelled her Scheherazade illusion to wave at him and before they even reached the gates the wrought iron was swinging open. Sarah nodded thanks to him as they passed by the booth, then brought Astoria to a halt as the musclebound figure of her brother hurried out of the door.
“James!” Sarah launched herself off Astoria with the bouncy grace of reduced inertia as she practically tackled her bother. He still had a few glimmering strands of colored hair as a souvenir from being crystallized, but seemed otherwise unharmed as he gave Sarah a bone-cracking hug. Isaac followed at a more sedate pace, and by the time he had dismounted from Shay, Sally Miller had appeared as well. After exchanging embraces with her daughter, she inclined her head to him.
“Isaac.”
“Ma’am,” he replied.
“Thank you for keeping my daughter safe,” she said, and Isaac shook his head.
“It was a team effort,” he said, as Shay bent down to snuffle at James, who tried to fend off the dinosaur to little effect. “I’m just glad to see everyone got back home intact. Even Gratin,” he added, glancing around to try and spot the slippery little lizard-guy.
“Just happy to be home yes!” Gratin called from where he was already at the building door, though Isaac knew now that he hardly needed to use that door – or, for that matter, elevator – to get places.
“Well, we don’t need to all hang around outside,” Sally said, clapping her hands as she eyed the two raptors. “I’m sure we can find a space for your…?”
“This is Astoria,” Sarah said proudly. “And that’s Shay.”
“We have the care and feeding literature, for what it’s worth,” Isaac added. “Gratin knows, too. But I guess they are going to need a stable sooner rather than later.”
“I’m sure it can be arranged,” she said, with the assurance of someone with more than enough money and power. “Come on inside.”
Isaac patted Shay and reached out to squeeze Sarah’s hand, then followed them in. Home, for now.
Over the next few weeks it turned out that money and connections were really the most unfair superpower. Finding, purchasing, and converting a building adjacent to the city walls, so that the raptors could venture out into the druid-controlled wilds between cities when they wanted, was simply a matter of course for the Miller family. As was turning the upstairs of said building into an apartment and office, and while Isaac felt a little bit weird sponging off his girlfriend’s family, it was great to have his own space again. Though the fact that it was shared with his girlfriend made it a unique experience.
It did mean their neighbors were people with a need to access and hunt in the wilds; a family of werewolves from the Old Country, magic users with predator familiars, and some avian folks who were either not human or had some very severe mutations. They seemed nice enough, though, and he wasn’t going to object to their penchant for barbeque.
While he’d had roommates before, living with a girlfriend was a completely different experience even though they kept separate rooms. Especially when they had so much more to learn about each other. So far, most of the time he’d been around Sarah, they’d been dealing with supers or trapped in the Deep Kingdoms or otherwise under some kind of stress. He had a worry that without that pressure they’d drift apart, but it turned out to be less of an issue than his worries had conjured. Even if they’d met as Chains and Smokeshow, the chemistry hadn’t been all between invented personas, and they got along just fine even without a crisis.
Of course, all relationships took work. Isaac might not be a seasoned veteran on the topic, but he knew that much. So they went out on dates to the theatre, which Sarah was surprisingly passionate about, but also to the park with Shay and Astoria, just strolling through greenery that was less overwhelming than the Deep Kingdoms. They even stopped by a classic car expo, though with the raptors it wasn’t like either of them were in the market for anything.
Still, it was fun to see the antique ‘700 hyperspring model vehicles with the very early bubble stylings. There were even some very old repulsor designs, back before Tinkertown standardized the technology, and Sarah got a kick out of how wobbly they were. With her illusionary hat and kiseru layered over her more usual strolling-around clothes she looked right at home as a moll behind the wheel of one of those classics, so he got a photo for her scrapbook.
It was more leisure time than he’d taken for a while, but there was no need to rush their relationship. Both of them were still trying to fumble their way into some new identity, as well as expand their power portfolio. His ability to make her illusions more real needed a lot of practice to define its exact limitations, and that was just one aspect of what they were working on. While they were – and he hated to use the word – powerful enough as individuals, together their talents could be quite extraordinary.
“I’m still kind of astounded to be using my power for more than lifting and carrying,” he said one afternoon, as he lent ontological inertia to illusionary miniatures that Sarah had reenacting one of the plays they had seen. Princess of The Dead Mountains, by Prokhoviev, which was apparently historically accurate. “Not that I’m complaining, but it’s still so new.”
“Better than what I was doing before, too,” Sarah agreed, voice cutting across the sound of Isaac’s pocketwatch quietly ticking away as it measured how much power he was pushing into the smoke. “I feel like I was being so stupid, just running with Dad’s gang all the time. Wasting my life.”
“Hey, I’ve met your dad,” Isaac said, reaching over to squeeze her hand. “He clearly thinks the gang isn’t a waste of time, so why would you?” It wasn’t clear to him why her mom had let things continue, but it really wasn’t his place to judge family dynamics. He hadn’t had one himself, after all. There had been no word from Crash about rejoining the gang at the rare family dinner, however, or even an indication that Crash knew Isaac had been Chains.
He couldn’t spend all his time settling in, though, as he needed to start turning his power into something he could actually use. Accepting the largesse of the Millers for a building he shared with Sarah was one thing, but James had recovered Isaac’s tinkered workstation and Isaac wasn’t going to rely on someone else for the raw materials needed for costuming work. That meant money, which meant work, but it still took him several weeks before he was ready to start selling his services.
Sarah kept herself occupied turning her notes and photographs into a fully-featured book, a more thorough addition to the newspaper column she’d originally planned. Isaac was pretty sure it’d do well, considering that it had the first pictures he knew of from inside one of the ikiski crystal palaces, not to mention all the action for those who wanted a more exciting read. And of course, with such a big name attached to it, finding a publisher would be easy.
Isaac himself had a loose association with the Star City diplomatic corps, which was odd to think about. When the teleporter was repaired, there would be paying work for sure, but it wasn’t something he could rely on consistently. Which meant he had to ply his talents in other ways. To start with, selling altered materials. His first customer was, inevitably, Cayleb. Or really, Star Central, but Isaac could read between the lines and he didn’t mind having someone he knew make the first contact between them.
“Oh man, this is so cool,” Cayleb said, as Isaac kept his fingers on a tray of electronic components. The actual function of the components was a little opaque, but Cayleb’s request was easy enough to fulfill. He wanted the resistance to a change in current reduced as much as possible, and had a gizmo attached to track it.
“It’s just numbers changing to me,” Isaac admitted, somewhat amused. The space he’d set aside for materials alterations was just a refurbished garage, right next to the stables, since he figured that someone might want him to alter something big and heavy rather than a little suitcase-sized chunk of electronics.
His own sensor, the pocketwatch supplied by Mechaniacal, clicked softly from its position on the workbench next to the electronics tray. Several spikes reached out from the center circle, shifting and narrowing as he focused his power on the widgets. Probably not necessary for something so straightforward, but the audible feedback to applying the alterations was reassuring.
“You have any idea how hard it is to get exotic materials! I mean, I have some ideas for making them, but it takes a lot more energy and infrastructure. Some of it even Star Central isn’t willing to shell out for.” Despite his words, he was cheerful, his oversized head supported by a barely-visible suit, one made for blending in with civilians. It wasn’t like he could hide the physical aspect of his power, but there was a difference between an actual uniform and just the usual trappings of someone with mutated physiology.
“Well, when I go back down to the Deep Kingdoms we can hopefully resume trade there, which should allow for some weird stuff, right?” He took a moment to rummage in his drawers and pull out the crystaltech tablet he’d taken from the amethyst city and offered it for Cayleb to examine. Crystaltech could very clearly do things that human tech couldn’t, and vice versa of course, so he could imagine better trade there would make the various tinkers quite happy. There were some people who really wanted a close look at Shay and Astoria, but so far nobody had dared push too hard about that.
“Probably,” Cayleb said, poking at the tablet while keeping half an eye on the readouts from his sensors. “Hands might get more from that than I do. I’m mostly telecommunications, electromagnetics, and I think crystaltech isn’t really built with that in mind.” With obvious regret on his broad face, Cayleb put the tablet down on the workbench. “I hear Glorybeam figured out some stuff, but, well. That’s Glorybeam.”
“Speaking of Glorybeam,” Isaac said, letting go of the case to put the tablet back where it belonged. “Has she gotten back to normal? Or close?” He remembered though the fever-haze of Mechaniacal’s power boost that he had removed the alteration that made the depowerment permanent, but that was meaningless. If she wanted her powers back, she would have to put in the work.
“We’re not allowed to say anything about that,” Cayleb replied, tapping the workbench in the idle manic energy he always showed. “Not that I know much anyway. I spend most of my time down in the dungeon with the machines, and leave the fighting stuff to other people.”
“You’re not missing much,” Isaac said, shaking his head. “The couple of super-fights I’ve been in have not been any fun. It’s just too much, and all at once. I don’t know how anyone manages to keep their head when they’re slugging it out.”
“Oh yeah,” Cayleb said, reaching for the soda Isaac had provided and taking a swallow. “Not jealous, especially since I can watch everything now. Everyone’s carrying my minicams and we’ve got drones flying sometimes. Not as much as I wanted, though some people got mad about my cam-drones in their neighborhood and yelled at the mayor.” Cayleb rolled his eyes, and Isaac took a moment to think how to most diplomatically explain the problem.
“Well, there’s a lot of metas who don’t like having things like that nearby. I’m pretty there there’s a lot of retired supers up by Park Avenue, for example.” A couple of them gave Isaac a bit of uncomfortable attention when he turned up now, too, as if sensing that he had been involved in something important. He wouldn’t have been surprised if that was the case, as being old didn’t mean they were any less powerful than they had been during their prime — and heroes that survived long enough to properly retire were dangerous indeed.
“Eh, I guess. Still pretty fun to do all this stuff. Kind of wish I’d gotten the chance to look at Mechaniacal’s work when we were up there, though,” Cayleb grumped. “Or that he’d open up his tower.”
“I hate being such a killjoy, but it’s probably for the best he doesn’t,” Isaac disagreed. “I’ve been up close with it and I don’t think that stuff is fit for public consumption.” It wasn’t like he exactly had nightmares about it, but some of the more disturbing lines and angles from Mechaniacal’s chairs occasionally found their way into an intrusive thought, a random memory that made him wince before he set it aside. The same exercises he’d been taught when he was a kid for dealing with unwanted thoughts still worked, though, so it wasn’t as bad as it might have been.
“But it’s so cool!” Cayleb enthused. “Maybe that’s why so many tinkers go supervillain. Because they get to do cool stuff!”
“Don’t let Administrator Ichabod hear you talk like that,” Isaac said with a laugh. He knew Cayleb well enough to understand the complaint wasn’t serious, but not everyone would see it that way.
“Eh, everyone in the Dungeon talks all kind of trash,” Cayleb said, waving it away. “I think Hands actually did used to be a supervillain? Anyway, how’s it been being not-a-janitor?” The topic shift was abrupt, to the point where Isaac was pretty sure Cayleb had been asked to ask. Not that it was a real issue.
“Tell you what, I’m glad to not have to listen to a middle manager anymore,” Isaac admitted. “Still trying to find my feet, though. The Millers have people to take care of the paperwork and all, so that’s not a problem, but now I have to actually get clients.” He shook his head, though it wasn’t as big a deal as it might seem. Exotic materials went for top dollar.
“Not what I’d want to do, for sure,” Cayleb agreed cheerfully. “So the Millers, eh? That really was Sarah I met back on the station, then. Lucky.”
“Yup,” Isaac agreed happily. “Strange ships that pass in the night, and all that.”
“Oh man, you’re already starting to talk all fancy,” Cayleb said, pointing a finger at Isaac. “You’re going to be too high class to hang around folks like me soon enough.”
“No, no, it’s not like that,” Isaac laughed. “Mostly it’s just I’ve been doing a lot of reading of late,” Isaac said. He wasn’t necessarily into the same stuff as Sarah, but considering that he needed to give himself a better basis of understanding of both people and society, he’d been going through the classics.
“Man, I should get back to reading,” Cayleb muttered. “I mean, something other than technical manuals. I’ve been doing so much tinkering lately. They have all the toys, you know?”
“Gotta come up for air sometime,” Isaac said, leaning over to crack open the mini-fridge and get out another soda. “But I’m glad to hear you’ve been enjoying it.”
“Sure you’re not interested in coming over?” Cayleb half-asked, clearly not anticipating a positive answer.
“No. I’m independent, and I’ll stay that way.” He had even invested some of his power into that idea, making it harder to change that particular fact. The broad spike on his watch that indicated his self-investment had gotten incrementally wider, but he knew it would be hard to tell what was affected by that particular use of his power.
“I figured, but they wanted me to ask.” Cayleb waved it away, clearly unconcerned. “Have to say, I’m a little surprised how the chair upstairs flipped like that. You were kinda most-wanted for a while, and now everything is fine.”
“I’m pretty sure Mechaniacal had a word with him, back on Point Archimedes,” Isaac said. “Along with everything else, I guess he just figured it wasn’t worth the effort of trying to bring me in.”
“Yeah, you probably wouldn’t like being stuck in the Dungeon anyway,” Cayleb concluded.
By the time Cayleb left, Isaac felt a bit better about Star Central in general and Cayleb in particular. It had been a weight on his mind, that his brother had been locked into a completely different world, but that separation was not so bad anymore. There was still a gulf between them, thanks to the way he had been baited into an ambush, but it was no longer one that was completely resistant to change.
After putting Star Central’s creds for the work in their safe and spending lunch with Sarah trying to recreate one of the Deep Kingdom sauces, he went to his closet and pulled out a costume that he hadn’t had a chance to use for a while. Lou, the janitor. Just the moustache, overalls and bald cap, which felt familiar despite everything he’d gone through. Nostalgic, really.
He took a brand-new miricycle out to the foster home, now in the shadow of Mechaniacal’s tower. The area was starting to show signs of revitalization; partly because a lot of buildings had needed to be rebuilt anyway, but also because there was a lot of interest from high-powered people about Mechaniacal’s building and technology. So far as Isaac could see the home itself hadn’t much changed yet, but that probably wouldn’t be true forever.
Isaac let himself into the vestibule, finding Dolores there as usual. For some reason he was expecting her to look older, despite it only having been a month or so since he saw her last. A long month, though, and he half-expected she’d still notice some difference despite the costume.
“Mister Lou!” She beamed as she saw him, standing up to buzz him through the door. “I didn’t think we’d ever see you again after last time.”
“Well, I didn’t know myself how it would go,” he drawled, leaving his miricycle in the vestibule and walking through to shake Dolores’s hand. She ignored the outstretched arm to give him a hug, which he awkwardly returned. “But everything’s squared away. Hopefully you haven’t had issues keeping things up while I was gone.”
“Believe it or not, I’ve been doing this a long time,” Dolores said. “I can go a few weeks without someone to help sweep and mop. I’m glad to have you back, though.”
“Glad to be back,” Isaac said, accompanying Dolores down the hall to the janitor’s closet. She unlocked the door, and he saw that there was a brand-new janitor’s cart there. “Have you gotten any more support since Mechaniacal moved in?” The foster home was on the edges of the affected area, but he had heard that there were extra funds disbursed for the people nearby. Mostly to those who had needed to leave, but also just in general.
“Oh, just a bit here and there, but we’re fine,” Dolores said, waving it away. “Nothing like the bad old days. Actually we’ve had, y’know, fewer kids these past couple years, which is good.” Isaac nodded along as he pulled out the janitor cart and checked over the cleaning supplies. It was good; nobody actually wanted kids to go into foster care.
“Easier on you, for certain,” Isaac said, hefting the brand-new mop before putting it a way and inspecting the other replacements. “Have you been able to get more staff in?” Dolores wasn’t the only person at the foster home, but everyone else was part-time at best. He had only hazy memories of the rotating aides that came and went when he was a kid, especially since most of the time it really was just Dolores and the other kids.
“Yes, actually!” Dolores said happily. “There’s a nice young man with low-grade healing powers that’s going to stop by now and again. That’ll help the flu under control, especially this time of year.” She continued to chatter away as Isaac began sweeping the floors, which indeed weren’t too bad.
Falling back into the groove of just being a janitor was quite soothing, especially after the high-stakes actions of the past couple months, followed by the annoying tedium of trying to set up in a new place. Mopping, scrubbing, doing laundry, and even wiping windows was so ordinary and straightforward that it grounded him in the moment, rather than trying to wrangle with possible futures.
It was the kind of feeling he wanted to capture for his talent, as well. He knew that what he could do was not simple or straightforward, but being able to visibly see improvements in the world mattered. Most of his power use would probably be to change materials, and figuring out how much that had improved the world would be hard, but it wouldn’t be the only thing he did.
Something that he was slowly coming around to was the fact that he’d have to be proactive. If he waited to clean until he was tripping over trash then he was doing things wrong. The same way with his power; if he wanted to exercise it appropriately, he’d have to spot opportunities or even make them. A minor one being that he leaned into the cleanliness as he worked, both the act itself and the state after he had everything neatened up. He knew that it was a holding action at most; his talent couldn’t break physical reality. But making it more difficult to change from the clean floors and spotless windows might make it easier on Dolores.
There were no children there at the moment, since it was the middle of the day and most of them were in school, which left him free from interruptions. There was just Dolores gossiping, which was as it should be. Though even she eventually had to return to her paperwork and other administrative tasks, leaving him to finish the interior sweep and move on to scrubbing away a few bits of graffiti on the outside.
No drones accosted Isaac, and all the previous damage had been repaired. Unfortunately, it was just repair, and nothing had been done to make the brick building look any more exciting, but reworking the entire façade was more than anyone would expect anyway. Maybe, if his new career turned out well, he’d make an anonymous donation so at the very least the foster care center wouldn’t look bland and boring.
He packed up and said his farewells to Dolores, returning home more settled. Only a day later, he had another actual customer, this time a costumer, though not Star Central’s. Meta Defining was an upscale, fashion-oriented concern, and while the only thing the prim young woman representing the business wanted was zero-inertia cloth, it was still a novel experience. He also got a card for Sarah, since Scheherazade would need a full costume set eventually and Isaac could only do so much.
It was with these small things that the two of them kept themselves occupied, up until the alarms went off while they were trying to watch television. Not the citywide sirens, but the local shelter-in-place advisory. A glance out the window showed why, as a familiar black wall swept toward them.
“Heck,” Isaac said, jumping to his feet. Sarah followed suit, rising from the couch with her face shifting into a blank mask. Her smoke billowed out as Isaac reapplied the temporal resistance he had thought of the last time they’d encountered the supervillain. After his experience in the chair, he was sure he could do even more along those lines, but not on such short notice.
“Knew he’d be coming eventually,” Sarah muttered. She’d told him about how the illusions had taken on a life of their own, but there was no way that had fooled Blacktime for more than a few minutes. The connection to Crash did something to shield them, but Blacktime was ultimately a crime boss and supervillain.
The two of them stood shoulder to shoulder, each preparing in their own way. Sarah’s smoke condensed as a shield around them, as Isaac reinforced both his and Sarah’s ontological inertia. Various plans started flitting through his head, but before either of them needed to actually do anything about it, a brilliant light blazed outside and a comet arced down in front of their house.
“Blacktime,” said a voice that Isaac had only ever heard in person once before.
“Glorybeam.” Blacktime responded, the black wave shrinking down to just a single figure. Anything else they had to say was too quiet for him to hear, down on the street as it was. But slowly and by degrees, Isaac relaxed as it seemed Blacktime wasn’t going to be confronting them after all. In fact, after a few minutes of conversation, the time super vanished. Glorybeam rose into the air, her golden armor gleaming, and Isaac could swear that she looked directly at him and Sarah before arcing off into the air.
“Well,” Sarah said, pulling a real kiseru she’d purchased from its smoke form and rolling it in her fingers with a nervousness that didn’t show on her face. “I guess Glorybeam’s back.”
“Seems like,” Isaac said, staring out the window. He wasn’t really certain what to think. What animus he had toward Glorybeam was mostly gone after everything that had happened, but he didn’t really want anything more to do with her. Or with Blacktime, for obvious reasons.
When he’d started that campaign, he’d been just a guy, with no real power or prospects, or even a family. Now he was someone different, with a girlfriend and a future, with a potential he had only begun to explore. In some ways, things had gone back to the way they had been, but for him they weren’t at all, and that was a change he could live with.
Isaac put his arm around Sarah’s shoulder, and she put hers around his waist, leaning against him as the two of them looked out the window at what had happened. What had almost happened, but had been prevented, thanks to Glorybeam and in no small part Isaac’s own actions. That was another change he could live with.
“Well, I guess we have a new status quo.”
END OF BOOK TWO