Adamant Blood

"The Cultist Response," began Mayor Emilia Ramirez, in her report to the Security council, "Is what we are calling our official new response to the threat posed by the cultists, both demonic and Thrashtalon."

The Security Council of the Central Cities sat around the table, with the Mayor at the head. There were 5 people on the council and 1 observer, in case the other 5 fell. Memphi had almost fallen, so if it weren't for that crazy Living Resurrection, then the observer, Mayor Glover of New Chicago, would have taken Mayor Ramirez's place.

The leader of the security council was New Denver, a tier 6 city, and the largest city in the Central Cities coalition. New Denver, or just 'Denver', was represented by Mayor Walt Castle. He sat at the head of the Security Council, though they were all equals in this gathering.

Mayor Hatch of Salt Lake City was in seat 2. Salt Lake City was barely tier 4, and had been on decline for a little while, but they were likely going to bounce back soon, as soon as Memphi got its act together with the gate. Hatch had 23 million people in his city, compared to Memphi at a very high tier 4, at 45 million.

Memphi had almost matched Salt Lake City's population, in the middle of the Battle for Memphi, before the Resurrection Ghost appeared.

Mayor Robinson oversaw Saint Paul, which was a healthy tier 4 city, just like Memphi, and also located on the Mississippi. Most cities of the Central Cities Coalition were tier 4. Memphi and Saint Paul were big traders because of the Mississippi River. They were rather tight as a result.

Mayor Jorgenson was of Kansas City, and his city stood out as Tier 5, verging on tier 6. Mayor Jorgenson was one of Ramirez's biggest supporters, though they all supported each other rather well.

Mayor Glover of New Chicago was the observer. New Chicago was only Tier 3. Chicago used to be a massive city in the Old World, but times changed, and they changed hard. Mayor Glover was working hard with some settlements on the Daihoon side of his part of the Two Worlds to try and pull a fast one on Memphi, to get the Gate there, but he had failed.

Memphi had outmaneuvered Glover… Mostly.

Memphi had outmaneuvered Glover to start. Was this whole cultist shit a back-end ploy by Glover to make his city the gate city of North America? And also to oust Memphi from the Security Council, to take her place? Possible. Also unlikely.

Ramirez was keeping an eye on it, though.

Glover's response to Ramirez's words, happening right now, would be telling… Or maybe it wouldn't be telling at all. Glover probably knew what was coming down the line; there was no way he was going to be blindsided by what Ramirez had to say today. The offices of the government of Memphi had been battlegrounds of ideology over the cultist problem for the last week, ever since Resurrection Day. News of that shit storm had been confined… mostly.

A lot of people wanted more draconian laws against cultists.

'Kill them instantly upon identification' was hard to make more draconian, though, without infringing on the rights of perfectly normal people, which most places already did to a rather unacceptable extent, in Emilia's mind. She was getting a lot of blowback for that historical stance, though. And so, the Mayor was opting for a potential new strategy. Hence this meeting right here, right now, taking place in person, which was a rather rare thing for them indeed.

Usually they met by hologram.

Ramirez continued, "We can either continue what we're doing and tighten our responses against cultist activities to heights never before seen, including raids, background checks, prognostication mandates, like they do on Daihoon, or we can go the other way, and try rehabilitation for all cultists—"

Outrage, anger, and other reasonable responses. They spoke of how they could not believe that they were hearing this; that the stories coming out of Memphi's halls of office were true. Were they really considering lessening the response against the cultists!? Fucking crazy!

Glover waited till the others were done guffawing, and he came out roaring, saying, "Rehabilitation?! After what they have done? Are you out of your mind, Ramirez? New Chicago plans to institute mandatory prognostications on everyone, once a year. That is our solution to this developing crisis."

Ramirez calmly continued, "... 'Rehabilitation', in this case, means full mind wiping and Skilling the offenders to a few different approved Knacks, of which we can go over later. We're considering Knacks for Cleaning, Landscaping, and other menial options. Things that cannot do damage, and that we can monitor."

It was, perhaps, a foolish endeavor to try and rehabilitate cultists.

But monitoring and helping people get out of the Cult was one sure way to dismantle the Cult's biggest draw. Once you were in, or even suspected of being in, you couldn't get out, because the governments of the world would murder you on sight.

Skilling and mind wiping people was a lot worse than murder for a lot of people, though.

… The response to Ramirez's offering varied.

A lot of guarded looks.

Glover frowned, saying nothing.

Mayor Walt Castle of New Denver spoke, "Killing is cleaner. What you propose, Ramirez, opens the door to expanding this methodology to other peoples. Several peoples of Daihoon have historically done what you are suggesting and those people were all eventually ousted by their own laws, when those laws were corrupted to be used against them."

Glover said, "Or the demons got them through cultists that never fully repented, because it is impossible for them to repent. The demons are always there, always ready to make Contracts with people they know will Contract with them how they want."

Mayor Jorgenson said, "I don't like it and I won't do it. It's irresponsible, Ramirez."

Jorgenson might have been a longtime friend and supporter, just as Ramirez had been to him, but politics were politics.

Jorgenson added, "And I urge you to reconsider this ideology."

Mayor Robinson said, "There is something to be said for allowing people to repent. If you give them no options then they have no options. We give assassins the option to turn on their employers, paying them the same assassination rate, and we have culled every single assassin out of our city with that program."

Glover replied, "Cultists are not the same and we all know it."

Mayor Ramirez said, "It's a dangerous road to walk to leave cultists alive at all, but mind wiping them and Skilling them down to be lesser threats allows us to be softer in our approach, to allow for rehabilitation. If all we offer is the guillotine then of course people won't allow themselves to be caught, and they won't turn on their fellow cultists. That is what we're really after, here, because the uncomfortable truth is that Resurrection Day has turned a lot of people toward the Cult, and most of them without even knowing it."

Uncomfortable looks all around.

Ramirez continued, "We had one lady two days ago, putting out shrines to the Resurrection Ghost. She didn't know what she was doing. It was a cult activity according to the old laws. She needed to be executed for that. Obviously we did not execute her. We told her that she shouldn't be worshiping a person, and she decided that she had been wrong. She had been deeply embarrassed about that, too, when it was brought up in a proper way. She won't be repeating that same mistake."

Silence. Contemplation.

Mayor Walt Castle said, "We should stick to the story; that a young person we're still searching for entered the Tutorial to get away from the horrors of it all, and they desired to bring people back, so they came back with a Talent for Mass Resurrection. Denver has issued a 300 million credit reward for the person who fulfills that criteria, and I know that several other city states have instituted similar bounties, to act like that is what really happened. We need to double down on that story. With enough propaganda and AI control of the internet, the real history will be locked down and forgotten."

Mayor Hatch of Salt Lake City spoke, "We're doubling down on the propaganda, as Walt suggests. Salt Lake City shall have no changes for how we police the Cult at all. What I need to know is how the Gate Project is going. I do not need to hear about Memphi radically changing any response it has against the Cult. You jeopardize a great deal in upsetting the boat with talk of changes in Cult response, Emilia."

A round of agreements.

And then Ramirez happily said, "Well then that measure dies in committee, and thank the gods for that. Memphi will have no change regarding our cultist responses at all."

The group untensed.

Walt chuckled, "Appeasing the masses again, Ramirez?"

"Of course," Mayor Ramirez said, "It was a foolish measure, but the senate wanted to try it so I'm putting it out there as a responsible mayor for my people."

Glover asked, "Senator Walho, yes?"

"Walho has been soft on crime his entire life and his people love him for it because it does work, when you have the power to back it up," Ramirez said, "But we have no power over the demons or Thrashtalon. Not really. No one saw this coming."

And so the conversation moved on to the big topic, the real one for gathering the group.

Everyone settled in.

Glover started it off with, "The real problem here was that Kardi Shale girl. She proved to be too strong, her Luck too much. New Chicago has already identified 3 people with Luck in our city, and as Luck would have it they all walked into the main offices the very day we instituted a new protocol, not yet implemented but still going into effect, regarding all Luck-based Powers. They'll be paid well for their services, but they will be required to be patriots, at the very least, which means working for the city on a schedule…"

There were counterpoints given to Glover's idea of 'putting the Lucky to work', but there was nothing inherently wrong with New Chicago's idea of how to police the Power Lucky. There were some very big edge cases, though, that needed to be addressed, namely the fact that you couldn't have a Lucky person around sensitive information all the time. They had to be ousted for a while, just because they could 'get lucky' and their subterfuge could go unnoticed until it was too late.

Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

Kardi had been disregarded because she wanted to follow in Credenza's footsteps, and she was walking that path well. And she had only been Lucky for a little over a year and a half before she revealed herself as a Cultist, so there was no time for her to join any sort of governmental organization.

A lot of people, Emilia included, didn't believe that Kardi was, actually, a Cultist. She had probably just been following her Luck to get what she wanted, which was fucking crazy, but which Emilia did not bring up.

Emilia shuddered to think of someone like Kardi hiding out in government for 60 years, like Grey Phantom had done.

There was no real way to prevent shit like that, though, except to make systems more robust so that they couldn't be broken by a single person. Even a single person as strong as Grey Phantom.

Hard to do.

Glover's idea of putting the Lucky into the government turned out to be a lot further than how far Emilia would have gone, but the simple fact was that if Kardi would have been taken into hand then she never could have done what she did. Glover's response to Lucky was actually not much different from what they did to Seers, and several other concerning Powers.

And now that Credenza was working for Memphi in Central Command for one day a week, Emilia was rather certain that Memphi was a lot safer than she had ever been.

Memphi had still lost 4.6 million people, though, even after the Resurrection Ghost had brought back 27.3 million from the dead. Almost 17% of people simply did not come back, and no one was quite sure why, exactly, that happened. The prevailing theory was that many people went to the gods, and that was true for half of them. The Pantheon claimed to cherish in glory over 2.2 million people who died from the Day of Kaiju. But what about the other 2.4 million? If the Cult had taken them, if Thrashtalon had taken them, then Ramirez didn't know.

4.6 million people; dead.

One of the worst tragedies in recent history.

That was one of the reasons for trying to relax the laws against cultists, if they repented. If they had cultists willing to actually turn on their fellow cultists, then Memphi could have learned about the Battle for Memphi while it was still just that HVP 'Attack the Gate' entertainment.

… Emilia would have to keep working that idea over and over, she imagined. Sparing a cultist in order to kill a thousand cultists seemed like a fine thing to do, to her—

Something pinged her.

Her True Self, coiled on her shoulder like a small glass-covered tech-octopus, glittered with tiny red lights.

Emilia turned her attention to the side for a moment, the entire meeting noticing that Emilia's octopus had flickered red. It had interrupted Jorgenson, who had been talking about weapons on walls and rearmament and nuclear weapon concerns.

She said, "Apologies, Jorgenson. I have some… concerns… It'll only take a second."

Emilia dove into her True Self, which was more like her secondary self, as this latest destruction of her 'true self' had re-taught her, and she answered some questions far, far away. Eliot was asking about the update to the Wall structure—

Walt said, "Let's take a break and reconvene—"

"Already done; nothing too pressing. Just a backline getting pinged," Emilia said, turning back toward Jorgenson, saying, "Sentinel Industries already has the highest standards of control on all of its machinery and products. We are good with our regulations. The simple fact is that this sabotage was planned decades in advance, and it didn't take us down. Even with the Cult doing what it did with the Living Resurrection, that was them taking the propaganda win instead of the actual win. We won the night."

Glover responded, "They won the night, Ramirez. This is what it looks like when the Cult wins. They're not trying to actually kill people. They're doing what the demons want, and what the demons want are horrific and dangerous, but ultimately powerful."

Jorgenson said, "Back to nuclear proliferation. There are some new safeguards coming out of Naxmetal Industries in Kansas City that ensure that all of our city didn't see a single nuke explode within our walls."

Glover said, "All of the worst shit was contained to Memphi to make an example out of them, and out of this gate project. You never should have gone for the Gate, Ramirez. New Chicago is a much better location, with a much stronger settlement on the Daihoon side, and we have a lot more safeguards against Cultists."

Ramirez simply said, "The gate is still going up, Glover."

Glover frowned.

"Is it, though?" Walt asked. "Really?"

"Of course!"

- - - -

Mark relaxed in a black webweave suit, eating an apple, as he sat on a lounge in the sun.

He was still working, and quite a lot at that, because the lounge was in the open roof of the spider flier that Eliot was using to rebuild the Wall of Memphi, and Mark was in a Union with him, Isoko, Sally, and a few tens of other people all down below, inside the foundation that Eliot had hastily laid several days ago. This was not a 'fast-as-shit rebuild' like what had happened back then, but an honest-to-gods rebuild. Isoko was helping to fly the vehicle, while Sally was flooding the rebuilt and to-be-rebuilt parts of the Wall with a flash of Tactile Telekinesis. She was also pressing an 'I'm Helping!' button. TT'ing the rebuilt parts was one of the fastest ways to impart new structures with a 'man made' designation, and the button helped too. Eliot wasn't sure which one helped more. Other brawnies inside the Wall were moving stuff around inside, or using bulldozers the sizes of buildings to push trash and broken Wall closer to the Wall. A lot was going on out there, and all of that was being coordinated by someone else, and also a little bit by Mark's Union.

Mark was keeping everyone strong, capable, and semi-organized.

Also, Mark was just relaxing.

His adamantium floated around him in ball-shapes, like moons around Jupiter—

Eliot got off the phone, saying, "The Mayor says we're good with the new style of Wall in this location, so we're doing that one, and damn the current contractors."

Isoko scoffed. "She did not say 'damn the current contractors'."

"That's what I'm saying," Eliot said.

Mark barely understood what that was about, but he knew enough. Apparently the Wall of Memphi was a constant construction project, with every part of the Wall getting rebuilt and remade all the time, both because metal wore down and the Wall needed to be remade, and also for updates to electronics and shit like that. Kaiju rarely, if ever, actually made it to the wall itself.

The Battle for Memphi was an anomaly.

The Wall of Memphi had given people a lot of time to actually fight off the kaiju, which is what it was made to do. Mostly it kept the smaller monsters out, though. The Wall of Memphi was also basically a business district, and responsible for something like 15% of Memphi's total budget costs. Sentinel Industries was the majority contractor for the Wall, but they subcontracted a lot, and that meant that much of the Wall wasn't up to code as much as it should have been.

The southeastern span they were currently rebuilding, the 40 km stretch of Wall taken out by the unkillable River Kaiju, was apparently slated for a complete rebuild, like, 13 years ago, which is why it failed so badly. Bringing it up to code was a problem due to the old contractors being obstinate about their contract being taken over by Eliot, but he was only being Like That due to the fact that they failed to keep the Wall as strong as it should have been, so Eliot had to get on the line with Emilia to go over the contractors, which were currently down there and shouting at whoever they could shout at.

Mark was keeping an eye on it.

… Mark supposed he knew more than 'barely anything'.

Ah, godsdammit. He was being hypervigilant again.

He couldn't relax at all.

Mark sat up and gazed out at the open land south of Memphi, beyond the Wall. It was destroyed. Black and brown and ash and lake. The River Kaiju had done a lot. Mark looked to the land north of the Wall; at the city. It was destroyed, too. Burnt buildings, new lakes, a path of destruction that wove in and out of the Wall.

Of course Mark and Eliot had sanded and then rebuilt within a kilometer of the Wall, so the foundation Eliot was building on right now was good, but… There were a lot of places out there that people were picking over, instead of Mark simply sanding them down. Historical districts and museums and homes of all kinds. Mark's Earth/Bubbles Union tended to destroy everything that was even remotely solid, except for that which people carried in their own astral bodies, or near them. Mark's 'Sanding' qualified as massive property destruction, and it was going to land Mark in hot water soon enough, as soon as people realized that a 'villain' had destroyed their homes, instead of the kaiju.

It was gonna take decades for people to recover from this loss, and it was going to be court battles the whole way down the line.

Mark had already contacted his lawyer for the HVP, Goro Teshima, and he had had an hour long conversation with the guy about legal needs and problems. Basically, the guy had said, 'This is gonna be at least a year for the full brunt of the fallout to really start hitting the courts, but we'll take the problems as they come. Expect a lot of problems. You're rich, kid, and people will sue you to get that money.' And then Goro had sent along some cards for Mark to print out, to hand to people who confronted him regarding anything legal-related at all.

The cards all read: 'Please contact Goro Tashima with regard to property damage claims' along with a bunch of numbers and email addresses. They were very nice, gold-embossed letters on shiny black card stock.

Mark had already given out several of them.

Mark had also deposited 100 kilos of adamantium into HVP, 20 of it into his own private legal fund and 80 into the public legal fund. 20 kilos of adamantium bought Mark 1.66 billion goldleaf of personal legal defense and 6.64 billion goldleaf of goodwill through the public fund. He had only gotten that much because the price of adamantium had gone up, again, to 83 million goldleaf per kilo. Goro thought Mark paying/donating that much was an extravagant overkill, but also it might not be enough. Hard to say right now.

Mark still had 145 kilos of adamantium left, and that was more than enough for him. 6.6 liters of the stuff.

Too much, really.

He felt the need to give away more of it. To help more people.

But for now Mark tried to relax, to breathe in the Good, to breathe out the Bad, to be present in the moment and to let the horrors of the last week flow away in the wind. He did the same thing for a lot of people.

It helped.