Adamant Blood

Mark was sitting in the spiderbot again, Unioning with everyone in the nearest 600 meters, and currently looking over the list of things Eliot was scheduled to do for Memphi, as curated by Quark. As the list of requests stretched on and on, and everyone was aware that Eliot was more than happy to build everything anyone asked him to build, Mark suddenly realized that they would be in Memphi for the next month or so, at least. Which was fine! Absolutely fine! Just… Not what Mark wanted to be doing, actually…

Which was the first real feeling he had had since Resurrection Day.

It was March 11th, and Mark realized—

"I need to see my uncles and Lola," Mark openly stated.

Isoko must have heard him down below, because she said, "Good! You need to do that. And Sally needs to see her family, too."

Sally instantly complained, "I saw them! They're… they're fine!"

Isoko added, "And Eliot needs to say 'no' to some of these builds!"

Eliot came out of his trance. "What? No. I can rebuild the entire city."

Which was the wrong thing to say, apparently.

Isoko slammed on the 'stop' button on the hovering spiderbot and the slow, steady forward movement of the rebuild suddenly stopped. Warning lights flickered to brightness on the sides of the ship; simple red warning lights. Those warning lights then turned bright white and then went off. The ship was stopped. There was still half of this hole in the Wall of Memphi left to go, but they were stopped.

And then Isoko pressed a button next to a microphone and her voice went out through speakers on the ship, "Halting work for a little while. Take 30!"

Everyone noticed the halt work order, and soon the whole 'machine' of the rebuild was paused.

Eliot complained, "Oh come on we were in the groove—"

"Yup!" Isoko said, "But you're hurting too much and this is how you think you make yourself better, and sure, it is, but you're doing too much. Memphi needs to do some itself, you know. The Mayor has already complained to you about this twice."

Eliot countered, "I have heard those complaints and I have logged them, and I'm also continuing on, because Memphi needs help! So we're helping."

"We finished the major break in the south with that shit-ass contractor, and now we're continuing on, and you do not need to do all of the rest. You have contributed, at the moment, 38.8 billion goldleaf worth of help, Eliot," Isoko said, "You need to take more breaks, and now is a good time, because Mark finally came out of his funk, too!" Isoko looked up at Mark, on the roof, and said, "Yes! You should go see your uncles! They contacted me two days ago, wondering how you were, Mark. They think you hate them for being too weak and getting captured."

It was like a spear through the chest.

Mark gasped, "The FUCK?! No! Holy fuc—"

"Yeah yeah, I know," Isoko interrupted. "ALSO! Sally needs to go see her family for more than an hour. Yell at each other or whatever and then help each other! And we need to film Episode 4 of Attack the Gate!" Isoko rounded on Eliot, "But the big problem is this: You're doing too much to try and beat yourself up because you were so horrifically injured. So let's all talk through this, as a team! And we can get through this, and… And I…" Isoko went quiet.

Everyone was silent.

Isoko sat back down, looking away, even as she said, "I just… I don't want you guys to be hurt, and you're hurting, a lot… And that was too much of me. Sorry."

Mark felt loved, and so did Sally and Eliot, but…

How was talking going to help anyone—

Isoko added, "And Blackthorn talked about some high profile fighter/dancer instructor the other night and I don't think you actually heard him, Mark. Sergeant Hamburger is, like… an amazing brawny instructor. You should have accepted those classes the instant —the very instant!— they were offered. Sergeant Hamburger doesn't teach just anyone, and he specializes in people without a Strength modifier."

Silence.

Mark breathed a little, then said, "Okay. Yeah. I need to… Quark told me about him, too. I need to do that, and… I need to see my uncles."

Sally blurted, "I need to see my family again."

"Yes! Good!" Isoko said. "Eliot?"

Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

Eliot said, "I suppose… I can take a break. Uh… That's gonna piss off a lot of people."

"Piss them off," Isoko said, "You're doing too much for too little, Eliot."

"We are getting paid, Isoko," Eliot countered, "And a lot! 250K a day! Each of us!"

For Sally and Isoko that was a lot, and both of them felt that way about those numbers, and yet…

Mark said, "She's right. It's not enough. Money still matters."

"No," Eliot said, "What matters is influence, and we're buying a lot of that right now. You want to talk to Timeweaver? To figure out what he did and what did not happen? Then we can pressure Memphi to ask those questions for us. You want to talk to Malaqua and have him answer questions about demons? Then we can do that this way. Money is only a means to an end. Power is what matters, and we're getting a lot of power through these acts."

"… Also true," Mark agreed.

Isoko tsk'd.

Sally said to Eliot, "I'd agree with you, but we're only doing bitch work on a vast scale. We don't have any real power to enact any real change right now, and working on the bottom won't do anything to fix that. This, right here, is bottom work. What you need is a whole lot of people working for you, and then you have real power."

Eliot paused as his worldview came into question, and then he said, "Okay, well… Yeah. That sounds true…. as well. Both things are important— I'm not starting 'Cybersong Industries' right now, Sally."

Sally eyed him.

Mark shortened whatever talk was going to happen by saying, "I need to see my family."

Isoko said, "Me, too, and it'll take a while."

Sally paused, looked down, and said, "Same."

Eliot looked out across the break in the Wall of Memphi, and asked, "We can finish up this break in the Wall and take a few days off? 2? 3?"

"Five or six," Isoko said. "I need to get all the way to Tokyo, and then I want to be back for Episode 4… But if you only want to break for 3 days then you can go back to fixing walls without me and I can come back later."

"Are we really doing Episode 4?" Sally asked.

Eliot wanted to know, too.

Isoko was absolutely going to do Episode 4, though. It was just a matter of wrangling the rest of them into finishing up that obligation.

"Yes," Mark said, "Noel and HVP all talked to me about it… I kinda blew them off. I need to talk to them about it again. Short answer: Yes, because…" Mark looked away, across the destroyed land, waving a hand. "Mayor Ramirez said something about statements and shit like that. So Episode 4 is a statement. Closure. Noel took most of his footage from the whole event and..." Mark smiled a little.

Noel and the HVP crew mostly survived the whole event, and they didn't even die, even though they were so very close to the action. When Mark had descended underground to get to his friends, to confront Kardi that first time, he had thought he had entered underground through a broken series of bunkers. And he had. But they were empty bunkers. Noel and the HVP team had been in a different one.

Mark had gotten his directions mixed up back there, in the churn of it all.

Mark looked down, to his team, to add, "Noel has pretty much the whole story already done and ready to go, but he wants to get Eliot rebuilding the gate and us handing it over, formally. The actual first real test of opening the gate will be next month, though; not when it should have been, like, 10 days ago."

Sally took that in, and said, "Okay. Yeah… So we don't have to do much?"

Mark nodded. "Maybe a day of filming?"

Isoko said, "I heard just a few scenes to tie it all together. Half a day."

"Counter-suggestion," Sally began, "How about we do that shit tomorrow, and then we move on to the rest of the stuff we need to do."

Mark was surprised, but also… Yeah. He'd like to get it done and over with, so. Yes.

Isoko had much the same reaction.

They looked to Eliot.

Eliot was having a moment, and then he took a breath and said, "Okay. Yeah. Tomorrow, if we can. And let's… Let's just stop this rebuild for the entire day, I think." Eliot was on the verge of something bad. A horror crept into his vector, and Eliot began to hyperventilate—

Mark was there with him, breathing in the Good, breathing out the Bad, for Eliot, and for everyone else in every direction.

Eliot still broke down sobbing, and then Sally was there hugging him, and Isoko held his hand, and Mark sat with him, as Eliot said, "I was in a fucking bowling ball. My entire body was dead but my brain and my head and… I was so dead. So… so close to being dead. Would I have come back? A lot of paladins didn't. 4.6 million people." He sobbed, and there were no more words.

Mark had Quark send out a politely worded 'end of workday' message to the people who needed to get the message, and then Isoko flew the spider ship back into Memphi, to Blackthorn's. For now, as they flew, Eliot crashed out on a couch, and Sally stared out a window, watching Memphi flow by.