Adamant Blood

The sun was shining, Mark was sweating through his scales, and Shawn was grinning underneath his mask. Over on the other side of the field, Sally and Isoko 'fought' Tartu, while Lenny and Eliot kinda sat this one out, sipping juice and soda over by the production tents. Lenny hadn't been up for anything but walking around for a while now, and Eliot had emails to attend to. Noel was watching through cameras while drones flew around them.

And the show went on.

They were pretending that Tartu had hit him with a 'lock down power' for this end of Episode 4, and so Mark restricted himself to a sword and a shield, and dull ones at that. It was basically a spar, to see if they could get anything usable for Episode 4, and it was kinda fun.

Shawn leapt in with a downward slash and Mark let the sword glide along his shield, while swinging his own blade at Shawn's side. He connected. Shawn flashed gold, and though he went bouncing, pain lanced up Mark's arm, cutting him open like a hundred small slashes underneath his scales. Blood flowed.

Mark barely felt it and healed up fast enough.

Mark pursued, footwork forward, sword clipping at legs.

Shawn parried with his shield and came around for a clip at Mark's neck.

Mark ducked and punched with his shield.

Shawn took the hit straight on, angling his body to get himself hit even harder. A hundred small injuries, like cat scratches, retaliated across Mark's scales, half of them getting to his skin, and Shawn went sailing backward, tumbling and planting onto the concrete. A flash of Tactile Telekinesis and golden Retribution flickered through the ground and Shawn instantly bounced back, aiming right at Mark for another takedown attack.

In a real fight Mark could have ended this any number of ways, but he was pushing his Incorruptible Body right now, and it was fun to fight, so Mark fought.

Overhead slam from Shawn.

Completely avoided this time. Slide to the back. Carve in at the thigh.

Take it and spin with a sword empowered with Retribution.

Parried this time, up into the air.

Shawn flips feet over head to sail backward, to line up another jumping attack.

Mark moves in, seeing the pattern, feeling the flow.

Shawn rips forward, spinning wildly, strongly. All of his vector is an unavoidable top spin.

Mark leaps to the side.

Shawn crashes and does not crash at all. He hits the ground like a rubber ball aimed right at Mark, tapping off of the ground and top-spinning right at him once again, but from closer.

Mark steps to the side and almost casually sticks his dull blade right where Shawn is, as he is moving through Mark's formerly-occupied space. The 'counter attack' is a blow to the head that Mark puts no weight behind.

It would be death in any real fight.

The sword touches the neck, like a trailing leaf.

They both know it is over in that moment.

Shawn takes the strike and sells the fall.

Mark falls out of the flow.

Shawn proceeded to pratfall on the ground, sword skittering across the concrete, grabbing his own neck. He gasped, "I yield."

They'd add blood to his neck in post.

Mark walked over to him and puts his blade to Shawn's neck, and Shawn held there, looking at the camera floating around them. Over in the background, Noel called out to hold it there.

Mark waited till Noel was done with the shots, which happened rather fast. The drones floated up and away, and Noel signaled for Mark to continue.

Mark roared at Tartu, "Tartu! Give up!"

Tartu and the girls had been fighting well. Leaps, slashes, Tartu sliding out of the way, leaving Domains to mess up Sally and Isoko as they moved around. Mark was supporting Tartu with Union, too, keeping him fresh and strong. That allowed Tartu to actually keep up with both of the girls, both at the same time.

But Tartu wasn't winning as much as he was prolonging the end, and now it was over.

Tartu dropped his Domains on command and held up his hands.

Isoko was right there with a manic grin and pushing Tartu onto the ground and pulling his hands behind his back. "Gods! That slowing trick really pisses me off!"

With his face on the concrete, Tartu retorted, "Good."

Noel called out, "Cut!"

Tartu sighed.

Isoko chuckled and helped Tartu up.

Mark let go of Shawn and helped him up, too, as he connected to everyone nearby and did a Union of Good/Bad, relaxing away any possible soreness or injury.

Soon, under the shadow of the gate that Eliot had rebuilt, Blackvein was standing with his team, and Tartu, Shawn, and Lenny all in black adamantium handcuffs.

Ten meters away, Kraigen Steele, looking badass in his ripped jeans and white tank top, stepped forward, complaining, "I wondered where they had gone. You idiots should still be in the hospital."

Tartu quietly retorted, "I'm glad we weren't, and that we were out here able to fight the kaiju."

"And you should have stuck to just that," Isoko said, grinning platinum-ly.

Blackvein said to Kraigen, "As I said in the letter, the gate is rebuilt and for sale, you just gotta pay the price. Sending goons to take what is mine is unbecoming."

Kraigen grinned. "Heroes don't 'steal'. We liberate. And these guys were acting on their own, of course."

"Sure," Blackvein allowed.

And then Blackvein 'shoved' Tartu and his team forward, across the way, while pulling back his adamantium. They grunted as they walked toward, to stand behind Kraigen.

Kraigen didn't even look at them as they walked by. He focused on Blackvein, and said, "They were just trying to get some of their honor back."

The topic of 'Kardi', even when alluded to, kinda made Mark furious. Mark had felt that way ever since he saw her last, when he killed her. His reaction to her would likely remain tense for a long time. Other people reacted differently.

Kraigen was hollow. He had been dead, and then he lived again, and he didn't remember most of the previous day. But he had found out about the day, through a lot of different sources. Kraigen still didn't know how he felt about everything.

Mark focused on the show. On Episode 4.

Blackvein simply said, "I'd rather deal with deposits into the designated bank accounts and free passes through the gate for me and mine, in perpetuity, than wayward heroes unknowingly working for others."

Tension rippled.

Kraigen quietly said, "Check your accounts."

Blackvein angled his head toward VeryHuman, but he did not move his gaze from Kraigen.

VeryHuman looked through his visor, checking stuff, and then he said, "It just hit, right now. The full amount! We also have the signed agreement for permanent portal access for free, for us, for always, and anything less than a billion credits of cargo per year, with a few exceptions."

They weren't going to say 'exceptions for adamantium' on the air, but that's what they were talking about. The adults watching would know what was what. The kids would not. It was Curtain Protocol.

But the whole idea of 'selling the gate back to Memphi and getting contracts for movement' was a farce, anyway; Part of the show.

Blackvein said, "Then we're good." He walked over and held out a hand, "Pleasure doing business with you."

Kraigen's vector was solidly satisfied as he shook hands with Blackvein, with Mark. "We'll be seeing you around."

Noel would probably add some post-processing to that handshake to make it look more menacing, but in reality it was good for the leader of the Hero's Association of Memphi, and for Mark, and for the whole Attack the Gate program, to end it there.

The handshake lingered.

And then Kraigen let go, and then Kraigen said, "Ahhh, shit." He asked, "Is Blackthorn still throwing those parties every night?"

"He has been, yeah," Mark said, pulling his helmet down to be a Quark-lined collar. "You're invited. Everyone is." Mark told Tartu and the guys, "You guys, too. It's been a fucking horrible month for practically everyone, and we can all use some breaks."

Tartu sighed, relaxing in a shell-shocked kinda way. Lenny and Shawn were simply there, for now; not much more than that.

Kraigen chuckled. "I can't even remember what killed me; that pisses me off more than anything. I saw the footage, but it's… It was fucking water. I have survived a splash of water before."

Mark smiled wide. "I saw the footage, too, and it was a little more than a splash. It was an entire skyscraper of water… And cultists were probably involved, too."

Kraigen shuddered. He kinda drifted off, too.

Noel spoke up from the side. "Let's get the official story out there."

Kraigen kinda startled. "We're still filming."

Mark was surprised, too… But yeah. Sure. Extra footage? Why not.

Kraigen stood strong and performed his role, saying, "The cultists are dead, and their attempt at killing whoever caused Resurrection Day died with them. I only wish that the Mayor could have caught more than a glimpse of that conflict, then we might know more of whoever Awakened to Resurrection."

Blackvein asked, "You got that meeting to discuss Resurrection Day on the 30th of March, at the Hero's Association?"

Kraigen nodded. "And you're invited."

"I might send a proxy, because..."

Mark held out his right hand in front of his face, his scales peeling away from his grip. And then he breathed out adamantium with every breath, like black dust, thickly, to gather in a small ball in front of his face. For much of the world, this wouldn't mean anything. But whoever wanted to get the real footage of this would get it, and they'd get the metal-detector, wealth-scanner information to go with it. They would see that Mark breathed out a few kilos more of adamantium into a black ball in front of his face. A lot of people watching right now, from Tartu to Kraigen to a few people on Noel's staff, didn't really believe that Mark was adamantium blooded until that moment, right then and there. But they believed now.

Mark continued to breathe out adamantium, even as he continued, "My talzarki and I are rather alike in this particular aspect, you know. So it is worrying when people come after me for my 'scales'. I wouldn't want to show up to talk about Resurrection Day just to get arrested for exaggerated crimes, meant to put me into a farm somewhere."

Emotions built.

Kraigen's eyes were wide. He simply said, "Ah…" And then he added, "The empires dismantled those places after the Reveal."

Blackvein merely said, "And history is history."

Silence. The wind.

A spinning cloud of adamantium dust in Mark's hand.

And Noel said, "Cut! Amazing work!"

Emotions unraveled or bunched or split off in weird directions, toward jealousy, toward reverence, toward a lot of weird feelings. Even a little bit of hate among some people. But not much hate. 'Hate' was probably naming that emotion too harshly, anyway. 'Extreme jealousy' was closer to the truth.

Greed. A lot of greed.

Mark was walking around with tens of billions of goldleaf on his person, so yeah, greed.

Time flowed. Wrap ups commenced. Mark put his helmet back on.

The extreme jealousy faded after the first few minutes of 'end scene' time, as people reevaluated themselves and their reactions, and Eliot went around cleaning up the fight damage on the ground, and conversations meandered among the people present.

Mark joined a conversation happening between Isoko and Noel.

Isoko asked, "Is this truly the only scene left? Because I can do more!"

Noel said, "We got a lot from a lot of people, and the whole direction of the final show is being mandated to change. No one is getting the big parts they wanted, Isoko, but trust me, you will be doing numbers."

You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

Mark asked, "What do you mean the whole direction is changing?"

A lot of people tuned in when Mark said those words. Kraigen and Lenny and others came up to stand near, to listen. A few guys did not, though; those guys were a part of the production that already knew what was happening behind the scenes.

Noel found himself with a small audience, so he spoke to all of them, "People died. We have a strict mandate to never show people dying, or to have real bodies on the screen. We have some bodies that we know are coming back through Resurrection Day, and we're using those, and those people have already consented to that, but the direction of the show is changing because of the depth of what happened. We're adding in a whole new 'Kardi is psychotic' line, which is barely within Curtain Protocol, but we have to do it. It won't be that hard. We have enough footage of her being a liar and manipulator. The rest is whatever Memphi and Crystal Tower says needs to happen.

"All in all, we have about 10,000 usable hours of footage from the Battle For Memphi, and way too much from all the rest of the world, including scenes that take place in Crystal Tower, between Timeweaver and Glorious Man and others.

"Episode 4 is going to be a challenge to get under 2 hours long, consist of a lot of perspectives from a lot of people, and the Betrayal is going to be absolutely nothing like what happened in real life. Higher ups are talking to me and others about how we need to frame the betrayal and the cultists as a magical infection that took root in Kardi and many others, that triggered at the same time when the Veil ruptured."

No one liked that. They all understood it was going to happen that way, anyway.

Noel continued, "What happens on the screen will involve as much justice as can be done in this situation."

There was more talking, more clarifying, more questions, but Mark wasn't involved in any of that.

Mark found himself walking across the concrete, and spotting Tartu over under the shadow of the gate. Tartu was looking up at the structure, his mind a million miles away. He was not doing well. Numb; that's what he had become.

Mark walked his way and asked him anyway, "How you doing?"

"Terrible. You?"

"My uncles blamed themselves for getting caught, which was a real fucking gut punch."

Tartu's eyes went fractionally wider as he heard a lot more than what Mark was saying. "… Yeah."

Mark told him, "It's not right that they blamed themselves. Maybe if they had willingly walked into it then there is blame, but they were tricked. They were tricked."

Tartu's shoulders shuddered, just a little bit. "… Yeah."

Mark was silent.

Tartu was silent.

They looked up at the gate.

Without expecting a real answer, but needing to know, Tartu asked, "Why don't you hate me?"

"Because you were tricked."

"There was a lot there to trick, Mark. Kardi preyed upon my hatred of dragonists, but that hatred is still there. Dragonists still…" Tartu cut himself off.

Mark waited patiently, and Tartu eventually figured out what he wanted to say.

Tartu said, "I was born on Daihoon but I was raised on Earth because when I was 7 my mother… She was a battlefield healer. Not Freyalan, but similar to those kinds of paladins. There was an outbreak of malformations and they got into the city because dragonists manned the protections guarding against that sort of thing. It was a whole neighborhood under attack, but it was the 'rich slums'. Old mansions and stuff like that. Faded glory. The politics of it were complicated, but it boiled down to Mom always fighting in groups that needed help, that couldn't afford a healer, or who didn't trust the churches. There is a lot of that on Daihoon, even these days.

"Mom was strong, capable, and selfless. She always went out to help people.

"And it got her killed.

"It wasn't just an accident. It was...

"She could have joined any of the bigger groups. She could have been protected, for real. She should have been protected. She never should have been out there like that. 90% of it was her own fault because she was a good person who tried to do good things, and not everyone is that way.

"And so she went out there, and she said something wrong to someone, and she was murdered for those words. She was murdered by dragonists.

"Not just 'left unprotected', to die to the malformations flooding the rich slums, though they tried to pretend that is what happened. Mom didn't die to monsters, Mark. They tried. They failed. So they murdered her instead..."

Tartu went quiet. Hard-edged. His vector was internal. He knew Mark was here; he was talking to Mark. But his words were for himself. To make himself known to whoever might be listening, because Tartu couldn't talk to Mark about this. Talking to someone? Impossible! He had to pretend he was talking to himself.

Tartu continued, "The dragonists closed ranks, of course. They covered it up as best they could, but the truth always outs in the end." He sighed, and looked up. "I don't paint all dragonists with the same brush. The Valens are not the practical cultists who killed my mother. But dragonists are the ones that know the most about the demons, because before the Imperialist faction, there were only the dragonists and the cultists. It was a 90%/10% split, but the dragonists needed the cultists because you can't have dragons without demons, and so… That's something to just consider, going forward."

Mark listened well, and he sort of understood why Tartu was against Mark, as a healer, going out into the world. It was almost comforting, in a weird sort of way. Tartu thought everyone had their station in the world, and to leave those stations was to invite danger upon the whole.

Mark didn't see the world like that at all.

But still, Mark said, "I'm sorry about your mother. I didn't know."

Tartu snorted. "You didn't have Quark figure it out?"

"I did not."

"You should have," Tartu said. Silence. And then, "I didn't mean to go after you with the shavallian and… all the rest, as much as I did. I'd blame Kardi for that, but the truth is you shouldn't be anywhere near any front lines, of any sort… Unless you're willing to be as ruthless in gathering information as you are with a sword."

"I'm going for Inquisitor training soon. I'm removing weaknesses as fast as I can."

Tartu kinda paused. And then he nodded. "That's good. Protect magic will be useful, too, as an all-purpose catch."

Mark grinned a little. "You've been spying on me, huh?"

"Yes."

Mark felt the girls and Eliot walking this way, along with Shawn and Lenny. All of them were talking about something, and they seemed to be getting along well in a strained 'we're all in this together' sort of way.

Mark wrapped it up with Tartu as much as he could, saying, "There's no hard feelings. You need help, and I'll help you whenever I can, about anything."

Tartu instantly said, "Renounce Elaria Valen. Take a Mage Secrecy Oath with my father and learn magic through him; through proper Imperialist channels."

Mark laughed. "Almost anything."

"Any other Imperialist mage would be fine, too," Tartu added.

"No thanks."

And then Lenny was there, saying, "Show's not coming out for a week!"

Mark pivoted into that conversation with enthusiasm, grinned as he said, "A week! That gives time for some re-shoots, right?"

Isoko said, "I hope to Freyala that I get to do some more scenes. I don't care what!"

"I want to know what Kardi had against you, Isoko," Sally said. "You're the only one she didn't try to kill, and maybe these guys know why that was."

That statement sent emotions swirling weirdly around the group, with Isoko feeling weirdly conflicted most of all. She was about to say something, too, but—

Tartu cut through the noise, saying, "Kardi was jealous of Isoko."

"Jealous?! Of me?" Isoko felt weirdly on-the-spot, so she deflected with a nervous chuckle, saying, "The fuck?"

Tartu said, "You come from a line of famous villains and you're in the team that will one day 'kill all monsters', and Kardi had dreams of Credenza-level fame… Which I don't think were fake. So yeah. Jealous."

Lenny tried not to get too furious as he said, "But she was a fucking liar about everything, wasn't she! Fucking… cultist."

"I never want to talk about her ever again," Shawn said, "I am hungry and it's late."

Eliot happily changed the subject, saying, "So who wants Nigerian for dinner! I'm buying! You guys are invited, too."

Tartu was unsure about that, and feeling weirdly improper—

But then Shawn said, "Yes!"

Everyone was hungry, so… Yeah. Mark, Sally, Isoko, Eliot, and Tartu, Shawn, and Lenny, all piled into Eliot's hovercraft, and Isoko drove. It wasn't all that cramped, thankfully. It wasn't nearly as awkward as it could have been, either. Mark changed into something less war-like in one of the back rooms, and came out wearing jeans to go along with an adamantium breastplate, to show off his arms and not look so nearly imposing.

When they got to the Nigerian place down the road in Shady Acres, they found it burned down, the owners and workers sitting on chairs in the middle of the ashes, drinking wine out of plastic cups, commiserating.

Eliot rebuilt the place for them, and then he remade the whole neighborhood, too. Food was a bit harder to source, but surprisingly, the Nigerian, Congoian, and all-up-and-down-the-Ivory-Coast neighborhood came together fast enough, well enough, and supplies got broken out and shared.

By the time night rolled around the grills were hopping and so was the freshly rebuilt neighborhood. People came out in droves, and they brought their culture with them. Mark wasn't sure when the music started, but it started, and well.

Several people were banging small double-headed drums with sticks, shaking what looked like gourds with nets of beads on them that Quark helpfully labeled 'shekere', and clanging what looked like double cowbells that were called 'ogene'. It sounded neat. Mark had never heard anything like it. Some people danced. The party got wide, and Mark met a lot of people. He was thanked by a lot of people, too. Injuries still abounded, and Mark got to healing what he could, and the music rose, drawing them all together into a community. Some old grandpas in the community called for the musicians to keep it down till after dinner, and the players reluctantly kept it a little quiet, though they made plans to turn up the heat later.

People cooked. People sang and played instruments. And people met each other.

Soon Mark, Eliot, Isoko, Sally, Tartu, Shawn, and Lenny, and a lot of other people, so many people, were eating fresh agege bread, spicy suya, cassava mash, and jollof rice. There was a lot of it, and it was good.

Somewhere toward the end of dinner the instruments and players came out again, and this time they would not be denied their power. Some girls invited Mark and Eliot and the other guys to dance, and some guys invited Isoko and Sally to dance, and they did, with only a little reluctance.

Mark was already feeling the beat, his knee bouncing, and then he was up on his feet and learning how to shake his ass from a big bottomed woman with a big smile and a jangling belt.

Mark felt the beat in his heart and in his soul, and he fell into a Union with everyone.

Soon the people danced in the street, some of them singing, some of them playing on, all of them thankful, like a great wound had been lanced and was now allowed to heal. Mark danced in the Good and danced out the Bad with all of them, and when they sang in words he did not know, he learned them, and joined them in the song.

Afterward, long after it was over, it was almost embarrassing for Mark to realize that he had started an impromptu musical dance number in the middle of some street, with about 30 different families and friends of those families, and even with Tartu and his team. All in all it was maybe 200 people, from old grannies with canes to young children who had been exposed to mana, and were no longer under Curtain Protocol. When it was over, all of those worries crossed Mark's mind.

Mark did not take the blame for that mass magical event, though. It had been a group effort, and the singers and players and prime dancers in the group happily took the blame for almost all of it, according to their internet posts about it afterward. In those posts they admitted that they didn't think it would get that wonderfully crazy. They had never had as good of a show as that one.

Because in the middle of it all, it was glorious.