A Thread for Stories from the Ten-Year Skip.
In game terms, the time between 2006 and 2017.
In real life terms, the time between 2013 and 2017.

Subject to DM approval of course.

The alarm clock sang.  Comstock was already awake.

He swung his legs out of bed and felt the floor flex in response to his weight.  From the flex, he guessed he was between 200 and 220 kg, which was a good omen for a good day ahead.  He concentrated, tried to reduce his weight a few more kilograms, and breathed in.  Today was going to be a good day.

His house was sparse, but not Spartan.  One wall was covered with old license plates from all the states and countries he'd visited in his travels.  Two rows of Nevada plates reminded him of a time when he swapped out plates on a regular basis.  He pondered these plates while making coffee, just as he did every morning.  When the coffee was done, he drank it, took his time feeling the strange flavorless carbon chains, and then put on a new set of clothes.  His pajamas went into the wash.

Outside, he surveyed the landscape.  Sand, rabbitbrush, bitterbush, and pine.  Sunrise bathed the mountains in a warm amber, banishing the cold from the old timbers of the town’s abandoned buildings.  His neighbors were mostly ghosts, for little Adaven's post office had closed in 1959, but surprisingly there were two families that still lived this far out.  Decent people just trying to make their own life.  Broken people that didn't get along with society.  Comstock guessed that one of the two families concealed a government agent paid to keep an eye on him, but he tried not think about it.  He did not see them often, anyway, and if one of them was a spook or an informant they were just doing their job.  No reason not to make friends.

He went back inside and made a peanut butter sandwich, just as he did every morning while making his phone call.  The agent on the other end of the phone thanked Comstock for his compliance, but remained professional.  That was fine too.  Comstock hoped that he'd get through one day, learn something about a spouse, kids, hobby, or something.

The peanut butter sandwich, like all things, possessed a soft consistency and no flavor.  More than that, it lacked purpose: Comstock's body would go on with or without it, and the molecules were not particularly interesting or useful.  They were white noise, as dull and uninteresting as the air.  But Comstock was determined, and finished the sandwich anyway, trying to appreciate its subtleties.

Next, he hiked around his new land.  It was not, in fact, his.  Not by law.  But since he lived there it had become his, and he cared what happened in it.  This morning, some antelope passed nearby.  This was unusual and worth noting, so Comstock wrote it down in a little pocket journal.  When he was done, he flipped through the little journal, trying to see if he had spotted antelope here before.  There were seventeen months of entries in this journal, little analog memories scribbled in no.2 pencil, but enough pages remained for at least 17 more.  He wondered what his next journal would look like when this one was filled.

Adaven, Nevada.  His new home.  A ghost town for a rusty old man.

---

On his way back from his hike, Comstock noticed his mind wandering by the audible crunch of the ground at his feet.  The further his mind wandered, the heavier his footsteps, until gravel splintered and sandstone buckled.  Calming down took a bit of work, but he felt pretty human when he stepped in the door.  A sprightly 150 kg.

Today was his third day without talking to someone.  The nearest farm was 10 miles out, over the mountains, so he wasn't surprised.  And he knew he could just call for Solitaire and she'd come visit if she was able.  But after thinking it over, he decided he wasn't lonely enough to impose.  He was just under a fey mood.  A gremlin of the imagination, working at the gears, trying to break his routine.  Indulging the gremlin, he took a long look in the bathroom mirror.

At 39 years old, Dillon Amargosa was not the man he had once been.  Just after his eruption, he stood five feet and ten inches, lean and mostly muscle, but the shape that looked back from the mirror now stretched six feet and six inches from the floor.  Gone was his youthful black stubble: now, follicles of oxidized silver passed for black-and-gray hairs, and only grew or shrank when he wanted.  His once-tanned skin was also pale, loose with wrinkles and wear, barely hanging in there.  Almost human ... to the naked eye at least.  That's the way Comstock liked it.

Sixteen years a nova, Dillon had done it all.  But now, at 39, Dillon barely saw anything of himself anymore.  Comstock had overtaken it all, eaten every last organ, swallowed every last doubt.  Comstock was the man that Dillon had aspired to be.  Too late to aspire toward being someone else.  He'd spent almost half his life becoming Comstock, the embodiment of the American Dream, an unkillable man who made wealth from nothing, who pushed frontiers and stood up for the helpless, and he didn't regret a bit of it.  Not a bit of it.  Not a bit of it.

Nostalgic, he unsealed a box from his closet and peered at the eufiber colony inside.  It was still locked in the shape of his Vigilance uniform, the one patterned after his T2M uniform.  Calmly, he prodded the sleeve with a finger and watched it coil up in revulsion.  Rejection.  After the incident with Buendia, when Project Proteus had turned eufiber into a weapon to sterilize and cripple nova-kind, Comstock's body had gradually come to recognize eufiber as a possible threat.  He'd had to put the suit away to avoid reflexively destroying it.  Perhaps symbolically, he could never put it on again.  But like Solitaire with her old jacket, he somehow couldn't let it go.

---

The afternoon was dragging on, and Comstock made his second call.  Again, the agent on the other end thanked him for his compliance.  He made a simple dinner of flavorless cornbread and flavorless pork while listening to the Doobie Brothers.  It wasn't so bad.  His dad had listened to the Doobie Brothers too.  Mom and dad were gone now, but lived on in these little rituals.  The same but different with each listening.

Dad had gotten sick.  That was the straw that broke the camel's back.  The moment that he realized he was strong enough to hold up the world but too small to wrap his arms around it.  A miniature Atlas, struggling to square up for a proper lift.  Dad had gotten sick just like Vigilance had gotten sick, and nothing was going to save either one.  Not without changing either one into something else entirely.  He had sent Phantasm and Slider and the rest of his friends away and cut a deal with the authorities: if they'd let him back into the US to be with his dad at the end, he'd cash in all his remaining favors and retire.  Work with them to find someplace he could live in peace, away from the public, so they could keep an eye on him and know he wasn't still up to old tricks.  It wasn't like they could imprison him anyway.  He was the one who'd picked Adaven.  He hadn't been there before, but it was enough like Indian Springs, where he'd grown up, and the name had made him laugh.

Nevada spelled backwards.  Perfect place to escape a world turned upside down.

The Teragen rampage after Bahrain had shaken things up, but revealing Project Proteus had not gone as expected.  It turned out that people distrusted novakind a little more than they feared their own paranoid rulers.  He and Vigilance had worked to expose everyone's dirty laundry, but compared to a billionaire who ignited the air on contact or a blind and delusional superman who could annihilate cities at will, what were some regulations and biological weapons?  Would Dillon Amargosa, the man, have really questioned the morality and existence of a sterilization weapon and a secret prison in space?  Of secret government intelligence agencies producing superweapons?  To cover their tracks at Bahrain the Teragen had bent the fabric of the universe, and even if baseline people could not see how or why, they somehow knew.  A line had been crossed.  Their new beginnings could never truly be new beginnings, because the future refused to change.

So many possibilities had ended that day.  Gale flew away to terraform a planet or stop Climate Change.  Impetus never became president of the United States.  Gravitas relocated his work and the alien probe from Mars to some distant lair.  The Second Generation novas were swept away, hidden somewhere where Utopia and Proteus could never harm them again.  Directors Thetis and Laragione were never brought to justice.  Divis Mal and his Manus vanished to a temple on the moon.  Doctor Zero never returned, though its cultists still saw it everywhere.  Comstock and Hell Kraken had tangled with the criminal mastermind, Chagan, but never uncovered the identity of the mysterious Stranger that left breadcrumbs to help them.  The Aeon Society transformed itself and hid once again.  World governments that had come together under Utopia's aegis slowly grew more paranoid and isolationist.  Some old friends died.  Some even became enemies.

His "Movement" had been doomed from the start, too awkward and idealistic to ever stand a chance against the whole world.  He'd been a poor manager, and hated all the lying, the cloaks and daggers.  Without a flag and a clear enemy, he was almost useless ... or at least felt useless.  All Vigilance really accomplished, in the end, was to alienate some people, stop a few atrocities, and help smuggle some novas away from the authorities.  Was that enough?  Comstock supposed that it had to be.  In the end, what else was there?

He remembered a long car ride with Solitaire.  How she'd chided him back then.  How free Gale had seemed after her time in Chrysalis.  How Phantasm had risked trusting him with her secrets just after they joined T2M.  How Frostburn had burned out.  How Prodigal and Pax had found religion.  He remembered loading rubber bullets into an M4 carbine.  Remedial classes with Dr. Bharati.  Arguments with Impetus.  Flirting with Lydia Divine.  A nuclear sunrise in Colombia.  A few different fights with Crimson Dawn.  Walking in space without a suit.  He remembered all that and more, and realized suddenly that it was dark.  His afternoon had become night.  He'd spent it all remembering.  Standing stock still.

---

Comstock picked up some junk and dusted.  Vacuumed.  Lifted some weights.  Cleaned off his poor worn-down boots.  Then changed into pajamas for bed.

He wasn't lonely.  Not exactly.  Just tired.  Lost.  Hoping for some humanity.  He knew some of his friends were out there.  Playing at godhood or wandering the stars.  Fighting the good fight or succumbing to temptation.  He knew he could just ignore the government and walk out of here to go join them.  Few novas on Earth could stop him.  But he'd seen a lot of killing, a lot of destruction, and a lot of things no man should.  He’d played hero games too long, tried to stand tall for all mankind, and made too many mistakes.  He'd been there for it all, watched the new world take shape.  A great fire rising from the wreckage of the fallen Galatea.  He still couldn't decide if he was fuel or ember.

He set his alarm and got into bed.  Though tired, he wouldn't sleep.  He closed his eyes anyway.  And promised himself that tomorrow was going to be a good day.
This message was last edited by the player at 18:56, Fri 17 Feb 2017.

The alarm clock sang.  Comstock was already awake.

He swung his legs out of bed and felt the floor flex in response to his weight.  Lighter today.  Maybe 140 or 150 kg.  Good sign of a good day ahead.  He moved through his routine -- clothes, coffee, peanut butter sandwich, phonecall -- and tried to dwell on each element.  Conversations with the agents did not really meet the criteria for human contact, since the agents followed careful scripts, but Comstock always tried to ignore that.  He'd ask about sports or the weather.  The agents would always return to script.  Fear of neurolinguistic programming, the dreaded NLP, had spread like wildfire over the past few years.  Pharmaceutical prophylactic produced by KHI, OCP, and a dozen other companies might even be required by the agents' work.

Comstock reminded himself that this made sense.  That when he spoke with authority, people could not resist.  They were just afraid.

He debated hiking, but remembered the previous day's fey mood.  A more meditative task was clearly in order.  Something to keep his hands busy.  He got some tools from the garage and went out into the rock garden behind his house, where a set of statues and sculptures awaited.  Here was Gale, the Queen of Heaven.  There, the Solitaire, balanced on a house of cards.  Samuel Wolfson, wrapped up by a serpent and consumed with self-doubt.  A therapist had once suggested art as a way to steel the nerves.  Comstock liked the pun, and when he came here he made sure to ask for tools and a butane welder.  The agent arranging things had seemed surprised.  "Why not use your powers?"

"I'm retired," he'd replied.

---

Today's project was a scale representation of the original T2M:A base.  With a swimming pool under construction.  It was reaching pretty far back, but he discovered the memories were all there, backed up like so many zeroes and ones on a hard drive.  Working in iron limited his ability to add detail, but that was alright.  Comstock didn't want to cheat.  Over the course of the cool morning, he slowly made a few tiny metal figures.

By afternoon, he had given up.  Larger scale things were easy to cast and weld.  This tiny detail was impossible.  In frustration, he reached out and touched the iron.  It seemed to melt and flow, details becoming crisp and clear, then hardened to steel and plated itself in chrome.  In minutes, it was a near perfect representation.  He added all the details he could remember, and then sat for a while, mulling over why he'd lost patience and cheated anyway.  The detail on the other sculptures reminded him that it wasn't the first time he'd cheated himself.

He had decided that these works of art were his trophies.  His gallery of achievements.  Reminders of a life well lived.  Here, in the desert, he did not have to deal with the ugly nuances of the life he'd lived.  He did not have to talk to media outlets, answer to critics, cut through dissembling liars.  He did not have to precede every action with a philosophical debate or risk estimates.  He could just remember things the way he wanted.  That, he decided, was what made him old.  The selfish desire to not have to explain himself anymore.  With great power comes great questioning, and he'd never mastered that trick of just "being".  Not like his friends.

Gravitas, Zero, Solitaire, Impetus, and even the Hell Kraken had sat on the Pantheon of the Teragen.  Maybe still sat there.  They'd transformed, locked themselves in shells and emerged different.  More actualized.  Comstock supposed he had done the same, it had just taken longer.  The metal had always been there, keeping him safe, but it wasn't really a separate entity.  It was just him.  The desire to survive, to endure, to overcome.  That, Comstock decided, was the heart of Teras: just cutting through the bullshit.

So why was he trying to play at humanity?

---

He gave up on his statue garden after working on Impetus' statue some more.  He could not make a face for the statue.  His old friend, his brother in arms, the man he'd doubted and questioned, was too complicated for a single face.  Suzukaze, the lunatic that had caused him so much paperwork, had received a kabuki mask half curled into a demon and half in serenity.  That juxtaposition was easy to express.  But Impetus was challenging.  Where was his old friend now?  And what would Impetus think of this Comstock, content to idle in a rock garden?

He debated turning on the radio, but decided against it.  The news only made him angry.  The whole world gone mad.  He'd just hear Raoul on another talk show saying something provocative, or investigators trying to track down the criminal Geryon, or another politician promising to keep everyone safe.  It should be obvious to everyone, Comstock thought, that they will never be safe.  Even an unkillable man can be wounded.  Living meant taking risks.

The sun began to set, so Comstock made his second phonecall and a dinner, then got out his telescope.  He had made a habit of trying to track down the various satellites and space stations orbiting Earth, and even though he was rubbish at it he liked trying.  He could probably apply himself and figure it all out in an evening, but this was week three of messing around.  There was no rush.  He knew most of what was out there anyway.  Occasionally he'd spy a KHI rocket or a nova screaming into the sky, and he'd scribble it in his little pocket journal.  The sunlight vanished, and Comstock gazed at the stars until he'd had his fill.

Out there, he'd been many things to many people.  Here, it was quiet.  The valve in his head seldom ratcheted shut, and he did not need to worry about so many things.  Here, he could savor some time as Dillon Amargosa, the human being he'd once been.  The future was undefined and infinite.  He did not frighten anyone, because there was no one out here to frighten.

"If I were still out there," he said to the cosmos, "I would still be making mistakes.  Trying to stand up for them.  That just makes more trouble."  He told himself he was satisfied with this answer, and only had to twist the valve on his mind a little.  It was just logical.  What good would punching another monster really do?  What would kicking over another building really achieve?  Killing one enemy just made another.  It'd happened again and again and again.

"They have to learn for themselves," he asserted, metallic hum finding its way into his voice.  Who was he really trying to persuade?

He set his alarm and got into bed.  Though tired, he wouldn't sleep.  He closed his eyes anyway.
This message was last edited by the player at 18:56, Fri 17 Feb 2017.

The sphere was smooth and black.  Not any conventional sort of black either, but pure graphene black.  The sort of black that made it difficult to determine whether an object was small and up close or big and far away.  The sphere was very much in the latter category; at the moment it was precisely 1400 kilometers in diameter.  As the hours passed it got a few millimeters larger.  The sphere was still and silent.  To be fair, there was little to speak to in a Lissajous trajectory about the Venus-Sol L₃ point.  There was much to see, though, and room and time.  And in a number of lights the lack of neighbors was a positive benefit.

"It is time."  "Indeed.  All is prepared."  The One That Was Male and the One That Was Female did not speak English, or speak at all for that matter, since they were both of the sphere, their thoughts speeding across a web of super-conducting filaments.  Still, certain memes persisted, out of habit if nothing else.  The One That Was Neither directed a thought toward an appropriately oriented segment of the sphere.  Pores opened, radon flowed, electrostatic charges built to phenomenal levels, and the segment glowed a faint blue.  "Ion drive online.  Entering ballistic capture trajectory."

---

"It's just sitting there.  Some sort of emissions coming out of the forward hemisphere.  ...  Roger.  Will do.  <click>  Unknown object, USA-277.  Identify yourself and state your intentions."  The FS-37 maintained a five kilometer standoff from the sphere, oriented perpendicular to its velocity vector, its dorsal side facing the sphere ready to open its cargo bay doors and disgorge the weapons contained within.  "We are Dr. Wilhelm Förster.  We are returning to this planet.  We will be entering a circular polar orbit with a period of 167.541 hours."  "Not in that thing you're not.  UN Security Council Resolution Two-..."  "We are familiar with all of the resolutions of your United Nations.  You need not quote them to us."  "Alright, then if you'll just take your vessel to 500-Kiloklick Parking Orbit 37 and we'll send a shuttle to pick you up."  "There is nothing to pick up.  We are the 'vessel' as you call it and we will be entering a polar orbit with a period of 167.541 hours.  Further assistance is not required."  "<click>  Control, USA-277.  ...  Well what do you want me to do?"

---

<ffffp>

"SUNDAY, SUNDAY, SUNDAY!  Live at the XWF Carnage-drome in Henderson, Nevada; El Santo Azul versus The Mangler!  'I'm gonna mangle him!'"

<ffffp>

"...to which the official response, delivered via the White House OpNet account, was: 'KHI, which I hear is highly overrated, should immediately apologize for sending American jobs to outer space.  SAD.'"

<ffffp>

"...and we add just a capful of pomegranate molasses."

<ffffp>

"'...I don't know why you would claim that the KHI Dark Star doesn't exist when we can literally look out the window right now and see it.  It's affecting tides.' 'Well we're just going to have to disagree about that.  Next question.'  'Yes, Oswald Brandenburg from the Traditionalist News Network...'"

<ffffp>

"GOL!!!!!!  GOOOOOOOOOLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL!!!!!!!!!!"

<ffffp>

"Look, I've got people breathing down my neck about this Vigilance thing.  I can't keep passing you intel.  Not even the mundane stuff."

Gale and Thorn had agreed to meet in the place they normally exchanged information.  Not one of their usual date spots, since sometimes information had to be sent quick.  The abandoned boxing gym in London allowed them some privacy, since Gale could contact Slider to get her in and out and nobody really questioned Thorn's training methods.  At least not yet.

"And it might get to the point where they send us out to fight you.  I don't want it to have to come to that, Gale."  Peter was calm, his voice matter-of-fact.  He was leaning against the ring in the center of the building, afternoon light from a broken window above casting a spotlight on him.

"How can you even still be with Utopia?  After all they did to us?  I told you about Bahrain--"  Gale paced back and forth next to some old hanging bags, causing them to swing with a slight brush of her wings as she went past.

"And I've told you I don't think that was really Utopia."  He sighed.  This was old ground.  He couldn't even remember how many times they had gone through this exact same hashing.  "I've never said Utopia was perfect, but they're at least trying to protect people."

"Protect them by neutering us!" She wasn't going to let the point slide.  She stopped pacing to face him.  "We trusted them.  I trusted them.  And they betrayed us."  The word "they" here held multiple meanings: Utopia, but also baselines in general.  Storm-cloud grey eyes, not verdant green as he originally remembered, blazed with simmering anger.

And there it was.  Their two core issues, laid out and at odds.  Thorn wanting to protect baselines from nova destruction like what he had suffered and Gale refusing to let them have the opportunity to stab her in the back again.  Neither wanting to budge for fear of another trauma.  But also neither wanting to admit that the issues were irreconcilable.

He knew why she was stuck on the betrayal aspect.  Peter had pulled Gale's file once, years ago, when they first started getting serious.  A little creepy perhaps, but he suspected she had done the same.  She had never pushed him very hard on why he wanted to protect baselines.  Even now, her chief complaint seemed to be that he was doing it with Utopia.  And he had known that the year leading up to the Bahrain incident had knocked her pretty low, though he supposed he hadn't truly known how far.  When she emerged from Chrysalis, she seemed brighter, renewed, and more free, but also perhaps more angry, selfish, and callous toward baselines.

They stared at each other for a long moment before Gale turned away.  "Ugh, sometimes I just want to punch your handsome face in."  She made a mock jab at one of the bags and resumed pacing.  This was not the first time they had this argument, and it probably wouldn't be the last.

"Well, at least you still think I'm handsome," Peter responded with a smile, looking up at the ceiling.

At the bottom of the Pacific Ocean, as far from any inhabited landmass as she could get, Phantasm watched her school of monstrous fish devour the last scraps of her prey.

It took two years of planning to get here.  Initially she intended to remove Geryon, but a passing comment from Gravitas (does he know?) made her reassess her priorities.  Shrapnel was more cunning, and thought like a terrorist rather than an egotistical brawler.  Geryon was more powerful, and would be harder to deal with the longer he was left to his own devices, but Shrapnel would probably do more damage overall.

She chose the spot carefully, avoiding major shipping routes, “secret” ocean bases of the worlds’ various political powers, and orbital surveillance.  She planned the encounter meticulously, watching videos of her victim and learning to predict every movement and attack.  The hardest part was ensuring that the initial assault carried Shrapnel through the wormhole though; there was only one shot at secrecy, and if that failed she would have to face the entire pantheon’s wrath.  Not that the dysfunctional terat family was in agreement on much of anything these days, but there were even odds that they would put aside their differences long enough to eliminate Phantasm for killing one of their own.

The fight itself was almost tedious, a foregone conclusion before it even began.  The water blunted the explosive power of Shrapnel’s attacks and limited her speed, while Phantasm and her nightmares were already shifted to take advantage of the environment.  Phantasm flexed a webbed hand, the barbed sucker on her palm reflexively pulsating in response to the movement.   I should be happy, but I just feel lost.

All her touchstones to her old self were faded and worn.  Years had passed since she had more than cursory contact with her friends, people who were once her constant companions.  Angelo, when he was still a part of her life, had talked wistfully about his army days and how strange it was that people you shared your whole life with could fade to just a distant memory.  Maybe she was experiencing something similar.

She hadn’t expected it to take this long.  She prepared for it, but still hadn’t planned for Proteus to play such a slow game.  And the longer it stretched, the more disastrous the war would be.  The more dominos would fall, the more power would be unleashed at the end.   Phantasm set up her pieces, fed information to various factions, removed enemies from the board, but the end goal became increasingly nebulous even as the zeitgeist shifted toward intolerance and authoritarianism.

Would it have been better if we’d stayed together? No, her plans required too much subtlety, and her friends couldn’t be connected to her actions if she was caught.  Their innocence, especially Dillon’s, was also a part of her plans.  But she missed them.  She missed the person she was with them.  She missed the feeling that together they could steer things in the right direction with only the force of their combined effort.

“You know this will end in destruction.  It’s the only way it CAN end.  Why didn’t you just let me do what needed to be done?”  Phantom-Shrapnel’s voice was the sound of grinding metal in her mind.  “Sure, it’s inevitable, but the shape of the conflict is still mutable.  Go back to your cage or I’ll eat you”.  The phantoms seldom strained against their bonds now, they feared dissolution more than they feared imprisonment, but sometimes the new ones were unruly.  Shrapnel would learn.

Enough of this.  What is, is.  I’ve got things to do.  A quick shift back to normal, and a wormhole to her bathtub in the LA mansion.  A shower and eufiber shift, then a car ride to the studio.  She had to practice with her “Dancing with Novas” partner.  Appearances had to be maintained after all, and after 10 years of her slowly disintegrating career as a celebrity, the show was the perfect cover.  I sure hope we can get Val into shape before taping begins though.  He looked like a loaf of unbaked bread during the auditions, and she still wanted to win, even if it was a stupid reality show...  Shit. What the hell am I doing with my life?!

This message was last edited by the player at 07:41, Wed 22 Feb 2017.

Light. Sound. Movement. People. Stranger things. The Club was full of all these things, and much else besides. It was Her Place, but it was also a place for everyone. One of the last bastions of neutrality in the world. There were no enemies in The Club, just peers. It was a place for Novas to be Novas, regardless of outside allegiances. Terats and Tomorrows, Elites and Criminals were all welcomed if they would abide the truce. The right of violence was Solitaire's alone, no other fights were permitted.

It was important, she thought, to know that when it came down to it, you had more in common with that other superhuman you just threw through a building than the mere mortal's recording the fight on their cell phones. There were rules, there was etiquette. Not everything needed to be a battle to the death, you threw down, one of you won, and you moved on.

The Club was an open secret. Nova's and Governments alike knew it existed, the latter were constantly trying to find it, but had never been successful. Its true location was a mystery, but finding a door was possible, if you were clever. She'd called in a few markers with some of her brainier peers to set the whole thing up. Something something Quantum entanglement, associative resonance, wormholes were mentioned, much arguing about whether the place technically existed at all... Basically magic. Whatever, wasn't important.

What was important was that there was one place left where a Nova could be themselves, with others who would understand. There was a place for the new kids to go, for the lost to find. If a kid was willing to learn, Solitaire was willing to teach, how to throw a punch, how not to melt your friends, how to be who you are. There was even dorm space. She didn't let anyone stay indefinitely, but it was a place to find your feet. A place to crash, a play to stay, a place to plan, a place to hide. It was important that there was still a place. A place where her vision for Novakind still held true.

Her Place.

Be Welcome.

Be You.

Be Free.

10 years...

Being one of the faces of Vigilance hurt Gale's reputation only a little when it fell apart.  She'd already burned a lot of bridges when she left Utopia and became a follower of the Teras philosophy.  But in truth, most of her closest friends were not with Utopia anymore.  And she had gained a whole new set of connections in the Teragen.

It was almost enough to make her laugh.  The winged woman seemed to keep jumping from "family" to "family", never finding the perfect fit anywhere.  Finding some sort of betrayal no matter where she went.  The closest to a true family had been her teammates on T2M, and if anyone  asked, they were the first names on her list.

Family...

Her mom had died a couple years ago, tragic sudden heart attack.  So now, truly, the last tie to her pre-Nova life was gone.  The woman had tried to keep Gale appraised of what was going on with her brother, but Gale didn't let her get very far with it.  It was obvious her mom felt guilty about how everything had turned out, but Gale never wanted to see Jimmy again after what he had done.  If he ever showed up on her doorstep, she would call security on him and get a restraining order.  But she figured he was at least smart enough not to try the same thing twice.

She tried to keep in touch with all her old teammates as much as she could.  It was difficult since she didn't trust conventional communications any more, and finding time and safe spaces to meet in person wasn't always convenient.  Solitaire's Club helped in that regard significantly.

Somehow, she and Thorn were still together.  Sometimes it was rough, since they didn't share all the same ideals anymore.  But the feelings between them were familiar when they weren't fighting.  Cozy.  Comforting.  They'd never taken the next step; moving in together or marriage or whatever it would have been.  Maybe neither of them wanted to risk breaking what they had.

A New Year...

Gale was still a big speaker against Climate Change.  Her ability to actually change the climate was probably letting people be complacent about finding real solutions, since she could fix droughts and correct heat waves.  But things were going to get out of even her control if the governments of the world didn't start getting off their asses.  Her 2017 resolution was to start charging even more exorbitant fees for her help.  Maybe that would provide some motivation.

She lived permanently in her Hawaii bungalow now, the waves providing a much more soothing setting for when she needed to relax than her high rise condo in Vegas.  The condo had basically been converted to an office space, from which she could manage her work.

And her personal vendetta.  Prodigal and the Host of Eternity continued to be of great concern to her.  She felt responsible for the "punishment" he had inflicted on the innocent children of the Michaelists.  So, even though cloak and dagger wasn't usually her arena, she tried to keep an eye on the Host's activities.  She rarely got directly involved in stopping him anymore, but she would make sure the correct authorities got wind of anything she considered out of line.  He probably knew it was her, and she didn't care.  He didn't seem to ever want to deal with her directly either.

All in all...

Gale sat on her short-board, bobbing up and down in the Hawaii waves.  The setting sunlight lit up the water droplets in her sky-blue hair, making them look like twinkling stars.  She briefly remembered another surfing trip, where she taught Phantasm how to surf and Impetus expressed a wish about solar flares.  What a long way since then, she thought as she started paddling back toward shore.

Her life was arguably much better than it ever had been, more true than it had ever been.  She had cut the lies out, slowly but surely.  Reaching the beach, she slung the short-board under her arm.  Her bare feet sank into the still warm sand as she climbed back up to her darkened bungalow.  However, the cost of truth, it seemed, was being alone more often than not.

Wheelman flowed through the chaos of rush hour in Ho Chi Min City, his wheels finding sure purchase on the rain slicked streets and suspension absorbing the impact from the myriad irregularities in the pavement.  For all the new regime touted progress and building a future city, they certainly hadn't finished fixing the roads.
He turned down a narrow alley, dodged around crates and detritus, and drove down into an underground garage.  Reflexively he hacked into  the surveillance cameras and overrode their transmission with images of the garage that did not include him letting Operator and their client out by the service elevator.  Once they were on their way up he shifted into one of the tiny, unmanned delivery vans that plied HCM's streets in growing numbers, left the garage, and blended seamlessly into the swirl of vehicles delivering people and things to their destinations.
Milk runs like these paid the bills, certainly, but he missed the excitement of being chased through Singapore by a wing of Elites, or snatching high value targets out of the jungle with El Dragon, or even cutting loose as Mechanus.  As he drove he checked in on his subroutine that was managing his finances, and noted with satisfaction that he was on pace to meet his 20% return target this year.
The last 10 years had passed with a rapidity that boggled the mind, and a glacial, plodding monotony that made the decade feel more like a century.  Sure, there'd been exciting points, Paidrag had a habit of getting mixed up in some truly random shite.  From storming compounds in Siberia to taking out a consortium that was stealing diamonds from De Beers, he'd lead a very interesting life until his very public death at the hands of Kauriraris in a brawl that flattened the mouldering husk of the Packard plant.  Kauriraris, the perfect patsy that he was, had even melted down the strange bio-mechanical power plant he'd ripped out of Mechanus' chest on camera.  Since then Sean had faded into the background.  A black-suited shadow for the worried wealthy that was known for his discretion, professionalism, and complete loyalty to the client.  Christ he was bored.
An incoming transmission told him that Operator had made the handoff to the client's people, and that the contract was finished, followed shortly by another from his Kraken Financial account that payment for his services had been made.  He funnelled the cash into his investment firm, then drove out into the countryside before taking to the air to fly back to Pretoria.
Up above the atmosphere he gazed up into the heavens.  Were the rumours true, that Impetus had left earth with all the children born to Terats, and that he had established a colony on a planet orbiting a distant red star? Were the other rumours true, that he secretly controlled people in many governments on Earth, and that he was preparing for some future war?  Sean didn't believe it.
Still hours away from SA an incoming transmission alerted him that his services had been requested again.  Having nothing planned for the next week he acquiesced, and changed course.  It'd been a while since he'd been in New York.

In the black void of space between stars, Gravitas floated, waiting. The trip to the Alpha Centauri system was extremely taxing, even now. It took several maxed out warp jumps, which required pausing intermittently to restore his energies.

So he waited, basking in the radiation between stars. He could feel the radiation primarily from the nearest stars, primarily those of his own home star, Sol, and the three stars of the Alpha Centauri system. Their EM radiation was his primary fuel, though he could more faintly feel their gravitational radiation as well. It was faint compared to that of local binary systems involving more closely spaced stars with faster orbits, but it was there. He was uniquely sensitive to such radiation.

There was, unfortunately, little to do as he floated there. His split attention worked on a number of different fronts to keep him occupied. He typed on his holographic keyboard, responding to experimental requests that only he and his powers could facilitate. They'd be stored in his suit's onboard computer until he was in range of the Solar system's communication network. Another part of his mind digested papers and books he'd seen but hadn't really read yet. A side effect of his eidetic memory was that even having briefly glanced at thousands of pages of scientific literature didn't grant him immediate comprehension of their contents. He could feel that his mind was starting to subconsciously process this information since his last Chrysalis, but it was a faster process if he dedicated at least some of his conscious attention to it. Still another part was calculating the required parameters for his next spatial warp, accounting for local spatial and gravitational conditions.

This still left a portion of his mind unoccupied, though he sensed something additional occurring in his subconscious (see Dreams in the Mist post to come). He reflected, briefly, on the events that had transpired in the last few years. After the war, he'd retreated, inevitably, into his work. Though he maintained a prominent position within the Teragen, he avoided becoming too involved with its internal factional disputes. He tried to, instead, act as a moderating force for the organization's more extreme elements.

His main work remained scientific. He developed inventions and other technology as he needed, or if the price and novelty of outside propositions appealed to him. He also explored the local region of space - primarily within the Solar System, as the planets within were considerably more accessible to him. He desired to extend out and explore further reaches of space, beyond the roughly 15 light year boundary he'd established for himself. Such expeditions would be, unfortunately, extremely time consuming, and he wasn't yet ready to leave Earth for more than a few months at a time. He remained primarily based on Mars, valuing his privacy and solitude. He assisted extensively with baseline efforts at Lunar and orbital colonization but notably withheld his assistance regarding Mars, earning him some baseline resentment.

He barely noticed. Years of influencing the Teragen movement had influenced him in turn. Baseline opinions, particularly of him personally, mattered less and less to Gravitas. With regard to Mars he cared even less. He considered it his sanctuary and wasn't keen on baselines moving in any time soon. Still, he had already begun planning for relocation. That was part of his motivation for exploring nearby stellar systems. He estimated that humanity's expansion to Mars would rapidly be followed by expansions to the system's various terrestrial moons. A move to one of these, then, was not really an option if he wished to maintain his privacy. He thus looked outward, to the stars, where he estimated, quite conservatively, he'd have at least an additional handful of decades of privacy before humanity found some means of catching up to him again.

His warp calculations completed, long before he was ready to put them to use. The main bottleneck in these interstellar trips remained his own quantum capacity and expenditure. Interstellar distances were extraordinarily difficult to traverse, even for him. His projections of his own power growth did not significantly alleviate that effort any time in the near to mid future, though he did believe that the cost might drop somewhat as further travel familiarized his quantum pattern with the process. Still, he'd been working on ways to mechanically reproduce his ability to warp space, though they all still remained theories. Until he himself had more need such a device, it would not be built. There was too much danger of it falling into the hands of someone he didn't want having such access to deep space.

And so, Gravitas floated in the void, absorbing the cosmic radiation that would, in a few more hours, power his way home.