capeandcowl2020 | Open Post 001

Norman Osborn didn't mind his job. It lacked freedom, of course, this whole damn place was an oppressive force that strangled the freedom and independence from its inhabitants, but he was ever an opportunist. He had spent the last several years climbing the ranks of the Secret Police rather than rotting in prison with his powers suppressed by his nanite technology or getting executed, and the freedom that granted him was a freedom Norman enjoyed. Not only was he a high-ranking, decorated officer that had full authority to hunt, detain, and arrest refugees and Resistance forces, but he got away with quite a bit more than that, too. The screams of tortured inmates' echoed in his mind, fugitives pleading as they died, and it brought a smile to his face. He gave no mercy to those he caught, and used his authority in fullest, because in doing so he knew he would rise even further to true freedom. There was no chance of failure, no chance of backfire. His mind surged with anger, with bloodthirsty pleasure, and most importantly, optimism. He had risen up from lower than this. He could, and would, always do it again.

Those sorts of odds, Norman relied on. He wore the blood of anyone he detained as a warning to the Resistance and anyone else who might defy him; not the Registration initiative only, but him, personally. Shoot first, detain later. Many never made it all the way to prison.

Years ago, Norman might have leashed that part of him. Some cards you didn't show. Time and prison had convinced him -- no, these can be things you wear with pride. The voice in his head quieted whenever he thought so, whenever he reminded himself that anyone could call a man a monster, but he was still a man, and not just any man -- he was Norman Osborn, cunning, resourceful, invincible -- and that silence was worth more than any other freedom he could be offered.

Edward was haunted. Since his failed assassination attempt of Mitchell Hundred, since the subsequent torture (a rightful punishment, he was told, he remembered, his thoughts remembered for him) at the totalitarian Katurian’s hand, Edward Nygma had been a man haunted by phantoms. He couldn’t deny this, as he walked the pocketmarked City streets, with his eyes downward. He wasn’t haunted by the ghostly undead, no, but by something more lethal and immortal to him: an idea. Two ideas. A series of thoughts that whispered like smoke seduction, teasing the reality he knew.

Katurian was wrong, they said, lipless smirks.

Katurian doesn’t love you. Katurian wants to destroy you.

About the man that Eddie had been violently forced to recognize as his savior over the past year, this thoughtcrime was unspeakable. The daily torture, the brainwashing that Katurian had woven through his brain like one of those macabre stories, that had sunk so deeply into his consciousness. It drowned him. The electricity the shocked down his spine, the water plugging his eyes and ear and nose and mouth. The beatings, the blades, the implements shoved into him, that tried to erase Felicia from his mind. He stopped to lean against a wall, breathing hard.

Next block was a resistance stronghold. He would make it.

What seemed like another man’s life (a year ago), Edward Nygma was an element of the resistance. A spymaster. He networked intelligence, enlightening the coalition (to even their more radial, terrorist tactic factions) with information. Facts. Truth. It was Norman Osborn who had captured him, and given him to Katurian. A year ago. He’s done what Katurian has told him to do since then.

Sometimes.

He had the key to the stronghold, which looked to be a decrepit building born from decay. Inside was a paradox, sleek and clean, the intelligence hub of Edward’s operations, and all his inner network knew where to meet him. Inside he would meet his spies, one by one. He had sent out the invitations, the calls. He wanted to reconnect.

But maybe not for the reasons Katurian had wanted him to reconnect. The thoughtcrime sneered again, in his mind.

It had been five years since the Sentry died. It was a night of fire, of darkness, of death, of trauma and seemingly endless terror that had suddenly flickered out like an extinguished candle, the battle ended. It had been six months since John V. Williams, the homeless art peddler, had turned up in Central Park, doing sketched portraits for food. His long blonde hair framed a gaunt, stubbled face with striking but tired blue eyes, his body was tall and fit in a way that implied he had been strong once before his muscles had withered.

John didn't remember much. He didn't really remember his name, but that was how he introduced himself; it came from a memory somewhere. John Victor Williams, 35 or 36 and probably unmarried, because he had no wedding ring. He had no reason to register, because he couldn't be an Import; he waved to families that walked by and offered free portraits to ones with children. He never really charged, anyway; "If you insist, I'd prefer a sandwich to money," he would say. He didn't want the temptation to spend it on alcohol, because even without his memory he could feel the burning desire of snuffed addiction in the back of his mind.

When he had no customers, sometimes he would draw a woman -- always the same woman -- or he'd cover the paper with graphite and erase a small circle, a single beam of light in a world of darkness.

In the beginning, Maxwell "Electro" Dillon had always put himself toward the front-lines; he wanted to be a known face of the Resistance, this scar across his face signifying more than just pain. "This is oppression!" He'd yell, "This is fascism! Send a message, for Christ's sake! Stand up for yourself, City, don't let them take your power away!" He had had to change strategies, of course, once rioting became scarcer and torture and arrest became standard operating, but he continued to make his presence known. Power to the People, he painted on buildings, he burnt them down, he knocked out their power. It didn't always stay out for long, but it was a message that he wasn't helpless; that none of them were helpless. He stayed in empty subway cars, or occupied ones if options were slim.

He was afraid. He never admitted it, never let it show in his face or his voice, but he was afraid. This was never what he had wanted to become, or wanted to stand for. Electro knew he may have become a face for something, however minor, but he was not as big as his voice would make him seem. He wanted importance, he wanted recognition, but he was not a selfless man. He was waiting for the day his cowardice and greed would grow stronger than his need to be heard, taking the lead so he wouldn't be caught.

It hadn't yet, anyway.

It felt like years; but could it have been? David Clinton didn't know. He had no way to know. However long it had been, here was he, still imprisoned, his time equipment confiscated. They allowed him other tools, allowed him to build them weapons and repair their clocks, but they never let him set them. He just fixed them, he wasn't allowed to know the time. He wasn't allowed. It was terribly, terribly unjust. He couldn't imagine a single thing he had done to deserve this fate, in particular.

Years, perhaps. Perhaps years he had been here. Sometimes he heard about familiar names on the radio that played faintly from the other room, and sometimes he hoped. He would be remembered, perhaps, even rescued. He shouldn't be here at all -- no, not at all. He wasn't from this time period, and he worried about the affect his very presence there had.

"Terribly, terribly unfair," he whispered to himself, "Just dreadful, here. Absolutely dreadful. Enid, my dear, perhaps you were right all along. Only a loser would wind up in this predicament, wouldn't he? Any day now. Any day, certainly."

He waited, talking to himself in hopes that one day someone would invade the facility, that they'd hear him and let him out. It hadn't happened so far.

Solitude made the years pass much more slowly. The Mirror Lands didn't exist in the City, but what Evan McCulloch dubbed "Mirror Hallways" did; enter one mirror, have a pathway between it and another, lined with the "windows" of other surfaces. It was pitiable compared to what he was used to, but sufficient, and it quickly became not just where he slept but where he lived, 24/7. For years he stayed in there alone with only his thoughts, an occasional Mirror clone to hold conversation with, and enough Scotch and cocaine to keep him company and keep his thoughts far, far away, peering through the windows as briefly as he could so he was never spotted, at least for not more than a second. Sometimes he lingered for longer, not deliberately but because sometimes he hung there in the moment, senses dulled.

"Aye it's gone right to Hell out there, hasnae it? Aye your mum, it's cozy here. Ya cannae call me a feartie-cat when it's pure survival, awright -- naw, away and raffle yourself ya tool, I dinna have time for your mince and greetin' now-- they're fine, see..."

He talked to himself, or muttered, constantly to fill the silence. It was habit now, his mind naturally filling in the other parts to conversation. Though what he saw most of was his own reflected face, what he watched for most consistently through his "windows" were glimpses of the other Rogues; he wanted to make sure they were alive, but he didn't want them seeing him. He had built a safehouse years ago underground with no doors or windows -- just a single mirror in the corner -- that he had never offered any of them. But he would, if they needed it. That's what he told himself. But they were alive. So was he. His hair was grayer, his hands always shook, his sense of time passing was not what it should have been. He didn't even want the drugs or the alcohol, he realized the sadness there, but in the end he came back to them always. Wonderland was so much nicer than what reality offered.

The last several years had given Jessica a newfound appreciation for having a normal life. Not that taking off her clothes for money was exactly normal, but it did afford her the ability to care for her daughter and grant her a comfortable, if somewhat modest lifestyle. Jaime never wanted for anything, and Jessica never put herself at serious risk in order to provide. And that was what mattered most.

Jaime had saved her mother in a way. Temptation was everywhere in the Miami heat. It would have been so easy to fall under the spell of a man or a drug or money. But Jessica was under her daughter's spell entirely. It was a position she'd never ever thought she'd find herself in, loving another human being so completely that she'd do absolutely anything for her, even spend her nights in a seedy strip club, bilking idiots out of their money.

Of course, that was before Laura arrived to take them out of South Florida and onto a new adventure. Five months on the road with a mutant assassin for hire and a five year old certainly put things into perspective, and when Laura's work brought her back to the City, Jessica decided it was high time she put down some roots in the place where it all began. An apartment in Brooklyn was obtained and Jaime was enrolled in the neighborhood public school. Laura came and went on her missions, leaving enough cash that Jessica wouldn't need to work to maintain their lifestyle-- especially not in a topless bar.

Sure, somedays she was worried about her cover being blown. But the City was as big and bustling as it ever was, and she hadn't spotted a single familiar face in the two months she'd been back. It had been six years, after all. What were to odds of her running into anyone who would recognize her.

Captain Isabela, self-proclaimed terror of the seas, could be found at her burlesque joint. The Siren's Call III had been seen drifting somewhere along the Jersey shore, but still, no one could find hide nor hair of where it was docked.

Nor could anyone find the pirate wench as she took her usual, hidden route to the City, pockets heavy with coin from trading stolen resources she nicked from company and government ships. It was all very black-market-y and unsavoury, but Isabela enjoyed these dealings very much so. Just like the good old days. Shame Hawke couldn't be around to see Isabela re-make a name for herself.

She probably would have been disappointed in her anyway, Isabela had a good habit of disappointing those she admired.

In any case, her and Cross had made sure the burlesque club was kept from the government's watchful eye; it was a place where the trusted imPorted and trusted non-imPorted could mingle, have a good time, and enjoy a good show and a strong drink. The women were handpicked both based on looks, and how well they could keep a secret, same with the bartenders and servers (though there was more variety regarding gender, attractive men with nice arms and a handsome face, equally pretty women, and some who found themselves in the middle of masculinity and femininity).

She still hadn't developed a taste for pants, even after all these years, though her outfit had gone through vague changes over time, and though she were a few years older she still looked relatively the same. The years of salt and sun actually did this woman good, even if she had a few new scars. She was as healthy as a horse and for whatever reason, never came down with any sort of ailment.

She still attributed it to sheer luck.

Isabela was making her rounds at the club however, drink in hand. She was checking to make sure everything was in tip-top shape, flirting with customers and workers alike, and seeing if any familiar faces had decided to show.

"I NEVER WANTED IT TO BE THIS WAY, YOU KNOW."

Sometimes, in the dead of night, Mitchell Hundred, when he was in the silent dark of his cabin, could actually speak candidly. Adrian Maskin was a front, and since the attempt from Edward, he pulled everything. No media appearances, no radio. No nothing. No net interviews. He had internet, of course, but that's because the area was wired for it, but he wasn't paying for it, he didn't have to. He just commanded it, of the machines, and the data opened and flowed.

He tried to remain untraceable. His old mansion, it was already on the market. He was here. He'd never left much of a trace, anyway. He'd cleared out what he could, burned the rest. Adrian Maskin had to be a ghost. He had to vanish.

So he did. Mitchell had gotten surgery again. He'd had to. People were looking for Adrian Maskin, not the man who looked somewhat like the ex-Mayor of the City, minus the eyes and the hair, and the odd scars. The only thing of Maskin left were his books, and he would not stop with the writing. Mitchell didn't like being threatened, he didn't abide by assassination attempts. He was used to this, although this is the first one he'd felt honest to god fucking fear for his life.

And in the woods of New York, the state, he tried his goddamned best to write, and not think about the attempt on his life. He thought about his enemies, Edward now among them, in the ranks with Pherson, was he even around anymore? He didn't know. He was glad he didn't know.

He dictated to the lone machine from his past sometimes. Cut off from the rest of the network, it had taken the role of his jetpack, and the old communicator from days long gone sat in the middle of his living room, silent, as if he were waiting for the old network to be reactivated.

Edited 2012-05-19 17:55 (UTC)

It was boring, slow in the secluded location. Nothing to pass the time, only silence. He wasn't even allowed a radio anymore, they didn't bother giving him books. He used to enjoy the silence. He could sit for hours in his penthouse, hours, and just work, interfacing with seven different things and not feel the strain. But he couldn't do that anymore. The locks on his brain, if he tried to remove them, he would die. Instantly. They were clamped in, and he couldn't take chances with his life, not when the consequences would hardly be to his liking.

Ghost had come by, once, and offered to kill him. Out of mercy. Carol had been bringing him pictures of Clint and Bobbi's kids. He was missing things, he was offered a mercy death. It was all he could do not to accept the offer.

Tony Stark rarely gave up, but he was on the edge of things. Teetering over the edge. But information, even fragments, was enough to get him going. Enough to motivate him to look further.

He had an idea, but he didn't know if it would work. He'd been here for years. He needed out.

Edited 2012-05-19 18:45 (UTC)

It wasn't the Iceberg Lounge. Under "new management", of course, it had needed a different name. It spoke not just of a change in ownership, but also the 'disgust' for the import who'd run the place. Now he had something entirely innocuous, unimportant, boring. But the change had done wonders for the suspicious police who'd wondered why Cobblepot would just give up, and leave.

They'd looked, but he was smarter. Far smarter. They were practically simpletons, but they just didn't know how this worked. He was from Gotham, he'd outsmarted Batman! If anyone could make it, it would be him.

He had meetings arranged, but they had to be done carefully. Those who did get them were fortunate, lucky souls.

But they met Cobblepot, they had a free, very expensive drink, maybe a smoke, if they wished. He was nothing but a gentleman.

The deals were all some people had, after all.

Xanatos had given any concept of morality up long ago, as he heard the screams of the imprisoned imports. That could have been him. That wasn't going to be him. He was going to make sure of it. So, he sold his soul to the government. He had risen up through the ranks of the Secret Police and, after one failed attempt at double-crossing, had put a lid on his treacherous ways. Mostly. He still concocted elaborate plans in his head, plans that he knew he would never implement.

Besides, he actually enjoyed this. He still could build. After all, the government always wanted better prisons. He finally had his exosuit and was constantly tweaking and adjusting it, making it better for combat, better to catch rogue imports. And Khisanth...she was something else. He idly looked back on his past sometimes, trying to befriend the gargoyles, and that made him laugh. She was so much better than anything he had seen back home. She was stronger, more powerful and, unlike Goliath, actually got along with him.

He was older now, gray creeping into his beard and ponytail. He still tried to keep in top physical condition but he had noticed he was getting slower, that his reflexes had dulled slightly. Oh well. All the more incentive to work harder. Besides, the exosuit would fix some of the defencies.

He visited the prisons now and then, partly to talk with the prisoners and partly just to remind himself that those people could have been him. He made the right choice.

The City. Damian wasn’t sure what continued to draw him back here—no, wait, that wasn’t right. He knew exactly, but didn’t want to admit it. Life hadn’t been easy for the past decade, and that had created fissures between him and the people he had grown up with, and perhaps cared for. But even as he sunk further and further into the persona of the Bat, he couldn’t forget them. At least not entirely. So he returned here, every winter.

He always told himself he wouldn’t approach, that he would observe from a distance. But even now he was horrendous as keeping his cool. And also his distance.

So when the City is visited by Damian Wayne, it was something like the place’s worst-kept secret. Certainly, there were some who knew how to find him, or some he’d seek out.

It was getting cold in the City.

Not really Autumn, but not yet Winter, the City was stuck in-between seasons; and, some might think, in-between times. Reports from the Resistance were good: they were making progress, things would get better soon. But the average import had yet to see the results. Nill knew how rough it could be. She had been lucky so far with her orphanage. Because she took in import and native children alike, she was usually left alone.

But there was always the occasional troublemaker, as evidenced by the threats spray-painted into the orphanage's lawn that morning.

She had taken care of it before the children had woken up, of course. Cut the grass, painted over the remaining insults in greenish-brown. But the years had made Nill just a little bit colder, a little harder. She wouldn't be sleeping that night. She'd be up, Heine's gun in her lap along with a book, sky blue eyes glancing up now and then from the pages, shifting in the armchair in which she was seated. She wore a camisole, her wings (still small, but proportional), free from the confines of the jackets she usually wore.

There was no guarantee that a foe (or friend) would stop by that night. But waiting was something at which she had always excelled.

It was almost cruel how kind the years had been to Gemma's appearance. She looked just like her mother: all fiery red hair and upturned green eyes. If she had been in her world, and Mother still alive, the two would have been almost indistinguishable. When Father had called her "Virginia," he hadn't been that far off. Because she was just like her mother: vain, fearful, headstrong. It was uncanny.

She'd been kicked out of her first London flat after a burst of magic had shattered all the mirrors and windows.

But things had settled down, for the most part. She was welcomed at the library, accepted. Nobody asked what happened when she disappeared for days on end. Nobody questioned her when she simply walked out of work in the middle of the day. She thought they feared her; it seemed like an acceptable assumption. She feared herself sometimes, so she couldn't blame them.

The days dragged and spend by. Some days she would wake up, and she'd be in the City, in her old townhouse, still immaculate because of the lingering magic in its sturdy walls. Others, she'd open her eyes in the middle of London. But he never found herself in Bombay, never home. But that was okay. She didn't want to go home. Because how could she even live there now? Her memories had all but faded. She couldn't even picture Tom's face, or Kartik's, or Felicity's or Ann's anymore. Only Mother's, each night before she went to sleep.

It was a mystery where she would wake up, but one thing was always the same when she did: she would get up, dress, and leave whichever house she was in. And her day would be spent wandering, wondering what to do, how she had gotten there, how she was to get back to one place or another. Some days she got along just fine, recognizing friends, saying hello, acting normal. But those days only lasted so long.

It had been almost two months now since Max Gibson was last back in the City. One mission out of it had turned into another, her time perpetually not her own but given over wholly to the resistance.

She always would come back in the end, though. It was, after all, her base of operations and the center of the Import community still, though she barely considered herself part of that community anymore.

And this time there was more than one thing calling her back. Things were converging, to some extent, and after a few messages she'd received she'd decided she wanted her feet on the ground in the middle of it, ready to go whenever and wherever she was needed. So she'd wrapped up an intel jack and caught a flight to a smaller, less guarded New York airport before taking the train into the City.

It was a fair day when she stepped off the train, tugging her baseball cap down closer over her head. Black haired, average height, average weight, unobtrusive and middle class clothing, a first glance at her was likely to be the only one. She was insignificant, precisely how she liked it, and she took a deep breath of City air and sighed it out.

There were destinations in mind. A Resistance stronghold, for a debrief on her work. Ghost's latest bolthole, to put her bags down and see him, though that one would wait a little longer until she had time to steel herself against the inevitable sorrow of seeing him as he was now. It never got easier. The grocery store for food, a pool for a swim - it had been a long trip away. Messages had been sent out to a few of her contacts to inform them of her arrival. If anyone needed her they'd reach her. Sooner or later she would need to go visit Dick and Terry before they heard she was here and tried to track her down.

Home is where the heart is. Her mouth shaped the words almost absentmindedly as she walked, mocking but still half sincere.

The walls of Julian's cell were covered not with paper and dates, but with simple scratch marks. With no windows, the lights on and off at hours at a time, Julian had no way of knowing what day it was.

A scratch for every day he calculated had passed. He tried, he really did. He listened carefully to what people said, if one of the guards wished another a Merry Christmas. He listened for the change in shifts, the casual banter. But clues were so few.

Sometimes he counted, seconds to minutes, minutes to hours, trying to count out a day - but he was only human. The utter crushing feeling when he lost count wasn't worth the attempt, but he would keep trying anyway.

With his powers suppressed he couldn't summon monsters, or even feel the urge to summon them. He didn't want to use them to destroy anything. He no longer wanted to commit crimes. He just wanted to know the date.

He begged for the date. Hour after hour, year after year.

The guards were told not to tell him it, and after every denial he slid to the floor and curled into a ball and counted the seconds.

The climb up from Hell had been a slow and agonizing one, rife with more broken bones than even Jonathan Crane, veteran of a hundred Bat-shaped street-fights, knew what to do with. But he had come across his epiphany, and clung to it with the tenacity that only men of his mental calibre could manage. He'd realized that few people really understood the meaning behind the message that Dante had left in his Divine Comedy -- but it was so clear to Jon.

All hope abandon ye who enter here.

It wasn't a warning. It was advice.

Because hope was the last thing they used to hurt you, because a man without hope, who never imagined a way out of his pain, could no longer be tortured. Not where it counted.

So he confined his dreams, and his hopes, to the nighttime, to sleeping fantasies where a black-winged savior skulked the edges of his subconscious and hearkened back to better days. With the injuries inflicted on him now, there was no way he was jumping rooftops with a Bat on his heels, hearing the snap of that cape in the wind and the breath he could imagine on the back of his neck.

He could barely walk.

All he did these days was what he was told. Break prisoners. Using only his words, he sat and calmly talked to them for hours, made them pliable. If the words didn't take, he prostituted his drug to them, and took sour comfort in every second of their screaming, and moved day to day like a man already dead where it mattered.

The Scarecrow hadn't whispered for months, and he sorely missed the company.

There was always something building in Eridan Ampora (Arkady Otkupshchikov, because he derived some manner of fleeting pleasure in watching people trip over themselves linguistically) these days, a slow, grueling, grinding incline towards his undoing. The morning when he could no longer put in the contacts that made his purple eyes a dull, unattractive sort of brown, the afternoon when he couldn't bring himself to trudge into that trendy little cafe downtown and wait hand and foot on people he hated. The night he chose to activate his badly put together, patchwork doomsday devices just to see if they could take out something important. Or marched into the street, murdering whatever crossed his path, going down in a brilliant show of defiance before they could pick him to pieces. There were no more duels, no blood - just something hard and cold growing in his chest.

He hadn't seen Eddie - hadn't seen his father in what felt like ages, had long since assumed him dead. Couldn't find Felicia. None of the other trolls, not that he actively sought them anymore. For all intents and purposes, he was alone.

Which, of course, had been the one thing he'd feared most his whole life. The irony was not lost on him.

Today was not the day, though, as all the others in his twelve years here had not been. Today he dragged himself out of bed and through his work day, neither too charming nor too rude for his own good, dragged himself down the dark streets (he liked to walk them sometimes, pretends there are familiar faces in the dark), dragged himself down into his own personal warehouse by the docks, and threw himself into his work. It was about the only thing he could pour himself into these days, the idea that someday - maybe - he could strike back. He'd die, of course, he'd die terribly - they'd find him and torture him and drain all his lovely purple blood and break him, kill him, but he'd have struck back and it was the principle of the thing, wasn't it? He didn't have much left to lose anyway.

Eridan couldn't risk sleeping in that warehouse of his very often, much as he'd have liked to, and this night was no different - he scrubbed the oil off his hands with a spare rag and pulled on his jacket, slipping back out into the night. But, surrounded by his death machines and the trophies, all evidence of his import life, he didn't feel quite so alone.

He'd folded like a cheap tent. He'd signed on the dotted line, he'd agreed to be their pet piper, their snake charmer, and he didn't think he'd be calling the tune any time soon, not with how rigidly they took care of their assets. Every time he stepped into a cell it was like his heart was broken over again, and some nights he curled up on himself, cursing his cowardice, fearing deep down he was never going to be the man he should be.

But every morning he got up again and did it again, and said silent apologies in his head to Wally and Linda and tried not to hate anyone but himself, because it wasn't Wally's fault he never came.

But all the same, he never came.

Piper had been looking the wrong way for heroes, he'd thrown his family away waiting for his knight in polished golden wingtips. He was a fucking idiot.

He stepped into the cell for the hundredth time, the thousandth time, the ten thousandth time, what did it matter?

"Hi."

Monet St. Croix grew older.

(Not wiser, she'd never needed to grow wiser. And certainly not less reckless, because she was built to take the hits for those who couldn't.)

X-Factor still existed. Quietly, underground where nobody could find them they didn't want to, but their doors still remained open for business. A different kind of business, these days, and Monet made sure that it was her in the crosshairs. Rictor and Shatterstar were susceptible, could be killed by a sniper or a bomb. If there needed to be a visible face, she wanted it to be her.

She dabbled on the side sometimes, worked with a group of children who did the things no one else wanted to. She'd always known what she was capable of, and she found no great surprise in it. Perhaps a long time ago she would have been proud of that, but these days she was more often tired than proud. Still cutting and sharp and every bit herself, but more withdrawn. Her energy she reserved for her work.

Those who knew where to find her could find her. Anyone else who came looking wouldn't enjoy the results.

As difficult as the years had been, James wasn't blind enough to ignore just how lucky he'd been. He'd escaped with his life and as much freedom as one could manage in the current climate and he had Zee to thank for that. They spent their years travelling around the globe, hiding under tricks and disguises, in plain sight and sometimes tucked away in corners, almost always untraceable. Bond knew he wouldn't be where he was today without Zatanna by his side and her magic to aid their cause, which has helped him fight for a worthy cause rather than slink into the shadows.

The City wasn't somewhere they visited too often. It was too volatile, even so many years later, and a risk that wasn't worth taking too many times, but James liked- needed- to get down there every now and then and keep his contacts open. He'd kept ties to that little intelligence group he'd tried organising not long before 'it' all happened, contact details and information on those he trusted (and some he didn't) that he knew would prove essential in the underground. The resistance was unwavering but weak, a slow pulse that kept imPorts hopes up. James was half surprised more hadn't been caught in all the back alley rebellions.

Still, it was a cause he believed in and James couldn't turn away from that. A life spent with no aim seemed like a wasted one, so Bond kept himself fighting the good fight, handing out info, forgeries, aid and whatever else was needed to the imPorts that craved it most.

All that may explain why a rough-around-the-edges fifty year old was cheerfully sitting at a back street café, coffee in hand, tucked away near the back to watch the door; his latest little spot for his 'meetings', for today, at least. Tomorrow it would be elsewhere. And somewhere new the next day. All carefully plotted to avoid detection. Paranoia had kept him alive for this long…

The circus was back in town. It's been a little while since they were last in America, but now they are and to Trickster's delight, back into the City as well. It was risky being back here, but without his colors and a little help from contact lenses or hair dye, he pretty much looked like your average Joe. That, and it's not like he could escape Father Time. So he didn't worry too much. There was always the perception filter he'd made if things got really dire too.

The only pressing concern he had was not falling and dying during his act, but that was a regular reoccurring thing. He hated it. Despised being back in the circus. It had been hard at first, it brought back bad memories, but he'd gotten used to it and over time it became easier. James is, if anything, adaptable. However, if it weren't for his. . . extracurricular activities, he'd have gone insane for sure.

And that's the thing about the City, the heart of everything, there would always be something he could do for the Resistance here. He was itching to go out and do something, but he couldn't leave, not yet, they were still setting up and it was only fair to lend a hand when everyone did.

So that's what he does, wandering the circus grounds, helping where it's needed or just walking around restlessly whenever there's a break.

[ SO. IF IT'S ALLOWED, THIS IS FORWARD DATED MONTHS AHEAD FOR THOSE OF YOU WHO WANTED A BRAIN IN A JAR. Horrible. Mostly because uh, it'd be kind of hard to go around tagging you guys as a brain. in a jar. So this is for those few people who wanted him to be a brain in a jar.

HOW DID HE BECOME A BRAIN IN A JAR? IS HE ALIVE? And more importantly, how did your character even come into possession of Quentin and where are they headed to next?

Although he might be just a brain in a jar, that doesn't mean he's entirely helpless. He's got telepathy on his side and a neat little handi-dandi anti-gravity gadget that allows him to float around in his jar.

As another note, I'll still be tagging people as regular quentin and create a seperate post for him eventually...]

Mere hours before the planned attack, and she was standing in the middle of a bustling control room. People were running around, tying up loose ends, making sure her plan goes off without a hitch. A tall building against a stark blue sky was on most screens, and she traced its outline with a finger, a smirk on her lips. By the end of the day, the edifice would be reduced to rubble, and the esteemed government official residing within it would be dead by her hands.

Of course, there were those who protested, convinced she shouldn't show herself in the open when so many wanted her head. But she was never one to remain in the background. What was danger and the threat of death, when she could experience the thrill of destruction and the feeling of that piece of filth being completely under her power before she ended his life?

[ooc: feel free to tag before, during, or after the attack!]

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rogues??, and open

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