So I was crouched in the bushes watching Karu through the window. It wasn't creepy, I promise. I was just having a hard time believing what I was seeing going on in there.

She was wearing an orange and white little dress with a frilly apron on the front of it and a whole lot of bows and lace. Her hair was, naturally, still shaved as last time I'd seen her, and she stood rigid as steel in her white sneakers while she serviced the patron seated in front of her.

Throughout the place I saw three or four other girls identically attired, walking around doing their jobs, talking to customers, flitting in and out of the back rooms.

What manner of madhouse had I come across? Why had Karu told me to meet her here? Had she wanted me to witness this?

All very important questions, I was sure, but my brain really refused to get any further than comprehending that it was Karu I was looking at in there. She had no guns, no armor, no visor, her green eyes the dull color of the underside of leaves.

I watched, disbelieving as Karu turned from her customer, clearly embarrassed by something he was laughing about. My disbelief exploded into brain-puncturing shrapnel as I saw the man edge forward and then deliver a sharp spank on her butt, apparently loud enough to cause the other girls to glare at him with anger or fear. I expected Karu to turn, rip the man's offending arm off, and use it to dig a shallow grave she'd throw him into.

Instead, she took a few moments to collect herself and then walked away without so much as a backwards glance.

Well if she wasn't going to kill him, I sure was. I stood up and stepped unevenly out of the bush, startling a family as I emerged. I rounded the corner back to the front entrance where I'd first spotted Karu, and this time actually went inside.

"Table for one?" the hostess greeted me pleasantly.

"I'm here to see Karu," I said, trying to look past the girl to see if I could spot the fatass or Karu from here.

"Karu? I'm sorry, but--"

"Karen. Karen Irenside. She works here. I just saw her from outside."

"Sir...this is a restaurant."

"I know that. I called Karu last night and she told me to meet her here and at this time," I explained stupidly.

She looked at me like I was crazy, the pleasant smile slowly slipping from her face.

"Let me go grab my manager," she said, stepping away.

"No, I see her there, I'll just--" I gave up on excuses as I was already slipping past her and her protests. "Karu, hey!"

"Ashton? What are you doing?" she said, frowning. She took a look around at the attention I'd pulled just by yelling and crossing the room and flushed.

"What am I doing here? What are you doing here? When you said you wanted to meet at a restaurant I didn't think you'd be working there."

"Ashton...people are staring. My shift was over I was just waiting--"

"Your shift? You're serious about this. You really work here? Is this a joke?"

"Ashton, please," she was breathing heavily and repeatedly smoothing down her dress as every single eye in the place fixed on us.

One of the other girls cut through the fixated crowd to assail me. A short redhead. "Hey. Karen, is this guy bugging you? Gonna have to ask you to leave, sir."

She reached for my arm and I pulled it out of her grasp before she could touch it. Ameteur and slow.

"So you quit pro hunting for this?" I asked her. "Did you have a deep-seated dream of serving pie and getting harrassed by fat fucks like him?"

"Hey!" said the fat fuck. "I'll sue your ass, punk!"

Without taking my eyes off Karu, I grabbed the plate in front of the man and smashed it against the edge of the table in an explosion of ceramic, eggs, and grease. He screamed like a child.

"Karu, what the fuck," I said to her. "I don't know what happened to you in New Eden, I don't know why you quit hunting, or why you ran away from the Defiant, or why I can't get a straight answer out of you about a single fucking thing anymore, but this just tops them all. Karu, why are you a waitress at a shitty diner in Vegas?"

She turned and stiffly walked away and I moved after her until she turned around and passed me again, eyes averted with a broom in hand. And then she began to sweep.

"You don't even need the money!" I shouted at her. "If you're not refueling your jetpack and buying depleted rounds, what expenses do you even have, compared to a single bounty you pick up? Or if you do need money, you could ask me, or Lia, or anyone. Hell, even your dad! Anything's got to be better than this. So what the fuck?"

The slow redhead from earlier tried to get between us but I just spun her around and put her on my opposite side with a practiced reversal. She stood there not sure exactly how she'd wound up there, but then turned to yell at me anyway.

"Listen here asshole, I don't know who the hell you think you are, or why you're yelling at Karen, but you can't just come in here and scream at our girls and tell us we're all working a worthless job at a stupid place and get away with it. I'm calling the police on your ass."

The crowd murmured its assent as Karu flushed more than ever, her hands shaking as she swept the remains of the plate into a tidy pile.

"Karu, say something. Tell me what's going on."

She said nothing, didn't even look in my direction, just stared directly at her work.

I stood there for several minutes, just watching her sweep. The same careful diligence she'd always put into the maintenance of her arms I saw on display now as she systematically worked from the outside of the disaster zone inwards, cutting off any chance of escaping debris with a coordinated pincer attack. Her strategy and capability was flawless as ever, and when she finished sweeping the remains into a dustpan and carrying it away, there was no evidence that a deranged idiot had stormed in and smashed a plate in a tantrum whatsoever.

The deranged idiot was still standing there when police came in and the redhead yelled that he's the one, get him out of here, and two large officers closed in on me, asking me to step outside with hands on their holsters.

I left without embarrassing Karu any further, not even sure why I was there. I offered vague answers to the officers' questions by their car, explaining what, why, and how I'd chosen to start smashing up the place when Karu came running outside, still in uniform and sneakers.

"Miss, I understand this man assaulted you. Would you like to press charges?"

"No, this was all a mere misunderstanding. I apologize for wasting your time, officers."

"You're sure?" The officer lowered his voice but I could still hear him. "Look, if you're the victim of abuse, we can protect you. But we can't help--"

"I said it was a misunderstanding and I spoke truly. Thank you officers."

"All right, if you say so. Stay the hell away from any more plates, buddy."

"Yeah," I said numbly, as they got back in their car with the heavy thunks of the doors.

"I...I apologize. You just...startled me. I did not know how to react," Karu said.

I shook my head. "Because you're not a waitress, Karu. You're a hunter. If we were on the battlefield and some Exhuman came out at you like I had, you wouldn't have hesitated, even for a second."

She said nothing, and I had too much to say, so I continued.

"I'm sorry for yelling and freaking out. I just don't understand what's going on with you. You were like, the most constant thing in my whole life. You always seemed like you were born visor-first into this world and that's how you'd leave it. But something happened, something big, and I just know it's my fault. And I can't begin to start helping until you tell me what happened."

She just stood there, eyes downcast, frills and laces bobbing in the morning breeze. I waited for her to say or do something, but she just stood, soulless, answerless, empty. Dressed and acting like a doll.

Irrational anger I associated with Tem surged inside me. I wanted to smash that fat fuck's plate all over again just so she'd do anything. I tried to push it down, tried to think about anything else, but all I found in my mind was more reminders of why I hated this fucking world.

Lia laying there like a broken stone. The twisted blackness within and without AEGIS. The unrepentant shrug of a murdering shadow. The burning touch of an innocent girl's blood on my hands. The stench of a good man's house he'd been left to rot in. Seeing AEGIS for the last time as the fortress armor crushed me into blackness.

I felt like I'd been so angry for so long, it'd just filled me up to right under my skin. Every time hope had shown up to comfort me, it hurt me in a new way I couldn't see coming.

In a twisted way, I wished we never dug up AEGIS again. Or discovered Saga under New Eden. Or tried to talk to that heilioist. Or befriended Talon. Or killed Blackett, even. It all seemed to come back to him in the end, even after he died, his legacy seemed to live on just to torture me. If I were more paranoid, I'd say he planned it. More than likely, he at least would have anticipated all of this, set himself up to be difficult to excise cleanly. And now the world was rotting from the infection of his removal, and he was probably chuckling to himself in hell.

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I couldn't keep it all in. I wasn't about to hit Karu, so instead, I just screamed at her because that was so much better.

"I am so angry!" I shouted, making her flinch at my outburst. "Blackett's dead! You killed him. But the whole world is going to shit and it feels like I'm not even allowed to know why! I've got Exhumans and XPCA both who hate me, I've got people who should be best friends of mine trying to murder each other. One of the most capable and intelligent people I know is turning herself into an idiot robot, my sister who gets along with everyone is having some kind of war with her friends, and you--you've turned from competent and confident to...to this! Every single thing in my life is just turning to shit, and I don't know why, except that somehow, all of it is my fault!"

"Do you feel punished, Ashton?" she asked abruptly. I hadn't expected her to speak, and it took me a moment to process.

"Yes. Absolutely. For crimes I don't even know I committed. Is that what this is? Are you punishing me?"

"Not me. God. You murdered a man who might have saved the world. I murdered a man who might have saved the world."

"He was a monster."

"He was a man."

"What he was planning to do was horrific."

"And yet you suffer because of the world shaped by his absence."

"Oh. That's great. Just throw it all in my face. Really layer it on me. Tell me more how all of this is my fault."

"I am telling you nothing but what you are telling me. Listen to your own words, and tell me what of your suffering is not an outcome of your own actions."

I seethed at her with completely justifiable anger now, but she seemed as removed as ever, staring down at the ground with unfocused eyes. Like this was just some empty gateway the real Karu was talking to me through from far away.

"You can't blame me for everything. That's bullshit. What about you? You're the one who actually killed him."

She looked up at me and drew her hands to her chest and then into a sweeping gesture which seemed to gesture towards all of her being.

"What?"

"I suffer as well, Ashton. Do you think I wound up here lightly? Do you think my dream of serving pies and being harrassed by fat fucks like him was a lifelong fantasy I am acting out, as it were? Are you completely blind to the misery of others?"

"I am when you won't even talk about it!" I yelled back.

Suddenly she snapped, screaming like a teenage girl at her father. "My feelings are not your plaything, Ashton! Every thought which passes through my mind, you are not entitled to view and judge! I too, suffer from all the complex dilemma of the affliction known as living, and you have no right to presume to hear, or be the cause of, or be the solution to every single scrap of it!"

Her voice carried over the parking lot and she ran both of her hands through her blonde bristles. "I hate you!" she cried out. "And I hate myself for loving you! There is not a thing in my world which has not crumbled from your influence, and yet here I am, a goddamned fucking waitress, working in a town where I knew you would reside, so that when you finally deign to inquire into my whereabouts, I would be at your service! Can you think of, nay, imagine a more detestable creature? I am the very pinnacle of pathetic."

She fell to her knees, red lines appearing where the asphalt scratched her bare legs.

"I hate me! I hate what you have turned me into! Some mornings, I awaken and face the mirror and wonder who I see before me before realizing that is my new reality. That is who I am, who I must see the world through, every day, from now until Judgement Day. This foul...loathsome…"

She struggled with her sleeves and then with a ripping sound, tore the white sleeve from her dress exposing the pale flesh of her left arm. Criss-crossing scars and cuts covered the entire inside of her arm.

"Am I punished, you ask?" she said, thrusting her forearm in my face. "Do you continue to wish to pry, to see what I am beneath? Do you understand now what a base, craven, godless creature I am? I threw away everything to try to make you mine, Ashton. I threw away my self, and all that is left is the scar."

Her outburst subsided and she remained kneeling on the cold, black parking lot, the first sobs of many forcing their way out of her body.

"It is over, is it not? But why can I not seem to move on? What is wrong with my heart, Athan?"

I didn't know. I fell to my knees in front of her and just...leaned against her. Both of us leaning on the other, heads propped up on each other's shoulders.

Sitting still. Crying. A moment frozen in time in that diner's parking lot.

She moved, I thought to embrace me, but then her hands played at the back of my neck. And then she pulled away.

She was holding my choker in her fingers, looking at it like it might jump up and strangle her heart.

"I set you free," she whispered. "I believe...it hurts more...to suffer together than apart."

I swallowed hard and pulled her chin up to force her to look up from the black ground. Pulled her gaze into my eyes, our faces inches from each other.

"Karu, I'm sorry for not knowing about your pain."

"I hid it from you. It is expected."

"Even so. And then I burdened you even more with my own issues."

She shook her head. "It is--"

"But I never want to not have you in my life. If both of us suffering is too much, then lean on me. Put your suffering on my back and I will gladly bear it for the both of us. Tell me, let me help, trust me, and I will do everything I can to protect you from anything which would hurt you. I would fight the whole world for you, Karu."

She sighed heavily. "You are a base idiot, Ashton. Fighting the world and trusting you are why we are in this mess. I love you. And I love that fire within you which burns your own soul to warm others. But your burdens are real, and I see you buckling beneath them already. I would never cast my own troubles onto you, who remain still so beautiful and pure to try to salvage my own corrupt shell. Abandon me, Ashton. Let me be a waitress who once flew with angels. Who once--" she reached out and touched my cheek with rough hands. "Who once touched the face of God."

I shook my head. "I will never abandon you."

"I know," she whispered. "But I cannot let you break. Even if you are not to be mine, I can never let you break. And I am too broken. This dress, these cuts, this life...this is nothing compared to the darkness in my heart. You would delve to great acts of idiocy for me, and I cannot permit it."

She stood up with a wince but otherwise ignored the cuts on her legs. "Please leave me in your past, Ashton. I will spend the rest of my days working quietly, here...or elsewhere. I will be nobody of import, nobody worth loving. Another face you see every day and never question why they are a waitress. It is what is best. One so impure as myself cannot fix the world, only fracture it further. So give me this final selfless act."

I stood up too and shook my head. "No," I said.

"Would you stop me then? Break in and strip this uniform and my plates from me by force?"

"No, but--"

"Then you are as powerless as I. This is not a battlefield. There are no rockets or jetpacks or Exhumans here. Just breakfast and lunch, and dinner on the weekends."

She turned to go and...I couldn't stop her. Not without force anyway, and any impulse I had to reach out and grab her stopped as I saw the angry lines cut into her arms.

She disappeared inside and I just stood there like an idiot, feeling another entire world of thoughts and emotions swirling inside of me. Even if I didn't have all the answers yet, Karu had let me see a small slice of her world, of the agony which had pushed the light from her eyes and had dragged her out of the heavens.

And I couldn't do anything about any of it. And she knew that, and that's why she hadn't told me. It had taken a childish tantrum and a teary breakdown just for me to get this one glimpse. And in that glimpse, I had the painful realization that as much suffering as I might feel, there was a whole world of suffering people around me.

Everyone struggled. Everyone died.

…

But some people fought anyway.

Karu came back outside in street clothes, her arms covered once again and approached me cautiously.

"Karu, I met a girl," I said.

"Another one? I pity AEGIS."

"No, not like that. An Exhuman girl."

"Then I pity Saga?"

"Listen," I said, cutting her off before I lost the emotion in my heart. "She's dead. But before she died, she was ready to join the P-Force and fight for what she believed in. She wanted to fight so that no other Exhumans would suffer like she had. She wanted a world safe for us, where we could live in trust and peace."

"So she was you, in essence."

"Yes. Me a long time ago. When I was first joining, when I was fresh-faced and starry-eyed. When I wasn't yet heavy with all this knowledge of the inner workings and how much sacrifice and how many lies there had to be to keep the whole thing going."

"I see. So she died an idiot."

"Maybe. But...an idiot is who I want to be again. I want to find that clear-cut path again, to know what's truly good and evil and cut down evil and say consequences be damned, because if there's bad consequences, I'll just cut them down too."

She gave me a half-smile. "Perhaps I was an idiot to believe in you as well."

"My point is, don't give up on yourself, Karu. Even if everything seems hopeless and grim and you're trapped...I'm going to try to turn over a new leaf, I'm going to try to be more like her, more like I used to be. I'm going to fight the XPCA from within, and if they turn on me, then from without. And if I die, I'll die like she did, walking the path I believe in, with hope. Not...not just...after a lifetime of selling pies."

She went quiet and just watched me carefully.

"What?" I asked.

"You will die," she said. "And I care about that greatly."

"Maybe. But if you spend your life being afraid to die...you wind up selling pies. It was only when I was ready to put my life on the line, repeatedly, that anything good ever happened to me. You. AEGIS. Saga. The P-Force. I can't just sit still, or I'll become what I am now...angry and confused and lost. I'm a quarterback. I have to keep moving, I can't second-guess my gut, or I stand there until I get sacked."

"Perhaps...you do not care for the words of a petty murderer--"

"You're not a murderer, Karu."

She smiled darkly. "I killed Blackett at the very least. I had no contract nor right. It was indisputably murder, and I will face judgement for it when it is my time."

"He was a piece of shit who deserved to die."

"Saint Peter would see it differently. But, my point was to be...when you walked that path, you found many beside you. Myself, Saga, AEGIS, as you mentioned. But also many more. The downtrodden who see you brimming with a halo of hope."

"Sure. I guess. Lots of Exhumans or sympathizers might support what I'm doing."

She shook her head. "Support it with their lives. And also, with their deaths. As that girl you spoke of pushed you towards the right path through martyrdom. I fear your path is not to fight and die for your cause, but rather to fight and live while others die. Is that something you can do?"

I blinked at her, completely floored by the direction this conversation had turned. Nothing seemed to stir between us but the sounds of cars at a distant intersection, idling at a red light.

"I don't know," I said. "I can't plan to be unmoved by people dying."

To my surprise, she smiled. "That is not a 'no', I notice."

"No...it's not. While you know I'd much rather die for my beliefs than let someone else do it...if something happens...if it's like that girl, or like Mage, or like AEGIS...I have to keep moving anyway. Otherwise it was all for nothing."

"A long time ago, I told you the nature of true leadership. Do you remember what I said?"

I shook my head.

"I said that to be a leader is making the hardest decisions. That sometimes, to be a leader is to decide whom you must sacrifice so that the rest may live."

"And at the time you were worried I was going to throw away myself," I said, remembering.

"Yes. And you proved me right by capitulating the moment one other than you was in danger. Do you think you have grown? Have you reached the point where your principles can outweigh the life of another?"

She didn't wait for me to answer, simply put a hand on my shoulder with reassuring weight.

"If you find the answer to be no, we are hiring," she said with a macabre grin.