"Stop! Stop!" Rio shouted, somewhat muffled in my chest as I pulled her away. My shield flashed with impacts as the convoy unloaded on us both.

"What, you want to get shot?" I asked.

"I want there not to be any fighting, moron!"

"Well too bad. These guys want your guns, and it looks like they're not taking no for an answer."

"Then give them the guns."

I grabbed her and heaved her over my shoulder while she complained. She was reasonably solidly built, but short, kind of the inverse of Lia, whom I had no problem hefting either. I took a good, careful look and then shot us both into the air by kicking off with my exoframe.

She was saying something at the time, and it came out as a scream as the ground whipped away under us.

"We're gonna die! You're going to kill us!"

I just laughed as she screamed and thrashed in my arms, any sense of intelligence left in her, vanished with the panic of unexpected flight.

I popped a few magnetic pulses to slow us a little and adjust our mid-leap trajectory, but honestly, we were up and down in less than two seconds, just enough to carry us back past the outer wall. Something AEGIS could have done in easily, or Karu without even blinking. Come to think of it, our group had a lot of verticality to us, didn't we?

She continued whimpering and panicking for a while even after I dropped her, but I was a little busy to take too much stock. Something had come over everyone around us suddenly, every farmer and laborer just dropped what they were doing and started running full-tilt, like there'd been some kind of alarm.

"Hey, get ahold of yourself," I said, pulling her upright. She screamed in my face, an ugly tear-streaked mess, which made me wince to think I'd reduced her to that. It was just a jump...I couldn't understand how someone so invested in death and destruction was so utterly unequipped to face it. She pissed me off so much, with her detachment from her own actions.

But at the same time, she was also a crying woman, and that made my stomach churn very uncomfortably.

"Look, you're okay, Rio. You're back in the city. See, white stone?" I asked, stooping to run my fingers on the ground. "Nobody's shooting anymore."

Which wasn't technically true. There was still gunfire, it was just on the other side of the wall now. But that wasn't nearly as reassuring-sounding.

It took her a couple of minutes of seemingly all of Oasis rushing past us before she composed herself, and packed her fear and angst back into being furious at me. There was a nice little transition period of her calming down and looking like she was coming out from behind a cloud...until all at once irritation crossed her face and she was back to waving her arms threateningly.

"Look what you've done!" she shouted. And then stopped to hack and cough up the last of her snot, in a very dignified and certainly threatening manner. "Sorry. But...you bastard, look!"

"I'm looking. What am I looking at?"

"The city is under attack. Oasis is responding. All have manned the walls."

"I haven't," I shrugged. "Visions must not be working for me anymore. That's neat."

She rolled her eyes viciously. "If you are found to be a high priest, it will be the end of me. I was excited and troubled by AEGIS, but you…"

"Yeah, well. She'll tell you I'm ten times more troubling than she is. She'll also probably tell you I'm ten times more exciting, but don't follow up on that, because she'll get into the kinds of excitement you probably don't want to hear."

She glared at me. "What is wrong with you?"

"I'm an Exhuman."

"I meant…" She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. "I meant the joking around. Do you have no concept of what you've done here? How many lives are now in danger?"

I shrugged. "Sister, I've been throwing that line at you all day. It's infuriating to see you so triggered at your city being in jeopardy, and giving zero shits about what goes on outside of it."

"And I'm infuriated that you care only what's outside it. Your actions are as though chosen to bring Oasis to as cruel a death as you can muster."

"Well, I wouldn't put it that way. I want you guys to survive, obviously, but if you won't give up on screwing up the rest of the world...yeah, I'd choose them over you. Obviously."

"Obvious, why?" she shouted, as I watched the mass of bodies on the wall continue to grow. When I thought at first they were just running around, that was one thing, but seeing now that they were supposed to be defending the city...something didn't add up. I puzzled it over even as she continued bleating. "The rest of the world hates you, doesn't it? It is oppressive and unfair and barren of opportunity. Here you can be happy -- if you are new high priest, you can even be free. Why would you choose to be a slave there, over a lord here?"

I shook my head at her. We were just way too different. "Why aren't these guys armed?" I asked, gesturing at the wall. "You've got farmers up there with sticks and rocks?"

"They are armed with whatever they know."

"Like, what, obscure factoids?"

She stared at me. "Whatever weapons exist within their visions."

"Oh."

Well that seemed like bullshit to me. This was a city based on exotic weapons, with a mountain of a stockpile right in its middle, and when threatened...this was the defense mustered? It was like they were just asking for these people to be killed off. And on top of that, the hierarchy that said all Exhumans would be further back, defending the next wall in...these bastards would be helpless.

Like, did Oasis really give that few shits about humans? They were literally less valuable than the dirt they worked?

"Don't they...die?" I asked. Which was a stupid question because a few of them were already demonstrating for me, as the sound of gunfire continued, bodies fell from the wall.

"They do. But we can reclaim from those who attack."

"Wow, that's ten kinds of fucked up. So next time IkaCo comes calling, they'll find their own people standing there with rocks to lead the defense?"

"They are people, and people are people."

I gave her a big fake smile. "You know, you always know just what to say to continue to horrify and alienate me."

"They're dying because of you, bastard. I may not know them nor mourn them, but have a little respect."

"I've got an idea," I said. "Stay here, or else I'll have to carry you while jumping again."

"I'm going nowhere. There is nowhere to go. They will not breach the first wall with small arms."

"Great," I said, intensifying my smile with a dash of sarcasm. "Be right back, precious."

And then I bolted away, taking flights of stairs in single bounds. The rest of the city was similarly deserted, all the walls crowded with bodies. But the gates were still open for now, so my threat to have to jump was an empty one, and I went through like a normal person instead, until I got in range of Saga.

I tapped out a request for her on my tablet and flashed it into her senses, and only had to wait a minute before a blue streak from the inner walls traced through the twilight with the sound of engines echoing off the stone.

"How goes things?" Karu asked, handing over a pair of guns from the armory.

"Oh. You know. I got the city attacked."

"Is that why they have gone to alert?" she asked with mild amusement. "I dare say you are rather calm about it. Are these essential to breaking the siege then?"

"It's just some convoy and their escort. They have regular guns, and are shooting because they don't know what else to do. Mercenaries just making a big show so they can get paid, probably."

"I know the type well," she grinned. "You have forbid killing within the city to expedite our victory, but perhaps if I dispatched the aggressors, all would be ingratiated enough to end this farce?"

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"Kinda doubt it. I don't think the locals even know what they're doing, and Rio kinda blames me for the fight starting in the first place. We're probably looking at zero gratitude."

"As is our lot," she sighed. "Well, should you need anything else...I am bored."

"How's everyone else?" I asked.

"Lia is mildly upset, though trying to hide it. Dragon is...unexpectedly despairing. I make no reservations about the extent of my glee to see him as such. AEGIS is undergoing basic repairs. Saga is Saga."

"How about Tem? We might have better odds with her now that the visions flickered. Her situation might have changed?"

"Or they might not," she shrugged, as though in a way to demonstrate just how little she thought of the girl. "I have little intent to be lasered by the rampaging idiot should I try to break her from her spell, regardless. She is a lizard-brained ninny who would bite at any who reach within her cage."

"Ninny. Nice," I said. "Well, we'll need to collect her at some point. She's probably the only one who could blow all the armory to hell, which is kind of becoming plan B for me here at the moment, since Rio is still uncooperative."

"I believe plan B was to execute the uncooperative one?" she asked, clenching her fist and popping a blade into the air.

"Thanks for the update," I sighed. "I'll take these and see if it works."

We said our brief goodbyes and I took the two weapons back down to Rio with reckless downhill bounces that would not have been possible if Whitney hadn't gotten the auto-gyros working. I even startled her with my approach.

"My guns?" she asked. "What do you need those for?"

"Imagine," I said. "You're a...lizard-brained ninny. You've been called to defend your city, which you do willingly. That's about the extent of your intelligence, right?"

"Sure," she said.

"And then someone presses a gun into your arms. Doesn't matter if you know who they are, or what it is. What are you gonna do?"

She blinked at me.

"You've seriously never, ever considered what it's like to actually be trapped in the visions, have you? All you think about is 'boy, how happy they are', without a thought to how they experience the world?"

She ripped one of the weapons from me and ignored me, frowning as she checked it over. Without replying, she headed up the stairs to the wall, finding the closest laborer and pressing the gun into his arms.

It took him a couple tries. He was saying things and confused, seemingly apologizing for bumping into her even. But when she took his hands and placed them on the weapon's grips, even his stupid mind wasn't capable of dismissing the object anymore, and all at once it seemed to click for him, and presumably entered existence into his reality.

Because what he did next was lean over the wall and start shooting. A flat baseline of a sound, I had no idea what it was doing, but it sounded bone-rattling. When it fired, I couldn't hear the distant gunfire over it, and when it went silent, the gunfire had ceased, at least for a few seconds. It picked up again but sounded more timid, more distant, not expecting to have met resistance.

Rio came pouting back to me, seemingly unsure whether she was mad at me or elated that the trick had worked.

"Happy now?" I asked.

"No. Yes." She stared at me. "Why would I be?"

"You're such a woman."

"Give me that gun--" she growled.

"I meant, with your calling. This is what you wanted, isn't it? You wanted your weapons to be tempered on the battlefield. Here you go, your own limitless supply of testing dummies. Bodies you don't care about, shooting off your babies. Feeling the proud mother yet?"

"This is just a slaughter," she said, shaking her head.

"And that's what they're designed to do, isn't it?"

She went silent again, and this time when she reached for the other gun, I gave it to her. She gave me a small nod before heading back up to the wall and passing it off to another of the bastards up there before rejoining me, still as pensive as when she left.

We loitered for a few more minutes before, just as suddenly as they'd come, everyone began leaving the wall. Like students flooding out of class, everyone just came pouring out at once, all headed their own directions.

The front gates even opened again, and I could see some of the trucks and both of the VTOLs were smoking piles of wreck now. From behind us, soldiers headed out to round up whatever salvage they could find. Maybe even recruiting the wounded into the next generation of laborers. Fun times.

Made all the more gross by the thought that, if it weren't for Saga, that would have been me marching out right now, maybe. As much as I hated this place, I still loved it somehow, and that fucking sucked.

"Shall we head back up?" I asked. "I think we might be mostly done here. Just gotta get Saga to convince your god to let our heads go, and all our loose ends are tied up, right? You're happy, the city's happy, uh...there's salt in the salvage probably and, uh..."

"This won't be the end of them, you know," she said. "That was no attack."

"Yeah, that was just some lazy mercs."

"They were desperate. They will continue to be desperate, and will act in their desperation."

"And you'll have a hundred dudes on the wall with a hundred crazy guns when they do. There's no army in the world that can match that. They can't nuke you or anything crazy, because they're only here for what you've got in the first place. You've got your war in place, and I've got my gun deal cancelled."

"This isn't what I wanted, though."

I put my hands on my hips. "What, you wanted to test your guns without having the fighting be in your own backyard?"

She nodded. Which was surprisingly straightforward.

I had an impulse to continue to attack and ridicule just how stupid and naive she was. Because, absolutely, she was. Frustratingly so.

Instead, I took her by the hand and dragged her along until we were indoors, and sat us both down at a table opposite each other.

"Look," I said. "A long time ago, I was a lot like you. I was a huge idiot when it came to what fighting actually meant. I thought...really thought...that I could be some kind of new generation of Exhuman who wasn't bad, who could just be left alone and didn't hurt anyone. I was stubborn, and thought that the XPCA had taken away everything I had, my life, my family, my future...and the only thing I had left was to say 'fuck you' to them and show them I still had humanity. The one thing they said I never had. Y'know?"

She nodded stupidly, and I wondered how much she was actually listening.

"But the more I struggled along, the more I realized...that isn't how things work. When you're as strong as you or me, there's no such thing as being left alone. Some guy named Blackett saw my power and thought he'd use me for his own, just like IkaCo wants to use you."

"Then we just tear them down," she said, with a frown.

"I did that. I killed Blackett, once I realized what a real piece of shit he was. But that just created a whole new mess of problems. I'd put my power where his had once been, and if I stayed there, I'd be a target...or worse, have to pull the strings myself. And if I left, there'd be a power vacuum, and whoever filled it -- Director Hall in this case -- he'd just use me the same way Blackett had tried. I even ran and hid, I tried living without my powers entirely for a while. But that's not something you can do, you can't just have that kind of power and expect not to be marked. You'll either find a situation where you need to use it, or regret that you didn't."

"This is just your life," she said. Her tone was dismissive but she was clearly attentive. "Just because it happened to you doesn't mean it happens to everyone. We were fine here before you came along, you know."

"You really weren't," I shook my head. "If we were able to figure out that you guys were the source, someday, someone else would have. And then they'd want it for themselves, or maybe just want it gone. That's what I'm saying -- when you get this powerful, people can't ignore you anymore. And you can't live pretending you can be."

"Well I don't...we don't...care about being ignored," she huffed, crossing her arms. "Oasis has been sieged loads of times. This is one more."

"I just want you to accept that this siege is because of the guns."

"It's because of you."

"And we're here because of the guns. And so are they."

She wavered for a long time. "So what then? Would you just...have me stop making them? I may as well die."

"Well that seems melodramatic. But no. What I want from you is what I'm aspiring towards, the same reason I'm here in the first place, the same reason I'm talking to you when killing you would be so much easier, the same reason I shot down the deal when so many problems could be helped by making it."

"And what is that?" she asked, trying not to look too captivated.

"Just fucking think, lady. Be aware. Listen to things you disagree with. You can't tell me there were never hints your guns were out there causing hell, I bet you just ignored them. Open up your reality to those things, wonder what you can do to always be improving."

"That's not very helpful," she said.

"Maybe not. But doing that has gotten me where I am today. I'm such a different person from that stupid, naive idiot who got thrown into the wilds." I bit my lip and stared at her for a long time. "When Dragon...when Liwei had Lia at knifepoint, I didn't do anything."

"What?"

"Sorry. I'm just...this is been on my mind ever since it happened. I might just be blabbing at this point."

"No, go ahead."

"Well...Liwei took my sister hostage when I did the same to you. And instead of caving in on the spot and giving up everything for her...I didn't. I held firm to what I had, because I knew that he wouldn't do it if I didn't hurt you. I knew that..she or one of the others would figure out something, or that I could talk to Dragon...how ludicrous that sounds, we hate each other. Karu just told me that Lia's kind of upset, and I think that's why. She's seeing it in me too."

"Seeing...what exactly?"

"Dunno." I had a thought and blanched, but once it was in my head, it wouldn't leave. "Leadership?"

"How is that leadership?"

"Karu once told me that leadership is often just deciding what sacrifices to make. That I was a weak leader because I'd only ever be willing to risk my own life. And then today...I was willing to risk Lia's. Because that was the only way I'd have a positive outcome. Because if I just gave you up and gave in to Dragon, we'd have lost everything, in my stupid, desperate bid to put everything on myself."

"If you don't mind my saying, that just sounds like not being an idiot."

"Well that's a big part of leadership too, I imagine," I smiled at her. Then I sighed. "Anyway. That's my advice for you. Oasis to you might be Lia to me. To get the positive outcome, you might have to put what you love at risk. If you seem to have no options...maybe the option is to do what you never considered yourself doing."

"At that point, couldn't I just kill you and then deal the guns?" she asked, with a sly smirk.

"Sure," I shrugged. "If you honestly think I'm easier to kill and more of a bad guy than they are. By all means, try."

A weird look had frozen on her face at my words. "It was a joke."

"I know. But I'm serious. If that's what you think best, I can't fault you for doing it. But I don't think you will."

"Heh," she snorted, standing up. "More of that leadership? That reckless confidence that things will turn out?"

I smiled at her and joined her in walking back outside, now fully night.

"No," I admitted. "I don't know that they will. But I just act as though they will be, and if a problem arises...I'll cut it down, until the world works just the way it should."

"Sound exhausting."

"It is. But it's the only way I know to make a change."