“Why the hell is he here--?” Conrad voiced what Tabby (and pretty much everyone there) wanted to scream at this man.

“Yeah, why should I—literal founder and leader of this civilization, should be present in the discussion of it’s possible demise?” Davenport didn’t bother with the sarcasm. (Which, Tabby did admit that she wasn’t expecting that—since ((undiagnosed)) sociopaths don’t bother with… The emotional stuff-)

“This isn’t the time, Eli—for you to make this about yourself!”

“If this was all about me, why would I be here, General Miller?” Davenport bluntly asked. None of his usual (smarminess), no over the top theatre outside of whatever he’s wearing now…

It was scary. And everyone present knew that.

“Should you not know about the underground emergency tunnels? That I’ve activated them myself, ready for use?” Despite having these terrible pilot shades on, they lowered and revealed his beady… And tired eyes. “A system that I hoped I never would use—something I dreaded because I know that it’ll be twisted somehow that I have dungeons or pits or sex rings deep in my island and who really knows what I built--?”

“And that’s great, we’ll use them as a last resort and if the shelters fell, we at least have that—but as someone who started out with ‘this isn’t about me’, you sure are making about yourself—” Conrad still spitting back with stern venom.

“What the hell happened to you, huh?!” Mr. Davenport suddenly shouted. “What happened to us—just what happened?! We used to BUILD solutions to our problems, so that we could LIVE and LIVE EASILY—BETTER. Basic human response, and we’ve all forgotten. And now, when life is challenged more than it’s ever been, we just shit ourselves. ‘How much?’ is our only response anymore—”

“I was willing to entertain your concert until you made this into some personal attack,” Bogdan stated, cutting him off so hard, he practically spun on his heels to face the hologram of the man, his gaudy red, white striped tux, flapped in the wind. “Who are you, man of whimsy, to criticize the complex nature of what we’re doing here? All you did was build things that were only recently useful and aren’t available for their integration—you were busy working a crowd that hates you.”

Mr. Davenport just smiled. But it was so not a smile, just due to the way his face formed in that moment. Eyes near shut, the grin being forced ear to ear. Seething.

“90’s. A boom of siVis users, back to back—teenagers, young adults, turned into monsters. The Last Year: 2000, the announcement of limited government everywhere nearly plunged us into another global war due to how poor it went. 2002—oh sorry, The Transitionary Point—god awful name by the way—The Horizons Mission goes horribly wrong and we lose people in space and we don’t know where they are anymore. Still don’t. ‘Transitionary Point’—or y’know, 2006, Dr. Taber DIES ON LIVE TELEVISON, unable to cut away or censor a thing and the clip is rerun into sin. We lose an entire city to a mentally disturbed man that twists people into whatever he thinks of them as, we try to take back most of Oceania and failed miserably, the fringes of human civilization getting a taste of Noumena and liking it—The Sierra Bolton incident—The Nulgarrt Infestations of the East—The Near Drifting of Human Society—And now all this? I only remember the same, tired ass response. ‘We are sorry, we are strong together, we will evolve our plans according to what’s transpired, one step of the time. We are together Extant’. Every. Single. Time.”

“Mhm,” Joy retorted, unimpressed. “So, what’s your grand—amazing reasoning? The plan of yours to save humanity from certain existential extinction?”

“THAT’S THE THING!” he now had his hands on his head, fingers in his now messy shaved mohawk—a thick slither of white with gray, shaved sides. “Nobody blames you for this! You didn’t create these things, you’re people who went on to MEET it! It’s why they’re not raging at you, you dolts! But you wanna know something? They’re bottling that resentment up. Why? Because of this mess of a mission you have. You promised them a return to normalcy and we all know by the day, it’s dead.”

Silence fell upon the room.

“Have you ever thought, what it feels like, to be constantly told by someone driving that they knew what they were doing—to watch them swerve constantly into a hillside, to let a tire pop so badly, it made the car jump and you near crush your neck from hitting the ceiling too hard? You’re riding on rims as the driver is swaying and grinding against the road’s railings, and you see the ocean below, and can FEEL the car tilting, and they reply; ‘we’re going to be okay’? There is no more normalcy—there can’t be, people have died in ways that… There’s only parts of bodies—bodies that aren’t bodies anymore and transformed into… Gunk. Government bodies are gone, economy operating on a life support system that can’t handle the load so much longer… And the psychology of it. We’ve seen… We’ve seen cosmic waves. We’ve seen things that cannot be unseen, so much so, that an entire people lost their minds so badly that they became the very thing they feared… AND YET—it’s something entirely different?”

“We’re creatures of habit—” Arthur burst in, full of white-hot rhetoric. “We’re monkeys that work best with patterns, it’s what we know—steady is the only way we could’ve done this, we didn’t fuck up. We endure everything and make the next step, every time, until we reach the goal. We win by growth, it’s the only way when nothing else makes sense.”

“…The thing about growth is failure is always an option. Even excusing the fact that these people have experienced failure—tragedy for near 20 years… We hate failure. In every single form. Even the beneficial kind.”

The ranting old man simply threw his glasses aside. His expression mournful. Morose.

“What pains me the most is that you ALL are such good people… Champions. Titans among men, guiding them when you have all the resources to dictate every single thing they do—rebuilt a broken world into yours…” Mr. Davenport looked to Conrad. “Especially you. You served in one of the bloodest battles in human history, you lead in the face of pure evil and you managed to win multiple victories. This isn’t your fight, you could’ve just retired and passed on, you did your bit… But here you are. It pains me to say that you went about this thing all wrong.”

Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

Conrad didn’t say a word.

“This could’ve been the closest we gotten to an agreed upon new Era. New way of doing things, new attitudes and schools of thought… We finally break through all of those pointless things—poverty, racism, depravity… Literal things of the past. We have to fight for our existence, now. After being forced into a new era of destruction and terror, we would’ve joined hands and agree to wipe that all away for now… Then for good. Progress was the key, here. By showing we can conquer—continue to conquer—all of our fears about this vast universe we’re in…That’s the fuel to breed more amazing, intelligent and innovative HUMANS. We’ve risen from an amoral state of existence—so why not again?”

He turned towards the audience.

“Because the thing… The most insidious thing about this whole cosmic shit we’re in… It makes us look at what was before, as we longed for it, even the things we’ve put up with… And realize THAT didn’t really make a lot of sense, either. So what did?”

“So what the fuck have you done, Mister Narcissistic Asshole?!” Tabby said before she could’ve thought it through, straight from her broiling chest.

She seized up, noticing the frozen stares of everyone present in the room.

Professor Diana just leaned against the wall, crossed arms. She had a vacant, pissed off expression the whole time, only now blinking in surprise. Arthur laughed openly, “ha haaaa”, before rising a fist. Conrad remained strait laced, as did Bogdan. Diami was nodding with a subtle smirk of approval, Olivia had a covered mouth, Genichi was peppering a towel against his wet forehead. Joy clapped softly while having raised eyebrows.

…Surprisingly, Davenport was even more crestfallen. Just looking at her.

Whatever sense of catharsis she had was snuffed out. Especially since… She kinda agreed with him to some faults.

So, the stupid girl just shook her head, returning back to her place, head lowered and just focused on recording.

“So, can we have another meeting and the topic is to NEVER piss this girl off or we’re done as a force?” Arthur joked, seemingly more alive now.

“You joke, but I would definitely put that in the back burner…” Joy quipped right after.

“‘Conquer’, Davenport?” Diami asked. “There is no way to conquer something when we haven’t figured out how to relieve natural events. But the nice girl who has put up with a lot of your bellyaching asked a question we all would like the answer to as well: what HAVE you been doing?”

The man looked down, his eyes becoming a glassy sheen.

“…Nothing. I thought… Maybe acting as an example, and a distraction… Maybe that would’ve breeded something. And on some level, I hoped that everything would’ve evened out so that I could just be ‘Urban Planner Walt Disney’ still. It’s regret. That’s what I’ve been doing. Nothing but as it burns me out.”

“See,” Arthur responded. “Now that’s something I believe, because it wasn’t packaged with some droning speech. But it’s like you said, buddy. We’re Titans that have every finger in every single, different pie. If we ever HINT that we’ve designed safety features in case of when things go severely wrong… It’s over for us.”

Tabby froze at that, immediately picturing the outcry of that. Cries of sneaking weapons under their beds… Cries of making things weirder.

“And we’re trying not to resort to that,” Genichi responded. “People want normalcy, deserves it. And they will continue to do so as we operate.”

“It’s… It’s not going to break them—they’re already broken… We’re speeding towards is everything being shattered. Beyond repair…” The man, the shattered bravado, Davenport tried to reason.

Nobody wanted to listen anymore.

“If we’re done acting out a play here—” Diana interrupted with a grimace and attitude. “Just got word—five Extant Researchers at the school site are dead.”

“You have got to be kidding--?!” Conrad had his fire light.

“The footage is being processed and sent over, but I just got word—” she pointed to the screen, and five cards appeared. No identities, just the suit pictures and vitals that are a plain line. Tabby covered her mouth.

“Four, sudden blunt force trauma. The fifth, who I guess was the one who sent the footage…” Diana shook her head. “Also requested the Remains Protocol.”

“They feared that their fate would be so gruesome, they volunteer their body as research,” Bogdan grabbed at his head. “This is bad.”

“Show the footage for quick review, at least…!” Olivia pleaded.

Diana nodded, and toggled the screen of the footage, it instantly widening.

Tabby shrieked.

A twisted, twitching, vein monster rose from the debris of the once-there school. The limbs were covered in the red, meaty veins as it forced the monster’s arms to jut out in a primal stance—twisting along the limbs so much that it was just a fleshy stump for hands. The eyes, pried open because there was no eyelids—dead and barely formed under a sickly yellow shield. The jaw, wired at the sides, was still an open, constantly screaming beak. The head, avian in design, was tied down by the hunched back it sported, covered in pulsating, writhing nerve-endings.

The footage itself was shaking, as the creature arose, darting it’s strained head left to right as it noticed that it did away with the other lifeforms that hounded it. Until it saw the last one.

With blinding speeds, it charged forced as the constant scream just got high pitched, and the footage stopped.

“This is like a siVictim, Nulgarrt hybrid situation—” Diami commented instantly. “We must use both measures to ensure some sort of conclusion—because that thing cannot continue any longer.”

“How?! If we harm it, then we’re accelerating the change!” Diana fought back.

“I’m guess you can’t do anything to stop her, can you?” Conrad turned to her.

Tabby responded with the biggest wide-eyed look, just scanning the Professor with the implication she thinks she just heard.

“…I don’t think my abilities can work with a primal mind to follow, sir,” Diana looked at him as if he asked a stupid question. “And if I did, I don’t think TWO of her would be the wisest idea.”

“I suppose that would make things worse, yes,” Conrad nodded as Tabby continued to silently freak out about what that could possibly mean for a possible siVis ability used by LITERALLY the Second Taber. “Then it’s settled. We have to prolong this fight long enough for us to use Null Rays. Forcing her to transform into some perfected form, wearing out the limitations of it, and exposing her to them as it theoretically peels back a husk for us to contain.”

Diana rubbed her chin a bit. “That would mean having her under lock and key to study, and if she turns into something else, hey, we now know that Null Rays work… But if they don’t?”

“Then the usual siVis Incident protocol must be issued,” Conrad answered grimly. “We break them with their own reality.”

Diana nodded. “Hopefully, this time, we’re doing a more permanent end other than aid like last time. We’re still paying for that.”

Conrad nodded in turn. Then he looked at the sad man that yelled at him.

“You wanna lead for once in your life? Then come with me.”