Ice Dust

[letskicksomeice]

[cw: mild gore, death.]

Okay, guys, I think we're almost done here. Everyone's reported in that all the cell blocks are just about cleared. I'm checking one of the last sections.

[He flits towards one of the secure doors, casually tapping his staff against the security panel housing the ID reader and lock, freezing it until it fritzes out. He pushes through the doors and lands, anticipating that he might have to duck low behind something for cover.]

We've already overstayed our welcome and we shouldn't risk them bringing in backup from outside, so start snowglobing to the Po -

[What he sees on the other side of the door makes him freeze and stagger back as if shot to the chest. Most of the science labs had been emptied in the ruckus; the myths within were quickly dragged back to their cells. But with the base overrun, it looks like this lab was one of the ones quickly abandoned, without the scientists cleaning up after themselves.]

[It is a macabre tableau. On one giant examination table there is a vivisected unicorn, clearly dead, rainbow blood flowing over the sides of the table. It is an ugly sight, something so pure and beautiful, its white coat glossy like pearl, paired with such brutality.]

[But that's not what gives Jack pause and makes it look like he's been punched in the heart. What gives him pause is the other myth, strapped to a table, lots of painful-looking devices and tubes attached to her. The nymph is still an otherworldly beauty. Her skin is still a brilliant mix of blue and green and gray like the ocean meeting a stormy sky. Her face is delicate and her hair is a curly tangle of flowing vines. When she opens her eyes they look like blue marble, blended with cloudy white.]

[But she is dried out, skin cracking like tree bark in places, the leaves and flowers in her viney hair wilted and brown.]

[She is not meant to be dried out. Her skin is meant to glisten like it is perpetually sprinkled with drizzle. Every one of her movements is meant to scatter droplets over the woods like morning dew. She was one of the ones to bring gentle storms to the slopes of Mount Nysa, after all.]

[Seeing slight movement, Jack flies forward, placing his staff against the side of the bed. He starts pulling devices and straps off of her, careful to not yank anything that looks like it'll hurt if he pulls suddenly.]

Aesyle, Aesyle, it's gonna be okay. It's gonna be okay.

["Jack Frost," she breathes it out in a relieved sigh. "I should have known the Guardians would come. We - we lost hope, many of us. That we would be found. But...but I am found." The relief and peace she feels at this flows from her expression and water pours from her eyes an unnatural flow, like exuding water is in her very nature.]

[Some of the devices give him trouble and has to dismantle them carefully, freezing components that need to be weakened and broken.]

You are. I found you. Are your sisters here?

["My sisters were here," she says, eyes closed. "But they walk with our brother Hyas now."]

[Agony falls over Jack's face. Devastation. In the space of a sentence, he has lost fifteen friends at once. His eyes temporarily squeeze shut but the tears stream out anyway, freezing on his cheeks in a fine smattering of ice dust.]

I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry we didn't get here sooner.

[He manages to fight past it and gets the last device undone. He quickly has a globe out, and whips out a portal to the Pole, all business despite the heartbreak. He hefts her up, staff grasped awkwardly in one hand.]

I've got you, though. [His voice cracks.] I'm taking you to the Pole, we can call Epione and her daughters -

[She suddenly reaches a hand up to his face holding it gently but tightly, commanding his attention. He stops flying, knowing, knowing with a sinking feeling, that it's too late. Knowing that she needs to be seen right now. She wanted to be found and she is; he can give her that at least, more of being found. He kneels with her on the floor as if the weight of her and what's about to happen are suddenly dragging him down.]

["You always made our rain so beautiful, turning it into snow, spreading your frost over the trees of Mt. Nysa." She locks eyes, expression filled with long-held longing, unspoken. "I wish...I wish we could've danced one last time, but my sisters...Hyas..." Her eyes gently drift shut. "Hyas waits for me."]

[He hand drops in a last caress, she breathes out a last breath that sounds like a breeze through the trees and finally fades from the world, her body suddenly melting into a gentle flow of water that passes uselessly through Jack's violently shaking hands. His body is so cold that some of it freezes there in a glaze over his fingers and palms. He holds his hands to his chin, bunched up, as if the touch of her essence there will somehow be taken inside himself, preserved.]

[Where his knees touch the puddle frost spreads out on the floor and there could be uglier things left in her place but at the very least the frost lines are beautiful, spiraling outward in an elegant pattern, vaguely shaped like a humanoid form, with spiraling lines where the vines of her hair had been. This brief memorial is ephemeral. It will be gone soon, melted and evaporated into the air. But for now, the place of her death is marked with something that's at least a fraction of how beautiful she'd been in life.]

[The tears on Jack's face will be there for longer, frozen in streaks. Shaking uncontrollably, his watery expression changes from agony to one of barely contained rage. The wind picks up in the room and ice starts to crystallize on every surface.]

[His voice is as hollow as an empty tomb when he finally speaks to the team.]

Get the last of the myths out and get to the Pole. [The myths, not the staff of the Project, but they've already had plenty of time to run. Anyone left - anyone being sent in to try to retake the facility - has made a very serious mistake in not getting out while they could.] Tell me when you're done.

[The plan had just been to run after everyone was out. Jack could never be described as "prudent" in the past, but that was when he didn't have a whole team he was trying to keep alive while in deeply over his head. Many of them were powerful, but blowing that huge a facility on their own would've been a stretch and while there were some hefty power sources within in it, none of them were fully centralized, and some were on closed circuits. No easy way to just hack a bunch of power cells to overload.]

[But...the plan has now changed. Circumstances have changed. The wind briefly shrieks like its being murdered, and the doors Jack flew in through slam off their hinges so hard they embed themselves into the opposite wall.]

[The steel wall.]

[Around him, the metal hallway walls start to frost over, groan, and then crack. The irises of his eyes seem paler and almost lit from within.]

I'm bringing this entire place down.

Comments

[credit_not_blame]

[Good, even better, more engagement and less rage. Stacia nods in acknowledgement of his answer, then allows an upward tilt to her lips.]

I mean, I have met Bunny. He told me that I could have as many shivs as I want.

Question three, and I want you to look me in the eye when you answer this one:

[She holds his gaze when it meets hers and pours the intensity of her question into her words while still keeping her voice even.]

Will Jamie understand?

[letskicksomeice]

[His steps pause and the light in his eyes dims just slightly as he considers the question, really considers it, and weighs the "my adoptive big brother"ness of it against...]

[Against everything. Everything he's already had to become. Everything else he might become after. He weighs it against the nightmare on the other side of The Door and what things it may take to stop it. And how he can't just find a new set of people to hide behind when it comes to making these kinds of choices.]

[He weighs it against necessity. (Do the evil people need to be stopped? No, most have run. But do the Guardians have time to go through all their records, break or steal all their technology, can they erase yet more ammunition against mythkind, and is the ability to do so worth the consequences?)]

[Is breaking what Prometheus has left worth it if it means breaking a child's heart?]

[In so many cases he'd say no.]

[But if he breaks this place, as fully and completely as he can, can he possibly save more Aesyle's?]

[The light in his eyes, briefly dimmed, burns bright again.]

They just wiped out every single one of the Nysiads. An entire sisterhood of nymphs. There were sixteen of them.

If Jamie doesn't understand, he'll have to learn to. Or he'll stop believing in me. I hate both options, but if this destroys something these monsters have in a way where they can't get it back, and it saves a single myth, it'll be worth it.

[Jamie would just forget him, after all, once he stopped believing. If they can't work through it, he'll just fade from his mind like he never existed at all.]

[The rage drains from his voice and it grows cold again.]

The facility is mostly evacuated anyway. The ones that valued their lives ran. Anyone that stayed behind to recover what they stole? What they made to hurt myths? They've made their choices.

[credit_not_blame]

[The glow in his eyes flickered and dimmed, so she knows the question hit like it was supposed to. It's probably not great that he's willing to sacrifice his relationship with Jamie when Jamie's the one he brought in to make sure the rest of them were on the up-and-up; but she knows for sure that he's thinking now. At least thinking well enough to frame this as protective, preventative violence rather than just revenge.]

[She'll still check with Bunny about this later. This isn't the secret Elle asked her to keep; this is something extremely public.]

I understand where you're coming from. But as much as I love some cathartic destruction, can you first focus on keeping reinforcements out? This isn't the olden times when records and information are all kept in easily-destroyed physical copies. Give the tech-y types more time to poke holes in their systems so we can make sure that when we [pointed emphasis. A reminder that Jack isn't all alone now, even if they're not the people he'd prefer.] take them down, we take them down harder than just a single facility.

[ninjavampire]

[ tech guy chiming in: ]

They've been up to something with more far-reaching implications, I can tell you that. Anybody search for a 'self-destruct' button, yet?

[millenyal_pink]

Is there a PA system we can override? Give anyone left a chance to surrender properly?

[bestbrotherever]

I believe I can send a message that everyone in the building will hear. I have considered doing so myself.

As to a self-destruct button, I have not found one, but if anywhere is likely to have one, it is my current location. Perhaps you would have more luck with your hacking skills, Miguel?

[ninjavampire]

I can take a look. A lot of these systems are closed off as a security measure, but if there's a way to connect them...

[ Miguel is not principally opposed to plan 'blow up the evil lair' if they give fair warning and try to get everyone out. He has a feeling it'd be best to try alternatives before letting Jack indulge his rage.

Good things didn't tend to come of that. ]

[hallelujahjunction]

We can make our choices too.

[Dan's a little banged up, having been dragging angry myths away from murdering their captors, having been ferrying the injured out and giving quick and dirty medical care, having most of the bullets left in his seven-shot Taurus revolver. Dan's slow on the trigger. That doesn't mean he didn't have to fire it today.

He doesn't really know Jack; he mostly knows him from Bunny's grumbling, from the irritation that gets undercut by genuine warmth and concern. He knows that Jack's a prankster (according to Bunny, a nuisance), a good-hearted child, someone who stepped up reluctantly when it was first asked of him and then stepped up again and again, and is now one of the sole forces keeping this world from spinning out like a gyre.

The Jack that he's looking at now doesn't seem to be the boy Bunny's so fond of. The circumstances here, the circumstances since the Guardians started undergoing attack before he and the other Myths were even pulled here, have unearthed something dark and pained in Jack, and it chills Dan - no pun intended - to see it.]

Practically, every folk who ran back into that facility to grab their tech might could have knowledge we could use to ensure this don't happen again. Ain't a high likelihood that any individual person's got all the information we might could get, so we might could be shooting ourselves in the foot going scorched earth.

[Dan rarely gets far arguing morality with people who have just held the dying in their arms. Pragmatism is usually where he defaults to first, and the fact of the matter is that murder is rarely as prudent as it looks like on the surface.

Concrete Blonde, also a bit banged up, sways and nickers underneath him, her flicking ears and tail sometimes falling into the frame of the mirror, sides heaving with exhaustion.]

I'm going back in. Who I bring out is who I bring out.

[forceforlight]

I'm with you.

[Dick's still seeing spots. The after effects of that light blast to the face are taking their own sweet time to completely clear. But he has most of his vision back. Enough to be making his way through the corridors, collaring myths and sending them one way and employees to send them a different way.]

[Some of the employees might end up a bit roughed up, but it's nothing that won't heal.]

It's not that I don't get where you're coming from, Jack. And I don't have a problem with bringing the house down, as it were. But if we don't at least try to get everybody clear?

[There's a pause as Dick shakes his head.]

I don't know that I could live with myself.

[bestbrotherever]

I have some suggestions about where you could send the staff, if you are interested.

[forceforlight]

As long as it's somewhere safe and away from here, I'm all ears.

[It's not like Dick blames Jack for being angry. They're all angry. But more death isn't going to make things better.]

[letskicksomeice]

[Some of the others managed to get through to him.]

[He's surrounded by ice and a hallway so broken it's obvious what will happen to the rest of the facility.]

[Struggling to even speak. Occasionally wiping fresh, salty ice off his cheeks.]

Make it fast. [It's firm because there are limits to this.] If reinforcements start coming in faster than you can get people out, we're back at square one.

[No way to destroy the facility without killing people. And he is destroying it. But...they'll get their time. Enough even for the staff.]

Understood?

[hallelujahjunction]

[It takes Dan a minute to get back onto the mirror, and when he does, he has a baby sewer alligator in his arms and is securing an unconscious, battered employee over Concrete Blonde's back with his thighs and elbow, trotting the horse out so he can deliver them to safety and go back in again.]

Thank you, Jack. We won't waste the opportunity.

[kemonookami]

Is it really so bad to let him have a go at anyone who came back?

[Garurumon just...grumbles that]

People he cared about got hurt and now he wants some payback from that. Is that really such a bad thing, if done after all myths are safe?

[By having been willing to let a Fury slaughter a Prometheus guy Garurumon already showed he was willing to let someone have their revenge on Prometheus people, so when Jack seems like he'll go in a rampage to tear this building down and all, Garurumon is...well, truthfully, he's up for letting it happen]

Sometimes it's just what you need, okay? To just try to hit back in some way because what else are you supposed to do. Like what's the point if in the end you don't get to at least soothe your anger a little.

[Something about Garurumon's tone definitely shows he's projecting somewhat by letting others have revenge of some sort on those who wronged them heavily, really. A Fury was going to be subjected to tremendously wrong experiments and potential vivisection, and she was going to lash out from that. Now Jack lost people who are very important to his heart, and wants payback for it.

If they're wrong then it means Garurumon's own issues are wrong too and that's just a tad difficult for him to accept. He has had a lot of time to cool his head down throughout the last few months in the North Pole, but still, seeing the pushback against this stuff multiple times is starting to irk him a little because Garurumon's own hopes and goals were revenge-based and those already were shaking in their foundations before he became a myth, he's trying to feebly hold onto the hope for revenge even though in the end he just isn't nearly hateful enough to pull it through.]

[hallelujahjunction]

I ain't here to pass judgment. I'm just saying I'm going back in.

[There are times and places to argue about revenge and mercy, and when someone's furious and just held a dying friend, it's not then. Dan knows better than to waste his energy having that debate now, especially when he's already back in the building, barely glancing at the mirror as he looks for survivors.

He can tell what Garurumon's getting at, and that's the other reason he doesn't let himself get sucked into this difference of opinion. Without getting to actually talk to Garurumon about the basis of both of their beliefs, they'll just come away with the worst impressions of each other. Garurumon will think Dan's naive and precious and Dan will think Garurumon's callous and reckless. There's no reason to invite that sort of misunderstanding.]

Killing these folks off don't raise the dead or make it so the survivors ain't been kidnapped and tortured, but it might could permanently cost us some allies or at least some information. If ain't nothing else move our hearts, let's at least try to preserve what information we can get.

[kemonookami]

...fine. In the end we're here to get myths out.

[Despite everything, he's not so unreasonable he forgets what's the objective here. It probably is fortunate, really]

star trek speech incoming i am so so sorry

[antigravboy]

The point of not killing them is that even the worst people can change.

[Boimler is setting up some of what they need in the infirmary. Only a few people on the team have medical skills but the Federation's first aid training is solid and he does have a basic medkit. He has to help there where he can.]

In my world, millions of people died over the course of a century. Society collapsed. The worst parts of humanity took hold of the world. There were instances of slavery, nuclear wars, genocides.

You could look at that and think that that's what we'd always be. That we'd broken so much that we'd always be monsters, with people causing suffering to each other, until we completely destroyed ourselves.

But that's not what happened. We made first contact with another species from the stars. We realized there was so much more...out there.

The universe opened up and we changed. We stopped fighting and rebuilt. We started to explore and learn about the universe instead of destroying things. We learned to live in peace and started to make peaceful contact with other species, sharing things with each other and helping each other. We bettered ourselves and still keep trying to be better.

People can choose to be better. Even if they're awful, they can choose to do better and do good in the world. And they can't do it if they're dead.

They deserve consequences [he has to emphasize that, because it's important there's some form of justice for the suffering they caused] so if we can get them arrested for something else, we should. But we also don't know what they could be if they have time to think about what they've done - and time to think about the fact they were spared by the same type of people they were hurting.

Think of the good that could be done if any of them flip and turn against the organization.

[kemonookami]

Wow. Hah. You really said all that.

[It's...idealistic, maybe? He sees it as a tad idealistic and perhaps naive. But also it makes him laugh in a way that's not really all that mocking. This kind of thing said at him is...baffling, especially because it keeps happening. How does anyone come up with this kind of thing on the fly. How do they all manage to say it all without feeling self-conscious about it.

Maybe it's because anyone who goes like this does mean it? Is that it?]

...you really hope someone will turn against them. Dunno if that's hoping too much. I knew a whole group who was all about making others suffer and none of them would have helped in any way just because the ones they were tormenting tried to help.

[...mostly because Garurumon was the one who turned against said group -- probably because he was never into the group's beliefs and goals so he doesn't consider himself truly one of them, but yeah, generally speaking Garurumon did more or less what Boimler argues and Garurumon himself doesn't realize it.

He's the proof Boimler isn't all wrong and yet he lacks the self-awareness to notice that]

But fine. The snowy kid doesn't get to destroy them all, I guess. It's not like I'm going to go behind your backs later and tell him that actually he should go wreck this place up. I get it. We came here to get myths out first and foremost, anyway.

[At the very least it's acceptance! Garurumon might not be into the thought of Jack taking revenge being wrong because by extension it'd mean he was wrong, but at the very least he's not trying to bend the issue]

[letskicksomeice]

[He knows that's logical. He knows that it's better leadership. (There is a reason he was the last member of the team qualified to lead.) He knows he should be an example of the Guardians' usual ideals and he knows...]

[He knows North or Tooth especially might be more merciful about this, despite their pasts and upbringing as warriors.]

[They don't just protect the lives of children. The oath is that they also protect their hopes, their wishes, and their dreams. Their innocence and ideals. And those ideals usually don't involve their heroes being overly harsh or needlessly cruel.]

[For many children, their heroes show mercy. They watch their media where heroes refuse to kill, where they depower their enemies on mountaintops and leave them fangless instead. Or they spare them, leaving room for them to truly reform and change, despite personal hurts and resentment.]

[Or they recognize that even when they wish to heaven that they were the person that would kill for revenge, they just aren't. They've already chosen, choose every day, not to be. Whether the one they're sparing took a friend, a father, or their true love.]

[That's what the kids believe in. That's the world they wish for. That's the goodness they hope for. He just said Jamie would have to live with it but the thought is still carrying over through the conversation, hanging out in the back of his mind, chiding him.]

[It's all too much, the conflicting feelings. Jack's face scrunches up and he stamps back and forth in the hall, body shaking, fists clenched. He swings his arm futilely at nothing and the metal in the hallway continues to groan and crack, coated with more layers of ice that lightly crackles in the air. He wants to argue with logic, he wants to have a good counter to that based on what needs to be done.]

[But he knows he doesn't have one.]

[He finally bows over, as if the weight of it is trying to drag him down, hands grasping his staff so hard his knuckles are white. His voice is barely more than a rasp when he speaks again.]

They were my friends. They were the first friends I made after the Guardians.

[He'd been a loner for centuries before that.]

[He closes his eyes and when he opens them a few tears drip down his face.]

And Aesyle...I thought. I thought when Kuk was stopped and I finally had time...

[He could see what might happen.]

Time is one of the things we can usually count on having.

[armagettingpancakes]

Listen. As one of the people who were trapped in that hellhole? Prometheus deserves it and a hell of a lot more.

[And he'd killed some of them for it and let Cato kill just as many. But this kid sounded like he was about to cross a personal line and from experience Hellboy knew it wasn't a good time on his side of it. Probably a good idea to push him back away from it.]

You, on the other hand, don't deserve to do this to yourself. Let the bleeding hearts get everyone out.

[letskicksomeice]

What...

[The words almost comes out as a whisper.]

What am I supposed to do when the Guardians are sometimes the only ones there to bring justice or set things right? Who else is supposed to do this if it's what they actually deserve?

[credit_not_blame]

[Stacia is so grateful that everyone else is stepping up for the logistics and the alternatives and the stronger pushback. It means that she can focus her attention on Jack and just Jack. The guy needs it.]

I'm so sorry, Jack.

[The empathetic part of her wishes she was there so she could hug him. The practical part of her is glad she isn't, because she is not at all dressed for the cold where he is.]

It's horrible and awful and it's not fair. It's not fair to Aesyle or her sisters, and it's not fair to you. And I'm so very sorry that I can't casually turn you loose, because I've been where you are and I know how much destroying something feels like seizing control.

But instead of risking your relationship with Jamie to save even one myth, you can take control of your pain for long enough for us to get what we need to save more myths. Maybe even all of reality, if we can find tools here that we can use against Kuk and its minions. And then when we're done here, I'll put on my fur or the heaviest coats I can find, and I'll sit with you and you can tell me about Aesyle and her sisters and we can cry for them together.

[letskicksomeice]

[She's right. He knows she's right.]

[He doesn't want her to be right.]

[But this is different than stopping a deadly myth that can't be taken down another way, as a last resort, while protecting a child.]

[He wants it to be so much.]

[His hands twist around his staff and it glows and crackles with a blue-white energy, frost spiraling up and down it.]

[Tears drip down his face, freezing on contact. But before he wipes the crystallized droplets away, he lets out a cry and slams his staff onto the floor. The metal walls don't shatter so much as splinter in a million pieces of shrapnel. The blizzard wind buffeting Jack keeps any of them from hitting him though and huge shards of ice shoot through the places the walls had been, breaking concrete and pushing through the Earth.]

[ He's grown far more powerful after helping take over tasks of other Guardians. Being seen protecting, planting eggs, leaving tooth money, handing over presents. Always telling children he was just a Helper, but now getting some bleed over belief from the other Guardians.]

[So it's easy to see now how he can destroy this place. Concrete and metal shattering apart, ice pushing through rooms and walls, pulverizing everything. And when it's all over, when the ice crumbles, there'll just be a pit for the wreckage to slide into.]

[For now, it's just this hallway. For now, he holds back.]

[For now.]

[Defeated.]

Let me know when everyone is out.

[Everyone.]

[arthropoda]

...I think a lot of people would say you're right for wanting to strike back. They took a lot of people you cared about. I mean...who wouldn't want to make them hurt after that?

[Without her mask this supervillain really just shows she's just a teenager. Seen a whole lot of horror and gore, but still someone who has dealt with things she really shouldn't have. People like Jack are included among that, because really, someone like Taylor isn't qualified to be handling anything like this. Still, she can try. Taylor hasn't crossed this particular line but she has had to cross others. She should try to caution about making a mistake]

But we don't know the consequences of this, and I don't mean counterattacks from Prometheus later. Taking the time to kill them all right now...it could end up destroying you in the inside. Maybe nothing would ever happen to you, but that doesn't mean by taking action now against them all something inside you won't break. You won't be able to go back to who you were before that.

I don't think anyone should cross that line and see what kind of person they end up becoming because of it. Sooner or later it just catches up to you.

[......]

I doubt anyone who cares and cared about you would want to see that. Even though it'll piss you off right now, it's best to focus on something else...on what you can do that doesn't involve destroying these Prometheus people for what they did.

[letskicksomeice]

[Jack is silent for a little bit, processing.]

It's hard.

Balancing both sides. We're supposed to be what the kids believe us to be.

We're supposed to be the good they believe in.

But we also have to deal with this. We have to handle the darkness they don't see.

[He shakes his head.]

It was so much easier when the others were here. I'm not the one that should be here trying to makes these kinds of decisions. I'm -

I'm snowballs and funtimes, not -

Not...

[He doesn't even know how to finish the thought.]