Summus Proelium

“Are you quite certain about this choice?” As she asked that, the girl known as Skip stood in the middle of a small bridge that stretched across a creek in a park near the outskirts of the Detroit city limits. Most of the time, the park was filled with people. But the longer the situation with the quarantine had dragged on, the more people had stopped going out. Not because they didn't want to, but the rising violence from gangs across the city, Touched and otherwise, made them afraid of being caught in the middle of a fight. Organized events that were bound to have actual security still attracted plenty of participants, but people were worried about going out by themselves. They stayed in large, brightly lit places with protection, like stores and theaters. Both of which had ramped up their own security efforts both to give people a place to go and buy things, and to avoid incurring all the damages rampaging criminals could inflict. The fact that people were digging into their savings to spend money at those places rather than going to places that didn't have security, like the city park, also helped the decision to make sure the places had visible guards.

In any case, parks like this barely had any visitors recently. Which meant Skip and her companion could stand on this secluded bridge and be assured of privacy. They were able to see the road leading up to the park in the distance, and there were no buildings nearby for people to look out of. Nor was the park near where other Touched would likely be traveling.

Her question was met with an audible snort, as Austen Deleon, dressed as a civilian rather than in her paper armor, shook her head. Anyone who had looked at them likely wouldn't have noticed anything all that strange anyway. It would simply look as though Skip, who was dressed in her usual costume, was having a conversation with a young girl around her own age. Still, even if it would have been quite a reach for anyone to guess what was actually going on, neither of them wanted to take any sort of extra risk. Not considering the sort of danger involved with this entire situation.

“I think it's probably a little late to change my mind, isn't it?” Austen pointed out flatly. “Seems pretty hard to pull the brake cord after all the work you've gone through to set this up. Speaking of which, how many people know what's actually going on?” She stopped looking at the road to turn and squint at the other girl. “How many people are going to know this whole thing is complete bullshit?”

In a flat tone, Skip replied, “By which you mean how many people have the pieces to potentially put together your identity? As promised, only four people, including yourself and me, are aware of the switch that we are going to make. My sister is one, and an agent under our employ is another. He is the one who will be playing the part of Deicide’s killer. I promise you, he can be trusted.”

Those words were met with a disbelieving chuckle. Austen gave her a hard look. “Let's get this straight, I don't trust anyone. No one but myself. If you depend on anybody else, they will fuck you over the second it's convenient for them. My dad split and abandoned my mother and me. And if he hadn't done that, my mom wouldn't have…” She trailed off, biting her lip before turning back to look at the road once more. “She wouldn't have been taken in by that stupid fucking cult, I'll tell you that much. You never knew what she used to be like. You didn't know what kind of person she was before they got their claws in her. She was better. She was a better mother, a better everything. But she was weak. She was weak and she listened to them and they took advantage of her. They twisted her, they made her into one of them. Which was just another way of abandoning me. Things were tough, and she gave up and let a fucking cult change her entire personality. My dad took off, but at least he had the decency to physically leave. My mom was still standing right there, but she was completely checked the fuck out. She stood there and let them do all that bullshit. She could've stopped it, but she didn’t. My dad is a piece of shit who ran away. He made my mom into what she was. But she's not innocent either. She made choices. And so did I. I chose not to trust anyone else. I'm never giving someone that kind of power over me again. No one.”

After getting all that out, Austen blanched and grabbed the nearby railing, squeezing it tightly. She hadn't meant to say all that. She hadn't even meant to get into the subject at all. It was just that this whole situation was suddenly much more real. It was happening. Which meant she was going to abandon this identity, this life, that she had built up for herself. She was going to abandon everything she had worked for ever since breaking out of that cult. That was the real issue here. Deicide was a person, a life, a purpose that she had built entirely by herself. After leaving the cult, after killing the man who had called himself Jesus, she had been alone for the first time in her life. She could have done anything, and her choice had been to create the character of Deicide. She took over the gangs, pulled them together, and put them toward the purpose of eventually killing her father. A purpose that had still not been fulfilled. Mostly thanks to the betrayal of several of her most important people. A betrayal that made her want to snap this railing off its hinges and beat them with it.

The point was, abandoning this life meant something. It meant several things, actually. Including the fact that she was giving up on it. She was admitting that she had failed in her mission, at least as far as doing it this way went. She was admitting that everything she had worked for all this time was for nothing.

She didn't care about the resources being the leader of one of the biggest gangs in the city brought her, and she sure as hell didn't care about the prestige her costume identity had. It had been the means to an end. An end that she was now admitting couldn't be achieved that way. She was admitting she couldn't do this alone.

Well, of course she couldn't do it alone. She had known that before. That was the entire point of putting the gang together and using criminals to attack her father’s organization. But at the very least, she had been the only one who knew her reasoning. She had been the only one to know how and why she was actually targeting Cuélebre. And now she wasn't. Now Skip knew the truth. As, apparently, did Caishen and their agent. Three more people who knew the truth, who knew that Austen had failed, and was walking away from that identity. The whole situation made her feel… odd.

Skip was quiet for a moment before speaking up. “Your personal feelings about all of that, are they why you chose the location you did for this?”

Austen released the railing and looked at her once more while opening and shutting her aching fingers, in pain from how tightly she had been squeezing that metal. “You mean did I choose one of that cult’s old safe houses for Deicide to get blown up in because it was some sort of symbolic thing?” She paused before offering a shrug. “Yeah, probably. If the old compound had been within quarantine limits, I would have done it there. But this is good enough. It's one of the houses they had the people they called missionaries stay in when they were in the city. Missionaries who walked around recruiting people into their bullshit. It's the house my mother and I stayed in for a little while. Back when I was stupid enough to think things might actually be getting a little better. I liked them for the first couple days, when they were nice. When they were luring us in. Before they showed their real faces. So yeah, that place can go ahead and get blown up. Deicide was born in that cult, and she can die in it. Then I can be something else.” Something that might actually be able to do what she had set out to do, and kill her father.

The two of them spent a little more time on that bridge, talking about the specifics of what they were going to do. It wasn't actually all that hard. Austen was already accustomed to moving her empty armor around while pretending Deicide was in it. They were going to create a fake fight where Skip and Caishen’s 'trusted agent’ would supposedly crash an armored car that Deicide appeared to be attacking. With the supposed Deicide on the roof of the vehicle, it would crash into the targeted cult building, which was already empty.

In truth, Skip would be the one driving, given she could render herself immune to the damage from the crash. The agent would be inside already, on the far side of the building. In the wake of the crash, Skip would teleport out, and he would emerge in her place. The man would escape the crash, shooting over his shoulder in what would appear to be a blind panic. One of his shots would hit gasoline from the damaged truck and blow it up with Deicide right on top of it.

Some part of Austen did feel a little odd about the idea that the character she had created and built up would be killed off by something so mundane. But that was also the benefit of it. Something more dramatic, a big fight with other powerful Touched or the like, would have felt too staged. This, something that was just a random accident, was probably better in the end. For a certain definition of better, anyway. At the very least, it meant that she didn't have to give credit for supposedly killing her to any Touched. It would simply be an anonymous guard as far as the public was concerned, who would insist on not being named in order to protect himself from anyone who might want to go after him for it.

And that was how Deicide would die, after all these years. After everything she had done, the figure she had built up would be killed in an accidental explosion. Yes, it did feel a little anticlimactic, but that was for the best.

Finally, it was time. The two began to head out to where the armored truck was already waiting for them. On the way through the park, however, Skip received a call from her agent, the one they were working with. She listened to his report, murmured something and then looked at Austen. “There is a situation. The building you chose is not empty.”

That made the other girl do a double-take, a frown jumping to her face. “What the hell do you mean, it's not empty? It was empty last night when I checked. If there's some drifter in it or something, just have your man kick him out.”

Skip shook her head. “It's not that simple. There's a large, organized group there. They seem to know the place and are moving in.”

That made Austen even more confused. At least for a moment. Then she was angry. Because, as far as she was concerned, there was only one possible reason that a whole group of people would move into that house and think they belong there. Members of the cult. The so-called Church Of The Lamb. She had thought there were none left around here. She had done a lot of work to make certain of that, actually. But if there were people moving into that place now, it had to mean they were back. They thought they could move right in again and start up with their bullshit while she was around? Her ‘death’ hadn't even been completed yet, and they were already here trying to pick up where they had left off.

Absolutely not. If the character of Deicide had to be killed off, then the last thing she was going to do was wiped out that fucking cult once and for all.

Skip seemed to have come to the same conclusion about who it had to be, and started to say something. But Austen didn't stick around to listen. A swarm of papers erupted from her pockets and arranged themselves around her to form her armor. Then she was in the air, commanding her armor to lift her up to fly that way. Leaving the other girl behind, she flew straight toward that building. Every single one of those deluded fucks was going to regret ever even hearing the name Church Of The Lamb, let alone actually showing up to that place.

All other thoughts, all those other feelings that she'd had about what she was doing, came together into a single emotion of anger. Anger directed at the people who thought they could step right into that old building and keep the cult going. In that moment, nothing else mattered besides putting them down for good. She certainly wasn't thinking about the plan. That could wait until she had dealt with these pathetic pieces of shit once and for all.

Flying like that, it only took her a few minutes to reach the right area. Rather than following her anger-fueled instinct and flying straight through the wall, however, she stopped on top of a building across the street and landed there to look that way. No matter how righteously furious she was, barging into a situation she knew nothing about could have been disastrous. She would survey the place to see just what and who she was dealing with.

At least, that was the plan. But as she perched on that roof and looked across the street, the first thing Austen saw were several people in robes carrying pallets of bottled water into the tall, somewhat secluded three-story house. The home had a large yard and tall fences all around it, affording it some measure of privacy from the nearby busy street. But from this position high above there, she could see a van full of supplies that were being unloaded. They really were moving right in. and those robes were just like what missionaries from the Church of the Lamb wore. It really was them. They really were moving right back in and trying to pick up where they had left off.

With a sound of rage filling the back of her throat, Austen started to lift off. By the time she was done, there wouldn't be a building standing down there anymore. That had already been the goal with the planned explosion, but this time she would do it all by herself. She would take that house down to its foundation and then burn the ashes. There would be nothing left.

But before she could move, a hand touched the side of her armor. It was Skip, who spoke simply. “It's not them. They are not your old cult.”

Austen gave her a look, removing the mask of her armor so the girl could see her incredulous expression. “I don't know if you went ahead and skipped your own ability to see what's in front of your eyes, but look at them. They are absolutely a cult.”

“Yes,” Skip confirmed. “They certainly are. I did not say they weren't a cult. I said they weren't your cult. They are not the people you knew, and they have not picked up the same banner. If you charge in there, you will find more trouble than you expect.” Before Austen could retort, she pointed toward the other building and added, “Just watch for a moment. You will see.”

So, with no small amount of impatience and annoyance, the other girl did just that. They both stood there and watched what had been a safehouse for the Church of the Lamb missionaries. It wasn't long before Austen saw what her companion had been warning her about. Several colorful figures emerged onto the roof of that building. They were clearly deep in discussion. And two were familiar, though Austen had not seen them personally. But she recognized the man with the long gray coat, surrounded by rats and mice, and the man in the dark green suit and tie, both wearing hooded masks, as a couple of the people who had attempted to blow up the building where the cure for Sleeptalk was being made. They had fought Paintball. The fact that that was what their target had been wasn't public information, but Austen had ways of finding out such things. She also knew that those two and their companions hadn't been identified yet. They were strangers with no known allegiance.

But now they would be, because she also recognized the other figure with them, the one doing most of the talking on that roof. The woman, who appeared to be around seventy years old and well-worn, with white hair and dark leather clothes, could have simply been an anonymous figure. Nothing about her stood out that much on its own. Except for the long metal claws that emerged from her fingers. Between that and the swarm of red birds fluttering around her, the woman's identity was obvious. Those weren't simply birds. They were constructs formed from blood.

Skip was right. This was a very different cult. One that shouldn't even have been here in the city. This was the Garden of Badb, and that was their titular leader. They were a small army of Touched whose entire lives revolved around fighting and challenging anyone to prove their own strength. They set up fighting tournaments, offering prizes, both good and bad, to anyone who could prevail. And they had clearly been the ones responsible for trying to stop the cure from being made.

But why? And what were they doing in Detroit?