We were on the road within moments, AEGIS' only concession to the argument and lifestyle she was leaving back there was the minute it took to put her hard-labored dinner in the fridge for another day. Another, better day than this one.

She called everyone while we drove. The snippets of their conversation were jarring.

"Whitney, have you heard? Turn on the news...or...or don't, actually. There was a thing. There is a thing. We want everyone in the Raven's Nest now, meet us there? No I'll...I'll explain when we're all there. Okay, see you in ten."

The same noncommittal, ineffective conversation, over and over. Cosette and Karu had heard on their own, the two who really kept up on military events. I thought Lia stood a decent chance if she wasn't working at the moment, but of course she was.

Which left us just Saga, whom I informed mentally as we pulled into the tunnels under the spire, and gave her free reign to pull what she wanted from my mind by means of explanation.

So it wasn't long at all before we were up there in a conference room, smooth darkened glass and shiny chrome around us, reflecting the lights of the holo we were crammed around which played the latest footage of the unfolding disaster.

Nobody seemed to have picked up on just what was going on out there. To the rest of the world, this was some bizarre, pre-announced military maneuver being taken by an unknown aggressor against one of the world's superpowers. There was no talk of it being Exhuman related, none of the media seemed to notice or care that the weapons in that battalion were anything but standard-looking.

Instead, reporters grasped at what they could, repeating phrases like 'you can see the discipline on these soldiers as they march', or 'the country of origin is unknown', or 'we believe those are uniforms, though not any that experts have been able to identify'.

Worthless, baseless speculation, basically. And footage of the Russian military's response was tightly-controlled, to prevent leaked intel to the aggressors. But it was clear they were doing something. Given that they'd already dropped missiles on the advancing group, they knew it was coming and weren't happy with the declaration of war.

The declaration itself was also out there, and widely canvassed, probably the one piece of this which made it more than just a random-seeming incident. It looked familiar, the same note I'd seen sent from Oasis to the XPCA, stating the intent of war against all the world from the Oasians.

"Most people probably saw it as a prank or a fake. Or terrorism, at best," AEGIS said as she half-watched, half-combed the XPCA archives for anything the rest of us might have missed.

"Yeah, who'd expect a written, random declaration of war from someone you've never heard of to be legit?" Lia replied.

We were almost all here. Cosette was late, and tended to avoid coming to the Raven's Nest in person anyway. And Karu was working a 'job' and wouldn't make it, though we were giving and getting sporadic updates from her. She expressed her apologies for not being present and said that she would come by just as soon as her mark would give up on living.

She'd been kinda doing the same as me, sneaking out to do missions, except hers always ended the way she intended. With the mark's death. We put her on the less-redeemable Exhumans for that reason.

"I hope they're seeing it as less of a joke now," Whitney muttered. She of all of us looked possibly the most stressed, which was funny given that however this shook out, she'd probably still have the least involvement. But maybe it was precisely because there wasn't anything she could do while still being as informed as the rest of us that she was now sweating and fidgeting over there.

"Yeah, I don't know," I said. "I know a few of those declarations of war got leaked...I think they were a real meme in South America for some reason for a minute there. But that was before anyone thought they were more than some kid sending out fliers."

Lia shook her head. "Still might not put it all together. What's more likely, that this professional death-army wrote out formal declarations of war to every military power on the globe? Or that some punk did it, and then this force shows up to realize it afterwards?"

"You think people are still going to take this as a joke?" AEGIS asked with alarm.

"I think the 'net, and people in general are amazingly competent at thinking things are fake until forced to face it personally," she shrugged. "Denial is so in right now."

Whitney frowned. "That's like what Athan's always banging on about. With the accepting or denying reality."

"I hate how smart I am sometimes."

"I like how s-s-smart you are."

AEGIS cleared her throat. "Regardless. We need to figure out what we're doing, whatever people may think or see right now."

"What is there to do?" Lia questioned. "Right now, nobody's treating this like an Exhuman anything. Sorta beyond the limits of the XPCA."

"And," said a voice from the door, and we all turned to see Cosette strolling in. "Russia maintains their own anti-Exhuman force, they're not part of the XPCA umbrella."

She looked good. Or at least, better. Being back in uniform was a good look for her. Of course, she'd been hardly dressed at all, in beer stains more than clothes when we first picked her up, so pretty much anything was an improvement. But at least now she looked reasonably put-together.

"But the Oasians are going to destroy them," Whitney argued.

"Probably true. That doesn't mean we have to fly our people halfway across the globe to intervene."

Whitney shot me a wide-eyed glance. "They're going to die."

"I know," I sighed. "That's why I called everyone here. So we could figure out what we were going to do. But on the ride over, while AEGIS was calling everyone, I thought about it as hard as I could...and I don't know what we can do."

"Even if they were an ally, even if there weren't any politics," AEGIS fretted. "We're talking minutes before they collide."

"We have Rito," I realized. "We own the XPCA, and the XPCA owns New Eden, and Rito's being held there." I turned to Saga with hope, and she glared at me like I'd brought her roaches instead.

"Yeah, no," Saga rebutted. "Even if I do have a lot of sway on the guys here -- and I do -- the fact is, I'm making my best efforts not to just run them. Say what you want about me, but I'm not all-powerful." She paused for a moment. "Actually don't just say what you want about me. Only say the good shit."

"So you can't do it," I goaded.

Of course, trying to bait Saga didn't work half as well when she was already in my head. "No, buttmunch, I can't. I'm not like the tree bastard of Oasis, I don't subvert and rule the lives of everyone in my blood-dominion. I've worked on people's thoughts until they are willing to generally ignore us, and listen to the leadership whom I've corrected towards our line of thinking. But that shit is slow. And randomly busting Exhumans out of New Eden and sending them up the Raven's Nest is not really in line with majority thinking."

"We could just do it anyway," I suggested. "Who cares if everyone thinks it's a good idea or not."

"Oh that sounds like a great plan. Let's just get everyone suddenly deeply suspicious of the leadership of the XPCA. I'm sure they won't find anything in their subsequent investigations." Saga shook her head at me and gestured at the room chock-full of fugitives.

"Well...you could fix that."

"Yeah, sign me right the fuck up to put myself from a position of running everything in the shadows to madly scrambling to hide traces of myself. Sounds great."

"Guys, it's starting," Lia said, and we all went quiet to focus on the screen.

The Oasian force had advanced far enough that it was now crossing roads and reaching buildings. Not a city yet, but some kind of rural area, though with less farms than I expected. Maybe it was like, a retreat area, or for logging or mining or something less obvious. Mostly still just green-speckled rock and patches of dirt with little brush afros.

But at times, I saw what had made Lia comment. When the feed drifted or zoomed out, Russian forces could be seen in the periphery. From the glimpses, they seemed limitless, like how a few ants could indicate an entire colony. But what I saw filled me with a sense of wrongness.

"There's no exosuits," I exclaimed. "No tanks, no fortifications, no...fortress armor, nothing. They're dudes on the ground with guns."

"They're facing dudes on the ground with guns," Lia replied.

"They're wearing nothing."

"They're wearing camo?"

"It's not armor. It's not exosuits. They're totally exposed. How the hell is camo supposed to help?"

"I expect it will help them blend in," Saga added with a savage grin. "With the enormous amounts of camo-wearing corpses that are about to be present."

I felt lightheaded and swearing didn't help. I turned to look at Cosette, to see if there was anything sympathetic there, any missions she'd overseen where she knew everything was about to turn to shit. But if there was, she didn't show it, she was sternly focused on the screen, same as everyone else.

I realized, I didn't often feel powerless, and I loathed the sensation. Even before my powers, when I'd wanted to do something, I pretty much just...did. And while being Exhuman had definitely limited my freedoms, it rarely felt that way. Much more, it just felt like now I was freely empowered to...get myself killed in new and exciting ways.

But sitting here, halfway across the world, at a calamity I knew was coming, at hundreds or thousands of senseless deaths that only we knew were certain, it put my teeth on edge in a way that made my soul hurt. I felt a little betrayed, honestly, that I seemed the only person in the room who was willing to throw everything away and dash off to do everything I could.

But everything I could, I knew, was probably nothing. Saga was right that getting to Rito, much less her cooperation...much less the fact she'd never been to Russia, so couldn't send me there...ignoring all of that, then what, I'd take on a thousand exotics-armed toads by myself?

I was powerless, and I knew it. I just didn't want to. But here I still sat, watching like the rest. Like the rest of the fucking helpless world. Watching as the first contact occurred, in a moment that I knew would shake the balance.

There were flashes of light like strobes across the Russian lines as the toads crossed into range of engagement. Some of the exotics must have been defensive in nature, because few of them were even showing signs of getting hit. That and, y'know, they'd already survived a missile strike. It was when they fired back that the lightshow began.

It was colorful. Almost like CGI. In a corner of my mind, I wondered if this is how XPCA ops looked from a bird's-eye view. The exotics belched cones of violet flame, rained down a blizzard of crystal-blue needles, hurled a chain of gnarly, lingering green explosions that spread too far and detonated in slow-motion. I saw flashes of white as stone spires erupted from the ground like bones, an Exhuman power I recognized from the handiwork of Oasian construction.

It was as though there was a brush of fantasy being dragged across the scattered Russian lines, but the ink it left behind were all too real. The fires left behind blazed a normal, earthly red. The pulverized debris hung in ashen clouds. The blood pooled dark, almost black. Touched by colors and lights and powers unimaginable, only for an instant, to return to terminal mundanity.

It made it hard to think. Hard to realize exactly what was going on. Hard to conceptualize and visualize the enormous numbers of death and destruction we were seeing so far below our perspective. A blue flash here, a green strobing there. How many hundreds more were now gone? How many new orphans and widows?

It galled me. I tore myself way to look at the others and found myself alone in this. This was, I realized, exactly what Rio had meant. She'd never created the weapons to kill, she'd created them to be art, and death was just their medium. They were meant to be enthralling, seductive, emotionally-moving, like all art was. It was supposed to captivate, and it did. And it pissed me off that death, of all things, was being shown with such pretty colors and bright flashes and glamor.

Death was a miserable thing. War was the most miserable thing imaginable. And here she was, prettying it up because that was her passion. I knew she was weird and dangerous from the time we'd spent together, but it wasn't until this moment that I realized just what a freak she was.

The display wasn't short either, although I suspected it could have been, if they'd wished. Instead it seemed to weave through a narrative, starting out with a bang before calming to a sustained engagement, of formed battle lines hammering away at each other without too great an effect. I imagined the Russians thinking themselves successful in beginning to turn the tide, beginning to hold. But they weren't, they were being toyed with.

Which was made clear as the action rose. Russian reinforcements began to sweep in, bodies streaming in from off-screen like trails of ants led to a fresh kill. But as they began to surge and mount, the Oasians moved forward. And as the distance between them shrank, the deaths began to intensify again. New powers revealed themselves, crackling domes of some kind of non-electricity which zapped everything which came close. A miasma which seemed to pour from any crevice in the ground, swallowing the battlefield from the bottom-up.

The situation turned hectic. Reinforcements became a retreat. Arcing explosions tore through the lines and the flames grew tall. One of the lonely structures in the area swayed and collapsed in a black plume, its downfall like a turning point for the defenders.

And then the climax. Everything poured out, all at once. The multi-colored array of attacks became as one, and in their focus united into a blinding white. A huge detonation, like nothing yet seen in the conflict tore the defender's line in half, and any who weren't yet running sure as shit were now.

As though a joke, now that the conflict was already broken open and the battle already lost, the Russians deployed their other forces. VTOLs began to scream overhead, obscuring the conflict by laying down columns of smoke and provide whatever other support they could without entering the battle proper. Artillery pounded the formations of the Oasians without apparent effect.

But the fight was over, I knew just from the pacing of it, set by the toads, who had orchestrated the entire event. As the army broke and fled before them, the Oasians seemed to pause and collect themselves, like an stage-actor holding a pose for the audience to clap after a song. And then, inexplicably, as one, they turned and began their retreat, moving back, though not quite the way they came, with the Russians apparently more than happy to let them go.

Coverage would go on for days, a spectacle like a live war hadn't been seen in dozens of years, and no live war in history had ever looked like this one, but I turned away. It was over, I knew, and the rest would just be the media and the experts chopping it up into coarse pieces for popular consumption, while the Russian army did whatever they could to save face.

But the message was sent and was heard around the world, and that's what Rio wanted, as clear to me as though it was done all for my personal understanding.

We are here. We are dangerous. We want to be taken seriously.

The world had not taken their existence or their declaration seriously. Russia had given a token response, deploying a few thousands with little support on very little time and information. And as much as it hurt me to watch them die needlessly, it had probably hurt Rio to watch them respond so feebly. She wanted her weapons tested, not target practice.

And so, this. A demonstration. The flawless, beautiful, orchestrated slaughter of a few thousand so that next time, there would be a fight. I shivered.

Someone broke the silence and touched my arm gently, and I almost jumped. It took me too long of looking at her to realize who it was.

It was Moon. She was staring at me with small soulful eyes, filled with concern. Dark brown pools, still despite the emotions boiling behind them.

"Are you okay?" she asked. And I looked around only to see everyone else turning towards me at the question.

"Y-yeah, fine."

She blinked at me once. "No you are not. You are like me. This was abhorrent, a desecration of life by bad people, it was. We loathe it."

"It...it was," I agreed, not...exactly sure where this was coming from. Had I missed Moon in all the times I'd looked around the group, wondering if anyone else was feeling as I had about this outrage? Or had she simply not missed me in doing the same?

The hand on my arm squeezed tighter for a moment. "We will not let them go unpunished."

"No, we won't," I agreed again. I saw the smallest of frowns on her lips, as though all her righteous, bitter fury were concentrated into that unremarkable display. And then I realized, she was making that frown, holding my arm, talking to me, despite every eye in the room being on her, and her not giving a damn.

Which was...completely unlike her. And it only took a moment after I realized this for her to do the same and apparently shirk and shrink as she nervously blushed her way through the attention. She sat like a statue until the eyes were back on the holo and off of her.

But in that moment when she'd found it so important to reach out to me, completely heedless of the attention it might draw or the uncharacteristic outburst it might be for her, I'd felt everything already. I had the answer I'd been looking for all those times I'd looked around. Moon was there, she was with me, and she was as pissed as I was about what we'd all just witnessed.

Not to say the others were emotionally mute. AEGIS seemed half-horrified, half-busy, as she tugged at her hair with one hand and typed in the air with the other, worrying and planning as she could. Lia seemed blank, soaking in facts and information as impartial as possible, her knees curled to her chest in her chair. But I knew the look on her face, the concentration going on in there. Her 'scheming face' I'd accused her of having when we were kids. But we were so far from being kids now.

Tem wasn't even watching the broadcast, just my face. Whitney seemed in complete fascinated disbelief. Cosette was more on her computer than the holo. And Saga was just grinning like a kid watching fireworks, the little shit.

This is who and what we had, against that thousand, and who-knows how many more after that. Rio had the weapons to arm them for waves and waves of attacks like this, and that was weeks ago when we'd left. Who knew what she'd gotten up to in that time? Nothing good.

And we would go against them. Rio wanted a fight, and she'd keep bringing it against any force out there in the world who could provide a challenge. The XPCA wasn't at the top of her list maybe, but we were up there. Just like she'd marched against Russia today, I knew she'd be coming for us someday, and probably sooner than I'd like.

Which was not what we needed. Not with the instability of the rebels, with the unrest in New Eden, with the arms and personnel shortages, with Justice still out there eluding us, and the internal conflict of being leaderless, of running everything from the shadows.

It was one thing too many, on top of a pile which I thought was already a few things too many. We needed to do better. We needed more decisive action, I realized, and a lot of that was on me.

"Saga," I said, and she turned to me with the same grin. I mentally slapped it off of her, eliciting an eye-roll, but I addressed that too, by making sure she knew I was serious. Finally, she faced me in kind.

"What?" she asked, off-guard at how cold she suddenly saw me.

"The emergency powers bill you had drafted. How soon could we enact that?"

She shook her head. "Anytime we have the big seven in the building at once. As early as tomorrow, probably."

I looked around at the others, realizing, I was still looking. My gaze landed on Moon, and I saw the tiniest of nods from her. The resolution to do. To be and protect as much as we could, as many as we were able. That was all I needed.

I looked back on Saga and again, she almost-recoiled at how deadly serious I'd turned.

"Send the word. Have them do it. Appoint us the interim head of the XPCA."