It was unmistakable, she may have lost a good bit of blond to the grey but the blue streaks were still there. Though they’d bled a little and turned into wider swaths. The wrinkles weren’t new, but the crocheted sweater and mom jeans were definitely new. But all of that didn't fucking matter!

“What the hell is this?! What are you doing… here…? You…? You fucking knew this entire time!?”

“Well, what did you think I was going to do after you told a child the secret to half your powers? A child from Frigateville no less. ‘The enemy of peaceful society’ or whatever your father came up with back then.”

Stratosphere sneered halfheartedly at the past as Aegis’ exacerbation cratered in on itself.

“You… You knew what he was this whole time. This whole fucking time! And you…”

“Calm down honey, we weren’t certain of anything. We needed to know what was really going on before we doomed some poor kid for what his parents did. And if we helped him find a better path in life than all the better.”

“Wait… We? Does dad know?”

“Well of course he knows. You should have seen his face when he told me, like a life time’s worth of regret for being a boastful idiot finally caught up with him.”

“But… You’ve seriously been living here? In this dump! What about HQ? What about dad!?”

“Your father’s got plenty of company, don’t worry about him. Besides, HQ is full of old coots just like him, he’s fine. And as for my seat, I’m almost insulted. You think your dear old mother can’t commute when she needs to?”

“It’s… it’s the other side of the damn country! It’s… hugghh… It’s-“

““Just a hop skip and a jump at Mach 10.””

“And to top it off, unlike those poor saps in marketing, I’ve been remoting to work for years. Now come on in, Seth can wait a few more minutes. And I’ve had a few vanilla pound cakes with your names on them.”

Alex was dumbstruck, a head of the League of Supers was just playing the kindly neighbor to its current most wanted, and was Aegis’ mother no less. She desperately tried to blend into the wall to keep from getting between them, but the sudden serious flash from beneath all that exacerbation threw her for a loop as Aegis stormed passed her. Leaving her in the lurch as her leader just abandoned their mission at the mention of cake. She was pulled between objectives just a few steps away and the need to keep up with Aegis as best she could, but her choice was made for her as Aegis turned about in the inviting doorframe. Her giddy face throwing everything away.

“Come on! It’s really good cake!”

Steps were retracted with insistence and the environment was shifted completely on its head. Alex shut the heavy door behind her, stepping into a clashing world of pleasantly floral furniture and high-tech computing suites. One half of the room was the spitting image of a stately… generically furnished old person’s home. Complete with plastic covers on the seats. But the other half bled into a brace of screens, servers, sensor suites, and camera feeds. The only hold out between was a comfy and plush rocking chair pulled up to the main desk. The air a mixture of mothballs and floral undertones, and the ever resurfacing smell of ozone and clean electronics. And of course the strong vanilla wafts that came from the corner kitchen.

Aegis was already sat on the laminated couch, eagerly waiting for a slice of cake like it’s been on her mind for years. Alex tentatively scooted across the thick carpeting and sat next to her, concern and whiplash trying to get her attention.

“What? The cake really is that good, besides…”

Aegis eased up on the giddiness, more seriousness coming through under it.

“She’s now got just as much explaining to do, and this is the only real way we’ll get it.”

“I heard that young lady!”

The slowly easing away kindly demeanor rounded back with plates loaded for bear.

“And don’t worry about Seth hearing us, I’ve sound and electro sight proofed this room to all hell. And he’s soundproof damn near the whole building. He thinks he’s being sneaky trying to avoid the lashing he’s owed.”

Stratosphere looked down solemnly at the thick slices of plated cake she was duel wielding, the last of the façade and casual disregard falling away.

“But what happened was something out of all of our controls.”

Aegis’ facetious giddiness drained away, feeling the blame that could be dropped onto her just as much as him. Letting it wash over her as her cake was clinked on to the coffee table at her knees. Alex nodded her thanks but could do little against the dropping of the atmosphere surrounding her.

“B-but let’s not let what happened draw us away from what needs to happen now. You two need to understand the truth, and I can only prepare you for what you’ll get from Seth. And given everything I’ve been able to find out, there will be quite a bit of it.”

“So then… *clink* whaf… mmm… whaf hawve vou fowed fo fawr?”

Stratosphere leered disappointedly at her daughter stuffing her face with cake but quickly brushed off the indignation.

“So far… not enough to paint a picture. The stencil work should suffice, but the deeper meanings will have to come in later. I’ll just start from the beginning. For poor Mimic’s sake at least.”

Alex flatly smiled, but it was clear she was still feeling the discomfort of the third wheel.

“After you told Seth of your power’s weakness and he told you where he walk all the way from, I made sure that the psych doctor put him under so a more thorough examination could be made. Coming back from a town that was clawing at the walls while still looking human was a definite intelligence necessity. Now, this isn’t to say I wasn’t genuinely proud of you dear, nor sympathetic to the poor kid, but he knew full well I was there and that I’d heard everything. His senses weren't as dulled as they seemed. And yet didn’t act upon any of it. In all honesty he probably wanted to sleep for a week after everything he’d been through. When I talked with your father it only confirmed what I’d heard. He said looking at his face was like looking down at the laceroid hoard he was pulled from. Just without the overriding primal ferocity to keep those emotions at bay. He was something different altogether from those beasts, but still not far from them. So, while he was under we gave him to Psyclops to-“

“*mffff* Seriously!?”

Aegis nearly spit out her cake, attentiveness shattered to wholesale worry.

“You subjected him to that!?”

“Calm down sweety.”

Stratosphere understood her concern more than most.

“Me and your father were there to take the worst of the load. And all we needed was a cursory look, just to make sure he wasn’t really an infiltrator. As far off as that nonsense would have been. Ahem. But what we found was rather inconclusive. Psyclops said it was like looking at a static filled television, his nerves were a mess and his psyche was hard to read. And yet… Psyc swears he could hear voices deeper in, feel something beneath all that static. Like a pull drawing him in. The strain was too much for even us to bear so we called off the test before he could dig deeper. Or burn a hole in all three of our skulls. But we surmised he wasn’t a danger at least.”

“Given that, despite this mental static, he was still coherent and mentally acute enough to communicate with you and spot me out, we decided we’d watch over him. At least from the sidelines. We originally wanted to put him in a good foster home, but the system was so overloaded he ended up at Marrow’s by simple chance. I had Psyc pop in to the area to observe as needed, but after the first few months it was clear he wasn’t needed as badly so we moved to simple record keeping efforts. Every few weeks I’d pop in and check his file, see if he’d had any troubles. But when he started sneaking into United Armors, oh I knew this kid was going places. The CEO at the time was a good friend of mine so I had him give the kid a shot, and lo-and-behold he turned out to be a natural armor smith. Maybe a little bit too natural.”

“About that time was when I first saw him use his powers. Nothing extreme, but he definitely didn’t start out with electrical powers from the looks of it. In no time I was having to take up shop in the sector just to keep up with his progress. Thus…”

Stratosphere gestured humbly to her one room control center.

“All this. But I didn’t expect him to stay close. And definitely didn’t expect him to move in across from me. I’d bought up this whole building just to maintain the façade better, but out of the blue he just called up with in hand and will enough to accept the low standards. I think he just liked it because it was close and he could set up his own little armor works in the garage.”

She pointed to one of her live camera feeds, a small dim garage space taken up with workbenches and an armor berth. Aegis lingered on the small wall of privacy violations that her mother had created.

“You seriously wired up his apartment?”

She looked over each feed, one view for every corner of the single room, baring one. A single feed looking down from the center, down at Seth sitting undisturbed on a couch. The slight flicker of a TV illuminating his face and every so often a spoonful of cereal filling it. But Aegis was puzzled.

“Why isn’t he jamming the cameras like all the others?”

Her mother smirked and turned to the far side of her suite. A non-descript box nestled and wired up to the feeds, the one reeking of ozone.

“Psyc might not have much to do these days, but his little Seeing Eyes certainly offer wonderful alternatives.”

“But back to the story. After he outgrew the orphanage and he moved in across from me, and all the serendipity that was, I set about learning as much of his routine as I could. The Seeing Eye constructs gave me plenty of insight, but offered little to add to his overall psych evaluation. But after a bit of progress with his powers he began a rather alleviating trend. He started fight chasing.”

“Mff hrmhm… Really?”

Alex started giggling.

“Oh please tell me he keeps a notebook.”

“No, nothing that extreme. But he pulled out a fake powersuit and went bounding across town whenever the sirens went off.”

“Wait, uhggh, was he really that guy.”

Aegis had her head in her palm.

“The pilots have been talking about this guy for years. Powersuit Paparazzi or whatever.”

“Hemhm. Yup that was probably him. But despite the gossip it was a good sign. He wanted to be a hero after all. After everything that had happened to him.”

Stratosphere looked up reminiscently.

“There was little for me to do, or really could do, in steering him right. He was set in his path. Even quit his job the day before signing up. But I never found any conclusive evidence of what was going on in his head. He was out of my reach and out of my protection. And…”

But her head turned down as the past came back.

“And what happened… happened. I certainly feel regret, I encouraged him the day he walked out that door. But you and I both know more blame falls on Para than Seth in setting it all off, you'd better believe he's getting a revaluation when he's out of the hospital. But… I still wish I had been able to catch the darkness that showed itself that day before it took control of him.”

“Baring all of that though, I did what I could from here. What amount of his dossier Para even entered was sequestered away. What physical files on him we had were taken out of the system. What records that even tangentially led to him were buried as best as they could be. All the better to keep them from certain… prying hands after all.”

Aegis stopped halfway through a slice of cake, looking up at her mother with revitalized indignation.

“You're the one who made us go through all of this! You're the one that made us scrounge for just the slightest lead! After everything that’s happened, you still protected him?!”

Stratosphere took the ire, but did not relent her staunch stance.

“Yes… because I know him better than most at this point. And I know, no matter how it may seem to the others, that Seth was not the monster that killed those heroes. The fact he went through your barrier said that rather loudly. But what ever else he had in him was something far worse. And something only he can tell you of.”

That ire drained away from Aegis’ face, appetite lost as it drove her down yet tightened the grip on her resolve. Without warning she stood up, startling Alex out of her last forkful of cake as she followed suit.

“Remember, he feels just as bad. Just make sure you-“

“Oh don’t worry, I’m going to make sure he knows just how I feel.”

With a sudden heel, she was storming out the heavy leaded door, simmer returning in force. But a set resolution for all of this to end with. One that disregarded the stealthy approach.

Another spoonful of cereal, another channel flicked away. The shows just weren’t there, nothing really interesting, or existing. And the news, when he worked up the courage, was just more of the same speculative opinions on the current state of the League. Most of which pointed fingers rather than looked at solutions. Though in turn those solutions ended with him dead, so even then he was out of luck. So here Seth was, stuck in his small apartment. Sequestered from the world and stuck with himself again. At the very least this couch was cleaner than the last one. And at least it was qui- *CLAAaaaKRK*

His spoon was stuck halfway to his mouth as his door shot across the room, hinges snapped away like paperclips and the hardened wall across too strong to bend. Wood splintered to solid chunks, threads keeping it from turning to sawdust on impact. But still it shattered to bits, as did Seth’s lonely sequestering, as Aegis stomped into the bare doorway with all the nonchalance of a judgmental freight train. And a glare to match. Seth didn’t move, stun too prominent to dare try. But a weak smile eked up as he tried to save face in the withering torrent of his breached solitude.

“He-hey… Aegis… you’re uhm... early-“

A hand cut across and stopped him pitiful.

“I don’t want to hear it! I’ve had to deal with too much bullshit just to get here. I’ve had half the League and crowds of barely informed entitled idiots berating me for being even vaguely on your side. I’ve had to follow your trail of utter NONSENSE and mostly deleted records just to even get to this area. Me and poor Mimic here have had to dig through musty and terribly sorted files to reach this point. And I just found out my own mother beat me here by fucking years!”

Seth was reeling, trying desperately to accept her grievance, but...

“*snap* I knew she was your mom. Wait, your full name really Dana Mahan?”

The interruption wasn’t the worst thing to contort her face as it turned about and compounded in on itself like a collapsing star of bullshit!

“Are you fucking KIDDING ME!?! You didn’t even use an alias!?!”

“What’s that dear? I couldn’t hear you over someone being ungrateful to their mother!”

If she could, Aegis would have had her hand slamming through her skull with force enough to actually ignite that star and send it nova. But all she managed in the quagmire of constant garbage she’d had to endure was to turn back around to the final objective to all of this horseshit and glare that metaphorical stellar glare at him for piling one last load on top. Seth cowered back, the forced upon image of terror incarnate losing its composure under the withering glare of the one left to uncover it.

“…The only thing… I want to hear from you… is what the fucking hell all of this was. What started it, what the hell has been going on with you, and why the hell you think you still deserve to live after everything that’s happened? Don’t leave anything out. Don’t embellish, don’t make jokes. I want to hear that promised long version. All of it. And so help me if you say you don’t know. Because at this point, you’re the only one who should, and the only one who does. Now… fucking talk.”

Seth felt the condemnation he’d feared crash over him, just from a more directed source and with more justified authority. He slowly put down his cereal, breathing in that air of guilt now rightfully brought to bear on him. He sat up, his facetious cover, his separating walls of distraction and concentration falling away. Until all that was left were those pillars of guilt he’d refounded his being with. The guilt carried over from the Garkah, from Threat, and from the crisis. A guilt he knew he could never escape, but still tried to live with regardless. And now it all had to come out in earnest. And totality.

“Like I said, it’s a long story. But it starts… on a planet called Tesh.”