A Scripta

Iggabuzz played checkers like each checker was a bit of Excelsior. Mase's tactics were wild and reckless, which disturbed Igga to make mistakes. This is how a general who flies by the seat of his pants handles things, said Jack.

Jack - Lodestar - had taken a hard back seat after their fight. The two souls had shared their memories up to that point, and now Mase had locked one part of his mind away, a part that he told Jack he should never, ever even think about peeking in. Jack agreed.

So after lunch, Mase pulled out the checkers and handed over the red ones to Igga, who looked up at him. "Long time no see."

"Oh, Styrm or one of his servants. Thought you forgot about me."

"I will never forget a man such as you. What are you going to do when your lawyer fails to get your confession thrown out?"

"It'll get thrown out."

"Don't be so sure. Did you know that if a confession is made voluntarily it's totally admissable?"

"I'm not sure if it was voluntary."

"You walked into Longbow offices, asked to see Manticore, and over the course of an hour told him everything."

"I was in pain."

"Of your own making, which doubly makes this admissable. But--" he turned away, saying, "I'm not your lawyer. Though I can get you one that will have you out of there within two hours."

"I need to stay here."

"Tell me why."

"I'm still psychotic."

"So that Peaceful Warrior in your head won't make a difference? That's what Malloy's going to bring up in order to have you released. Like I said, I can get you out of there in no time. Wouldn't you like that? To be able to go to Serena's apartment and stay there at night? With her? Your arms wrapped around her - "

"Shut up," Masonry growled.

"And you pounding her into the bed frame, making her scream in pleasure?"

Masonry gathered up the checkers.

"Go on, walk away. But you said you would work for me. Now I'm giving you orders." Masonry stopped, looked at Igga. "And, like the benevolent man that I am, giving you something in return."

"What do you want me to do?"

"That's a good boy. Sit down before they notice. Now. These orders are very simple. Keep Guardian Pace safe."

Masonry stared at Igga. "You don't...want me..."

"I can hear the disappointment. No, I don't want you to kill him. Keep him out of the hospital. Understand?"

"What about Fyre?"

"I could care less about the girl. If you fail in this, Masonry...I will be very disappointed in you." Even with the flat voice, Masonry could hear the pure coldness of the man's words. Igga looked down and saw the red checkers. "Hey, I get red today!"

I had hoped to make this the beginning of a thread on the boards, but it didn't want to go that way. It wanted to go into Rusty's history, and I honestly don't know how he became the way he is.

Gah, you're an idiot, Russ.

He looked at the glass of pure Irish whiskey that spoke to him. "I know," he said quietly. He was 25 years old, out of sync and time, and he had just admitted to someone that he cared about that he cared about her as a person, not as someone to use, just like everyone else he came in contact with.

It was more than money that he would have wanted her for. Companionship, someone to talk to and work with, someone who didn't mind that he didn't wear the same masks as the rest of the crew. Someone who didn't mind his lack of professionalism and military bearing. Someone who called him "normal".

He chuckled at that. It was why he joined the Merchant Marines almost ten years ago. He had taken a North American History course offered in the curricula, and his perceptions were changed. People actually fought over whether or not it was their right to carry a firearm? They fought over whether or not to keep slaves? Didn't they know that it was unnecessary for either a firearm or a slave, that sec-bots and maint-bots covered both functions?

They also fought about politics. North Americans were fiercely independent - that one person, with work and diligence, could surpass all others and return to rule - hopefully benevolently. No working together for the common good, while everyone agreed on the same common sense principles that if all were happy, satisfied, and accepted, then the universe would be at peace.

Russ studied more into North American history. Independence wasn't in his training, but it certainly was in his makeup. He rebelled, violently, taking all of the things he owned and teleporting them to a storage facility, then taking the teleportation key and heading off to the stars.

At the age of 15 he applied his sight to mechanics. Every ship somewhere needed a mechanic, and although he didn't have technical expertise, he was able to see results and how to get there. That and his natural charm, knowing what to say to captains and crews, got him from ship to ship with positive recommendations from all of them.

He looked again at the glass. "Got more to say to me?"

The glass was silent.

"Good," he replied, and drained it.

Linda Malloy watched the man walk by the glass windows, and her heart swelled. Something about him, she had no idea what, why he seemed to evoke such a glow out of her. She had defended heroes before, heroes more buff, more handsome, but Masonry, he was just so...cute.

"Hi, Linda," he said, pulling out the chair across from her.

"Hi, Nate. What were you in solitary for this time?"

"Somebody passed out in front of me, they thought I did something."

"Did you?"

"No."

She nodded briskly. "All right,then. Here's what we're going to do. We're going to aim the bar really high. After we get the confession dismissed, I'm going to ask that all the charges be dismissed, because, technically, they have no evidence that you did these crimes."

Masonry shook his head. "No. I did them. I deserve to be punished."

"Don't you think that your time in here so far is enough? Don't you think everything that you've done for the city is punishment enough?"

"I need to be watched."

"Nate, you're not on the drugs anymore."

"That's why. I'm evil."

"You are not," Mallory folded her arms across her chest. "Everybody gets mad at someone sometimes."

"But to want them dead?"

She looked down at her papers. She had read his psych reports and knew the answer to that question. He was jealous, pure and simple. But he didn't hate them enough to kill them, or she would have read Pace's obituary by now. "All right, " she stated. "But this isn't about them. Once the confession is out, they have no physical evidence connecting you to the crimes." She looked up and smiled. "You'll be free."

He looked down at the table. "Hm."

"Hm?"

"I was telling Fyre last night that I didn't want to be free. That I wanted to stay here. When they decided to put me back into solitary because some ex-sorcerer had a seizure, I realized I didn't want to stay here."

"Good, Nate. I thought I was going to have to fight an uphill battle." She rearranged the papers. "Now, here's the worst case scenario, and we're working our way backwards."

"Execution."

"Yes. They won't do that."

"How about a plea bargain?"

"It depends on what happens with the confession. We'll get you out of here, even if it means you have to keep wearing that teleport belt. We can change the teleport coordinates to something like a cell in Futura Force or the nearest police cell..."

He nodded, half listening. Scenarios ran the gamut from life in prison with no chance of parole or work release, all the way to total freedom. She would start from total freedom and work her way down. She didn't expect the total freedom, but she would push for some jail time with work release, probably a couple of more years.

His mind went back to the night before, when Fyre wouldn't believe he was capable of evil that he thought he was. "I've seen you with other people, Frosty, Rogue, Kit, Scott, Em, and Star. You can't not care." He told her that he almost tore Star's wings off. He didn't tell her that Em put him in his place with an order and a command, "UNDERSTOOD?"

"Nate, I know I'm boring you."

He gave her an awkward smile. "I'm sorry."

She smiled. "You pay me the big bucks to think for you. I just want you to know what to expect."

"Thanks, Linda."

"Just keep doing what you're doing, Nate. It doesn't matter what E says. And don't skip anymore, it looks bad."

"What about drinking?"

She gave him a skeptical look.

He smiled. "Drugs?"

"Nate..."

"Sex?"

She gathered up her papers even as she blushed. "Go on, get out of here."

His chuckle was deep and sexy as she watched him get up, like a lion rising from a meal. He squared his shoulders and fixed her with his dark, smoldering eyes. Then they crinkled as he grinned, because he knew what he had done to her for that one moment. He turned and knocked on the door for them to take him away.

Malloy took a deep breath to steady herself. No wonder Serena stuck with him. But she would have to beat off all the women with a bat. Or, Malloy thought with a grin, a katana.

A girl in my department came around with ribbons bearing the Virginia Tech colors and asked if I wanted one. "No, thanks."

"How come?"

I just shrugged and turned away. My real answer: Because I can see myself as being the shooter.

Stephen King writes that if anyone looked at his writing when he was in college he'd get tagged as mentally ill and be hauled off to Bellvue (or, in my area, Butler). How do you tell which one's "gonna blow"? According to him, "Violence unenlivened by any real talent."

I wrote a story for creative writing once where the main character took the usual Faustian bargain, and had a demon invade her body and use it as a conduit. I don't remember the end, but I do remember only one scene: As she walked across a field, her feet caused small fires in the grass. I remember the teacher pulling that scene out and saying it stuck in her mind as a symbol even after the story was done. In my case, violence enlivened by talent?

The writing, all of this stuff you're reading, is what's kept me from going postal all these years. King also says that writing is "excretory" for us creative types. Nice choice of words, that, because all of this violence and anger is just that - dark, deep, primal crap that everyone has and is afraid to handle. It takes a person either brave or foolhardy enough to deal with it and present it to you for your edification. I aspire to be the former. I'm closer to the latter, as I dance very, very close to that edge.

Mase helps.

Part I

"Is this going to be a morning ritual?"

The Tsoo seated across from Masonry began to rise. "If you would prefer..."

Masonry tapped the table with his fork. "Take a seat Strym."

"Actually, he's not here."

"Oh, then who am I talking to?"

"One of his servants."

"What's your name?"

"It doesn't matter."

"I'd like to call you something."

There was a pause, as the Tsoo scrunched his face in thought. "Psy-Ops."

"All right, Psy. Nice to meet you."

"Charmed," the Tsoo snapped.

"You happen to like Tsoo and Freaks?"

"I look to find what mind is available and see if you are in proximity to it. Then I access it."

"What about Igga?"

"I have worked with him before." The Tsoo gave a cry and fell backwards off of the bench. Masonry jumped up, and three guards came over, one with the quantum gun, drawing a bead on Masonry's forehead. Two guards went over to the Tsoo, who was having a seizure.

One guard said, "Wha'd you do?"

"Nothing. He was talking to me and then he just fell over."

The seizure faded and the man began breathing normally. They led Masonry away as he was pulled up to a seated position and the doctor arrived. The guard kept the gun on him.

"She will be punished," said the guard flatly, then his features softened. He looked around for a minute, wondering why he said that, then returned to focus on Masonry. The captain even got called over. Captain Aragon had known Masonry from the moment he came into the Zig. At first he had felt the same way that the Longbow did - that Masonry was a heinous criminal and evil man, but he saw how compliant he had been, even helpful.

Aragon saw the doctor, then turned to Masonry. As the rest of the prisoners were recalled to their cells, he approached Masonry. "What did you do this time?" he demanded.

"I didn't do anything, captain."

"You were the last person talking to him."

Masonry sighed. "We were talking about a mutual acquaintence and he keeled over. Maybe the drugs he had taken long ago finally got to him." The Tsoo was now heading back to the general population.

Aragon turned to Masonry. "Do you happen to like solitary, Greene?"

Masonry sighed again. "I swear to God I didn't --"

"If I had a dollar for every time someone said that I'd be a rich man. Solitary, Matt, until he gets called downstairs."

The quantum gunner directed him there. Again.

----------------------------------------------

Meanwhile:

The buff, naked man in front of him slowly, gingerly, unbuttoned Styrm's pants. He slowly ticked down the zipper. He took the hem of Styrm's shirt, tucked it under the waistband of the pants, then rebuttoned the pants. Styrm patted the man's head. "Very good, you did it right without this time without touching the skin."

"Thank you, master," the man said, bending his body in half so that his forehead touched Styrm's foot.

"Maybe I will allow you a touch this evening. Mousey," he said to a huge man with no hair or neck, "I want the most recent reports of my quarry on my table downstairs with my breakfast."

"Yes, sir."

He left his bedroom and headed down the hallway. He stopped outside of a door. "Where is Sheila?"

"We thought you didn't need her today," said the small man who had been behind him the day before.

"She knows her orders," he snapped, and turned the doorknob. It didn't move. Styrm growled. He turned and walked down the hall, touched an area that he hid with his body. A small panel popped open, and he pressed a button. This unlocked all the doors on the floor. He returned to the room, his face angry, causing the servants to step back. He threw open the door he originally meant to open.

Seated in a yoga position on her bed was the telepath from the previous day. Styrm strode across the room and grabbed her hair again like he had done the day before, but grabbed it hard enough that she fell off the bed. She screamed and sprawled at his feet. "I am disappointed in you, Sheila."

"Master, I was only trying to prepare the way for you to speak with him--"

"I did not want to speak with him today," he snarled. "Who are you to predict my wants? Have you skimmed my own thoughts as well?"

"No, master, no!"

He drew himself up to his full height. "You should know better." He turned from her. Mousey opened the door for him and guided him out. "Blake," he snapped to the small man. "Make sure she is punished."

The man in the black fedora rapped his fingers impatiently across the table and watched the woman in front of him. Her eyes were wide open, but she wasn't looking at him. Her soul was hundreds of miles away, inside the body of a Freakshow in a prison cafeteria, directing it from here. She would hear and repeat words from this man in the fedora, and speak them through the body far across city.

The woman uttered in a deep voice, "Excellent. How lucrative is it going to be?"

The man chuckled. "Lucrative. What an idiot." He tapped the woman's right hand and spoke, "What are you looking for?"

The woman repeated it when he pulled his finger back. She then blurted out: "Free rein."

The man sat back, folding his arms across his chest. "Well. That's interesting."

"He wishes to be free, master," said a small, mouselike man standing just to the left and behind the seated one. "All prisoners want to be free."

"He wants to be more than free. He wants a license to kill." He tapped the woman's hand and chuckled audibly, which she mimicked. "I'm sure that can be arranged. We will contact you. In the meantime, keep doing what you're doing. Let them think you're a loose cannon if you want. Let them think you're the penitent son. Whatever you want." Then he reached over and pulled the woman's hair, hard.

She yelped, focused angry eyes on the man in front of her, who backhanded her for the insolent look. She wilted before him. "I'm sorry, master."

"You'd better be." David Strym- under an assumed name at the moment - put his feet up on the table and his hands behind his head. "That would be an interesting one to add to my collection."

"Sir?" The mouse uttered quietly, almost cautiously.

"Masonry the War Wall as my slave. And now that he's joined with a Kheldian...yes, it would be interesting. A challenge."

"The man would easily come to you, master. The Kheldian may not."

"It's the Kheldian I'm interested in. I know I can easily break the man. Maybe even..." He grinned. It was not a pleasant sight. "I can put him in chains. Hmm..." For a moment, Strym's mind drifted to all the different possibilities, what tools he could put to that man's perfect body and face to scar it - no, maybe not. By the time he finished with Masonry, the moment he would get off the train the city know the huge man was a twink.

It depended on the Kheldian. If the Kheldian was a true Peacebringer, he would be losing patience with Masonry by now, especially now that Masonry had turned traitor. Would the Peacebringer jump into the driver's seat and stop him? He knew from his contacts that this was the old Kheldian in Powerhouse Jack, who was a relic from Statesman's time - Powerhouse threw things around and generally beat things and people into bloody pulps. There was nothing about crossing lines.

Strym's mind switched immediately to the next item on his list, the recent acquisition from Atlas Park. She was a tall blond, who would look at someone and fully heal them with just that look. She also crushed things for fun. He caught her contemplating the Atlas Park Bank. His personal telepath had skimmed her mind to see her plans for crushing the bank vault door. It wasn't hard to convince her from there.

"Let us go meet the young lady called Gravolator."

Masonry sat as Orbison sat at the table across from him. Masonry wondered if he was a real person.

"Nice to see you, doc."

Masonry had never been so cordial to a psychologist. If Orbison noticed, he didn't let on. "Masonry. Have you thought about the answer to our question?"

After the events of last night, he had to try to remember what the question was: Is what E and Fyre say always true? With his recent cold, detached clarity, he realized the answer immediately.

"Screw them. They can be wrong. They have been wrong. All this time, all the crap I went through for them. They're wrong."

"You seem to be carrying a lot of anger for them right now."

"Yeah. So?"

"This didn't used to be so, was it?"

"A few times I was pissed at them. When Fyre would show me up. When E would start lecturing, knowing what he was talking about. Ben said we would protect them, but then he started talking about their imperfections..."

"Do you know anyone who doesn't have imperfections?"

"No, of course not."

"So what makes them different?"

"Because I thought they knew what they were doing. I looked up to them. I believed them. They don't know jack shit!" He slammed his hand flat down on the table and got up, turning away from the doctor.

"What changed your mind?"

"I went and took down two ringleaders, by myself. I realized I didn't need them."

"Why does that make you angry with them?"

"They refused me," he said quietly, turning back to the doctor.

"Refused you?"

"They refused my help. Fyre refused me - a long time ago. E... E's said he doesn't need me."

"So you wish to feel needed."

"I want to feel like I'm an integral part of a team. If they can do everything they need to do without me, then they don't need me. He said he only had me for company. Even when I handled a mace..."

"So you believe your presence adds no value? Are you certain they don't need you?"

"They told me three times already that they don't need me. I always think I suck. But I notice Frosty does the same thing. Maybe it comes from being the front-line person."

"You have told me what they say. Based on how they act, do they need you?"

Masonry stared at the hologram, thinking. "I'm helpful, I think. They don't compliment me anymore because they think I'll get a 'bigger head than you already have'. But the Futura guys... they're always helpful and supportive, and we support each other. Even if we're pissed at each other, we'll still help each other. Because it's the team that's important. And we put aside our snarky remarks until after the mission's over. Or we don't gang up on someone. At least we try not to." Masonry clammed up once he realized that he and Synecology unintentionally ganged up on Emerald Flight after a mission, discussing "you time travelers". Masonry never had a problem dealing with that; he had other things on his mind.

"Why is the Futura team different than E and Fyre?"

"I don't know. It didn't used to be like this. We used to be a family."

"What do you think changed?"

"Fyre's got a Warshade running around in her head somewhere. E's deteriorating from radiation and they're going to take away his daughter - who he can't see anymore anyway because of the radioactivity. And I had a perfectionist Peacebringer in my head."

"So you have all changed?"

"Yes, we all did."

"Do the things that originally brought you together no longer exist?"

"I'm not a dumb rock anymore. I'm not so 'endearing' like that. And saying you want to kill somebody kinda puts a damper on your relationship from that point on, don't you think?"
"You told them you wanted to kill them? Why?"

"It was Ben. 'They're imperfect.' But I thought they were too perfect - they used to snipe at each other and now the two of them were so compliant with each other that it was sickening... I was angry that they could do things so well and work in concert together; and..."

" . . . and what?"

"And I was jealous of their relationship together. I kept telling myself it was because I was angry at Fyre for hurting E all those times she sniped at him, that it was the brotherly feelings guys feel whenever a girl hurts them."

"Because you cared for her more than that?"

"I did. And... maybe..." Maybe for E too? He squashed that idea, hard. "Can we go on to something else?"

Orbison nodded. "You do not feel this same anger toward your colleagues in Futura?"

"I did at first, but I realized that I could do things that they couldn't do. And I did things differently with either the same or better results. I could take the hits. Scott can too, but not like me. And when I first joined, I thought I could do that still, but I realized that I can't - but there's another niche that I can fill instead."

"And the female members? How do you feel about them?"

"Lady P's a sweetheart. I love Kit like a sister. Em reminds me of someone who wants to give you a hug, but can't because of social constraints. Syn is a sweetie, too, but she's in love with Jake so I dont' even want to get near her."

"So no anger?"

"Violet's kinda quiet... No, actually, no. Because I'm appreciated. And accepted. I think. Gee, I never thought about why they don't piss me off ..."

"Is there difference between E and Fyre, and Futura, how you think they treat you?" Masonry opened his mouth but the doctor got up. "Our time is up. Please consider that until tomorrow."

The hologram dissolved as Masonry sighed. He got up when the door opened, and muttered, "I always get the hard questions at the end."