deadly little thing

Five frowns at the question, casting a quick and cursory glance down at his own body — which, yes, is still very much covered in blood, the collar of his white button-down soaked liberally in red and crimson fluid dripping from the bullet graze on his cheek, the cuts all over the palms of his hands, the ugly slash in his left leg — before he puts the pieces together, realizes the misconception he’s inadvertently given her. He supposes he should have been a bit clearer with her, especially since she’s apparently going to be teleporting him around the city in the next ten seconds or so.

“I’m not actually headed for the library,” he explains, pushing his hair out of his eyes and trying not to pull a face at the feel of the stiff, flaky crust of half-dried blood clumping all the dark locks together in a gross, tangled mess. “It’s just a landmark — it’s the biggest building on that street.” It’s also just the first building he thinks about when he thinks about Penrose Avenue. And it’s also the first building he thinks about when he thinks about the city at all. And it’s also the first building he thinks about when he thinks about home. Half a century living in the burnt-out remnants of a place will do that to a man, he supposes.

Five is already reaching out to take her hand when he remembers his backpack, probably still crammed with a decent amount of plastic water bottles and medical supplies — he shrugged it off onto the floor and kicked it into the corner as soon as the agents showed up (those few extra pounds could have easily spelled the difference between life and death for him) and he never picked it back up afterward.

And he’s going to seriously regret it if he doesn’t take care of his injuries as soon as he’s settled in his next hideout. Besides, the last thing he needs to do in his current situation is leave behind any trace of his presence for the cleanup team to find — might as well just put a flashing neon sign out front that reads NUMBER FIVE WAS HERE.

(She would love that, wouldn’t she? She would love to see some evidence that he’s out here on his own, wounded and exhausted and easy prey.)

So he sucks in a deep breath to steel himself for the painful trek, and limps slowly past Azrael to get down the creaking stairway, his knees trying their best to buckle beneath him and his hands trembling on the rusted metal rail. As soon as he’s got the bag, one thick black strap thrown haphazardly over his shoulder so he doesn’t drop it, he turns back to Azrael and holds out his hand. “If you could just drop me off on the corner of the street, I can make my own way from there.”

“Good Heavens, no. I’m not leaving you on your own after that.” Azrael says in her overwhelmingly posh English accent, which certainly cuts a peculiar contrast to the blood drying in her silver hair.

The rest of the blood from Azrael’s already healing gunshot wounds has all but faded into the black of her clothes. She might even be able to blend in with society now without alerting the emergency services, though she would never be able to avoid the strange looks in her direction, not with eyes like that or a complexion like someone on the very brink of death itself.

Despite her apprehension towards physical contact, she takes the boy’s hand in hers, certain that even he could not cause her damage if he wanted to. Azrael’s flesh is warm, bordering on hot, like there is a barely suppressed fire raging somewhere beneath the service. It’s not enough to burn, but enough to startle someone.

The very moment Azrael allows her power to surge forth, her light transcends the barriers of her vessel and encompasses them entirely. Where it would feel warm and reassuring to be in the embrace of another angel’s power, a softer angel like Gabriel perhaps, it is not the same for the Great Wrath. Her presence, her power, is wild and dangerous, betraying her true purpose as a destroyer. It is absolutely clear, in that moment, that God did not create Azrael to protect. She was meant to raze cities to the ground and tear through entire armies of men.

There is a flash of blinding light, the kind that is seared into the back of one’s retinas for a while afterwards, and the warehouse around them vanishes at once. When the light fades and retreats back into Azrael’s vessel, they are in an alleyway across from the library.

“It means something to you, hm? This building.” Azrael says, surveying the library from afar. “Souls can be tethered to places they’ve been, places of significance, and yours is tethered here.”

To say Five isn't grateful for the divine intervention in that fight with those agents would be an out-and-out lie, but for as much as he appreciates Azrael's timely interference in his favor, he still reflexively rolls his eyes at the predictable (though nonetheless extremely disappointing) response. "Look, I don't need a minder, lady. Believe it or not, I'm older than this—" he gestures toward the pathetic prepubescent body he's trapped in with all the scorn and contempt and disdain it deserves, "—would have you believe. And I'm a hell of a lot stronger than I look. You just... caught me on a bad day." Understatement of the century.

But Five doesn't have the chance to argue the point any further before Azrael's (unpleasantly warm) hand collides with his own, and her energy envelops him, a burst of raw, absolute power that makes his own precise teleportations look like cheap party tricks in comparison. He squeezes his eyes shut at the sudden blast of blazing white light, reflexively jerking his arm up in front of his face to block any incoming blows she might try to land while he's blinded and vulnerable before common sense catches up with instinct — if she really wanted to hurt him, she would have done it during that fight with the Commission agents, taken advantage of his distraction and his weakness to land a decisive hit.

Besides, he knows better than to think that even he could defend himself against her. She's simply too powerful for that.

As soon as the burning glow has receded enough for him to open his eyes, he immediately withdraws from her, taking a few steps away to ensure a more comfortable distance for the both of them — she doesn't strike him as a woman who appreciates physical contact any more than he does — before her observation stops him cold, and he frowns at her, cocking his head to the side. She can sense his soul? She can sense that his soul is tethered here? His soul is tethered here? He has a soul? "You can feel all of that?"

Half a second later, he realizes just what a moronic question that was — it only figures that it comes with the territory of being an archangel (or maybe a demon? he hasn't completely ruled out that particular possibility yet, though he knows better than to say it aloud) — and shakes his head, brushing off the revelation. "Of course you can feel all of that. Never mind." He has plenty more queries he'd love to make, but he's got the feeling he's probably testing her patience by now (if he was an all-powerful deity, he definitely wouldn't want to be bothered with silly questions from small-minded mortals all day long) and anyway, that would just invite a conversation, which would invite her to linger, and he's already told her that he doesn't need her to stick around. Christ forbid she get it in her head that his inquiries are the very poorly-concealed efforts of a young child to cling to an adult who helped them.

"I guess that makes sense," he adds, thoughtfully, and mostly to himself at this point, because he can't imagine Azrael has any interest whatsoever in his life. "I did live here for a while. Most of my life, actually." He shrugs it off, stuffs one hand in his pocket, and hitches his backpack up a little higher on his shoulder with the other. "Anyway, thanks for helping me back there. And for the lift. I can take it from here, though. You've probably got... mortals to smite, or something."

In spite of his own annoyance with this situation in general, and the self-proclaimed witch in front of him in particular (which is ridiculous, by the way, because there is no such thing as magic, or witches, or wizards, or whatever the hell kind of Harry Potter bullshit this girl is on) Five can feel a tiny twitch at the corner of his lip, threatening to blossom into a full-on smile, as she finally divulges the reasons behind her interest in teleportation.

Still, even the barest trace of amusement in his expression could very well lead her to believe that her pestering behavior is in any way acceptable, so he carefully arranges his features and voice into a cold, composed neutrality before he responds. "Spite is an excellent motivator, I'll give you that." And the pursuit of further knowledge is an even better one — one that Five can understand and respect above all else.

Shit, he's actually going to do this, isn't he? He's actually going to go ahead and help this girl, even though she's basically a walking, talking headache and a half. Fuck, but he's going soft. Udyati must be rubbing off on him way more than he realized.

"All right, all right," he huffs out a heavy sigh, just so she knows exactly how much he does not want to do this, and finally pushes off the wall he's been leaning against to look at her full-on. "Fine. I don't know how much you'll be able to learn from me, because teaching is not my thing, but..." he takes a minute to gather his thoughts, and organize them all into some semblance of order, before he forges ahead. "Look, if you're really serious about this, you are going to need to buckle down and focus on mathematics to some degree," and if he's already jotting down a mental list of all the physics textbooks that helped him come to grips with the intricacies his own powers so he can track them down and loan them out to her later, that's absolutely no one's business but his, thank you very much, "but, for now, try and think about it this way: The universe is essentially just a layer of fabric, right? Of course, with the gravitational curvature of spacetime, the fabric isn't perfectly flat or uniform, but I'm assuming you understand that already. That's... third-grade curriculum, I think?" Wait, isn't the theory of general relativity in the third-grade curriculum? He's pretty damn sure it's in the third-grade curriculum. At least, he certainly knew what it was by the time he was eight.

"Anyway," he shakes his head, shaking off all the unnecessary musings as well, and refocuses on the matter at hand. "When you teleport, you're essentially hiding behind that fabric for a minute or two. What you need to do is tear a hole right through it."

"Figured as much. I'll ask Annabeth if I can borrow some of her books. She's got so many, she could fill about six libraries. So she must have stuff on this subject."

The universe is essentially just a layer of fabric, Five says, and Eleusine nods as he goes on to explain that she is essentially hiding behind that fabric for 'a minute or two' - much more minutes than that, actually, but that's neither here nor there - but what she needs to do is to tear a hole right through it.

That makes her smile. It's a giddy sort of smile that comes with accruing knowledge as well as the possibility of potentially, essentially, tearing a hole through something.

Destruction, creation. Two sides of the same coin. A coin that she is well versed in flipping around and around and around.

There is a story of old about a mother goddess - a goddess of creation - called Nuwa. She patched up the holes in heaven after a particularly grievous battle tore it all asunder.

Eleusine wonders if she's also responsible for the patch-job that comes with tearing holes in the layer of fabric that makes up the universe.

"Hang on, I'm writing this down." She's pulling a pen and a navy blue grimoire out of the Mist. It's empty. The pages are just waiting to be filled. And so she does, quickly jotting down notes of what Five said just now. "I've taken to writing important shit down. Otherwise I forget. Busy mind." Busy body. "I'm sure you get what that's like."

Not for the first time since he met Eleusine, Five silently makes a mental note to seek out this Camp Half-Blood place and track down Annabeth Chase, because he would very much like to have a proper conversation with an intelligent lifeform besides Dolores every once in a while. He waits patiently for Eleusine to finish her hasty scribbles in the journal she pulled out of nowhere (ooh, he'll have to see if he can't accomplish something similar with his own powers soon, because that would be handy) before he resumes his impromptu lecture.

"All right, I'm not going to get too math-heavy on you until you've developed a more thorough understanding — there's no point in throwing you in the deep end without the proper build-up — but I do want to make it clear that I was using layman's terms before when I mentioned particles. There really are no such things. What we observe as particles are actually just fields — the gravitational field, the electromagnetic field, the Higgs-Boson field... well, we won't get into all seventeen of them just yet, because the fields aren't what I want you to focus on right now — and strings. Each field is responsible for a different string — the electromagnetic field is responsible for photons, and the gravitational field is responsible for gravitons, and so on, and so forth — and the strings are what we typically call particles. They behave kind of like guitar or violin strings, except they're impossibly tiny, they're constantly vibrating at a pitch no one can hear, and they produce pretty much every force we observe in the universe."

The deeper he delves into the subject, the more animated he becomes — standing up straighter, speaking louder, gesturing wildly, his passion taking on a life of its own — before he catches himself in the act, and quickly dials his excitement back down to normal levels. Just because he looks like he's thirteen doesn't give him a pass to behave like it, after all.

"Anyway, that's just the fundamentals of it. I would definitely recommend more intensive study on the subject when you have the time for it. For now, though, I just want you to keep in mind that you're not simply tearing through empty space when you teleport — you're tearing through fields, you're displacing strings, triggering all kinds of fluctuations, and you need to learn to be aware of the microscopic universe around you, because it's just as important as the macroscopic one, and you disrupt it a little more every time you jump. I don't know how difficult it will be for you," he adds, in the name of blunt, brutal honesty, "because my powers give me a fair few auxiliary senses and make me naturally more attuned to the motions of the strings and fields than other people — I can't see them either, of course, they're too small for that, but I sense them around me at all times. Again, most of the population can't do that. I believe that's specific to me and my powers, though I wouldn't be surprised if your abilities gave you a similar edge here."

I AM WELL ON MY WAY ( s.b.l. )

a collection of quotes, phrases, and sayings from the 2022 Dreamworks Animation film The Bad Guys. change & alter as needed.

"For your information, I've already had the opportunity to attend an Indian wedding, actually," Five leans back against the wall behind him, arms folded firmly over his chest and head tipped up to stare at the ceiling so he can avoid Udyati's pleading eyes for as long as humanly possible. "November 29, 1982, Sri Lanka. Beautiful ceremony. Remarkable shahi paneer. The bride and the groom were really wonderful people. I shot them through the head that night."

He's pretty sure that cheerful little anecdote from his days in the Commission will scare Udyati off — funnily enough, most people don't typically want a former assassin too close to their family — but he has to admit, she's actually piquing his interest a bit with all this talk. And Five is rather fond of Ankita Rao, though he's certainly under no illusion that the feeling is mutual. He's dragged her daughter into more trouble than he can even remember, and he knows he wouldn't want his hypothetical children to have a bad influence like that in their lives.

The fact that Ud just casually puts him under her umbrella of friends and family without so much as a second of hesitation also isn't hurting her chances — though that's probably the point, isn't it? She's probably pulling out the big guns like that on purpose.

Five can respect some healthy manipulation from his favorite granddaughter every now and again.

"All right," he huffs out a heavy sigh and pushes off the wall to stand up straight, waving her off with a flick of a hand. "All right, I'll be there. What time do the guests need to arrive?" And then a far more pressing thought occurs to him — he's not going to get properly drunk, or anything like that, but he's certainly not going to spend a couple of hours stone-cold sober in a room full of total strangers, either. Large crowds and no alcohol to take the edge off is one of his stupid hyperventilating in the bathroom episodes just waiting to happen. "Wait, hang on, is it a dry wedding? Do I need to bring my own tequila?"

"I do hope you stayed put long enough to observe the funeral rites afterwards? Otherwise that'd just be bad luck for them, you know? Getting shot on your wedding day and then you're not even seen into your next life properly? Ouch."

(Udyati likes to think her mom is fond of him, too. She pretends to be made of stone, but really, she's just a softie underneath all those layers.)

She runs a hand through her hair as she informs him of the time that the guests need to arrive.

"Well it certainly won't be a wet wedding. This isn't a Bollywood movie where everyone's gonna dance in the rain you know?" Also, she's unfamiliar with the term, but she's not gonna tell him that. Because that's stupid. She doesn't want to look stupid.

"There will be a bar, nana. And you will be able to sit at it. And they'll serve you drinks. We're not animals."

"Well, I wasn't exactly flush with a whole bunch of spare time or anything, kiddo," Five rolls his eyes at her. "As soon as I got through the last mission, they'd send me off on another one. I think the longest time I ever had to wait between orders was... three hours? Yeah, three hours. I didn't really have the chance to stick around for things like funeral rites."

Truthfully, he can't exactly blame her for the misconception — he hasn't ever bothered to really explain all the various ins and outs of the Commission to her before, mostly because he'd prefer to keep her in the dark, out of the loop, away from the brutal reality of that godforsaken organization for as long as he possibly can. Logically, he knows there is no rational basis for that — she's seen more than enough human depravity with her own eyes, and she's proven she can handle it perfectly well — but it's a knee-jerk instinct, always gnawing in the pit of his stomach whenever their conversations stray even a hair too close to that place.

But he doesn't have much longer to get lost in his own head (and thank Christ, because thinking about the Commission usually ends in waking up to find he's just spent the last fourteen hours staring blankly at his bedroom wall with absolutely no reason or explanation for this behavior or, occasionally, waking up to find he's just spent the last two hours repetitively scrubbing his entire body under the ice-cold shower spray) before Udyati's insistence that this affair will not be "wet" or "Bollywood" in any way finally hits him, and an actual laugh spills out of his mouth, full and real and completely unexpected.

"No, no, a dry wedding isn't literally dry," he tries to explain once he's gotten himself back under control. "It just means there's no alcohol. That's all." He clears his throat, and clears his face of whatever amusement might still be lingering in the corners of his lip, but he doesn't bother to dispel the crooked, fond half-smile. Even with the age-old reflex to scrupulously guard every positive emotion, he knows it's pointless to try and hide his affection for Udyati — she softens him in a way no one else, aside from Viktor, has ever been able to. "Now that I think about it, I'll probably have to bring my own, anyway. I doubt they'd let me near the bar with this—" godawful "—face."

"Look, I'm sorry to disappoint you," Five says, dry as bone, rolling his eyes and folding his arms firmly over his chest. "But it really is 'just math', as you say — very complex and intricate equations to account precisely for the cumulative mass of every single particle comprising my body, and every single particle comprising the space I'll be displacing with my jump, as well as the gravity and the nuclear forces influencing my movements through space-time, and the movements of those particles. That's... literally all there is to it, kid. There's no secret or trick I'm keeping from you just to be mean, or whatever. If you can't do the calculations with perfect, or near-perfect accuracy, you'll never get the hang of it. Take it or leave it."

Honestly, he's not sure he really understands where on earth her confusion is coming from — with powers such as hers, shouldn't she have already figured this out for herself? He's not exactly out here singlehandedly upending the foundation of the universe, is he? He's simply stating a fact. The sky is blue, the sun is hot, and teleportation is largely dependent on its user's comprehension of basic algebra, elementary calculus, and amateur physics — all branches of science and mathematics that any encephalous multicellular organism can easily understand with little effort.

Actually, now that he's really thinking about it, that might just be the problem here: she's talking about magic, and he's talking about science. There's a fundamental disconnect in the way they use and perceive their respective abilities, and that's throwing a wrench in this entire conversation.

"You're not actually teleporting, are you?" he says, the final piece of the puzzle finally clicking into place in his brain. "You're just... manipulating the... Mist? Is that what you call it? You're making everyone around you think you're gone, but you're not actually gone, are you? When you disappeared earlier, I couldn't see you, but... I could still feel the mass of your body somewhere in the room. So... if you want to do it for real..." he goes quiet for a long second, trying to come up with a solid, sensible approach that doesn't require too many numbers or figures for a first-timer. "Are you familiar with quantum physics, by any chance?"

She mutters something that sounds suspiciously like 'people never allow me to have my fun' with something that looks suspiciously like a pout.

But the conversation moves on and Eleusine perks up at the chance of accumulating more knowledge. Even if said knowledge is way above her pay grade.

"I am not as familiar as I would like to be. However, I like accruing things." People, power, magic. "Knowledge is part of those things. And, also, Malcolm said I'd never understand it and now I have to learn, you know? To spite him."

She's never had to explain her own abilities. Not really. Not with words, anyway. It's all energy work. She's made of mist and magic. So wielding it is as easy as breathing.

Maybe Eleusine should take Five for a spin. Get him to step into the Mist. See what happens. He won't get lost. He strikes her as someone with a strong anchor - or anchors, even - to the here and now.

"Yes." It's an easy decision to make. She looks, suddenly, less like a girl in her early twenties but like a warrior about to receive orders. "I would like to do it for real. I know I've got a reputation for joking around and being a trickster, all of which is true, but I take shit like this seriously."

And she likes to think she's a good student. Or can be, if given enough time (and space) and someone who works with her, rather than against her.

In spite of his own annoyance with this situation in general, and the self-proclaimed witch in front of him in particular (which is ridiculous, by the way, because there is no such thing as magic, or witches, or wizards, or whatever the hell kind of Harry Potter bullshit this girl is on) Five can feel a tiny twitch at the corner of his lip, threatening to blossom into a full-on smile, as she finally divulges the reasons behind her interest in teleportation.

Still, even the barest trace of amusement in his expression could very well lead her to believe that her pestering behavior is in any way acceptable, so he carefully arranges his features and voice into a cold, composed neutrality before he responds. "Spite is an excellent motivator, I'll give you that." And the pursuit of further knowledge is an even better one — one that Five can understand and respect above all else.

Shit, he's actually going to do this, isn't he? He's actually going to go ahead and help this girl, even though she's basically a walking, talking headache and a half. Fuck, but he's going soft. Udyati must be rubbing off on him way more than he realized.

"All right, all right," he huffs out a heavy sigh, just so she knows exactly how much he does not want to do this, and finally pushes off the wall he's been leaning against to look at her full-on. "Fine. I don't know how much you'll be able to learn from me, because teaching is not my thing, but..." he takes a minute to gather his thoughts, and organize them all into some semblance of order, before he forges ahead. "Look, if you're really serious about this, you are going to need to buckle down and focus on mathematics to some degree," and if he's already jotting down a mental list of all the physics textbooks that helped him come to grips with the intricacies his own powers so he can track them down and loan them out to her later, that's absolutely no one's business but his, thank you very much, "but, for now, try and think about it this way: The universe is essentially just a layer of fabric, right? Of course, with the gravitational curvature of spacetime, the fabric isn't perfectly flat or uniform, but I'm assuming you understand that already. That's... third-grade curriculum, I think?" Wait, isn't the theory of general relativity in the third-grade curriculum? He's pretty damn sure it's in the third-grade curriculum. At least, he certainly knew what it was by the time he was eight.

"Anyway," he shakes his head, shaking off all the unnecessary musings as well, and refocuses on the matter at hand. "When you teleport, you're essentially hiding behind that fabric for a minute or two. What you need to do is tear a hole right through it."

Bianca Stone, from What Is Otherwise Infinite: Poems; “Mary Magdalene”

"Don't be ridiculous. Of course I'm not sick." Five rolls his eyes and scoffs at her, or tries to, but the motion scrapes painfully in the back of his burning throat, and sets off a violent coughing fit that wracks his entire body, shoulders shaking and shuddering with the sheer force of it. It takes entirely too long for him to get some breath back in his lungs, but he trusts his don't fuck with me glare will convince Lila that he's still more than capable of taking out a potential threat.

(You do not show weakness in the Commission. You do not allow anyone — not your superiors, not your subordinates, not even your equals — to see you as anything less than the strongest and meanest dog in the pack. That's rule number one right there, and Five will be goddamned if he's going to break it just because he's got a fucking sniffle.)

"What do you need?" A blatant change of topic, maybe, but he's never been one to exchange meaningless pleasantries, so he's sure Lila won't push the matter any further. She's smart enough to know that wouldn't end well for her. "Diego isn't here. He's... probably off doing his Batman shtick. Maybe at a Daddy Issues Anonymous meeting, or something. I don't know."

               ˜”*°•.     Maybe  they  were  no  longer  trying  to  violently  strangle  each  other,  it  didn’t  mean  they  couldn’t  do  it  with  insults  and  words ,  though.  It  was  their  way  of  conversing ,  of  communicating.  Answer  sarcasm  with  sarcasm  and  mockery  with  more  mockery .  And  as  much  as  she’d  have  loved  to  do  exactly  that ,  retaliate,  she  didn’t .  It  was  quite  clear  something  was  wrong  with  the  short  one ,  after  all,  and  curiosity  had  grown  huge .

❝Did  you  try  acting  school  ?  Because  if  I were  the  one  with  those  lying  skills,  I’d  ask  for  a refund. ❞  Came  the  words  sarcastic ,  still  with  a  look  of  indifference ,  though .  it  was  the  truth ;  the  Commission  was  an  unforgiving  place .  One  mistake,  one  drop  of  weakness  and  life  was  gone ,  torn  to  pieces .  Body  dead  on  the  ground .  However,  they  were  not  in  the  battlefield  at  the  moment ,  so  what  exactly  was  he  trying  to  prove  ?

❝ Yeah,  I  am  not  here  for  Diego .  Well ,  not  exactly.  ❞  The  truth  was  a  little  bit  more  complicated  than  that .  However ,  messing  with  Five  instead  of  focusing  on  the  actual  problem  was  so  much  better .  Far  more  entertaining  too. 

Five grinds out a very halfhearted fuck you from in between his clenched teeth, too exhausted to come up with a cleverer quip at the current moment. His temples are pounding with what has to be the worst migraine he's had since he came off that ill-advised six-day bender at the end of the world in good old October 2036, and the sunlight pouring in through the wide-open window is stabbing into his skull like an icepick, but he's not about to get up and close the curtains now. No way he's going to give Lila that kind of satisfaction.

(Besides, it's not like he hasn't had worse.)

"What?" Okay, now that gets his attention — Lila and Diego are practically inseparable, always sucking each other's faces and pawing at each other like they're a pair of dogs right smack in the middle of their mating period — and he risks a second glance at her, biting back a wince when the motion sends another wave of dizziness and pain washing through him like water. "Then... what are you doing here? Or is it just Annoy Five Day?"