A/N: Thanks again to Those-Who Walk-Alone (FFnet), Elsannity (FFnet), Justherefortheride (FFnet), and my newest editor SexyMist (Discord) for betaing my work.

Four and a Half Years Ago

Anna walks into the Elite kitchen and dining area. Elinor is there and, even though Anna knew she'd be here, she winces nonetheless.

Elinor's nostrils flare and she turns to Anna with a frown. "Those pheromones really aren't calming down this time."

Anna huffs a sigh through her nose and grabs a plain mug from the cupboard. "Yeah, no kidding," she airs. She frowns and rolls her shoulders. "They're still strong enough for me to feel them. I haven't gotten used to it yet." She pours water into her mug, heats it with her powers, and throws a tea bag into it. The tea is a narcotic she got on a different planet. There have been cases of it debilitating people and so the planet stamped it illegal, but all it does to Anna is calm her down. So Anna took every stash she could find to help 'clean up' before she left. It's lasted her a full year and counting.

Elinor hums and stares at her almost empty bowl of soup. "Did you tell Jennifer?"

"I did." It wasn't the best way to welcome her fiancée home after a long mission.

A smile curls Elinor's lips. "You certainly didn't waste any time."

"No point sitting on it," Anna says. "Shit like this festers if it isn't dealt with." She sips her tea. It still tastes like water.

An odd look passes over Elinor's face, one she often gives Merida when her daughter makes her proud. "Did she have any theories to why Maleficent's pheromones are sticking better than before?"

Anna swirls the contents of her mug, then she exits the kitchen and takes a seat at the table across from Elinor. "I already had a theory before she came back," Anna hinges. "Jen agreed with me." She winces. "She wasn't particularly happy with it, but she didn't punch my lights out either, so that's something."

"Jennifer would never hit you."

"What are you talking about? She beats my ass all the time. Have you never been to one of our training sessions?" Anna fakes a shudder. "She's a monster."

"Ugh, right?" Elinor chuckles. "I hate going up against her."

"You and me both."

Anna and Elinor have a losing rate against Jennifer as high as the Elite's success rates on missions. Maybe they'd be able to win more if deadly force were allowed in training, but that isn't a risk the Elites are willing to take. Well, all of them except Maleficent, but she's never given a shit about safety to begin with.

Elinor finishes off the last few bites of soup. It smells amazing, and Anna points to it. "Is there any more of that?" she asks.

Elinor raises an eyebrow. "I didn't know you had a thing for alien food," she remarks.

"If you're referring to that raw slug thing on Worien then yes I'd prefer to eat lead. But this looks normal." Anna leans over and sniffs. "Smells normal, too. What is it?"

"I can't pronounce it without the translator," Elinor admits, "but I learnt how to make it while I was working a mission on Hyolar with James."

A slow smile curls Anna's lips. "I recall James making a special trip there recently. Did he bring this back?"

"Brought back the ingredients, actually." Elinor grins. "He claims I make it better."

"That's a given. You cook everything better," Anna says. She stares at the bowl and drums her fingers on the table. "So, uh, did you make enough to share or were you planning on hoarding it for the two of you?"

Elinor shakes her head and heads to the kitchen. "Plans don't mean much when any one of us Elites could eat a restaurant out of business. Shit, I forgot my bowl. Can you throw it to me?"

Anna leans over and throws the spoon like a projectile, then the bowl. Elinor catches them both with ease.

The fire meta watches Elinor work for a moment before staring at the opposite wall. She takes a drink of her tea for courage. "So, uh, I came here to talk to you."

"Mm, I figured," Elinor says. She reclaims her seat and sets a bowl in front of each of them. She gestures to the bowls. "Can you?"

Anna nods and heats the contents of both bowls. She pokes at her own with a spoon. "Are there any signs of the pheromones being flushed from my system?" she asks.

Elinor freezes with a spoon halfway to her mouth. She lowers it back down and sniffs the air. She tilts her head. "It's slightly less potent than before, but I think it may be caused by the pheromones integrating into your system more, so they're starting to smell more like you."

Anna winces. "So no flushing?"

Elinor's eyes soften. "I think the dose you got this time was permanent, and not in a minor fashion like before." She frowns and rubs the back of her neck. "I don't understand it, though. It has never taken this well before. You say you speculate the reason, but I don't see—"

"Because," Anna interrupts, "she— damn it, she— augh." Anna groans and buries her face in her hands. She hated explaining this once. She's not looking forward to doing it again. "She bit me while I was masturbating."

Elinor chokes on her own spit. She pounds on her chest and all but hacks up a lung. Then she's staring at Anna with a look that is trying so hard not to be judgemental. "Was it consensual?"

Anna squirms in her seat. "Yes? Okay, before you say anything, let me explain." She's going about this all wrong, but at least it's not as much of a disaster as when she told Jennifer. "I had just, uh, finished, when I got a knock on the door. I thought it was you or James because when does Maleficent seek me out in my room? Anyway, I opened the door and she got punched in the gut with the smell, I guess, and it was driving her insane. She wouldn't leave. I panicked and told Calhoun to call Jen—"

"Jennifer was on radio silence," Elinor says.

"Yeah, I know. I was panicking, okay!" Anna forces a breath through her teeth and runs a hand through her hair. "Calhoun refused to call so I was on my own. I told Maleficent that I didn't belong to her or owe her anything, and that she should leave. Then, then, she fell to her knees in front of me and whimpered, fucking whimpered, and said she didn't need my body. She just needed to bite me."

"Wait," Elinor interrupts, wide-eyed. "Are you saying she begged?"

"Yeah," Anna says. "It was weird. Like, when does Maleficent of all people beg? I've never even seen her bend her pride enough to apologise let alone anything else." She frowns. "Well, she's half-heartedly said 'sorry' to me a couple of times after she royally pissed me off, but I don't think that counts."

"It's more than she gives anyone else, so I say it counts," Elinor says. She scratches her jaw. "So I'm assuming you let her bite you, and the post-orgasm hormones let the pheromones take root?"

Anna cringes. "Um, yeah, kind of."

Elinor narrows her eyes. "What do you mean, 'kind of'?"

Anna fiddles with her spoon and refuses to make eye contact with the shape shifter. "I let her bite me because fuck it, right? She's bitten me hundreds of times by now so who cares? Only, I probably should have cared."

The muscles in Elinor's jaw jump. "She didn't make you do anything you didn't want to, did she?"

"Yes and no? Please don't yell at me." Anna's shoulders inch towards her ears, and Elinor swallows whatever she was going to say. By the angry flush on her face, Anna would say it wasn't an easy task.

"Okay," Elinor says. Her voice is calm, but there's a tremor in it. Anna suspects it's from rage. "Tell me what happened."

Anna crosses her arms over her chest and stares at the stew. She'd rather be eating that right now. "Apparently her pheromones are enhanced when injected before and during sex."

"During?" Elinor all but growls.

"The strength of the initial pheromones took me off guard, okay!" Anna shouts. "They've never hit me that hard before so I didn't expect— god, I suspect that's what drugs are supposed to feel like."

Elinor's eyes widen. "Did she— she didn't—"

"She didn't rape me," Anna confirms. "But she did touch me a bit when I started masturbating again."

Elinor buries her head in her hands. "Oh, Anna," she moans. "What the hell?"

"I didn't exactly plan for this to happen!" She holds up her hand to show off her engagement ring, then lets her arm drop back to the table. "Meli didn't do much besides kiss my stomach and bite me again"—she touches a spot under her left breast—"but it was far more intimate than I would have liked."

Elinor doesn't say anything for a long couple of moments, and then she lifts her head. She gives Anna a strange look. "Meli?" she asks.

The blood drains from Anna's face. All the Elites know about the deal Anna made with Maleficent, including the nickname, so Elinor knows what it means.

Anna closes her eyes and pinches the bridge of her nose. Her hand is shaking. She didn't want to go through this part of the conversation again. "I love Jen so much it hurts," she says, "and I bet I would probably kill myself if she died, but . . ." She sighs and buries her hands in her hair. "What if I still had enough of my heart left to love someone else?"

Elinor stares. "You—" she cuts herself off with a frown. "You love Maleficent? The woman who's been treating you like prey or meat since the day you met?"

"I don't know, maybe," Anna sighs. "I care about her, and I can't stop thinking about her, and god I can't stop praying for her to be okay."

After biting Anna twice, Maleficent had to go into hibernation to prevent herself from going into shock. She's been down for the count for five days. Since then her condition has stabilized, but she hasn't gotten much better. She must have swallowed some of Anna's blood by accident. Anna suspects Maleficent would be dead right now if she didn't have immunity to most poisons.

Elinor stirs the contents of her bowl with a frown. "Are you sure that's not just the pheromones mixing with your caring nature?"

"I wouldn't doubt if that caused part of these feelings," Anna relents, "but I've built up something of an immunity over the years, so I know what they're trying to make me do. They're trying to make me go to Maleficent and offer myself to her. They don't cause emotions that weren't already there, just enhance the ones that help submission."

Elinor's frown deepens. "So you already had feelings for her?"

"Yeah, but I never addressed them." Anna scowls and massages her forehead. "How could I have? This is Maleficent we're talking about. She wanted to murder people—normal people—for bumping into me on the street. How the hell am I supposed to feel about that? I just—" She sighs. "I needed to control her. I didn't have time for feelings. Emotional distance made everything simple. Berate her? Done. Order her to do something she doesn't want to do? Done. Show clear disappointment in her? Done. It was easier. God, I wish it was still easier."

A sob catches in Anna's throat and, for the first time, she realizes that she's crying. "Why did it have to be her?" she croaks. "Why couldn't it have been you, or James? At least then I would've been able to trust who I love."

"As flattered as I am, I'm not interested, and Jennifer would probably kill James if he tried touching you like that." A hand rests on Anna's forearm. "If you'd have loved either of us I can't say it would've ended well but with Maleficent there's, uh, well, there's a chance it'll end well. At least you know she cares about you."

"As much as Maleficent can care about anyone," Anna grumbles. "And who knows how much that is?"

"She does," Elinor says. She doesn't sound as angry as she was before. "You'll need to talk to her when she wakes up."

"Yeah, no shit," Anna mutters. She lights her face on fire to burn away her tears, then leans back in her chair. She grabs Elinor's hand before she can pull it away. "I don't want her to fight a challenger bout," she whispers. "Jen and Meli will have to fight to the death, and I don't want either of them to die."

"You put that clause in place so that Maleficent wouldn't have automatic rights to you," Elinor says. "If you take that away you know what'll happen."

Anna hesitates. "Not really, though." She takes one of her thumbs between her teeth. "If I word it right and convince her, I could make her accept co-claim with Jen."

Elinor rubs the back of her neck. "I'm not sure how well that'd work, but it's a possibility."

"One I'm more willing to work with than death." Anna takes a bite of stew. She blinks. "Shit, this is great."

Elinor grins. "I know, right? Just be warned, there's steroids in the meat. The animals on Hyolar produce them as a by-product, but different animals have different potencies."

Anna raises an eyebrow. "As good as that is to know, why warn me?"

Elinor blinks, then laughs outright. "Good point."

They're halfway through eating when Jennifer and James enter the room. James' eyes light up when he spots the soup.

"Oo, you made it already!" James bounces over to Elinor and hovers behind her, staring at her bowl.

"There's more in the kitchen," Elinor grunts. "Get your peepers off of mine."

Jennifer rolls her eyes and sits next to Anna while her brother goes to the kitchen. She doesn't make a move to touch Anna.

Bile lurches from Anna's stomach, but she swallows it down before she can puke. "Did you tell him?" she asks instead. Talking is better than silence.

"Tell me what?" James asks. "That you fucked the most insane hero I've ever met?" Anna almost chokes on her spoon. James returns with a bowl and sits beside Elinor. He looks at Anna and points at his food. "Please?"

"I— what— no, fuck you!" Anna sputters. "I didn't have sex with her!"

James raises an eyebrow. "You mean you didn't climax with her groping and biting you?"

Anna goes as red as a tomato. Beside her, Jennifer stiffens.

"That's none of your business," Anna says.

James rests his elbows on the table and leans forward. "So you're saying you didn't have soft-core sex with a hard-core maniac?"

Guilt slams into Anna, hard, and she finds she's not hungry anymore. She pushes her bowl away and stands up. "I need a drink." She grabs her mug, downs the remainder of it, and heads into the kitchen.

"If you're making," James says, "can I have a Juon on the rocks?"

Juon is an alien alcohol that makes human hard liquor look like horse piss, and it definitely shouldn't be had without mixer. Powerful meta or not, Juon can knock the socks off any one of the Elites, even Anna if she drinks a copious amount fast enough.

James makes a disgruntled sound. "And can you please heat up my food?"

Anna slams a large vial of Juon on the counter and glares at the hell meta. "Get a fucking pot."

Jennifer frowns in her direction and Anna turns her back to the dining room. Her fiancée is disappointed in her, Anna knows, and facing that makes the wound hurt more than it already does.

Tears burn in Anna's eyes and she grabs the Juon. She stares at it. There's a little more than half of it left. It won't be enough to make her forget how to walk, but it will make the world spin. She taps the lid. It might have an unexpected effect with the tea in her system, but at this stage she's about ready to take that risk.

Only, Anna doesn't want to drink. Her brain and her heart hurt, and she knows alcohol won't take that away. She just . . . wants to sit down.

Anna leans against the counter and starts sliding to the floor. There are shouts of alarm, because the Elites know this sign by now, but Anna can't bring herself to care. She doesn't want to talk anymore. She doesn't want to deal with anyone else. She doesn't even want to deal with herself.

Anna sits on the floor with her knees up and her head against the cabinets. Her ears start ringing and her heart goes numb. Some part of her brain realizes that she's crying, but the rest of her doesn't know why it's important.

The vial is taken from Anna's hands and someone's wiping the tears from her face, but she doesn't focus her eyes to figure out who.

"Fuck, fuck," Anna hears, but doesn't let herself put a name to the voice. "Fucking hell, James, look at what you did!"

"What I did? She must have been ready for a meltdown long before I got here if I only had to say one thing!"

"If you had been more sensitive it would have been fine!"

"Don't you blame this on me. If she fell apart from one shit comment then that means you didn't take the news very well when she told you. Did you even tell her it was alright?"

"That isn't—"

"No, did you even fucking tell her it was alright!"

"Enough, both of you! Arguing isn't going to help her so, just, ugh, sit by her in silence or leave her alone. She'll come back when she's ready."

Blessed silence washes over Anna and she closes her eyes. She's still crying, but it doesn't matter. Her chest is too numb to remember why she's hurting.

Anna doesn't know how long it is until she regains her senses, but she isn't happy when she does. The lingering numbness over her emotions isn't enough to block their sharp sting. She blinks her eyes open and squints against the light. She tenses, thinking someone will notice her regaining awareness, but no one says anything.

Alone, eh? Anna thinks. She's not sure if that stings more than being in company. She sighs and rolls her neck, then nearly jumps out of her skin. Okay, not so alone.

Across from her, Jennifer is slouched against the deepfreeze. Her arms are crossed on her raised knees and her head rests against the crook of her arm. Her breathing is soft and even, a pattern Anna knows well. Jennifer's asleep.

Huffing a light sigh through her nose, Anna shifts to her knees and reaches out. Jennifer will get a cramp if she stays like this.

Before Anna's hand can touch Jennifer, her body freezes.

"Jen?" Anna whispers. She just finished her explanation in full and, while Jennifer was vocal before, she's been sitting with her face in her hands for the past five minutes.

"We can manage this," Jennifer says, but it rings more like a strategic calculation rather than a comfort. She sucks in a deep breath and sits up. She won't look at Anna. "Maleficent is still in hibernation, so we can figure out what to do and have a plan of action ready for when she wakes up."

Anna takes a tentative step forward and reaches out, but the sharp look Jennifer gives Anna's hand stops her dead. She drops her arm back to her side. "We'll have to tell the other Elites."

Jennifer rubs her mouth. "Yeah, we will," she murmurs. She sounds so far away. She shakes her head and stands. "I'll talk to James."

Look at me, Anna thinks. Tears threaten to sting her eyes, but she doesn't let them. One benefit of having fire based powers. "I'll talk to Elinor. With her nose, she might be able to tell me a thing or two about what's happening with the pheromones."

The muscles in Jennifer's jaw clench. Anna resists the urge to wince.

"Yeah, good idea," Jennifer says. She starts walking to the door.

"Jen," Anna says, before her fiancée can leave. "We're not okay, are we?"

Jennifer pauses in the doorway. Anna doesn't know if she turns back around to face her, because Anna isn't looking at her.

"It'll be fine, Anna. We'll make it work."

The door closes, and Anna knows Jennifer is gone.

Anna tilts her head to the ceiling as if it'd stop the tears from flowing, but all it does is give Calhoun a good look at the face of heartbreak.

"That's not an answer," Anna chokes.

Anna retracts her hand and pushes to her feet. Jennifer isn't here because of love. She's here because the leader of the League broke down in the middle of the kitchen and she feels responsible.

Anna grabs at her chest and blinks tears from her eyes. She staggers to the liquor cabinet and grabs a full vial of Juon. She downs half of it.

"Easy," Calhoun soothes, her voice soft on the speakers. She must have seen Anna refusing to wake up Jennifer.

"Easy?" Anna scoffs. "I'll go easy when the situation gets easy." She downs half of what's left.

"Things always get better, Anna."

"Yeah, but who kicks the bucket along the way?" Anna grabs an extra vial of Juon and walks to the living room. She sinks into the middle of the couch and sets the full vial on the coffee table. She stares at the vial still in her hand, then takes a sip. "Jen's going to kill her."

Calhoun sighs. "You don't know that."

"Don't I?" Anna counters. She leans back into the couch and rubs her eyes. "What I want and what Jen wants are two different things."

"How do you mean?"

"I'm okay with sharing," Anna states. "She's not."

"Again, you don't know that," Calhoun says. She almost sounds exasperated.

"If it were literally anyone else then maybe Jen would consider letting me into another relationship," Anna allows. "But this isn't 'anybody else'. It's Maleficent. And Jen would rather rip Meli's head off than let her anywhere near me."

"I don't think you're giving Jennifer the credit she deserves," Calhoun cautions.

"And I'm sure the person who isn't fucking dating her would know way more about that than me," Anna mocks. She drinks the remainder of the first vial of Juon. None of the effects have hit her yet, but when they do she wants them to hit her so hard she forgets how to think.

"Just listen to yourself," Calhoun snaps. "You two have been together for, what, four years now? And you've known her for even longer than that. Do you really think she'd willfully ignore your feelings to do something that would hurt you?"

"I think she's as possessive as her father and more of a monogamist than Elinor," Anna retorts. "I also know how stubborn Maleficent is. Neither of them are going to back down."

"That doesn't mean Maleficent is going to die."

"What else is going to happen?" Anna demands, slamming the vial on the coffee table. It shatters. "If they end up fighting for real Jen will wipe the floor with Maleficent, and that stupid, stubborn dragon won't back down until one of them is dead, even if she knows it's going to be her."

Calhoun groans. "Maybe instead of speculating you can actually talk with everyone and come up with a plan? Or did you forget how to do that?"

"Not quite yet," Anna murmurs. She stares at her hands. Since when has she had twenty fingers? "If one of them dies because of this, Calhoun, I don't want to be a hero anymore."

"Then make sure neither of them do," Calhoun stresses. "You're the leader of the League. Make them listen."

"Tomorrow," Anna says. She opens the other vial of Juon and takes a swig. "Right now I'd just like to forget."

"Now is the last time you'd want to be forgetting anything," Calhoun retorts. She lowers her voice and asks, "What's really bothering you, Anna?"

Anna's hands start shaking to the point where she has to set down the vial. "I don't want to talk about it."

"Anna—"

"Just ask Jen!" Anna roars. "At least she'll fucking look at you!" She tries to focus on a nearby camera, but she doesn't know which one is real and which ones are fragments of her splitting vision. She gives up and stands, only to lose her balance and collapse on the floor. She feels shards of glass pressing against her pants and decides not to move all that much.

"Why in the— did she drink that whole thing by herself?" someone asks.

"Within a matter of a couple minutes," Calhoun says.

The other voice sighs. "Fuck."

Anna can hear approaching footfalls, and then the back of a hand is pressed into her cheek.

"She drank too much. Why didn't you wake me up?"

"I couldn't exactly stop her," Calhoun deadpans. "And I didn't wake you up because Anna didn't want you awake. You . . . kind of fucked up this time, Jennifer."

Jennifer. Right, Anna thinks. That's why the voice sounded familiar.

"I hardly think I'm the one who fucked up," Jennifer retorts.

"Oh yeah? Then why the hell did Anna choose to chug an entire vial of Juon over waking you up?"

"How should I know? This isn't the only stupid thing she's done recently."

Anna closes her eyes. Her chest hasn't gone numb enough to cushion the impact of that.

"God!" Calhoun blurts. "You can be so blind sometimes! No wonder Anna's considering leaving the League."

"I— what?" Jennifer says. She sounds hurt. "Why would she do that?"

"I don't know, why would you treat your fiancée like dirt and threaten to 'take care of' someone she cares about?"

"Her care is misplaced," Jennifer clips. "Maleficent doesn't care about anyone other than herself, and Anna is a fool for thinking that beast can care for her as anything other than a pet."

Anna's heart twists in her chest. That's just . . . ouch.

Anna pushes herself to her hands and knees with a groan. The worlds spins around her. Two hands support her before she can topple over.

"Slow down, I got you," Jennifer murmurs.

Anna rears and throws a punch at where she assumes Jennifer's chest is. She misses and collapses onto her back.

"Calm down, it's just me!" Jennifer barks.

Glass digs into Anna's shirt and she tries not to move. The glass might not be able to puncture her skin without enough force backing it, but it can put holes in her shirt. The last thing she needs is more shirts with holes in them.

Jennifer huffs an irritated sigh. "Come on. I'll get you to bed."

"Take me to my own room," Anna says. She doesn't want to spend the night with Jennifer.

"I was going to," Jennifer says as she picks Anna up bridal style.

Anna tips her head back and bellows a pained laugh, as if she expects it to dull the knife digging into her chest. "Oh, who's the hero now!" she sings, loud and off key. "It's not me, it's not me, so keep lookin' around! Oh, who's the hero now?" She stares at Jennifer's face, or at least one of them. "It's not you, it's not you, so stop actin' so proud."

Jennifer narrows her eyes and drops Anna on the couch. "You know what? Just sleep here." She grabs the mostly full vial of Juon. "I'll come check on you in the morning."

An unhinged type of laughter spills from Anna's lips, and she doesn't stop until long after Jennifer's gone.

"Calhoun," Anna says when her voice is hoarse and her throat is far too dry to be comfortable.

"Yes?"

"Am I a horrible person?"

Calhoun sucks in a breath she doesn't need. "No, Anna, you're not."

Anna doesn't respond. If she's not terrible, then why does she feel like she is?

Present Day

"I don't know if you want to come along for this," Anna says. She woke up an hour ago not feeling as shitty as the day before, which is an improvement.

"Someone needs to watch the door," Ariel chimes. She has an arm around Rapunzel's shoulders despite both of them being fully armoured, and she holds one of Anna's hands with the other.

"I suppose Crossroads could use the company," Anna murmurs. "But don't delude yourself. Sandman already admitted to looking into Arson's dreams. It won't be pretty in there."

"Will that translate in you needing my powers?" Rapunzel asks. She's holding a portable base console in a bare hand, and her removed form-fitting gauntlet is tucked under her arm.

"If I can help it, no," Anna says. "If I can't help it, then still no. You aren't healing anybody for at least another day."

Rapunzel snorts. "As much as I appreciate your concern, I'm an Elite now. I don't have to listen to you."

Anna frowns. "I wouldn't want you to follow me blindly. If you think that using your powers before you're fully recovered is a good idea when you don't know the extent of the damage you caused yourself then you're entitled to use them."

Rapunzel leans in to Ariel with an irritated sigh. She doesn't respond.

Anna knows what this is really about. Rapunzel has been having second thoughts about the secrecy portion of the Elites ever since her strained conversation with Elsa yesterday. She started questioning everything about the plans they've already set, and it took Calhoun some time to assuage her worries.

In the end the thing that convinced Rapunzel was Anna saying, 'if you tell them the full truth I won't help you anymore.' Calhoun and Ariel had piped in, saying that if Anna left the League then they would too.

The three strongest metas in the League threatened to drop everything if the silence wasn't upheld, which effectively pushed Rapunzel into a corner. She had to decide between crippling the League and staying true to her beliefs, and she's not happy that she was put in that position. Anna doesn't blame her. She'd be angry in Rapunzel's shoes, too.

"Are you planning on burning her?" Ariel asks, her voice too low to be overheard.

Anna frowns. "What gave you that impression?"

Ariel nods at Anna's clothes. "Your outfit is flame proof."

Anna blinks. She's surprised Ariel noticed. It's not like her clothes—SWAT boots, dark brown cargo pants, and a grey t-shirt—advertise their real purpose. They don't even have armour in them.

"I'm not," Anna says. "I just don't want to risk being naked at some point."

"You'll be putting on a show, then?" Rapunzel guesses.

Among other things. "It's what I'm good at," Anna replies. Manipulation is one of her fortes and she doubts she'll have to resort to full-body open flames, but letting them think she's using fire is better than letting them know the truth.

Anna stops in front of the training room were Sandman is being held and releases Ariel's hand. "Don't get too bored," she says.

Ariel grins. "No worries. I'll help her research."

Good, Anna thinks, and nods her approval. The more distracted they are the less likely they are to try to enter the room. "See you in a bit." She enters the room and stands just inside the threshold. The doors close behind her.

Sandman looks up from whatever she was doing and stares at Anna. She frowns, as if she recognizes Anna but she doesn't know from where. That will change soon.

Anna takes every poor social cue she ever picked up from Maleficent and curls her lips into an unsettling grin. "Vikke," she rumbles, "don't open the doors without my say-so and lock audio and video footage of this encounter under Elite level access."

A beep of confirmation sounds over the speakers, and Anna rumbles a deep laugh. She stares at Sandman like a predator. "It's just you and me now, Sandman."

Sandman's eyes widen and she scrambles to her feet.

"Vikke," Anna barks, before Sandman can say anything, "change scenery. Elite stored simulation, Torture One."

The living room scenery dissipates into thin air and it's replaced by tables and tools no one should ever have to see, let alone worry it will be used on them.

Anna gestures to an angled table with built-in restraints. "Situate yourself there."

Sandman staggers backwards, tripping over a bear trap. She catches her balance, but she's shaking all over. "I d-don't understand," she stutters. "I've been cooperative. Why are you doing this?"

Anna leans on a table full of surgical tools and smiles, all teeth and no mirth. "Tainted hellfire smoke was not kind to me, and I shan't be kind to any who utilize it or are trying to recreate it's effects." She blows smoke out her nose. "So I'm here to, hmm, obtain the truth." She picks up a pair of pliers and examines them. "And trust me, no one will mind if you're missing a toenail or two."

All the blood drains from Sandman's face, and her throat bobs in a harsh swallow. "Arson," she croaks.

"No!" Anna roars, slamming the clamp back on the table. One good thing about doing this in a training room is that she can't break fake materials as easily as real ones. "I'm not Arson," she spits the name like a curse. "I am your worst fucking nightmare." She throws the table aside and stalks towards Sandman with coiled muscles. "You admitted to violating the privacy of my dreams," Anna snarls. "And no one, no one, gets the upper fucking hand on me without my direct goddamn permission. Do you understand me?"

Sandman cowers behind an upright coffin of spikes. "Y-yes. I'm sorry. Please forgive me."

"Forgive you?" Anna asks. She barks an unhinged, uproarious laugh. "You decided to have a peek into my brain and had the fucking gall to tell the League about it!" Anna slams a swinging kick into the coffin and sends it flying across the room. "Do you have any fucking idea how stupid that was?" she bellows, spittle spraying from her mouth. "Giving the League ideas about my weaknesses is a folly I can't overlook."

Sandman bolts to the other end of the room. Anna stares at her, then follows at a slow, unnerving pace.

"This isn't just about you, Aurora," Anna says. Her lips curl into a slimy grin when Sandman stops dead in her tracks. "You can run and hide, and hell I'll even let you, but what about your friends and family? Can they protect themselves against someone like me?" She taps her chin in thought. "I wonder how they'd like being dragged behind a car."

Sandman releases a distressed cry and covers her mouth with her hands. She starts crying. "P-please, they have nothing to do with this," she warbles. "Don't hurt them."

Anna closes the distance between then and grabs Sandman by the cuff of her shirt before the other meta can scramble away. "They have everything to do with this, thanks to your foolish behaviour. Now you either get on that fucking table or things are going to get"—Anna sucks in a sharp breath and she drags her eyes down Sandman's body—"a hell of a lot more interesting." She licks her lips and Sandman's legs almost give out from under her.

A coil of self loathing bundles in Anna's gut, and she almost drops the whole act when Sandman openly sobs. Acting like a villain—something Anna's become far too good at over the years—is one thing, but doing so to a meta who she isn't sure is guilty? It feels like an all new low.

Anna releases Sandman and takes a step back. She raises an eyebrow when Sandman sends her a pleading look, and the woman's shoulders slump. The distressed meta glances at the restraint table.

"If I do this, will you leave my family alone?" Sandman asks. Her voice wavers.

"That all depends on your level of cooperation," Anna replies. She smirks. "If you're forthcoming, perhaps all I'll do is torture the people you love as holograms. Otherwise I can make that fantasy real. I assure you I don't mind either way."

Sandman looks like she's going to be sick. "Will my full cooperation get rid of both those options?"

Anna rolls her eyes. "If you are, fully and completely, then I guess I won't take your body however the fuck I want once we're done. How does that sound?"

Sandman gags and she turns a pale shade of green.

Anna watches the sleep meta for a moment before stepping forward and grabbing Sandman by the hair. Anna tugs her head back, baring the front of her throat, and Anna stares at it.

"We have important business to discuss," Anna says, "but I'm willing to delay it for, say, an hour." She catches Sandman's gaze. "Do you think you can handle me for that long?"

This time Sandman does choke up bile, and Anna releases her grip so the other meta can spit it on the floor.

"I'll take that as a no," Anna says. She turns heel and walks back to the table. "How about I make things easy and just ask questions? If I'm satisfied with your answers you can remain where you are, but if I'm not I'll restrain and torture you. Fair?"

Sandman opens her mouth but no words come out. She nods instead.

"Mm, good." Anna sits on a glass casket filled with centipedes. "In my dreams, what did you figure out?"

"Uh," Sandman croaks. She clears her throat. "The details have gotten fuzzy since then, but I learned to some extent what tainted hellfire smoke did to you, what you and some of the other old Elites looked like without their masks, and a couple scattered memories but I couldn't tell if they were real or not."

Anna hums and leans back on her elbows. She never deviates her focus from Sandman's face. "What memories did you see?"

Sandman swallows. "Uhh, I saw you torturing Shadow."

Fake, Anna thinks.

"I saw you crushing Athena's skull and ripping out her heart," Sandman continues.

Anna suppresses her wince. True.

"Um, I saw you struggling with the Ambassadors. You were being pushed into a cryo tube or something, and Hades was already in an active one across the room from you." Sandman frowns. "This memory was fragmented. You were resisting and shouting at the Ambassadors, but at the same time other memories about screaming or blood or war or fighting were crashing into it. I lost track of the thread and couldn't make heads or tails of what was happening."

Anna's eyes harden. That must have been right before she was put under, and the other memories must have been the false ones that bombarded her afterwards.

Sandman scratches her chest and shuffles from foot to foot. "I got the impression that your memories under influence of tainted hellfire smoke were on an accelerated time scale, but only because there's no way you'd have a denser memory mass during your torture than your entire life up until that point. Uh, what else?" She frowns, and flinches when Anna shifts. "I, uh, know that Scar and Hades went through the same thing as you," she sputters. "And, um, I know that you, at least at that time, regretted what you did to the old Elites?"

"What did you learn about the Ambassadors?" Anna clips. She can't drop the act until she exonerates Sandman as the culprit.

"Nothing through direct memories," Sandman says, "but I figured out through context that they didn't have the best interest of Earth in mind. They wanted to cripple the League so there wouldn't be anyone to protect the planet. I'm not sure why."

"I see." Anna rubs her nose. "Tell me what you know about the current situation."

"Until the League came for me I didn't know anything," Sandman says.

Anna's lips curl into a cruel smile. "Oh, and you were doing so well." She holds out her hand. "Vikke, give me a sand burrower from Achilles Four." A long creature with ten legs and multiple incisors appears in Anna's hand. She pinches the burrower's head to keep it from scrambling away. She jumps from her perch and advances on Sandman.

Sandman's eyes widen and she takes a step back. "Wait, please!" she cries, scrambling as far away as she can. "I know that a similar situation with personality transformations is happening but on a lower level of severity, and that a mind manipulator, the Ambassadors, or maybe a scientist might be suspected to have caused it."

Anna cackles. "Repeating what the Leaguers told you isn't sufficient, Aurora. Please," she mocks, "take this seriously." In a flash of fire Anna is right in Sandman's face and she grabs the meta by the throat. "I'm going to ask again, and you better tell me what I want to know." She tilts Sandman's head up and holds the burrower above her mouth. "Because simulation or not," she chuckles, "these things can tear your insides to shreds."

Sandman's crying in earnest again. Anna doubts she'll be able to hold her own weight soon.

"Tell me," Anna says, "what do you know about the operation involving the kidnapping and mental torture of Earth citizens?"

"I don't know anything else!" Sandman sobs. "I keep to myself— no, no please don't!"

Anna lowers the burrower at a steady pace. "Last chance," she says. The burrower lashes out and cuts Sandman's lip. Sandman's knees weaken but Anna keeps her upright by her neck.

The sleep meta slams her eyes shut. "I haven't talked to another meta in months," she weeps. "I've been going around helping the heavily traumatized population sleep."

Anna sucks in a harsh breath. "Why?"

"Because it's hard to sleep around people who scream themselves awake from nightmares," Sandman sobs.

"Well," Anna murmurs, crushing the sand burrower, "now I feel like an ass." She releases her hold on Sandman's neck. "Vikke, disperse simulation. Load base memory, four years ago: Arson demands creation of suppressant."

Sandman falls to her ass and rubs her throat. She's trembling and watching the changes around her like a frightened animal.

The scenery changes to a decent sized room with a massive half moon console on one wall that extends from the floor to the ceiling. On the floor in front of the console is Arson in her old skin tight outfit, clutching at her gut. Her outfit is torn in several places, but the thing that's out of place is the sweater tied around her waist, covering her lower back and ass.

"Make the antidote," Arson orders. Her body spasms and an agonized groan forces its way past her mouth.

"An antidote isn't possible," Calhoun says from the speakers.

"Then make a suppressant!" Arson shouts. She releases a gurgled scream. "Do whatever you need to do! Just make it stop!"

Sandman frowns and leans forward. "What is this?"

"What happened after THFS was used on me," Anna answers. "This is a couple days after the first Incident." It's hard to watch, but she doesn't stop the 3D render of the event as a measure of good faith.

"Okay, okay, I'm working on it," Calhoun says. Her voice is panicked. "What happened to you? Arson, Arson please talk to me, what's going on?"

Arson clutches at her head and moans. "No, no, no, not again, please, not again. Go away! You're not real!" She sobs and she grasps blindly for someone who isn't there. "Jen, you need to run. Athena's going to kill you." Arson jerks as if she's been shot and her eyes widen. "No!" Arson wails, her eyes focusing on something that no one else can see.

"Hold out a little longer, okay?" Calhoun says. Now she's panicked. "I can finish mixing something up in a couple minutes."

Arson starts hyperventilating. Traces of red start edging into her irises.

Tarzan bolts into the room and stops dead in her tracks. "Arson?" she exclaims. Arson glares at her, and Tarzan falls into a tense fighting stance. "Calhoun, sound the intruder alarm."

"Tarzan, you need to get out of here," Calhoun warns.

Arson pushes to her feet without taking her eyes from the junior leaguer. Her showing expression has turned from distressed to a hyper focus that makes the Elite look more than a little unhinged. "You're dead," Arson growls. "I killed you. Four times. You're dead."

Tarzan takes a step back. "General! Shadow!" she shouts. "Calhoun, sound the damn alarm!"

The alarm sounds, and Arson's pupils narrow into pinpricks. In an instant she has Tarzan pinned against the wall. "You won't sic them on me again!" Arson roars. "I won't let you!"

"Stop recording," Anna says. She stares at the stilled image. She walks towards herself and stares into her own eyes. "The junior leaguers tried to talk me down once the other two arrived," Anna explains, "but I didn't know what was real and what was fake. I didn't believe anything they told me. I ended up knocking them out, giving myself the suppressant, and leaving."

Sandman stands and walks towards the simulation as well. She keeps her distance from Anna. "Why are you showing me this?"

Anna taps the stilled Arson on the forehead. "I was a lucky outlier of the THFS experiments, if it can be considered lucky at all," she says. She punches the image of herself so hard Arson's head explodes into pixels, only to be restored a second later. She circles herself and Tarzan. "Everyone else's personality change was permanent, but mine wasn't.

"My personalities split," Anna continues, "leaving the regular me mostly intact and creating a hellish version we call Red Arson." She pauses behind the stilled Arson and stares at the sweater tied around her waist. Anna's expression flashes with hatred. "It was a curse. I lived in a hell I created and everyone despised me, including myself. But one thing stuck in my head, forcing me to keep going."

Anna turns to Sandman with a grave expression. "The Ambassadors would come back and do this again. Maybe they're already doing it again." Anna clenches her jaw and looks away. "We know they're on their way. It wouldn't be a stretch to assume they have non-Ambassador affiliates doing their bidding here on Earth until they return."

Sandman stares at her. It looks like she wants to say something but she's too scared to speak.

Anna waves her hand in a 'go ahead' motion. "Say whatever you'd like. I never had any intention of harming you." Much.

Sandman frowns and crosses her arms over her chest. "You didn't answer my question. Why did you show me this?"

Anna stares at the floor. "As a peace offering, I suppose," she says. She looks at Sandman and huffs a soft sigh through her nose. "I'm sorry. Innocent or not, you'll have to stay locked up for another two weeks."

Sandman's frown deepens. "Why?"

Anna twitches an empty smile and shrugs. "If I did this the way I should have, I would have kept up the villain act for a couple weeks to ensure your truthfulness." She chuckles. "If Black Dragon could see me now she would call me soft." Her eyes soften. "I fucking miss her." She shakes her head. "Sorry. Vikke, get rid of this shit and open the door."

The scenery dissolves and the door slides open. Ariel pokes her head around the corner, her head tilted like a curious puppy.

"Can you both come in here?" Anna asks.

Ariel's eyes light up and she skips in. Rapunzel follows with less enthusiasm. The door slides shut behind her.

"Wassup?" Ariel chirps, throwing an arm around Anna's shoulders and nuzzling their foreheads together. Sandman stares at the display like she doesn't understand what's happening.

"We need to decide what we're going to do with Sandman for the next couple weeks," Anna says.

Ariel's expression turns thoughtful. "She can share my room." Her eyes light up. "Yeah, that's a great idea!" She grins at Anna. "She'll be confined to the Elite section until we sort through everything, and I get company!"

"Elites?" Sandman asks, tentative.

"Yeah!" Ariel laughs. "I'm one of the new Elites!" She poses. "I can finally complete my goal of becoming the official face of love!"

Anna laughs. The sound makes Sandman jolt in surprise.

"Say that enough in front of a camera and I'm sure the media will go along with it," Anna chuckles. "Also, I like your idea about the Elite quarters. Not your room," she says before Ariel can cheer, "but we can give her a temporary set up in a free room."

Rapunzel hums and taps the portable base console against her leg. "That solves one problem and creates another," she says. "Sure, the rest of the League can't access her, but Sandman will get direct access to us. Maybe even out of costume."

"Well I hope so, I can't feel y'all as well when we're in armour," Ariel chortles. She grins at Sandman. "Do you like hugs?"

"Um, yes?" Sandman says, tentative. She glances at Anna as if expecting her to retaliate.

"Do you prefer them with or without clothes?" Ariel asks.

Sandman's eyes widen and she takes half a step back.

"Don't be alarmed," Anna says. "This is an innocent question. Poseidon has a habit of not getting dressed."

Ariel's lips curl into an amused smile. "I still don't get why I have to wear clothes to eat breakfast, of all things."

"Custom, mainly," Rapunzel says. "If you wanted to stop getting dressed in the morning I'm sure the other Elites wouldn't mind."

Ariel's eyes light up. "Fuck yeah, no clothes!" She grabs at the clamps on her chest piece, but Anna catches her hands before Ariel can release any of them.

"Maybe do that after you get Sandman's answer," Anna suggests. In truth, she just doesn't want Ariel stripping and then lugging all her gear back to the Elite section. It would confuse the hell out of the other heroes. Anna turns to Sandman. "Clothed or not?"

Sandman glances between Anna and Ariel as if she thinks this is a trick. "Clothed," she says.

Ariel's shoulders slump. Anna grins and wraps an arm around Ariel's waist. "Sorry," the villain says, "but I guess you have to pretend to be normal for a little while longer."

Ariel raises an eyebrow and grins. "Are you insinuating that someone in the League is actually normal?"

Anna blinks. "Good point." She shakes her head and turns to Sandman. "I should have asked this before"—and that alone makes the dream meta stiffen—"but have you looked into the dreams of the current League heroes?"

Sandman pales. "Y-Yes," she stutters, and her lack of confidence almost makes Anna wince.

"In those dreams, did you figure out their real names or see full faces? If so, for how many?" Anna asks.

A sickly look crosses Sandman's face. "Names and faces, for all of them." She looks at Rapunzel. "Except for her." She snaps her focus back to Anna. She's trembling again. "It's been a while, though, and the details are a little hazy. I can't even remember all the names by heart." She winces. "But I'd recognise the names if I saw or heard them."

"Well, that solves that!" Anna laughs, trying her best to ease Sandman's fear. She glances at Rapunzel. "If she already knows who we are, and she'll know who you are after the official announcement, then putting her in the Elite wing isn't a problem. Unless, of course, there's a better alternative?"

Rapunzel lifts the portable base console and inputs commands with her exposed hand. Her hand pauses a couple times while she reads information, Anna assumes, before she lowers the console with a sigh. "I don't see a viable alternative." 'That doesn't put your plan at risk' remains unsaid, but Anna hears it in the healer's tone.

"Cool." Anna waves to the door. "Can you two take her and get her symbol imprinted on a room? Oh, Vikke," she says, tilting her head up, "edit Sandman's permissions. She's only allowed in the Elite room dedicated to her, the gym, and the kitchen slash dining room area. She is not allowed to leave the Elite section."

"Confirmed," Vikke says. She never was a big talker.

"What are you going to do?" Rapunzel asks.

"I need to report what I learned to Blizzard, which was basically nothing," Anna says, "and I have to make a call to the Ultimate heaven shithead."

Ariel frowns. "I don't like the idea of you talking to her. Can I call instead?"

Anna's eyebrows furrow and she opens her mouth to answer when Rapunzel interrupts her with:

"Don't shoot her down with something noble. Even I would call that asshole in your place, and I don't even like you right now."

Anna scratches the back of her neck. "I was going to say, 'if I don't learn how to deal with her now I never will', actually." She twitches a tentative smile. "You know, that whole 'face your fear' thing so it won't cripple me or make me burn my shirt off?"

"Burn your shirt off?" Ariel asks. She looks to Rapunzel. "Did that happen?"

"Oh, right," Rapunzel murmurs. "That was . . . unsettling." She sighs. "Alright, fine. We'll take Sandman."

"Page us if you need us though," Ariel adds.

"I will," Anna says. She waves to the door. "Now go on. I'll catch you up later."

"Poseidon," Rapunzel says, "can you start walking without me? I need to have a word with Anna alone."

Ariel's lips curl into a bemused smile. "Sure." She walks to Sandman and leads her forward with a guiding hand to the lower back. "If you were in my dreams," she says as they walk away, "does that mean you've seen Tridium? What do you think of it? It's beautiful, right?"

"I've never been in your memories," Sandman admits. "I only know your name because it was mentioned in another leaguer's memory."

"Oh," Ariel says. She rubs the back of her neck. "Would you like to see it? After we remove the suppression items, of course."

Sandman gives Ariel a peculiar look. "I don't see why not."

"Yes!" Ariel whoops. "This is going to be great! I lived in a castle and I had a best friend named Max—that wasn't his full name but we called him that anyway—and he was trained in the same class as me—" The door shuts behind the pair.

Anna blows out an astonished huff of air. "Aurora won't even have to get into Ariel's dreams to learn about her."

"What did you do to her?" Rapunzel clips.

For a second Anna only stares at the healer, trying to understand the topic change. "Ah," she breathes when she gets it. "I wasn't overly physical and I didn't use my powers, if that's what you're worried about."

Rapunzel jabs a finger towards the door. "She had developing bruises on her neck, a cut on her lip, and she was afraid to even be in the same room as you," she accuses. She straightens. "I could attribute that to the fact that she just had to deal with Arson in the flesh with no way of defending herself, but it was more than that, wasn't it?"

Anna sucks in a breath and nods. "I know from experience that anyone's worst enemy is their own mind," she says, choosing her words. "All I did was make Aurora focus on her fears surrounding torture by changing the room's layout to a torture chamber and, of course, acting like a villain."

"Fucking hell," Rapunzel hisses.

"I didn't use my powers on her," Anna says. "I know that doesn't make what I did any better, but I don't take it back. The Elites need a Black Dragon, and I'm the closest thing you've got."

Rapunzel shakes her head and starts walking away, before whirling back around. "You have the ways of the old Elites so stuck in your head that you can't adapt. You're trying to recreate a system that ended in disaster under the assumption that it was a fluke that the old way failed."

"We had protocols in place for everything," Anna ensures. "Me being the only living Elite had nothing to do with the remainder of the League not getting the access they needed."

"No, it was Reaper threatening Calhoun to keep her mouth shut," Rapunzel spits. "But do you think that would have mattered at all if the junior leaguers were in the loop? No, it wouldn't, because they would have known everything the Elites did."

"They were kids!" Anna defends. "The shit the Elites dealt with wasn't meant for teenagers to know. We never even told them we killed metas! I mean, they figured it out anyway, but we never discussed it with them because we didn't want them to feel obligated to become murderers."

"You were a kid when you became an Elite!" Rapunzel shouts. "How can you refuse to make exceptions when you were an exception?"

"I didn't want them to be conditioned like I was!" Anna bellows. Tears burn in her eyes but she grits her teeth, because she won't back down. "I joined the League because I loved Jen and Athena was my fucking hero. But I wasn't trained with choices. Hell, for the first year I was basically just trained by simulations. And automated voices kept drilling the motto of the Elites into my head, because Jen and James thought that the only way I'd remain loyal was if I believed everything they did.

"I didn't want to be a murderer," Anna says, "but they made me believe it was necessary. It was the only way to achieve peace. It was the only way to be accepted by the hero I'd idolized for years." Anna growls to clear the lump rising in her throat. "If the junior leaguers were told any Elite business then they would have been put through the same type of training, and I couldn't let that happen."

Rapunzel stares for a couple seconds. "You were leader of the League," she says, but there's doubt in her voice. "Couldn't you force a change in training?"

"I could've, but not by much," Anna says. "The Elites were built out of hardasses. I might have been able to bring Elinor to my side, but even she would have agreed that teaching 'murder is necessary' is a requirement for this type of work." She pinches the bridge of her nose. "Don't get me wrong. I do believe that killing can be a benefit in some scenarios. But I don't believe it should be taught like it's as common as a goddamn handshake."

Rapunzel steps forward and rests her bare hand on Anna's shoulder. "Okay, so maybe your reasons back then make sense," she relents. "You were trying to protect them, for good reason, but that backfired, and now the League doesn't have kids anymore. It's made up of traumatized adults who already know the consequences of failure. Why do you insist on keeping them in the dark?"

"Because the old Elites were right about one thing," Anna says. "Loyalty can't be determined in peace. The metas who make up the Elites right now have seen the darkness and then looked at me, the person they blamed for everything, and realised I'm not the problem they need to fix."

"Why can't it work the same with the others?" Rapunzel pries.

"It will," Anna says, "but if you recall, you, Belle, and Mulan didn't come around the moment you found out who I was. In fact, the exact opposite happened. I expect the same thing to occur when I tell the rest of the League, but by that point it won't matter. I'll be 'dead', they'll be made Elites, they'll learn what really happened in my history, and they'll either still be glad I'm dead, or they'll wish they did things differently.

"All of this, all of this," Anna insists, talking over Rapunzel, "is a way of giving everyone in the League a choice. What they choose will determine the type of Elite they're going to be and yes, that will cause a friction that the old Elites never had, but that's okay. I don't want this batch of Elites to be like the old one. I just need to know where the non-Elites stand before they have access to protocols that can destroy us all."

Rapunzel grunts and rubs the back of her neck. "What does that have to do with withholding general information, though?"

"It's just form of containment," Anna says. "It prevents the individual Elites from spilling bits of information they don't think is important by itself, but could potentially be pooled together to make a whole picture. You're right, the wide blanket I've thrown for 'no talk' topics is old Elite extreme and may not be necessary. But you have to understand that when people figure out information they know they were denied, it'll exacerbate the us versus them mentality and put the league at risk of ripping itself apart.

"Which brings us back to my original plan," Anna says. "No regular leaguer learns anything if not from my mouth, and they all get access to Elite level information at the same time."

Rapunzel groans. "I wish you would have just explained this from the start," she says. "It beats the hell out of 'do what I say or I'll take the League out by the knees again'."

Anna winces. "Sorry. Old Elite habit."

"Habit of what? Being a dick?"

"Immediate damage control, actually."

"So, being a dick?"

"Basically," Anna chuckles. She shakes her head. "God. The more I think about it, the more I realise that the old Elites were tyrants."

"'Were'?" Rapunzel repeats. "I'm pretty sure an old Elite tyrant is standing right in front of me."

Anna grins. "Hey, I'm working on it."

"Yeah, you are. And I'm sorry for, you know, making your life more difficult than it already is."

"That's fine. I'd prefer my life go to hell than any of yours," Anna replies without thought. "It's not like my life has much to salvage anymore." She pulls out her phone, types in her password, and presses her thumb in the corner for a fingerprint scan.

"Why do you have to say things like that?"

Anna glances at the healer. "Because it's true. Or, at least, it used to be." She looks back to her phone and selects Emma's number. "I didn't have anything before I came back to the League. Then Ariel forced her way into my life and changed everything." She blinks tears from her eyes. "Do you know how strange it is to have friends again? I thought I lost my right to all of that."

"God, you're depressing. I don't know how Ariel deals with you," Rapunzel says, with a forced humour Anna jumps on in a heartbeat.

"Through persistence and bribes, mainly," Anna jests.

Rapunzel chuckles. She turns her head towards Anna's phone. "I guess I'll leave you to it."

"Actually," Anna says, "I would appreciate it if you stayed. If you want to, that is."

Rapunzel barks a forced laugh and throws a loose punch into Anna's shoulder. "Sure. I hear I'm great at moral support when I'm not being an ass."

With a grin, Anna dials and brings the phone up to her ear. It rings four times before anyone answers.

"This is a surprise," Emma says. "I thought you didn't want anything to do with me?"

"I don't, but the universe has other plans," Anna drones. Her voice doesn't shake, and she mentally pats herself on the back. "I saw the base's magical energy lines yesterday. Will you explain it to me, yes or no?"

Emma sucks in a sharp breath, as if that was the last thing she expected to hear. "Oh, wow, so soon," she murmurs. She airs a humourless laugh. "I'll do you one better and give you direct access to the magical core, but you'd need to let me into the base again."

Anna's lips tighten into a thin line, and she tries not to focus on the dread pooling in her gut. "Why do you need to be here?"

"Because my blood and heartbeat are the only things that'll open the door," Emma says. "I won't be able to come by for the next couple days, though. Is, augh, where's my calendar? Hm. Is this coming Thursday okay?"

"No day where you're involved in my life is okay," Anna retorts, "but I'm willing to tolerate your visit on that day, yes."

Emma clears her throat, uncomfortable for no reason Anna can fathom. "Right. Will you be sending a League ship to get me or will I be expected to get there myself?"

"I'll send a ship," Anna says. "The last thing I need is someone seeing Archangel of all people flying through the sky."

"Sounds fair. Anything else?"

Anna purses her lips, considering. She could just hang up now and prevent herself more misery, or she could be responsible. She sighs. "Do you know anything about the Old God on Asgard?"

Emma hums. "The basics, I suppose. The royals, who are famed to have seen him, are tight lipped, and there's no text on him. I did figure out that the Old God summons royals at any time in their life to perform one task, and that one task determines whether or not they get to remain royal. There's a temple on the planet that the royals go to when summoned and they can be accompanied by a parent or guardian figure.

"These two people will be met in the grounds at the main temple gates by a sentient, ageless gryphon, of sorts. I'm not sure what happens, but after the pair is greeted one will go into the temple while the other is forced to leave the temple grounds. After a while the tasked royal will exit the temple and, usually, they leave the planet.

"I tried tracking a few royals," Emma admits, "but I could never get a fix on them after the task was initiated. It's like it gave them some sort of immunity to my powers. Looking back, it makes sense. The only thing strong enough to block an Ultimate is an Ultimate, and it certainly wasn't Reaper." A voice pipes up in the background, and Emma's voice fades as she says, "I'm just talking with Calhoun about Asgard."

Anna frowns. That's a strange thing to lie about.

"Asgard sucks and it can choke on my fucking dick," Darryl shouts.

Anna throws a hand over her mouth and gags. Bile burns the back of her throat but she swallows it. She won't throw up because of these two again. She won't. Rapunzel reaches out and squeezes Anna's shoulder in a show of support.

"Very helpful, honey, thank you," Emma says but, despite her diplomatic tone, she sounds irritated. "Sorry about him," she says, lower. "I was just going to say that I suspect the Old God is Alpha Alpha, or at least one of his kin."

"I see. So our suspicions aren't unfounded after all," Anna murmurs. "Anyway, thank you. It hasn't been a pleasure. Please wear a bag over your face on Thursday."

"Yeah, sure, I guess," Emma says.

Anna hangs up before either of them can say more or, worse, before Darryl shouts anything else.

"So?" Rapunzel asks.

"She thinks the Old God is Alpha Alpha, which is on par with your initial assumption," Anna says. "Also learnt a couple new things with the process about how he gives tasks to royals, which I'll tell you right after I get my stomach under control."

Rapunzel steps forward and gives Anna an awkward half hug that Anna suspects neither of them likes, but she appreciates the effort.

"I'm sorry you still have to deal with her," Rapunzel says.

"Yeah, same." Anna stares at her phone for a moment. Her eyebrows furrow. "She told her husband she was talking to Calhoun instead of me. Why would she do that?"

"That's . . . odd," Rapunzel mutters. "But I wouldn't give her the benefit of the doubt."

"I don't even give her the benefit of having morals," Anna scoffs. She puts her phone back in her pocket. "It's just bizarre. I don't see what she has to gain by lying about this."

"An objective we can't see," Rapunzel says. She squeezes her arm around Anna's shoulders once before backing out of touching range. "I'll go tell Calhoun about this while you talk to Elsa. Who knows, maybe Calhoun will have some insight on it."

"If she doesn't, maybe tell her to get some by Thursday," Anna suggests. "That's when the she-witch is coming."

"I see," Rapunzel all but snarls. She shakes her head. "I guess I'll help Calhoun on that front then, since you and Belle have Alpha Alpha covered."

"As much as we're able," Anna allows. She starts walking towards the exit. Rapunzel follows her. "If you could, arrange for alerts in the Elite wing when Sandman is entering an area another Elite is already in. To prevent us talking about things we don't want her to know."

"Couldn't you do that right now by talking to Vikke?"

"I could, but I'd prefer someone who's thinking a bit more clearly than me to do it instead." Anna taps her temple, and the memories inside scream at the disturbance. "Too many things distracting me. I don't want to risk making a mistake."

The training room doors slide open at the Elites' proximity and the two walk out, only to almost be tackled to the floor.

A surprised whoosh of air leaves Anna's lungs as she grabs hold of Esmeralda's torso and steadies them both.

Esmeralda lurches back with wide, haunted eyes. She takes one look at Anna and clasps her hands on the villain's shoulders.

"I know them!" Esmeralda shouts. Her voice trembles. Anna blinks. Is she sober for once?

"Hold up," Rapunzel interjects in a soothing tone. "Who are you talking about?"

Esmeralda's gaze snaps to Rapunzel. "Landalis," she chokes. Her eyes widen more at the name and her breath becomes shallow.

Adrenaline bursts through Anna's system. "You know Moana?" she asks. What the hell did that woman do? Anna grits her teeth. Is Moana the reason Esmeralda became an alcoholic?

Esmeralda shakes her head with more force than necessary. "No, no, I know Aesgrad Landalis."

Anna's heart falls like a pit into her stomach. "Did you say Aesgrad? Are you sure?"

Esmeralda nods enthusiastically, but her face is pale. "Yeah, I'm sure. I'll never forget the bastard. Except when I'm shit faced. But I still felt like something was wrong when I heard the name. That's why I'm sober. To remember." She shakes her head and scratches at her bicep. "It's horrible. I need a drink. Do you have any liquor on you?"

"Um, no," Rapunzel says. She turns to Anna. "Have you heard of him before?"

Anna barks an unnerved laugh. "Not quite. I'll explain later." Right. Explain that her father made her middle name his fucking first name like a brand. Like Anna needed any more of those. "Allure, how do you know him?"

Esmeralda blinks at her hero name before understanding washes over her. "Right. We have guests," she mumbles, more to herself than anyone else. She clears her throat. "He's the bastard my father worked for, for like, two months. He created the Beast of France, and turned my father into— into— god are you sure neither of you have booze on you? Please, I need it."

Anna cups Esmeralda's elbows and forces a calming smile. "There's a liquor in the Elite kitchen that will knock you flat on your ass with two shots, and I'll give you some if you tell me everything you know."

"Don't encourage her drinking," Rapunzel hisses.

"Well none of you discourage it which is just as fucking bad, so I don't give a fuck," Anna retorts without taking her eyes from Esmeralda's. She lowers her tone and asks, "Do we have a deal?"

A harsh swallow bobs Esmeralda's throat. "Yeah," she croaks. "I'll tell you everything."