You worship the Earth? Wasn’t that just a loaded question? “Not exactly, no.” Though really, they may as well–their passion for environmental preservation all but bordered on religious reverence. “But our purpose is to protect it.” At the most basic level, that is the point, though there’s rather a lot more that goes into the League’s mission than that. They don’t go around cleaning up beaches, after all.
“Me? No, no. Some of my students practice magic, but my own abilities in that respect are feeble at best. What I use to extend my life is itself enchanted, but I need only touch it for it to work.”
Ah, and there it was. The desire he’s oh-so-familiar with. The League attracted a certain type of person, always had. People who had been hurt, people whose families had been hurt, people whose pain led them to do whatever necessary to ensure the never again. There were a rare few who came to him truly interested in the cause of environmentalism from the get-go. No, for most of his assassins, their loyalty was transactional, predicated on his provision of strength and security. Attachment to the mission came later, almost always, and often to varying extents.
Hence how easily many of them had slipped under Nyssa’s control, despite her feeble commitment to the cause. Only the truly loyal had stuck around. No matter. He would win the others back. One way or another.
He placed his hand over hers where it rests on his arm. “Let me show you how, then.” He guides her off the sidewalk and into an alley, fishes a key from around his neck to slip into the locked door waiting just beyond the edge of the ever-present shadows. “After you.”
He had kept certain properties in his name in major cities throughout the world for centuries, and this was one of them–he’d owned the deed to this plot of land for some two hundred years, and while he’d allowed developers to construct one of New York’s ubiquitous skyscrapers on it, he’d ensured they left certain areas for his own uses, should they ever be needed.
It was the smell that hit, first–the thick, heady scent of burning incense, contained beneath layers of concrete and steel. The windows were covered with heavy drapes to prevent those outside from taking a peek at what was going on within, from seeing the training.
His assassins did a good job keeping busy even while he wasn’t there. He and the woman walk in on a handful of men sitting along the walls, the rest enveloped in a whirl of clashing steel in the middle of the room. The brief slow-down as they registered his presence, with a guest, was quickly aborted by the sharp “Aistamara!” from their master.
He was so very much like her father. The same righteousness in their words, the same poetry on his lips as he spoke of his cause. Her father called it duty, he called it purpose, but in the end it was a calling they had chosen. She sensed the same power in him, that quality that set him apart from other people, smaller people. They were separate, and by definition, alone atop the peak.
Even the door he opened led to almost the same place her father had taken her. Thanos children were trained in his domain, in darkness and shadow. They slept and bled upon the rocks, and the warmth of the galaxy did not reach them. The walls here were concrete and steel, a shining metal, and the air smelled thick with sweet-smelling smoke, but the feeling was the same. Isolated. Controlled. A place where pain shaped a person’s destiny.
Nebula might have hesitated except for that touch upon her arm. For all the similarities to her father, there was one key difference. This man, Ra’s, saw her. He looked upon her and did not see something to re-shape, to mutilate and torture for his own experiments. He saw the potential within her already, and he offered not to change her -- but to teach her.
There was so much she wished to learn.
“They revere you,” she noted as they made their way through the training area. The disciples -- for that was what they were without question -- could not help but stare and Nebula did not blame them. She had been fighting the urge to stare at him herself. A few eyes even gazed curiously at her. Perhaps they were wondering what she had done to prove herself, to gain the privilege of walking so close to the undeniable master. Nebula let her disguise fall entirely, revealing the blue and silver and purple metal that encased her instead of skin. Her eyes darkened entirely, and her hair vanished, revealing the one strip of gold she still held onto. Nebula’s fingers brushed against it, wondering what Stark would think of a place like this. But just as quickly, she pulled her fingers away and pushed the thought to the back of her mind.
This Stark was not the one she had survived with. He was not her friend, just as the Gamora of this universe was not her sister. She was as alone in this universe as she had ever been. Perhaps more so -- until she met Ra’s.
She stopped, arms crossed across her chest. Jaw set with determination, a fire burning in her dark eyes. “Where do we begin?” she asked, a demand softened by the presence of so many whom she sensed would spring into action over the slightest disrespect towards Ra’s. “You have brought me here for more than just a tour.”
