ZENITH

ZENITH. Trans woman. She/her. Tier Five. --> "Necessity is the Mother of Invention." PTS: 800

[zenith-moi]

nightxhunter​:

The rage that was a near constant for her, lowers in intensity as Zenith speaks. And she’s tired of it, of being so mad all the time, of having to be mad for herself because the rest of the world refuses to see Clint Courtney for who he truly is. Darren had been a good distraction these last few days, but it did little but fan the anger already in her, over how much time the two of them have now lost with each other just because of Clint and his need to destroy everything that didn’t go his way. 

“I’ve done that for the last two years,” she confesses, shoulders slumping as the exhaustion settles back into her bones. “I’ve punched and screamed and raged my way from one place to another, and I’m tired of having only that to do. I’m tired of carrying this anger and having to release it on someone else rather than the person that caused it.” 

She wants to be rid of this, but she isn’t sure how, nor does she expect Zenith to have that answer for her. She had tried looking for that answer with Jase, but in the end knew that that was too much to ask of him, not when he’d been harboring his own trauma for far longer than she had. 

There’s another, she knows deep down, that she should try to approach this topic with. After everything that happened in the Tower with Lazarus she hasn’t been able to shake loose the aching feeling that their connection with Clint runs deeper than either are prepared to dig into, but they need to… she thinks. Or at the very least she should see if the feeling in her gut is one with merit, or simply her grasping for someone else to hang onto. 

“I’m sorry,” she sighs after a moment, bringing her hand up to rub at her throbbing temple, “I shouldn’t be throwing this on you.” 

.

Night Hunter seems to deflate a little bit, as the moment passes on. Zenith isn’t sure how to feel about it. The slump of her shoulders makes her look just that little bit more fragile, makes Zenith want to be able to reach out and touch her. And she shouldn’t be so soft for someone who she hasn’t really shared more than hope and a kiss with, before she ended up ruining things. But Zenith has always fixated, just a little bit, on the things she couldn’t have or shouldn’t be doing. That was one of her many flaws. 

She can imagine it. Night Hunter, carring that pain with her. The anger, and the fury, screaming and raging for as long as she could manage it. Its a sentiment that Zenith can identify with, becuase she’s nothing if not stubborn with the things she picks to hold on to. Zenith has been clinging to grief, clining to a legacy, ever since her father died. She’s let it fuel her, let it be the thing that drives her forward. But its a bitterness and a fear thats clawed its way into her. heart as well. She isn’t sure anymore that it was right to hold on to all of that, the anger and the feeling of nothing being fair in the world, especially not where she was concerned. So she can understand the slight exhaustion in Night Hunters voice, the way she might want to let that all go, if she could. 

Shes not sure it will be so easy for Night Hunter to let go of this. Like she said, its something she should be focusing on the person who caused it. “Sounds like you need a plan to let it all out toward the people who deserve it, then.” A thoughtful hum. “There are a lot of people who will help you with that, if you ask them.” 

It was true. The Collective was nothing if not stupidly loyal, and good at building connections between people with dramatic backstories and a thirst for revenge. 

“Hey, don’t say that.” She says, not quite soft, but softer than normal. “I’m pretty sturdy, I can take it.” A quirk of her eyebrow. “And I’m a good listener, surprisingly. I let Jase complain to me all the time. And Kaz. And Hyde. Honestly, it’s nice to get a new voice in the mix.”  

[zenith-moi]

nightxhunter​:

Zenith seems… disappointed, she thinks, when she doesn’t offer her something to help her with. But Hunter honestly can’t think of anything she needs, her mind has been to occupied lately with everything that happened at the Tower with Darren, to really reflect on what she needs. And she honestly doesn’t even know what she needs at this point, or what Zenith if anything that Zenith could do to change that. She’s still not certain in all of this, just where the two of them stood with one another. 

The last time they talked, she’d voiced her own thoughts on the matter as well as she could have, had told her that she didn’t want her to keep her distance anymore, that she didn’t want to be left alone. And she does feel the small stab of annoyance at the thought that that was precisely what had happened again between them since the attack, then again, she knows just as well that she could have as easily bridged that gap herself too. 

“I had my own run in with a Courtney, along with the grossest lesson on the Old Testament in history,” she says bitterly, although her bitterness isn’t directed at Zenith but more at Clint fucking Courtney. “But all is well in the world again, right? Golden Boy is back in the game, and now with Dimitri out of commission, looks like Robert is going to get the seat at the top that he’s been vying for for ages.” 

She lets out a steadying breath, once her small rant is done, which perhaps that’s what she needed after all. To let herself get mad over having to do what she did back at the Tower, to fucking save the asshole that tried to kill her, and have to put to the side her thoughts on whatever the hell was going on between him and Lazarus, because there were other pressing matters at hand. 

“My condolences towards the entire world.” She says, a little wry, as she imagines Robert Courtney on the top of the heap. She should check in on Jase, she thinks, again. She had before, but neither of  them had really been in the right mind, and neither of them were really the type to sit down and have a straightforward heart to heart about childhood trauma and bad fathers. Her father was a different creature entirely, which may have been part of her hesitance. He was a good man. He cared about her. He would have never treated her badly, he would have never let anyone else treat her badly either. He had been strict, and had some strange methods for raising a young girl, but he had been the best father she could have asked for. Still, it must have been hard for Jase in the tower. She might not ask right out if he was feeling fucked up about his bullshit family, but maybe just hanging out with him for a few hours would be a good thing. 

She files those thoughts away for later, a reminder to follow through on them and make sure he doesn’t slip from between her fingers. She focuses on Hunter again, when she’s made the mental note, and considers how hard it all must have been for her as well. Facing the man who had left her for dead. Having to save him when he wasn’t really worthy of it at all. Hunter should have been allowed to leave him to rot, but she had done her job instead, and pulled him out from the tower that would have crushed him in its rubble. 

And Hunter, who didn’t have as many connections within the Collective as other people did, had been left to deal with it mostly on her own. On her own, with an injured brother, another responsibility for her to deal with, another weight on her shoulders that she had to struggle with. Zenith wishes that she could have tracked the girl down sooner, could have offered her help when she really needed it, when she had come to the meeting point after the tower covered in blood. But there had been things to do, and her own wounds to clean up, and Zenith had been wrapped up in her own pain –– the things she would never let anyone else help with, as she tried to clean up her own wounds, as she ignored how much she would have liked someone else to help her. She could have asked Shadow, but Zenith hated to look weak. 

She purses her lips, and looks at Hunter with softer eyes. “I’m sorry you had to deal with all that. WIth Flame Thrower. Next time he’s in danger I feel like you’ve earned the right to let him rot in hell.” She shakes her head, then, looks down at her own hands, worries a thumb over her palm. “I’m sorry about everything.”

“You know you can be mad about it all, right? Punch and scream and rage. I’ll listen.” 

[zenith-moi]

nightxhunter​:

She spends the days following the attack on Guardian Tower, split between the hospital and the manor- and then finally, Darren’s place and the manor, once he’s given the clear to go home. It’d been a complete whirlwind, having him back again after so many years, but they’ve seemed to fall back into somewhat of their old rapport with each other- apart from the whole having to help him walk to the bathroom, and telling him that at least two of his colleagues are more psychotic than even he probably was aware. 

She’s off Darren duty that day though, but just as she’s about to leave for a jog around the manor, she realizes she needed to give Jet something to pass along to her brother. Which is what she’s doing in that instant, as she’s digging through her dresser. The last time she was at Darren’s, he was asking her about some old hoodie of his that he’d been looking for for years, it was oversized and just the right kind of comfy- and she had mostly definitely stolen it from in at one point, and circumstances allowed her to keep it as her own for the time being. 

She lets out a triumphant laugh the moment her hand lands on the soft expanse of fabric, and it’s just as she does when she hears the knock on her doorframe followed by Zenith’s familiar voice. She’s still getting used to MOI’s face being paired with Zenith’s voice, but it’s not quite as jarring as an experience as it used to be, as she turns around to see her. And she’s stuck for a moment on just how to greet her, and is glad that Zenith keeps talking to spare her from having to figure out just what kind of approach she should take with her, now that she wasn’t fuming angry with her any longer. 

“I’m guessing you also heard Hyde’s role to play,” she rolls her eyes as she drapes Darren’s hoodie over her arm. “I haven’t said anything to him yet, figured I’d let him spend the first week wondering when I’ll show up, before I give him the worst shiner he’s had in his life.” He really was lucky she still held a certain fondness for him, after everything was said and done- if someone like Grizzly or Mimic had done the same, they’d be down a lung as well. 

“But um, I’m doing fine, I don’t need anything,” she shrugs, although it hits her then that Zenith is the first one to ask her how she’s doing, which fuck… it’s not like she got injured. When she and Lazarus showed up with Flame Thrower, looking like they just came back from Carrie’s prom, it’d certainly caused a scene, but that had been the extent in any interest in just what she’d been up to that night. 

“How about you?” She finds herself asking, wondering if anyone other than herself had checked in on Zenith either. “You doing okay?” 

She watches Hunter, wondering for a moment if she made the wrong decision to come here, to offer help to the woman in front of her. But she’d make a hundred wrong decisions, in the effort to win some semblance of a relationship with Hunter, even just a friendship. She’d embarrass herself by trying, she was sure, but at the end of the day she had to check up on Hunter eventually, had to see her again, had to see her not drenched in blood. She wanted to know that Hunter was okay. 

It was the kind of sentimentality that Zenith didn’t usually want to deal with, the kind of thing she would usually run away from. But she was tired of running away from herself, from the softer corners of her mind that preyed on her long hidden desire to have someone connect with her. She’d checked up on all of her other friends, but this was different. This was more intense, because Hunter was something different. 

She quirks a tiny smile, at the mention of Hyde. Yeah, she had heard that story. And she’d been wanting to talk to Hyde for days now, but for once in her life she didn’t think she should menace Sebastian into letting his other side come out. The kid had clearly been through a lot, and as much as Zenith disliked Seb, she didn’t have the heart to make things worse for him, when he had that look around his eyes, when the Tower must have been traumatic for him. Fearmonger… she wouldn’t have liked to go up against that. She has a morbid curiosity about what she might have seen. But she can’t imagine that it was pretty. Hell, she might have accidentally shot Mind Master herself if she had been put in the same situation. But she nods her head, despite it all. “Sure, he couldn’t blame you for that.” 

And Zenith tries not to be disappointed, that Hunter doesn’t need anything from her. Because in all honesty, she’s felt useless for the last few days. It’s the crash after a hard fight. Zenith had been useful enough in the tower, had gotten through it all, and came back with her team. But now, she was in the midst of a drama she didn’t really know all that much about -- and no one really seemed to want her help, or to bring her into it. And she’d like to help someone. She’d like to make sure Hunter is okay. But she won’t push it, if Hunter doesn’t want her involved. 

She’s surprised, genuinely, by Hunter’s question. And it shows on her face, just for a moment, before she clears it away again and turns her smile into something much cockier. The aches and pains that came along with her injuries were a lingering embarrassment, because she was the one who had managed to get herself hurt. The smile pulls at the mostly-healed cut on her cheek, from Morningstar’s searing blades of light. “Oh, I’m good.” She nods, slow. “Got banged around a bit, but I’ve had a hell of a lot worse.” 

And she bites her lip then, considering. Because she doesn’t want to turn around and leave, yet. “I got to knock Old Man Courtney out with an experimental stun gun, so… I kind of had a blast. If zombie Femme Fatale hadn’t been there, I would have rated it a solid 10/10, as far as missions go.” 

[zenith-moi]

( the manor, a few days after the tower attack / @nightxhunter​ ) 

She takes the time to leave things settle, after the Tower. In all honesty, she would have liked to seek Night Hunter out on the same night, but she didn’t imagine that either of them had been in the right shape for an emotional reuinion when they hadn’t even really sorted out what was going on between them. It still felt raw, and a little uncertain, even after their heart to heart in the training room. Zenith didn’t really know what they were, anymore, or what they could be. But she’d been worried about Night Hunter, after all of their rescue missions. If she hadn’t been a little loopy herself after her fight, she definitely would have gone to find Hunter sooner. 

One of the things that Zenith hated was that she could still get hurt. She could fly, and she could shoot literal beams of scalding hot light out of her eyes, and she was smart enough to solve nearly any problem you put in front of her... but at the end of the day, she was still made of so many squishy, vulnerable human parts. And she’d been too stubborn to let someone like Nightingale near her, so her side still burned with pain when she moved wrong, and her cheek still bore the delicate little cut it had earned from Morningstar’s glowing blade of light. 

Still, she had gotten away relatively unscathed, when you compared her to some of the other people who had been stuck in the Tower. They had all been through hell. Lazarus looked like they were going to fall down dead, from the small glimpse she had gotten of them. And Mind Master –– Mind Master got shot by Hyde, which would have been a little hilarious if it was someone else, if it wasn’t for the Night Hunter of it all. 

So she lets things settle, and then she seeks Night Hunter out. She’s lucky to find her, she knows, with the amount of time shes been spending with her brother. But she must have needed to come get something, because her door is open just a crack, and Zenith nudges it a little wider, knocks on the frame, peeks inside. 

“I heard about Darren,” She leads with, the same straightforward way she starts most of her conversations. No preamble, straight to the point. And she feels more relaxed, now, that she knows Night Hunter probably won’t turn her away, probably won’t punch her in the face. 

“Do you need anything?” She asks, because that feels important, when Dylan is likely holding everything up on her own right now. “Can I help?”

[zenith-moi]

theshcdowman​:

Once the fight- or fights, seem to have finally ended, Shadow immediately slips back into his normal form, his mother’s shadow rejoining with his just as the transition is made. Between Zenith being injured, and Mathias suddenly having his own body back, he’s torn between just who to rush to first. Zenith wins out in the end, given how much more pressing her issue is than marveling at whatever in the hell was going on with his great uncle. 

“Looks like you had a little too much fun,” he greets with a faint laugh, knowing that humor was the better option here than showing his genuine concern over her. Looking back at Robert, still unconscious in the corner, then over to Mathias, he realizes quickly just how they should proceed from there. Mathias seems to understand immediately the plan beginning to form in his head, which he figures has something to do with the two of them coexisting for so long. 

“We’re going to have to leave the undead here- well, other than Mathias,” he says to Zenith, before motioning over towards his uncle. “Unfortunately, Robert is the most important asset to try to get back. Mathias and I can deal with him. Zenith, if you want to, you can lead the way out of here.” 

Zenith’s pride was one easily bruised so he was deliberately trying to avoid the fact that her injury was the reason why he gave Mathias the role of helping him than her. He can tell how pissed Mathias is at the idea of helping Robert Courtney of all people, but for once he seems content with keeping his mouth shut, and just going along with whatever plan is laid before him. 

After the two of them secure Robert’s dead weight between them, he looks back to Zenith, waiting for her to give them the go ahead to move forward. 

[zenith-moi]

theshcdowman​:

He and his mother’s shadow were not going to subdue Morningstar on their own, that had become painfully clear, as the two of them coordinated beating back her strikes, and hammering her with their own. At the very least they were distracting her, which was all they could do while Zenith and Mathias did what they needed to do with the others. 

It’s not too much longer though, when he hears Zenith call out for him, her voice pained as she shouts her command. Whipping his head back, both he and his mother follow her orders without question, both shadows leaving Morningstar- and its then does he see the source of both Zenith’s- and now he realizes Mathias’s, source of pain. 

Femme Fatale- another Courtney, although this one was much more closely related to Julian than Robert was. He’s not sure she’ll be able to inflict any of her powers on him in his current state, and so he barrels towards her without much hesitation, pulling her attention away from the two other living villains in the room and centering it on his and the other shadow. 

———————————————————————

Once Alex and Clara reach Jeanne, Mathias can finally stand again, the pain that was coursing through his body finally subsiding. With both undead temporarily occupied with the others, his gaze quickly surveys the room, looking for anything that could help take down either undead hero. Eventually his gaze lands on a weapons walls, full of varying guns, knives, explosives, and- stun batons. 

Walking over to the wall, he quickly picks up the baton, and gives the trigger a few short clicks to make sure he knew how to operate the damn contraption before he heads in the direction of Jeanne, where she was currently battling against the other two shadows. 

He keeps his movements slow and discreet as he moves closer to Jeanne, not wanting to alert her to his presence. It really was a damn shame, that out of all the Courtneys he could have fought against that day, it’d be her that he’d have to take down. He held a certain fondness for her, she had been different from the rest of her siblings, much like Jase was in a way. She was whip smart, and was not afraid to distance herself from the likes of her brother, even though she would one day follow in his footsteps. 

Keeping himself carefully hidden behind Clara’s shadow, which was currently taking on the form of a massive wolf, he edges closer to the fray, until finally his baton was only a few feet away from where Jeanne was standing. 

With a deep breath, he squeezes the trigger of the baton, its end lighting up as he dives forward, and presses it sharply into Jeanne’s side. She doesn’t go down easily, which of course she doesn’t, she never was one to fall easily. But as Alex and Clara entangle themselves around her, keeping her pinned in place, he’s able to hold the baton against her long enough until she finally drops. 

Once all is said and done, he glances back to where Zenith is, uncertain if she’d managed to take down her own hero yet. 

Zenith doesn’t waste time worrying about the Shadows. She learned a long time ago that Alex was someone she could trust, to the ends of the earth, someone who didn’t need as much protection as other people did. The three shadows would be able to hold their own in a fight, even against someone as scary as the zombie they were currently fighting. Her job was to keep Morningstar away from them too, so that they definitely wouldn’t get overwhelmed. 

Distantly, she thinks she watched a documentary about Morningstar once. That kind of shit was all over the place, for the superheros who made their name fighting in WW2. Her golden weapons, the beaming light of her, she was an intimidating presence. And she’s a hell of a fight, now. Zenith has been pulling her punches, during the fight. They weren’t supposed to damage the zombies too much, after all. They were never supposed to damage much of anything. But Morningstar clearly doesn’t have the same qualms about causing damage. The golden blade of light she’s summoned sears into Zenith’s cheek, in a flash, damaging her mask. 

The world narrows down, into those flashes of action. Trying to disarm someone who can’t be disarmed. Trying to knock out someone who isn’t actually alive. She won’t remember half of it, later, when she’s looking back on the fight. It ends as things usually do, with Zenith. Her enemy subdued, her on top. And she spares a moment when the fight is done and Morningstar has been knocked out, to lay on the ground and pull ragged breaths into her lungs. 

She’s scrambling up again holding on to her side where the pain is the worst and blood is still slowly seeping out, at pretty much the same moment that the Other Shadow Man looks around for her. 

She feels dazed, for just a second, before she takes in the scene and plasters on a smile. “That was fun.” 

[zenith-moi]

theshcdowman​:

Shadow’s attention is divided between the fight he was still entangled in with Morningstar, and Mathias. Keeping the undead hero distracted was all he could do, considering he didn’t have a stun weapon on his person while in this form. So he does his best to continue to bait and evade her, and try to carry on the act long enough that Zenith could eventually get a shot in with her as well. 

But it was difficult to keep up the game, when his attention was already so divided, but Mathias wins it over long enough that he realizes what he’s done- he’s hopped back into his own body somehow, and managed to take control away from whatever hold Morrigan had on it. It’s a mind altering sight, seeing the shadow that had only resided in him suddenly be back in his own body again. As much as he wants to rush over to him though, and see how he was doing, Morningstar was the bigger issue at hand. 

And so he continues his battle, his mother’s shadow splitting from his in that moment as well to better help keep Morningstar away from the others and the rest of the action in the room. 

———————–

It takes Mathias a moment to get his bearings, as he adjusts to the body that he once called home. Even when it was his home though, he never was its main driver while in this form. As much as he felt he was Mathias Thatch, he knew that technically he wasn’t in the true sense of the word. He was only a remnant that the real man left behind, a reflection of him imbedded into his shadow that had now taken on a full life of his own. He’s lived as Mathias Thatch longer than Mathias technically had, but it makes it no stranger a sensation to suddenly be in control of the living and breathing body he once slumbered in. 

Zenith is talking to him, and so he tries to focus in on that and her. She doesn’t seem to realize he’s known her and fought beside her this whole time, just like she had with Shadow, but now was far from the time to start getting into the specifics of that particular piece of information. 

“You better have something a hell of a lot bigger than these things to take down Immanuel,” he shouts over to her, before looking up to the villain in question, seemingly frozen in his bat form, despite the hour of day. Rushing over to a wall of firearms, he figures he might as well do what he can to distract Immanuel though, even though the sight of him pulling apart Robert Courtney limb by limb would be an all too satisfying one. 

Picking up one of the larger weapons, he fiddles with it for a moment, struggling to get the damn thing to fire, until finally he finds where to click off the safety. And from there, it’s just as simple as pointing and shooting, doing his best to keep Immanuel away from Robert without pissing him off too much. Immanuel was the only one in the manor whose temper near rivaled his own, although considering the lot in life he was served he absolutely fucking deserved it. 

 When Zenith finally reappears he can’t help the loud laugh that spills out of him at the sight of her, he’d told her to find something bigger than what they were working with- and by hell if she didn’t deliver. 

He simply stands and watches the scene unfold for a moment, enjoying how satisfying it is to watch Robert slump to the floor. But soon enough, he finds him crumpling to the ground himself, as an intense pain begins coursing through his body- at least it feels pretty fucking intense. He’d never really felt pain before, but this took his breath away.

Even if he could look behind him, which he couldn’t given the amount of pain every move made in him, he knew it could only be Jeanne Courtney- Robert’s aunt, and the Courtney who haunted his every waking minute’s daughter. 

“It’s Femme Fatale,” he grunts to Zenith as he fights his body to stand, even though every newly revived nerve in his body screamed at him to stay down. And Jesus fucking Christ… if he knew that being back in his body was going to feel like this, he would have never bothered hoping back into it in the first place. 

He glances up to Alex and Clara then, who were still wrapped up in trying to keep Morningstar away from him and Zenith. 

“If we take Morningstar down next, that should free up the shadows to help distract Femme.” 

tw gendered slur. 

The bat thing has a name now, thanks to... she wasn’t sure what to call him. The Other Shadow Man. And it’s almost annoying, because it reminds Zenith that it was a person. Someone who had lived and breathed and died once upon a time, who had been a member of the Collective and probably had a family, people he loved and people he wanted to keep safe. Immanuel. 

She doesn’t like to get sentimental. But she thinks she must have it her head, just a little bit. That would explain the slight ache in her chest. But that’s an easy feeling to force away, because she has a really fucking big gun and a job to do. Having a big gun could fix pretty much any problem, Zenith had always thought. It’s one of her go too moves. No one can really challange you if you’re got some determination and more firepower than they could possibly get their hands on. And she’s grateful, suddenly, that she was so close to her lab. 

It’s a pro, of her double life, because it means she can help. Because she can take down Tin Soldier before he does any more damage than they can fix. Because she can take down Stoker before he kills one of them in his fury and his rage. Because she can keep Shadow safe, and help get him out of this sticky situation they’ve found themselves in. 

She watches as Stoker falls. And she wonders if everyone else was facing as much as they were. The onslaught of the dead. 

Zenith spares a moment, just a moment, to worry about Night Hunter. Hunter, here in this den of snakes, the people that she’s been scared of and running away from, the people who had hurt her so badly. An ultimate kind of betrayal. And things were just looking up between them, the door of Hunter’s attention opening up just that crack. Zenith hoped that she was okay, that she was getting through whatever the world was throwing at her. She hoped that Lazarus was protecting Hunter the best they could.

But her attention is dragged back to the here and now by The Other Shadow Man, in so much pain. He’s fighting through it, whatever is affecting him, but it must be one of the most painful things in the world, with the way he’s acting. Then again, he could be over sensitive. 

The thought leaves her mind when she feels a wave of pain flood over her, as well, in turn. It almost makes her fall to her knees, almost makes her want to crawl up into a ball and cry. “Fuck,” She hisses, holding herself up against the doorway, crying out in pain. “Fuck, fuck. Fuck her, what a fucking bitch, what the fuck.” 

She manages to recover, to hear what The Other Shadow is telling her. The second two shadows were fighting Mornightsar, with her resplendent glowing weapons. She fights through the pain, tries to heft the gun up, and when she sees an opening she tries to fire it at Morningstar. But it sparks, instead of firing. She must have worn it out, it will take time to recalibrate, recharge. And the Shadows were probably in the way, anyway. She didn’t want to know what would happen if she hit one of them by mistake. 

“Shadow,” She calls out, through her pain, pushing herself up again. “Duck.” It’s an order, and there isn’t any hesitation in it. She needs to distract Mornightstar, so that Shadow can deal with the bigger danger. And she launches herself without waiting, across the room, flight taking her and barrling her in to Morningstar’s strong body, knocking her away from the Shadows. She keeps the gun with her, so that she can knock the woman out semi-humanely when the time comes. 

[zenith-moi]

theshcdowman​:

He agrees to Zenith’s plan without question, knowing it was the best strategy to use in this particular scenario. There were far too many enemies strewn about the Tower to try to subdue them all, and by the groans emitting from the Tower’s steel beams, he doesn’t think they have all that much time to waste anyway. 

Once they reach the fray, he quickly shifts into shadow mode, taking on the towering form of a massive beast while his mother’s and Mathias’s shadows split off into their own creatures of smoke and shadow. Zenith is immediately on the bat-like creature who seems to have found their damsel before they have- Robert fucking Courtny. Of course it had to be Robert Courtney. 

He shifts his sights to his target though, which is a hero he vaguely remembers from his mother’s days in the Collective- Morningstar. Her light based weapons have taken on a strange color in her afterlife though- almost green in nature. But as he begins to start fighting off the undead heroine, keeping her attention away from Zenith and Tin Soldier- his own attention is stolen from a separate fight across the room- it was Mathias… both of them….

——

The moment Mathias splits from Alex’s form, he starts barreling towards the second source of gunfire in the room. In the dim light he can’t quite make out just who the enemy is, but none of that matters, as he shifts into his large demonic form and makes a nosedive in their direction. It isn’t until then, as the figure begins firing a hail of bullets in his direction, does he see his face flash into view behind the muzzle-fire. 

The rage that’d been brewing in him for the last week, suddenly comes boiling back to the surface as his demonic form silently roars at the imposter in his own body. He has no plan when he barrels towards it, letting the flurry of bullets cut through his body of smoke. But when he finally reaches his body, instead his form simply passing through the solid form- it makes contact…. 

The two of them fall back onto the floor beneath them, and he doesn’t quite have the chance to marvel how in the hell he’s able to make contact with his body, when he hadn’t been able to do that since he had lived in it, because his attention is far too focused on wrestling the firearm from his body’s hands, and pinning it to the ground. 

Once he’s finally managed to remove the threat his body carried, he’s not sure what to do, as he looks down at his own eyes, staring wildly at him like a vicious animal. It’s then, as he continues to hold down the writhing beast, that he tries something purely out of curiosity. 

When he merges with Alex’s solid form, it always was an unpleasant experience. It wasn’t his body after all, it wasn’t his to claim and inhabit, even if he had permission to do so. But when he slips into his own body… there’s no discomfort whatsoever, instead it feels wholly natural, like a key sliding into the lock only it was made for. 

When he stands, he wobbles as he tries to gain his bearings, his breath ragged still from the exhertion the body had undergone while he was fighting it. 

“Well…” he gasps, unused to the sensation of needing to breathe, “this is new.” 

.

It’s hard to get a good shot at The Bat Man when it won’t stop coming at her. It’s a brutal fucker, and it’s fast too. It keeps launching itself at her with its wings, and she keeps missing the chance to stun it. It’s frustrating, to say the least, and part of her just wants to hit it with her laser vision. But that would almost certainly damage it beyond repair, and that was one of the few things that they had been told not to do. These poor fuckers desevred a chance to be reburied in more or less the same shape they had been in before. 

Zenith gets caught by one of its wings when she’s going to take a shot at it, and it throws her across the room. She lands hard against a glass case of supplies, and she thanks god that this isn't her lab. She’s only lucky something didn’t explode. She can feel a jagged piece of glass digging into her side, when she gets up again, something that managed to slip through a weak spot in her armour. A one in a million chance, but something she doesn’t have time to deal with right now. She pulls it out instead, lets the blood just stream out. She doesn’t like the look of her stun gun, where it lays on the floor with her. The impact of her armour against it must have caused damage. Fuck.

But she has more important things to focus on. Like the way Tin Soldier has found a gun and is now shooting at the giant bat. The bullets don’t do much damage, only seeming to make the creature more and more angry as he shoots. She’s about to do something about it all when she gets distracted by… The Shadow Man. The Shadow, entering something else, and taking control. 

She takes the second to stare in disbelief at the zombie that... isn’t really a zombie anymore, it looks like. The wobbling figure, like a baby deer that’s still figuring out what it means to have legs. Breath pulling in and out of his lungs. Living and breathing, and talking. 

“What the fuck?” Comes out of her before she can really even think about it, because holy shit. She didn’t know shadow could do that. “Okay, nevermind. I’ll find out later, I guess. Hello Zombie Guy, welcome to the team.” 

The bat lets out a loud scream in Tin Soldier’s direction, and she remembers what she was going to do before. He needs to be dealt with. She could just stun him, but she looks at the gun again, and swears. Before she looks across and spots the entrance to her own lab, brain whirring. She’d been working on a prototype for the guardians, the same as the one's the collective had. But she’d run out of time and was not able to finish it before the attack. Still, it would probably work. 

“Keep the zombie busy for me, and keep the idiot alive.” She calls out to the stranger-shadow. “I’ll be right back.” And with that, she kicks off the ground and propels herself as fast as possible into her own lab. It doesn’t take more than a minute for her to find her own prototype, hefting it into her arms, and cringing when the movement pulls on the wound in her side. She takes a moment to steady herself, and then marches back out into the thunderdome everyone has made for themselves. And she can’t help but smile, because she always did love holding a massive gun. 

She whistles, to get their attention. Tin Soldier looks up from where he’s still trying to fight Stoker. She sends him a wink, and indulges herself in a quip. A dully spoken: “Say hello to my little friend.” 

The stun gun sparks a little, when she fires it at him, and he goes down like a sack of bricks. She can see he’s still breathing, so she lets out a huff of satisfaction. The strange altercation seemed to have stopped Stoker in his tracks for a second, so she shifts targets and fires at him too. Once, twice. He doesn’t go down, so she tries for a third time, and feels a swell of satisfaction when the creature falls it its knees, finally feeling the effects of the weapon.

[zenith-moi]

nightxhunter​:

The more Zenith speaks the more pieces of the puzzle she feels like she’s finally receiving that made up the enigma that was the villain. She’s still upset that she hadn’t told her sooner, that the moment they’d gotten back in touch here, Zenith didn’t recognize that what she needed most wasn’t more flirtatious banter spoken from behind a mask- but this. 

She also can’t help but wonder, that if she’d known that MOI was Zenith back when she was Artemis, if it would had taken her so long to join the Collective. Perhaps instead of living on her own for years, constantly watching her back, she would have gone to Zenith instead. But none of that really mattered now, she supposes. What’s done was done, and now she needed to figure out just how they moved forward from here- because she wants to still move forward with her, in whatever way best made sense given everything else that’d happened. 

“Do you think I would do something to you?” She asks, again her tone is more genuine than accusatory, because she’s still trying to figure out precisely just how Zenith felt about all of this. “Something that would put you at jeopardy of either losing your place here, or back at the Tower?” 

She still finds there’s more questions than answers with Zenith, and she’s not quite certain if she’ll ever learn the truth to them all. Zenith had always been a mystery to her, which initially was part of the allure of their exchanges, but now she wanted desperately to know just who exactly she was really at the end of the day. Because Zenith and MOI were just two characters she played, two halves of herself that she kept far apart from each other, and Hunter still didn’t feel like she really knew the real woman that made up the varying pieces of her. 

She returns the small smile on Zenith’s face, at the mention of her own former self- Artemis, but doesn’t comment further, letting Zenith finish the rest of her answer before she does. When she voices her own questions, Hunter pauses, giving herself to think first and answer the question with the same amount of introspection Zenith had given hers. 

“I haven’t necessarily liked anywhere I’ve been, whether it be here or at the Tower. The Guardians were a viper’s nest, that I thought I had a decent handle on until I didn’t. And here… well I’m really only a member in name. I don’t feel any strong attachment to the place, or most of the people. But I’ve never been one to do that anyway. You and Hyde are the only two I talk to on a somewhat regular basis- I talk to Reaper too, but I’m not sure he really counts as someone I’m close to per say.” Danny could be one day, she thinks, but she didn’t want to be too forward thinking in that regard. 

“When you told me the truth…,” she says slowly, venturing into the topic she was most curious about, “what did you want to happen? As much as you said that you did it for me, there had to be a reason you did it for yourself too.” 

Zenith is surprised by how much they’re actually talking. She had really expected Night Hunter to shut her out again when the information Zenith had was handed over to her. An update on her brother, on the conflict that was sure to arise in the coming weeks and days. Zenith had just wanted her to be prepared, to know what was coming and what she might have to face at a moments notice, if she was asked to come along. She had thought that Hunter might need the chance to think it over, to bow out gracefully if she needed to. Zenith had meant it before, after all, when she said that no one would blame her if she stayed very very far away from the Guardian Tower. And if anybody did blame Hunter, Zenith wouldn’t hesitate to set them straight. 

“You’d be well within your rights.” She somehow settles on, when the idea of Night Hunter putting her in danger comes back up. And then she shakes her head, “I guess, when you first showed up, I wasn’t sure. I was just scared. I didn’t know what to think.” And that says a lot, because Zenith didn’t get scared. That was one of her rules. She was brave to a fault, so courageous that it put her in danger more often than not. 

And her heart aches a little bit, when Night Hunter admits that she’s never really felt at home anywhere. She can understand how hard it would have been to make a home in the Tower, when you were someone like Night Hunter. And even the connections she did have had hurt her so badly, made it a place she needed to run away from. 

“I wanted...” She looks at Night Hunter, and then away. She feels too soft about it, too vulnerable. “I wanted someone else to know me, really. I guess. And you never could have, any other way. It was like... we were getting so close, but we’ve never had a conversation before now without that wall between us, that secret. You could never know me, I could never know you.” She thinks for a second, massages the palm of her hand with her thumb. “It gets lonely, sometimes. Being me. I figured if I was lonely, you must be in hell.” And then she’s shaking her head again, looking up at Hunter. 

“It’s stupid, though. It doesn’t really matter. It doesn’t make it better, I mean. The lying I did. But I’m trying to do less of it.” Zenith sighs out a breath, and shrugs a shoulder. Sne changes course, then, because she feels like she should offer it. “If you want to –– need to, talk about any of the Guardian bullshit, or Darren, I’ll listen. Otherwise, I can leave you alone, like you asked.” 

[zenith-moi]

theshcdowman​:

location: hallway just outside tower elevator

status: closed to @zenith-moi​​

The elevator ride up to the floor containing the armory and specialist labs is a quiet one. Not because he’d already switched forms, but rather because there just didn’t seem like much to really say to Zenith, now that the time had finally come for the two of them to carry out their side of this sprawling plan of Catalyst’s. He was grateful to be partnered with her, outside of Dulce, Zenith was the next villain in line that he’d worked alongside the longest that was part of this plan. She was steady and reliable, and next to him he knows there’s nothing the two of them won’t be able to take down together. Which is why, he supposes, that out of all the floors its the one holding the armory they are heading to. 

“Remember, don’t be afraid if you need to leave me behind,” he says finally just as the elevator dings to let them know they are only two floors away from their destination. His words are not meant to be chivalrous by any means, more so meant to be a simple reminder that he can get out of any situation, while her and whatever hero they were there to save couldn’t. “Worst case scenario, and we get too overrun in there, I can play distraction and give you enough time to slip out with our damsel in distress- whoever they are.” 

He gives her a chance to counter his plan if she felt she needed to, and it’s soon after that the elevator doors open, revealing an empty hallway. The sounds of the fray they were soon to be entering into though, are not far off. A high pitch scream can be heard echoing down the hallways, followed by repeated gunfire from an automatic weapon. The scream wasn’t Banshee’s, that he could tell even though it was muffled and distorted as its sound waves bounced off the walls as they traveled down the length of the hallway. It was more animalistic in nature, less from the vocal cords of an enhanced human, and more from something far more… monstrous in nature. 

“Alright, if we have anything else we need to plan out, now’s the time,” he sighs, rolling his stiff shoulders as he readies to slip into his shadowy form. 

.

It feels so strange to be walking through Guardian Tower in these clothes. Dressed as Zenith, someone so strong and so confident, the part of her that could face any problem and overcome any foe. Zenith never stopped to question things, never had the time to live in fear. But this wasn’t necessarily her world. Guardian Tower was supposed to belong to someone else, was MOI’s domain. It feels almost as if she’s standing on quickly shifting eyes, while they ride up the elevator together in silence. Her and Shadow. This is dangerous, she keeps thinking. Two worlds meeting, so many secrets to keep. But it’s also the best case scenario, completely by accident. 

Best case. Because Zenith knew this place. She knew the armory. She knew the labs. She knew her lab, specifically, so nearby and so fully of things that could come in handy if things got bad. She knew every nook and cranny. And Zenith knew Shadow, too. More than that, she trusted him. He was one of the people who she could always depend on, who she could lean on. She knew that Shadow would get through any fight, would give them hell, would be dependable and think the same way she did when it came down to the wire. They were a good team, they always had been, ever since the first time they stepped out on a crime together. There was a reason she liked him and Dulce so much. 

“I won’t hesitate, don’t worry.” She says, calm. He was right to remind her of that. She didn’t need to coddle him, she didn’t need to worry too much. He was far more slippery than she was, and he could get out of the tight spots she likely couldn’t. “I trust you not to get yourself killed.” 

She takes the second to crack her knuckles, try and think of her own best course of action here. In and out quickly would be good. Subdue the zombies, save whatever sorry sucker was stuck in there with them, and get out of the building before anything too bad could happen to them. 

“You know my style, Shadow. I say our plan is to go in and get this all done as fast as possible. In and out, no need to waste time, bring our guys home and try our best to make sure our mortal enemies don’t kick the bucket on our watch.” A nod of her head, and she turns. The doors ding open, and she doesn’t waste time. She knows Shadow will be going, well... shadow mode, behind her already. She follows the sound of violence, the sound of a fight. 

Her heart goes a little cold when she sees Tin Soldier –– fucking Rob –– fighting...a giant fucking bat thing? And countless other zombies, not just from the Manor either. Stoker must have been the monsterous creature before her, one of the old guard. Tin Soldier was out for blood, trying to put the zombie down for good once again. It was clear that he didn’t have the same idea the villians did that they should be brought home and put to rest. And she doens’t want to have to fucking save him, after everything, after what he had done to Hunter on the boat, the way he would have killed her in an instant. But she’s going to, because that’s the job, and Zenith always does her job. 

Stoker is closing in on him, and Zenith moves quickly, even through her anger. She tackles Tin Soldier out of the way, catching a claw to the side as she does it. She doesn’t stop to feel any pain, and it doesn’t seem to have gotten through her suit at all yet. “Stay the fuck down, Courtney.” She hisses, shoving herself back to her feet and throwing herself at Stoker, hoping she’s strong enough to subdue the beast. 

Out of the corner of her eye, as she moves, she can see Tin Soldier ignoring her and getting back up, pulling his gun back out again, but she focuses on the fight in front of her instead. 

[zenith-moi]

thecollective-npcs​:

He’s waiting for her to ask just why he wanted a flame retardant mod, when none of the undead villains possessed fire manipulating abilities. Hot Shot was the closest, but even then, all he produced was heat in the form of thermal radiation, and not of the bright and burning kind. Luckily though, he doesn’t have to come up with an excuse, as she readily does for him, and then even offers, in a gaze that seemed to be saying quite a bit more than what she was saying out loud, that she was willing to give Jet the same mod too. 

“That’s precisely what I was thinking,” he says, following her lead in how to navigate this particular conversation. “I’ll let the ones who’d be interested know, and make sure they give you enough time to do it before the ambush.” 

And that’s all really he feels like he can say at that point. It seems she’s aware that Clint was the real concern, and not one of Judgement’s minions, and she also seemed to know that Jet was the main one to be concerned about regarding that threat. 

Giving her a small smile in understanding, he soon gets up, figuring it would be better to leave her in peace to do whatever else she needed. 

“I can come back later today and pick that up,” he says, glancing down at his suit then back up at her. He feels like there’s more he wants to say, but he’s not sure what exactly. He’d tell her to be careful, and to watch out for herself- but that didn’t seem right. Instead, he looks at her for a moment, then says, “if you’re here when it happens, don’t try to protect this place. Just get off if you’re able. The Tower is nice- but isn’t not that nice.” 

He thinks she knows the reason for his words, but if she didn’t, he meant the sentiment all the same. Her lab was a masterpiece, but it wasn’t worth killing herself over, and neither were the Guardians. 

[zenith-moi]

nightxhunter​:

The moment Zenith tells her she doesn’t have to go, that people would understand if she didn’t- is when she knows she does have to. As fucking terrifying a thought it was, walking back into that Tower again, that was full of more people that wanted to kill her than ones that didn’t, she knows she has to go. She needs to face that fear head on, and beat it to a god damn pulp, no matter how much staying and hiding away in her room again sounded like the much better option. 

When Zenith’s features shift though, looking away from her as they turn almost shy in nature, she lets the thoughts that had been rattling around in her head fade, as she focuses on what Zenith reveals to her next. And it’s weird, to think how similar they really were to a certain degree. Her own father pushed her too, to become a terrifying thing- his own little soldier to show off, while Darren remained his dutiful assistant. Darren was bred for boardrooms, and using his mind as a weapon to wield rather than his body. She, on the other hand, was bred for battle and brutality. 

“Is that why you never told me about who you were?” She finds herself asking despite herself, because she desperately wants to understand just why they had to end up in this position, standing what felt like miles away from each other, when she’d wanted more than anything for her to be within arms reach. “You were afraid I’d ruin you? That knowing both halves of you would make you weaker?” 

She can’t help but wonder, if perhaps there is a certain truth to that. That if she’d known MOI and Zenith were one and the same, and that Zenith no longer had to be some untouchable thing she could only dream about but never let herself have, that it’d weaken them both in some way? 

She smiles weakly at the mention of Darren’s name, her heart aching still at having such a large piece of it being so far away from her. She focuses though on Zenith’s other words, and can’t help but wonder why she chooses to stay in the very place where Robert and Clint do hold so much control. “Do you like being there?” She asks, referring to the Tower they both once haunted together- but separately. “You were always so quiet, so different from you. I guess that’s why I never even considered you were her.” 

.

Zenith almost wants to flinch away from the question, but it doesn’t sound like an accusation. Some of the bite has gone out of Hunter’s voice, and it seems almost like she just wants to know. It makes Zenith have to examine herself, introspective. Why did she always feel like she needed to keep secrets? Why did she do any of this, split herself up into a thousand different pieces. She’s been doing that since she was a kid, though. There was the little girl who charmed everyone she met, a twelve year old devoted to her father and effortlessly poilite. And there was the same pre-teen who got home from school and let her dad run her through training course after training course until she was a creature of perfect control. The two never seemed to meet, even then, except when he looked at her. He was one of the only people who knew her through and through, every side and every secret and every flaw. And he was gone, and she still didn’t really know what happened to him. 

“Maybe I thought I’d ruin you.” She goes for, with a shake of her head. Because she wonders sometimes if loving her is a death wish. Because half the people she’s ever stopped to consider her family are six feet under ground. Even if she didn’t have anything to do with it, it’s still a sting. And she’s self aware enough to know it’s part of the reason she keeps everyone at arm's length. Even the people she adores. “But it does make me weaker, doesn’t it? You could do anything you wanted to me and I probably wouldn’t try to stop you.” 

It’s a hard truth to acknowledge. If anyone else held power over her, she would probably try to destroy them. She would ruin their lives. She wouldn’t flinch. But Hunter has… special privileges, it seems, in her mind and against her will. And she’s clearly been so hurt and so damaged by everything, Zenith couldn’t bring herself to do anything else that would hurt. That was why she was here, telling her about Darren, answering her questions.

“Is I don’t know an acceptable answer here? I mean, I like… being where my dad was, for so long. It feels like I grew up there, sometimes. And I like the resources. I like building beautiful things. I don’t love handing them over to people like Robert. But I do it anyway, I guess, because I know I’ll break it eventually.” She frowns, thinking for a minute. “I don’t like the people, really. Except for Cap.” A small phantom of a smile spreads across her face, more sad than anything. “And I liked Artemis.” 

And then she shakes her head. “But I don’t like it as much as I like this. The Collective is… ugh, don’t get me wrong. I’m not one of those people who thinks that this is my family. Blue is as close as I get to that. But it’s a business, at the end of the day. But I have friends here, and I can be… all the parts of me that I thought I needed to keep a secret.” And she looks at Hunter then, shrugs her shoulders. “Did you like it there? Do you like it here?”

[zenith-moi]

thecollective-npcs​:

His gaze drops to his suit, as MOI begins to alter it. He’d grown weirdly fond of the thing, in the years since it was first given to him. At first he detested it, and the image it was trying to create for him of the grieving brother, now though it was practically a second skin- something to better help him slip into the persona of Mind Master when he needed to. 

“I don’t know that much about the inner politics of the manor,” he confesses as a means of answering her question. “He seems to still have enough friends there though that’d help. I’m not sure how easy it’ll be to convince them to help us of all people, but I’d imagine they’d have to see that it won’t be long before they’re the ones at the center of the next attack.” 

If they helped the Guardians, he can’t see how the Guardians in turn couldn’t not help them when they needed it- if they wanted their help that is. All of them were stronger acting as allies in this case though, and if there’s anything that might serve as one source of hope in all of this shit, it’s that it might create a bridge between the two warring factions finally. 

Silence falls between them for a moment as he continues to watch her work, her skill apparent as she is able to figure out what modifications can be best seamlessly added without too much alterations being done to the original suit. As he watches though, he can’t help a certain thought that crosses his mind, a thought that has been plaguing him ever since Jet and he talked about Clint and his actions back at his apartment. 

“Do you think you can make it flame retardant?” He asks, and hopes she doesn’t look for an explanation why. Jet’s words had spooked him though, and the warning that came with them. He’d thought for so long he had Clint under control- at least when it came to his seeming obsession with him, but Clint’s appearance at his apartment clearly showed that wasn’t the case. He still doesn’t think Clint will attack him directly, but he knows he’d be far more comfortable with that added protection. 

.

It isn’t too hard to bring Mind Master’s suit more or less up to scratch. It’s still not as strong as some of the others. Tin Soldier’s was a work of art, far more protective than Mind Master’s currently was. But she adds some extra shielding, slips in the same kind she had given to Night Hunter. It feels fitting to give them twin shields. And she wanted to make sure he was protected, that Night Hunter wouldn’t have to face the hurt of losing him, or seeing him hurt too badly. 

She’s nodding along with his thoughts about the Collective, while she works. If anyone could convince people to help, it would probably be Jetstream. He’d get his friends involved, and they would drag everyone else they cared about into it for him. He falls into silence, once he’s said it all, and she doesn’t really feel the need to do much more than agree with him.

She shifts her eyes up to Mind Master, curious finally. Because that’s a request that’s hard to ignore, and hard to find a reason for. Flame Thrower being kind of a psycho is the Guardian’s best kept secret, it seems like, but they’ve never felt the need to protect against him before. And she doesn’t think there’s any other reason that Mind Master would be asking. It makes her think about Night Hunter again, the half-conversation that Zenith overheard on the boat with Robert. It makes her hand pause, in what they’re doing. 

It makes her wonder what she should say. She’s betting that Mind Master would rather she not say anything.So she looks at him for a moment, before nodding her head. “Oh, yeah. Yeah, I can do that.” And then, after a moment of silence. “Probably smart. Judgement bought a bunch of nasty explosives off some guy, right? That could heat things up quickly. If you know anyone else who might need that upgrade, you can drop off their stuff and I'll let you know when it's done.” She means Jet, more than anyone else, really. She’s seen his suit, she knows it won’t protect him from much more than being considered stylish. And she says it in a slightly different tone of voice. It must be obvious that she’s got her suspicions about the real reason, but she doesn’t think either of them will feel the need to call it out.

[zenith-moi]

nightxhunter​:

It’s unfair, she thinks bitterly, as she listens to Zenith’s voice, and instead of being mad at her still- she’s aching for her. The fire in her that the sound of Zenith’s voice ordinarily ignited, had evolved into something closer to a dull pain, as every cell in her cried out for her, begging to regain what had been lost. She hates how complicated this now has become, that instead of being able to embrace this newfound intimacy in the form of Zenith finally taking off her mask, and letting her see her face uncovered, she has to keep herself at bay instead. That she can’t use her for comfort right now, and she can’t air out how fucking scared she is over her brother either, that instead she has to pretend like she doesn’t want that- or need it even. 

She lets herself turn around though, marrying the face of MOI with the voice of Zenith, and it doesn’t really help. Not at all really, because her thoughts of Zenith lately, which never went away, have allowed the face to appear with it, despite the complex emotions that came with that face. 

Crossing her arms tightly over her chest, she holds herself as she listens further, and once Zenith is done she lets out a hollow breath. When she opens her mouth, she has every intention of thanking Zenith, and leaving the conversation at that. That would be the safer option, the one that wouldn’t get her hurt any further here, and not make this crappy situation they’re now in any crappier. 

“I don’t know if I can go back there,” she confesses instead, and she tries not to cringe at herself for how vulnerable the words sound as they spill out of her. “It’s not easy for me anymore- to be that version of me. The me that would have stormed that Tower without a second thought, and not given a fuck if Robert or Clint were there. Or wonder how the hell I’d even start to tell Darren I’m still here.” 

She looks up at Zenith then, her gaze uncertain, not knowing if she was the right person to air this fear out with, even if she was the one person she wanted to do it with. Maybe this would be for the best though, for her to show Zenith this frightened fragment she’d become of the person Zenith used to want, and she would finally end this pain she’s in once and for all. 

“Clint took her from me- Artemis… Dylan, and I don’t know how to get her back.” 

The confession surprises her, and softens something in her too. Her face is more open now, something that you can look at and see more than a mask. And she hadn’t been expecting Hunter to open up to her at all. She had expected Hunter to take the news and tell Zenith to fuck off again. But instead she’s confessing her fear, something that Zenith isn’t really worthy of. And she wishes she could help more than she’ll likely be able to. But she’s never been really good at comforting, never been good at reaching out and helping. She could fix some tech. She could punch a guard. She could fly someone to the moon and back, but words weren’t her strong suit. 

But she feels like she has to try. If Hunter is letting herself be vulnerable, she has to try. 

“You probably don’t have to.” She starts, “You could probably say no, to whoever asked. No one would blame you. But I don’t think you’ll do that.” A small shake of her head, because Night Hunter was stronger than she made herself sound. She might have been changed, by whatever happened between her and Clint Courtney, but she’d survived the change and managed to keep going. “Not because it’s what Artemis would do. Just because of you.” 

And she has to look away, almost shy with it. She doesn’t really know how to offer anything more, but she barrels on, takes a breath. 

“My dad taught that there are only two really important things in the world. Knowledge and power. He thought that teaching me how to split myself up in to all these different things, different people, would make me more powerful –– he thought it would protect me, because no one would know the full story. No one would have the knowledge to really tear me down.”

“You have more power over Clint than he has over you. You know what he did. But they don’t know you the way they used to. And you’re not in a place that he or Robert can control anymore.” She knows it isn’t actually much help. She knows it won’t really change anything. She knows it isn’t any of her business. “And you shouldn’t worry, about Darren. I think he’d kill just to see your face again.” A pause, something softer. “And maybe he can help you find the person you used to be.” 

[zenith-moi]

nightxhunter​:

She’s back in the training room again, because honestly she doesn’t know what else to do, or where else to be with everything that was going on. She had not been in the manor long enough, or was enough of a social butterfly, to be part of the various social circles that seemed to know more of what was going on in regards to what happened at the cemetery, and everything else surrounding it. She despised being in such a spot, where her gut was telling her danger was just around the corner, and yet she could do absolutely nothing about it given what little control she had. 

And so that day she’s pounding the punching bag in front of her particularly hard, trying to dull the storm of emotions and questions plaguing her. She manages to lose herself enough in the rhythmic sway of the bag and the rattle of its chains, that she nearly misses the fact that someone else had joined her in the facility, that is until she hears Zenith’s voice only to be met with MOI’s face again. 

She had to give it to her, she was doing a decent job in keeping her distance up until that point, granted Hunter was making that job fairly easy on MOI considering how little she made her presence known around the manor lately. The complicated swirl of emotions that hit her at the sight of MOI then, proves only that not enough time had passed as she’s torn between either storming out of there the moment her eyes land on her unmasked face, and the ache of wanting her closer. She settles for standing firmly in the spot she was in though, as she grabs the swaying back in front of her to pause its motion. 

“You didn’t tell him, did you?” She asks even though she knows the answer already, because if MOI had told Darren she was alive and well and living in the manor, he’d have beat MOI there. 

Given everything, she still finds it hard to look MOI squarely in the eye as she hears Zenith’s voice spill from her lips, so she keeps herself turned only half towards her, eyes cast to the ground as she speaks. 

“Tell me then,” she says after a moment, not liking being in the position of having to ask MOI for anything, but given how little power she has hear, she knows she’s at her mercy. 

It should feel more like a relief, that Night Hunter doesn’t just storm right out of the room. It would be fair, Zenith supposes. If Hunter decided to never talk to her again, that would be fair. She would just get Hyde to pass on the important information instead. He was friends with both of them, after all. But Hunter doesn’t storm away. She stands there, looking so strong, looking so beautiful. Like a phoenix risen from the ashes, something stronger than a mountain. She steadies her punching bag, ans she looks at Zenith. 

It should be more of a relief, but it isn’t. Because Zenith was hoping she could have convinced herself not to ache a little bit for Hunter. Because Hunter won’t even look her in the eye, hardly even turns toward her. 

But she’s willing to listen, and that has to be a blessing enough. 

“I didn’t tell him.” She promises, a solem vow. She’d considered it, for the briefest of moments. But compartmentalisation always did wonders for her, and she had other things to worry about during that conversation with Mind Master. His suit, his information about the attack, the fact that Jetstream was in the Tower and so many of the rest of the Collective might end up there too, sometime soon, playing hero. “That isn’t my secret to tell, right? I wouldn’t do that.” 

And she takes a breath, looks away from Hunter as well. She examines the practice weapons on the wall instead. “He told me that Judgement and the cast of Thriller are going to hit the Tower first. That’s why we were talking. I’m upgrading his suit for him.” She shakes her head. Darren’s suit was a thing of beauty, but it had needed some major upgrades to make it more battle ready. “He said they’re probably going to ask some of the Collective for help. He’s got this kid of ours, Jetstream, with him. I guess that’s where they’ve been getting all their info.”

She pulls in a breath, then, and chances another look in her direction. “I figured you’d want the heads up. That we’ll be there. That you might be asked to go by someone. And he’ll be there. But I’ll protect him if I can.” 

[zenith-moi]

thecollective-npcs​:

He’s glad that he doesn’t need to go into the long spiel of why he was needing modifications to his suit, and just what all he wanted added to it. His knowledge on anything technical was minimal, and other than knowing that kevlar could help stop a bullet, he was completely in the dark about anything else she could do. MOI was a pro though, always had been, even though he never had much experience being down in her lab, he knew how much the others relied on her to protect them while they were out in the field. 

When she lets him know he can just wait as she goes to work, he picks up a stool from the corner and places it closer to her station before taking a seat on it. It would probably do her some good to know just what other kind of powers he’d need to make sure he could fight against while in the suit, but he figures they could get into that gradually as she worked on what she wanted to do with his suit first. 

“Jetstream is talking to Dimitri now about it,” he answers, figuring she might have heard through the grapevine that the villain was in his care. “Word is that Judgement and the other living and non-living villains are going to be hitting us first. So I’ll likely won’t be the last person you see come in here today for modifications. I’m betting Dimitri is going to try to get some support from some other groups, because we’re clearly not prepared here for that large of an attack.” 

The question of just who Dimitri was going to ask was one even he wasn’t all too certain of. There were the Crusaders, who were a bit more B-level than the Guardians, but had some strong superhumans on their team regardless. They were even smaller in number than the Guardians though. There was the Youth Brigade, but even though they were considered the junior version of the Guardians, they were still just a bunch of kids. The Collective however- that would be the strongest ally to find, although nearly impossible to convince to help them. 

“He’ll probably ask Jetstream if we can get some Collective members to help us,” he says, verbalizing his train of thought. “They’re closer and much larger in number than any other alternative.” 

It’s easier to talk to someone like Mind Master, she finds, when she has something else to focus on. So the suit in front of her is a godsend. It’s something that requires thought and and a hell of a lot of attention, enough to keep her mind from spiraling or sticking on anything that rightfully should freak her out. It helps her with compartmentalising the different parts of her life. Zenith goes far away, when Rachel starts working. She’s a lioness who will get to come out and play another time, but right now she has more delicate work to do. 

She does perk up a little bit, at the mention of Jetstream. The kid who always hung out with Catalyst and Dark Wing. Zenith never had much time for him, but he was... fine, she supposed. He wasn’t as badly behaved as some other people could be, and he alwys seemed like someone who just wanted to do a good job. Plus, Dulce had a weird soft spot for him. Not quite a real one, but liked him well enough. So the kid was upstairs right now, talking to Dimitri. Making a plan to save Guardians. It makes her almost want to smile. But it was too serious for that. The rogue crew that had fled from the manor all that time ago was gearing up to be quite the serious threat indeed. And they were coming for the Guardians first, for some reason. 

That surprised her, a little bit. Surely if they were pissed off at White, they would come for her first. But Zenith couldn’t claim to understand their thought processes. “God, that’s scary.” She mentions, instead. Her voice sounds like she really means it. Rachel has always been a weaker person, a weaker persona. As far as the Guardians knew, she didn’t have any powers to defend herself with. “But i’m sure any other heroes that Dimitri can get in touch with will help, if they can. And I’ll make sure you’re all set up as best I can, I promise.” 

And she doesn’t miss a beat at the mention of the Collective, though that actually does worry her. It would be a lot to balance. But she was no strange in a challange. “Do you think they’ll help, if Jetstream asks them?” She manages to sound almost worried about it, “I hope they do. I’m pretty fond of this little tower of ours. I don’t really want it to become a set piece for a bad zombie movie.” 

[zenith-moi]

( the manor, training rooms, after her conversation with mind master @nightxhunter​ )

Zenith has been doing a good job, she thinks, in staying the hell away from Hunter. Space was important, she knew that. It had been pretty clear that Hunter was furious, hated her guts now, and as much as it stung Zenith could understand it. She might have been angry too, had the roles been reversed, if Hunter had hidden something so big from her for so long. So she’s letting herself be the bad guy, in her own head. Licking her wounds in private, where no one can see her being pathetic and a little sad that the whole SomethingNothing they had was over now.

But some things were worth risking pain for. Worth risking her own peace of mind. And she thinks there are some things Hunter deserves to know.

It had been strange, seeing Mind Master. Hunter’s brother, Hunter’s family. The person that Zenith imagined she loved most in the world. And there was a war on the horizon, brewing in the distance, getting closer by the day. Dr Judgement and his zombie army was putting Darren in danger, and all the rest of the Guardians. Even if Hunter didn’t love them all as much as her brother, she would wnat to know exactly what was happening.

So Zenith finds her in the training room, feeling bare still without her mask in place. She knocks on the frame of the door before she fully enters, and keeps her distance, a safe amount of room between her and Night Hunter. She tries not to think about the last time they were here together, the hot and heavy closeness that had been brewing between them. 

“I want to talk to you about something.” She says, voice strong. And then a little quieter. “I was talking to your brother, the other day. I thought you might want to know what’s going on over there.”