#longcoatcaptainzero

Zero’s holding all the cards. He knows he is. He has the best hand - the only hand in this game, in fact - but somehow Wyatt Cain doesn’t seem to see it, always ready with a quick reply, always calm and collected, no matter what he seems to be facing. It’s infuriating.

At his side, he feels his own hand clench into a fist.

It would be so easy.

But they weren’t supposed to attack the Tin Men. Not yet. The Mystic Man was still useful, still being just the right side of cooperative.

But he wouldn’t be useful forever. Soon, he’d have the evidence they needed to find the resistance. And then…

He relaxed his fist.

“Well, don’t worry, Cain,” he smiled. “I bet you’ll be getting away from all the politics very soon. Who knows? Maybe I’ll even put in a word for you.”

Cain isn’t a stupid man. He’s many things, though, He’s a damn good police officer, and he fancies himself a decent man. He’s a good husband, and well on his way at being a good father. But he’s not stupid.

He works for the Mystic Man, but anyone close enough to the guy can see that the walls are thinning, breaking down and letting in the cold and the dark.

He knows that the time is coming that he’s going to have to make some very difficult choices, to stay and fight, or join and be protected.

But now is not that time. Zero has the upper hand, or at least, Cain wants him to have the upper hand. He’s not ready to make that decision.

The war was won--but somehow it didn’t quite feel over. DG and her sister ruled the Outer Zone together, but the people still despised Azkadellia. She had been the face of the Witch for too long; they could no longer discern the source of their misery from its first victim after the First Gale. Jeb was training to become a proper Tin Man; Raw had returned to his community, to help it heal; Cain was retained, by DG, to reorganize the Longcoats and make them into a force for good; Ambrose was...dead. Officially now.

Brain and body had evolved in their time apart from each other: they were no longer biologically compatible with one another, completely unable to reconcile and reunite. Glitch could count on one hand exactly how many minutes he had been Ambrose again (an astonishing three-and-a-half, all unconscious as far as the others knew), and although the other him had done everything he could to fix his damaged counterpart--there wasn’t much. The genius could not give it all back. Glitch awoke, sweating and gasping, to clinical terms of failure as if he was just one experiment among many.

The heartbreak on DG’s face was almost enough to break him entirely.

The unfixable headcase was kept around, but he had no business being in the Central City...save to run errands like these under the noses of the new queens. DG hadn’t ever seen what had happened to Zero. Azka D has only known he was missing, Raw had his people to worry about, a community to rebuild. Jeb was too busy with his new training to complete the check on the old resistance outposts. Cain had flat-out forgotten with all the new responsibilities on his plate (or so Glitch hoped, unable to imagine his friend as being quite so sadistic). But Glitch remembered. Glitch remembered--a little glade in the woods, and a big iron suit, like the one at the cabin. Something his hands had wrought a long time ago. Something he stood before now wringing his hands.