MIDNIGHT

They strolled through the halls, Disguised as nondescript maintenance workers while Leo murmured Workings; shifting suspicion to disinterest, bending light away from the security cameras.

They were finally in the last climb of the current arc and it was putting Leo on edge. It'd been building for weeks, starting from a small gang's sudden rise in the local criminal underground and following from there along a chain of suspicious people and businesses - of intrigue, power-hungry corruption, and an illegitimate flow of funds leading, finally, to here.

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Luke was back at Addergoole. Just for a couple of days, so far, but it was the official mark of his advisorial role being temporarily over. Leo had mined him for all the thoughts and information he could, before Luke had to leave - not because he needed it, but because it was stupid to waste valuable resources. Even if they weren't in this case his resources, exactly.

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previous

this is turning into a bloody saga

Leofric sat, waiting and watching, and the only thing keeping him from pacing nervously - or worse, charging the camp single-handedly - were decades of martial self-discipline. He'd sat down, worked out the whole plan in advance, made absolutely sure it would work, and yet... And yet. The younger man - Jeska, he'd said - was his, now; Leo was responsible for him. And he'd just sent him back into a pack of Nedetakaei, to get himself grabbed by a wild monster and hauled off.

It wouldn't be that bad, Leo reassured himself for the dozenth time. He'd turned off his new Kept's ability to feel pain, for the moment, and he'd heal him as soon as the others were sufficiently convinced he'd been killed, but it was still... uncomfortable.

He was never, ever, going to tell Cya how he'd done this.

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Another teleporter from Addergoole. Number six in the Air event.

Calcifer Stein scanned over the Games roster for the student in question and put a perfectly innocent asterisk next to her name. Nobody would question it; even knowing whose copy it was, no one would suspect anything of it. And the roster, it had the names of the students, their Mentors, and their year. Enough information to easily find them, later.

This one would be graduating at the end of next year. Calcifer considered the timing carefully. She probably already had her two children for her school and, as past experience has proved, the female Addergoole graduates were rarely willing to have another child, let alone sign them away to another project in any capacity. Which left the theft of genetic material as the only option.

Calcifer sighed, chewing absently at the end of a pen cap. It was a tricky option, legally speaking. What with the Law regarding maternal rights, the material had to be donated willingly. The only loophole that had worked in the past was that full disclosure was not necessary...

Berena. Berena would make a good surrogate. She liked children, she was always thrilled to assist her former Mentor, and she was excellent at persuasion and prevarication. Motherhood would make her effectively useless for any other projects or experiments for a few years, but with Wells as the genetic father again...

One more generation. One step closer to opening a gate to Elleheim.

Cya was happier. Every time Leo had started wondering what the hell he'd been thinking, he reminded himself of that: not dealing with Apollo had made a visible difference in her. That's why he volunteered to take Apollo off her hands, and it'd worked. Having to live with a confused and still resentful teenage Kept for ten months was a small price to pay for helping Cya.

Leo sighed, resisting the urge to put his head down on his desk as the first few students for his last class started wandering in. He'd known the kid was going to be a pain. He'd known he was reckless and stupid and full of himself in that way his fellow cy'Luca graduates specialized in.

He hadn't realized how little Apollo knew. The only things Addergoole'd taught him were from his Keeper (whoever she'd been). Leo'd disagreed when Luke said he'd "failed" Apollo when he'd come by to check on him, but now... Well, he was feeling a lot less sure about that.

Not that he was complaining about the situation. Leo flipped through his notebooks, looking for the one with today's lesson. Apollo wasn't outright rebelling or anything. He hadn't trashed the house or tried to run away or refused to come home or started sabotaging things or... well, Leo could think of a lot of ways to be a deliberately bad Kept, and so far Apollo hadn't done any of them. And it was nice having someone around the house besides Sayuri (his cat). Even if that someone was still too annoyed about the situation to be much good for conversation.

It had only been a week. Apollo'd been months with Cya before he started even trying to cooperate; he wasn't going to get used to being Kept by Leo in just one week. Leo could give him at least a month for things to settle down; maybe even two. The last thing he wanted to do at this point was make Apollo hate being Kept even more than--

The sound of a throat clearing caught his attention and he looked at the door. To his surprise, a young woman with metallic flower-like patterns on her skin and wearing the city guard uniform was standing there at attention. Frowning, Leo stood and gestured for her to come over, searching his memory for her name.

"Sondra, right? What's going on? Did something happen?" He kept his voice low, though the students had probably already started rumors about this...

"Not to the city, sir. I recognized him from your description," she added, just barely loud enough for him to make out. "Says his name's Apollo. We're holding him at the hospital until you get there."

The hospital.

He nodded curtly. "Thank you. I'll be there shortly; I need to let sa'Doomsday know."

"Glad to help, sa'Lightning-Blade." Sondra inclined her head and left.

Leo's jaw clenched and he flipped the notebook back shut. So much for giving the kid a generous adjustment period. Now, now he was annoyed.

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