The Beginning of the End

This is a long one. You might want to pack a lunch first. Go ahead, I'll wait.

Okay, backing up a step before I cover the Big Stuff. But, quick-like, because it’s not really that important.

The Carnies/Malta mission was just fun. I threw on all the fire auras, which I usually can’t do for very long because of the end drain. Thanks to Speed Boost, that wasn’t really a problem. I didn’t even remember Malta being in that mission, so it definitely surprised Fyre. She was scared, hence the fire. I’d think she was probably pretty scary, too. There was so much going on, though, that I don’t think anyone noticed either.

And then, on to the Big Stuff. Did you ever see the film of an atom bomb, how it wipes out everything around it, sort of vaporizes everything, and there’s the huge mushroom cloud, visible from miles and miles away? Yeah, it was like that.

Yeah, when I logged on, I did get aheads up of what was going on. Mason and Strym were talking in Pocket D. Fyre wouldn’t just wander into Pocket D and come across a meeting like that by chance, would she? Ehh, probably not. But, if she’d had people looking out for such a thing… Well, she did used to spend some time in Pocket D. It’s not stretching it that someone, an employee or just a regular customer, would call her, either with or without being paid off. In fact, it makes perfect sense. So, Fyre found Mason talking to Strym.

She came up behind Mason without him seeing her, in full view of Strym, though. “Well. Isn't this cozy? Can't imagine what's going on here,” she said. She’s practically ignoring that Strym’s even there, she’s so furious with Mason.

“You can, but it would be wrong,” Mason replied. This was about the last point in the conversation that Fyre, and I, held out hope for Mason. She, and I, hadn’t heard any of the previous conversation. Maybe it wasn’t what she thought?

Not exactly, but just as bad.

Strym continues talking to Mason, and Mason responds at one point, “But, you know, when E dies...I could care less what you do with the kid.” It seemed like every time he opened his mouth, he just made it worse.

Fyre even gave him a bit of chance to save himself, early on. “Mason. Were I mistaken about your intentions here, you would be doing absolutely nothing to change my mind right now.” She wanted to be wrong. She wanted him to at least try to cover. But, it just kept getting worse.
Like, a minute later, when he said, “Because if I turned over the brat, he'd never forgive me and probably fall on a sword somewhere.”

Fyre’s reply: “E fall on a sword? I don't know about that, but if you go near Jen, Mason, you'll wish you had it that easy.” Fyre figures that E would kill Mason first. That is, if he’s still alive.
Strym and Mason both think that Fyre is threatening Mason for herself. Strym tells Mason that if Mason joins him, she can’t touch him. Fyre, though, is more than up to the challenge, “If he hurts Jen, I promise, if I have to go through hell and back, he'll regret it. Strongly.” She meant it. Literally, figuratively, completely.

Strym doesn’t seem to like being ignored by Fyre,, and she was practically ignoring him. She knows what to expect from him, and she’s so furious with Mason, he’s just not important right now. But Strym’s paying attention. “And if you want to see Hell again... “ And he “points a finger to the back of his neck and makes a *bang* sound.“ That should have scared her a lot more than it did at the moment. But, she does have an ace up her sleeve, or a weight around her neck, maybe, but between that and how angry she is, she just laughs at him. She doesn’t properly think it out, but she (and I) does a little better later. What she wonders later is if Strym was more personally involved in her death. Was he there? Could he have been the one to pull the trigger? Maybe not, but it’s something she hadn’t even thought of before.

Mason says she’s not afraid of anything and makes his “marble” allusion again. Fyre can’t believe he’s still talking, still making an effort to dig his own grave. Mason says he’ll shut up. We all know how how unlikely that is.

Strym starts talking about Fyre’s demon and her ancestor. It sounds to Fyre as if Strym thinks that Katherine and the demon would be on his side. Fyre is entertained. Strym is scary, but he’s not on the demon’s level. And Katherine’s not interested in making deals. “You’d just be as much kindling as anyone else.” Strym keeps on for a minute, and Fyre tells him, “I'm sure she'd be interested to see what color you burn.” After a minute, she adds, “In fact, if you'd like to step outside, we can just find out now.” Strym just laughs and refuses. Fyre never thought he’d agree, of course.

Fyre knows, too, that soon she’ll have nothing to lose, and she won’t be afraid to go after Strym, or through anything to get to him. It takes some of the sting out of his threats. She over-plays it, and tries to use her apparent lack of fear to throw Strym off. Does it help? Probably not.

Strym leaves. And leaves Mason to Fyre. Jack appears momentarily, but Fyre immediately tells Jack to put Mason back out. She and I both expected Jack to refuse, and she was prepared to do whatever she could to make him, but Mason’s back instantly.

E shows up before Fyre can rip into Mason. And Mason tells an extremely short version of what happened, which doesn’t make him look that bad. Another few mintues, though, and Mason admits that he told Strym that Fyre knew where Jen was. And not just admits, but practically brags. He could have saved himself here, too. At least a little. An apology, admitting that he’d made a mistake, offering a way to help fix it… any of those would have “saved” him, to some degree. But he doesn’t do any of it. He doesn’t try to rationalize, or apologize, or even shift the blame to someone else.

“She wants to be the one with all the answers, then let her deal with being the one who has to answer the questions,” Mason says, proving to E and Fyre that Mason set Strym on Fyre on purpose. And with malice.

This is about the point that Fyre wants to see what color Mason burns. She doesn’t because it’s Pocket D. No violence. There’s a teleport dampener, so more than likely, there’s a some kind of power-dampener, too. And she knows that if she starts, or even thinks too much about starting, she won’t stop until he’s not moving any more. I didn’t even put any the auras on, because she wouldn’t have stopped at just hurting him a little. (And, running powers in Pocket D is just annoying. Almost as annoying as the constant NPC babbling.)

Even here, though, Fyre is expecting Mason to try to apologize, or say Strym tricked him, or something. Or, on the other hand, admit that he wanted her dead, so she can write him off for good. Okay, okay-- kill him.

E is no less angry. He doesn’t have Fyre’s anger-management problem, though, so his anger is calmer, and better expressed, since it does’t revolve around setting Mason on fire. He verbally writes Mason off, more than once.

Fyre’s still waiting for Mason to push her toward killing him, or (and the possibility gets less and less) excusing what he did. Or at least to try to get her to excuse what he did.

While she’s thinking, though, she realizes how well Strym set Mason up. The way Fyre sees it, Strym has gotten Mason to sign his own death warrant. Either he steps up and stands against Strym with the team, and Strym gets to kill him. Or, he continues his betrayal, and either E or Fyre kill him.

Mason keeps saying at Fyre’s people will protect her, or deal with Strym. Fyre won‘t show fear in front of Mason, especially not now, but she wants to make it clear to Mason that she realizes that Mason intends for Strym to kill her. “Mason, Strym has ten times the people that I do, and they're a lot meaner. I surprised him with getting Jen out of the way, that's the only reason it worked.”

And then they all begin to think about what everyone else will think of Mason now. Starting with Frost. Mason finally seems upset. Fyre does feel bad that Frost will be hurt, but she thinks it’s much better that Frost finally figures out how Mason really is, before he’s hurt worse, or physically hurt.

Mason gets stalled by another riff about how he doesn’t care about Jen. Definitely not the way to win E over. Mason says that Jen isn’t E’s daughter. E’s done. He can’t even speak, and he leaves.

Mason tries to “shoo” Fyre, but she’s still looking for a final reason to kill him. Or possibly at this point, a reason not to kill him. She may have already made up her mind.

Mason’s drinking heavily, and Fyre realizes later that he’s trying to make Jack come back out so that he can hide.

Fyre’s also seeing a chance to twist the knife. She can’t shove the knife in right now, but she can definitely twist it, and she’s going to enjoy it. Mason’s caused enough pain and grief, and she doesn’t have any reservations left in doing the same to him.

Mason does start to try to rationalize, a little. But, he doesn’t try hard enough, and it’s too late, anyway. The reasons don’t make logical sense, either.

“Everyone has a threshold,” Mason says, which makes no sense to Fyre. But she comes back with, “What’s yours?” She’s more than willing to help him find out.

“What would you rather have me do? Have him pepper me with questions, get me confused and then get the information anyway?” Mason asks. Yes, Fyre would have been happier with that. She would have still been angry, but she wouldn’t have been ready to kill him, like she is. It would have lacked the malice that Fyre sees now. Ignorance and stupidity can be excused. Evil intentions can’t. And that’s what Fyre sees in Mason now, in his willingness to sacrifice her, and Jen, and even E to Strym, in trade for Strym leaving Mason, and possibly Frost, alone. Evil.

Mason goes on about allegory involving Anton LeVey and the Garden of Eden. That didn’t help his case with her at all, and it didn’t make sense to her, either.

But it gives her time to prepare to twist the knife more. She lists people, his “friends,” and asks him how they’ll feel about him once they learn what he’s done, this time. Actually, she wouldn’t be surprised if they forgive him, or dismiss what he did, once again. But, she’s not going to present that option to him. She wants him to worry, to suffer. And she realizes that if they do feel the way she does about Mason’s actions, and cut Mason loose, that’s the worst thing that could happen to him. She doesn’t have to “hurt” him. He’d have hurt himself.

Mason tries to call Jack out, and Jack doesn’t respond. If Jack’s abandoned him, then Mason’s completely lost.

Mason’s losing focus, as well. He tells Fyre that Strym said she had “cracks.” “He said that you weren't as strong as I think you are,” Mason says. And that’s absolutely the truth. But Mason either doesn’t believe it, or won’t acknowledge it, and Fyre’s not about to prove it to Mason, and tells him that.

They talk another minute or two, and Fyre says, “Goodbye, Mason.” She doesn’t expect to ever talk to him as an ally again. She hurries outside to E, and apologizes to him for letting Mason distract her and make her angry. E thinks “nothing will be okay ever again,“ but Fyre assures him that they don’t have to worry about Mason anymore. Fyre does acknowledge that Strym probably would have come after her eventually, that Mason just put that on the fast track, but it doesn’t make it better.

They would have talked more, but Kit was around, and Fyre wanted to tell her what happened before Mason got to her and spun some story, making himself look good, or at least not so awful.

Fyre suspects that Kit has more than friendly feelings for Mason, and figures Kit is the most likely to get suckered by Mason. (And she was available.)

Between the two of them, Fyre and E explain what had happened to Kit. Kit seems angry. Well, a little. She seems more concerned with “helping” E and Fyre. But, Fyre still expects Mason to win Kit over, and is more than hesitant to tell Kit plans, figuring that Kit will eventually tell Mason. Fyre believes that Kit would do it with good intentions, but the results could still be bad, very bad. Fyre tries to explain to Kit that she’s not asking for help, just trying to help protect Kit from Mason, but Kit seems to take offense, and Fyre realizes she can’t explain her reasoning to Kit without offending her more, so tries to just stop talking.

They do discuss Mason’s reasoning briefly. Fyre thinks a big motivating factor for Mason is her death. She hasn’t always believed that Mason wants her dead, but she does now. When Mason killed the people who tormented him, he had a psychological excuse, and the drugs were affecting him. When he tried to kill E and Fyre, the first time, he could blame Ben’s influence. Now, he has no excuse. There’s no reason to hold back on him, this time. She figures that Mason either isn’t willing to take the consequences of killing her, or that he thinks he’s not powerful enough to do it, so he’ll have Strym do it for him.

Kit comes up with another motivation. Explaining her ideas, she says, “Well, one of them has him flying in with trumpets blaring and shouting ‘I'll save you, ma'am!’" She says that his quest for glory might make that a possibility. Fyre thinks that’s unlikely, and it’s nothing like anything she’s thought of.

So, what happens to Team Angst? It’s been broken before, but this time it’s shattered. There’s No Way that E or Fyre will ever trust Mason again. Right now, Fyre, and possibly E, is more likely to kill Mason than talk to him. I can see some far-out scenarios that might get Mason back in on the fight against Strym. Very far-out. At least partly because I know that E's player wants the team to beat Strym (aka the Kronos Titan) before the team moves on.

I don’t know what’s going to happen next. I didn’t expect any of what happened to happen, either. Isn’t that why this stuff is fun?