Recruitment Tour (Quickdraw, Celeste, and Stareater) - COMPLETE

”Going there wouldn’t affect me any different than an ordinary person. But I still can’t go somewhere that cold for long,” Stareater explained. Places as cold as Canada or Norway were one thing, but the arctic was a whole other field of cold entirely. ”Assuming I didn’t freeze to death, it’d be next to impossible for me to have access to backup energy if my battery pack ran out or was damaged. I wouldn’t lose energy by being there, I’d just be flash frozen.”

Her harness was a tool for getting around things like this in emergency situations. It was a lifeline for her, for when Stareater went to cold places or places that were dark and didn’t exactly have indoor heating. ”If I had a way to tolerate that extreme cold, I’d still only have maybe two hours at most to search for someone.”

"Perhaps myself and the Seraphic Court can help with that," Compassion started. "Every member of my Knighthood has some form of item that denotes their station. For normal humans, it comes in the form of their enchanted weapons and armor. Perhaps we can forge you a similar item to act as emergency power reserves."

Compassion looked at Astrid, her eyes glowing a serene green, and earnestly began, "Such an item would serve you well while in my Knighthood. Before you commit, there are some things you ought to know. All members of my Knighthood commit to a series of tenets and cultivate virtues in accordance to good. They are: compassion, mercy, justice, humility, generosity, temperance, will, and redemption. Sins to this Knighthood include cruelty, coercion, greed, pride, excessive ambition, vengeance, indulgence, and despair. To become part of my Knighthood means cultivating those virtues and seeking mastery over these sins. Should you fall too far, whatever we fashion for you will no longer work."

Compassion smiled softly, in a motherly manner, saying, "I would not have approached you, with this personal information or with the general responsibilities of what it is to be one of my Knights, if I didn't believe you capable of these virtues. I will not force you to accept this oath - it must be of your own will. With all this in mind, I would ask if you would join."

A magic tool that kept her alive longer in exchange for helping people along the way, as she always had? Sure. It didn’t sound like a bad deal in theory. The only possible pitfall in that was the wavy that Stareater was somewhat proud of her capabilities. In a mundane sense, she considered herself a decent scientific mind. Less in an egotistical sense and more of a factual one; Grass grows, birds fly, and Astrid Black knows her way around a lab.

”Fine. As long as it’s something that isn’t awkward to keep with me as I’m moving,” She decided. ”And then what? Am I supposed to track Skadi to her lair and undo her “phylactery?” What am I getting myself into?”

"If you can successfully find her lair and use your power on her phylactery, we can make a determination if that will be enough to destroy or bypass its magical barrier," Compassion said. "If your Whitespace energy destroys the phylactery on the spot, so much the better - Skadi will be unable to resurrect if her phylactery is destroyed, and perhaps, she may even die on the spot. But first, you'll need to track the lair itself; tailing her undead as they travel to and from the region would be a good way to start. I'll put in the request to the enchanters right away."

In time, as Astrid's powers and their drawbacks were assessed, the Seraphic Court would settle for something fairly small and easy to move: a ring. At first blush, it would appear to be little more than a silver band with a teardrop-cut amethyst embedded in it. In reality, it would end up functioning as an additional battery that would passively charge while in Moonshadow. The enchanters would design the ring in such a way as to charge Astrid or drain her until both her and the ring carried the same charge level.

It would still be susceptible to thermodynamics, however. Some energy would become unusable during transfer to or from the ring, and Stareater herself would be able to use it as an emergency power flush if she was overcharged herself.

This ring would ultimately be the result of the design specifications Astrid had set forward. In an emergency, it might work as a lifeline to pull her into Moonshadow.

Outside of San Francisco, California

The law offices in the seedier parts of San Francisco were closed, but that didn’t stop District Attorney Simon Dufresne from staying late, counting out what he made from his side gig. He was paid quite a bit from his side job, with promises from the foreign actors that his actions wouldn’t catch up to him. Driving home to a rich gated community outside the city, he was rather panicked to see a mess of paperwork on his darkened desk in his personal office - paperwork that should have been either locked away or disposed of.

“You know, Mister Dufresne…” a thick male Texan voice said. “Contrary to what you may think, I don’t mind it when a prosecutor makes a little money on the side. I just wish it weren’t done by taking bribes to burn smokin’ gun evidence that would land a multiple-murderer and rapist in jail for life. Cover-up like that woulda seen you hang from the gallows in my time.”

Dufresne turned around to see a man in a full cowboy getup and a bandana worn over his face, looking at him disapprovingly.

“Quickdraw…shit,” the corrupt District Attorney said.

“All that paperwork has already been faxed to several law offices around the United States,” Quickdraw said. “They’ll all know that you were bought out by cartels - for years - across the border in the morning. I asked the most important question about you: ‘how does a divorced man on a government salary who owes not only alimony, but child support for three manage to afford a cushy home like this in high society?’ Immediate idea would be that it was kept in the divorce settlement; except your first mortgage payments for this place happened after the divorce. There wasn’t a single loan taken out to afford this place - on a prosecutor’s salary, it shoulda been foreclosed on by now.”

“If you’re feeling contrite, you could easily shoot yourself here and now,” Quickdraw said as he drew a suppressed pistol. “It would definitely show how guilty your conscience is. Or I could do it myself.”

“How exactly do you plan to make it look like a suicide if you shoot me from there?” Dufresne asked.

“I’ve been in bounty hunting and vigilante work for nearly a century and a half, Mister Dufresne. Believe me when I say I could snipe you from Sacramento and still get the proper effect,” Quickdraw said. “There’s also the inconvenient fact that the ledger was leaked on the internet soon after the faxes. The call is yours: you can shoot yourself with the nine millimeter you keep in your desk, or I can do it for you. Either way, it will look like a suicide.”

“Whatever you’ve been paid…”

“Begging for your life by bribing me the same way the cartels bribed you? I’m taking out trash like you pro bono. At least die with some measure of dignity,” Quickdraw said. “Otherwise, someone else might kill you - and presuming you survive tonight, you’ll be dragged from courtroom to courtroom, one testimony after another for years while everything you own is taken away from you.”

Glaring daggers at the Old West bounty hunter, Dufresne opened his drawer and began pointing the muzzle of his pistol to his own head. He offered a few choice words, though.

“I’ll see you in Hell, Mister Crenshaw,” Dufresne said.

“As many people as I’ve killed…ain’t no doubt in my mind,’ Quickdraw said.

Quickdraw immediately took the hit from the nine millimeter rounds for two purposes. One, since he was armored in Level 3 armor, he knew it wouldn’t penetrate and draw blood. Two - and this was more important - because it wouldn’t penetrate the plates, the rounds wouldn’t hit the wall behind him either.

With practiced movements, Quickdraw grabbed the hand and arm of Dufresne and redirected the muzzle to the man’s head.

“You’re scum, Quickdraw…” Dufresne cursed, before the trigger was pulled on him, splattering the brains of the corrupt district attorney over the wall. Falling to the ground, the pistol was still snug in the dead Dufresne’s hand, with no trace that Quickdraw’s gloved hands had ever touched.

“Yeah…just like you,” Quickdraw admitted. “But at least I don’t pretend I’m not.”

The drop down from the second story messed Quickdraw up, but his healing factor immediately healed the muscle tears and the fractures. Like a ghost’s shadow, he left the gated community as if he had never been there. Even most of the brass had been cleaned up before he left.

Only one of the nearby houses had started turning on its lights - a delayed reaction to the gunshots. These high-society folks got too comfortable away from the violence of the city. They wouldn’t have survived a single day on the frontier back in the 19th century.

The US had turned into a nation of deadbeats as the centuries passed while Quickdraw had remained sharp. In the era of the Old West, the law was stretched thin. Therefore, vigilantism wasn’t an option - it was a requirement. Even the otherwise law-abiding homesteader was likely to have just as much blood on his hands as the average outlaw.

Mistakes did happen in those days due to vigilantism, but the law-abiding citizen was still acting in good faith. When mistakes happened today, the worst that tended to happen was someone resigning in disgrace. Most of the time, however, the punishment may as well have been a slap on the wrist. Legitimate malevolence in the legal system, however, tended to be covered up or simply bought out of.

Quickdraw felt a hint of pride for eliminating yet another corrupt official who allowed others to suffer because he was paid enough not to prosecute. Personally, he’d have preferred laying the evidence out in the light of day and hanging the corrupt bastard out in public. But in a corrupt system, this was the next best thing he could manage.

By the time dawn came, Quickdraw was across the state lines into Arizona again and two bottles of whiskey deep. David Crenshaw spent a fortune buying his homestead back from the state government. He’d also learned the ins and outs of the Homestead Acts. His homestead was located in high country, southwest of Flagstaff. It was one of those places that was off the beaten path.

He was his third bottle of whiskey in, and he was genuinely beginning to consider Compassion’s words. He held the diary of his daughter in his hand. He’d only briefly skimmed it, and it looked like it had continued on into the Roaring Twenties. Then the entries were cut off…like Rosalie simply disappeared.

Did he want to know what happened? Could he really bring himself to read what was in the diary?

Justice sat upon his grand Throne of Law, a construct of cold, unyielding metal and stone, positioned at the apex of the Realm of Order. The glow of starlight from the vast, swirling void of perfection surrounding him cast long shadows across the geometric patterns etched into the floor. His Heralds, the Thrones, stood in silent reverence before him, their postures stiff, their faces unreadable. The faint hum of cosmic energy reverberated in the chamber as they delivered their reports.

One of the Thrones, an angular being of light and precision, stepped forward. Its voice was a measured cadence, as though every syllable had been weighed and found suitable. "Lord Justice, our surveillance reveals continued activity from your sister, Lady Compassion. Her travels have seen her touch the lives of the downtrodden and forgotten. Her efforts swell her ranks with Disciples of Virtue and self-proclaimed knights. Her intent appears aligned with opposition to your crusade."

Justice’s gaze was inscrutable, his swirling, galaxy-like visage giving no outward sign of emotion. Inside, however, he pondered the audacity. His sister, ever the sentimentalist, gathering her flock like a shepherd of lost lambs. Did she not see the inevitability of failure in her efforts? Her so-called knights were fragile; their resolve was forged in the fires of despair, but despair had a way of crumbling under pressure.

Still, he could not dismiss her entirely. Compassion's growing influence hinted at a defiance she had thus far veiled. Neutrality, their agreement of coexistence, was her shield. Yet her actions suggested the first cracks in that pact.

Justice raised a hand, silencing the Throne mid-report. His voice resonated through the chamber, an unwavering beacon of authority. "Her numbers do not concern me. Let her gather the disillusioned, the downtrodden, the weak. Let her comfort them with promises of hope. The quality of my Heralds remains untainted, their purpose undiluted. They are not swayed by the illusions of virtue she peddles to the desperate."

Another Throne stepped forward, its angular form crackling with controlled energy. "My Lord, do we act against her? Her defiance—"

"No," Justice interrupted. His voice was sharper, cutting through the suggestion like a blade. "Order demands adherence to the agreements made. To act preemptively would be to betray my purpose. Her Disciples are her concern, not mine... yet. She prepares for a war she cannot win, against a peace she refuses to accept. Her sin is Disunity, and in that, she will find her undoing."

Justice leaned back in his throne, the vast chamber reverberating with his calm authority. "Continue to watch. Inform me of her movements, her recruits, her intentions. But do not interfere unless she crosses the boundaries of our neutrality. She believes she builds an army of knights, but they are no more than a mob of zealots with dulled swords. Criminals, destitutes, and the abandoned donning silvered helms and handed glowing swords without any true purpose or cause of righteousness with which to give weight to that title of 'Knight' which she so carelessly adorns to them. Let her have her numbers. In the end, they will crumble under the weight of their own chaos."

The Thrones bowed as one and stepped back, their forms dissipating into the shifting patterns of light that filled the chamber. Justice remained, his gaze fixed on the distance, where the mortal realm played out its unceasing conflict.

"Sister," he muttered, his voice a low echo in the silence. "You preach virtue, yet all you breed is defiance. When the time comes, the weight of your Disunity will be yours alone to bear."

As David read through the old diary, he came across what he'd hoped he never would: his daughter exposed to violence and hatred he had never wanted her to experience. During the First World War, she had become someone else's victim. Forced upon by a madman. If David had been around...if he had been there.

He'd have shot the madman dead without a second thought. This was what the current so-called "justice system" produced.

Somehow...his Meta gene had passed onto his daughter, as she still looked in the prime of her life when she had disappeared. And the last entry in her diary made mention to "Justice", and how she was going off to accept an offer he had made her. Somehow, he would know what happened to her - and yet, he was the kind to hate people like David himself - a man who had put his entire being into atoning for his past as an outlaw - on principle alone.

Still, Justice was David's only lead as to what happened to Rosalie. But, given that Compassion is his sister...

David would be lying if he said he was going to accept Compassion's offer completely out of the good of his own heart; and he was going to make sure she knew that. David had been a lot of things: a deserter, a killer, a thief. But he abhorred hypocrisy. And if everything Compassion was telling him about her brother was true, Justice fit the bill of a hypocrite.

Justice could have stepped in any number of times - before David had ever been born - to establish order well before the world's population had gotten as large as it did. Could have stepped in long before New York or London, but he didn't. It was almost like he was waiting for humanity to get desperate enough to want to turn to his methods.

As ineffective as she was, at least Compassion was trying for others, even if it didn't always work out.

"Compassion," David started. "If you can hear me...we need to talk."