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Supply runs were always dangerous. They planned them as best they could, but there were so many constraints.

Most of the time, there was almost no point in traveling in plainclothes. Herger was still fair of face and could travel without much difficulty, if he wanted to, but there was very little Laney could do to make her own appearance less suspicious. In winter, it was a little easier. She could bundle up in a heavy scarf and walk around with her face half-buried in Herger's sleeve and just look like one of those people with hideously bad circulation who ceased to function outdoors in cold weather, leeching off of other people for warmth. In mid-summer, though, no matter what, covering her face or openly wearing obvious mutilation scars was too apt to draw questions. There was no point going out in anything but their powered forms, with a cat for company.

Weight and size were their second set of constraints. There was very little that Hvergelmir could load in Nærøyfjord's arms that he couldn't carry, but anything they could carry, Eikthyrnir had to be able to carry plus about four hundred pounds, and fit all piled on caribou-back, and there were limits to how much that was. Much though she hated to admit it, Nær's otherwise-disheartening weight loss had served them well, here -- they could carry more, fit more. Even the difference between a full-grown Mauvian cat and a kitten (or *********, when she could be spared) could mean something they didn't have to leave behind. They traveled light as they could. They had to.

In this case, though, the biggest constraint they were working against at the moment was time.

Hvergelmir wasn't too worried about whether they could actually deal with regular patrols, especially lieutenants who couldn't teleport -- Nærøyfjord more than outmatched them on his own, and was reliable as an atomic clock; she'd never once even had to draw her staff in her own defense, traveling with him at her side. As he'd said, though, encountering a patrol at all was a guarantee of trouble.

In this case, it wasn't really her companion's fault. She'd been choosing the route, trying to shunt them through the city streets unseen like some great game of Pac-Man played only by auric sense. It didn't always work out, which occasionally meant he occasionally had to deal with what she couldn't navigate them around.

Last time, they'd dodged a mounting tail by each winking out to their wonders a few blocks away from where they'd left the bodies, and the supply run had taken three days before someone in the city could get word to both of them that their route was clear again to finish their task.

This time that wasn't an option. They had reports of a diphtheria outbreak among the children in one of the caves -- which meant that either the Negaverse had cooked up some kind of a creepy vaccine-resistant strain of it, or the DPT vaccines they'd been getting for the last several years hadn't been legit. Either way, they couldn't lose three days this time. Already, one of the Earth knights who'd been living in the city as a Watcher had put his wonder at risk travelling to some of the hospitals near it to pilfer their unexpired supplies of anti-toxin. The serum was too seldom used, these days, and that made it too high-profile to ask Ganymede to lift locally: they'd be on her in an instant. As it was, an Earth knight was now going to have the Negaverse sniffing the countryside around his Wonder for a while.

The only way out was through, then.

It's fine, Hvergelmir indicated in a straightforward, placating gesture. Then a head shake and a point for Not your fault, which looked more like Not you, but she figured was close enough for guesswork. Nær had a good head for emergencies, anyway -- she imagined he'd just as likely ignore the gestured chatter and focus on the actual instructions. She tapped an invisible watch. We'll just hurry.

Hvergelmir closed her eyes and put two fingers to the bridge of her nose for a moment, concentrating. Sure enough, there was a captain out at distant range, just at the periphery of her senses, and another patrol a few blocks off, like Nær had predicted. As far as she could see it, that left them with about five options, other than retreat.

To the left, directly through the captain's path -- a risk if they lost the element of surprise and the captain teleported away to raise the alarm. To the right, opting for the two lieutenants, instead: that option put them in the same place they already were, with even less time to spare before one of the two missing patrols failed to report in. Through the middle was an obvious gap, and tempting -- but if the missing patrol was noticed too soon, they could be left pinched between both enemies, and in a really tight spot. The sewers were quieter, but still sometimes monitored, and slow -- by the time they had to come back up, the streets might be swarming and they'd be caught. And rooftops, while tempting, would slow them too, and were a better choice at night: in daylight, it was too easy for the Negaverse to do surveillance on them.

None of the options were good.

Peanutbutter was settled on her shoulder, little claws having dug into Hvergelmir's skin during their brief skirmish. She let the kitten stay there, a hand running soothingly over soft fur like eiderdown.

They'd go the fastest route, then. Straight up the gut, between captain and lieutenants, and hope luck was on their side. They could do it running, if they had to, till they got to a clear area again.

She pointed their course, and looked to Nær for confirmation, posing a question in simple gestures. A finger pointed at him, a fist struck into her palm, three fingers upheld.

Do you think you could take all three before they could get word out, if you had to?

It was always a comfort, to have Nærøyfjord along. He took things in such stride, the way Carmine always used to try to give Laney 'the right tools to do' in the face of overwhelming anxiety. (She wasn't sure she'd succeeded, but time and need could habituate a person to a lot of things, even panic -- and it had been some time since Laney had been free to visit her therapist anymore.)

Her companion, she was fairly certain, had never had that problem, not in this life, or the one he'd traded away before it. Reforged he might be, but Nærøyfjord was Titan in everything but the window dressing: the same reliable old boy scout with an easy smile and a big heart. He carried them with him as sure as his hammer.

(Do you think you get to choose which memories you keep? someone had asked her once.

No one knows, she'd said, not for sure. But from what I've seen, Chaos takes cruelly -- and will leave you with whatever makes it easiest to keep you. Whatever memories will hold you in your darkest hour and make it hard to find who you are at the heart of you.

With Order, I've always believed... It's something like a choice your heart makes. You keep whatever you need most. Whatever makes you the most you in the deepest part of your soul. I like to think we hang onto our true selves with both hands, when it really matters.

She'd seen a lot of people since then who'd been purified. She didn't know if that was actually true or not -- but it had felt like a nice idea, at the time.)

Her boy scout, here, missed no opportunity to be helpful; he bent to tie her skirts out of the way while she made her choice, stole a kiss to her knee as his own reward for good service thoughtfully rendered. For gratitude and fondness, she carded the fingers of one hand through his hair, letting them linger a little. Then, for brazen cheek of liberties taken, she swatted him lightly on the forehead before he got to his feet. (It was an old game, after all, and there were rules to how it was played.)

They traveled with all the careful haste they could.

Laney had lived in Destiny City all her life, and there were parts of it she knew quite well. Some of its boroughs had never been places she'd frequented, but this area had always been safe and familiar, especially during the day. There was a gelato place at the next corner, she remembered wistfully. They made Belgian waffles and crepes with gelato as the topping à la mode. Laney missed restaurants. They all missed restaurants.

Around them, the captain to the left was still idling in place. Sitting in a bookstore somewhere, perhaps, or reading a newspaper at a table outside a cafe. Hopefully not shaking a crystal communicator to see why it didn't seem to be getting reception to one of their patrols.

The patrol to the right had turned to continue on their circuit, and were a block or two farther back, by now. In another few blocks, Hvergelmir, Nærøyfjord, and Peanutbutter would be safely out of their patrol zone and into the next. The farther they could get from the bodies, the safer they'd be. Their allies in the Mainstay were good about keeping the Negaverse's resources stretched as thin and preoccupied as they could, which meant they couldn't possibly muster all their available personnel every time someone in the lower ranks was picked off. Distance was safety.

But she thought she felt the captain move.

She thought she felt the patrol stop.

Damn.

Minutes, now, from the missing report till they found the bodies. Minutes till they called in reinforcements and started their search. Time was thinning. She thumbed the ring on her left hand warily, the opal that could call her summons worn inward, turned to her palm. There was still a chance they could make it to their pickup site, their waiting contact. She wasn't prepared to give up on that yet.

Being picked up and carried made a little bit of a dent in her pride. She thought, fleetingly, of Vanessa -- that warm, bright face smiling back at her, encouraging her along on that old jogging path every time Laney had slowed to a stop or tripped over nothing but exhaustion or simply flopped down on the ground and declared her very serious intentions to no longer go on living if she was going to have to run so much. Vanessa had never been daunted by any of it. It was always you're great!, you've got this!, come on, we'll finish it out together!

Would Sailor Vulcan have botched this mission like Hvergelmir had? She didn't know. She liked to think she wouldn't.

Still, Hvergelmir couldn't really object to the free ride she was getting. Nærøyfjord had over a foot of height on her, and even with the unavoidable loss of muscle mass he'd gone through in the past two years, in his knight form he could carry vending machines as easily as she carried a stack of books. He was faster even carrying her than she could run on her own, on foot.

Peanutbutter seemed to agree with this decision, and moved with a little fearful clamber to what must have seemed to be a place of superior safety and higher, steadier vantage on Nærøyfjord's shoulder. Poor, frightened kitten.

Hvergelmir directed them another few blocks, trying to stick to their current plan as long as they could while she considered what the next one should be.

Energy multiplied behind them. Two more captains teleporting in, and the slower advance of Chaos auras that must've been lieutenants; nearby patrols were being recalled to fan out in a search party. The patrol in the zone up ahead of them had picked up pace, and was now heading in their general direction, to join up the search as well. They'd have to divert a little, find a way around. (Or kill this pair, too. Knock them out, at least.) She pointed Nærøyfjord away to the right. A few blocks would slow them from reaching their rendezvous, but it was better than a fight that could give away their position immediately.

If things didn't work out, if trouble reached them before the drop, what then? Nærøyfjord was good for a fight, if it came to it -- and she could maybe manage two opponents, on her own, burning her magic on her aspect, but it depended on numbers.

Her magic was against her, these days. She hadn't lit the rising star in years -- with the city overrun by the Negaverse, it was likely to call more enemies than it would allies, to send up a distress beacon. That was lives lost, lives they hadn't reckoned losing.

She could light it at its lower level, of course. Betray their position only locally. Call the entire search party on them, but also the one other knight they knew to be in the area: their contact that was supposed to meet them. He'd bring the antitoxin to their location -- and from there, she could call down Eikthyrnir and they could make the jump to one of the boltholes in range -- but that was a solution for only two of them, it was all Eikthyrnir could carry. It meant Nærøyfjord or the other Earth knight staying behind to die. That meant having to decide which was worth the most: a Watchman, a Guard, or a cave full of sick children.

God forbid she choose. Except that she might have to -- and then God forbid she didn't.

The alleyway they were trying dead-ended in a wall, new construction. They'd have to go back. There was little chance the new patrol wouldn't hear them running, at this distance.

It was frustrating not being able to speak. With her companion keeping his eyes ahead, getting across her intentions was even harder. Hvergelmir drew a finger across Nærøyfjord's throat so he could feel the gesture without needing to see it, then pointed toward the twin auras of the nearby patrol.

Kill them both. Keep moving.

Hvergelmir had to shift slightly, to keep from losing her grip while Nærøyfjord jumped them ledge-to-landing-to-wall up to the rooftops of Destiny City. His hold was fine, but her left arm had started to burn from her shoulder outward, then gone entirely numb. Her heart stuttered a few dizzy, staggered beats. She tried to ignore it. That was her warning from her Wonder, familiar over the years: she was skirting dangerously close to the bounds of her oath.

It was, admittedly, a fuzzy definition of 'to defend my own life,' and an even fuzzier one of not raising arms against Negaverse officers -- but the roaring cauldron had yet to strike her down dead entirely. She wondered when she'd push her luck too far.

Still, landing on a rooftop from an easy drop was hardly difficult with one good arm and two fully functioning legs; when Nærøyfjord let her go, she fell into a tripod crouch to catch herself on the black rooftop.

The Earth knight had already half dispatched with their opponents by the time Hvergelmir got back on her feet. She crossed to where the fallen lieutenant was trying to drag herself, keeping a look out to make sure they weren't about to be spotted. It was the work of a bit of bluffing to make herself seem threatening from this vantage -- she wasn't (couldn't) actively doing anything to bring the woman to harm; one arm was hanging temporarily dead at her side; the Mauvian on her shoulder (she couldn't feel PB there, but was still sure of the little fluffball's presence) was a tiny kitten -- but she stood over the woman all the same, letting her shadow fall ominously across the lieutenant's face, standing at an angle to look down on her.

Across from them, Nærøyfjord was palming the other lieutenant's face in one big, sure hand, then calmly cracking the back of his skull open against the building's edge like a large egg that he was very coolly angry with. (No, not actually angry, though, never angry -- fury was never Nærøyfjord's refuge. His justice was tempered by absolute honor, or cooled by patient, cheerful resolve; this man was simply in the way and needed not to be.)

The remaining lieutenant was taking out her communication crystal -- presumably to summon help. That was obviously not an option: Hvergelmir bent to snatch it out of her hand before she could.

These crystals . . . if they break, it sends out a distress signal, right? she pondered briefly.

A fall from this height's bound to crack one open when it hits the ground. It could buy us some time.

She looked over at Nærøyfjord, showing him the crystal -- then mimed throwing it through the air, and pointed on a diagonal away from the direction they'd come from. He could certainly throw harder than she could. And life was coming back to her left arm in distracting sensations, pins-and-needles spiking up through her fingertips like some sort of scalding hot acupuncture -- not the best circumstances to practice her fastball.

She offered a sequence of upheld fingers and simple pointing to relay her instructions.

One: the remaining lieutenant.

Two: the comm crystal.

Three: off the roof.

Yes?

Hvergelmir looked on, entranced, as Nærøyfjord swung his hammer on her say-so to cave in a woman's head. There wasn't much left, afterwards. Not a very kind corpse to leave. The other lieutenant at least still had his face.

She would've looked away from the killing blow, wished with all of her might that she could -- but she owed the dead at least a little better than that. You should be willing to look at your own handiwork. Never pass a sentence that offends you too much to witness. And it would've dishonored her companion, too -- who did his work without complaint, however blunt and messy it was, and swung his hammer to end two lives at her command. His hands were bloodstained a hundred times over because she'd sworn to keep hers clean, and Nærøyfjord had never once asked otherwise. Looking away would've dishonored everything he'd ever done for her.

Hvergelmir watched, and wondered what he thought about, in that moment. My use is simple, but it fits, he'd told her once. I am not ashamed to be simple. I wish only to serve well.

Maybe nothing troubled him, in the moment when he was swinging his hammer. Maybe there was no time for a proper soldier to think, in the midst of battle -- judgments had to be made so quickly. Or maybe his mind was already moving onward, even in that moment, preparing for his next task.

But he thought about it eventually. She knew that much. His honor had always been so important to him. He'd always wanted to believe in the people who'd asked him to take lives. He wanted it to be just. If he'd never thought about it at all, he wouldn't have left the Negaverse, as he did. Wouldn't have offered her his friendship, even earlier than that, just on the strength of her desire to make this war an honorable one. Wouldn't have looked so affected by the deaths he'd exacted and the ones he'd ordered.

Nærøyfjord was a gentle soul. To her, he was all the honor in the world. If she'd stood beside him against all the armies of the heavens, Hvergelmir would've still been sure her side had the man with the purest heart.

That was the sort of person she was asking to kill people. She wondered if he would ever find her orders wanting.

Not now, though. Now there were still sick children, and too much auric movement in the rear distance for her to even discern what actions the search parties had taken, and Nærøyfjord was jumping them all down to street level again and on their way. He was asking about her arm.

Even now, movement was returning to it with the tingling bite of a limb after it had fallen asleep. Hvergelmir forced it into motion, hooked around his neck to steady herself.

I asked you to do something I shouldn't have, she wanted to say. I swore an oath not to raise arms against a Negaverse officer unless my life was in danger, then without being sure it was, I asked you to bear arms on my behalf. My Wonder is warning me that loose definitions of 'life-threatening danger' and 'not raising arms' are not in the spirit of my oath, even if they are in the letter of it.

None of this was remotely anything she could convey in one-armed, simplified gestures.

Instead, she just answered by tracing the oval seal on her shoulder and tapping it a few times to indicate my oath. Then she gave him a bracing little squeeze on the shoulder with her left hand, to prove it was working again, and made a casual brushing-off motion in the air with the other. Doesn't matter.

Their rendezvous should be just around this corner -- in an old printing facility for a newspaper that had gone out of business when the Negaverse had apparently disagreed with them about what constituted 'all the news that was fit to print.' Hvergelmir crossed her fingers a little superstitiously. They were so close she could almost smell the phantom scent of paper off a hot printing press.

The little glowy star was like a little love note sent down from the heavens to tell them they'd succeeded. Hvergelmir looked at it and felt like she was completing a level in Super Mario Bros. and making the victory leap at the end. Their congratulatory star.

Thank God. She smiled so broadly that the apples of her cheeks showed it, and her eyes curled, and she nodded. Yes. That was it.

Sighing with heavy relief, she closed the remaining space between where Nærøyfjord had gone ahead and her own slower movement, then gestured that he could pick up the cooler and they could be on their way.

Hvergelmir held out her palm, turned up to show her companion her thumb poised over the opal ring that housed her very-familiar summons, then raised her eyebrows to check. Ready?

When she was sure he was, she lifted a silent call to the heavens -- and Eikthyrnir came.

The great beast's hooves touched down soundlessly to the floor, all grace and elegance, glimmering and featherweight. Her friend and other constant companion. There was a great huff, and Hvergelmir smiled, reaching up to lay a hand across the broad white starburst of fur over the caribou's head.

Had they been transporting somethig more difficult, she might've left the saddle to Nærøyfjord and made the jump with one foot in the stirrup and a hand wrapped around one of the long prongs of Eikthyrnir's antlers, leaving the seat to the Earth knight out of necessity. As it was, the burden was manageable this time with both of them astride.

Eikthyrnir huffed merrily at Nærøyfjord, who was familiar and safe. Hvergelmir stood aside, gesturing for her companion to saddle up first. Their work here was mercifully done -- the caribou could do the best part of the remainder.

Let's go home.