Brothers in Arms

Eclipse: Right Here; Right Now

"What I can't believe is that they thought they'd get away with that," Agatha states, shaking her head without removing her chin from her supporting hand. She looks around the table, glancing over the Commander, Andrews, Rouge, Shadow, and I. The two regional Commanders who also knew about the mission had commed for the overview, but it's just the six of us left now, discussing the events of the past two months. "How many times has some villainous organization tried to conquer the world with an army? I'm losing count."

"Not an original plan, to say the least. But, it could have caused a lot more harm than the Doctor's half-baked schemes if it had festered a little while longer," Shadow replies from next to me, looking grave. Around him, everyone's faces show similar sentiments, the late night meeting bringing out our darker thoughts.

"Well, aren't you a ray of sunshine?" Andrews raises his eyebrow, having to comment on Shadow like always, and I wince as my head throbs for the enth time. My headache began forming off and on after we left the mission scene this morning, and it's been steadily progressing ever since I left my room.

"What surprises me is the apparent lack of planning to that end," Commander Tower remarks, reviewing the paper files again. "We've heard from several people now that the plan was simply to create as many soldiers as possible and control them using an artificial hivemind, but no course of action was set beyond that."

"Waste of resources, paying for all that when they didn't even know if it would work," Rouge replies, snorting with amusement. "Are you sure there wasn't a plan?"

"Apparently, it was projected the development of the soldiers had several years still to run, so any finer logistics were going to be taken care of once the soldiers neared full development."

"Still dumb," Rouge mutters, and Shadow nods, agreeing.

"Let's be grateful they weren't better at planning this," my half-brother suggests, folding his arms as he leans back in his chair. His feet are on the table, a gesture I figure would be disrespectful were it not for the fact he'd be dwarfed by the chair otherwise. Rouge does the same, but I simply sit, resting my chin on the table in an exhausted acceptance of my size.

"The creations you found--they're not intelligent, right?" Andrews asks, looking at Shadow and I for clarification. As if on cue, Shadow launches into a brief explanation, trying to describe them to the human, and I shift to let my forehead touch the table's cool surface, staring down at my lap with unfocused eyes.

I can't tell what exactly I'm feeling right now, honestly. I feel hollow and exhausted, which I suppose is justified, but I don't know whether I'm suffering from sadness, despair, regret, or something else entirely. And, worst of all, I'm becoming too tired to care.

No one has tried to cheer me up or offer condolences; for once, I'm appreciative, finding I need space to think about and accept all of this. I'd rather do that tomorrow, though--be it selfish or not, I just want this long, awful day to end, even if it means not grieving properly.

"How did they create them, anyways?" Rouge questions, and I hear Agatha shift in her seat, likely switching arms to lean on.

"DNA," Shadow replies, and Tower's collar scratches on his close-cropped hair as he nods an affirmative. "From what we found, they'd collected samples during the first invasion, and they were planning to incorporate Eclipse's blood into the creations to make them more powerful. They got some when he was shot, apparently."

"So, capturing Eclipse was an opportunistic thing?" Andrews queries, tiredness making his voice sound stale and disinterested despite his evident curiosity.

"From what we can tell, yes," the Commander answers, shuffling his papers again.

"I guess we should give the bastards some credit, then," Andrews mutters. "They rallied on the spot when Eclipse made that truce. What was it, like, a few minutes difference between them capturing him and you all arriving? It's lucky Eclipse jumped out of that copter--they would have gotten away with him, otherwise."