Gabriel Ruthers was not having a good day. That seemed to be the norm anymore, ever since Gaia had betrayed Crossroads. Gaia, the woman he had recommended be put in as the new leader of their school, his own replacement. That was the part that hurt the most. He was the one who had thought she was the best choice to teach these children how to defend their world, and themselves. And then Gaia had betrayed them, betrayed him. She had worked with the very daughter of Joselyn, the woman who first created the damned rebellion, to bring it back!

So yes, the past year had been one bad thing after another. Gaia was safely imprisoned, but any hope that they would be able to contain this reawakened rebellion quickly, before it got out of hand again, had been quickly diminishing. Somehow, this new rebellion was even stronger and more dangerous than the last had been at the height of its own power. This one was different.

That, along with the accompanying realization that something drastic was going to have to be done if they were going to make sure this situation didn't get completely out of control before the next year was up, had already been on Ruthers' mind even before he'd felt… something at the far edge of the Crossroads island. He'd been there, near the school, to have a talk with Liam. But when his Committee-enhanced senses had picked up some sort of possible situation out there, he'd immediately investigated. While, of course, sending a message to the rest of the Committee through their connection about what he was doing. He wasn't an amateur, after all.

There hadn't been a response by the time he had arrived in the air above the disturbance. But at that point, Ruthers had stopped even thinking about his fellow Committee members. He stopped thinking about anything at all. The only thing in his mind, the only thing in his soul, was fury. She was there. She was on their island, that girl. And she had brought Fomorians with her. They seemed to be juvenile Fomorians, which meant she was undoubtedly trying to prove that even those monsters were sweet and innocent if you tamed them properly or something. Like a child bringing home a hyena cub and insisting it was their friend.

Unless she wasn't the real-- yes, one thing did break through the haze of anger, a thought that made him take a second to make sure this girl didn't have a monkey tail. But no, it wasn't the imposter. This was the real Felicity Chambers. She was here, and she had brought Fomorians to Crossroads, to their school.

That was beyond anything Ruthers could ever have imagined. The man was apoplectic.

He was so angry, in fact, that he didn't recognize the threat from that other woman before she made her move. Ruthers had had no idea who she was, other than possibly some unimportant rebel from Eden's Garden. A distant relative of that Wallbern girl, who was right there, perhaps?

It didn't matter. Or at least, the man had believed it didn't matter. He thought Felicity was the real problem. And in the end, that had cost him. That strange woman had punched him harder than he could ever remember being hit, before snapping some sort of magic metal cuff on his wrist that had left him trapped in some nightmare reality, some dream scenario. In those dreams, he had been forced to confront his own failures, his own responsibility for Fossor's Black Death plague. He had seen every mistake he made, had watched himself allow that man to nearly wipe out all of humanity over and over again. It only took him a handful of minutes to snap his way out of that mental prison, but inside, it had felt like years. Years of being shown his mistake.

When he finally snapped himself out of it, Ruthers found himself lying in a large, watery crater deep under the ocean. Breathing hadn't been an issue since before he was even part of the Committee, and another minor power he'd picked up somewhere (or maybe one provided by one of the other Councillors, who could remember?) made it impossible for him to get wet. Rising right up from the ocean to get his bearings, he had been as perfectly dry as if he'd never been in the water to begin with. He hovered there, trying to orient himself while checking to see if the rest of the Crossroads leadership had arrived yet. But he never had the chance. Not before something else had drawn his attention. A ship. There was a spaceboat-- wait, starship? Whatever silly word the kids used-- flying away from their island. That had to be Felicity.

As soon as he saw that, Ruthers knew it was where he had to go. Fortunately, getting onto the ship wouldn't be an issue. Or it shouldn't have been. All he had to do was summon up one of more than three dozen powers he had that would take him safely onto the ship itself, and then he could put a stop to this whole situation once and for all. Even if that meant putting Felicity down. What choice did he have? She was her mother's daughter, and now the damn girl had brought the Fomorians to Crossroads. The delusional little child had to be stopped, right here and now.

And yet, it seemed the world wasn't through with making Gabriel Ruthers consider this one of the worst days of his life. Because even as he focused on that teleportation power and found himself appearing inside that ship, directly in front of Felicity herself, he felt something else tug at him. Some outside force was slowing down his transportation, holding him stuck there, not quite on the ship, and not quite back where he had been hovering just above the ocean. He was between both spots, his teleportation slowed down so it would take several seconds rather than the instantaneous transport it should have been. Somehow, something was stopping him just long enough for that spaceyacht to flee. It disappeared less than a second before he managed to rip himself free from whatever was holding him back. But that was long enough for the boat to be gone. It had completely disappeared, leaving Ruthers hovering in the air where it had been.

Only then, as he floated there and realized that Felicity and those monsters were gone, did he finally hear the shouts and cries from the school itself. Shifting a bit in the air, Ruthers listened for just a second. He kept hearing people say things like 'it's gone,' 'how did she do that,' and 'what are we gonna do now?' It was enough to make the man narrow his eyes, looking back that way. He was miles out in the ocean by that point, but a simple thought made his vision zoom in that way. He saw the crowd out in front of the school, saw them all shouting at one another as they gestured at the lighthouse. As they… wait. Wait. He turned a bit, thinking he was looking at the wrong spot. But no. No, the lighthouse was-- it was just gone. The lighthouse wasn't there.

No, that was absurd. It was completely impossible. This was a trick. Felicity was using some sort of illusion magic to make the lighthouse look like it was gone. He was going to put a stop to this utter nonsense right now. He would end this ridiculous illusion and show their students the truth.

He didn't teleport that time, flying that way instead. But there wasn't actually any appreciable difference. The man could move so quickly that he appeared right where he was almost instantly anyway. Landing right next to the assembled students and staff, he raised his voice. "That is enough! Where is Headmaster Mason? He should be here putting a stop to this nonsense himself. Even he could end an illusion this obvious." His eyes passed over the security team and teachers with an annoyed grunt. "Any of you could, if you took a moment to think rather than panic." In truth, he knew it was wrong to dress down his own staff like that in front of the students. He knew better. But this day had been bad enough as it was, without these people letting an obvious trick get to them. With a wave of his hand, Ruthers used an anti-magic power to disable the illusion.

And nothing happened. The power that he had sent into the space where the lighthouse should have been, where he thought the illusion was, did nothing. In the midst of telling his people and students that they should have known better, Ruthers belatedly realized there was no illusion there after all. But that meant… that meant… He turned, staring at the hole in the ground where the lighthouse should have been. A hole that was actually there, because the lighthouse wasn't. The lighthouse was… it-- wait, that was impossible. This wasn't possible. How-- what-- what?

For a long moment, the only thing he could do was stare at that spot. His shock was beyond anything he could have imagined. Nothing, nothing could have prepared him for this. If someone had tried to tell him what would happen, he would have called them a damn fool.

"Headmaster Liam's gone," one of the staff informed him in the silence that followed. "They took him. The lighthouse, it… it rose out of the ground. It flew up and… and it turned into that ship that flew off. He tried to stop them, the headmaster did, and they abducted him. He's gone, sir."

Whirling on the man, Ruthers started to snap, "That's imposs--" He stopped himself, seeing the way all those students were staring at him. The entire school was out here now, all of their students standing there watching what he did, what he said. They needed some reassurance.

But there was only one thing Ruthers could think about in that moment, only one thing he could focus on besides his rising outrage. The Committee. If they had just been here when he called, all of them could have stopped this immediately. Whoever that woman was, whatever unholy alliance Joselyn's daughter had sold her soul for, they couldn't have stood up against the entire Committee. Hell, if even one other Councilor had appeared, this would be over, the Edge would be right where it was supposed to be, and Felicity Chambers would be on her way to a cell. But he was alone here. No one, not even any of his like-minded Councilors, had shown up here yet.

Where the hell are you all!? The mental call he sent that time would thunder through their minds like a rolling explosion. Let them try to ignore that one. We have an issue here. Come now!

"Sorry, Gabriel, they didn't get your first couple messages." The voice came from the crowd of onlookers, and every eye turned that way even as it continued. "But I think they're on the way now." The figure was revealed as several students quickly, almost frantically, backed up. A very familiar figure, in fact. Paul Calburn, the six-foot tall boy from Kentucky with sandy hair. But it wasn't Paul, of course. Not really. It was his ghost. The real Paul had been murdered the year before, by the bodysnatchers, that mysterious group of Strangers with possession powers. They killed him, and now his glowing, semi-translucent ghost was standing right there talking to Ruthers.

Feeling an intense pang of regret that was immediately overcome by anger, the man all-but roared, "Everything she's already done isn't enough, now the Chambers girl thinks she can use her filthy Necromancy to send the ghost of one of our own students to taunt us?" Even as he said that, ghost-fire was appearing around the man's fist as he took a step that way to shatter that ghost.

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He never made contact. In midswing, his arm was caught right at the elbow by another figure, another ghost that had appeared out of nowhere. Like Paul Calburn, this was a very familiar ghost. Far more familiar than the boy himself, in fact. It was the ghost of a man that Ruthers had known for many years, whose death was still one of the worst moments of the past couple years (years that didn't exactly lack for bad moments). Seeing him there, the glowing remnants of a man Ruthers had deeply respected, made him stop short, voice coming hollowly. "Zedekiah?"

Yes. It was the ghost of Zedekiah Pericles, standing right there with his hand on Ruthers' arm, just avoiding the ghost-fire. A thing that should have been impossible for uncountable reasons, and yet, there he was. The old man gave him a concerned, sympathetic look. "Gabriel," he began carefully, his voice just loud enough to be heard by the entire crowd stretching all the way back across the grounds, "you need to stop now. Do not escalate this any further, please. This is beyond your ken."

Face screwing up with a rage that was beyond anything he could possibly have thought himself capable of, Ruthers nearly exploded then. But something stopped him, a realization. "Wait, this isn't… no, this is wrong. You… you both died before Chambers became a Necromancer. This is a trick. This isn't really you, you aren't here. Neither of you are really here. These aren't your ghosts!" He said that last bit loudly, making sure the entire student and staff population heard. "This is not how Necromancy works."

"Oh Gabby." That was Zedekiah again, but his voice was very different. It wasn't his voice, but someone speaking through him. Not that it had ever been the actual man himself to begin with, as far as Ruthers was concerned.

"What you don't know about Necromancy could fill the Library of Tequnme." Those words, in the exact same voice that had spoken before through Zedekiah, came, that time, from the ghost of Paul. It was the same man speaking through the ghosts that he, not Chambers, had summoned.

"I've been there, you know." A new ghost, still speaking with that man's voice, put in. Ulysses Katarin. His glowing figure appeared slightly to the left of Zedekiah's. "I took a few trips away from Earth over the years. Had to stretch my legs and see the rest of the universe, you know? It helped me get some real perspective for just how much is out there and how big everything is."

Yet another ghost figure with the same voice appeared on the far side of the open circular area the students and staff had left between themselves and Gabriel. This one was Irenee Berengere, a young Crossroads Heretic who had died thirty-four years earlier. "But then, I suppose you don't know what I mean. You'd rather sit here on this one planet and spend all of your time hating everything that isn't just like you. Hell, you've never even heard of the Library of Tequnme. If you weren't so ignorant, you might understand how sad that ignorance actually is."

"Enough!" Gabriel's bellow was a violent burst of thunder, deafening enough to make every other Boscher there, save for the ghosts, wince and reflexively lean away from its source. And it didn't stop there. His voice continued to shake the very ground around them in his rage. "I know who this is. I know who you truly are. Show yourself, cowardly filth! Show yourself now!"

On that last word, the bright moon (or at least the false version that helped make this pocket universe that Crossroads Island within seem more like the real world) went out. As did the false stars, and every other source of light. But that wasn't the extent of it. This was a magical darkness, one that couldn't be seen through with any night vision or other power. Even Ruthers himself was left blind in that moment. All his other senses were fine, but his sight was useless. He had several hundred powers that could see in darkness, but none of them worked. And from the sound of the rest of the crowd, none of them could see either.

Once again, Ruthers reached out through the Committee connection, and got no response at all. This should've been impossible. All of it should have been impossible. It was some sort of wild, absurd nightmare. The Edge being stolen by the very lighthouse it was kept in, Felicity showing up with a collection of child Fomorians and a bunch of stitched-together animals that were clearly their nightmare pets, some woman who was capable of hitting him hard enough to leave him dazed, and now this man showed up with the ability to make magical darkness so effective it even left a full Committee Member unable to see? Absurd. Wrong. This couldn't be happening.

Then a star returned. A single, tiny pinprick of light high up in the sky, almost directly above them. That was followed by another star a short distance from the first, then a third, before more and more stars appeared in an exponential rush. They did nothing to actually illuminate the area around Ruthers and the other Crossroads people, remaining simple white dots off in the distance. Until they weren't in the distance anymore. Those dots, the 'stars,' fell from the sky. They didn't grow any larger, remaining just as small as ever as they all dropped right into the middle of Ruthers and the crowd. Those little dots flew down from the sky and came together right there in front of the Crossroads people, first forming a vague constellation of a man before more dots filled in the gaps. Soon, it wasn't merely the outline of a figure there, but a full-on image. An image that became solid as the lights faded, but he remained. The man behind this, the man who had done all of this. The man whose voice Ruthers had recognized immediately.

"Jacob." The snarled name came with almost as much anger and disgust as Ruthers would have had for Fossor himself. As far as he could prove, as far as he knew for certain, this man wasn't responsible for nearly as many deaths as that piece of filth had been. But he was still a Necromancer, a proud Necromancer, whose sense of arrogance and disdain for what Crossroads and their ilk were trying to do had already long-since driven Ruthers' anger to seldom-seen levels. And now? Now he was here, doing this, attacking Crossroads itself.

"Cowardly?" The darkness faded away and allowed everyone there to see the man properly, in his long black tailcoat with gold trim and buttons, that frilly white shirt, black and gold vest, and what was somehow, even after all these years, one of the most ethereally handsome faces any of them had ever seen. His left hand loosely held a black and gold cane with an ornate skull atop it, and he ran his gloved thumb over that skull thoughtfully. "You call me cowardly? That's rich, coming from a man who is so afraid of repeating a mistake he made hundreds of years ago that he's willing to allow thousands-- even hundreds of thousands of innocent people to die rather than risk trying to figure out which of them are actually evil."

Growling deep in his throat, Ruthers began to stride that way. He was going to put a stop to this now. Yet before he took more than two steps, another ghost appeared between them. This one was named Ricardo Pash, a Crossroads Heretic who had died two hundred years earlier. He was joined almost immediately by the ghost of Trish Helever, who had been torn apart by bird-monsters only a year after the Edge itself had been created. Then Elroy Irvine, killed by a Thunderbird in 1875. Aileen Rolland, lost at sea during a battle in 1784. Madilyn Dance, 1929. Garret Dixon, 1994. Hiraku Ito, 1903. And so on and so forth. A dozen Crossroads ghosts appeared right there in that open space. Two dozen, three. So many ghosts.

"You see, Ruthy, I've been keeping myself pretty busy," Jacob informed him, voice rising so everyone would hear. "I didn't get to all of them. And a lot of the ones I did get to chose to move on, or just didn't want to stay with me. But these guys? They're the ones who chose to join up. They're the ones who wanted to be a part of this. They died because of you and your people. But that's not why they're angry. They're angry because of what you did to them before that, because of what you turned them into, because of what you taught them. They're not angry because they died. They're angry because…"

As one, every ghost there, several dozen all together, chorused, "You made us monsters."

The ghost of Katarin spoke as himself, alone. "You made me teach innocent children to hate, to kill. You made me turn kids into soldiers. Not to protect, but to hunt. I made my choice. I sided with the people who wanted to stop all this. Then you took that choice away from me, away from all of us. You erased our memories and made us go back to contributing to every atrocity that happened since that moment. Every death, every innocent victim, every bit of trauma we inflicted or helped create, is because you took those choices away from us."

Pericles was next, his voice much calmer than Ulysses' had been. "This cannot continue. Crossroads cannot be allowed to keep turning innocent children into genocidal soldiers. There will be no more. It is time for things to change."

"Is that what this is about?" Ruthers demanded, his eyes sliding across the assembled ghosts. "You brought an army of these mockeries to attack their former school, to assault their friends to spread your message of 'peace and acceptance?'"

"Oh, no," Jacob informed him easily. "Not their former school. Just you. Except that's probably not very fair, is it? You'd be all outnumbered that way. Let's see what we can do about that."

With that, the skull head of his cane glowed, and Ruthers felt the sudden arrival of more of his people, other Committee members. Litonya, Jue, Geta, Sigmund, Davis, and Antaeus. All of them, together with Ruthers, comprising the most devoted supporters of Crossroads beliefs on the Committee. Seven of them, facing a single Jacob Donn.

Seeing that, taking it in, realizing the other six were fully aware of what was happening (and just as angry as he was about it), Ruthers couldn't help the abrupt laugh of disbelief that escaped him. "Oh, you are more of a fool than I ever believed."

"Perhaps," Jacob allowed. "But then, I've been doing this for longer than you could ever believe, Gabriel. I've been waiting for this moment for over four thousand years. I've prepared for it. I've studied for it. I've practiced for it and dreamed of it. You taught yourselves to massacre civilians because you're too afraid to face the real monsters. I have faced the monsters every day of my life since you people made me a part of this world. I have walked every corner of this planet. I watched its civilization rise and begin to flourish. I have seen everything it has to offer, and I have strode beyond. I have sought the answers and power I needed on other worlds. I have crossed the stars, and finally come back here, to this place, for this time. I have seen majesty and wonders the likes of which you could never imagine. I have seen evil that the darkest depths of your twisted souls couldn't conceive. I know what this world is capable of being, and I know that it cannot become that so long as people like you hold it back."

Music began to fill the air then, coming seemingly from nowhere. Music that they were all very familiar with by now. It had become the theme of this reborn rebellion. That Twisted Sister song they all knew so well was once again playing throughout Crossroads. As it did, Jacob met the eyes of each of those seven Committee members. Each of them alone capable of leveling entire skyscrapers. He met their gaze, and spoke clearly. "So come then, show me the strength of those who spread their hate and fear through impressionable children. Show me the true power of cowards. Because as I said, we have all watched you spread this hate, this filth, this genocide for so long. We have been trapped, forced to allow this to continue, until now, until this moment. But now we are no longer trapped. As of right now, we are no longer bound to an established timeline. We have watched you all create your xenophobic child soldiers since the birth of Crossroads itself. We have watched your hatred and fear destroy countless lives. And now?" His head tilted, allowing the song to reach its next crescendo as he and every single Crossroads ghost spoke together with those lyrics.

"We're not gonna take it anymore."

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