The Director and the Dragon, Part 3

Posted on Tue Dec 2nd, 2025 @ 5:21am by Head Mistress Absynthe "Syn" Drake & Level 10 Minamoto 源 Takashi 孝志

Mission: HYDRA: Another Head Rises
Location: Mutant Academy Near Sedona, Arizona
Timeline: Current, 2300 hours

“ありがとうございました (Thank you very much,)” the S.H.I.E.L.D. Director said as he bowed in thanks, taking note of the warm tea as she placed the beautiful porcelain tea set upon the nearby table. He then nodded slightly at her in acknowledgement of her comment about meeting him in person, walking over and instinctively taking a nearby seat immediately after she sat down, as his cultural customs demanded when being hosted in someone’s abode.

Takashi listened to her intently as she spoke, picking up the slight frustration in her exhale, her pauses in speech speaking just as loudly as what she did say. The Japanese understood silences better than every other human culture on Terra, they understood that sometimes silences relayed more than what was actually said.

“We have had similar problems tracking her,” Takashi said after a brief moment of silence. “I have been more successful in personally following her than using our surveillance systems. Though to be honest, it is usually immediately after she has left one of these hidden compounds. That was how I encountered Talon, actually.”

He took a moment to look at her before asking his next question, reaching for the small yunomi (tea cup) of slightly steaming tea sitting on the table before him with his gloved left hand. It was customary to wait for the tea to cool slightly before drinking, though not long enough for it to grow tepid. He held the yunomi with both hands, left hand cradling the cup with his thumb on top, right hand underneath the left.

Taking the opportunity of silence that drinking the tea gave him, he sipped at it slowly, savoring both the aroma and the taste of the high quality bancha tea. He lowered the yunomi to his lap, still holding it in both hands and closing his eyes as he appreciated its flavor. bancha tea was very appropriate at this time of night due to its robust flavor as it subtly offset its low caffeine content. Most appropriate, he thought to himself as he took another sip.

Taking up her own cup, Syn paused mid-sip, the steam curling briefly around her face as she offered a wry little smile at the mention of the strange, infuriating shaman.

“She’s sending location pings,” Syn began, lowering the cup but keeping it cradled between her hands as if for warmth. “Only after a strike. Just enough breadcrumbs to let us know she’s alive, never enough to actually track her. That’s Fractal for you. Self-sacrificial to a fault.”

A soft exhale followed, almost a sigh. “We’ve narrowed it down to somewhere West-North-West. But she’s a wilderness ghost. That’s a hell of a lot of land for anyone to comb through, even us.”

Her tone was casual, but the golden heat behind her eyes, subtle, draconic, betrayed a deep worry. Syn didn’t give a damn about HYDRA’s downfall; she’d happily let them rot on their own. But the light-bearer? That girl mattered.

“When her father killed her mother,” Syn continued, her fingers tightening around the ceramic, “she awakened and left a smoking crater outside Reno. That irradiated lake? S.H.I.E.L.D. ’s babysitting it now, I believe.”

Takashi nodded in agreement, visually acknowledging his attention to her words, slowly enjoying the tea as she filled in the details of Bethany’s past. The Marshal had been understandably tight lipped about her past during the short amount of time they had spent together.

The ebon-haired woman shook her head, jaw tightening. “And that was before they took Rook from her. Now there’s no leash, no stabilizer, no one to pull her back from the edge.”

She glanced into her cup as if it might contain an answer the universe hadn’t given them yet.

“I could, with a smile on my face, say HYDRA brought this on themselves,” Syn admitted, voice lower, “but she’s walking a razor’s edge. Rage like that burns hot and fast.”

The diminutive administrator paused, concern etching her fine features for just a beat. “If we don’t catch up to her soon… she’s going to get herself killed. Or wind up in some twisted villain arc. What’s worse? I don’t even know if she cares anymore.”

Takashi slowly finished his tea while he digested everything she had revealed to him. He took note of the genuine concern for the wellbeing of Bethany, but didn’t quite understand why. Maybe that would come up during their continued conversation. When he finished with the tea, he gently placed the yunomi on the table before him.

“I have been tasked,” he said slowly, his Japanese accented voice soft as usual, sincerity easily heard within them as he looked at the ancient woman in the serpentine eyes. “With bringing her in for questioning. The Director of the United States Martial Service himself, under the circumstances, contacted me and asked if I would do so.” He leaned back in his seat, adjusted his daisho, then continued.

“She has been placed on administrative leave pending a formal investigation into her conduct. She has not been acting as a Marshal should act, she is acting as a vigilante, or worse, to quote him directly, ‘as an outlaw with a Marshal’s Badge like if she were in the God damned Wild West!’.”

Syn lifted an eyebrow, one fiery dragon eye catching the low light like an ember turning. When she responded, her voice was dry, laced with a quiet bite of humor. “If you’re digging any deeper than ‘Fractal is taking out her rage on the people who tortured her since childhood and killed everyone she’s ever loved,’ then you’ll be tunneling straight through the Earth, hit China, and have to turn right back around.”

The corner of her mouth curled at her own phrasing, and for a heartbeat she looked impossibly young despite her many years. A soft, fond chuckle escaped her as she lifted her cup, inhaling the steam before taking another measured sip.

“She’s simple in that way,” Syn continued, settling back into her seat with the ease of someone who had given this explanation a hundred times and still found the girl worth explaining. “Hurting the innocent would disappoint her dead mother. And the rest... well.” She gave a small shrug. “Jon kept her from thinning the criminal population a little too enthusiastically.”

Her voice warmed with something like respect. “Those two spent years dismantling trafficking rings, human and mutant alike. I believe they still hold the record for the number of arrests. If not, they should.”

The Headmistress turned her gaze toward the window again. The campus below was peaceful: moonlit paths, dormitory silhouettes, Jon’s name etched on one of the stones of the memorial ring that gleamed faintly around the tower’s base. Her hands, small, scaled just at the knuckles where the robe parted, cradled the cup with a tenderness that was well practiced.

A sigh slipped free, almost inaudible. When she faced Takashi again, her eyes had gone fully reptilian, molten and ancient. “She’s chasing HYDRA, saving as many as she can, until they finally manage to kill her,” Syn said softly. “No mystery. No hidden motive. She’s just leaving us breadcrumbs out of habit, or stubbornness. Or maybe because she knows we’ll use them to shut these places down.”

Her lips thinned. “Fractal’s not running from us, Director. She’s running ahead and hoping that we don’t catch up.”

“I understand all of that,” Takashi said, nodding in the affirmative of all she had said, his gloved right hand making a circling motion as if encompassing a globe. “And while I am sympathetic to her past and agree that HYDRA deserves to be eliminated at almost all cost, she is using her status as a US Marshal to accomplish her vigilante work. You know as well as I that is not how they work. As an organization that is part of the US government, they must follow rules and are run by bureaucrats that hide behind miles of red tape, who understand little about the sacrifices that those in the field have to make to deal with the scum of the Earth.”

Placing both gloved hands on the armored knees of his Shinobi shozoku, he sighed heavily looking away from her deep in thought as if torn with the weight of several opposing tasks, all of which he found distasteful.

Syn set the cup down with a soft click, her fiery gaze lowering to the table’s polished surface for a long, deliberate moment. When she finally spoke, her tone carried the weight of careful consideration.

“Fractal cares little for rules that shield the rich and powerful from consequences. Besides, I’m not entirely convinced she’s still relying on those credentials,” she said. “Using contacts? Absolutely. But the access she had in Utah, that felt like the last time she used anything official.” She paused again, her lips pressing into a thin line as she measured the next words.

“The other facilities don’t show signs of planned infiltration. No authorization trails. No indication she announced herself. Every survivor we’ve interviewed claims she never gave a name, a rank, nothing.” Syn’s eyes softened, the scales at her temples catching the dim tower glow. “The only reason we know it was Fractal at all is because the descriptions match her… and because she pings us once she’s gone.”

The small woman leaned back slightly, arms folding loosely. Not defensive, but tired in a very old way. Her voice lowered, threaded with an ache she did not bother to hide.

“Fractal isn’t hunting anyone except HYDRA and the people who enable them. Which makes you wonder who’s afraid of what she’ll find. That’s always been her lane.” A faint, wistful exhale slipped free. “I’d like to say she has a plan, an appallingly reckless one, mind you, but I’m really not certain that she does.”

Her reptilian gaze drifted to the window, watching the silent campus. She smiled thinking of the students who slept unaware while the world beyond them bled at the seams.

“When she was here last… she wasn’t living. She was just inhabiting the space she stood in. Going through the motions.” Syn’s voice softened further. “She doesn’t believe she’s meant to survive this. I think she’s accepted that, which makes her dangerous. And there is little of value to her left in this world, so we can’t even really manipulate things in that manner.”

A long silence followed, quiet, heavy, ancient, before she looked back at Takashi, her eyes glowing with something fierce and unyielding. “But she does expect us to save the people she leaves behind.” The dragon lady gave a soft chuckle and a faint tilt of her head. “And that, at least, we can do. For now.”

Takashi looked back at her and nodded his head in agreement. “I have explained this to her. I told her that all of S.H.I.E.L.D.’s resources will be used to assist the survivors in any way they need. I will make sure they have medical care, social services, financial assistance, and job placement services if they so choose. I can offer some… off the book services if they require it as well. I well know the plight of Mutants and how they have been treated in the past.” His tone rang of sincerity and honesty because deep down Takashi believed everything he said and more.

Being different did not mean that one was less, only different. And Mutant kind had already suffered more than their fair share of prejudice and discrimination. It was high time that they joined human society on an equal level as the rest of humanity.

“Fractal knows that we stand at the ready to take in anyone that needs it. We even help families resettle, find work, go to school,” Syn said with a bit of a sad smile, motioning to the quiet academy, the town surrounding it, that the tower loomed in the center of.

“At least she recognizes that just because she didn’t fit, that doesn’t mean others won’t. Dyami is also one that directs people where the Great Spirit leads him to. He’s dropped many-a-student here over the years,” the ancient being explained with a wry chuckle.

Her odd reptilian gaze moved back to Takashi, “If I could, I’d end this idea of factions amongst us. Many of us seem to seek the same things. Acceptance. Freedom to live as we wish, without having to worry that people will come for us in the night out of ignorance, fear, or greed. It’s just difficult to bring everyone to the same playing field.”

The headmistress, who had lived through many contentious mortal lifetimes, continued as if lecturing a class, a state of mind that she easily fell into after so many years. “Some are sticklers for rules. Some use them as recommendations. Others find them to be put into place to protect the powerful, while used to shaft the masses. The ones that seek power for power’s sake, human or mutant, give us all a bad name. I suppose that just proves we’re all still human in very fundamental ways. At least the government saw fit to recognize our individual personhoods after the last war.”

There was a heavy pause as Syn remembered the rivers of blood that had earned that privilege, and weighed the rest of her statement. “All of that to say that this rampage of Beth’s is out of character. She carries considerable guilt over the accidental killing of innocents during her awakening, over losing most of her team to a HYDRA hit squad on her wedding day. Fractal is self-sacrificial to a fault, preferring to go in alone rather than let others put themselves at risk, and avoids command to keep from having to order people off to their deaths.”

A small grin touched her lips as she remembered a younger Bethany, not nearly as controlled, standing in the ruins of the gym, smoking holes in her clothes after having blown up one of the bags accidentally. “Attitudes to her detriment, in my aged and pickled opinion,” she quipped, “but also understandable considering her history. We’re not tracking some faceless villain, Takashi. We’re tracking a broken hero that’s lost hope in a system that has failed humankind. And mutantkind. Repeatedly.”

There were few that Syn hadn’t been able to help along their paths in some way. Bethany was one of a rare handful that just couldn’t seem to fit somewhere into the carefully crafted Drake Academy. She was an egg not easily cracked. Mentally, or physically.

There was a short break in the headmistress’ vocal ponderings as she reached towards the teapot, smoothly resuming the role of hostess. “More tea?”

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TBC
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Absynthe Drake
“Wyrmwood”
Headmistress - Drake Academy

Minamoto Takashi 源孝志
“Hypernova 極超新星”
Director of S.H.I.E.L.D.

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