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OOC INFORMATION

Name: DJ
Contact information: aim psitaniums / e-mail: eeveester{@}gmail.com / biomagnet
Personal journal: whitelighter
Age: 21
Characters played: N/A
Who referred you: Maggie 'n Toast. It's like a breakfast food.

IN-CHARACTER INFORMATION

Name: Shannon Vaughn
Fandom: Original (Aspects 'Verse)
Age: 32 8, technically speaking
Canon point: 1988, after the Aspects are rounded up, menaced and set free by Those Shady Fuckers.
Original Universe or Alternate Universe? OU.

Personality: Shannon Vaughn is a very confident man. He feels no less for his disability, having known nothing else, because he knows that he can function perfectly well in this sight-less world. There are things he can't do or understand the same as everyone else might, but really, how is that different than any other human interaction on the face of the planet? Exactly. As long as he has his independence, as long as he maintains his job and keeps his friends like a regular guy, he doesn't need anything else to confirm that he is whole. What does sometimes frustrate him is his own personality. He can be rough around the edges, quick to speak and insult, keeping on top of his game to prove that he is on top of his game — even if Shannon is positive he needs nothing more from his life, that doesn't stop others from treating him like something lesser, and he cannot stand being treated with less respect than is due. His game must always be the best, he must always make sure others are aware that they can't pull anything past him. This has resulted in the habit of him practically detaching himself from his own thoughts, operating on finely honed instinct and intellect than ever stopping to think things through, because thinking things through tends to catch him up on the myriad options presented to him from a too-active mind. His unique way of living sometimes makes him difficult to get used to.

None of this is to say that Shannon is a hardass. He is playful, bright and always willing to take part in a joke. Even jokes involving him, sometimes, when he knows it won't target his weaknesses in good faith. One of his favorites is wearing a pair of spoof-glasses not only to make himself more handsome (he has it on good word that it makes him even more handsome than usual), but to mess with the preconceptions of anyone who might assume things by watching him at work or with Lacey. To pair with his bright attitude, Shannon is incredibly responsible: he's always had to look out for himself more than others, and for about half his life he has always had a guide dog to care for along with himself. His line of work can necessitate working with shaken and confused people, and he does try to help them out of some confused echo of a fatherly instinct. He wouldn't call it his soft side; he simply has compassion enough to use his own time helping others with things where the world had failed them. He is not the type to donate his time to charities and goodwill, just the sort that doesn't like seeing someone fester when they cannot help themselves.

His life has always been relatively simple. With help from his parents, Shannon has not wanted for much, and could always put his life and daily activities in boxes where things made sense and he could easily know where he stood at any one time. Only in recent days has it gotten ridiculously more complicated with the reveal that Shannon is some sort of godlike reincarnation with sway over fire. His feelings on the matter are mixed. On the one hand, it excites and pleases him to know that the oddities of his life (body temperature, his sense of the heat around him, a nagging offness with his place in the world that he could never claim as his own) have an explanation; odd as the truth may be, it rings correct in his soul. On the other hand, everyone seems to hate the man that he was and Shannon is inclined to agree. While it's technically possible to remember being Nate Silverman, Shannon will never go that far for fear of losing his own identity and becoming the apparent monster that he used to be. As long as the other Aspects treat him as more or less his own person, an inheritor to Nate and not some sort of ticking time-bomb, he's pretty okay with the new twist his life has taken. It's expanded his social circle several times, and has given him a goal beyond just getting up in the mornings: staying himself, and making sure the others remain all right. It's that misguided fatherly instinct again, but he doesn't deny himself of it as long as they don't catch on. What's the harm?

Background: Nate Silverman used to be God. He had accidentally made an entire universe with his wife Alice and was, by default, turned into the ultimate power presiding over it: the elemental dragon of fire, patron god of humans. With his wife and children, they formed a pantheon of elementals representing many different races and guarded over the universe. He was a complete asshole and very much drunk on the power he had maintained for millennia. When the inevitable happened, Nate's son, Thomas Hawkins, absorbed all elementals including himself and went on to recreate the universe once again with minimal meddling, to create something almost identical to our own world. Thomas gave each of the new pieces of himself a choice: join him in eternal slumber at the center of the universe, or have a chance at second life.

Nate, being a terrible horrible person and even worse of a father, took that to mean "be stuck with me or be separated" and chose the second-life bit. Since then, he has reincarnated as an Aspect of himself throughout the ages. None are entirely the same, but one thing binds all of them together: they are generally cocky assholes with hearts of gold, a return to who Nate used to be before unfathomable ages dealing with the pressure of all existence on his shoulders. Although Aspects tend to Awaken to memories of their previous lives, more often than not Nate's Aspects only ever get to a "sleepwalking" stage of being aware of their identity without the rest of the headfuckery to go with it. Nate himself is ridiculously unhappy to be a puny, powerless mortal, while his Aspects would rather continue enjoying life and not become bitter, toxic assholes upon returning to their Nate-like states.

It works out. Less than 1/10th of every Aspect truly awakens to Nate's memories.

That doesn't mean that they cannot tap into his elemental powers of fire, and many end up doing just that. Thankfully, fire has many different and subtle uses that would not incur Nate's proper attention by being outright destructive and seductive to use.

Word of Eli-mun    Yeah, Eli's story is he was a mysterious child found near an impossible headstone by a journalist. After Marcus adopted him, they were given photographs and names of people who would know who Eli was and what the headstone meant. After going on a sidequest to get Jasper Keaton, Aspect of Light, to help, he joined the party and the three had to travel all over the world to do sidequests to get the other Aspects to help. And then they met Alice and Nate's Aspects.
   This version of Nate's Aspect is the rare one who doesn't have the asshole with a heart of gold thing going on.
   He's just an asshole.
   Eli is both the Aspect of Thomas and a reincarnation of someone Thomas holds very dear to him.
   Once Eli found out that his whole search to find out who he is was basically just a game to Thomas himself, he wanted nothing to do with any of the other Aspects save Jasper and wanted a perfectly normal life without powers or other memories or anything. So he and Marcus went back to Chicago and Eli decided that he was going to grow up and be just like his adopted father instead.
   Or "Eli found out Thomas pulled a Nate and ragequit the game."
   (And then Thomas just wiped the Nate and Alice pieces once the game was over?)
   Nope, just the Nate piece. Alice was a nun that Nate was harassing.
   She was a nun who ran an orphanage. Nate's level of asshole knows no bounds.

Shannon Vaughn is the current Aspect of Nate Silverman. Despite there having been one as recently as fifteen years ago, Shannon's birthday on February 29th gives something of a metaphysical loophole that allows him to theoretically have existed alongside the previous Nate Aspect; Shannon is, after all, only 8 years old. Shannon was also born blind, having the fortune of well-off parents to make sure he got proper education and care in his younger years all the way up into locating a job — he works with the Chicago PD as an assistant of sorts, doing some paperwork, yes, but also helping with the intellectual sides of cases and sometimes appearing on secured crime scenes to give aide even there.

As Shannon's natural temperature is a toasty 101.2 degrees Fahrenheit and, since his teenage years, he has been able to sense masses of heat around him like some kind of heatsensing radar, it was hard not to notice something was different about himself. He was not one to flaunt this type of specialness in front of others, rather than using it inconspicuously to put himself ahead of expectations and make himself more valuable by virtue of natural talents. Despite much initial resistance with his placement in the department, Shannon has become something of a fixture to them over his eleven years of employment there. During that time, two particular foreign officers had transferred in to the department: Matheus Rocha, from Brazil, and Javier Vasquez from Spain. Thanks to a whole bunch of friendly conflict between the three, they all bonded quickly and became close in spite of what should have been a tense relationship. (It was here that Matheus, the Aspect of Poison, and Javier, the Aspect of Wood, realized they were dealing with an Aspect of Nate when Shannon made it a running joke to comment on the girliness of Javier's hands; it was simply an asshole comment from Shannon's side of things, but hinted at the completely terrible person that Nate was underneath due to Javier's original life as a FtM transgender in the previous universe. They don't hold it against Shannon for being unknowingly beholden to his previous life and have, thus far, never mentioned it to him. Shannon would not deal well with having made such horrible comments to someone he genuinely respects.)

In 1984, Shannon had an unusual encounter with a young man named Eli Delacroix. Eli was a journalist attempting to get a scoop about an unusual case back in the day, and Shannon had been the lucky one to intercept him and run him in a few loops before Eli could catch on to the man's blindness and lack of badge. Despite some hard feelings, they then agreed on a lunch date for a proper interview when it became clear Shannon knew just as much about the case as any cop might and would gladly use his own time to keep the proper officers on the case without interruption. It was that incident that started the precedent of Shannon becoming Eli's informant — no other journalist had quite the pull or the charm that Shannon appreciated, but where Eli was concerned he felt it necessary to make the time.

Only a few months after the friendship began, Eli asked Shannon a favor. He wanted a restraining order—several, actually—placed against seemingly unrelated peoples who kept bothering him despite his and his father's wishes to be left in peace. This was how Shannon unknowingly widened his social circle to almost all of the current Aspects alive, who had unconsciously begun gravitating toward the Chicago area starting around twenty to fifteen years prior. While Shannon did not understand the point behind their "harassment" of Eli, he did help fill out the paperwork and push it through for the orders... all while getting closer to several of the restrainees despite all attempts not to bond. It was all kinds of awkward, but Shannon could not help the pull he felt to these people and made sure not to ever let it cross the professional boundary of the restraining order due to his friendship with Eli. Still: awkwaaaard.

In 1987, Shannon became aware of Matheus and Javier growing obsessed with a case far outside their jurisdiction: the missing person Jasper Keaton. He aided them when he felt like it, because they were pretty intent on the case, but for the life of him could not fathom why it was so important when his own private inquiries turned up no real connection between any of them. It was not until a year later, when Eli made passing mention of the name, that things started to seem more and more suspicious. It was Shannon who accidentally spilled what all the other Aspects had been hoping to hide from Eli for fear of what the young man might do. Jasper Keaton had gone missing within the last two years and no one could locate him. Eli then stormed down the station to drag Matheus and Javier out by their ears to give them a gigantic dressing down for hiding the situation from him, all while Shannon invented popcorn.gif and observed.

Once the chewing out was done, all four of them did the only thing left to do: combine their forces and double their efforts. While Shannon still had no idea who Jasper Keaton truly was to Eli aside from a childhood friend, no one seemed inclined to call the investigation unimportant. After about a month of meet-ups, the unbelievable happened. Shannon, Eli, Matheus and Javier were all kidnapped straight from Javier's home and tossed into the back of an unmarked van. The long ride down to the warehouses gave them enough time to clear much of the air of confusion, with Shannon's nature as an Aspect being revealed to him, as well as getting introduced to Harvey Adair, Aspect of Darkness, and Denise Trepanier, Aspect of Metal. As Denise had fully awakened who knew how long ago, she was fully capable of wrenching control of the very metal van from their captors and getting them to safety — however, the group eventually decided to wait for the other four Aspects that the group of Very Shady Individuals must have surely grabbed as well, then make a break for it with the full ten of them (plus a dog) in tow. When they arrived, there was very little to be done; the Shady Fucks did not know the whole story of the Aspects, their true place in the world, and believed the group to be people in some kind of cult with a large amount of unexplained power. Jasper's disappearance worried them immensely, and they had hoped to scare his location out of the Aspects with their little show.

It didn't work. They were released once the monologuing was done, and the Aspects that knew what was going on decided on their next course of action: locate the incarnation of Thomas Hawkins. Eli apparently didn't count as he was simultaneously a reincarnation of someone else, and there would be a purer version somewhere in the world to consult. Which was all well and good, except for the fact that Shannon had only just learned that Thomas Hawkins had eaten his previous life and probably had the most reason to hate his entire being. It was the standard reaction when talking to an Aspect about Nate Silverman.

Other notables: I would like Shannon to retain his natural body temp (101.2°F, which climbs up to 105°F in sleep) despite being reduced to normal, as that seems to be more of a genetics quirk than outright magic. If possible (and this one is a long-shot, I do understand), some of his heatsense might stay to make up for being a blind man in a horror game since he would be very reluctant to upgrade his eyes into gaining a sense he never before experienced. That would be terrifying. Even if he doesn't retain that, Shannon dehydrates easily and gets headaches at the drop of a hat if he doesn't take care of himself.

Inventory:
- His 6 year old German Shepherd guide dog partner, Lacey.
- Lacey's harness.
- A white cane.
- A braille watch.
- A pair of (entirely useless) glasses.
- One of his work outfits, a tastefully colorful suit.


SAMPLES

NETWORK SAMPLE: Dear-mun post.

LOG SAMPLE: One minute they were all trying to decide if a connection to a bookstore that only used to run a drug-smuggling operation in its basement counted as a criminal connection worth kidnapping and the next—

Well, the next they had sacks over their heads and were getting tossed like so much garbage into some kind of vehicle. A truck? Van? The sack was terrible, doing nothing to Shannon so much as restricting his airflow. "What kind of assholes go to the effort of grabbing us and don't realize I don't need the bag?" he snipped once he had managed a solid breath.

Then Lacey whined at being tossed inside after them, he could feel the slight thump of her weight by his knees, and it snapped him from snark straight into actual anger. "Hey, fuck you guys! What did the dog ever do to you, huh?!"

The backdoor simply slammed closed. Shannon forced himself to his knees and waddled over to his partner, bending down and somewhat sideways to press his forehead against her harness while the van rocked to life around them. Having his hands tied was infuriating, but not as much as someone picking on Lacey when he could do nothing to help her. She sniffed at his face, shifting until she could lay down comfortably, and waited for instruction; Shannon merely murmured for her to be patient. He could hear the others were moving and finding more comfortable positions. Soon, he lifted his head and addressed the rest of his companions — Eli, Matheus and Javier were the ones he knew... but he could feel more. There was too much warmth in the back of the vehicle to be only the three of them. Maybe one or two more bodies.

"So... what the fuck just happened?" he asked plainly.

"Oh, we got kidnapped," Matheus said blithely. No shit, Shannon was about to say—

Javier beat him to it. Sort of. "I think he means why."

"Right, yeah," Matheus agreed, as if he should have considered that first. Which he should have. "That. Maybe it's the Aspect thing."

It didn't help that the sacks were not only muffling their voices, but his hearing to boot. "Aspect thing? Aspect of what?" Did he even hear them right?

"Aspects of God." And now Shannon could place Eli. Which meant those over in the separate corners were most certainly the ones who had been here first. Eli continued, "There's, what, eight of us?"

"Ten, actually," Javier corrected. "You didn't meet all of us back then."

As if to keep them on track, Matheus said, "Each one of us represents a specific element."

Shannon let his eyes flutter closed behind the sack; it was so beyond pointless to keep them open right now, no one would be able to notice. This had just taken a turn for the very, very weird. He sat himself back until his spine tapped against something. It felt like the indent to make room for a back wheel, and the heavy vibration underneath only confirmed it.

"You're saying... you're godlings?" surmised Shannon. Without a doubt, it was the most outlandish claim Shannon had ever heard and he'd heard plenty of claims from crackpots at the station for years. That they were coming from trusted and respected friends with no tone of sarcasm made it all the more surreal. Almost surreal enough that it seemed acceptable. Almost. "Put a sack over your head and you go insane in ten seconds flat. Jesus, guys."

"They're not insane, and if they took you too, then you're an Aspect."

Not a voice Shannon recognized. It came from the small lump in the back corner on Shannon's side of the van. Sounded young, rough, and... cold. There was a shiver to the voice, a warble on the air, that Shannon was pretty sure the others wouldn't catch. No one else ever did. It was kind of chilly, though Shannon never really reacted to the cold much. He was his own space heater.

"Tactless as usual, I see," said Matheus. "We were getting to that part."

"You were taking too long," the teenager snipped back. Maybe being cold made him testy. "As usual."

Taking as deep a breath he could manage without choking down the sack with it, Shannon tried to clear his thoughts. "Never signed up for the godling club," he denied. "Where have all my newsletters been going, huh?"

"We don't have newsletters," Javier said. It sounded like he was amused but pretending to not be for the sake of their kidnapping. Well, fuck their kidnappers, funny should always be funny.

Matheus groaned. "Thanks to Eli, we have restraining orders."

"Do you really?" asked the teenager. He sounded quite impressed, though the tone only emphasized the shiver in the words. "I didn't know the imp had it in him. Good for you, kid."

"Watch who you're calling kid, kid," Shannon shot back. He was already working his way back onto his knees with as much stability as he could muster in a moving vehicle. "Respect your elders and all that yadda bullshit. Sit up, you're just going to get colder laying on the floor like that."

With a petulant grunt, Shannon heard the boy moving. He sensed the pool of heat leftover on the cheap carpet of the van and nodded to himself. "I'm technically not a kid," the teenager argued.

"You are this time around," Matheus said cheerfully. "Maybe you shouldn't have gotten yourself killed so quickly."

"Don't forget Eli's the oldest one here," Javier said. There was a rustle of fabric and Shannon was almost positive he had tried reaching to point toward Eli before getting caught by his bindings.

The teenager clearly took offense to that and refuted, "Hey, that doesn't count! Two plus centuries stuck in a graveyard shouldn't count."

"It does," Matheus said. "You'll just have to live with it until you die again."

While the others bickered, Shannon shuffled his way to the corner, wedging himself into it where the teenager's head had been moments ago. Working his right leg around until his knee lightly knocked the support the teenager had been huddling against, he muttered, "Sit back. You're doing nothing to convince me this isn't some kind of weird bird thing," he added, louder this time. "Just, by the way."

"Weird bird thing?" the kid asked, obeying in what had to be the most surly, teenager-ish way possible. He thumped his shoulder into Shannon's chest, shifting and wriggling around until he was just right, then remained tense despite the fact that Shannon's warmth must have been welcome. Kid really was damn cold from his nap on the floor.

"Birds go to sleep when you put a cloth over their head," Shannon explained with a winded grunt. "You guys go loony."

"We could probably explain this better," Javier admitted.

"As long as he doesn't get his memories back," Matheus said cheerfully, "we sure can."

Rolling his eyes and letting his head thump back, Shannon said, "Don't tell me you guys remember being God. Wait, then why shouldn't I remember, too? That's cold, Matheus."

"They're always like this," bemoaned Eli. "Hence the restraining orders." Shannon couldn't speak to the validity of the statement of their everyday lives, but if Matheus and Javier were like this every time they met with Eli... then yeah. Yeah, he could see why the restraining orders now. "And yes, we do remember."

Javier spoke up, tone saying that the restraining orders were not the direction he wanted to go. "As for you not remembering, if you're who we think you are—"

"—and we're usually right about these things—"

"—then you don't want to remember," Javier finished, barely heeding Matheus's insertion at all. They did that sometimes.

And, well, that was pretty true. Awesome as remembering being God sounded, there was something in the idea, something in the tone of their voices, that made Shannon pause. What would he need with a whole bunch of memories he could do nothing with in the long run? If it didn't come with a return to status, it really was completely useless, wasn't it?

(When had he started to entertain this as actually real, anyway?)

"Why not?" he asked, because even if he didn't want to, his stubbornness demanded that he follow through. How could they know what he wanted? They couldn't.

"Because he's a massive dick?" Matheus suggested.

"And has issues with not being in charge anymore," Javier added.

"Wait." Against his chest, Shannon could feel the teenager tense up where he had only just begun to relax in the extra body heat Shannon put out on a daily basis. "Are you saying he's who I'm thinking you're saying?"

"Yep," said the other three, in some creepy synchronized response. The teenager stayed tense for a few moments more before he gave up the ghost and dropped his head against Shannon's chest to hang it in some kind of dismay.

"Wow, that's a reaction," Shannon commented. His eyebrows were surely escaping into his hairline by now. "What the hell kinda guy was I? The vibe I'm getting says: not the same, lovable rogue I am now."

"Really terrible is one way to describe him," Matheus said.

"Worst father is another," the teenager contributed.

To weigh in for himself, Javier said, "Someone we're really glad the Sleeping God ate."

Just as Shannon was about to begin protesting on the mere principle that he could ever be someone that dickish and unfriendly, Eli cut in. "Guys, I think you're getting your point across. You don't need to keep going."

"Thank you," Shannon said. It was very hard not to take offense when everyone seemed to agree that Shannon was most definitely this terrible, worst father who deserved to be eaten. In fact, it was impossible. Shannon was offended. "Yeesh. It's a wonder you haven't put a knife in my gut with how much you hate this guy. What about me reminds you of him again?"

"Higher than usual body temperature," Javier said. Which didn't make a whole lot of sense, until the conversation automatically rewound in his head and Shannon remembered. Each one of us represents a specific element.

"The girly hand comments," Matheus said, perhaps on behalf of Javier. At that, the teenager let out a muffled snigger for reasons unfathomable to Shannon, then shifted and plunged an elbow right into Shannon's gut.

With a surprised, strangled breath and cough, Shannon asked, "Body temp? Because I'm... what, fire? Fire's an element." He wasn't sure he wanted to probe about the girly-hands thing. That had always just been a poke at the truth of the matter; Javier had some frail hands despite his line of work. It was funny.

"You're fire," Eli agreed. "I'm light."

"Darkness." Teenager.

"Poison." Matheus.

"Plant." Javier.

"You two are cheaters," Shannon said, tilting his head toward Javier and Matheus. He could already feel the thirsty itch at the back of his throat and his head was beginning to swim with new facts that he didn't have the time to process or otherwise integrate properly. He was already flying on autopilot, which was one of the reasons he was such a good aide. It just meant he wouldn't be one hundred percent certain of what he was saying until after the fact. "Those aren't elements."

"They counted back when we were created," Matheus said with a huff.

There was another soft shift of fabric in Javier's direction. Probably a shrug this time. "It could be worse."

"Worse, as in we're stuck in a van and talking about being elements who also all represent the selfsame God that created the universe, oh and also I'm apparently the dick to end all dicks?" Shannon tilted his head to one side, and then back. The teenager's rising body temperature was helping him acclimate to the general climate of the van itself, making it almost... cozy. Lacey was still where he had left her, ever the loyal and trusting companion that he loved; Javier and Matheus were set up against the wall next to each other, probably hadn't moved much from where they'd landed; Eli seemed to be laying on his back near the center as if he could keep an eye on everyone from there through the obvious obstruction; and... there was still that other body. Obviously not dead from the signature it was giving off, but quiet and still. Maybe unconscious. Shannon tucked it all into the back of his mind and let his head flop around again.

"They're taking us the long way," he noted aloud. Since it was all he knew, he had been tracking their movements by sound and touch without needing to keep all his attention on it. Like watching scenery roll past a window, he imagined. "Hardly any stops, and I haven't heard much traffic outside either. Going around the city, maybe, or just plain leaving town. What are the chances someone's noticed we're gone by now?"

He already knew them, he had worked with cops and learned their statistics just as well as anyone might. They had all been at a private residence with no one else really aware of the get-together to note a lack of arrival back home. Perhaps keeping the pow-wows so thoroughly secret wasn't the best way to go about things. Then again, Shannon was going to put this one squarely on the shoulders of Eli, Matheus and Javier. How was he supposed to know they were the kind of people that attracted crazy kidnappers and didn't just go out to catch them every now and then?

"There's a pretty big chance somebody's noticed," Eli said.

Against his chest from where his head had landed in his moment of disbelief, the teenager added, "They got me at school, so that should raise a few alarms."

"Or we could just escape."

Aha. So their mysterious sixth was awake. He heard a bit of a startle from the other side of the van before Matheus asked, "When did you get here?"

"I've been here the whole time, idiot," said the flat, mocking tones of the young woman no one else had noticed.

"Thought they might have hit you on the head or something," Shannon said. It was acknowledgment that he'd known of her presence. There was nothing wrong with that. These two didn't know he was blind, and the others were used to him being hypersensitive to the presence of other people. "Escape would be great, if we had hands and eyes. Unless you want to ditch us—which, by all means, I'd do the same—it would be pretty hard to get us all out at once."

"Well, if it wasn't obvious you weren't awakened, that just cinched it," said their sixth. Which, what? Again with the dickishness of the last fire guy? Leave him alone already. "We're Aspects of the Sleeping God himself, able to control our specific elements. Of us here, there's three that I know that can use it, the imp prince might have learned how to do it without Daddy's help in the last few years, and Harvey's too young to access his abilities."

"Imp prince?" repeated Eli, indignantly.

"Too young to use my abilities?" repeated the teenager—Harvey?—with great offense. "Who do you think I am? Delacroix? I can use them just fine. I'm not going to fry myself like the shoddy sparkplug over there."

As Eli spluttered and wound up to reply, Javier interrupted. Ever the peacekeeper, Mr. Vasquez. "If you haven't forgotten, there are ten of us and only six in this van. Where are the others? And if they're captured, we could plan an escape while we're all together."

"You think they'd let us all alone together to plot?" asked Shannon. Not that their current situation was very different, but it wasn't that they were being left alone. They were being transported. "Ten's a good number, but I doubt we're going to have any advantage on these guys. Anyway, what do you mean, that cinched it?" he asked, returning to the matter at hand with their sixth.

She gave a short sigh. She still wasn't moving, but at least now they seemed to have the entire group engaged now. "You're not aware of anything Aspect-related, you don't know the extent of our power, and you're not nearly dickish enough to be awakened if you really are fire."

"Oh," Shannon said simply. "Well... that's—I'll take that as a compliment, thanks."

"We don't really need all six of us to use our abilities to escape to begin with," Harvey explained. "All we really need is Denise."

"She controls the element of metal," Eli said. It was beginning to grate how everyone seemed to be finishing each others' thoughts, how they all understood their position and could roll with the punches when it came to Aspects. "Not very smart of them to transport her in a van."

"This is officially the Cheater Van," Shannon announced. "Metal's not an element either. I mean, periodic table yes, but not mystical voodoo scale element. What does that mean for us? Can she just turn this sucker around and get us home?"

"If you want to go find the van with Water, Air, Sound and Earth, be our guest," Denise said. "I won't stop you, but don't tell Sister Marie what element you are."

"What the hell," Shannon muttered, only loud enough for Harvey and Lacey to hear him. "Did he burn down a church while he was at it? Jesus."

Eli sighed, an aggravated sound. "Can we not bring up the whole 'his Aspect is a dick' thing? I think he's aware by now."

"Fine," Denise said, tone as even as usual. If she actually cared that much, Shannon was having trouble figuring it out. "I can't completely control the van by myself," she said, back to business, "since as soon as they noticed me, they'd probably turn it off. That would need me to have Eli help since he can use electricity."

"That's unless he fries the electrical system by putting too much into it," Harvey pointed out.

"I can control my electricity well enough to prevent that," Eli said.

Shannon was quiet for a moment while they discussed. All right, that sounded like a plan, and he was definitely on board with having a plan. However, the ebb and flow of his uncontrolled thought process did not bring him to an immediate agreement, instead seeming to try and focus on the thought that niggled in the background, drag it to the forefront. God, he was thirsty. "What about the others?" he asked, slowly, thoughts once again smoothed out to a water-polished sheen that he couldn't consciously grasp. Much better. Work out kinks now, process the rest later.

Eli didn't seem very worried about it. "They can get out on their own, if they want."

"You mean if they haven't already," Harvey said, voice a rumble against Shannon's ribs while he shifted around to something more comfortable. Good, at least one of them wasn't completely miserable, all bound up and difficulty breathing through the damn sack over their heads. At least there was something Shannon could do, and it was one something more than anyone else had done despite all their brave talk of busting out like action heroes.

"It's doubtful." Denise seemed disinclined to make herself more comfortable. Maybe she liked it better where she had full contact with the metal of the van underneath her. Did it feel any different to someone who had some sort of affinity for it? "I imagine they'll want to find out who our kidnappers are and why they've grabbed us."

"Not to mention how they got their information on us," Javier added somberly. "Ten Aspects and not all of us are awakened, yet they grab all of us? Somebody's done their homework—"

"—and that's not a good thing," Matheus finished.

"Who else isn't?" asked Shannon. Counting up the numbers in his head, he realized with a start that with the introduction of Harvey and Denise, and the mention of Sister Marie, he must have met all the rest of the so-called Aspects when working on the restraining orders. Every single one of them were accounted for. Had they known who Shannon was by some inerrant sense that seemed to have led Matheus and Javier on him? Had Eli taken currently-unnecessary precautions and were they blindsided by the restraining order? "It can't just be me. How would they know what we don't even know ourselves?"

Jesus Christ on a pogostick, he was taking this completely serious. Somewhere along the line, this had stopped being some crazy avian trick of the light and settled into a sort of rightness. Like that window between waking and sleep where you knew what you had to do, how to do it, even if you had no idea what you were doing. Things just got done. It was like sleepwalking.

"It's just you," Javier said. Shannon frowned deeply from underneath the sack. "For the most part, we all awakened years ago."

"Denise and Harvey only happened last year, don't forget," Matheus contradicted.

"Right," Javier agreed, "and fire Aspects almost never completely awaken anyway."

"You'd think the unrepentant asshole would always go first," Shannon said idly, frown on his voice as much as his face. He was part of something big and had never known. Others had known for him, and it felt suspiciously like people trying to live his life for him for his lack of sight. That had always made him equal parts mad and determined. He just needed to figure out what he could do with this information now that he finally had it.

"They had to be keeping tabs on us," Eli said. He was either ignoring Shannon or hoping to avoid another devolution into how fire was so awful. Which was appreciated while frustrating at the same time. "You guys have only been gathering recently because of Jasper's disappearance—"

Wait, had the others been meeting up over the case as well? He didn't get it. There was some sort of connection he was missing. "What does Jasper Keaton have to do with all this?"

"Jasper's one of us," Matheus explained. "Specifically, he's the Aspect of light."

No, that wasn't right. Jasper couldn't be light, because— "That's a complicated situation right there," Javier said, cutting into Shannon's thoughts, "but to put it simply: Eli's special and Jasper is the actual Aspect."

"If it confuses you too much, just call him the Aspect of death," Denise offered. It would have been charitable had she not been calling someone the grim reaper. "It's what I call him."

Eli scoffed with ample incredulity. "You just call me an imp."

"We have exceptions in our club? Our club of ten people, and we have exceptions," Shannon said flatly. Not that it wasn't bad enough already, but he had a feeling this was only the tip of the iceberg.

Something shifted in the van around them and, judging by the way Harvey went tense, it wasn't just Shannon who could tell. They were slowing down like they hadn't before, ready to stop. They had pulled into their destination — or at least the neighborhood of it. There was no time left for discussion. Now was the time to present a united front, this pack of strangers Shannon had only met a handful of times and the friends he wasn't sure what to do with right then, and get through this. Better to work together and survive than let confusion win and doom them all. They'd get through this. Even with all the rest of the thoughts swimming in his head, looking for places to fit in and click, he knew that for certain.