13 November, 2020
JJ sighed as he settled back into the very comfortable backseat of the limo, pulling at the collar of his somewhat less comfortable tux. Okay, be honest, he thought. It isn’t the tux that’s making you uncomfortable; it’s the reason you’re wearing it that’s annoying you, Astor. The truth was, he just didn’t want to be going where the limo was taking him. But when the President of the United States herself calls and asks you, as a personal favor, to do something… well, you do it, no matter how personally distasteful you might find the request.
As the limo pulled out of his condo’s parking garage, into the wind and rain of the storm that had blown in so suddenly this afternoon, he sighed again and shook his head at his own angst. Most people would not find being asked by their Commander-in-Chief to attend a fancy gala, with good food and free booze, to be a particularly onerous duty. Certainly Jonny had seemed amazed when he’d thrown the invitation to speak at the Astoria opening of the Treasures of Atlantis traveling exhibit into the trash, the day after the team’s return from Terra Cava. Artemis had not been surprised, of course, and had rather drily explained the matter to their young teammate.
“John did not have a particularly happy childhood, growing up a virtual prisoner of the extremist Atlantean faction who had imprisoned his grandparents and other survivors from the Titanic. While their strange biological agenda to create Atlantean/dry-lander hybrids may have led to his own birth, he holds little love for them. I can assure you, Jonny, that kind of early trauma leaves an indelible mark — hardly surprising, then, if he has little desire to associate himself with anything Atlantean, even now.”
That had shut the kid down, which he’d been grateful for at the time. Thinking back on it now, however, JJ actually found it rather surprising – Jonny was not generally one to let his enthusiasms be quashed quite so quickly. But these last two weeks the kid had seemed pretty subdued, and had been spending a great deal of time away from the Pyramid on his off hours. JJ knew he’d met up a couple times recently with Wunderkind (or rather with that hero’s civilian persona, CIA analyst Frederick Hamilton), but Jonny had been unusually reticent about why. JJ hadn’t pressed, although he had thought of asking Kyle about it. The two of them were close, and if the kid was going to confide in anyone it would be Kyle.
Unfortunately, Kyle had been spending even more time away than Jonny the last two weeks, if for less mysterious reasons. The shocking revelation that The Master of Tyr’Ana was actually Nicco Steiner, Kyle’s long-thought-dead father, had thrown their teammate into a frenzy of action. A very focused frenzy, to be sure – the older Steiner had suffered a great deal of physical and psychic trauma in the years since his disappearance, and Kyle was grimly determined to help him regain both his memories and his sanity. Totem had agreed to lend own mystic abilities to the effort, which JJ would have found funny under other circumstances, given Kyle’s long-stand antipathy towards “magic” — you could always hear the quotation marks around the word when he used it.
Artemis had eventually convinced a reluctant Kyle that they needed to bring SHADE into the matter, if only to avoid future complications for his father. She and JJ had run interference with the agency while Kyle had gotten Nicco Steiner admitted to the Wolf Point Psychiatric Hospital, and in the end SHADE agreed to take a hands-off approach, at least for the time being. They would require frequent updates on treatment and progress, of course, but given the facility’s apparently successful rehabilitation of Epiphany Jones, and the Magus Prime’s personal involvement, JJ doubted there’d be any trouble on that front. Nor did he think Kyle’s legal team would find it difficult to clear his father’s name once the man was released.
All of which rather put his own current annoyance in perspective, JJ thought wryly. He just had to go to a party and make a pretty speech about the benefits of amity and commerce, how we’re all really the same under the skin, blah, blah, blah. As much as he had a visceral negative reaction to all things Atlantean, even he had to admit it was better to see the surface world’s relationship to the undersea empire normalize into something more secure and beneficial to both. With years of international negotiation finally beginning to bear fruit, Atlantis seemed ready to fully join the United Nations and take its place on the world stage – whatever his personal feelings, he’d be damned if he’d be the one to spike it.
Still, it had taken a call from President Clinton herself to make him realize that.
“Captain Astor, you are a living link between our two worlds, symbolic proof that whatever our differences may be, we are all human at root. With negations to bring Atlantis fully into the United Nations so close to being finalized, King Orlinar has agreed to a major publicity push. To that end, art treasures from the surface world and Atlantis are being exchanged for a six-month-long tour. Astoria has been chosen to open this tour not least because you live there. It will end next spring in New Atlantis, hopefully around the time of the formal vote to admit Atlantis to the UN. Start and finish, all very symbolic. It would mean a great deal to me personally if you could speak, even briefly, at the opening of the exhibit in Astoria.”
What could he say? “Of course, Madame President, it would be my pleasure to help in any way I can.”
He might have been a little less quick to agree if he’d known the President’s own speech writers would be quite so involved in vetting his proposed “few words.” Hell, in the end they’d pretty much written the damn speech themselves. He had put his foot down, however, at calling the Atlanteans his “siblings of the sea.” The President would just have to be satisfied with more general, and less florid, platitudes…
He was jolted from his reverie by a strong gust of wind that actually buffeted the limo – an impressive feat, given how heavily armored it was. The winds were really picking up. The driver had the wipers going at full speed, and they could barely keep up with the deluge. They were on the Aurora freeway by then, but barely doing 30 mph… gosh, it certainly would be too bad if I was late… or couldn’t make it at all, even…
His Vanguard watch beeped. A call from Artemis! Was he saved?
“Scion here,” he said, tapping his earbud. “What’s going on?”
“Nothing that needs your attention, John,” Artemis said, purposefully using his civilian name. “Just calling to check in and make sure you don’t get distracted from your duty this evening. Dispatch has alerted us to an unidentified small aircraft, apparently damaged or in distress, heading toward the city from the east. Quanta is getting the Interceptor prepped, and we will be taking off momentarily.”
“In this weather? No offense to Quanta, but maybe I should head back and take—”
“John, you certified him yourself as fully rated to fly the plane under all conditions. Plus, I’ll be there as backup — or were you lying when you said I was as skilled as you at the controls these days?”
“Well, no, of course not!” JJ was forced to concede. “It’s just that I think—”
“That you’d like a good emergency, to get you out of your responsibilities this evening,” she laughed in his ear. “But only you can do what you’re tasked with doing tonight, John – which is why none of us are there with you, so as not to take the focus off your “half-blue hybrid ass” as Quanta called it. We can handle this little emergency. So take that damn earbud out, put it in your pocket, and silence your watch. Call me after the gala, and I’ll fill you in on what you missed.”
She cut the connection. Damn, she knew him too well! With one last sigh, he pulled his earbud out and dropped it into a pocket of his tux jacket. They were exiting the freeway, and even with the storm they’d be at the Tidewater Aquarium in five minutes.
An aquarium! He’d rolled his eyes when he’d first heard where they were displaying the exhibition of Atlantean artifacts — a bit spot on, wasn’t it? Like the Atlanteans holding the opening of the surface exhibition at a chicken farm or something. Ah well, it hadn’t been his call, and if the Atlanteans were offended it was no scales off his back. Besides, there would only be a handful of the blue-skinned bastards there anyway — the exhibit’s security detail and one or two Atlantean diplomats, he’d been told.
He would do this, gain brownie points with the President, and bask in the satisfying glow of his own virtue afterward… he just needed to get through the next couple of hours… easy as hake!