Ambrosia collects Jess's things, thanks Mrs. Gravel for her hospitality, and then heads to the playmat where Jess and Summer sit.

She crouches down. "You two ready to go?"

Nope. Is that weird?

"Yeah, I think we are," he says to his mother. "Jess?"

"I require conveyance."

Ambrosia picks them both up.

"Bye Mrs Gravel!" 

"Pleasure's all mine, Summer," she says, a little too cheerfully. "Sorry about my comments regarding your name."

"Alright kids, remember to keep your voices down. Don't want to spook the locals."

She carries Jess and Summer back to her modest cottage near the seaside. The village isn't terribly large, so the trip takes only a couple of minutes.

Jess is very tempted to spook the locals, but she manages to restrain herself on this occasion.

Summer chatters happily about all the books and films he wants to show Jess and how nice his mother is.

Once home, Ambrosia makes all these books and films available.

"Which one would you two like to start with?" She's ready to read aloud, turn pages or slot cassettes into the VCR as suits her little guests' preferences.

"I'd like to see Velvet. It's a documentary I overheard someone thinking about yesterday... it sounded very educational."

"You sure? It's very graphic," he says very matter-a-factly.

Velvet. Oh dear.

She knows that film quite well. Knows it viscerally.

If there ever were a documentary that was Not Appropriate For Children it's this one.

She knows that Jess must've requested it for precisely that reason.

A test. The girl wants to make Ambrosia squirm.

"I'm sure." Pause. "Unless Mommy Dearest thinks we're too immature?"

"That's silly. Mother knows we can handle it."

A clumsy, but effective, manipulation. Ambrosia considers her options for counter-play.

"I'll grab the tape."

She heads to the closet, retrieves a worn cassette from the top shelf, then returns to the television and slots Velvet into the VCR.

There are no opening credits. No talking heads to contextualize any of the footage. It is what is is: a man walking through the aftermath of one of if not the most brutal massacres in the history of the planet with a hand held camera.

Broken buildings, shattered streets and wrecked cars lie everywhere he points his lens, but they're nothing compared to the evidence of human suffering. Chess boards of human breasts, coral reefs of baby skulls, a meter long caterpillar composed of dozens of mashed together children. These were the lucky compared to some of the people who lived through  all this, for lack of a better word. An armless woman, her eyes burnt out of her head, is led through the carnage by two crying children. A man whose flesh is half-melted like candle wax wanders past, not noticing the cameraman.    

"He had three whole hours before Father and the others came," Summer says conversationally.

It happened six years ago, in what used to be the city of London. Ambrosia had been out of town at the time but so much of her family--a grandfather, a mother, two uncles, a niece and a wife--were there when it all happened.

The Event... the 'Battle of London' as outsiders often call it? Other people, all across the world, remember it as the climactic final clash between the Miracleman and the Adversary. They remember the the high-soaring pugilism, remember the triumph of 'good' over evil, remember their savior's tragic sacrifice as he finally put down his murderous ward.

But here in Britain? People remember the three hours that came before.

Three hours. And the capital had a population of about seven million so...

Jess does some quick mental math.

Whew. She gazes upon the elaborate carnage displayed on the screen in front of them. "Six hundred of these... per second?"

"This is what the enemy looks like."

She projects her surface thoughts clearly, providing further context to the words she speaks aloud.

The 'Adversary', the monstrous god-child who took so many of Ambrosia's loved ones from her, is not the enemy she refers to.

Nor does she speak of the ones who eventually stopped him--the ones who spend three hours partying, oblivious in their palace on the dark side of the moon, while London burned.

"Power without humanity." Ambrosia stares bitterly at the panorama of mangled bodies. "The real enemy. The cycle you were born to break."

The cameraman eventually comes across Summer and Jess' father. He's weeping, holding a dead boy with a broken head to his chest and sobbing.

"It must have been hard for him." 

Velvet's finale always leaves her feeling so tangled.

"They were close. Like father and son, some say." Miracleman and Kid Miracleman. Mike and Bates. The Tyrant and the Adversary. Many names, always the same tragedy. "That day was hard for a lot of people. So much death, so many sundered families. But he faced the special horror of having to sunder his own. It was hard, yes, but it was necessary."