"I did look it up. Before killing Conrad, actually, I'm not a dumbass. It would have been hard, and risky, and since I'm in late stage of cellular decay, there would have been a whole 'nother cellular regeneration thing. At best. If it worked. And, actually, I'd rather choose to spend my time making the world better instead of scrambling for a chance to live longer in it."

.... well now Yvette's going to start crying, thanks.

Zash pulls Yvette into a hug and pulses love and agreement. He, too, wants to cry, he wants to keep arguing, keep trying to find a way out of this, but... he knows it's dumb. He knows it won't work. What's done is done and, well. This is the world they live in, right now.

"...okay. Then, then I want to make the best of the time we have left."

"That's the spirit! Now help me clear out a bunch of rubble so I can go out in style with a murder suicide!!"

"Oh my god," hiccups Yvette, still sobbing. "That's horrible and can I hug you, please."

"Yeah, sure. C'mere."

His brain comes up with the absolutely horrible thought that it's a good thing they never officially adopted Morgan and he is going to stop thinking that right now.

"Do you have to put it like this," he says instead, sighing longsufferingly, but he too wants to hug his not-a-daughter even if he's trying to focus on the positives.

Hugs are positive.

"I definitely do." Hug!

Yeah Yvette is just actually going to cry on her now. Probably she shouldn't and should follow Morgan's preferences on living life to the fullest and whatnot, but, but. ... Fuck.

"I had a lot of fun with you, Morgan. And I really like you. And I'm gonna miss you."

"See! Best, most sane child soldier you've ever met!"

"Fucking hell do you have to put it like that, I, yes you are and will absolutely be the best super-human experimental child soldier we'll ever meet, we'll, we'll be damn sure of it, okay," blubbers Yvette.

"Thanks. That's all I really want. Can't tolerate competition for the number one spot in your hearts, you know." She gives them both a little squeeze, and then winces a little. Ow. Hugging hurts, actually, when your body is starting to break down and all of your cells are kind of falling apart.

"Right, hug time over, back to work. I got a short list of things to do and they're going to fucking happen!!"

He pulls away and grins at her. And if his grin is a bit watery no it isn't.

"Yes, ma'am! Give me work to do." Glance at the supplies. "After we deliver these."

"Yeah, sure, off you go. And see if you can get the squishy humans to help with the boring rubble clearing work, since you're feeding them."

Yvette totally wants to hover and wring her hands over Morgan but. She'll follow her stated preferences instead.

(Fuck this hurts. She regrets ever not paying Morgan full and complete attention, and ever not spoiling her with everything she possibly could.)

...yeah, Zash does a little, too. When Morgan said she was "burning up lifespan" he'd kinda thought they'd have years, not... this.

Anyway, time to go give the Jeneorans stuff. And tell them that there's a crazy coming.

Yeah. This is. Far, far too soon.

"Crazies coming ain't new." Rosa doesn't quite smile, but she almost does. "It means we've got something worth fighting for. Capabilities, loadout, and priorities?"

"Legato has telekinesis strong enough to pull a sand steamer's cannon free from its hinges with fine enough control to clothesline someone with said sand steamer's railing. Elendira has less strong telekinesis but finer control and she can generate matter and often uses that to summon dozens of flying iron nails similarly to how Knives generates knives. They might have others but if so I don't know who.

"You should really hole up and hide once Jeneora is in range of Legato's TK, he will throw you guys around like puppets and try to make me kill you or have to make choices about whom to save. You do not have a way to survive a fight with him any more than you have a way to survive a fight with my brother."

"That being said, we would really appreciate prep work. Um, not that you, have to or anything, just. We really don't want Legato to have places to hide."

Rosa clearly does not like the idea of leaving defense of her town to someone else, but. ... She and the rest of the town are also clearly out of their league, and furthermore not in any state to fight any telekinetic psychos.

"... Fine," she sighs. "Prep work. So that's just... clean things up and make sure there's nowhere someone can hide? Hell, we were going to do that anyway."

Time for business. All traces of Zash's sheepishness and guilt and upset over this town are gone, pushed into the back of his mind and replaced by almost military singlemindedness. Yvette might find the inside of his head very interesting right now, the ease with which he creates a mental picture of the tactical situation of this town and their enemies and starts going through them. She might've caught a glimpse of that before, but not this much, not occupying as much of his attention and processing power as this.

"That's a good start, but there's more we can do if we turn out to have enough time, and if we can parallelize. Someone should give one of us—probably Yvette—the fine-toothed comb description of the whole place. Every nook and cranny, every corner, horizontally and vertically, everything you know about this town that outsiders don't. With that we make a tactical map of the place, find the most defensible spots, the spots with best visibility, the spots that can be best used when trying to fight—or escape—a telekinetic maniac.

"And for that matter, escape routes. We need to find or create some, redundant if we can, balancing ease of use by you and difficulty of use by them. The battlefield of my dreams has one-way teleporters inside incredibly thick-walled, secured, and trapped facilities whose layout is only known by the people inside it and which is designed to be impossible to navigate to outsiders, outfitted with arrowslits, cannons, and automated machine gun turrets. We can't get that but that's the dream and the closer we can get to it the better.

"Anything we haven't thought of, any suggestions, any wild ideas, bring them up. Yvette and I are well within each other's telepathy range everywhere in this town so you can get either of us from the other and Morgan should be with one of us at most times so we can be used to coordinate and for instantaneous message-passing.

"Questions, concerns, worries, ideas, requests for clarification?"

(...... help her husband is competent and she appreciates this about him. As in: she finds it hot. Zash being a gigantic adorable goof is great and all, but, but. It's a good thing no one expects her to know anything about anything in this sphere. She doesn't literally whine, but. Whine.)

Rosa is not nearly so distracted, and looks to be precisely in her element.

"Nah. Sounds like just the kind of thing we've been missing out on, here. Tonis, sweetie! Come down baby, it's about time your mama taught you some tactics."