Time:  The night of Fourth Fist’s linking

Place: Isolated location on the Regime/Pantheon frontier, near Redo

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Fader: No.

Anubis: What will your reason be this time?

Fader: Same as it always is, your boss is a butcher.  He proved that in the Fourth Defiance.  I’ll always stand against him.

Anubis: You are pretending you have a problem with butchers?  You work for Peggy Martin!

Fader: She isn’t the one burning cities to the ground around these parts.

Anubis: Really?  Have you seen what your new compatriots left in their wake in Laredo?

Fader: …

Anubis: In case you haven’t, they burned it to the fucking ground.  So go on and tell me how that’s ok with you.

Fader: I… look…

Anubis:  Was it ok because it was on our side of a line on a map?  Because it dared to stand up to your boss?

Fader: No, but…it’s a war, right?  They probably didn’t have a choice.

Anubis:  Ah, so Zeus is a butcher because he fights back when Prevailer sends her goons to slaughter his people, but she is not a butcher when she sends them, because no choice or whatever?  That makes sense to you?

Fader: You are twisting it.

Anubis:  I’m not asking for much.  I’m asking you to swap your allegiance from the bad woman who rules a few million to the bad men and women who rule billions.  Turn your coat, your bosses certainly can’t get any worse.

Fader:  One of your bosses is literally named Death.  She runs slaughter camps.

Anubis:  To make Ultras to defend us against the Fists.  Have you been deathless so long you’ve forgotten what it is to fear?

Fader:  Nothing about the Link changes who we are.

Anubis:  Debatable, and also, I wasn’t talking about the Link.  I’m talking about your power.  Your vaunted ability to take yourself out of a situation.  Just turn yourself into this powerless, and protected, image, and let the world go by.

Fader:  My Gift didn’t change me either.  I do what I can to protect the place I grew up in.  I would do that even if I could die.

Anubis:  Sure you would.

Fader:  Believe what you want.

Anubis:  Alright, this was the usual waste of time.

Fader:  Don’t act like you are surprised.  You had to know how this would go.

Anubis:  I did, but my bosses are always curious.  It would have been good to preserve you once the Regime was gone.  Someone needs to run North America for the Pantheon.

Fader:  The Regime doesn’t look to be going anywhere.

Anubis:  You aren’t looking in the right places.  The Fifth Defiance is already underway.