First comes mask and mission.

  Jasque thought that was backwards. First came the mission, then the mask.

  For instance, he was most of the way up a tree that had visibility on Thresher's tent. It had required him to summon special spiked shoes and a thick bit of fabric so he could shimmy high.

  Through his binoculars, he watched the tent where his charge and the dryad were. If anyone saw him, they wouldn't think it matched his mask. His mask was charming, fit, sexy, laid back, playful, and normal in all the worst ways.

  That was why they should say, first comes mission, then mask. This was more important than his persona. But that phrase wouldn't encapsulate the fact that those blessed to wear the true masks were the mission. They were humanity's hope.

  As hard as he tried, as much as he bled, and as hard as he worked to make allies and push people towards the righteous path, he could not compare to the difference Beige made in a single well-planned game of checkers. It was math. Uncompromising math. He wasn't very good at calculations and needed to call someone for help. Still, after three days of research and crunching numbers, his relative irrelevance had been soul-crushingly clear. That was why he was here instead of battling like his blood sang for.

  A bug crawled up the tree bark next to him. After a few seconds of looking at the marking and sensing it with his magic (it was screaming like a thousand damned souls to restore the balance and cleanse the world of monsters), he confirmed that it was a crypto. Not a particularly dangerous one, but still not something of this world; not of his world.

  The Slayer opened his mouth. He hadn't eaten in the last two days. Instead, he had gotten by with sugar pills, vitamins, caffeine, and whatever fuel his body needed that he could pour into a thermos.

  As the scent of sugar pill and other stimulants wafted from his open mouth, he kept his gaze on the tent, only blinking one eye at a time so he wouldn't miss anything.

  Godkiller Stern was in there. And Stern was close to a dangerous precipice.

  In truth, Stern was always at risk of being derailed. He bore the greatest tool, the most sacred mask, the key to their mission. He held all of that in the feeble hands of Wade Raslow: the man whose only resilience came in the form of being an intractable, roach-like threat to his own potential.

  In anyone else, Jasque would dismiss his weakness and move on. That was the only way to stop the unbelievable, selfish, slothful, idiocy of it all from breaking him.

  They had all been born into a war and a responsibility. Responsibility, to any sane person, should mean something. Especially the responsibility to stop the fucking apocalypse.

  But no, despite the self-evidence of the situation, almost everyone betrayed their duty a thousand times a day in a thousand ways. All because the apocalypse wasn't as bad as it was a few years ago, and because they didn’t like thinking about how right now wasn't as bad as it would be in a few years when the next layer of The Vault opened.

  The whole thing was insane. He couldn't understand, and it almost made him want to weep with impotent fury. Everyone acted like the ongoing extermination process of humanity taking breaks meant the resistance should too. But the monsters hadn't stopped. Somewhere in the world, they were killing right now, making new monstrous babies right now.

  By that logic, a racing bullet wasn't an issue as long as there was enough time to shove one more fistful of potato chips into your mouth before it hit. Who cared if you lost ground so long as this generation wasn't going to pay the final price for it, right?

  Let's all ignore the fact that if even one million people took a single five-minute break, it would be more than 83,333 hours wasted. In other words, more than 9.51 years of work time tossed down the shitter while shambling terrors hadn't stopped spawning, and walls still weren't tall enough for the next surge.

  And Stern was worse. Even with all that he could do in a single five-minute span of moderate effort, and all the support he had been given, Stern fell into the same indolent betrayals as every other civilian.

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  It sickened him.

  In truth, if he had an opportunity to, he would hollow Wade out and crawl inside his soul so he could pilot Godkiller Stern to its greatest heights. If it burnt his soul like acid for the rest of his life, if it would send him to eternal torture in every hell, if he had to drive a bus through a pre-school, he would do it in a heartbeat.

  After all, like everyone said but didn't mean, first comes mask and mission.

  Unfortunately, taking Stern's body was not an option. His research showed there was no way for him to do so without debilitating the power it hosted.

  Instead, Jasque climbed trees. Rather than reigning over the world with absolute will and a celestial jurisdiction that defied the limits of reality, he watched Wade sneak away to dance at a sticky-floored bar. No bathing in a sea of ichor, and soothing the entreaties of his soul, no, Jasque was too busy scheduling breaks.

  Even the thought of breaks made him sneer, though he kept his mouth open through it.

  Again, unfortunately, the data was clear. He had tracked Stern's output under different conditions. He had observed his mental tractability with varying levels of sleep and isolation to support his focus. The results were unambiguous; the mask needed breaks and social visits with an idiot who thought Jasque didn't know about every empty calorie and seditious thought he put in Stern's head.

  It was necessary, if distasteful.

  Necessary was fine, though; he could endure anything if it helped balance what was wrong with the world. Plus, Jasque had not yet given up on toughening Stern until he no longer needed the coddling. But that work was still in progress. Hopefully, they would be down to an average of three hours of sleep a night over the next two years.

  In fact, he suspected all sorts of things would fall into place in three to five years. The dream of properly adjusted Stern just required a bit more harsh training, big conversations on low sleep, and a subtle sprinkle of classical conditioning throughout. Then, through his charge, Jasque might address the incursion, the imbalance, the desecration happening to their world.

  He hadn't made peace with the work it took to get Stern operating like he should have from the beginning, but he was resigned to it. In a way, it made sense that the greatest weapon would require the longest fabrication. The difference between Wade and Stern was too severe for anything else.

  Then, just in the last couple months, Stern's constant, low-level betrayals of convenience had gotten worse. The lunches, the talks, the spared thunder falcons: all bad enough. Then he had aided and abetted The Dryad in finding a crypto to both bind herself closer to and to stop from dying.

  For years, his charge had given lip service to the mission and spoken as if he understood sacrifice and duty. Turned out all he needed to turn his coat was someone lying to him; to tell poor little Wade Raslow that he was already good enough, that he already worked hard enough.

  It was disgusting.

  Every day, she undid his work; she took the heat temper from his blade.

  If Jasque hadn't been jaded years ago, it would be unbearable. His eyes would have bled with the fury of seeing a savior prioritize his country-fried, trivial bullshit over turning back the tides of an extinction event.

  True, Stern needed breaks (for now); maintaining the mind behind the mask necessitated playdates with Scotty (so far), but Jasque was becoming convinced they did not need The Dryad, even if her Wild Talent could increase their cell's combat ability.

  Jasque's jaws snapped shut without any warning. The unnatural bug had just crossed the boundary of his teeth and was sheared in half. His soul's cry to fix the balance grew in fervor as he tasted the abomination's insides. They burned, and a blister formed on his gums.

  It hurt less than the thought of how many more he could have killed in the same amount of time if he had Stern's powers.

  Dispassionately, Jasque gently took the thrashing head and limbs from his tongue. He crushed it between his fingers without moving so abruptly that the motion would give away his position and disturb his vigil.

  The mission required The Dryad to join the cause. But the mask, or at least the one he was responsible for, required her absence as soon as that was accomplished.

  Hopefully, the contract was signed, and they could start distancing from her tomorrow. He could endure anything, even a possible savior’s betrayal, so long as it got them where they needed to be.

  Through his binoculars, he saw his charge and the poison-tongued, but necessary, dryad leave the tent together.

  Soundlessly, Jasque moved to follow Stern, just as he had been doing since that start, and just as he planned on doing until he died or mask and mission guided him to more fruitful labor.

  The End

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