A moody expression darkened Elliot's face as he entered the conference room.  He thought he'd departed early enough to arrive on time, but all of the Wards save their new leader had beaten him here.  In an unsurprising turn of events, the status and future of the teenage taskforce weighed heavily on everyone's minds.  Having selected an empty chair, he deposited himself in it without much composure and stilled himself to wait for Alessa.  It wasn't long before the girl arrived, seated herself, and began the meeting.

With remarkable speed, Elliot found himself annoyed with Alessa's manner.  She seemed stiff, impersonal, and ultimately disingenuous in both the way she held herself and the way she spoke.  In the time in which Elliot worked with Sonar, the kid hadn't gotten all formal like that at all, even when important matters were at hand.  [i]She's already starting acting like she thinks a leader should act...like a businessman reading off a quarterly report.  This whole stinking mess affects us all as humans.  You'd think she'd try and empathize.[/i]  But what did he know, after all?  The dark and mysterious antihero never stood as leader of the pack of goody-goodies, for he played by his own rules.

So, the new second-in-command could be Dean.  Elliot suppressed a groan.  If he'd known that the person with which he shared a mutual hate would eventually be promoted to a position of a semi-power over him, he might have held off on the taunting.  Now, he supposed, he would have to hope that second-in-command didn't mean much of anything in terms of authority—or that Alessa never fell on the battlefield.  Of course, he knew Alessa didn't like him much more, but she wasn't as openly spiteful to him as Dean.  To protest the decision would be to invite more scorn upon him while changing nothing, however.  The realization of how little his word stood for in the group, all based off his behavior, was a sobering one.  He'd have to rein in his brooding tendencies, even if he couldn't change who he was.  [i]Ugh.  It makes me want to quit.[/i]

Of course, he felt zero inclination to share any ideas with the team about 'integration'.  The problem with young heroes was that they all felt they knew best, and that was an issue that only time and pain could solve, not group therapy sessions.  Elliot leaned back in his chair, staring at the ceiling.