[COLOR=GRAY][INDENT][INDENT][i]

[center][color=white][b]“You know, my brothers and sisters?”[/b][/color][/center]

A voice bellowed out, soft but loud, projecting across the room over the ever-persistent hum of the now-yellow fluorescent bar lights that hung from the roof, and pops and cracks of the coffee machine running just off yonder in the corner. Before the crowd of unevenly lined plastic foldable chairs occupied with those from all over, stood a man behind a worn wooden podium whose hair, once golden, now cluttered with streaks of grays and dulled yellows, dressed in a garb of white frilled with Purple. Eyes of stark green glared across the hall, decorated with flags of the same colors he wore, banners of stripes and crosses lined the walls within his gaze. The air was permeated with the aroma of days-old coffee and the stench of stagnant air from years of disuse as a smile grew upon the speaker's old lips before speaking again.

[center][color=white][b]“Last night, I spent the whole damn evenin’ rackin’ my mind about what I was gonna say tonight. Thinkin’ about exactly what our naturally ordained position in this world is, despite how painfully obvious it may be. Where exactly do we fall in the almighty’s godly order?”[/b][/color][/center]

Near the back corner of the hall, one of the many people standing in the crowd due to the underwhelming amount of chairs was a man whose face looked so much like the speaker before them all. Yellow locks were slicked back on his head with arms crossed, slightly covering the name tag with Lucius written in sloppy Sharpie. Yet Lucius was still in jail.  With him locked up in one of the few specialized hype facilities in the South, the man who stood among the ranks of the congregation was naught but an impostor who wore the skin of one of their people.

And such was an art Dominique had grown prideful of. To become another, to embrace them and all their tics and idiosyncrasies, was more than simply copying a face or body; such was but the easy part. While copying the minutiae of his facial features and figure only took hours, becoming Lucius took long months in an office watching and rewinding clips of interviews to see exactly what made the man tick, how he thought, how he moved in a room – every facet of his personality. Many a lone night slumped over a desk whose surface was obscured by federal case files strewn about, having been combed through to memorize the small details of his life. All those hours led to this day: the knighting.

[center][color=white][b]“Well, to know this, we must look at who we are. We are a people, who at every chance have been hindered by the goddamn tyrannical grip of this government we call a ‘democracy.’ We are the people who have been left destitute by false kings who have no heavenly merit. We are the ones who have been left in chains. We are those who have been shackled by the powers that be, who just can’t handle the purity of our folk. My people, we are those who have been intoxicated by a cocktail of snake oils to destroy our gifts. The gifts given to us by God. By which, through his heavenly providence, we have become his chosen few. We are the ones ordained to inherit this Earth, yet upon these lands, they treat us as lesser. They call us freaks in the streets. Our young are collared and leashed for what is simply their divine right.”[/b][/color][/center]

Dominique leaned their weight against the wall behind them, taking a sip of the dark brew of coffee that was in their hand. It hadn’t been easy infiltrating the Knights of the True Testament despite the identity he had absorbed. Lucius Johnston, the man whom Dominique played, was the cousin of the orator who spouted a false creed to the crowd: Robert Johnston. Originally brought in on several counts of aggravated battery, Lucius was soon “released” after Dominique had taken his place in a joint operation between the FBI and HELP. Dominique, at this point, had been around the group for months, feeding information to the Feds as they watched the group’s rhetoric spread like wildfire in the fringes of the South. And tonight? Tonight was the time they’d finally be trusted as a knight. The time they finally began to gain the power that they would use to burn the group down to naught but ashes.

[center][color=white][b]“And I’ll confess to y'all, for you are my kin, I was once a man who saw color. Who looked only upon the shell of a man to determine his purity. I was a man whose eyes hadn’t yet been awakened to God’s truth, and I thought what made us pure and supreme was marked only by one’s skin, his blood, and the heritage of his people. But now? Now I know I was wrong. Now I know that I was looking at the wrong things. We aren’t pure because of those facts; we aren’t pure because of our genes. We aren’t pure because of our blood. We are pure because of the power that is coursing through our goddamn viens, people! We are pure, through the divinity god struck into us all on that very night! We are pure though that flame in our very being ignited by the blessings from above. Our power is the proof of our purity!”[/b][/color][/center]

As the last line fell from Robert’s lips with three successive bangs of his fist against the wooden podium, a cacophony of woos, cheers, and clapping erupted. With the peak to this sickening melody of hate, Dominique kept their face from twisting as they continued to observe the crowd. The K.T.T. twisted the reality of what their powers really were, twisted the view of who hyperhumans really were into something hateful. They preach like false prophets, spinning a tale of faux divinity to the masses. They fought against oppression, but in the same vein, fought for it.

[center][color=white][b]“And I’ll be damned if I let these heathens dictate how we live. For those untouched by God’s power are below us. We are his kin, we are his people, we are pure! There is no black, there is no white, there is no nation, there is no flag by which we are bound, there is only the pure and the impure. The divine and the discarded. And I know if anyone on this Earth will be cleansed, it will not be us. As God made us his soldiers, and it is our time to reclaim what is truly ours.”[/b][/color][/center]

The clapping continued yet the disgust burned a pit in Dominique’s mind. It was a shame to see how easily so many people were brought into hate. 

[center][color=white][b]“Y’all are too kind, I am just tellin’ our people’s truth. Thank you, thank you. Now y’all will see my face back up here in a little bit for the knighting. Mingle around for a little bit while we get everything prepared now.”[/b][/color][/center]

And with Robert left from the stage, the vitriol he spat now heralded and reinforced in the mind of the congregation as “God’s word.” Dominique exhaled a soft sigh as they once again brought the coffee up to their lips. This was not going to be the last of the long nights.

Yet before long, the black pager they held was tucked beneath their shirt began to vibrate.

911*86*60*401773

[color=825700]“What the fuck..?”[/color] They uttered softly, almost as but a whisper, as Dominique began to head to the nearest exit. The heart in their chest started to beat ever harder as they left out into the darkness of the Mississippi night. The soft breeze nipped at Dominique’s skin as the coverage of trees swayed overhead. There was not a single payphone for miles as Dominique’s eyes scanned out tree line. And in but an instant, they heard it. That sound which was unmistakable, the grip of dirt and loose stone under tire, the soft roar of an engine as it sped up the only road which led onto the property. Before they could get a word out, federal agents, equipped with gear as dark as the night sky they were beneath, swarmed the surrounding area, with the squad of HELP agents who accompanied them quickly ushering Dominique away. 

Dominique’s back fell into roughly cushioned seating that lined the back of the van be had been brought into.

[color=825700]“What the fuck was that, Kane? I’ve spent more than half a year with these bastards you fucking pull me out like that? The Feds, too? You just destroyed my cover.”[/color]

[color=f7976a]“Lower your tone, Dominique. Do you believe I wanted it to go this way?” Kane wiped the sweat from his forehead as his eyes shifted away from the surveillance screen. “Straight from the top, we only got the call a few hours ago, you’re getting pulled to a different team.”[/color]

[color=825700]“Are you serious?”[/Color] A scoff fell from Dominique's lips as he stared at Kane.

[color=f7976a]“Yup. Hell, this is just as much of a shock to us; this could’ve gone on for way longer. The Bureau decided to move forward with the arrest of Roberts; it’s beyond our jurisdiction now. We offered them a replacement agent but you can probably guess what they said about that.”[/color]

[color=825700]“You know, them arresting Roberts isn’t going to make anything better, right?”[/color] Dominique sighed.

[color=f7976a]“I do, and I am sure some people in the Bureau do as well. There is nothing either you or I can do about it. There’ll be a plane waiting for you tomorrow to take you back to Alpha Base. We still have some loose ends to tie up here. But in the meantime, let's get you back to the hotel.”[/color]

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[sub][CENTER][img]https://i.imgur.com/bs88WDw.png[/img][img]https://i.imgur.com/kGHfVmg.png[/img][img]https://i.imgur.com/N1YUXm6.png[/img][/CENTER][/sub][indent][sub][COLOR=SILVER][B]Location:[/B][/COLOR] [I]Canadian Air Space[/I][/sub][sup][right][COLOR=SILVER][b]Times of Trouble #1.007:[/b][/COLOR] [I]Faceless[/I][/right][/sup][/indent][sub]________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________[/sub][INDENT][sub][color=SILVER][B]Interaction(s):[/B][/COLOR] [I]Nil[/I][/sub][SUP][RIGHT][COLOR=SILVER][b]Previously:[/b][/COLOR] [I]Nil[/I][/right][/SUP]
[INDENT]
And there, upon that plane, had possibly been the most comfortable Dominique had been across these long months. The method of the K.T.T. hiding among the rural towns long abandoned by most after decades of economic strife and decline, overgrown farmland, and forests that dotted the Mississippi countryside meant forgoing that common luxury of comfortable bedding. Yet it wasn’t the first time Dominique had lived like such, and it wouldn’t be the last. Their body conformed to the seat as they lay back fully into it. Their hand delving into the reachers of the inner pocket of their jacket to retrieve the wallet they rarely carried beyond their off hours. As they unfolded the wallet and flipped up the flap in the middle, their two IDs shone beneath the soft light above their plane seat. 

It had been a little bit since they had worn such faces, although the way to construct them was like a blueprint seared in their mind. They were faces as old as they could remember, the ones they had always clung to as their own. But always, that lingering thought that such faces were only constructs created on half-guesses and estimates pervaded their mind like a weed on a clear field. You can only remove them if you cut them at the root, yet this one was buried so deeply that Dominique had not even fragments of a mental image of who they originally were. It was a forlorn dream. To find such a face lost to time, such a body lost to time.

Dominique tapped their fingers in a cascading motion against the seat flip-up table as they settled on a face to take, softly releasing the wallet down onto the table as they decided. And in but an instant, a heat grew across Dominique’s body. It was a soft burn they had come to know all too well. Like small tacks being poked against every inch of their skin, dulled sharp pain brought forth those once yellow locks of hair upon their head into longer streaks of black that fell upon their shoulders. The hue of their eyes had deepened into the darkest of browns, as the mass upon their body shifted with the change of stature. The clothes Dominique wore upon their body now felt sizes bigger as the heat slowly dissipated. No matter the time between each transformation, it was a sensation that could never be forgotten.

Dominique held their fingers up to their face, slimmer they appeared and smaller than the size they were only minutes ago. HELP would only let them on base in one of those two forms, yet there were still days when they had gotten past in the skin of another. 

Dominique laid their head back into the chair, eyes slowly slipping into darkness under the weight of all the time they had spent in the field. All that had now been lost. All the time in which they had struggled to play a man so utterly different from themself was now gone, as they had to shift back into their normal self. A scorn was still held in Dominique’s heart, yet such professions of anger would have to wait until they landed. Their flight still had hours left.

And in the quiet hum of the plane’s engine, Dominique found himself alone in the darkness of their own mind. For now, there was no more part to play, no more voice to copy, no more other life to live besides their own, and although it was only but a fleeting moment of solitude, this was when Dominique felt whole.
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