Death and Renewal (Invite only)

On and on they go, loud and shrill and annoying. On and on and on. Nails on a chalkboard. Did these people ever shut up? The ones that chattered the most had the least to say, in Lucius' experience, and this one was very good at saying absolutely nothing with the highest amount of words possible. They knew nothing, yet acted as if they knew everything. It was almost sad, to see a creature desperately trying to make itself look bigger in hopes of being likable to a true superior. It was futile, of course. Lucius just ended up getting bored.

Lucius sighed and looked back at the other one at the table that could actually grasp the gravitas of the topics being discussed. Iskander radiated understanding and piercing insight. Phoenix was dull in comparison. No, not dull. Blunt. As blunt as a baseball bat. And yet, he thought of himself as a leader. No wonder none of his operations ever really solved anything. It was the blind leading the blind, Lucius had no doubt.

"More than hell. I've gone to the end of the universe and stared Gods of Death in the face. Your concerns in comparison to what I have just gotten through experiencing are trivial at best..... But, I suppose they will have to be solved eventually. We'll be in touch," Lucius said dismissively. It was then that Phoenix left their little makeshift shelter, leaving Lucius with Iskander and his three meta goons.

"Since I now know you don't intend to kill me, given the fact you've done nothing the entire time I've been gathering my strength, we can talk," Lucius said. It was true. If Iskander was currently a threat, he would have done something by now. If on the other hand Lucius was just overestimating this man's strategic ability and Iskander did in fact want to attack him, well, the Dictator was now at full strength once more, for practical purposes.

"I apologize for the interruption. Stray cats from my past. Do you have any questions for me?"

”If I wanted you dead, I wouldn’t have gone through the trouble of hunting you down and making sure you healed,” Iskandar stated with a slight quirk of the lips, wondering what would have happened if he let Lucius Alba stay dead. His men stepped away from where they were standing before Patriot had interrupted them. It felt like a hurricane had ripped through the area, though he now had to make sure to deal with any information that man would use against him later. Not that he imagined the former Phoenix would be too well believed by the general public. A certain metahuman made sure of that. ”Think nothing of it. I’ve always been meaning to meet old heroic personalities, though I’m not disappointed in how things seemed to go. There’s always some world shattering event with them,” Even when he was younger and even less endowed with power, he recalled the way people worshipped heroes.

Before the tragic first major attack on New York. He sighed, wondering if that era would ever return or if people would learn their lessons. How many times would their edifices need be destroyed by men given more power than they deserved? ”I have so many questions. Such as how did you come back to life or did you die in the first place? You wouldn’t be the first person in human history to fake their own death.” He paused, blinking as if thinking over what he wanted to ask the man.

”Maybe we can talk in more…ideal conditions. I hate the arctic personally. It’s cold and nothing interesting happens here. Sans the polar bears perhaps,” Sliding his finger across a screen projected from his watch, Maximilian sighed. ”I heard you like a good scotch.”