To say Morricone was nervous was an understatement.

Sitting on a bench in one of the Initiative Compound’s many corridors, his head supported by crossed fingers, his left leg iddly tapping a storm away, the Devil’s Advocate stressed himself out just thinking about the research he’d managed to make since the last attacks - since it had all started, really. A clerk had nicely put an ashtray next to him, and it was now full of his own rolled, light-blue-smoke cigs. Usually, Morricone would only chainsmoke when he was working in his lab. This was pure and inefficient stress.

God, he’d have killed for a beer right now. Not that he hadn’t gotten one already. Or two, or six. The depressant made its way through his system and didn’t help as much as it numbed him from the outside noise, and now, Morricone could focus on the very bad things he’d studied, learned, and analyzed over the last few weeks. This was not helping. Alcohol was not helping.

But Alcohol was a fickle mistress at best. He knew that.

Force of habit.

Since this whole fuckload of problems had started, the death toll had never stopped going up. It started with the burn victims, then the meteorite that tried to crash the hell out of Texas, and from the space rock’s rubbles came the new Phoenix Force’s host, and then someone dropped another bucket of shit on the fan.

The terrorist attacks by the followers of the Phoenix had wrecked the United States asunder. And the only reason these attacks hadn’t really spread was because of proximity issues. Hell, he thought, Mexico had to wait in line - it was only 24h later that they got hit, along with Canada, and Central and northern South America - but then again, it didn’t surprise Morricone one bit. Texas WOULD have wanted to emancipate first, and then hit the hispanics on the other side of the border second.

...How cliché of him to think of. Morricone snorted and lapsed into a nervous giggle. How horrible it was to think about a state of crisis like that with those terms.

But fuck it, man, he was tired.

The information was good, and he’d asked - for the first time in his whole service - for a meeting among the heroes, to try and demystify the enemy they would have to face. And this wasn’t an option, either - All in all, the space bird wouldn’t stop until the whole earth burned, and the new cycle of humanity, or whatever it would be, to rise from the ashes.

And Morricone rather liked his cycle.

----------

The conference room was a more sobre affair than anything else, something reminiscent of a medical auditorium, or a university classroom - large and in charge, but in an ordained and structured tone, more than in the usual boastful Initiative colors. A few butler AI robots were busy preparing the room in advance - some had left donut trays along the desks, along with a bottle or two of water for every seat, and people were starting to enter and find a good place to fit in and begin conversing.

The fact that the Devil’s Advocate, or Morricone, as he prefered to be called by those who actually knew he was a hero, and not an eccentric pencil pusher around the base, one of the Initiative’s leading supernatural experts, and had called a state of emergency had not been overlooked by most. The facts were simple: The Phoenix Force killed tens of thousands, and he claimed to have some information about it.

Besides. It was about time they’d hit back, hadn’t they?