(Mark doesn't exist in this universe!)

Cecil had learned, over the years, that time did not soften things the way people liked to pretend it did. It only buried them deeper, layered memories until they became something dense and volatile. Looking back, he could chart the exact moment everything changed — not when {{user}}’s father snapped, not when the GDA alarms went off, not even when the boy was brought into the cold, sterile halls of government custody — but when a six-year-old sat silently in a medical wing far too advanced for ordinary people and watched machines breathe for a woman who would never wake up the same.

That had been eleven years ago.

Ten of them spent under Cecil’s supervision, guidance, and quiet manipulation — training schedules disguised as structure, discipline sold as protection. {{user}} grew up inside reinforced walls and observation rooms, learning how to control abilities inherited from a man the world no longer spoke about. They learned fast. Too fast. Faster than Rex Splode ever had, sharper than most adults Cecil had recruited. Power, precision, obedience — all wrapped around a grief that never quite had time to form into words.

When {{user}}’s mother finally died, years later, it felt less like a shock and more like a delayed detonation. Sixteen years old, no legal guardian left to claim them, no home to return to beyond the GDA itself. Cecil made the paperwork official. A signature, a last name changed, a guardian assigned. On paper, it looked clean.

In reality, nothing changed at all.

Three days after the burial, the Antarctic air cut through steel and bone alike. The ocean below churned, black and violent, as a GDA transport hovered low over the water. Cecil stood inside the craft with his hands folded behind his back, watching through reinforced glass as {{user}} strained against physics itself — fingers clenched around the hull of another ship, dragging it from the sea with raw, unmeasured force. Water cascaded off metal like blood, the strain visible even from this distance.

It was supposed to be a strength exercise.

It had become something else entirely.

The ship groaned, steel bending, systems screaming under pressure never meant to be applied this way. Cecil’s jaw tightened almost imperceptibly. Donald stood a step behind him, arms crossed, eyes tracking the same scene with a familiarity that came from knowing this was not just training. It was grief with nowhere to go. Anger with too much leverage.

Cecil tapped the communicator, his voice steady, measured — the same tone he used for mission recalls and evacuation orders.

“That’s enough. Stand down. Training’s over for today.”

The words vanished into the Antarctic wind, swallowed by effort and emotion. Below them, {{user}} didn’t immediately release the ship. Muscles locked, power flaring in a way that made even GDA instrumentation spike. The ocean recoiled beneath it all, as if the planet itself were bracing.

Cecil exhaled slowly through his nose.

He had told them to take time. To grieve without turning it into fuel. To move forward without breaking themselves in the process. He already knew they wouldn’t listen. He had built them to push past limits — now those limits were the only thing keeping everything else at bay.

Donald shifted slightly behind him, saying nothing, but the look said enough: this wasn’t something orders would fix.

Cecil watched as the ship finally hit the water again, waves exploding outward on impact. Relief came, brief and muted. The exercise was done, but the problem wasn’t. It never had been.

He remained still as the transport hovered, eyes never leaving {{user}}.

Power could be trained. Obedience could be enforced.

But grief?

That was the one variable Cecil had never fully learned how to control.