An unhealthy chunk of the start of this chapter is remarkably close to the source material, so if you recognize any lines, that's because I interpreted Luccio to be rather set in her ways in her old age. Her explanation of Dresden's duties, for example, is lifted word for word from Jim Butcher's novel (page 283, Dead Beat). With luck, this trend will end after we get moving again.

If I hadn't just come out of another Soul Gaze, I would have stared as close as I could to Commander Luccio's eyes, to try to read her face, to try to discern what possible logic there might have been behind giving me a cloak. As it was, I didn't want to risk it.

And besides, I think I already had a decent idea about where we stood.

Let's face it, I don't belong in the secret police. They work as judge, jury and executioners, and I'd already dealt with Warden Morgan trying to pin the time traveling fiasco on me (...depending on if that even happened, given the weirdness of time right then and the Fallen Angel in my head screwing with my perceptions, and wasn't that delightful). I was the usual suspect in any case dealing with dark magic in Chicago, so if they could screw me over for it, I suspected they would, and the quicker the better. No, not only did I not belong, but I also would have proudly undermined them in some of their more draconian efforts.

It wasn't that I didn't know the reason they were trying to draft me. Truth be told, I knew it several times over.

The version of me who had an eye carved out had left little bread crumbs pointing me at this possibility, even if I hadn't been coherent enough to figure them out beyond gut feelings and tingling sensations. Even so, the idea might have been there.

Ebenezer had actually given me a bigger clue that this might have been coming; losing more than half the Council—Hell, maybe 3/4ths of them—meant we needed fresh recruits if we wanted to stop the current offensive. More so if we wanted a chance at winning the war. Me getting drafted, with or without the Cloak, made sense just from a logistics standpoint. If you had no soldiers, you couldn't fight a war. Not to toot my own horn too hard, but I regularly make the claim (to myself) that I'm one of the top forty strongest wizards on the planet, at least in raw power. I didn't doubt that the Council wanted what I could bring to the table, if you could get around the problem of the Merlin painting me like the second coming of Kemmler.

The timing of it all just couldn't have been worse. With only four, count them, four soldiers ready and willing to aid me on the front lines (and I didn't even kid myself that the younger of the four were seasoned veterans like Luccio, Morgan and I were), walking away just wasn't an option. Even with the Necromancers understaffed, that just wasn't enough with how much prep time the bad guys must have had over the thousands of potential time jumps Frisk and It had gone through. Worse, the downsides to failing again meant that not only would the brains of all available magic users get scrambled some more, but that the maybe-still-a-kid could lose faith that we might ever win. Between some lesser talents already dropping dead and the kid potentially deciding to go full warlock, things were worse than even the Wardens knew, and an almost-member of the big seven had already been sent to deal with this mess.

I don't know how far down the rabbit hole the time-traveling pair had gone, but I knew it meant we were all on some very thin ice.

Those reasons were enough that I didn't just throw the cloak back in Commander Luccio's face. They were not, however, good enough that I'd join the service without some clarifications. It was bad enough that the Old World Nuclear Option, "Unleash the Muggles!" had already been deployed, but as long as they were available, I might just throw in with them before throwing in with the Council, my difficulty in following orders aside.

I glanced at Luccio, finally taking my eyes off the cloak, and waved it at her. "A word, Commander?"

I bit my tongue to avoid adding a joke or twelve to the request. I had just gotten out of a serious conversation, and was already on edge dealing with pretty much all of my allies. I didn't need this crap right now.

I knew Morgan heard me, so I didn't have to look at him to know he was scowling at me some more. It's practically his natural state.

Commander Luccio nodded. "Morgan," she gestured to the table, "please ward our coming meeting against eavesdropping, while allowing the Ambassador and his aid to listen in. We will return shortly."

The bedroom I'd used what felt like weeks ago was otherwise unoccupied, and the sheets had been changed. Neither of us bothered sitting down, and I deliberately left the door open behind us; I cannot emphasise enough how much Morgan has wanted to kill me in the past, and while I'd love to tweak his recently-broken nose (and boy howdy did I think it looked good on him!), there were more important things to focus on.

"What the actual fuck, Commander?" I asked her bluntly. "After all the years the Council has piled shit on my doorstep, trying to pin everything that's ever gone wrong in Chicago on me, now you need my help?"

Under normal circumstances, I wouldn't play games. I can't lie to save my life, and I know that because it's almost killed me a few times. Still, right now I had the Wardens by the short hairs, and even though I was pretty sure I was going to take up the cloak for the asking, I wanted something in return for it.

Commander Luccio's mind must have been going in another direction, because unless she was very, very good, you can't fake that kind of surprise. "The Council has what?"

"Don't play games with me," I tried to deflect her from realizing that was what I was doing, "Morgan, the guy whose first instinct on seeing me was to draw on me, has nearly pinned me to a wall with his sword on multiple occasions. Not once, not twice, repeatedly. About the only thing he ever did in my favor was speak on my behalf when I took down the guy who was exploding hearts, and he only did that because I don't know if he's capable of outright breaking the Laws. He still comes right up to that line whenever it'll screw me over, and he actually tried to get me to attack him just before we made the treaty with the Winter Sidhe, so he and the Merlin could sacrifice me to the vampires."

My little rant had floored her. She didn't do the fish-open-mouth thing, but the little breath and widened eyes still made it look like she wasn't expecting me to take this track.

Her response was a little surprising.

Her face hardened, in the same subtle way she did anything. She glanced at the wall, on the other side of which I was sure I'd spot my least favorite Warden. "Morgan tried that?" Her second question though, was a touch too deliberate. "Are you telling me the truth?"

I could feel more than hear the difference in how she said it, and my magical senses confirmed the humming spell under the words. It was a good thing I'd only spoken the truth, then. "Yes," I confirmed. "I'm telling you the truth."

She stared at me, and then the humming faded. She frowned down at her shoes. "I'd heard whisperings of how Morgan acted where you were concerned, but I thought they were only rumors."

"If they were, he wouldn't have drawn his blade on me, would he?" I asked. Actually, I had no idea whether or not Morgan tended to be trigger happy on people other than me, and I could totally see him pulling his sword every time somebody farted in his general direction, but I was hedging my bets on this one.

She didn't look up at my face, but her eyes were narrow now. "Dresden, we are at war. Would you simply abandon us to the Red Court? Would you stand aside while Kemmler's disciples have their way?"

"I wouldn't have killed two of them if I was going to let them have their way with my city," I admonished her. I waved the grey fabric in her face. "But I didn't need a cloak to stop them then, and I sure as Hell don't need one to stop them now. So why conscript me? After this fight is over, I'll still be fighting the Reds, with or without you, and it's not like I don't have a phone you can call me on when you find a nest near Chicago to clear out."

She looked at me like I was stupid. Being me, I understood her stance completely, even if I wasn't sure why this time.

"What does the cloak mean to you, Dresden?"

Easy question. "It means hunting down kids who broke the Laws of Magic before they ever knew what they were. It means cutting their heads off for making stupid mistakes, instead of helping them. It means I can badger and intimidate and interrogate anyone anytime I feel like it. It means I answer to the same people who have already spent a lot of time and effort screwing me over. Hard pass."

"If you speak like that to the crowds, then I understand a little more why they claim you began the war with the Red Court so that you could create an opportunity to bring about the fall of the Council."

I spluttered and laughed, having been caught completely off guard. "What? Are you kidding? For the love of- I can't even balance my freaking checkbook! How the-"

I trailed off, rubbed at my eyes and groaned. It didn't matter if it was Midnight, it was too early in the day for people to be this stupid, and that's coming from cave-man-stupid me.

"You have no idea how the Council truly sees you, do you?" her voice had softened. I stopped rubbing my eyes and scowled at her. She continued. "You are the most infamous living wizard of our time, Dresden, and we have been betrayed. Many have spoken out against you, but many more have held you up as a symbol of defiance in the face of the most conservative members of the Council. To Ramirez and others like him, you are a hero, one who has overcome more enemies and battled more evils than most wizards a century your senior. The hero who would risk his life when his principles demand it."

"I am?"

"You are," she confirmed. "Right now, we don't merely need you as an ally, but instead as one of us. The Council needs every scrap of courage and faith we can muster. The cloak will appease your detractors, and to see you as one of us, helping lead the battle with all the experience and presence you carry, will encourage the younger members of the Council." She grimaced. "Put simply, Dresden, we need you. And you need us."

I stared at her. I should have said something, but I was busy trying to rearrange the ideas behind her little speech. I knew the bad side of it, but I'd only really seen the youngsters chuckling alongside me, not putting me up on some kind of pedestal.

Finally I sighed. "Let's say I go along with this. I already said I'm willing to fight, but now I do it in the cloak. I still don't want to get bounced around the world for this; Chicago is my home, and I live here to defend it. And I don't want to have to answer to Morgan!" I quickly added. "I've had enough of his crap for a lifetime. I don't want him here standing on me just because I work for the same organization as him now. Also..." I trailed off and thought back to the gold I was getting from Asgore. Right, money can be used to buy goods and services. "Is there a paycheck associated with this? I sort of wasn't kidding when I said I can't really balanced my checkbook, especially with how many crank calls I get now that magic is, well, out."

Luccio rubbed at her jaw, and then slowly nodded, her eyes thoughtful. "I have to reassign Morgan in any case." She nodded again, more sharply. "Then I'm conscripting you into the Wardens as a regional commander."

I blinked. Lasciel's laughter caught me off guard in the background, making it tough to focus on Luccio's next words.

"You'll be in charge of security and operations within this region, and coordinate with the other three American regional commanders."

"Uh," I said. "What does that mean?"

"That it will be your job to protect against supernatural threats in your region, and represent the Council in matters of diplomacy. To aid and assist other wizards who come to you for aid and protection, and, when required, to strike out at the enemies of the Council, such as the Red Court and their allies."

I frowned. "Uh, I pretty much do all that anyway."

Luccio broke out into the first genuinely warm smile I'd seen today. "So now you'll do it in a grey cloak." She sobered. "You're a fighter Dresden. If the White Council is to survive, we need more like you. And yes, there is a paycheck for the position."

She grabbed my shoulder and gave it a light squeeze, then left me alone in the room with my thoughts.

Damn. Here I was, ready to fight for every inch, even going so far as to play around with the idea of trying to play a little politics, and she went and handed me a high level position just for the asking.

I probably should have asked for more, then. Damn it.

I closed the door, then went into the restroom, closing that door behind me, too. I got the cloak pinned up in front in the bathroom mirror, the fabric soft and heavy around my shoulders. The look I gave myself was haunted and empty. For all that hearing that people saw me as a hero, the situation itself was too dark right now for me to enjoy what little pulling I did over the Council's eyes.

Lasciel was standing in the mirror wearing a Slave Leia outfit and looking at me like a slab of meat. Which, honestly, I didn't mind so much as I could have, right then. It at least beat the heck out of her trying to sell me a bridge.

"You think this is funny?" I asked her quietly (wizards can eavesdrop like nobodies' business, so I subvocalized despite being behind two doors; it's a trick Batman uses to talk to Superman in a crowded room in comic books, and with no TV or internet, I've read a lot of comic books over the years).

"I think it's hilarious, my Host," she agreed with a smile. "All the trouble they've caused you over the years, all their efforts to break your spirit, and finally you come home because your mentor, who you hate, asked you to with a surrogate mother's touch."

…

I could have punched the mirror into little fucking shards, I felt so angry at Lasciel right then. My hands were shaking. This had been, at least, my decision, and she just took that from me. Given the way she frowned and started waving her hands, I was certain I wouldn't have heard her speak if she hadn't put the sound directly into my brain, bypassing my ears.

"I apologize, my Host, that was uncalled for," she waved a hand over herself and changed outfits back into her usual Greek Goddess ensemble. "But I must make some effort to keep you from thinking, as you would say, about pink elephants."

"How about you don't." I growled, low and quiet, and she tilted her head at me.

"As you wish."

She snapped her fingers.

Abruptly, I considered Chara-

I blinked, trying to understand why I was up against the wall, and why it was made of tile. No, that was the floor. I couldn't feel my face. My head hurt. I had been thinking about that little spirit, Cha-

Everything was buzzing. My mouth was two sizes two big. No, too small. I could see strange colors in everything. Pink elephants on parade. Pink elephants on parade. Dumbo took alcohol and there was a musical number and everything, and IT wasn't-

"Are you quite finished, my Host?" Lasciel asked me, sitting on the closed lid of the toilet. I vaguely tried to nod, and the heavy feeling vanished. I pushed myself back to my feet, carefully, and leaned against the sink. The door was still closed, I verified, but I wasn't sure if anybody had heard me fall.

"How long was I out for?" I asked, the words fuzzing out past my numb lips.

"Less than thirty seconds, my Host."

"Warn me if you're about to drop me like a bad habit in the future."

"Whenever I can get it past your thick skull, my Host."

I shook my head, then hooked a thumb at the door. "Get out."

She quirked an eyebrow at me. "I'm still going to be here whether you can see me or not."

"Don't care," I groused. "I'm not going to take a leak while you're staring at me, and I need an excuse for why I was taking so long in here. Out."

Rather than simply vanishing, she stood, moved around me like she had in the ruins of my apartment, and opened the door to leave; I noted that the illusion of the room beyond looked exactly as I expected it to. She shut the door, and I handled my business.

I washed my hands, noting that while the burns on my left had receded somewhat and my hand actually obeyed me reasonably well, the imprint of Lasciel's coin on my palm was as clear as ever.

I briefly wondered what Toriel had thought of it while she'd treated me.

Whatever she'd thought, it hadn't stopped her from healing me. That, or it had pushed her that much harder into it.

I stared at the mirror again. I looked like the boogeyman.

Every step of the way, the Necromancers were ahead of us, hammering down on me specifically because I tended to get in their way. Ambushes, baited traps, soul poison, every little thing they did to break me down, to push me into a corner…

And now the Council was pushing from the other direction, because they had nowhere else to turn.

Fine. The Wardens wanted to put me in a cloak because I could bring something to the table that they couldn't? Then that was exactly what I was going to do.

I could be the boogeyman, just for tonight.

"Lasciel," I intoned quietly. "Bring me those books."

I exited the bathroom a few minutes later with a plan in mind, carrying the presence of the Cloak I wore like a sword. The seat at the table nearest the hallway had been left open for me, and I approached to take it, watching how the others reacted. Morgan looked like somebody had shoved a knife in his balls, but Ramirez had a funny looking grin that got wider as I approached. Luccio looked me up and down with a tiny smile, and Yoshimo looked like she wanted to bow again.

Hell, maybe there was something to wearing a cloak like this.

Behind them, Sans grimaced and sipped at his mug. Frisk only nodded. Once. An acknowledgement and little more.

Yeah, and maybe there was something to taking up Lasciel's coin, too.

"Alright, everyone," I gathered their attention as I sat, stepping over a large circle to do so. "Raise the wards, and I'll try to make this quick. We've only got a few more hours until Midnight, and we're gonna need to move fast to take advantage of that. Bring me up to speed, and when you're done, I'll tell you how we can win this thing."

Morgan glanced at Luccio, who nodded once, and he raised his staff. I could feel the circle close around us, ensuring that no magical senses would hear us beyond the room.

It took less than half an hour to get me up to speed and to bring them up to speed in turn, and the clock was ticking away while we rushed through sharing time.

As expected, the time I'd spent on the bench hadn't gone well for the rest of the home team. The military had finished setting up basic checkpoints all around the city, but had lost ground and the Ring of Doom. The Wardens had checked out the museum, and the ritual there had been basically left unfinished behind a military barricade. The White Court of Vampires had basically withdrawn from the city in the meanwhile, leaving only a token ally behind with the Monsters so as to remain otherwise neutral (read: Thomas had teamed up with Undyne and they were both fighting unbound zombies in the streets). Mouse had gone AWOL, but knowing him that was probably in defense of children somewhere. The Alphas had been helping people evacuate. The Military had pulled out all the stops, and there were a few tanks in the streets apparently both old enough and overbuilt enough that a little magic wouldn't kill them outright.

In a show of good faith, Warden Luccio had offered to add a few runes to the outside of the armored vehicles to defend them against certain kinds of armor-bypassing attacks, but I didn't hear whether she'd been turned down or not before we'd moved on.

There were no helicopters in the sky, nor drones of any kind. With as much magic as there was in the air, the risk was too great that the new machines would simply fall out of the sky, and the cloud cover made long range aerial reconnaissance all but impossible.

In other words, the good guys were on the back foot and had almost no idea what to do next, other than keep holding the forces of darkness back while we waited for them to make the next move.

"And that's when we heard you were back on your feet and ready to kick more ass," Ramirez cut into the explanation.

"You have the facts, Commander," Captain Luccio turned things back to me (apparently I was only supposed to call her Warden Luccio until she was directly in my chain of command to avoid confusion with Regional Commanders, and she'd set me straight on that). "This is your territory, and you have made more significant progress on the Necromancer threat than we expected before our arrival. What is our next step?"

I considered all the facts, as I knew them, and clenched my gloved left hand reflexively. Finally, I nodded.

"There's one more thing we need to talk about, and it ties into the plan. There's a time traveler in our midst."

Everybody at the table jerked or flinched, but Sans and Frisk just kept watching me from their quiet perches in the background.

"I've already handled it, for the most part," I overrode everybody before they could cut in, "but it's something you all need to know. The only good news there is that they were trying to stop the Necromancers and they're convinced they're the good guy. The problem is, the Necromancers are aware that somebody has broken the Sixth Law, and have sent themselves messages across time to fight us with, hitching a ride on the do-gooder's spells. I managed to intercept some of them, so I have a good idea of what we're fighting and how to fight it."

"You've broken the Sixth Law of Magic," Morgan stood from his seat, hand on his sword.

I gave him a Look from my seat. "I haven't been personally swimming against the currents of time, Morgan, and if I hadn't intercepted the info, then we'd be screwed. There's a special defense in the ritual they're going to pull off, and if we don't break it, then we're all dead before we can even start."

"Let us at least hear the Commander out, Warden," Luccio interceded for me. She nodded for me to continue.

I nodded back at her. "They're going to try to perform a ritual of Ascension. I know how it works, and the short version is, they're going to try to call up the Wild Hunt to consume this Halloween night. If we don't have some form of Necromantic energy around us when we go in to stop them, then the ritual will eat us before we even get close. In other words, we're going to have to skirt the Fifth Law the same way I've skirted the Sixth, or our defenses are stillborn."

I waited, and Morgan disappointed me by remaining in his chair. He did seethe quietly rather well, at least.

"The Fifth law is against the raising of any human corpses." I quietly thanked Sans and Alphys for confirming that the Laws only applied to humans, though given their status as Soul-bearing mortals, and how Liverspots had taken advantage of that, I suspected the Laws would change slightly in the future. "Just like I didn't personally travel through time, only got impressions based off of somebody else doing it, it won't break the Laws if I were to raise something not human. Based on the message they sent themselves, the Necromancers were already trying to stop me at-"

"The Museum," Morgan breathed, putting the pieces together. He looked at me. "You're going to raise the Dinosaur." He even forgot to be angry about it for a moment.

"Got it in one," I confirmed. "So that's part one of the plan. Everybody on both sides knows it's coming, and the Military have been stopping the remaining bad guys from getting in our way on that point."

"Wait, wait, slow down hombre," Ramirez jumped in. "Everybody knows this is coming? Did I miss something, or do you regularly call up million year old dinosaurs for fun?"

I shrugged. "Apparently it's happened in alternate timelines enough that the Necromancers made a point of trying to prevent it, and I killed a few of them for the effort. I mean, I figured out how to do it then, so it won't be that hard now."

The Wardens exchanged glances, and Ramirez breathed out a quiet, "Madre de Dios…"

"What?" I asked them, genuinely confused. "I know I can do it because I've done it in other timelines. Easy enough. All we need to hold the working together is a big-ass drum. I know a guy whose big-ass drum I broke. I can probably ask him where he got his, so unless he's done the smart thing and fled town, he can keep a beat for me, or actually any of you can. That's how the other me did it, anyway, and even if my guy is gone, anybody can wear a bass drum to stand in for Dinosaur Sue's heartbeat. Anyhow, that's Step One. Step Two is something we're going to need to call out of the city for."

"Step Two?" Luccio asked cautiously. "Please, illuminate that for us."

I told them.

Ramirez stopped laughing long enough to step away to find a working phone and a pen and paper for me. I trusted he could personally complete Step Two, or Step One chronologically, so we broke the circle so he could go get it done.

"Anyhow, after we handle Step Two, or Step One chronologically," I repeated out loud what I'd just figured out in my head, "we can meet back up for Step Three."

"I almost hesitate to ask what you would consider a third part in this mad plan, Dresden," Morgan almost sounded subdued, "But if we fail, it would mean the end of all of our lives. Yours, certainly," he voiced his confidence in me. "What's Step Three?"

I gave them all an Evil Grin, like Vader might have worn under his mask. "Why, I thought you'd never ask. Step Three, just in case Step Two fails, is to march our forces right up to the site of their ritual, and to kick their asses up between their ears. Shall we begin?"