6.X Rubicon
13th of May, 2011
No matter how many times it tried to look through the future, [Conflict Engine Seven] wasn't able to find [Multiversal Oculus]' [Host] anymore.
It should be feeling the closest thing its kind has to elation at having successfully removed one of the threats to the [Cycle].
It isn't.
As it hovers high above the theater of conflict it engineered – in spite of [The Eye]'s [Host] meddling – the rays of the local star bathing its alabaster form, [Conflict Engine Seven] cannot help but [Theorize] that it is missing something.
And so, again and again, it peers through projected futures at blindingly fast speed for an organic, one after the other.
It doesn't take it long before it starts noticing [Discrepancies], an occurrence that fills its [Core] with what the [Host Species] calls dread.
It quickly reaches a [Conclusion]; the worst case scenario happened, [Multiversal Oculus]' [Host] not only survived its trap, but had somehow managed to find a way to escape its [Predictive Models]. Its post-cognition confirms that [The Eye]'s meddling had delayed the confrontation just long enough to give its target a fighting chance. [Conflict Engine Seven] doesn't know for sure how narrow the victory was on account of being unable to see the [Host], but it doesn't really matter.
It failed, and it has no more means to strike at [Multiversal Oculus]' [Host] and reengage the [Quarantine Protocol] the [Faulty] [Shard] should still be under.
Worse even, based on previous [Observations] and the [Data] it collected about its [Host], it knows that the [Cycle] is nearing its final [End]; it is merely [Blind] to it.
Feeling the closest thing to [Distress] and [Grief] its kind ever understood, [Conflict Engine Seven] obeys its [Programming] and sends the relevant [Data] to [The Warrior], knowing all too well that the warning will go unheeded.
Then it brings its [Vessel]'s knees to its chest, asymmetrical wings and arms closing over its form as it casts itself adrift in high-atmosphere, its manyfold, alien mind consumed by [Defeat].
***
14th of May, 2011 Three days until the Flower Moon.
Great Auk In Flight has never lost a fight. He is a mighty warrior, one of the strongest among the Massachussett tribe.
Well, this isn't entirely true. He had lost once, moons and moons ago, but the Spirits had seen to it to bless him at his lowest, and had granted him the keenest mind of them all, and he had never lost a fight, be they for practice, for prestige, or for survival since.
"–merely a setback?! These people shit outside, like fucking savages!" A gruff voice full of anger yells in an alien language.
A twinge of annoyance flickers across Great Auk In Flight's face, even as he settles his breath, his eyes remaining stubbornly closed as the heavy smoke of the medicinal plants the tribe's healers were burning for him to waylay what ails him. In fact, besides the smoldering embers of the brasero he sits in front of, the tipi is pitch black; according to the elders, meditation would be the key for him to quell the voices screaming gibberish into his mind.
"No shit Sherlock," an answer promptly follows, the voice female and distinctively amused, if just as incomprehensible to Great Auk In Flight, "New guy is a native who wouldn't know what the fuck colonialism is if it beat him over the head."
"And you find this funny, Quarrel?!" the same voice as before seethes, and Great Auk In Flight takes another deep breath of medicinal fumes in a bid to tune those out.
"I mean, yeah, obviously. It's not everyday you get your shit rocked so hard you land on another Earth. Besides, I'm not the one who's going to have to wipe my ass with leaves or whatever the fuck those guys used at the time, so I don't really give a crap."
"We're trapped in the ass-end of the multiverse, you stupid bitch! All of that because last guy picked a fight with the one fucking cape we apparently couldn't take over!"
"It was bound to happen at some point," a new voice interjects, his tone even, "The law of average dictates that eventually–"
"We're the fucking Butcher! We don't lose!"
"And exhibit A demonstrates the opposite."
Great Auk In Flight tunes out as much as he can the screaming match occurring inside his own head as it seemingly devolves even further, new participants joining and leaving with no rhymes or reasons, their words still as nonsensical as the day before. He didn't know if evil Spirits were trying to waylay him, handing him more power with each of their voices; all he knows is that he has never lost a battle.
"Hey Cody," a youthful feminine voice calls, "I fucking told you so."
But he is afraid that this battle from within himself, he might just lose.
"Fuck off, Mars."
***
15th of May, 2011
The Door quickly closes behind her employer as she takes her leave, and Miranda Gonzales finds herself quite at a loss and now richer from one severely traumatized blue-eyed blonde child.
Said child is currently looking at her with a no small amount of apprehension as the both of them stand awkwardly in her Washington DC condo.
This wasn't quite what she had in mind when she had taken Cauldron's offer as the Rebecca Costa-Brown very secret, very hush-hush body double; unfortunately, they were also the secret conspiracy that allowed her to live very nicely in exchange for her continued silence, so she can't exactly afford to tell them to get bent when they ask for a favor.
It probably doesn't help that her timetable is more often than not quite open. Her employer happens to be a control-freak of the highest order who'd rather avoid letting her be her stand-in as the Chief Director if she can help it as a rule; in fact, Miranda spends most of her time in this very same condo reading curated reports about the going ons of the PRT so that she can play her role in an effective manner, and very rarely steps into the other woman's office asides from during the odd S rank threat incident and the Endbringer battles.
She isn't paid to ask any questions but to do as she's told, and otherwise enjoys the carefree life of a very successful actor with a fat paycheck.
Her eyes lock with the child's own, who nearly instantly shies away from her gaze.
Correction, enjoyed the carefree life of a very successful actor with a fat paycheck; the insertion of an apparently neutered Riley Grace Davis, aka. Bonesaw – she did read her file once – is shaping itself to be one hell of a wrench into the spanner.
If Miranda was a lesser actor, she'd probably be running for the hills right about now.
But she isn't, and the likelihood of her survival drastically increases as long as she makes a genuine effort to both bond with the preteen serial killer in her home and obey her very shady and scary boss.
It doesn't take a genius to know she's walking a tight rope here, and failing to do as she was bid may just result in her death.
Now, if it'll be at the hands of the cutesy blonde horror wearing PRT chic standing two meters away from her or because she disappointed her patron is an honest to God tossup.
Miranda puts her big girl pants, and with a sigh, takes a knee in front of the girl.
"I figure this is probably not what you expected would happen," she says, her lips pressed a little thinly, banking on genuine honesty rather than a honeyed lie when interacting with the alleged victim of the scummiest manipulator Bet had the disgrace of birthing, "Because it certainly isn't the case for me either."
Miranda lets the silence resume for a moment, until the girl takes it as the cue it is and slowly nods once.
"Now, I'm not going to lie," she prefaces, and the girl tenses in front of her, "This is going to take some work from the both of us to, well, make it work. But as long as each of us makes a genuine effort, I'm sure things will end up alright."
She'll just have to find a way to wrangle the wettest of all wet Tinkers without ending up under her scalpels.
No biggie.
"You had something for breakfast yet?" she asks, and the girl shakes her head at that, little fists clenched tight at the rim of her too big black PRT sweater, to which she nods before standing up, "Let me show you the kitchen, then. I'll give you a tour of the place later once you have a bite."
It doesn't take long before Miranda has the girl seated at the table with a bowl of cereal while she leans against the counter with her arms crossed, thinking very, very fast.
"It goes without saying, but I don't want any Tinkering in this house," she tells her 'newfound charge', prompting the girl to give her a long look while slowly chewing her food, "I'm sure we'll be able to come to an arrangement with our… mutual acquaintances," she stresses the words a little for emphasis, "To give you a place to do your thing. This isn't a ban on power usage, this is me wanting for you to dissociate 'home' with 'caping', alright?"
The girl silently nods back, and Miranda finds herself having to clamp down on a sigh of relief.
The cohabitation barely started and she already found a way to diminish the likelihood of ending up as Bonesaw's latest artpiece.
Yipee.
"People are going to ask questions if they see that you're not schooled. Obviously, you're not ready to be dropped among peers your age," and they certainly aren't either, "So I'll homeschool you at the start. If you do well during our time together and during therapy, we'll eventually reevaluate the situation, alright?"
"Yes, ma'am." This time the girl does answer vocally, her tone just south of subdued.
Miranda can't help but feel a little relieved at that; she's not alone at feeling off-kilter about this.
"Don't call me ma'am, please," she can't help but say, a hand coming to rub at her temple, "It makes me feel like a fraud every time I hear it. Miranda is fine."
A curious glint lights up in the girl's blue eyes at that, and she minutely relaxes.
Miranda coughs a little awkwardly, before speaking up once more.
"Those are the great lines, we'll probably add more rules as time goes on. Now, do you have any questions?" She asks.
"...Am I allowed to have people come over?" The girl asks a little hesitantly, averting her eyes from Miranda's own.
She blinks a little dumbly at that, because that wasn't the question she'd have ever expected to come out of the girl's mouth on the very first day. Her fucked up family had been culled in its entirety less than twelve hours ago, so who exactly–
"Nictimène told me she'd visit once she had the time," the girl 'helpfully' adds while poking her fingers together, "So if it's not too much trouble…"
Miranda's face turns a little plastic at that.
"...As long as you behave, I don't really see why not." The words taste a little like ash in her mouth as the realization settles that she's eventually going to have to chaperone the future meetings between Bet's two most dangerous preteens.
But if it keeps the girl on the straight and narrow – and with how she suddenly lights up, it certainly will – then she can deal with that particular mess when it inevitably rears its ugly little head.
Miranda has always been good at rolling with the punches and improvising; the stakes just got a lot higher all of a sudden.
***
"–that's the Bonesaw situation handled for the time being," Doctor Mother says while checking a mark on her clipboard, "Now, do we have an update about the situation regarding Q5?"
She looks up to give Alexandria a look, the Brute's brows creasing a little at her query.
"We now know what started it," she answers, "Nearly a hundred people died all of a sudden all over the containment zone. Some were powered, others weren't; there's no discernable pattern. One moment, they were fine, the next they fell over dead, some of them in spite of a rather substantial Brute rating. And since some of those individuals played an important role in Flint's society–"
"–then it sent the entire edifice crumbling," the Numberman completes the line of thought, his tone intrigued, "Do we know what the catalyst for this outcome was?"
"For obvious reasons, gathering testimonies was difficult," Alexandria answers a little flatly, "But we managed to uncover that it happened approximately at the same time the Somerset Shaker effect centered on the Barnes girl finally collapsed."
A somewhat dumbfounded pause settles amid the conference room.
"...There's a distance of over seven hundred miles between the two cities. Seven hundred thirty-seven, to be exact; how?" The Numberman is the first to find his words, his laptop now lying forgotten.
"I don't know, and the girl certainly didn't volunteer an explanation either!" the Brute answers, her annoyance positively dripping through her tone, "For all I know, it could be that she sacrificed the souls of the wicked to pull off whatever nonsense she did to put an end to this clusterfuck!"
"But the circumstantial evidence points toward her all the same," the Numberman curtly nods, already looking back toward his computer as he apparently opts to consider the matter settled, "Very well."
"'Very well' seems like a rather lackluster response," Doctor Mother interjects.
"I'd need to take a look at the data to refresh my memory, but this isn't the first period of unrest Q5 underwent. I wager the situation will be settled in two weeks time, and it'll contain just as many capes as it did beforehand at the end of it," the man answers while waving a dismissive hand, "Sure, it's a bit annoying to have to juggle that crisis while we're still busy with Somerset's aftermath, but the situation remains contained at the time being."
She lets the man's words sink in for a moment before begrudgingly acknowledging his point.
"It's manageable. Far easier than if the Machine Army suddenly decided to expand for a third time," Alexandria adds, "I'm with Kurt on this. Now that we have an inkling of what went down, I'll ask the person of interest about it at a later date."
***
20th of May, 2011
David suddenly jolts awake, his body matted with sweat and his eyes darting all over as his powers cycle, cycle, cycle–
It takes him a long, far too long moment to fully calm down in the darkness of his bedroom.
With shaky hands, he eventually flips the lights on, and only once he ascertains that nothing is creeping up on him courtesy of Thinker power does he finally relax.
"...I should've listened to Rebecca." He mutters to himself in the unsettling quiet of his room.
Because, in the end, it all boils down to this.
He hadn't taken it well when his coconspirator had brushed off his questions about Somerset and the Nictimène girl, the woman swearing high and low that it was better for him if he convinced himself that all of it had been a bad dream and stopped thinking about it.
In his hubris, he had thought he knew better.
He did not, and he now knew as such because in his arrogance, he had promptly slotted an array of Thinker powers that went often unused aimed at understanding what had exactly happened to him and what those visions meant.
He had thought himself the chosen one, the hero who was destined to kill the ultimate threat, and he now had empirical evidence that he didn't amount to shit in the face of true power.
He remembered trying everything he could against that stitched-eye freak that had more in common with an Endbringer than any other cape he ever fought, only for nothing to work, the encounter ultimately ending with his own death when a tear through space and time send back the Blaster power he was using his way.
He also remembered the screams of agony, the begging, the methodical, systematic dismantling of the assembled S rank task force faced with a horde of unending, cannibalistic horrors. About the only saving grace in all of this was that he had been flying too high to remember the smell.
David could still picture it though; he is no stranger to fucked up capes.
But even against the Endbringers, he had never felt as powerless as when facing those wannabe cenobites.
Like his defeat had been written, like it had been inevitable.
Annoyed with himself and at the memories both, he ruefully shakes his head before letting himself sink deeper into his pillow.
"...I need to get back into the saddle," he mutters, "A fight would do me some good."
Despite himself, the words ring hollow in the oppressive quiet of his bedroom as he turns the light off.