All That Glitters, Part 2A

Oriam.

The sole CIGEN 6 city open to the public: the shining jewel of human, aarde, and hemel cooperation. Population: 600,000. Home of five members of the 44. One of the two main blades of the Twilight Wars. Respected, feared, and in more than a few places, cursed behind closed doors and called the 'City of Dread Dreamers'. Current Chieftan: Kyrillos Maser.

March came in like a rattlesnake...

Perhaps it was fate that Ash and the man known as Philander would come to blows, as Ash had had interactions with a man that could very well have been his brother, at least in terms of appearance. General Ephraim Joffre had the same build, same type of mustache, and the same general posture; Unlike Philander, he had considerably less snooty arrogance, though it was there. That, and Joffre had earned everything that had been rewarded him. A skilled soldier and leader of men, he was one of the seven men and women in charge of Oriam's greater military and police forces for a reason...

Not that this helped him at the moment.

Technically, he outranked her; the woman had an honorary rank of 'Errant-Major', which was basically a made-up rank that allowed her to work with the military of Oriam without any red tape getting in the way. On the other hand, she was the daughter of Chieftan Maser, whose actions then and now were why there was an Oriam military then AND now, especially after the Twilight Wars. If he got into a pissing contest with her, at best it would probably end up a waste of time. On the other OTHER hand, this WAS technically his mission.

On the other other OTHER hand, she'd presented her case so that her desires had butted in. Joffre had wanted to sent his Runners, the special squadron he'd personally trained and equipped. There was no real nepotism: Joffre honestly felt they were the best choice for this mission. They were, per their name (their codename, their official name was Special Offensive Operations Squad 11) quick and more importantly, quiet. She, on the other hand, had felt that a squad would be too easily detected, especially with how isolated the mission grounds were, and that it was better to send in a single person. His peers had sided with her; Joffre honestly couldn't tell if they agreed, if it was politics, or both. At least he knew she wasn't trying anything; in her mind, her way would work best.

Laura Maser. If anything was going to force him to finally start on any sort of medication, it would be her. Her and her damned boyfriend the 44 member.

Joffre, for the most part, respected the 44, but in the same way he respected a good firearm. Intent meant everything, and too many of the 44 had intentions that rubbed him the wrong way. Lone wolf, step in and damn the consequences heroic nonsense, that was what drove too damn many of them, going around trying to direct wars and social issues and all sorts of things a lot of them didn't have the experience, understanding, or patience to really handle. Great when dealing with obvious dangers like that Incael fellow, not so great when dealing with more complicated matters.

Like this. What the viewing crystals of Oriam were viewing were events not happening in Oriam, but technically over the border to Oriam's immediate eastern neighbor, Pansoe. Whose relationship with Oriam could be said to be chilly at best; some (more like nearly all of the people in charge) felt that Oriam had grabbed all the glory during the Twilight Wars and left out other countries like Pansoe's efforts. Which was nonsense; the reason Oriam had glory was the sheer amount of work they'd put into saving the world, not to mention the ridiculous danger their city had managed to pull through. Other cities that had directly opposed Xaxargas were not as fortunate as they had been, and not for lack of trying, and they'd taken that immense risk willingly, Chieftan Maser willing to sacrifice every life under his command if it ensured the world's survival, a will that had thankfully not become necessary. They had not seized any credit that wasn't due to them, let alone from a jealous semi-backwater like Pansoe. Chieftan Maser had no time or patience for bullshit, and he'd told them to their faces.

Joffre really hoped that what they said was true and Pansoe really had no idea what was happening on their territory. It was hard to keep an eye on everything after all, and surely there was a line between bitter realpolitik and outright attempted proxy-harm out of envy and resentment. But as far as he was concerned, Pansoe's nonsense was enough that he didn't trust them at face value, and if that meant he had to do some technical violation of their sovereignty to keep his city and people safe, he would.

Which is why he'd wanted to send the Runners. Instead, we had...him. The thoughts on the murk surrounding the issue made Joffre wonder if that was part of the reason Laura had sent in her boyfriend. To many, save a couple of exceptionally bad apples and nutcases, the 44 were not just a force for good, but of optimism and simplicity. The idea that a complicated problem could be solved by the most rudimentary solution: apply force to it until the problem went away, was very much a 44 statement and general intent. The Godslayer was certainly fond of it, though at least he had the brains to have enough connections and allies to compensate where he was lacking. To Joffre, such a mindset was not philosophy, but poetry. Nice when it worked, but not worth the risk.

Oriam wasn't called the City of Dread Dreamers for nothing. For all the good it had done, and all the amazing things the legions of brilliant minds had invented, there was always the bad seeds, the malignant intellects who were bent towards profit or worse, proving something that only made sense in their malfunctioning synapses. And of course, the worst, those who just wanted to see things burn. The ugly nature of war blurred a lot of lines, and one of Joffre's biggest regrets was how the Twilight Wars had forced them to legitimize far too many of those bad seeds. It was a war of annihilation; no weapon, no tactic was off the table. Except when the war ended in victory, there were a lot of genies that were not going back into their bottles.

Hence, their current issue. It was the equivalent of an illegal weapons bazaar, whose primary products would be Oriam's dark shames. Tatterdemalions. Rocksalt. Vehemence. Tinkertoys. Who knew what else, along with the smaller things like Pop Rocks and Sunsets, and whatever some nutcase Blackbirds had dreamed up, along with the more benevolent-save-for-intent items like Intricacies, Vassals, Millstones...

Millstones. That was going to be the problem. That rocky mountain corner was covered in them; no Stream-user was going to be able to summon any kind of strength or power without a Yoke counter, and Yokes were not something you could just swipe off some random stooge. They were activated by blood, and switching their user once activated (via further blood) could take hours. Anyone who went in was going to be doing so with one, if not both hands tied behind their backs. Something his Runners were trained in...

But his Runners were not there. He was. Joffre tried to be professional. No plan survived contact with the enemy; Oriam had endured and thrived because men like him had adapted to that fact better.

Not that covered other irritations. Like when the picture of said bazaar, viewed at a distance from a hidden position, distorted. Joffre cursed low under his breath. This wasn't the fault of his picture provider; Joffre couldn't get any sort of autonomous viewing equipment or process out there in the mountains (The Ienken Heights, they were called, though the locals just called them Grumble Peaks due to the constant mild volcanic activity that had only recently been sealed up), so he was stuck with one lone view, which came out of the patch that covered his (more like her) operative's eye. THAT was working fine and he was using it fine...but the weather was clear where the bazaar was happening. Oriam on the other hand was in the grip of a full-on thunderstorm, and they couldn't wait for it to clear up lest one of the criminals at the bazaar made a purchase and went off to kill people with Oriam's weapons. Or worse, kill Oriam's people with Oriam's weapons. So he'd put up with the image and communication snarls the storm was causing, if it meant a prompt resolution.

"All right agent...how long since the last new arrivals?" Laura said.

A gloved hand slipped into view. Four fingers, then a zero. Forty or so minutes.

"I'd say that probably means any more stragglers we get aren't worth waiting for." Laura said, addressing Joffre.

"Agreed. Close in, agent, but do NOT engage. Let's confirm the products." Joffre said. The picture distorted a few more times as their agent snuck in, and when Joffre tried to get one of the other divisions on the line to inquire about when the weather was going to clear up, he found that communique cutting in and out as well. When it rained, it poured. Literally.

"Bootlaces." Laura said.

"And I'm pretty sure I see Bottle Rockets too, sir." One of the soldiers manning the controls said. "Breadbaskets too. It's a literal B-show."

"Small time material." Joffre said.

"That one's selling blocks of Fire Clay." Another controller said.

"And that one's selling Wyrmblood, I suspect." Laura said. "A few vehicles too...there's a Bludgeon."

"The BLG-E10 is highly specialized, would be nearly useless to the average terrorist." Joffre said.

"And if there's a non-average terrorist?"

"A fair point. Especially considering that." Joffre said, pointing. "Reignmakers." Ultra-precise lengths of metal, glorified bullets, save you could fire them from twenty miles away and provided the target didn't have a few feet of hardened metal between them and the projectile, it would find them, ignoring all laws of acceleration and energy to do it save the fact that even it could come to a complete stop with enough mass. What happened when a Blackbird and a Dread Dreamer came up with a shared idea. Magitek, as Laura called it. Joffre hated it.

"Sir? Those too." The first controller said, having to fiddle with the picture as it again distorted. "Agent, look more to the left and up...there. Weeping Willows. And Locusts."

Joffre inhaled through his nose. Worse than he thought. Weeping Willows were tiny little balls that, if they hit anything organic, induced rapid, fatal dehydration (to the point where another name for them was 'Wringers', like a wet cloth being wrung out). Dangerous enough, but with the microbots known as Locusts, a suitably angry or insane person could literally wipe out all life in a five-ten square mile area, and reduce the ground to dry, lifeless dust.

"That's enough, then." Joffre said.

"Sir?"

"Agent, withdraw.  Lieutenant Harper, get me Sergeant Brooks." Joffre said, causing Laura's head to swivel towards him.

"Yes sir."

"Forgive me if I..." Laura said.

"Yes, ma'am. I do not care about plausible deniability or tensions any more. They're selling high end death and the ability to deliver it at long range. I'm utilizing the Accurser. Get your agent out of there."

"Sir, while I understand your concerns..."

"I don't have time for games, Miss Maser. As good a shot as your lover is, he's not THAT good. Scorched earth will solve the issue."

"I have Brooks on the line, sir."

"Sergeant? Prepare the Accuser. Harper, give him the coordinates."

Within the depths of Oriam, a building began to open, revealing a dull grey dagger-like structure of metal and wires. So named because it had been said to look like an accusing finger, the Long-Range Pinpoint Leveling-Based Blaster gathered kinetic and pyroclastic energies before firing them in an arc that reduced anything within five hundred feet of its impact zone to atoms.

"...Miss Maser, I told your boyfriend, your agent, to get clear."

"Yes General. I have conveyed the order. He received it." Laura said. Yet the pictures still showed the bazaar.

"...Mr. Rapanga, I am not joking around. If you do not vacate the area swiftly, I cannot guarantee your safety."

Still the bazaar.

"Paul?" Laura said. "What are you doing?"

A waving hand. Just wait.

"Mr. Rapanga I assure you..."

Then the Bludgeon, its wheels being tested, was driven away. Revealing what the man on the ground had seen that he wanted to show. A small table. A stasis field. And inside it, two scaled green orbs, the size of basketballs.

"...Is that...?" Harper said, and as Paul used his eyepiece to scan in, Joffre suddenly felt an even deeper chill.

"...Scans confirm. That's Peabody's Expanding Effluvium."

"Pea Soup." Laura said.

"....Will the Accuser blast destroy it?" One of the other controller said.

"I...I don't..." Joffre said. In the nearly forgotten past world, one of its greatest wars' greatest weapon sin was the use of gas-based attacks, clouds of death that so horrified the countries that had used it they had signed laws to outlaw them, said weapons not even making a return in the next great war, despite it being ten times as bitter. That was how deep the scars went...but in a war of annihilation, nothing was off the table. But in a world where people could summon winds and fire, gas was of limited use...unless the gas was magically designed to expand and convert whatever gases it touched into more of it. You didn't use Pea Soup unless you had thaumaturges with enough skill to neutralize it, or it would just keep expanding until it covered countries, continents, in theory the whole world. It would kill both you and your enemy, and who knew what else. Worse, its expansive rate was exponential. Without any magicians there...

"Sergeant Brooks, belay that order!" Joffre said. He'd almost made a terrible mi...

Static.

"Sergeant, respond! Can you hear me?"

Thunder boomed, incredibly loud. The picture, Joffre realized, was distorting so much that it resembled abstract art. Their communication network was completely scrambled.

"GET BROOKS ON THE LINE! ABORT THE FIRING PROCEDURE!" Joffre yelled, finding a lot of his soldiers were ahead of him. Good men, skilled men...

But no plan survives contact with the enemy.

"Sir?" Brooks' voice came through.

"SERGEANT, THE ORDER IS RETRACTED! DO NOT FIRE!"

"...fire...sir?"

"NO! STOP!"

"You are...confirming the order....fire?"

"YES! NO! Sergeant cease all acti-"

The echoing hum rippled through the air, and everyone in the room tensed up. They knew what that meant.

"...Sir?" Brooks' crackling voice said.

"...Sergeant, please tell me you received my orders to not fire."

"Sir, I believed you were confirming the order to..."

"STOP THE BLAST!"

"What? Sir, that is impossible..."

"DAMNATION!" Joffre cursed. "Rapanga, get out of there! You have six minutes before you either burn or choke to death on your own blood!"

There was a brief pause, and then the hand crept into the frame.

Thumbs down.

Then the bazaar started getting closer.

"...Miss Maser, what is he doing?"

"His job." Laura said.

Fool's Gold, Part 3

"I'm not sure I understand the question."

The water really wasn't all that cold. It made up for that fact with pressure and the fact that the man firing it was exceptionally good at making Ash fall on his face. With the room padded, this meant a lot of painful impacts with minimal marks.

The questions had stopped. That was the key part. Godfather had stopped coming, probably too interested in the bounties of his world and the damn Wunderwaffe. No longer there to insure the orders she had given were carried out. None of the other Magpies in charge, it seemed, were either interested in helping on that front, or were busy themselves. Or they were scared of Ivan. Lots of people seemed to be scared of Ivan.

No questions throughout the whole thing. Just constant blasts of water for who knows how long, and then back to his cell. Ash was pretty sure he spied a camera in the padded room on his way out; Ivan, it seemed, now preferred some distance.

"What is there to not understand?" The speaker, a young-ish fellow who looked like he would disappear in a Clark Kent impersonation contest, raised an eyebrow as he spoke, but otherwise didn't change expression. He, as well as the slim blonde woman next to him, were exactly the sort of people you shouldn't find here, which made all the stranger to Ash that they were. The man behind them looked more 'traditional', in size at least, but his expression matched the other two's. He had a number of grenades clipped to his vest that he kept fiddling with, a nervous tic that made Ash a little nervous himself. Hopefully he didn't accidentally pull a pin.

Tracy Owens - Telepath. Codename: Babel.
 
Willis Powell - Persuasive Voice. Codename: Whisper.

Declan Leopold- Low-Class Telekinetic. Primarily serves as support role, using power to throw explosives great distances with greater accuracy. Prefers flashbangs. Codename: Blindspot

"Ivan is abusing you," Willis continued, "for his own twisted amusement, and yet you don't... do anything. You just let it happen to you, despite the numerous opportunities you've had to resist. Why be so... passive?"

Ash considered asking the obvious question, but a cramp of pain discouraged him. He closed his eyes, thinking.

"...why do YOU think I'm doing it?"

"Lost hope? Waiting for an opportunity?" Willis shrugged. "What amazes me is the lack of screaming and begging, personally. Most of Ivan's victims tend to break in half a week."

"Personally," piped up Tracy, "I think it's a coping mechanism. After all, stuck in a strange land, cut off from your friends and acquaintances, being tortured by a registered psychopath and criminal for no motivation other than-"

The man immediately elbowed her in the side, adding a sharp glare for good measure, and she petered to a stop.

"...I'm rather surprised about the lack of screaming and begging myself. I...don't like pain. Hate it, actually." Ash said. "...and Ivan seems to have enough of a brain to realize pain has limits..."

Ash was not exactly claustrophobic, but he didn't have to be. The mental force field box, as it closed in, would be enough to inject phobias into anyone, squeezing him down into the smallest ball of himself he could make, and then just...stopping. And letting him sit there, trapped with no room to move. Minutes, hours, time lost all meaning. It would only expand out when his muscles started to cramp, and no sooner had he massaged the cramps away when he was squeezed down again. Over and over. Until it finally just went away and he was dragged back to his cell, utterly exhausted despite any actual physical effort.

They'd cut his meals down to nothing, as well. At least they hadn't cut his water.

"...do you have dangerous plants in this world?"

"Yes." Tracy nodded. "First to spring to mind is the Giant Coffin Rose of our South America - some call it the Red Maiden. It's petals are lined inside with spikes and connected to a spring mechanism, linked to trigger sensors on the inside. Step on it and the petals snap shut around you, slowly squeezing the breath from your body whilst the spikes pierce you all over. The process can take anywhere from three to five hours, depending on the length of the spikes or the size of the victim. So you get to watch your own blood trickle down to its roots before blood loss, asphyxiation or both claim you."

Willis shuddered, swallowing back bile. "Lovely," he muttered in a voice dripping in sarcasm.

"There's a plant in my world. We call them Landvines...they're these long thick ropes that have these big blue-green seed pods...and what happens is if it gets too dry, the pods break off. And if you step on one...there's a chemical in the plant cell walls that mixes with a chemical held in the pods, and they explode. Rather violently. Not as bad as your Maiden, but still, they throw people head over heels backwards, wreck boots, some people call them Toecutters because they've seen people lose toes to them. I heard a story once...where a Blackbird, a magician of my world, worked out a way to talk to plants. Plants don't really have much in the way of conversation skills, but when asked if he talked to Landvines about why they were so damn vicious, the answer was basically 'I wish no harm...but you step on me and I do what I must then.'

More cramps.

"...ever encountered an abused animal?"

Aside glances.

"...more than once." Tracy spoke hesitantly, unsure. "I used to work for the Crows - Delia's section. You have to be a certain kind of person to join them - broken, yet made savage because of it. And when you're a telepath like me, the mixture of hopeless, bottled anger, just waiting to burst out... It was why I asked for the transfer to begin with. I wasn't the kind of person she wanted."

"Then you know the effect. The....coring effect. How humans and animals can make each other better...and instead all the person did was make the animal...nothing more than an animal. Hell, not even that. A false purity, nothing but the most aggressive, violent instincts, no balance...because the animal has learned that's what it needs to survive. It can't understand anything else.

"...either of you part of a religion?"

Willis shrugged. "Not much of a believer, myself. My mother was a devout Mantran, though. Always said Chakravartin put everything on this planet for a purpose, but I couldn't really wrap my head around that. I mean, did he make things like the Hollow Field as well? I think she just believed because... There didn't seem to be another explanation for all the bad things."

"It's a bit hard to separate myth from reality," Tracy explained. "Especially when we have things like miniature dragons alongside hoverbikes and lasers."

"...Let me tell you a story..."

Honestly, in retrospect, Ash was surprised Ivan was smart enough to consider it. Three gallons of water left in the room...and then the door locked. The lights turned off.

Alone.

No one came. No one spoke. Time to heal, to regain strength...nothing but time. And the dark. Isolation. Absolute solitude.

Had they not mistimed it so that Ash was sleeping when they finally stopped the 'solitary confinement', Ash might have actually broken down and begged for...something. It was strange how a complete lack of torture could, if directed properly, be torture in and of itself.

So Ash did. About his mother, the equivalent of a pope, and about Schwarze Spinne, the Black Spider, the 'anti-pope' who desired to tear down Diana's city and ways and replace them with his own.

"Wandering his army in disguise, listening to them talk about how my mother, her people...flawed but good, how they were blasphemers, how they deserved the most ugly things to happen to them, how righteous and good it would be when they, the holy chosen, brought those ugly, ugly desires to bear on the 'false heathens'..."

Ash shook his head.

"Cut away the personal issues, all the rhetoric. In the end, all of Spinne's 'true believers' wanted to hurt people, and they were willing to come up with whole libraries worth of justification for it. How they were noble and right and GOOD for it. Just like your boss. Too many people died for me to succumb to that...more than I already have. Because my friends...there's nothing courageous about such a desire. Just that blind desire to hit...or hit back. Nothing special, nothing accomplished, nothing HUMAN. A PLANT can do it."

A long silence filled the room at that moment, the other three letting Ash's words sink in at that point. Even Declan had actually stopped fiddling with his grenades, much to the relief of everybody present, and had shuffled a little closer to listen in.

When Willis next spoke, his voice was quiet.

"...so what should we do?"

"...Believe me, if I knew...even I can't always keep to that fact. My current treatment...it's because I lashed out blindly, gave into that urge to strike back...the easy way. The one that so swiftly becomes 'Do whatever you have to indulge this, because it feels so GOOD. Any reason, any justification, any excuse, any cover...just give in'. You see what happened because I gave in. Your boss..."

Ash worked his jaw. At least his teeth were still intact.

"I don't know what he wants...any more than I really knew what Spinne wanted. Put aside the personal again...if I had to guess...he wants a world where his way is the first way, and the only way, all the time. Where all you have to do is give in. He wants a world where violence reigns...so I ask you...is that what you want? Because here's the thing...whether he's hurting me because I insulted his honor, or his sense of accomplishment, or whatever, or I'm hurting HIM because he hit a woman...it's all just violence. There's no balance in it. I'm not any more right in the end than him, because all I did was add more violence to the world. I...always wanted to be a hero. I've learned that being a hero is about a lot of sacrifice...so I try not to crack. Ivan, on some level...probably wants just that. So I ask again...what do YOU want?"

Another prolonged silence, punctuated by the click-click of Declan compulsively fiddling again.

Willis looked to Tracy. She returned the look.

Then they turned back to Ash and spoke, one after another.

"We... We want to get out. We want to stop all... this."

"What Ivan... what Godfather's doing... It's too much."

"Then leave."

"Impossible." Willis shook his head emphatically. "No-one leaves the Magpies. They hunt you down if you try."

"What about-?" Tracy began.

"Her?" A humourless chuckle. "She got lucky. Not even Godfather would mess with a demon. Us? We'd be dead before we even crossed the threshold."

"...Why are you here?"

A roll of the eyes from Willis. "Usual story, at least for people like me. Fell in with a bad crowd. Ended up owing money. Got roped in to pay it off. Only my talents caught Ivan's eye, and he got me shifted here. Dunno why he'd want someone with weird persuasive voice powers on his team, when he mostly solves problems by punching them."

"I didn't have much choice, either," Tracy put in. "I needed a roof over my head, food in my belly and money in my pocket. And they - he, rather - promised them to me. At a price, of course - didn't think this price..."

"You never realize the price of your choices."

From nothing but sleep to no sleep.

Light. Noises. People coming into his cell to rouse him, all of it making sure he never slept. When had he last been talking to Tracy and Willis, those two who had been given so many questions? He didn't know. His brain was frazzled. Everything was warped.

Subject a man to violence, and the violence in him will bloom. On a long enough timeline, the survival rate of anything drops to zero...

And it's faster if someone wants to prove a point, as the door abruptly opened and she was thrown in.

Tracy and Willis gone...that conversation had ended who knew when...

"Hello again," grumbled Hannah, picking herself up ruefully and dusting herself down. "Don't rush to get the cake, I already ate."

"Guhhhhhhhhhhh..." Was she here? Was he hallucinating? The world as it was seemed so less clear...even the head blows hadn't made him this out of it.

"...oh, dear."

Even through blurred vision, Ash could see what was wrong with the hand waving in front of his face. It should have been coated in a fine layer of flinty rock, as well as driving itself repeatedly into his jaw, stomach and various over vulnerable areas alongside an equally-aggressive twin. Not... flesh and blood, and just waving at him.

But what if this was a trick? After all, the foul-mouthed-

"Yo. Earth to dork. You there?"

...Huh. No swearing. That meant something was definitely wrong with Hannah Vallis.

"...youuuuuu?"

"Yes, me. Do I have to strip naked in front of you to prove it?"

"Nooooo...hurrrttttt..."

"Ugh, fine. Lucky for you I brought this, then."

A shuffling sound, as if something was being pulled out of a pile of rags. Then a clicking, popping noise, and Ash found the lip of a plastic water bottle being pushed between his lips.

"Drink," ordered Hannah, shortly. "It's got a diluted Nightbalm solution in it. Might help with the whole 'fuckers won't let me sleep' thing."

Ah, there we go. There's the sweary Hannah that was known and... well, tolerated would probably be the best word in this situation.

Though it seemed like Ash was in the least tolerating mood he could be, on the basis that he immediately grabbed Hannah by the throat.

"NO MORE HURT!"

"Then you know the effect. The....coring effect. How humans and animals can make each other better...and instead all the person did was make the animal...nothing more than an animal. Hell, not even that. A false purity, nothing but the most aggressive, violent instincts, no balance...because the animal has learned that's what it needs to survive. It can't understand anything else..."

"ACK!"

Hannah's immediate reaction was to start madly flailing, her fists hammering into Ash's ribs and shoulders. In a previous lifetime, it would have been enough to smash bones to fragments and organs to jelly, or send her attacker tumbling end-over-end backwards and give her time to retaliate. But when nothing in particular happened, her eyes, already bugging out from the shock and near-strangulation, widened even further as realization came roaring in.

Point One. Her power was gone.

Point Two. She was trapped in a room with a sleep-deprived, vengeful prisoner.

Point Three. He was nearly twice her size.

"Shit," she choked out. "Help! HELPPPPP!"

No one came. It took Hannah three seconds to realize no one was going to.

"...Where all you have to do is give in. He wants a world where violence reigns..."

The bill had come due.

Quite Contrary, Alpha

Drums in the deep.

The shared imagery was doubled. Mordor was a blasted hellscape, a land scarred and seething with blood, pain, and evil. Just like the Mines of Moria had become once the Balrog had been awakened, the legions of orcs driven before it, the warning of the dwarves of their coming. Drums in the deep.

Drums in the distance.

At least the Mines and Mordor had been solid underfoot. Here...

Mud. Lifeless, endless MUD. Mud and craters and befoulment everywhere, the sweeping drumbeat marking its way across the poisoned lands. A smell that reached beyond the noise and seemed to grip the stomach and lungs in claws of revulsion. Faint cries carried on the wind, sometimes heard before the drums resumed.

Sine stood without issue.

Daniel Ackermann, on the other hand, hit the mud and began sinking like he had just blundered into quicksand. His yells of surprise and general unhappiness just managed to reach above the drums, though the sudden joining of another voice, as Carol popped in and found the mud immediately trying to suck her into its grip, her legs going up to her knees almost as soon as she stepped down, helped.

"Daniel? Carol? Why are you in my simula...Daniel! Simulation! Say 'Reduce weight to one thousandth analysis!'" Sine said, grimacing and gesturing to the side. A hologram of dials briefly popped up, and the drumbeat lessened.

Carol was quicker on the uptake, shouting out the words before she sank any further. Instantly, her weight in the simulation lessened by several degrees, and she was able to yank her legs free from the clinging, sucking mud. Prior hazard training in the sim had prepared her for such sudden perils.

Daniel, however...

"-FUCKING GODDAMN SON OF A SHITBISCUIT FUCKSTICK-"

In the end, it took Carol running over and calming him down in order to get him to focus on what to say. And it also to Carol grabbing hold of both arms to help pull him free of the morass - his struggles had caused him to sink up to his waist. In the end, they managed to pry him loose, and the older mutant spent several moments cursing between his teeth as he clambered to his feet and scraped the muck off his trousers.

Carol had been lucky he hadn't drawn his spikes out of panic.

"Where the fuck are we?!" he growled at last, still obviously spooked.

"Paschendale." Sine said quietly. "It's a battlefield from the First World War. Sorry, didn't put up a sign. Didn't expect company."

"...Aw geez Sine..." Carol said, having pulled up her own hologram screen. "...Verdun? The Somme? Why th'heck are you hanging around recreations of such ugly places?"

"To remember what power does."

The drumbeat passed by. Daniel could see mud, the terrible sucking grey mud, being thrown up in the distance.

He grimaced, already picturing what was going on over in that direction.

"I remember reading about this," he mused as he looked around the awful landscape. "Had a load of old history books in Rutledge, that we managed to liberate from some libraries. Snuck a look in them sometimes, in my off hours."

He fell rather sullenly silent, as if searching for something to say. Something not irreverent or offensive, anyway.

"The things about war is that they're often pretty understandable. People want something, so they try and take it. Sometimes it's 'We don't like these people'. This war though...a comedy show put it best. It more or less happened because it was too much trouble NOT to have a war." Sine said. "The people behind this...they had all the power and had to bear none of the consequences. They stayed at the back with all their maps and all the constant lessons that technology had completely outstripped their ways...and those without power endured this."

The hologram simulation flickered a glove over Sine's hand.

"And I in theory have brief moments where all that power and all that came from it looks like nothing. Even with the self imposed limits. So I come down here. In the blood and mud and history. I need to be constantly reminded, you know this Carol...what power does. Is. Can do. Especially this. This is power as inertia. A meat grinder that basically exists because no one no longer has any clue on how to say no. You know?"

Carol nodded. "I know. And it's this that puts it all in perspective. You missed a lot, Dan, but trust me when I say she needs this."

A short pause as the group all observed the endless stretch of mud.

"...so how long do you usually spend in here?" asked Daniel, breaking the silence.

"Long as I really need to. And even I can't bring myself to make it fully...real. Like they had it." Sine said, indicating her standing on the mud. "At least...your Fears were...well, for lack of a better term, pure. They were absolutes in what they were. They were made that way, to be anything else would unmake them. Still beyond terrible...but they really had no choice but to be terrible. Humans do...but how easily we don't...well, evil's rare. Weakness isn't. I mean...you saw how eager I was to take Cauren and 'fix' her."

"Sure did," Daniel agreed, permitting himself a smirk. But he made no further comment than that.

"...But really Sine...you DON'T need this. None of us do."

"Beg pardon?"

"Okay, yes. You have responsibilities...but...you're not that good with dials, you know? You never seem to pick out smaller stuff. It's always lookit this vast plateau of human misery, to contrast the yoke I must bear."

"She's carrying eggs?"

"Yoke, Daniel. Eggs are yolk, y-o-l-k. You're kind of the same when it comes to fixy fixy, Sine. I will save this world made dumb. I will fix this broken universe. I will give this woman all these magic powers. You're no good at just being...middle of the road. You seem to forget there IS a road because you immediately run to go off it and keep going. Sometimes I think you like all the grand sweeping stuff because if it fails, you can just go 'Well it got away from me'. But the small stuff? That screws up, that's on you. That's also darn scary and you're notsogood at facing that. Even now."

"...I guess."

"I mean...if all you're going to do is huge things...you'll leave us behind. Just...is that what you want?"

"What? No! No!"

"Well then why are you hanging around horrible World War battlefields? When will you trust yourself to not abuse your power?"

"...I...really don't know."

"Oh, shut the fuck up!" Daniel suddenly burst out. "How about let's talk about me being dragged along on this?! I didn't come here so I could listen to bullshit philosophy about power and responsibility, like I'm in a rejected Spider-Man comic book!"

Daniel took two long strides forward, and then briefly paused. When he didn't start sinking again, he continued marching his way in front and put a hand roughly on Sine's shoulder.

"Listen to me, Sine, because you told me the same shit a long time ago when it came to my anger management. The next time you're gonna blow your top over something, or do something hugely over-the-top or jackass-y, ask yourself 'is this what somebody else in my position would do?' And if the answer is 'no', then tone it the fuck down or try something else! Simple as!"

"...do as I say, not as I do. Slippery phrase." Sine said, as she pulled out a hologram keyboard. Several keystrokes made the hellscape fade away to a white void. "I'm going to do a runthrough of our current inventory and deliveries before I get out. You can hang around if you want..."

Sine was not surprised Carol and Daniel immediately found a reason to leave. Losing herself in busywork, two questions failed to occur to her.

One was why Carol and Daniel had come into her VR simulation in the first place.

The second was when had Daniel overcome his immense distrust about technology.