All That Glitters, Part 2B

"I'm telling you Ash, this is foolproof. All we have to do is get in and dresses will drop for us before the night is out. Weddings are full of desperate pu-"

"Don't use that word. I hate that word." Ash said. In a time before marriage, Kobbers, godslaying, and a lot of other things, Ash didn't have a lot going for him, but he had Paul. Friends bound in rejection and dorkdom, and both overcompensating now that the Change had allowed them to jump about eighty steps in the self-improvement que. Where Ash wanted respect and admiration, Paul wanted accomplishment in the feminine sphere. Ie, he wanted to get laid, and a lot. Neither at the time realized that both had been cursed so that their greatest desires would cause them as much grief as possible.

The wedding crashing went poorly. Paul was mistaken for an assassin and beaten with clubs, while Ash attempted a rescue and ended up falling in a koi pond that was part of the wedding party and getting stuck there due to his over-heavy armor. The supposed assassin victim, Laura Maser, had called off her guards and given Paul a lecture, and when a rather pride-battered Paul had not exactly been polite in his response, she'd used mechanized gauntlets to literally toss him out on his ear. The language Paul had used afterwards had actually worried Ash a fair bit; no one liked being humiliated, but you could truly tell someone's character when they got angry. Christine, for example, stopped being nice and started being 100 percent honest, which was sometimes worse than the rampages some of his other teammates could, and did, go on when they lost their tempers. Himself included.

So of course, circumstances would constantly throw Paul and Laura together, again and again, always with Laura with the advantage. Ash sometimes wondered, just as he was unsure how he had survived so many terrible things where others had not, how Paul had never crossed over a line that there would be no going back from. Ash suspected it mostly had to do with Yumi, and maybe Debera too. Paul had been a rock after her death and Ash's overwhelming, crushing guilt. Maybe seeing how much it hurt to lose someone you respected made the whole idea of chasing after the poisonous kind of respect getting 'revenge' on Laura would bring unpalatable. Between that, how Yumi (or rather, Treasure) had probably also 'helped', in the end Paul preferred to be successful at things rather than shoot himself in the foot working at cross-purposes.

Love was a funny thing. In sweet talk Ash would have told his wife that he loved her from the moment he saw her, but in truth it had taken his feelings a long time and several wringers before they actually became unselfish enough to count as love. Having to work with a female whose pants he desperately didn't want to get into, as it turned out, was a lot better in teaching you how to get women to like you. Especially when said woman was always dealing with the nonsense of people who wanted to take advantage of her birthright for their own sakes. Amazing what some honesty and some swallowed pride could do. Amusingly, there hadn't been any obvious sexual tension; in the lead up to the Twilight Wars Ash had just noticed the two together outside of battle plans and hadn't figured it out until Laura had given him a brief kiss in their presence. Erdrick had gotten material out of his flabbergasted state for weeks.

Curses were meant to cause the most bitter of ironies. Ash's had probably been to drive him towards malevolence, Christine's to make her part with the heart that made her so prized for so many. Paul's was to ensure that the talents granted him would never be tapped and refined, that he would destroy himself and realize how badly he had failed at the end. But...he hadn't.

Ash had loved the idea of the knight in shining armor, the hero on horseback saving the land from evil. Paul had preferred the cool professional, the best in a dangerous field whose name became synonymous with accomplishment and danger.

In the end...it was almost surprisingly easy to get that. All you had to do was survive great danger.

This world was full of danger.

The world was not enough.

----

"...Mr. Rapanga, what are you DOIN-?"

"Shhhhh." Laura said, as the camera view showed Paul stepping out of cover without being noticed and walking to a cluster of men and women on the outskirts of the bazaar. "He's hiding in plain sight."

Joffre's expression soured, though that was a personal belief that such a risk wasn't worth it. Then again, Paul had very limited time and was not an expert in stealth-sneaking like Brigh. Maybe pretending to just be another thug who was window-shopping would work best.

"It is very unlikely they could hear our radio." Joffre said, though he kept his voice very low despite what he'd said.

"I always prefer no chance to a low chance, and no chance means no talking." Laura said, typing at the computer in front of her. Joffre briefly held his gaze on her; that was a control and guiding panel. It wouldn't do anything for the Accuser, so what was she doing...

No time to puzzle it out. The people in Paul's vision were looming close...

---

And they'd noticed Paul.

"Hey. Got a light?" Paul said, producing a herb cigarette. The key, he figured, wouldn't be people recognizing his face, but his clothing, in that his outfit was considerably fancier than what the average criminal should be wearing. Between his ragged cloak and the dust he'd covered himself with, he could only hope it'd be enough.

Most of the criminals ignored Paul, though one opened up a lighter with a grunt and lit Paul's cigarette. Another was giving him a cold look; Paul figured it was best to play ignorant.

"Thanks." Paul said, taking a puff and walking on. He severely doubted he could just pick up the Pea Soup containers and walk out, but if he could actually GET to them without a fight, it would be a start. He even had something resembling an exit plan, based on something he'd spotted when he was walking around doing general assessmen-

"Hey! Hey you!"

Paul stopped. Yeah, it figured.

"Yeah?" Paul said, turning and looking in the direction of the yell. It was from the people he'd just left; one apparently had gotten a whiff of her (actual, real) cigarette, or 'joint' as the old term had been.

"You got any more of that shit?"

"...Think so." Paul said, walking back over. Calm. Be calm. Forget being in enemy territory. Forget the tight time limit. Panic made you sloppy, and even if you kept it under control, he wasn't like Valse, or that nutcase Ash insisted on keeping on their team as their nuclear option. He couldn't just plow through masses of enemy forces on a whim and come out smelling like a rose. Act like you belonged, and things just worked out better. Heck, he'd gotten so good at acting like he'd belonged that Laura fell in love with him. Surely compared to that this would be simple.

"I don't have any more papers though, I guess I could just give you what I have left and you could find some yourself if you don't..." Paul said, reaching under his coat.

Then he saw lots of dancing colors without the aid of any drugs, as one of the cluster slipped behind him and slammed him in the back of the head with his shotgun. Paul tumbled to the ground, even as he heard Laura utter a low curse in his ear. He didn't hear Joffre, but he pictured the older man face-palming. Look what the 44 member did in his brilliant attempted trick.

Guns were drawn, cocked and aimed at him. Still dazed on the ground, Paul slowly withdrew the small baggie he had actually been reaching for.

"It wasn't a damn gun, assholes..." Paul said, trying to play the put upon victim.

"Not the problem. Rapanga."

The woman who'd stepped around some of the others wasn't someone Paul recognized, save for one thing; she hadn't been with the original group. But she'd been close enough to make him, and smart enough to get him to walk into an ambush instead of just sounding the general alarm. Fuck.

"I don't..."

"Would you at least respect my intelligence, Rapanga?" The woman said, and Paul found himself being stood up, his guns stripped from him, even as the woman thrust her hand into his coat, withdrawing the metallic pendant cast in the shape of a flickering tongue of fire. "Your 44 medallion lit up our sensors like you were holding a sign."

"...These things are cloaked."

"Not well enough any more, I'm afraid." The woman said, smiling, a look that spoke of broken knees and knives through necks.The wonders of ever advancing technology and spellcraft. Lucky him.

"We going to shoot him?" One of the men said.

"I don't know, I'm tore between blowing his brains out or ransoming him back to Oriam for even more toys."

"We could do both." Another woman said, aiming at Paul's knee.

"Technically, that's not where my brain is." Paul said,

"Yes, we have to aim higher." The woman said, drawing her own firearm and doing so. Eeek.

"Also technically, those dots all of you have sprouted might disagree with you."

A half second of staring from the woman, and then a check.

No dots on them. No snipers here. Paul was alone...and he'd needed to break their focus.

In the moment they'd given him, he whirled around behind the man with the shotgun, grabbing him and his weapon. Paul couldn't actually access the trigger, but he didn't need to: the symbol on the inside of his gloved hand lit up as he yanked the weapon up and the gun fired. Misfire on command. Sometimes a useful trick. The woman who had I.D'd him never had a chance to realize how things had turned around before her face was turned inside out.

Alas, only one shot in the gun, as he'd had no choice but to fire both barrels. Fortunately, his puppet also had a handgun at his side. And UNfortunately, for him, his peers didn't bother with any attempt of hostage rescue and immediately shot him repeatedly trying to get to Paul.

Don't panic...that just makes you shoot, you need to AIM-

Four swift gunshots. Two to center of mass, one neckshot, one headshot. Enough in all four cases...except Paul knew without even looking that now the entire bazaar was either looking at him, freaking out, or otherwise noticing that several people were now suddenly dead. By his hand. Which had one gun with a partially expended clip. Even IF some just thought it was a disagreement, he knew others would assume the worst immediately and try and ventilate him. And the corpse he was now holding would not hold up to a barrage like that.


Paul dropped his human shield and dove behind some thankfully metal crates, bullets slamming into them less than two seconds before he was under cover. Paul rolled onto his rear, briefly looking at the blood all over his front. The bullets had been stopped between the corpse and his armor, but so much blood...

Blood...death...

---

"Look at us." Ash mused. "The great heroes of the Twilight War, the Godslayer and the God of Guns...trying to not puke our guts out because some people just wouldn't get a clue."

"You fool." Paul said, in that unique way he did, making it a silly little jibe instead of an actual insult. "That's what you get for eating such a big breakfast."

"Says the one with the greenish tint."

"I'm just commiserating with you." Paul said, looking at the dead men who had forced their hand. Just a brief, normal journey, interrupted by brigands, whom Ash and him had swiftly stomped into the ground. That hadn't been enough, as it turned out: they'd played defeated until the pair of them had dragged them into the nearest town to get them properly arrested, at which point said brigands broke free and tried to burn the whole place down as a distraction. Buildings were bad enough, but when they went after the fleeing people with said fire attacks, the gloves came off. Ten seconds later, there was one less band of murderous scumfucks in the world.

And despite all that, Ash still felt queasy. He could tell Paul did too. Life was funny. Once upon a time, both would have thought the complete and utter destruction in such a short period of time of such men would be a point of pride, a showing of their talents and skill and how far they'd come, how strong and tough and powerful they were. Great warriors...except, as both had found out, in the words of another fictional character Paul was fond of, wars did not make one great.

You should always feel this way.

"Maybe so, Erdrick, but I could do with feeling it with less intensity." Ash said. "How do you feel, Paul?"

"I'm all right..." Paul said. "I'm...learning how to handle this."

"Maybe I should join your class."

"I dunno if it would help you, Ash...it's really just...well. To paraphrase him, I don't like to kill. But I take pride in doing it well."

"...I suppose in this world, that's the best way you could look at it." Ash said, looking at the drifting smoke in the air. "It's not the license that matters. It's the check your heart and soul cut every time."

"Better us then people who don't."

"...as better as such things can be."

----

Time to be that better.

They were trying to kill him. They were dead anyway, with the Accuser blast inbound. They would not extend him the same courtesy, even if Paul could somehow sit them down and give them lessons on the benefit of it. It was time for Paul Rapanga to go in the box. It was time for the gunslinger, the super-soldier, the one man army, the 44 member. The great warrior, because sometimes war came for you whether you wanted it or not.

"You have less than five minutes, Mr. Rapanga." Joffre said in his ear.

"Yes, thank you for that! If you're going to tell me the odds next, FORGET IT!" Paul yelled, cringing down as firepower was poured into his position. This was no good. Even if the boxes held up, it would be a very short time before the killers and criminals rubbed their two brain cells together and flanked him.

"How much ammo do you have?"

"NOT ENOUGH!" Paul yelled, though he did draw the clip. Eight bullets. Well, could be worse.

"Fortunately for you, sweetie, I can rectify one of those problems." Laura said.

"What?" Paul and Joffre said in near-sync. It was around then that Joffre, whose attention had been focused on Paul's issues, noticed the incoming signal that was showing on the radar scans of the bazaar. "Miss Maser, I did request you inform me of all your pre-preperations."

"So one slipped my mind. Sue me." Laura said.

"I take it that's not a missile."

"Yes and no." Laura said. "Paul, incoming."

"From where?"

"Uh..." Laura said, as she rapidly checked her last coordinates. "North and in your general downward directio-"

"OH SHIT!" Paul yelled, his voice echoing through the room. Laura pressed a button.

In the sky above the rocky mountain flat, the fired projectile appeared in the sky and descended for two seconds before it broke apart, as the bazaar-goers suddenly found themselves under attack and ran for it, pieces of metal raining down and crashing through the bazaar. There was a brief moment of quiet as the criminal forces regrouped and tried to figure out what had just happened. Missiles were supposed to explode, this one had just sort of...fallen apart and onto them, for minimal damage.

That wasn't the point of the missile. That was just a bonus. The paycheck was what was in it.

"Orbis non sufficit." Paul said.

"You've got four minutes, Paul." Laura said.

"I shall not waste my days in trying to prolong them." Paul said, as he centered himself, even as the weapon that had fallen into his hands had the last pieces slot and arm into it. "I shall use my time."

"Flatline, online. Armed. Licensed."

"Sorry, gentlemen. But I'm afraid you've had your six."

The Doom That Came To Vegas

-Porphyrion-

Peace had finally come.

Two chaotic years of disaster after disaster had finally passed. Whatever did not kill you made you stronger, as the saying went...

But sometimes...death was not the end at all.

The haruspex known as Hadeon had passed on, but her legacy lingered in two ways. One a weapon for her slayers, and the other the remains of her powers over destruction and oblivion, focused in manifested form due to the circumstances of her demise. Their unwilling host's defeat left only that manifestation: the Black Doomstone. The power to end things, to stop them, to bring them to a halt. If shattered, the power would simply find a new host. No one could bear such a burden willingly...

So it had to be buried. Buried like Hadeon once was, except deeper. So deep no one would ever find it. Such had been the plan of Lyall Curr, and in the end he had taken the extra step of taking it out of his hands.

The Order of the Eleven Stars had not gotten involved in Porphyrion's battles because they did not fight. They were scholars and guardians of knowledge, not warriors. In the end, even Lyall had not trusted himself with the Doomstone, and in his efforts to dispose of it and all knowledge of it, had ultimately turned it over to the Order. All had sworn oaths of death that they would not take it up, reinforced by powerful magic spells that no one of them could unravel alone. They had purged Lyall of certain memories at his request, and selected a long abandoned mine that dug deep into the earth. For a month they dug all the more, and prepared, a tomb that would be sealed behind them. No one would know what lay here. No one could possibly stumble over it.

....the best laid plans.

If Zoax Noureth had more of a creative mind, he might have seen this coming. But Zoax was a researcher who saw little value in stories, a viewpoint his peers shared. Which is why when the form emerged in the final moments, just when they were ready to seal away the Doomstone forever, down in the depths, they had never considered such a possibility could occur.

"What...?" Zoax said, and then his senses brought him recognition. "YOU?"

"I."

"...Why would..." Zoax said, and then he understood in what he could see. "...No...NO!"

His peers tried, knowing as he what was coming...but they were scholars, not warriors, and even if they had been hardened battle-mages, it would not have been enough. The darn form took their attacks and stopped them in their tracks, and then returned the blows twice as fierce. They crumbled like wheat under a scythe, not dead, not even really all that hurt, but down. It was all that was needed. Expert precision.

Zoax made a stand. The form just negated everything he did. Even with basic knowledge, it was enough. Empowered construct armor. By itself, merely dangerous.

But also perfect to wield it. And as Zoax was knocked aside, he realized that he could not stop it from happening.

"...please..." Zoax said. "I don't know why...but this world has already suffered so..."

"I have no interest in this world."

A slash from deadly weapons, and the Doomstone was free. Zoax understood.

"...what have you become?"

"...I am the Air. And the Darkness."

"...The star people...They will stop you."

"Can even they stop...the end of all things? Can even they stop...death?"

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.

Fool's Gold, Part 2

Well, at least there wasn't a crunching noise. The dull meaty THWACK didn't sound or feel good, but crunching would have been worse. Though the chained wrists (As Ash was now chained to a wall) made taking the fist harder, moreso that it was coated in flint.

"...Never start with the head. The victim gets all fuzzy. He can't feel the next..." WHY THE HELL ARE YOU QUOTING THAT YOU MORON DID SHE ALREADY GIVE YOU BRAIN DAMAGE.

"Shut the fuck up."

The brunette woman was clearly in no mood to take any shit. If the first punch didn't clue Ash in on that, then the second one would. That one bounced his head off the wall.

"...so is'this what basses for entertainment nyo?"

Another thump, this time to the gut, forced an "Oof!" as the wind was knocked out of him.

"I said shut up!" snapped the woman, glaring daggers. "Or do you want me to go for your fucking jaw next?"

Ash actually did not reply, mainly because he needed to regain his breath. Instead, he just stared with bleary eyes. The woman was small, compact. She clearly needed her rock fists to do any serious damage: even if she'd had some training in boxing, she lacked the proper body type to really punch with any power. She'd be better off learning a defensive martial art, like aikido, though aikodo wouldn't let you beat someone up when they were chained to a wall. Why was she doing it? Had Ivan gotten bored and delegated? Or maybe he thought he was being clever based on certain things...

She snorted. "Thank Chakravartin, I thought I was going to go mad. Now, where was I...?"

She paced back and forth, eying the body on front of her. Ash might have appreciated it, had he not known she was simply scanning for a fresh place to hit. Then again, given his current condition, he might not have appreciated any of it at all.

"Hmmm. Maybe the liver next. The boss always aims for that..."

"Is your boss' boss pissed I told him the truth or...?"

PUNCH.

"Nooopppeeee...guess nottttt..." Ash said, sucking air between his teeth.

"I said," snarled the woman, "shut the fuck up! Can't you take a Mantra-damned hint in your life, or are you literally retarded?!

"...heh, wouldn't surprise me, actually." To Ash's immense relief, she stood back and away from him, out of punching distance, to admire her handiwork. "You'd have to have the IQ of a cowpat to try and fight us. That, or a death wish the size of a small planet."

"We have found something."

Another time. No chains, no punches, instead just a seat at a table, but perhaps worse in a way. Ash hadn't liked the look in Godfather's eye the second he'd seen it.

"There are mines in the chasm we came out in. Useless minerals, or so we thought...then one of our less...intelligent members became grossly intoxicated and decided to...nasally inhale some of them once they were crushed, on a dare. The results were...surprising."

"Are they still alive?"

"They have some injuries from when their wood control accidentally caused the building they were in to collapse when they accidentally pulled it out of the ground with a thought. An object-moving process sixteen times outside their previously assessed maximum weight limit."

"...purple and blue crystals? Almost wet to the touch, found in dark crumbly clay?"

"Yes."

"...It's best used...crushed and mixed with salt...and then mixed with distilled water...and injected right into the bone marrow."

"...and why should we believe any of this?" If you quirked Godfather's eyebrow any higher here, it would fly off her face. "After all the effort I wasted in getting you to talk, suddenly you're just giving this information to us?"

"Because that's not some random magic crystal. That's the basis for Wunderwuffe you just stumbled over. And the only way you can safely use Wunderwaffe is if it's purified. Like wine, that takes years, and no Blackbird in my world is going to trade that information or service with invaders. And I know you're going to insist on taking it, because like you said. It made your stupid experimenting minion several times stronger. Has he or she started manifesting psychotic tendencies yet? Because that's sort of what happens when you ingest a high grade combat steroid equivalent."

"Kou?" Godfather laughed, and waved a hand dismissively. "Oh, whatever~! It's nice to see him be more assertive for once, instead of being a limp-worsted dork! Also, the way he threw his lab assistant through a window was funny as scheiße!"

Then her demeanor changed, as thoughts began to creep along her brain like a centipede on the prowl.

"...if it works for him, surely... Yes, I don't see why not...

"Is there any way," she asks, no longer muttering, "to speed that process up? I haven't got years to work with, you know! I'm a busy woman!"

"Please don't use it. I am asking you not just for my world's sake, but your world and your people."

In response, the Don of the Magpies cupped a hand to her ear.

"What's that? I can't hear you over the sound of money not being made! It sounds like a little blond-haired boy whining that the other kids are playing with his toys!"

"...I'm being quite serious." Ash said. "Wunderwaffe takes years to adapt to. It provokes excessive aggression, it destroys rational thought...I don't even know what it will DO to people like you. It might be poisonous. Do you want to play Marie Curie?"

"I don't know who that is."

"Do you want to hop up your people on drugs and then find them killing each other or keeling over dead of heart attacks?"

For a moment, Ash thought he saw something change in Godfather. In her eyes, the hazy cloud of self-obsessed, childish glee seemed to give way to what semblance of rational thought must have continued to drive her on the path of madness and law-breaking. She seemed to seriously ponder his words for a moment, not just casually dismiss them as though they were somebody else's problems. And, for a moment, it flared a spark of hope.

He might be getting through to her...

Then the raven-haired woman turned to an aide standing in a corner.

"Clerk," she snapped, "take a note, send it via InfoTube to Kou and Saguaro's divisions. 'Side effects of new compound reported by captive to be dangerous. Devote 50% of resources to finding a counter-compound to alleviate them. Also, broken window coming out of paycheck.'"

The aide did as told, scribbling out her message on a sheet of note paper before dashing off somewhere. After a pause, the woman turned back to Ash, clapping her hands together, and the selfish child was back in all her glory.

"So! Anything else you want to share? Or are we done with the whole 'doom and gloom forecast' routine?"

"If you start using Wunderwuffe on your troops, you will cause panic."

"You're no fun. Ironsides!"

In the corner, the sound of metal grinding against itself announced Ivan's standing to attention. "Da, madam?"

"Take the useless jerk back to his cell. Oh, and Ivan?"

Godfather's eyes flashed dangerously. Shadows swirled about her feet.

"No more 'private interrogations'. Understood?"

A brief scrape told Ash Ivan had clearly flinched or stiffened at this. Huh. So the big lug was afraid of something, after all.

"...Ponyal."

"Ma'am?" Ash said, having gone quiet. "May I ask YOU a question?"

"Stellen entfernt." (Ask away)

"What did your people tell you about my capture?"

"...that my forces overwhelmed you, despite the fight you put up. Lost a lot of good men, though. Why, is this important?"

"Is it?"

"I don't know," cried Godfather in irritation. "I thought you'd tell me if it was!"

"...just take me back to my cell."

Ivan's massive paw clamped on Ash's shoulder and began to drag him from the room. As he crossed the threshold of the room, though, the blond got a good last look of the black-haired leader turning her back on him, muttering audibly under her breath.

"What a spinös, honestly..."

And oh look, Ivan had taken that moment to enter the room Ash was currently in. His most recent abuser was apparently a subordinate of some sort. Ash just looked dully at Ivan, who towered over his female aide.

"Ash Marsello, Exa-"

Punch.

"...You suck at your job. Both of you." Ash mumbled, before hacking a glob of blood on the floor.

"Says the man with a bruised liver and maybe internal bleeding," Countered the woman with a sneer.

"Great if you just want me to suffer...oh yes, your boss doesn't want me to suffer. QED."

THUMP. That was probably the ribcage that bent horribly, there.

"Godfather isn't my boss," spat his assailant. "Ivan is. You think I take a direct order from that cuckoo? That's like if that sick fuck Muerto told me to drag you over to his place and feed you to one of his pets! And Morpheus knows I'm not doing that!"

"And Ivan's boss...is Godfather." Ash said, like he was stating 'the sky is blue'. "Ivan at least...I get. Why are you so mad at me?"

The woman looked at him as though he'd grown three heads.

"...okay, from the top." She lifted one rock-coated hand, the stone grating as she counted on her fingers. "One. You never shut up. Two. You're a fucking smart-aleck, and normally that's all the excuse I need. And three," she finished, clenching a fist, "Ivan's been getting cranky with this idiotic botch-job of an operation, and if I don't do this then he's going to take it out on me. And it's your fault for being the motor-mouth wiseacre with the mental capacity of slug shit who put him in that mood to begin with."

Analysis complete, she folded her arms and awaited whatever response Ash could devise. She honestly looked as though she thought that was enough to silence him.

"...Just let me go."

It was rare for Ivan to look goggle-eyed. Ash couldn't speak for the woman.

"I have pull in my world. We'll sign a peace treaty. We'll give you lots of supplies and treasure. You can take your people back and this can end peacefully, and Ivan can get the credit for getting what you want without wasting manpower or resources."

Hannah opened her mouth to speak-

"No."

-and was shoved roughly aside by Mr. Silver, bouncing off a wall as she went. The metallic form of the Russian loomed over Ash, glaring visibly beneath the faceplate.

"Do you think, little bastard," growled Ivan, "that we are stupid enough as to fall for trick like that? We cannot simply let you go on your worthless word! Where is guarantee you will not simply run off and bring back army to crush us?"

"But on the other hand," Hannah suddenly snapped back, picking herself from the floor, "how do we know he'd even do that?! He already got his ass kicked hard enough to bruise - he can't be stupid enough to risk open warfare with us!"

By way of response, Ivan rounded on her, fists clenched and an angry snarl building. The smaller woman flinched, but otherwise remained upright.

"I gave you my word." Ash's voice was tense.

"Word of dead man is worth nothing," snapped Ivan, rounding back on Ash. "You attack us and decimate our forces! And you think we let you go on just your word?!"

"Oh, be fucking reasonable!" Hannah moved, as if to intercept whatever the bigger man had planned. "Maybe he means it! We can beat anything he's got, surely we can-"

CRUNCH.

When Ivan's elbow retracted, Hannah was doubled over and screaming into the hands over her face. Blood dribbled from around nose level between her fingers.

"Forgive my assistant," rumbled Mr. Silver, almost casually. "She is new, and does not understand Magpie code."

It was funny that Ivan mentioned a lack of understanding just then. There were a few things he did not grasp himself.

One was the fact that Ash's cells were prisons designed to block the powers of Ubers. The Magpies had discovered that they seemed to work on Stream users as well, to a degree. After all, Ash hadn't tried to break out, had he? So surely he couldn't.

Another was the fundamental difference on how accessing the energy of the Stream affected people from Ash's world per how superpowers worked on theirs. The downside of excessive Stream use was Immersion, a condition similar to radiation poisoning...but the upside before you got to that point was a gradual increase in a body's strength and endurance.

The third was how a human body worked. Specifically, how it operated under a certain set of limits to prevent damaging itself. Crisis situations disabled those limits, which is how you had mothers lifting cars to save their children, as went the classic example. The body could function at three to five times its maximum capacity, at the downside of the fact that doing so would actively damage the body, and sooner rather than later. Hence, it was incredibly difficult to consciously disable those limits, which is why one often needed an outside source. Like alcohol.

Or overwhelming rage.

The end result was that when Ivan, having innately turned his head to look at his handiwork (or elbowwork, technically), turned back, he found Ash had broken the chains off the wall.

He also found that instead of Ash's punch futilely breaking his fingers on Ivan's faceplate, the end result was more like someone had swung a mace full on into his face. Not normally a problem...if Ivan had been expecting it. He had NOT been expecting that, and hence even he was staggered.

Ash promptly got around him, grabbing him by the head, his hand finding a fair grip in the various shifting indentations of Ivan's armor, and began smashing Ivan's face into the also-metal wall. Hard. Hard enough to leave indentations. And with every slam, a snarling word.

"MEN-DON'T-TREAT-WOMEN-LIKE-THAT!!!!!"

Alas, snapping in rage could only do so much for Ash. It did not help him when Hannah Vallis (Codename: Rubble) instinctively panicked and slugged Ash in the back of the head with her rock-coated fist. Ash's offensive cut off like a switch, as he slumped and then finally collapsed, knocked cold.As said, not seeing punches coming made them count for a lot.

Slowly, Ivan staggered back upright, looking as though he'd just woken up from a bad dream. His eyes were wide behind his mask, wide with an almost childish fear, and for a moment he simply stood there, breathing in ragged, rapid gasps. The front of his mask was almost caved in, crumpled and fractured in multiple places.

A long pause.

"...you alright, boss?" Hannah eventually piped up. "You look like-"

"Dismissed."

Hannah blinked. "Wh-?"

"You are dismissed," rumbled Ivan, almost like his old self again, "until further notice. Clean up here, but leave at once afterwards." And whirling on his heel, the steel-clad criminal marched from the room, his footsteps heavy with barely-contained rage masking his brief vision of terror.

Hannah stared after him, hesitating.

Then she looked down at Ash's unconscious form.

-------

When Ash next awoke, he'd have found his meal of the day on the bedside table, back in his cell instead of the interrogation room. Accompanying it was a note.

"I'll bring it up with the Council. It'll be something for them to chew on, at least.
- H."

The Eternal Recurrence, Part 2

"Do you believe in time travel, Sheena?"

"No." Sheena said, not even bothering to look up at Aria Cudjoists as she fed data into her Universal Pathfinding Lattice. The purple-skinned Teemer woman looked cross, knocking on the table with her three-fingered hand. "What? No, I don't. It's impossible."

"Right to impossible. Why are you so dull, Sheena?"

"I'm dull in imagination so I won't be dull in wits. It helps me know that time travel is just imagination." Sheena said. The alien adjusted her Pinpoints, special scanning glasses that were required whenever transport was being sent through the Subtle Folds. "And don't bring up lightspeed travel. That's not traveling through time, that's putting yourself in stasis, more or less. Backwards time travel is impossible."

"Why?"

"Well, for one, it violates every law of conventional physics."

"Said the woman standing next to the gateway to another dimension we use to transport cargo."

"We don't know WHAT the Folds are. I think if they were just another dimension, they wouldn't completely reject organic matter and we wouldn't have to spend so many Ours making sure anything we try and send through is free of it." Sheena said, using a slang term for 'man-hours' or as the politically correct business term was, 'organic hours', as not every species abided by the human concept of gender. "But I digress."

"You digress all the time. Your name is a slang term for rambling in the break room."

"Go figure." Sheena finished downloading the main data and began swapping in the programs she'd be using on this mission. "My point. We can't go faster than light, and traveling lightspeed means that if you want to get anywhere, by the time you get there everyone who wanted your stuff is long-dust. Sending people the long, slow way is even worse, if you've read our company's records."

"Yeah yeah."

"My point....again. The universe is DAMN BIG. We have so much trouble getting around it without building civilization ships, which, again, have some really big risks..."

"Yes, yes, Sheena. You are aware people overstate the risks and experiences of pandorum, right? People who feel safer are more likely to take risks, and our bosses hate risks."

"Overstatement or not, pandorum exists. And it's damn ugly. It's why we don't transport things the slow way any more. Eight times out of ten, the isolation of space got into their heads. And you can't just pull a Lightning Cage out of one's rectum, so going through the Folds is equally hard. Point being, the universe is BIG."

"What does that have to do with time travel?"

"Theories follow two rules about time travel. One's the paradox theory, negating your own actions. People have no idea what could happen if someone did that, some theories go all the way up to the universe completely being destroyed. We're not here, so either time travel is impossible or the theories are overstating things. And honestly, people understate the paradox theory. It's not just about large things like killing your own ancestors. You're still foreign matter inserting yourself into a time where you did not naturally exist. Just by going back you should cause a paradox, let alone trying to change the past. So that leaves the other theory. The multiverse theory. That going back in time and changing something just creates an alternate universe where your alteration played out."

"...And you think that's impossible."

"Look at the universe, Aria. How BIG it is, how much STUFF is in it, countless COUNTLESS processes over billions of years...and you're saying that if I went back in time and killed Be'Lunge, another universe that is almost an exact duplicate would just....spring into existence? All that matters and energy and STUFF, just...appearing? Grell...forget time travel. By the logic of that theory, everything that does anything with anything less than 100 percent success and devotion is creating new universes. I can't fathom ONE new universe just popping into existence, let alone TRILLIONS. It's too big, Aria. People just don't understand the SCALE. They don't understand until you're moving forward through the void to get somewhere and for day after day, week after week, month after month there's nothing but NOTHING...so no. Time travel is impossible. The basic laws of reality can't abide by it. Some things we figured out how to get around. Some things we never will. People don't understand impossible. They apply it to things like winning a Hensworth. That's not impossible, that's just HARD. Impossible is eating a star."

"Man, Sheena, if you'd been in charge your people would still be in caves eating bugs."

"I'm giving my opinion. Just because my ancestors thought fire was magic and lightning came from gods doesn't mean they could never understand the truth. Maybe there's still walls to push through. But from what I've learned to do our job, Aria...I think this is it. So speaking of, I have to actually DO my job." Sheena said, as she hauled a backpack out of her locker and began consulting the oval-shaped black carrying case she had been given by her unnamed employers.

"You really should tell the bosses what's in that."

"Why? So they can freak out and cancel the transport and muddy my name? Screw that. We got hired, they sent me, I'm using my best judgement and concluding I can transport it. Besides, I know what it is."

"The base scans came back with nothing."

"I checked what kind of nothing. Making an educated guess, it's antimatter."

"Antimatter's restricted."

"True, which would be a problem if I could CONFIRM it was antimatter. I can't, they wouldn't tell me what it was, just that it wasn't a weapon, a toxin, or a disease. The rest falls under our discretion guarantee. Beyond that is just me guessing and the fact I want the damn commission from this. Besides, why should I worry?"

"It's RESTRICTED. And antimatter can be used as a weapon."

"It's also forbidden for use as a weapon. EVERYONE follows the Cink Accords. Everyone. They might be twisting and breaking every other rule, but Cink's laws are damn near sacred. Anyone who steals it will be assumed to use it as a weapon, and hence they'll become an instant pariah even if they don't. This war won't last forever, and whatever the Psychopomps and Cornfeds think, they don't want to be the side that everyone hates when the war's over. I'm guessing some rich twit just wants a faster ship, or a Lightning Cage. What do I care if some idiot kid splats himself against the barrier of the Folds? I have a living to make."

"So ignorance is bliss."

"People who stick those noses into things end up with spited faces." Sheena said, finally settling on a side-bag. "We only get one trip around this life, and like I said, it's damn big. People who make up stories don't have the guts to go out and make the world into what they want. So I'll do my job so I can. I've followed procedure. You can pull up the reports and sign offs and check them if you want. I've got a green light and I have to go."

"Just go, boring girl." The alien said, turning her attention back to her work. "But don't come crying to me if you end up in trouble."

"Unlike some of our agents, I take our rules seriously. I don't even carry weapons on my person, because that's against the charter." Sheena said. "If I get in trouble, it's the universe being stupid, not me."

---

"It's amusing how the ones with a little knowledge and understanding always so greatly overreach."

"We didn't select her for her intelligence. She has sufficient talent and self-interest for this job and she doesn't want to know more details. All the same, we'd best provide some surreptitious assistance. The odds of this not having already leaked are non-existant."

"The shell?"

"Oblique Focus. She won't want the package to open, so even if the carrying case breaks, the shell will hold. Even if she dies, her desire will keep the Immutable sealed until we can retrieve it. Though it would be best if she DIDN'T die...the next carrier might actually want to ask questions."

"She was right, there. Asking questions brings nothing but grief."

"Unfortunately for her, grief is not so easily thwarted, I suspect."

---

Six Days Later.

If Sheena had had breath to spare, she would have run out of curse words by now. As it was, she had to focus her anger, and her breath, into flying.

She hadn't been too worried when she thought she was being followed. Even if she didn't expect trouble, anything in the life of a Twiddler that raised their hackles meant that they should treat it like incoming trouble, even if it just turned out to be paranoia. She'd invoked deceptive measures, and started popping Thousands to keep herself awake...

Then they'd come out of the star. Her transport ship was one of many generic space junks lugging more junk from here to there, her name wasn't on the transport listing for passengers, she'd crossed a few palms to ensure it...and they'd shown up anyway. Who was it? Reclaiments? Pirates? Stalkers? Maybe a Bulge or two? Whoever they were, they didn't give demands, they didn't try and board, they didn't say that their destructive acts were for one side or the other, or any of the score of sides in between. They'd just opened fire and turned the ship into outright junk. Bad enough...

But when Sheena had launched her escape pod, they'd ignored all the other pods that had made it and zeroed in on hers. Which pretty much said it all, even if Sheena had no idea at all what was going on. And who cared? They wanted her package, and she was stuck in a NS-900DI sphere-based vehicle. While the 'Nosedive' was technically a small spaceship and very much flyable in deep space and in atmosphere, it WAS designed to escape from disaster after all...disasters didn't chase you. For things that chased you, the Nosedive could have been a lot better.

Gods, the universe was so stupid.