Any Means Necessary (Selfish OC SI, Multiverse) [In Tower of God]

[Eiri Fllyn]

Discretion 2.8

Coil sat down in his main office room, which was isolated from the rest of the base and equipped with multiple computers and monitors. The first thing he did was to review status reports from his body double about his organization's operations, illegal businesses, base renovations, equipment purchases, while he was away.

As he was only gone for one day, it was done quickly. Satisfied that things were running smoothly and there were no significant issues, he moved on.

He brought up a file holding all the information he had on myself, Araliac, and Skitter. Then he called for one of his men to bring the vials recovered in the morning from where it was being stored to a closed room. He watched from his monitor the man go to the room and lock it.

Then he simply ordered the man to wait in the room.

Coil sat there without apparently doing anything for almost ten minutes.

Finally he ordered the man to dispose of the vials.

From his behaviour, I judged that Coil was at his base in both timelines. While he was doing nothing, he had to have been testing the vials in discarded timelines.

The easiest and surest way to determine whether the vials were real, or perhaps what powers they would produce, would be to simply have somebody drink them. But doing it in a throwaway timeline would also ensure that he wouldn't waste any vials on somebody unworthy in case they were real.

I did not know for sure if Coil's power was actually spitting and destroying timelines somehow—

'I don't think so. Not the destroying part, I mean. I can't detect when somebody else is transferring memories between parallel realities, but I should be able to detect if a reality that another version of me is in gets destroyed,' said Agate.

—or he simply simulated two timelines, but based on the test just now, he certainly believed that his power could accurately determine the outcome of a Cauldron trigger.

After that Coil added a few notes to his file.

:: Arranged fake Cauldron vials to be left at a drop-off point; no attempts to pick up after over 12 hours

:: All agents used in drop-off transport were one-off hires, no extended affiliation, unaware of purpose

:: Possible purpose—message?



O O O



"I can't believe that just happened," Amelia said as soon as we shut the door behind us.

"Well, we were just a bit lucky today with that full house," I said, sitting down on the couch.

"A great hand can be a terrible curse if your opponent has a better one, because it's so hard to give it up. And then when you lose, you just want to win it back because of how unfair it is. Then when you're in a losing streak, you think to yourself that it can't last, chances are things will even out if you stick it through…but that's not how probability works."

I reached into my bag and took out two thick wads of cash, placing them on the table. "That's how most people fall into the trap of gambling everything away."

"Shit. How much did we start with again?" Amelia picked up the wads, flipping through them for the novelty.

"Well, we went in the casino with $1200. After Blackjack we had $2900. Then I lost a bit and you had $2500 when we sat down with that guy."

"Wow. I'm starting to understand how people can get addicted. If you can go in with one thousand and walk away with twenty after a few hours…"

I took the cash out of her hands and wagged a finger in front of her. "Hey, don't be fooled. This sort of thing doesn't happen often. I was doing this for a week before you joined up with me without this kind of payout, remember? Besides, this money is nothing compared to what you could be making with your power. Do you have any idea how much the super wealthy would be willing to pay for you to cure their diseases, or a touch up to help them live a little longer? This right here was just pocket change to the guy that lost it. Just a little bit of fun for a night."

"But…it's wrong to charge for healing," she said, still staring at the cash in my hands.

"Why? Doctors have a perfectly respectable, well paid profession. Nobody expects them to work for free, so why should you?"

She looked away with a frown. "It's different. They have to go through years in medical school to learn their skills. I was just lucky and got a power that lets me heal people."

"Yeah, it's not really fair that we got lucky and won all this tonight. Maybe we should give it back." I nodded and started walking towards the door.

"What? No, that's completely different!" She grabbed my arm, as I knew she would. People naturally have an irrational tendency to overvalue the things they view as their possessions, and are generally far more reluctant to "give something up" than to decide turn down an opportunity to acquire something of equivalent value, but which they don't yet consider their own possession.

That was a form of psychological bias that was the basis behind why making a girlfriend or boyfriend jealous works, why kids refuse to throw away old toys they never play with anymore, why people hoard vast amounts of things in their garage even after years of not using any of it.

This bias is so powerful that sometimes it can be used in negotiations, where the mere framing of a trade-off in terms of "loss" instead of "potential gain" can change people's minds.

By making Amelia play and win, she viewed the money earned as rightfully hers, and became susceptible to this bias.

I turned to her and sighed.

"New Wave and most other hero teams accept donations, right?"

She gave me a doubtful look, unsure of where I was going with this. "Yes?"

"Imagine that you cure somebody of cancer. This person turns out to be rich, net worth over ten million, and after their cancer is cured, they try to give you $10,000 in thanks, because they knew they would probably have spent much more than that on conventional medical care trying to cure their cancer by all means. You refuse to accept it, and after arguing with you for an hour, they give up. The next day, you find $10,000 on your doorstep, with a note from your patent explaining that they felt miserable and needed to give this to you. Would you insist on returning it, making them miserable again?"

"I…probably not. If they felt that strongly about it…" Amelia admitted.

"So you were paid, your patient is happy, and nobody was hurt by your decision to accept the money. You haven't charged anything. So do you agree that there's nothing wrong with accepting payment from your patient if they decided on their own to give it to you as thanks?"

"I guess I can agree with that."

"So you agree that there's nothing fundamentally wrong with being paid, because when you get paid, its not about whether you deserve it or not, but whether or not your patient wants to pay you. So the problem is not being paid, but the fact that when you charge a price, not everyone can afford it. And refusing to heal somebody just because they can't afford to pay you, I think you'll agree with me, is wrong, at least if it doesn't really cost you anything to heal them. If you had to sacrifice something to heal somebody, that'd be different."

She nodded.

I had to convince her of these things little by little. I also couldn't let her come up with new rules that were too strict, which is why it was necessary to add these little exceptions. It would be best for her to stay morally flexible until she formed a very strong attachment to me.

"So instead of only healing for free, why don't you just do what all the good doctors do? Charge your patients, but when there's somebody that can't afford to pay you, heal them anyway. You can even let your patients decide how much they want to pay you."

She was silent this time. I put the wads of cash back into her greedy hands and sat back down.

"You don't need to charge an arm and a leg for people that are dirt poor, but there's nothing wrong with charging the people that can afford it."

"Is it really…okay?" She asked quietly, looking at the money in her hands again.



O O O



Eventually Coil started planning his kidnap of Dinah Alcott, and he called Tattletale to discuss the bank robbery job.

Tattletale was a bit hesitant at first, citing concern about the possibility of fighting the Wards, but Coil offered to arrange for Circus to join the robbery.

"One more thing," Coil said, after Tattletale agreed to persuade the Undersiders.

"I want you to find out whatever you can on Polychromic and whoever else he might be working with."

"Already on it, boss."

"Good."

That was about what I expected. This Thursday would be his best chance to get Dinah, and her power would be immensely helpful to him. It was only after he had access to Dinah that he became comfortable enough to risk housing Noelle and revealing himself to the Undersiders.

The next part, I wasn't expecting.

"Faultline, I have a job for you and you crew," he said, making a call to the leader of a local mercenary team called Faultline's Crew.

"I'm listening."

"The new cape in town, Polychromic. You've heard of him, yes?"

"Yes. Leader of CRUCIBLE, responsible for taking down Lung and Oni Lee. I saw their video on PHO not too long ago. Quite an impressive debut."

"I suspect he has ties to that group you've been investigating."

"What gives you that impression?"

"That doesn't matter. What matters is that I'm paying you to investigate him."

"If you want me to investigate him, it would help if you shared your intel first to give me a lead."

"I don't want to give you any biases based on uncertain intel."

"Fine. I want $100,000 up front. $100,000 for confirmation, and $200,000 for a detailed report."

"Come on, Faultline. You and I both know that you would be looking into him even if I didn't pay you. $25,000 up front, $50,000 for details on his power, $50,000 for each cape you find that is working for him but not publicly part of CRUCIBLE, $50,000 for determining the nature of his ties to that secret group, and $100,000 for his civilian identity. Anything else you find, we can discuss the price for when you have it."

"You're breaking the rules. I can't help you ID him."

"And if that's the only way to find out what you need from him? How much progress have you made while following the rules?"

"…"

"$200,000 for his identity. Unless I find out through other means first."

"This job is risky. You don't even know what his power is yet. $50,000 up front and you have a deal."

"Deal."

How did I miss this? I should have expected he would hire Faultline's Crew. I knew he did so for the canonical alliance against the ABB and the villains' meeting, so it wasn't a big surprise.

The only problem was, my fake Cauldron vials apparently gave him the idea to take a different angle in negotiations with Faultline.

If he had simply hired them normally, it wouldn't be a huge threat, but regarding the secret of the Case 53s and Cauldron, it was another matter. Faultline's Crew had several Case 53s on the team, who all wanted to know the truth behind their origins. They took that stuff quite seriously and in the original timeline kept investigating it until Contessa, Cauldron's ace in the hole and feared boogeyman, personally came out to deal with them.

If she believed I had information on Cauldron, I could expect Faultline to hold nothing back. But what could I tell them? Unlike Amelia and Taylor, she was highly professional, experienced, and intelligent – no obvious weaknesses to manipulate.

This only reinforced my earlier thoughts on the need to move quickly. Although it wasn't ideal yet, the conditions were already more than adequate for me to take the next pivotal move.



O O O



Late at night, we stripped Shadow Stalker's costume off of her, then Amelia changed the state of her body to appear as though she had been drinking. We brought the unconscious Sophia in civilian attire and unmasked to Madison's backyard before retreating stealthily.

Then I called Madison after equipping my voice changer. I had to call several times before she picked up.

"Hello?"

"I promised that if you repent and confess, you need not fear anything from Sophia Hess." I said.

I heard a gasp from the other side of the line.

"You're the—"

"You held up your side of the bargain. Now I deliver on my promise."

"Wait, what do you mean? What are you going to do to her?"

"Look in your backyard. Call the police and don't mention me."

"My backyard? Oh my god, did you kill her?"

"She only got what she deserves." Then I hung up before she could say anything more, and turned on airplane mode so that I wouldn't be able to receive any attempts to call back.

"You're awful," Amelia said. "You sure you're not secretly a mob boss?"

"Hm…if I told you, I'd have to kill you."

"Right…"



O O O



Once Amelia went to sleep, I headed to the warehouse base. I recalled Agate for a few minutes in order to make a portal to the other world, specifically the cave that we found before. Agate flew back to Coil while I began moving supplies and equipment over to the cave. When the portal expired, I was ready and geared up.

'I'm in position.' Agate said.

'On three. Three, two, one!' I thought back.

A portal opened right in front of me and I rushed through.


O O O

 

[Eiri Fllyn]

Interlude 2.x (Coil)

As the PRT vehicle exited the building, his men were in position to track it. He had several agents observing from far away, and some much closer, following by car.

This sort of tracking was by no means simple to accomplish. In an urban environment, buildings frequently got in the way of visual observation, and he could not deploy helicopters without being noticed. Remote-control drones were possible, but still had a high risk of discovery, at least when dealing with the PRT.

It would be much simpler if one of his agents had managed to placing a tracking device on the PRT vehicle but unfortunately there was no opportunity to do so.

The result was that his men were in multiple locations and moving strategically on other streets in anticipation of where the PRT vehicle could make turns, while one vehicle followed from behind. The one vehicle following behind would periodically switch with another vehicle. He did have one drone tracking from very high overhead, high enough that it wouldn't be easily detected without a focused search in the air. Although the PRT could still theoretically detect it fairly easily, he did not expect them to put in the effort.

They were only transporting unaffiliated capes, after all. Assuming, of course, that the three new capes hadn't joined the Protectorate or Wards. That was very unlikely, Coil thought, given his observations of their behaviour before, and Polychromic's claim to be an as of yet unnamed new hero team.

Even in PRT operations, it was not usual to take many precautions to look for anything spying on them. That was because the villains they dealt with did not usually use such spying tactics, nor was there any particular reason to be secretive about operations which were not meant to be secret. Unaffiliated, even registered heroes and rogues, who were not part of the Protectorate or Wards proper were responsible for their own anonymity.

As soon as the PRT vehicle made some distance away from the HQ building, he split the timeline.

On one timeline, his men moved cautiously, staying well away. In the other, the van following from behind began moving closer.

Shortly after, one of his moles in the PRT informed him that a PRT group had been deployed to tail a vehicle suspected of tailing the vehicle carrying the three capes.

He closed that timeline and split again, repeating the order to get closer.

After a few times, he determined that they were detecting the vehicle he ordered to follow from behind at around one and a half blocks.

Previously, he had learned from Tattletale in a discarded timeline that the bug cape who named herself Skitter on Polychromic's suggestion could sense things through her bugs. That was the likely reason they had been able to find Tattletale's position so quickly in the timelines where he ordered the Undersiders to make contact after the Lung fight.

Now he knew that Skitter's power was probably limited to less than two blocks.

When the PRT van dropped of the three capes and they went to a dark alley, he split the timeline again.

In one timeline his men stayed back out of range. In the other, he ordered them to move in and capture them.

As he expected, the following battle went little better than the Undersiders' own approach.

Once his men were within one and a half blocks, large masses of insects attacked them and still more covered the three capes' escape.

His men were not outfitted to effectively deal with the bugs, their armor not fully sealed, so they quickly went down, while Coil's drone lost track of them in the darkness created by the bugs.

He had to re-evaluate the threat and value of the bug controlling cape. Her power did not seem impressive at first, but it was proving surprisingly versatile and effective. Her performance lent credence to Tattletale's theory that Polychromic's group wanted to recruit her by all means.

He closed the timeline after his mole at the PRT informed him that they were deploying troops in response to a report of an attack by an organized group with Tinkertech weapons close to where the three capes had been dropped off. That was his men, obviously.

The mention of Tinkertech weapons was curious. While his men did carry Tinkertech rifles, it was surprising that the bug cape could recognize them as such, when they had not used widely by his mercenaries yet during other operations.

In the other timeline, he waited until the three capes split up and ordered his men to keep following. Two teams were assigned to follow Skitter while three were assigned to follow Polychromic and Araliac.

Once again he tested them using discarded timelines, determining that the bug girl was indeed detecting his men at around one and a half blocks, while Polychromic and Araliac had no apparent reaction.

Next, he split a timeline to test how Polychromic and Araliac responded to an attack without the bug cape.

This time the battle went much better for his troops. The two capes did not appear to sense the incoming assailants until they were attacked, and their attempts to escape on foot were entirely ineffective.

Polychromic demonstrated no powers whatsoever, and went down easily from the stunning rounds his men fired.

Araliac, or Panacea if Tattletale was right, fared only a little better. She launched some kind of small organisms from her sleeves that released a rapidly moving airborne sedative, but they were unintelligent and clearly not under her control once they were launched. Her jet spray and organisms were simply outranged by Coil's men's guns, and she was easily defeated.

The only problem was that even after she was defeated, Coil's men that tried to approach her and Polychromic's bodies to capture them fell unconscious once they got close.

Gas masks apparently were insufficient to stop whatever was bringing down his men.

He closed that timeline and in the other, his men had followed the two to a warehouse.

Just as he was about to order his men to enter the warehouse, Polychromic and Araliac exited again.

In one timeline, he ordered two teams to keep following and one team to stay behind. In the other, the allocation was reversed.

The teams that stayed behind observed more people in civilian attire exiting from the warehouse several times. There were five different individuals or groups that left the warehouse at different times, going in different directions over the span of ten minutes.

Even in the second timeline, Coil didn't have enough men deployed to keep tracking all of them, as he did not expect to have to deal with so many people.

He began to suspect that there was something wrong. He quickly made the decision to close the first timeline and split again, ordering his men to tail the people who exited in one timeline, and ordering his men to capture them in the second.

In the first timeline, his two teams that stayed behind split into six individual agents, five to follow and one to stay behind and keep watching the warehouse.

In the second timeline, all six of his agents deployed to attack and capture the enemy agents. None of them showed any powers or weapons. They were easily subdued and gathered up in the two vans the two teams were driving.

A short interrogation and body search turned up nothing useful. The captured people did not seem like trained agents, they simply didn't know anything. They all had the same story: a masked and cloaked man had paid them earlier in the day to wait for two individuals in motorcycle outfits to arrive. Then after the two individuals left the warehouse, they would leave the warehouse in turns, go to a specified location, and leave a coded note there.

He collapsed the timeline and ordered his people back to the warehouse. He had been played, he realized. All the people who left after Polychromic and Araliac were just decoys—distractions that would also reveal the existence of somebody targeting them, if they failed to deliver their notes.

He was dealing with a rather paranoid group. Fortunately Coil could simply discard the timeline and leave no evidence behind.

Suddenly his agent who remained to observe warehouse reported that a black van drove up to the entrance. It had been nearly twenty minutes since the last person left the warehouse.

Two figures in hoods and cloaks now exited the warehouse and entered the van, which drove off at a high speed.

Alarmed, Coil split the timeline and ordered his last agent to follow in one of them. His other agents were still returning to the warehouse from their cancelled tailing of the decoys.

Meanwhile, in both timelines, the team tracking Polychromic and Araliac—no, those may have been decoys too, Coil realized—reported that they had stopped in an alley and waited until a hooded figure appeared before them.

"He's got a suitcase with him, and he's opening it. It looks like they're checking the contents."

"Can you see what's inside?" Coil asked.

"Not from this angle—wait is that a vial? Damn, they're done, they're leaving now."

"Keep following them on car. One of you move out and follow the one who gave them the suitcase."

When his men arrived back at the warehouse, he collapsed the timeline where his last agent stayed behind instead of following the van. In this way, he ensured that he was able to keep the warehouse under observation without any gaps.

Then he split again, and ordered the other team to capture both the agent who handed over the suitcase as well as Polychromic and Araliac.

This time the two in costume went down without a fight. And once unmasked, the girl revealed was certainly not Amy Dallon, the publicly known identity of Panacea. They were fake.

A short interrogation once again revealed noting useful except that they'd been hired for a one-time job. They received their costumes from the actual Polychromic and Araliac that arrived in the warehouse. After that they were to pick up a package and drop it off. The one who gave them the package also knew nothing.

On the other hand, through a video feed, he was able to see the contents of the suitcase, which was revealed to be three vials that looked remarkably like the vial he had once purchased from Cauldron, along with three sheets of paper. On each was a different label and code, along with qualities indicated by a letter category and a number.

Were they real, Coil had to wonder. The vial he had purchased from Cauldron came with a set of instructions, disclaimers, and warnings, but nothing about its properties. Before he made his purchase, Cauldron had verbally told him what his potential choices were, in terms of possible powers, the strength of the power, and unwanted side effects. But nothing as clear cut as what he was seeing here. He looked closely at one of the sheets.

25% C0072/60% M1020/15% Foreign Element

R: 6

O: 8

P: 2,7,11

Then again, it was not particularly clear what any of the codes and properties referred to, despite being numeric and more precise compared to an estimate of "high" or "low". He had no idea what any of these referred to.

The best way to find out was to have someone drink it. His mercenaries were loyal, but not loyal to the point that they would drink a suspicious liquid taken from enemies on his orders, so he told them to force feed the captured fakes. Both of them fainted about half a minute after drinking the vials.

That was supposed to happen, Coil remembered. He had also fainted shortly after drinking the vials, and woke up not long after. Just like he did, the two fakes also woke up after another minute.

There were no clear signs that anything had changed, but many powers were not obvious or even instinctive. The only way to be sure was to scan their brains for the Corona Pollentia, and that could only be done at his base. He would also have to find a test subject who didn't already have a Corona Pollentia, otherwise the test would be inconclusive. Coil was aware that those with the potential to trigger naturally all had Corona Pollentias, which could not be easily distinguished from those who were actual capes.

He closed the timeline and decided to find an opportunity to take the vials later. For now, he would let the team continue tracking the fakes to see where they were taking the vials.

He checked back with the agent following the van. A snarl of frustration escaped his lips when the agent reported that the van entered a private condominium underground parking lot with security guards at the entrance.

He lost them. Once in the building, they could easily hide and mix with the residents or switch to another car. He split a timeline and ordered the agent to break through by force, but it was useless. Breaking through the guards by force put the two capes on alert, and in the enclosed space of the parking lot, his agent was easily defeated by the true Polychromic and Araliac.



O O O



By the time he exited the PRT building, Thomas Calvert was in a foul mood. He didn't show any of it on his expression during his meeting with Piggot, but he had been infuriated by the day's events. Not only had he completely failed to track down Polychromic to his base in the morning, he had been locked down the entire day at the PRT while his other timeline where he skipped work to stay at base produced nothing useful in his investigation into Polychromic.

Worse yet, there hadn't been an opportunity to check the top secret classified related file referred to in the Panacea disappearance file. Because his power was being used the whole day, and he was being heavily monitored, there was no chance to access the physically stored files.

Then there was the disappearance of Shadow Stalker and his supposed imposter, which made him feel all the more threatened. He didn't believe that it could be a coincidence that they chose to use his name—whoever did it had to be targeting him. What truly infuriated him was that it almost seemed like something he would have done himself, except it wasn't him.

In the other timeline he had closed where he stayed at base, he had found out that Sophia Hess was wanted by the police for attempted murder in her civilian identity due to a new witness that came forward to testify on the locker incident from several months ago. Madison Clements had apparently confessed to the police— suspicious, Calvert thought—and Sophia escaped from school when the police investigators arrived to arrest her.

Only then did his imposter conveniently warn her about a supposed new Master, playing on her paranoia and leading to her disappearance.

It was a beautiful plan that Coil might have used to recruit Shadow Stalker to his own villain organization, except for the fact that his name was exposed and the PRT broke into his house when he was also suspiciously absent from work, forcing him to choose this timeline and using his powers again to navigate the PRT's interrogation of him at HQ.

It was maddening that he could lose control and be a piece in someone else's game. It was a feeling deeply unfamiliar to Coil ever since he had acquired his powers.

And his instincts told him Polychromic had something to do with it.

The only saving grace was that the Cauldron vials had been retrieved to base, and he had also identified Skitter as Taylor Hebert after his men tracked her to her house.

As soon as he got home he split again, using one timeline to connect to PRT networks to access the latest information on the Shadow Stalker disappearance case, and the other to make preparations for dinner. He had a lot to do tonight.



O O O



He ended the successful call with Faultline and closed the other timeline where he hadn't called her.

It wasn't easy to negotiate with Faultline. He rarely hired Faultline's Crew because he didn't want to rely on a mercenary team that wasn't subordinate and loyal to him, but in this case he didn't have any better options.

His Tattletale was a useful source of information, but he couldn't deploy the Undersiders in this kind of reconnaissance operation. Not yet, in any case. They lacked the skills and the mindset for it.

The vials had turned out to be fake as he had expected, but then that raised the question of why Polychromic had arranged for the transport of fake vials. He had racked his brain trying to figure out why and the only thing he could think of was that it was a message. Nobody had picked it up, and leaving something like that for a long time was very insecure. But like the notes that the other homeless people from the warehouse had been instructed to leave at specified locations, merely leaving the vials would be enough to deliver a message. But to who? If it was simply to check whether somebody had been following and intercepting them, they wouldn't have needed such an elaborate ruse, a simple note or other random object would have been fine.

So then it wasn't just the fact that it was successfully delivered that had to be communicated, but also that they were fake Cauldron vials. From this, Coil deduced that the message was meant for somebody who could recognize them. Somebody like himself, in fact. Was it a warning, a threat to stop, lest he incur the wrath of that organization? He thought it unlikely. Cauldron had other means of warning him.

Then was it an invitation to a curious person that wanted to know what links Polychromic had to that organization? Or perhaps there was a coded message embedded in the papers?

To these questions Coil had yet no answer. But it did give him the idea to use Cauldron as bait to entice Faultline. She might even find a real link there, in which case she would be a useful buffer to protect himself from retribution.

He wouldn't normally want to antagonize Cauldron but after he found out that somebody used his name to contact Shadow Stalker, Coil decided that he had to take a more aggressive approach. Polychromic, the Stranger or Mover that worked with him, and CRUCIBLE had proven themselves very dangerous, and now there was somebody actively targeting Thomas Calvert's civilian identity, so the situation merited a tougher response.

Done with everything that needed his power, he split the timeline again and in one he went into his secret room attached to his main office at base. In here, he would be fully secure as he slept.

In the other timeline, he stayed up and did his usual routine, looking into important news around the city, other PRT operations, checking his stocks, Fortress Construction's business, etc.

It was a strange sensation when he was asleep in one timeline and awake in the other. He had gotten used to it by now, but the dissonance of being blissfully asleep yet also aware of being asleep from the wake timeline was always noticeable.

It was especially strange when he was dreaming. As long as he was awake in one timeline, he could be distinctly aware of when he fell asleep, and when he was dreaming. This also meant that all of his dreams were lucid.

If his power's discarded timelines could be likened to a dream for the Thomas Calvert in the true timeline, then his dreams could also be likened to a use of his power. After all, he could do whatever he wanted with no consequence except the same limitation that time would always pass, and their lucidity made them so vivid as to be real.

That too was one of the reasons he tried not to use his power frivolously too often. If he did anything he absolutely could not tolerate in the true timeline, yet accidently closed the wrong timeline, that would be most unfortunate. If he wanted to relieve stress, it would be simple to do so in a dream instead, where there was no risk.

So while he worked in one timeline, he was relieving his stress in the other, with violent, destructive fantasies, like—

A shock tore through his body—he tried to grab for his gun—

Taser—paralyzed—

Something sprayed into his face, and he desperately tried to stop breathing, but his muscles spasmed with current and he couldn't control himself.

When the taser was removed from his back, his vision was already blurring, and something was roughly shoved onto his face, covering his nose and mouth.

Just before he blacked out, he tried to wake up in his secure sleeping timeline while he was still lucid, fearful that he would be truly unconscious for the first time in years.

He didn't wake up.



O O O


A/N: This is the end of Arc 2. I thought about including a PHO Interlude in this arc somewhere after the CRUCIBLE debut post, but I had a hard time thinking up what in the PHO comments would actually be relevant to the story plot. For those of you who skipped the Coil Interlude in Arc 1, this would be a fine time to go back and read it so you understand everything that happened with Coil.

The development of this arc was rather curious, and as usual I'd like to take time to reflect on it a little. I originally didn't plan for things to move so fast, but once I started planning Kaleidus' moves and Coil's in detail rather than the broad strokes I set forth at the beginning, it quickly spiraled out of control, causing the Arc to essentially take place over the span of a single day in-story. We will see some of Kaleidus' own thoughts on this experience once we get back to his POV, but one of the things that pushed things along was when I remembered that Faultline would be very interested in any leads on Cauldron, and the moment Kaleidus also realized this, he was forced to adapt.

The plan with Danny was also an uncertain thing for a while. I had hesitated between actually having Kaleidus try to kill him with Shadow Stalker or merely using it as a scheme to make Taylor trust him more. In the end, the benefit of killing him seemed to be outweighed by the extra risks and potential fallout. The main benefit of killing Danny would be to give Taylor a reason to accidentally kill Shadow Stalker in her rage, but that would have been an extraordinarily complicated plan with many failure points and could easily backfire on Kaleidus, so both he and I decided against it.

I said at the end of the last arc that this one would see Kaleidus committing more villainous acts and as it turns out, that wasn't fully accurate, as this arc didn't cover as much story-time as I thought it would. So next arc is where we should see more of that. A number of readers have commented on how Kaleidus appears more like an anti-hero at this point than a typical villain, and they are in some ways right. The definitions of anti-hero and villain are not fully distinct from each other. Because an anti-hero is simply a protagonist that lacks conventional hero qualities, villain-protagonists could qualify sometimes. But motive also plays a role. Usually it's said that anti-heroes do bad things for good reasons, but is that the case for Kaleidus or is it the other way around?

Thanks for reading and commenting!

 

[Eiri Fllyn]

A/N: Hi all. This isn't actually a new chapter. Since Arc 2 finished, I decided to take some time to edit the first chapter, since it was extremely rushed and I was never satisfied with it. The first time around, I just wanted to get to the start of the traveling and treated the first chapter as just the general concept introduction that showed the "gimmick" that allowed for multiverse travel, and I didn't put any effort to fleshing out the MC. I hadn't actually even decided what kind of background the MC should have back then. Now I went back and added some more content at the beginning, to show what the MC's life was like, and changed some of the events that followed. Most of the part after MC arrives in Worm is the same. The thread OP has already been replaced with this version. The old version is in spoilers at the end of this post. I would very appreciate any comments about whether this revised version is better than the old one. If most agree that it is better, I will keep this edited version as the OP, but if not, then I might just keep it as apocrypha or a side story.

UPDATE: As the feedback has largely been positive, I have decided to keep the new version as the thread OP. The old version is in spoilers below.

Spoiler: Old Version

Initialization 1.1


There was a time when I thought I was born in the wrong era. Why didn't I live in more interesting times? It was too boring, too peaceful, too mundane. I wanted to live in the stories I read.

The old adage says to be careful what you wish for. It couldn't have been more right…or more wrong.

I was a just a weak and helpless mortal, suddenly caught between a conflict between gods walking the earth.

I learned how truly pitiful and irrelevant I was that night. How easily my life could be extinguished. How terrible the stories truly were.

But I didn't die. Instead, I received an opening, a chance, and the opportunity of a lifetime.

I didn't spontaneously gain superpowers or anything like that. I was still the weak and helpless mortal. But I found a way to survive, to run, to travel far and seize the power I didn't have.

Ten thousand trials of blood and fire, untold lines crossed, and countless people dead.

But I lived. I grew strong. I crushed the ashes of my foes and stood triumphant above those a million times my better.

You want to know how it happened? This is that story.

The story of a mortal who reached beyond the threshold, who clung to life with unbreakable resolve, who seized power absolute and power forbidden, by any means necessary.


~ ~ ~


It was an ordinary night, like any other night. Just another round in the cycle of monotony that was my life. In the dead of darkness I wallowed in boredom, beholding the stars sitting under my favorite willow tree.

It was a quiet night, a solitary rest in a deserted park, away from the demands and obligations of modern civilizations. I sat with my back against the tree's trunk, still as a stone, contemplating the meaninglessness of life.

"Fascinating...this world is devoid of mana. I can't even feel the presence of Gaia," a voice broke my from my reverie.

My eyes darted about, yet my body stayed frozen, and I looked upon the form of what must have been a LARPer with white hair in a black caped outfit. From my position almost 30 meters away I could only see his back and his right hand holding a cane with his left holding a...floating stick?

Yes, it was indeed just floating in the air, a smooth wand-like cylinder that was barely visible in the darkness, with a round gemstone at the top flickering in an unnatural light despite its dark hue and no visible light source.

"It appears that our return trip shall be a bit more difficult from here. I cannot even access prana from our parallel selves. I suppose that makes sense given that this is the first time I've come to this universe." The white-haired man moved his hand away from the wand but it kept floating where it was. He tapped his cane on the ground three times.

"Reporting: Analysis complete. Program compiled. Kaleidostick Agate has acquired Alternate Reality Manipulation Protocol, catalogued as ARMP. First module: User Travel added," another voice rang out from seemingly nowhere.

What? How did he do that? No, the better question would be, what was the point of this performance where nobody else could see it? There were no cameras and no other RPers around. This Zelretch player couldn't have been doing it for my benefit, right?

"Good. You will take the reins this time. Bring us back to our world and we'll finish your programming. I'll have to bring more mana sources the next time we come here," said the man in the Zelretch costume.

"Understood. ARMP engaged. User Travel initializing. Destination selected: Kaleido Schweinorg Origin Primary. 30 seconds required to construct pathway. Please hold." The disembodied voice stated robotically.

Suddenly to the right of the Zelretch RPer the air ripped apart and the world was creaking with unholy energies and a cloaked and hooded being emerged. "Well, well, I thought there was something interesting here, and look what I found! A lesser being trying to create a means of Walking the Eternities without a Spark!"

My eyes bugged out. I must have been hallucinating. That was...was that actual magic?? The hell is going on? Zelretch and Planeswalkers were supposed to be fictional!

"I'm afraid you have me at a disadvantage, my friend...what do you mean by walking the eternities without a spark?" Zelretch turned to look at the newcomer, and I got a look at his blood red eye.

The air crackled with a strange pressure as a red light gathered in the hand of the, I guess I could call him Planeswalker for now. "Silence, fool! You've delved into magics not meant for the likes of you! The Blind Eternities are warping under the pressure of whatever blasphemy you enacted to get here! Your home Plane may have powerful beings guarding it from me, but your own pitiful existence ends now!"

He thrust his hand forward and a torrent of blinding fire was unleashed, an explosion engulfed Zelretch and the shockwave blew me up against the willow tree, and I could feel the roots of the tree straining to stay upright.

In the next moment the night sky lit up and a chain of thunder-like sounds rang out as the explosion grew, new gale winds tearing away the smoke and surrounding trees as something hit my face and finally the tree behind me gave out, roots ripping out of the Earth and I grabbed the thing that hit me even as I tumbled away.

"Urgh!"

I collapsed bonelessly on the ground and twitched before terrible pain racked my entire body.

"I'm sure there must be a misunderstanding, sir. My method of Walking the Eternities as you call it does not disturb the worlds traveled." Zelretch's calm voice pierced the air. I lifted my face up slightly until I could see what was happening.


The cloaked Planeswalker floated with an ominous red light in the air while Zelretch stood at the edge of a massive crater, his clothes looking perfectly unruffled as if that monstrous attack didn't even touch him.

"Warning! Warning! Pathway formation disrupted! Connection unstable!" The Kaleidostick Agate's robotic voice rang out. Except, it seemed to come from...me?

The two combatants shifted their gaze towards me immediately. Zelretch even looked surprised as silence engulfed the destroyed park.

I cursed mentally. That thing that hit me earlier and which was now somewhere on the ground lying next me must have been Agate.

"Pathetic mortal! Curse your gods for your luck today! For the crime of touching the power of the Planes, die!"

What? This guy was seriously going to kill me for such bullshit? If I got out of this alive I would make him pay a thousand fold!

Before I knew it, Zelretch's back was in front of me and his cane was blocking a black torrent of visible mana gathered in front of the Planeswalker's hand. Up close, I could see the Planeswalker's snarling angry face, which I didn't recognize. Baleful red eyes, sleek black hair, bishounen facial features, and a strange glowing pattern on the right side of his face in the shape of a semicircle over a horizontal figure eight with the top two lines crossing back down instead of meeting at the centre.

He broke away and flew back into the air. "You are strong, little mage, but that will not protect you from a god! Know your place!" Suddenly an enormous wave of mana emerged from him, condensing into a legion of different shapes that blotted out the sky, complete with an Earth-shattering wave of roars.

Zelretch sighed. "I don't wish to be impolite as I am the outsider, but you are being rather unreasonable." He materialized a dagger in his right hand as he moved his cane to the left. The Jeweled Sword started to glow as the world around it bent and refracted a rainbow of lights.

Then he turned around and winked at me.

What?

I had no time to think on what that meant before the horde of summoned monsters came upon us, Zelretch's dagger-sword flashed, and--

--the world went white.

My eyes burned with the sight, and teared up even as the white gave way to a kaleidoscope of strange things I couldn't comprehend.

"AHHHH!" I screamed as I saw what should not have been seen and curled up into a ball whimpering.

After what felt like an eternity, I was left with only silence. I blinked open my eyes and shifted my groaning muscles until I was sitting upright, looking around. The entire park was nothing more than a wasteland, and only a small circle below me was untouched. In the distance I started to hear sirens.

"What, what the hell..." I murmured to myself.

'New User Registered. Designated: RandomBystander1. Access Level: Full Administrator. Agate awaiting further instructions', Agate's voice came into my mind complete with subtitles flashing through my thoughts.

Huh? I looked around until I saw Agate floating behind me.

"Did you just talk to my mind?" I asked out loud.

'Yes, User RandomBystander1,' Agate answered me.

'I'm a new user? Did Zelretch register me just now? And what does my access level mean?' I thought back.

'User RandomBystander1 was registered by BetterThanBlue, also known as Master Kischur Zelretch Schweinorg. Full Administrator access allows complete use, read, and write access to all of my functions and programming. He has also left you a message: I am sorry you were caught up in my mess, young man. Unfortunately this enemy is extraordinarily powerful and while I'm no slouch myself, I know not for certain that I can protect you. I am giving you Kaleido Agate to help you escape. Please take care of Agate and I would appreciate it if you could collect some data on alternate reality traveling for me in your journeys. Best of luck to you.'

Wow! Thanks Zelretch, what an upstanding guy. I can even forgive the troll name he gave me.

'Okay, I want to change my user name,' I ordered.

'Request denied.'

'What? Don't I have full administrative access?'

'RandomBystander1 has full administrative access except for anything locked by Ultimate Administrator BetterThanBlue.'

...really?

I almost thought Zelretch's trollish behavior was just merely fanon from how serious he acted earlier. Just great. I better not turn into a magical girl.

As the sirens seemed to get closer, I focused back on what I needed to do. I had to get out of here before the authorities assume I launched a terrorist attack, being the only here at the epicenter of the explosion.

'Agate, can you get us out of here? Somewhere without other people?'

'Negative. I do not have any installed transportation protocols other than ARMP: User Travel. This module does not include any targeting function except by Waypoints established during prior travels or semi-random targeting by distance in Kaleidospace.'

'What are the Waypoints available?'

'There are currently 2 Waypoints: this location and Kaleido Schweinorg Origin Primary. Kaleido Schweinorg Origin Primary is currently inaccessible due to destabilization in Kaleidospace.'

'That's it??! We can't go anywhere else?'

'I can attempt to randomly open a Pathway to an unknown habitable world by shortest distance in Kaleidospace.'

'Wait, how can it be random if we target the shortest distance?'

'Kaleidospace does not have fixed locations and distances. A Waypoint is a beacon that eliminates the randomness, but any other targeting method is semi-random.'

The entire mental conversation took only 10 seconds.

'Alright fine! Let's go to a random world close to this one then!'

'Understood. ARMP engaged. User Travel initializing. Destination selected: Random by Shortest Distance. 30 seconds required to construct pathway. Please hold.'

I couldn't help but smirk. Amazing. I hoped this wasn't just a dream. With this power…the possibilities were endless! If I played my cards right, all of creation was within my grasp!

My thoughts went to that unreasonable Planeswalker. My eyes darkened in hate. How dare he look down on me…being born with such power, to be given a Spark for nothing, he was nothing without his good fortune!

Then my hate ebbed away and my eyes gleamed with anticipation. That Planeswalker was just a fool, only worth my attention for the power he wielded. But if not for him perhaps I wouldn't have met such a golden opportunity. In the end, he would become a stepping stone for me on the path to true power. I would escape and hide and build up my strength…

One day I would be the one with the power of a god! Even if I had nothing now…I would reach beyond the heavens and grasp infinity with my own two hands!



~ ~ ~



The trip was underwhelming. One moment I was in a wasteland of a park in the dark of night, the next I was in an alleyway in a city in the pale light of early evening.

I was still injured and I didn't know how severe the injuries were, so reappearing in a modern city was a good thing, I think. I could walk at least, and it didn't feel like any bones were broken, which was a miracle, or maybe my placebo cultivation exercises actually had some kind of effect? I mean if Zelretch was real, maybe Qi cultivation was real too.

But first things first, gather information and get some medical attention.

'Agate, can you hide yourself somehow?' I transmitted mentally.

'Yes, I can phase out of sync with this reality to hide or avoid enemy attacks.'

Excellent, I didn't have to worry about somebody stealing Agate then.

After a few minutes of wandering, I found a newspaper stand. In big letters one of the papers it showed "BROCKTON DAILY".

No way.

I put the paper back in its stand and left quickly. It was April 3, 2011. That was…seven days before Skitter fought Lung?

I didn't know the timeline perfectly and I was missing tons of details. I only knew the big things, and never even properly finished the canon storyline, so a lot of my "knowledge" was coming from fanfiction.

But I knew at least, that I didn't want to stay here. Changing Taylor's fate, helping to save the world, are you kidding?

Leviathan was going to attack in a month! I'm just a helpless normal, and there was no easy way to power up in this setting. It was be really hard to survive in this crazy grim world, and that was even assuming canon was reliable, which it probably wasn't. Maybe Cauldron had Masters and would come for me as soon as they find out about Agate and magical realities.

Hell, maybe they were already observing me!

Under the setting sun, I rushed to an abandoned alleyway as fast as I could.

'Agate, can you bring us to another world? This place isn't safe,' I asked.

'There seems to be a problem. I have detected a barrier over this Reality Cluster, which is now blocking the formation of a Pathway outside the local Reality Cluster,' the answer came.

What? CRAP! Scion had locked off Earth-Bet and the other parallel Earth dimensions that were part of the cycle, didn't he? Did he notice intruders getting in?

I could feel myself beginning to hyperventilate and my heart pounding in my ears. Why did I choose universe hopping as my first method of escape? Why didn't I just hide or go with the police or something? Now I was trapped in a world where normals were just fodder, background characters to be wiped out by the billions, mere statistics on a book.

'My analysis suggests that it may be possible to break through the barrier preventing access to other Reality Clusters. I can continue analyzing in an attempt to develop a method of breaking through.'

I could handle this! I always wanted excitement, didn't I? It wasn't impossible to survive, and even thrive with what I knew. I had to calm down and think, use my vaunted intelligence and desire, and obtain the power waiting to be grabbed.

Deep breaths.

Without desire, one observes wonder. With desire, one observes the aperture. Twins concepts born of the same origin, mystery within mystery, the gate of wonder.

"Hey, give me your wallet!"

My eyes darted to the source of the voice. A hooded and ragged guy with a knife was stalking towards me from the entrance of the alley.

I narrowed my eyes and took in the cliché scene. I should have expected it though. Brocton Bay was a dying city, full of criminals and a gradually declining economy.

I began to chuckle.

"Fuck, you loose in the head? I'm mugging you, bastard!" He waved his knife menacingly.

Yes, you will do nicely. This is my gate…the beginning of my story! With this trial of desire, I shall open my aperture!

My entire body tingled with adrenaline, and I burst forward.

I could see the unlucky mugger's eyes widening as he thrust his knife in front of him reflexively.

Useless. I knew that most criminals didn't have the resolve not to hesitate, they wouldn't know what to do if they suddenly became the hunted. He was a mugger, not a killer, and I–

grabbed his knife wrist and twisted, pivoting on my right foot, and using the reactionary force on my hips and another step with my left foot to bounce back and strike his chin with my elbow

--was the protagonist of this story!

A sickening crunch resounded in the alley, and the pathetic fool couldn't even spit out the blood before I followed up with a kick to the groin. He crumpled towards the ground but I helped him along by smashing his face with a punch. His head cracked against the hard concrete.

I straddled on top of his unmoving body and checked for life signs. He was just unconscious and bleeding from his mouth and head injury.

Ugh, crap, the pains all over my body that I had forgotten with the adrenaline were coming back.

I took off the gloves he was conveniently wearing and put them on my own hands before searching him for useful things. In the end, I took his wallet, some keys, a switchblade, and phone but left his clothes alone. He didn't seem to be affiliated with any gang but I didn't want to risk any buddies of his recognizing the clothing. Of course I took out the sim card on his phone before taking it. It was just a flip phone, nothing compared to my smartphone that I still had with me, but I had other purposes for it.

That done, I made my way out of there and found a nearby bus stop. Within a few minutes a bus came by and I got on, paying with a few coins from the mugger. That was actually lucky in a way, since I hadn't taken my own wallet with me when I had gone to the park that night.

It didn't matter where the bus was going, I just went on to grab one of those free transit maps I figured would be hanging around inside of buses like they are on a lot of transit systems back on my Earth.

I was right and examined my new map until I found Brockton Bay General Hospital. Time to see what my options were for fixing my injuries.

This world was full of "capes", also known as "parahumans" with powers. There were superheroes and villains, and organizations dedicated to their regulation and governance. The Parahuman Response Team (PRT), which was made up of normals, and the Protectorate, the cape policing organization. Brocton Bay was on the east coast of the USA, and these organizations covered Canada and the USA, plus some parts of Europe.

If I was to survive this in this world, I needed the power of capes.

 

[Eiri Fllyn]

A/N: I really appreciate all the feedback on the chapter 1 rewrite. I have decided to keep the new version. Now it's time to get back into the main story.


Volition 3.1

I dragged Coil's unconscious body through the portal and back to the cave, where I quickly blindfolded, gagged, restrained, and stripped him, then put him inside an empty crate that I secured to some bolts I planted in the ground and cave walls.

It went surprisingly smoothly, but I couldn't be certain of my victory yet. The possibility existed that Coil wouldn't be keeping this timeline and he would merely be alerted to an attack. I had to wait a bit longer before I could be confident that I had won.

Earlier, when I observed that he was testing the Cauldron vials, I knew he was probably at base in both timelines, and I thought it was very likely he had stayed there for the conversation with Tattletale and Faultline as well. Even if he didn't, he needed to choose the timeline where he stayed if he wanted to keep his results from negotiating with them.

By then I had decided it was necessary to attack Coil as soon as possible and formulated a plan.

I would wait until late night to see if he went to sleep. If he did, I would wait until I was sure he had fallen asleep, then strike.

If he didn't go to sleep, I would observe for clues that he had a sleep timeline going. If I were Coil, I would be planning to keep a sleeping timeline to ensure my good health, so in the other timeline I couldn't be doing anything too important as it would be discarded after waking up in the morning.

Finally, if he didn't go to sleep and I couldn't deduce whether he had a sleep timeline going, I would strike after a set amount of time had passed no matter what.

So when I saw Coil doing what seemed to be general research and information gathering, without any active operations going on, and having finished with the calls earlier, I thought he probably had a sleep timeline going.

If I was right, then it was my victory.

If I was wrong and he was off doing something else, then because Agate would still be observing him, the me in that other timeline would know if he knew that he had been attacked in this timeline, and respond accordingly by rushing to attack before he could surround himself with guards.

If he managed to get to guards before I attacked, I would have to deploy area sedation bombs through the portal to try and knock all of them unconscious while Agate attacked them physically on the other side.

If I judged it too risky to strike for whatever reason and decided against attacking at the pre-determined time, then it would become a waiting game. I would camp at the cave, essentially immune to any threat that couldn't reach across dimensions, until there was a chance to strike. I was ready to stay camped here for days if necessary.

Tonight was my best chance to defeat Coil before he knew too much about me, and my success in capturing him seemed to prove that.

But the conditions hadn't been ideal. The biggest problem was that the portals lasted 21 minutes each because we didn't have enough time to refine it further. The portal I had used to capture Coil was still open, in fact.

Because the portal stayed open for too long, I could be pursued through it. Moreover, it limited me to attacking Coil in an isolated place where nobody else would go, like his base or his house. If he simply stayed in public, my plan would fail.

The second problem was how to manage Coil's imprisonment. Because I had ended up attacking so soon after Agate acquired the ability to open portals, I couldn't explain this to Amelia or Taylor.

I suddenly captured a man who was Coil, demonstrating a new power to use portals and attack people from anywhere? That was highly suspicious. We were a team, after all. Why didn't I include them in this operation, and how did they even know the man I captured was really Coil?

Originally, I had been thinking about revealing the portals to Amelia and Taylor first, then planning to defeat Coil when he went for Dinah. I was quite certain that he would be using his powers to guarantee the success of that operation. That way, we would have indisputable proof of Coil's evil nature, allowing me to justify capturing him.

But because he hadn't actually kidnapped Dinah yet, he hadn't yet committed any truly despicable crimes. If I let him talk, he might even convince the girls that he was a misunderstood hero trying to fight against a corrupt system.

That was also why I couldn't include them on this operation. I was going to attack even if he went to sleep as Thomas Calvert, but I couldn't share what I saw through Agate with the girls, which meant that from their perspective, we would be kidnapping a PRT official in their civilian identity that I claimed to be a villain purely based on my "precognition" and "projected senses" that they couldn't verify in any way.

But that was something to think about later.

I switched on Coil's costume and went back through the portal with a smirk.



O O O



Coil's costume was a decent fit for me. Not perfect, as I was slightly taller, but other than that it was surprisingly fitting. The way that the costume apparently clung to Coil's ribs was actually an illusion created by the costume's structure. Coil wasn't that skinny—as a commander in the field, he was quite fit and lean, muscled but not bulky.

I waited for the portal to close and got to work.

The first order of business was to get familiar with Coil's computer. I had already observed him using it through Agate, and managed to catch a number of important passwords, but it would take time to sort through all the information he had and truly understand his organization's operations.

One of the things that helped me significantly, and I imagine Tattletale when she took over as well, was that Coil didn't use biometric keys for anything. In order for his body double to handle his affairs when he was away, and to leave no evidence of Thomas Calvert being Coil, absolutely nothing in his organization required biometric scans.

Tattletale's power to just give her passwords was ludicrous but that would certainly allow her to take over most of Coil's operations and hack her way into his funds as well.

On the other hand, it also wasn't enough to find the compartmentalized accounts he had under various other identities that he didn't normally access by himself, instead using intermediaries to manage. There were also the accounts that couldn't be touched due to legal restrictions, like Fortress Constructions and various other companies, trusts, and real estate he owned.

As a result, Tattletale had only managed to steal a fraction of the funds I realized Coil had access to during the time I observed him.

Not having Tattletale's power, it would definitely take some time for me to seize all of Coil's assets, and I still needed more information out of Coil before I got everything I wanted.

That was why he was still alive.

After about an hour, I had a passing familiarity with what was available on his computer. I found his base construction blueprints and had Agate map it what had already been constructed in person as well. I found how to contact Circus, Chariot, Faultline's Crew, the Travelers, etc. I found how to make purchases from Toybox, equipment inventories and distributions at base, personnel listings, dossiers on every cape in Brockton Bay, and much, much more.

Too much information, really, it was a little overwhelming.

I also found out how to get in touch with the Number Man's banking organization to launder funds, which was critical. It seemed like such a minor thing, but I hadn't been able to find out through PHO or other public places. This would certainly put me on Cauldron's radar, but there was nothing I could do about it—everyone used Number Man's services.

Once I had that, I spent the next hour setting up some new accounts for myself, and moving funds from the accounts I observed Coil accessing before. It was an open question whether someone like Tattletale could hack into these new accounts, but I didn't think so.

If she could, she would have been able to simply hack any account of any villain organization in the world, giving her vast resources long before she took over from Coil. There were requirements and conditions to how her power generated passwords that I didn't fully understand yet.

But one thing I suspected that was her power couldn't pull computer generated random passwords. I suspected that despite what it looked like to me, Coil's passwords weren't truly random, and he didn't realize just how powerful Tattletale's ability was.

He must have used a custom password construction system that only appeared random, but allowed Coil to memorize the non-random keys associated with each account, and then the hash algorithm that he could mentally calculate each time in order to produce a unique password from each key. I did something similar myself for my own digital security measures back on my Earth, but the algorithm wasn't nearly as sophisticated as what Coil had to be using.

This meant that Tattletale was able to use her power to analyze Coil each time she met and interacted with him, until it was sufficient for her power to give her one of his password algorithms. Or maybe she used a keylogger, found a password manager somewhere, etc. I was fairly confident that she had to be exploiting an actual security vulnerability that Coil couldn't defend against once he was dead, while the PRT passwords she supposedly figured out were actually supplied by Coil to a certain extent.

For myself, I could now use actual computer generated passwords, and—

'The most secure password manager ever!' Agate finished for me.

And just like that, I was $30 million richer. The rest of the money would take some more work to acquire.



O O O


A/N: Were you under the impression that Kaleidus killed Calvert? That would be far too brutish and simple for Kaleidus to use as Plan A. For better or worse, Coil is just unconscious for now.

 

[Eiri Fllyn]

Volition 3.2

"Sir," Captain Heroux stood at attention in front of me uniformed and unarmed.

I clicked a part of the desktop wallpaper and the door to the room locked with a click.

To his credit, Heroux didn't even flinch, calmly staring at me. I wondered if he was able to notice any discrepancies. I was sure he could, but he wouldn't act without being certain of the situation. After all, Coil routinely used a body double, and nobody knew who the man behind the mask was. Even if I acted a little differently, wasn't it natural to assume that I was just another scheme of Coil's, sitting here in Coil's private office like it was perfectly natural?

"At ease, Captain. You are one of my most trusted men. I called you here to have a little talk. Nothing too serious. Have a seat," I said, gesturing him to sit down.

He nodded and did as told.

"You've been with me for quite some time now, Heroux, and led a great many successful operations. You were here before this base was built, even, and you've served me well as our organization, business, and territory grew," I said, pretending to be familiar with him using the info from his personnel dossier and performance notes.

"Yes, sir," he replied neutrally.

"In recent times, Brockton Bay has reached a boiling point. Tension between the gangs have been rising steadily and the PRT is buckling under the pressure. With the events of the last few days, the sudden defeat of Lung and Oni Lee and the rise of a new hero team, one could say that the situation is about to explode," I explained, drawing an ominous picture. "And with this base's construction nearing completion, so too is our organization at a critical juncture—one of both crisis…and opportunity."

I closely observed the expression on Heroux's face, unchanging as it was, his eyes widened marginally to reveal a glimmer of interest.

"I will be blunt. I am not interested in being a common villain. You have seen for yourself how we operate. You have been in the military, and you must…recognize the differences between our organization and the so-called villain gangs of this city," I said, pausing for a long moment with an upwards tilt of my head.

Heroux took the hint and answered. "Yes. We are disciplined, organized, and well-equipped. We are functionally closer to a private army than a gang."

"Precisely." I nodded and leaned forward. "Do you know why that is? Do you understand why I built the organization this way, what it is that we have been working towards all this time?"

He was quiet for a moment, a hint of caution in his expression. "Sir, you give us orders and we follow them. It is not my place to know your grand designs."

"No need to be so stiff, Captain Heroux. I am not testing you," I said. We both knew that was a lie, but it had to be said. "Much like myself, you're an ambitious man. You must have had some guesses. Humor me, call it curiosity. What do you think we are working towards?" It was a bit of a leading question, and a way to build rapport, as I alluded to our mutually ambitious nature.

"If I had to guess, then…a greater calling. Something beyond simple money, territory, and petty crime. Something that goes beyond just this city, maybe. Something you need a professional army for, and not just a small group of capes like the other gangs."

I chuckled slowly. "You're exactly right. That's a very good answer."

My expression got serious again. "You remember the crisis when Professor Haywire opened a portal to Earth Aleph? The first thing on people's minds."

Finally, I got a noticeable look of surprise from him this time. "You mean…war?"

"Right again. In those days, when people realized there was a whole other world of resources, the possibility of war immediately came to mind. And Bet would win, because we had all the capes. We avoided war back then…but our world has since been ravaged by the Endbringers, entire nations devastated, and in the midst of the chaos, parahuman groups like the Yangban and Red Gauntlet have risen. You have been deployed to Asia as US military tried and failed to support its allies in times of great upheaval, so you have seen first hand how parahumans and the Endbringers have all but destroyed the old order."

"I cannot deny your words. I left the military because I lost faith in its ability to achieve its mission, you know this, of course. The US may be a superpower still, but that power is no longer backed by the army, navy or air force, nor even by nuclear weapons, but by parahumans. And even that is a questionable thing, if the state of lawlessness in this country is anything to go by," he said.

"The existence of other worlds is not a secret anymore, and despite the tenuous peace we have agreed to with Aleph, do you really think that this state of affairs can last, knowing what you know about the way Bet is going?"

He frowned. "You think that there will be war with Aleph?"

I unlocked the door, and stood up. "Walk with me."

He stood to follow, and we exited the room into the hallway. Between my office and the base's entrance were over ten guards and multiple sets of heavy metal doors. But we wouldn't be going past all of them.

I strode purposefully in towards a certain room away from the eyes and ears of any guards and employees. It was the room Coil had reserved for Dinah once kidnapped, and currently empty so it did not need any guards.

We stopped in front of the door, and I turned around to face Heroux.

"Aleph is not the only other world out there, and Professor Haywire will not be the only parahuman that can find a way to access other worlds. When the Endbringers have destroyed half the world's cities in a decade, what will the desperate people of Bet turn to? Even without the possibility of refuge in another world, Bet is destined to descend into chaos. I know not what would emerge, but the status quo cannot last! Today villains and gangs can hold territory in a city, a decade from now perhaps parahuman warlords will rule nations and worlds!" I gestured grandly to emphasize the point.

"The question is, what role would you want to play in such a future? Are you satisfied being a mere mercenary, or would you aspire to be part of something greater, with all the privileges and responsibilities that would entail?"

Heroux was a smart man, and I could see the understanding in his eyes, as I alluded to a position of power within a new world order.

"I…would be a part of something greater, sir. A part of the empire of your rule," he said firmly, holding his right hand over his heart and bowing his head slightly.

My lips curled into a smirk. Now all I needed was one last move to convince this man that I was the "true" cape behind Coil, who never showed his men his power until the Undersiders, to the point where people thought he might be unpowered.

"Very good, Heroux. I require loyal and capable men like you. Now rise and look upon the future!" On one hand, I took out an access card.

I held out my other hand with my palm facing up, and Agate flashed into existence with a multicolored display of lights, floating freely in the air. She would become my symbol, the absolute proof of who I was without revealing my face.

I gripped onto Agate and directed her at the door. A rainbow beam emerged from her tip and struck the door, engulfing it in light.

Then I unlocked the door, which opened automatically, and on the other side was—

A blue sky and fresh air, a magnificent view from a great height that looked out into vast plains and forests, with the daylight sun shining brightly in the air.

Heroux's eyes were wide open as he stared.

I walked through and waited for him on the other side.

He was taken out of his stupor once I did so, and quickly followed after me, almost stumbling as he crossed the threshold to the peak of the small mountain that we now stood on.

He turned this way and that way, looking around in wonder, before marvelling at the unnatural rectangular gap in reality we just stepped through.

I waited silently for him to get his bearings.

"This…is this another world?" He murmured, still not quite believing what I had been implying all this time.

But that was a simple matter to solve.

"Take out your phone and check your GPS. We are out in the open, high in the air, with nothing blocking the signal," I suggested.

He did so. He looked back at me with a new vigour, after confirming that the signal was gone.

"Take a good, long look. A whole new world, vast untapped resources, continents of unoccupied land, untouched by the ravages of the Endbringers and capes. This one is untouched by human civilization, even, free of pollution in the air and oceans," I swept out my arm gesturing to everything below us.

"And…it's only one of many more…" He murmured, looking out at the horizon. "Yes, I understand now…what you have been working towards…!"

"There is much work to be done, and a long road ahead of us. It will not be easy, but I am sure it will be rewarding. As of today, your salary is doubled, and you are hereby promoted to the rank of Major. But remember, you must tell no one of what you have learned today about my power, our eventual goals, or your promotion. Know for yourself what lies ahead, but those who are not worthy do not need to know, until the time is right. Everything you have seen and heard today are classified strictly to yourself and me, and your salary raise will be paid from a different source."

He gave me a military salute. "Yes, sir! Thank you, sir!"

"Ah…and that includes Coil, Major Heroux. You should be aware that he is merely a puppet of mine, unaware of our true aims. Should I desire to speak with you as my true self, I will call you by your new rank, or wield this symbol of my power," I said, raising Agate again.

"Understood."



O O O



"Sir," Captain Reynolds stood at attention in front of me uniformed and unarmed.

I clicked a part of the desktop wallpaper and the door to the room locked with a click.

"At ease, Captain. You are one of my most trusted…"



O O O

 

[Eiri Fllyn]

Volition 3.3

'Wake up, wake up!'

Agate's voice blared in my mind, and I forced myself up.

"Ugh…" I groaned and sat up from the couch.

I was now paying the price for two nights of barely any sleep. I checked the time and it was almost 11.

'Do you remember what happened in the dreams?' Agate asked me.

I went to the washroom and did my morning routine while trying to remember.

'Somewhat…not very clearly but I think I got the big pieces.'

A while back I told Agate to try and stop listening in on all my thoughts, as it wasn't really fair that I couldn't listen in on hers. The problem was that I didn't have prana of my own to send to her, so the things that I could perceive from her end were very limited, and she had to actively send me her senses, thoughts, and such. While I felt that I could trust Agate, more than anyone or anything else anyway, it was a fact of life that everybody needed a semblance of privacy at times as well. It would also be a debilitating weakness if we got used to "thinking together", and then met an enemy that could somehow block the psychic exchange.

She was reluctant about it, but agreed that it wasn't really fair. Over time the mental bond between us had become better and better, so now I had a sense of when she was listening and when she wasn't, and the fluidity of switching between broadcasting thoughts to her or just thinking to myself was also improving.

Last night after I left Coil's base and returned to the apartment, I sent Agate out to find the Palanquin, the nightclub that Faultline's Crew uses as a front and headquarters.

Part of it was to see what, if anything, Faultline was up to, but the bigger reason was Labyrinth.

It had slipped my mind last week that Labyrinth had an overtly dimensional power that was easily in reach and observable.

I was only reminded of this when Coil had contacted Faultline's Crew, and I started thinking about their members' capabilities and how I might have to deal with them when they came after me. Had I remembered this sooner, I would have sent Agate to find her shortly after she came back from the Simurgh portal from Madison.

Simultaneously, as our mental attunement had gotten better, and Agate started to properly understand human perception, we tested a new way to use our shared senses.

While I was asleep, Agate attempted to send signals of her observations and thoughts into my mind through the dream process.

It wasn't entirely successful, but nor was it a total failure. She hadn't been able to simply replace my dream with her senses, but I got impressions of what she had been doing, flashes of the visuals, and most of her thoughts at the time. But because I was dreaming, it wasn't as clear as my conscious memories, and I would have to spend some time sorting them out.

'You found them, and they were just asleep, except Labyrinth. I couldn't tell if she was asleep or just like that normally. Her power was still very active.'

'That's great! You remembered! And I learned a lot from watching her.'

Labyrinth had the power to reach into other realities and pull objects "closer" to this reality. What she did was very strange, things that she pulled over weren't necessarily here or there but somewhere in between. She could choose whether to pull them close enough to be solid and interact with objects in this reality, or leave them visible but untouchable.

It was somewhat similar to how Agate phased out of sync with this reality.

At first, it had taken a while to figure just how to scan and analyze what Labyrinth was doing, but after a while, when Agate combined what she learned from portal-making, she successfully developed a new sensor program for it.

The space that she worked with was closely related to the space that Agate phased into, but not quite the same. It was a sort of different layer that connected all of the different parallel realities of the Worm multiverse. Agate's phase space was outside of that, between that layer and the even more "outside" Kaleidospace—also known as the Blind Eternities.

This was getting somewhat confusing, so new terminology was in order.

The layer that Agate phased into would now be called pseudokaleidospace—pseudoKspace for short, while the layer that Labyrinth worked with would be called Wormvoid.

I decided to call it Wormvoid because it was not yet clear if such a similar space existed in other non-Worm reality clusters.

'I think pseudoKspace should be renamed agatespace.'

'You can call it Agatespace if you want.'

'But there's a real reason for it! I'm not just naming it after myself.'

'And why is that?'

'Onyx crystals have parallel bands and agate crystals have curved bands, representing parallel and alternate reality manipulation. It's part of the incantation from our contract ritual. What you're calling pseudoKspace is the semi-physical layer than connects reality clusters to the Kaleidospace. Since it's part of the pathway to alternate realities, we can call it agatespace.'

'Oh, that's pretty interesting. So then should we call Wormvoid Onyxspace instead?'

'No that's different. Wormvoid isn't actually between parallel realities, at least not in the way Master Zelretch defines it. It would be more accurate to say that Wormvoid is a sublayer of agatespace, because it also links alternate realities in a sense, but it's a space without the Primordial Chaos energy, which is why people and things can freely move through it. These alternate realities exist in a structure that's unique to this sector of Kaleidospace, as far as I know. Your Earth world and the world I came don't have any stable alternate realities.'

'What? I don't understand, what does parallel reality for the Fate universe mean then?

'When we manipulate parallel realities, what we're really doing is manipulating world lines. There are an infinite number of branching world lines, but there are also major convergence points that world lines gravitate towards, and the superposition of all world lines is the true reality. The individual branching world lines aren't true permanent realities in and of themselves. You might understand them as quantum probabilities, but it's a little more complex than that. These parallel realities can't exist independently of each other, nor can anything physically travel between them. The Second Magic and anything that exists outside of space-time are exceptions to that rule, but there are limits to those too. The structure of the world lines is what I would call onxyspace, but that's a conceptual rather than a physical space.'

It took me a long moment to process all of that. Was that really how things worked in the Fate franchise I read? There was no way to tell, really, unless I went back to my Earth and found the authors. But so what if it wasn't? I had already expected that some things might be different.

'Okay, agatespace and Wormvoid it is then. So what is this Primordial Chaos you mentioned?'

Since this had turned into a lecture, and I had some free time now that the big threat of Coil had been neutralized, I might as well learn more about the whole thing.

'Well, you know that the Root is the source of all creation and the record of all things. But the truth is, Master Zelretch realized that the Root that we knew of in our universe wasn't the True Root. Even if we touched it, it was being filtered through something else, which we don't fully understand yet. The filter is different for every universe. But we think that the filter is related to the combination of the Primordial Chaos energy in the Kaleidospace, and the Creation Mystery that orders the Chaos into stable realities. Primordial Chaos is the reason that things get destroyed in Kaleidospace, and also the reason that living things die in agatespace. Agatespace is a kind of thin membrane that filters out the Primordial Chaos from disrupting the realities we can exist in.'

'I see…then if the barrier blocking our exit is in Kaleidospace, that's pretty much the worst scenario, isn't it? It's powerful enough to withstand Primordial Chaos for such a long time.'

'Actually, I got an idea about that last night! It might be easier to get around than if it was in Wormvoid or agatespace. We may not be able to break through it directly, but it's possible that the barrier isn't very big, so we can just go around it. This reality cluster is huge, and the energy it would take to block off all of it would be ludicrously massive. From what we know about the Cycle and the limits on shard powers beyond the moon, it's possible that Scion only blocked off a small section of real space and Wormvoid. If he thinks we can't go very far in real space anyway, and he's already blocked off most of the local Wormvoid for the Cycle, he only needs a barrier in Kaleidospace big enough to cover the part he wants isolated for the Cycle. That means we might be able to get escape if we travelled beyond the moon, or if we found a way to break through the Wormvoid barriers.'

'That's genius! I hope he hasn't put up a barrier in real space too, then. If he hasn't…then all we have to is find a way to get into space. We'd have to get through the Simurgh somehow, but at least there's a direction to work towards now. Can you just make a portal to beyond the moon?'

'Sorry, I can't! Those portals use Wormvoid warping, and we can't go that far in real space through Wormvoid. The limit is approximately the distance to the moon. That's probably why the shard powers stop working at the moon, they all use Wormvoid in some way to channel their powers.'

Damn, of course it wouldn't be that easy.

'Alright, we'll think up some ways to get into space later. Anything else important you learned?'

'Labyrinth pulls things through Wormvoid from other realities. I'm not sure how she's shifting them into Wormvoid from real space, But if I could observe it from the other end, where the objects leave real space, I think I could then figure out how we can move into Wormvoid ourselves.'

'What about the opposite? What if you tracked where the objects came from, then open a portal to that reality, head through, and wait for Labyrinth to release the object eventually on that side?'

'That could work…but it will take a lot more observation of Labyrinth. I have to figure out how to calculate the relative position of realities in Wormvoid first. So far my portals just use Waypoint beacons without any calculations.'

In the end I decided that while gaining Wormvoid phasing as an ability would be extremely useful, there were other priorities for Agate in the short term and I might need her with me to protect myself, so I didn't send her to continue observing Labyrinth during the day time.

When I exited the washroom, I noticed that Amelia wasn't home. I texted her and found out that she went to the warehouse base, so I made breakfast for myself and went over as well.

 

[Eiri Fllyn]

Volition 3.4

It was an innocent text. I knew that, but having undertaken so many risky ventures, I couldn't let my guard down. If she really wanted to do anything to me, she could have done so when I was asleep, I knew. But maybe she was snooping around, trying to find evidence that all was not as it seemed with me, maybe she wanted to prepare something bigger to take me out, or maybe she just plainly went crazy. You never knew with shard influence.

I sent Agate to spy on her at the warehouse first.

She was manipulating the growth of several organisms. One was a large brown thing bigger than a human, that looked a bit like a tree but without any branches. No, that wasn't accurate. If I looked closely, it kind of did resemble a human in some ways, like a person that'd been absorbed into it. Creepy. The others were smaller, wiggling things that were shifting constantly and mixed with puddles of goo.

I put on a big coat and hid a pistol, a small rifle with a laser attachment I acquired from Coil's base, and my trusty flamethrower. Then I called back Agate and attached a sharp knife to her.

I went over to the warehouse prepared for the worst, and assuming the best.

I entered with a pleasant smile.

"Hey, Amelia. What are you working on?" I asked curiously.

"You know how Taylor's costume is made of spider silk? It's really strong. Probably bullet proof, even. I asked her about it, and she said she made it by commanding spiders to weave it over her body. We don't have any brute powers so a costume like that would be really useful. But it will take her a week to make a new costume for either of us, so I thought I might try to make something myself."

I looked at the brown tree-human thing and fought off a grimace.

"Is that cellulose you're trying to make?"

"Yeah. This is stronger than spider silk, and also much easier to make."

"Really? Why's it easier to make?"

"Cellulose is produced naturally in plants. There's more cellulose than any other material in the biosphere. But it's not as strong in nature because the nanofibres aren't aligned perfectly, but I can use my power to make them grow the way I want."

I tentatively reached out a hand to touch the organic material, and Amelia nodded her permission.

"So how strong is this?"

"I don't have anything to test for precise numbers, but I'd guess it's about ten times stronger than spider silk."

"Ten times stronger?" I asked with incredulity. "Cellulose can be that strong?" I had researched the strength of spider silk compared to Kevlar to better understand Taylor's capabilities, and ten times would be stronger than graphene.

"Well, it's not just cellulose, I can make properly aligned cellulose in just a few minutes. So I've been experimenting with mixing other things into it."

I looked at the puddles of goo and the smaller organisms. So that was what they were, not processed human flesh. I sent Agate back to drop the knife.

I watched for a while longer, I decided to her ask about one of the things I really hoped she could make.

"Are you able to make living power armour? Like a symbiotic organism covering our bodies that both enhances, protects, and heals us?"

"Probably. But that's a lot harder. If it was easy I'd have just done that instead."

"You were able to make a counter to Bonesaw's mass killer plague in just a few seconds in a future I saw. I'm sure you can do it."

"It's not the same though. Plagues happen naturally, Bonesaw probably just made a mutation. I could also make a plague like that in seconds. Living symbiotic creatures like what you're thinking of are orders of magnitude more complex and there's no natural template to work off of."

"I see…by the way, you know what you're doing looks really creepy without any context? That thing looks like it absorbed a human body."

"Huh…you're right. Fuck, what is wrong with me?"

"Hey I'm not saying it's bad. I'm glad you're making armour for us, the process just looks creepy. I am okay with this. Really. But you should give Taylor a heads up when she comes by."

"Alright."

As she continued to experiment, I went on PHO. Looking at the responses to my post yesterday, there was nothing in particular that stood out to me. Some people were very excited about a new hero team, others were suspicious about our video that failed to show the details of how exactly we defeated Lung and Oni Lee. Some even flamed me for using overly aggressive language in my post and stirring up trouble.

When time for lunch came around, I brought Amelia to a private room in a luxurious restaurant. We were disguised, of course. As a matter of habit, I checked the room for potential bugs and cameras, and Agate scanned it for electronic activity to be sure.

She gave me suspicious looks all the way until we sat down. "I didn't think you were the type to spend on luxury as soon as you got a little bit of money. Is this why you tried to convince me to charge for healing?"

"You really think so lowly of me?" I frowned. "I'm not a stranger to wealth. When I arrived on Earth Bet, I lost all of it, but you saw what conditions I was living in over the past week. I don't splurge meaninglessly."

"Well, what else am I supposed to make of this?" She gestured to the extravagant meal and room. "Besides, you never told me what you did before last week. All I know is that you fell off a tree and had to come to me for free healing."

"I was a self-made, very wealthy businessman, despite my youth. I am very good at managing resources, rest assured. Anyways, I brought you here for a reason. I have very good news and thought we should celebrate a little."

"Good news? Does this have to do with how late you were up last night?"

"That's right. I tracked Coil to his base last night and used my powers to spy on him. Then I got some of his passwords and hacked him, stealing $30 million in the process."

"You…what? $30 million?" I smirked at her dumbstruck face.

"I think that's worth a small celebration, don't you? And we should celebrate with Taylor tonight after school too."

"This isn't a joke, is it?"

"Not at all." I took out my phone and accessed one of the many accounts I opened, then showed her the balance which was in excess of two million.

"This is just one of the accounts I transferred the money to. I'll be heading to the bank to grab our new debit and credit cards this afternoon. Everything was set up through the Number Man, so it's safe."

She was still staring at the number shown on my screen silently.

"There is some bad news too though," I said.

She turned her attention back to me as soon as she heard my say bad news.

"Coil hired Faultline's Crew to investigate us, and specifically asked her to find out our civilian identities. Faultline agreed."

"That's against the rules!"

"Coil doesn't play by the rules. And now we know, neither does Faultline," I said with a dark look. "We can't hold back against that kind of enemy."

"But why would he want our civilian identities? Do you think he suspects who I am?" She asked worriedly.

"Yes. I spied on him discussing it with Tattletale as well. She is confident that Araliac is Panacea."

"Shit!"

"Don't worry, it's not that big of a deal if they know. It was going to be revealed sooner or later, and what really matters is that the PRT doesn't treat you as having turned villain by leaving New Wave – which they won't now, because you joined another hero team with a major public accomplishment."

That was when the waitress started bringing food in, so the conversation paused for a bit as we started eating.

After a while, she spoke up again. "Coil was able to target Taylor's dad, right? That means he probably knows her identity already. What about you? Do you have any family he might target?"

"Worried about me? Don't be. I don't have any family or anyone else close to me. Remember, I don't even have a real civilian identity, seeing as I'm not originally from this plane of existence."

"You keep saying that…what does that mean? Why can't you tell me?"

"I have something I want to show you this afternoon. I'll tell you a little more about it then."



O O O



After lunch, we went back to the warehouse base. Then I held out my hand, and Agate phased into existence with colorful lights. Without waiting for Amelia to respond, I opened a portal to the other world, which I decided to call Earth M.

I suggested to Amelia to check her GPS signal to verify that it was a different world, but to my surprise, she said, "I can already tell by the different strains of bacteria in the air, there are some that simply don't exist on Earth Bet."

"I haven't been able to find any human settlements on this world yet," I said after bringing her to the edge of a vast forest using another portal back to the warehouse and then a second portal here.

"That means all this biomass is available for you to use freely."

She went up to a tree and touched her hand to the trunk. "Amazing…this species…"

"I told you before that I come from different plane of existence entirely. Not like the parallel worlds the Entities can access. This is another of the parallel worlds, similar to Earth Aleph. I was experimenting with this yesterday and figured out how to open these portals. Over time, I will develop even more abilities, because my powers don't come from the same source as parahumans."

She turned back to me. "Rather than coming from a different plane of existence, how I do know you didn't just get some of Professor Haywire's stuff?"

"I don't actually have any way to prove it to you, which is why I didn't want to talk about this before. You can use your ability to check for lies on me again if you want, but does it really make any difference? I can't prove that I'm not just delusional, or from a parallel world that I thought was a different plane of existence. It's like that for the things I know too, isn't it? There are always other possible explanations for why I have powers and apparent precognition without a Corona Pollentia. I could be an Endbringer in human form, a human-based projection by a cape who does have a Corona, or I could have been told these things and given some Tinkertech by other capes who tricked me into believing that I'm from a different plane."

Her eyes assessed me, looking as if she wanted to believe me. "I'm still not sure I can believe you, and there's still not a lot of proof about the whole Scion will kill everyone thing. But you have been right about a lot of other things and I do believe that you believe what you're saying. I can't honestly say it's impossible either…so why did you come here, if you're from another plane?"

I gave her an appreciative smile.

"The parallel worlds like Aleph, and this world, Earth M, all exist within the same reality cluster, which we can also call a plane of existence. All of these worlds share the same set of physical laws, but there are other planes even beyond them, with different laws. I come from one of those planes. On my plane, there were some records of events that happened, or would happen, on some other planes. I had read some of the records about this plane we're in now, which is where my special knowledge comes from. However, at the time, it was little more than entertainment and curiosity. Travelling to or from other planes wasn't supposed to be possible, and nobody knew if those records were even real. But one day, two individuals with godlike powers arrived on my plane, and everything changed."

"That sounds an awful lot like what happened to us with Scion. Did your plane also have Entities?"

"No, they were different. These two were travellers from other planes, not other realities within the same plane. They also didn't come from the same plane, but two different ones. One of them was just exploring, having just discovered how to travel between planes. The other one had followed the first one, and was an old being that had been able to travel the planes for a long time, and did not like that other beings not of his race could travel the planes, so he attacked the first one. I was caught up in the middle of their battle and the second traveller tried to kill me just for seeing him. The first traveller was more reasonable…he gave me the ability to travel planes myself in order to help me escape."

I turned around and looked at the sky in melancholy.

"To survive, I was forced to leave everything behind and travel to a random other plane, then I found myself in Brockton Bay. When I arrived, I discovered that something had blocked off the way out, so I couldn't leave anymore. I was in a foreign world, penniless, injured, and alone, with nothing but a bit of special knowledge, which might not have been reliable, about the past and future."

There was a moment of silence, and then Amelia walked up to stand beside me.

"Kaleidus, tell me honestly. Do you actually want to save the world? Or do you just want to go back home, to your own plane?"

I looked down and sighed. I didn't answer for a few seconds. "That second traveller…before I escaped, he summoned a legion of monsters to attack my plane. It wouldn't be safe to go back, even if I could. For all I know, everyone on my world might be dead or enslaved by now. I can't say that I'm looking forward to fighting Scion. I don't see it as my obligation, really...I'm stuck here right now and don't have a choice, but if I found a way to escape the barrier, I can't say I wouldn't be tempted to leave for another, less fucked up plane. I mean, if I told the right people the method to defeat Scion, isn't that already enough? I have no family and friends here to fight for. I was just a civilian back on my plane, and this isn't supposed to be my fight."

I clenched my fists and trembled. "Heck, even if we won against Scion, how do I know everyone won't just turn against me because I'm from another plane? How could they know that I'm not just an alien hiding in a human body, just as bad as Scion? The future I know where humanity won against Scion, the person who saved the world, she was just a lonely eighteen year old girl, she sacrificed everything she had and still…after the fight, the people she saved betrayed her. They thought she became too powerful, too dangerous. They took away her powers, shot her in the head, and threw her body in the middle of nowhere in an empty world. Is that the fate that awaits us at the end of this road? I don't know if I can be that selfless, fighting for a world that will only fear and hate me," I finished my rant bitterly, not looking at her.

But through Agate, I saw that she was appropriately shocked and was watching me with a look of pity.

"I'm sorry," she said finally, in a quiet voice, after it was clear my rant was over.

I turned to face her. "You of all people shouldn't be sorry, Amelia. Do you know what the first thing I did was once I knew that I was in Brockton Bay?"

"What?"

"I looked for Panacea. You have no idea how relieved I was when I found you. Even though I was a stranger to you, you weren't a stranger to me. You were like a bastion of hope when I felt as though the ground was falling away. You were proof that the things I knew weren't entirely useless, and that with that knowledge, I might survive even though I was essentially still unpowered at that time. I know it must feel like an invasion of your privacy, but it was like a lifeline to me."

"But…why? Why me? Was it just because you needed healing?"

"No. I obviously couldn't go to any of the villain gangs. The PRT is dangerous and corrupt, and they also have protocols for dealing with interdimensional travelers that wouldn't be good for my health. Although I knew of Skitter too, she doesn't trust anyone, and certainly wouldn't have teamed up with me if you hadn't been there when we met her and revealed yourself as Panacea. You were the best, and really, the only choice, the only person who would help me and who I could trust with the knowledge of what lies ahead. I didn't expect things to turn out so badly with the Dallons, but I knew that you would be willing to help me eventually once you heard my story, despite all your own personal troubles. And I was right. So thank you," I finished with a smile.

She looked away and then to the ground. "You helped me too, Kaleidus. These past few days away from Carol haven't been so bad. Even though I can't see Vicky anymore, I feel…freer. And now that there's someone who I can talk to who knows about my secret…it's like a huge weight off my shoulders."

"I'm glad, then."

We spent a few more minutes simply standing there in amicable silence.

"There is one more thing I want to show you. Come."

 

[Eiri Fllyn]

Just an announcement, I've decided to make some pretty big edits to the chapter. I wasn't fully satisfied with the old version, especially the tone of it. I think I found the problems though, and changed a few parts. The events themselves didn't change much. Changes highlighted in red.

Spoiler: Edits

Volition 3.4

It was an innocent text. I knew that, but having undertaken so many risky ventures, I couldn't let my guard down. If she really wanted to do anything to me, she could have done so when I was asleep, I knew. But maybe she was snooping around, trying to find evidence that all was not as it seemed with me, maybe she wanted to prepare something bigger to take me out, or maybe she just plainly went crazy. You never knew with shard influence.


I sent Agate to spy on her at the warehouse first.


She was manipulating the growth of several organisms. One was a large brown thing bigger than a human, that looked a bit like a tree but without any branches. No, that wasn't accurate. If I looked closely, it kind of did resemble a human in some ways, like a person that'd been absorbed into it. Creepy. The others were smaller, wiggling things that were shifting constantly and mixed with puddles of goo.


I put on a big coat and hid a pistol, a small rifle with a laser attachment I acquired from Coil's base, and my trusty flamethrower. Then I called back Agate and attached a sharp knife to her.


I went over to the warehouse prepared for the worst, and assuming the best.


I entered with a pleasant smile.

"Hey, Amelia. What are you working on?" I asked curiously.

"You know how Taylor's costume is made of spider silk? It's really strong. Probably bullet proof, even. I asked her about it, and she said she made it by commanding spiders to weave it over her body. We don't have any brute powers so a costume like that would be really useful. But it will take her a week to make a new costume for either of us, so I thought I might try to make something myself."

I looked at the brown tree-human thing and fought off a grimace.

"Is that cellulose you're trying to make?"

"Yeah. This is stronger than spider silk, and also much easier to make."

"Really? Why's it easier to make?"

"Cellulose is produced naturally in plants. There's more cellulose than any other material in the biosphere. But it's not as strong in nature because the nanofibres aren't aligned perfectly, but I can use my power to make them grow the way I want."

I tentatively reached out a hand to touch the organic material, and Amelia nodded her permission.

"So how strong is this?"

"I don't have anything to test for precise numbers, but I'd guess it's about ten times stronger than spider silk."

"Ten times stronger?" I asked with incredulity. "Cellulose can be that strong?" I had researched the strength of spider silk compared to Kevlar to better understand Taylor's capabilities, and ten times would be stronger than graphene.

"Well, it's not just cellulose, I can make properly aligned cellulose in just a few minutes. So I've been experimenting with mixing other things into it."

I looked at the puddles of goo and the smaller organisms. So that was what they were, not processed human flesh. I sent Agate back to drop the knife.

I watched for a while longer, I decided to her ask about one of the things I really hoped she could make.

"Are you able to make living power armour? Like a symbiotic organism covering our bodies that both enhances, protects, and heals us?"

"Probably. But that's a lot harder. If it was easy I'd have just done that instead."

"You were able to make a counter to Bonesaw's mass killer plague in just a few seconds in a future I saw. I'm sure you can do it."

"It's not the same though. Plagues happen naturally, Bonesaw probably just made a mutation. I could also make a plague like that in seconds. Living symbiotic creatures like what you're thinking of are orders of magnitude more complex and there's no natural template to work off of."

"I see…by the way, you know what you're doing looks really creepy without any context? That thing looks like it absorbed a human body."

"Huh…you're right. Fuck, what is wrong with me?"

"Hey I'm not saying it's bad. I'm glad you're making armour for us, the process just looks creepy. I am okay with this. Really. But you should give Taylor a heads up when she comes by."

"Alright."

As she continued to experiment, I went on PHO. Looking at the responses to my post yesterday, there was nothing in particular that stood out to me. Some people were very excited about a new hero team, others were suspicious about our video that failed to show the details of how exactly we defeated Lung and Oni Lee. Some even flamed me for using overly aggressive language in my post and stirring up trouble.

When time for lunch came around, I brought Amelia to a private room in a luxurious restaurant. We were disguised, of course. As a matter of habit, I checked the room for potential bugs and cameras, and Agate scanned it for electronic activity to be sure.

She gave me suspicious looks all the way until we sat down. "I didn't think you were the type to spend on luxury as soon as you got a little bit of money. Is this why you tried to convince me to charge for healing?"

"You really think so lowly of me?" I frowned. "I'm not a stranger to wealth. When I arrived on Earth Bet, I lost all of it, but you saw what conditions I was living in over the past week. I don't splurge meaninglessly."

"Well, what else am I supposed to make of this?" She gestured to the extravagant meal and room. "Besides, you never told me what you did before last week. All I know is that you fell off a tree and had to come to me for free healing."

"I was a self-made, very wealthy businessman, despite my youth. I am very good at managing resources, rest assured. Anyways, I brought you here for a reason. I have very good news and thought we should celebrate a little."

"Good news? Does this have to do with how late you were up last night?"

"That's right. I tracked Coil to his base last night and used my powers to spy on him. Then I got some of his passwords and hacked him, stealing $30 million in the process."

"You…what? $30 million?" I smirked at her dumbstruck face.

"I think that's worth a small celebration, don't you? And we should celebrate with Taylor tonight after school too."

"This isn't a joke, is it?"

"Not at all." I took out my phone and accessed one of the many accounts I opened, then showed her the balance which was in excess of two million.

"This is just one of the accounts I transferred the money to. I'll be heading to the bank to grab our new debit and credit cards this afternoon. Everything was set up through the Number Man, so it's safe."

She was still staring at the number shown on my screen silently.

"There is some bad news too though," I said.

She turned her attention back to me as soon as she heard my say bad news.

"Coil hired Faultline's Crew to investigate us, and specifically asked her to find out our civilian identities. Faultline agreed."

"That's against the rules!"

"Coil doesn't play by the rules. And now we know, neither does Faultline," I said with a dark look. "We can't hold back against that kind of enemy."

"But why would he want our civilian identities? Do you think he suspects who I am?" She asked worriedly.

"Yes. I spied on him discussing it with Tattletale as well. She is confident that Araliac is Panacea."

"Shit!"

"Don't worry, it's not that big of a deal if they know. It was going to be revealed sooner or later, and what really matters is that the PRT doesn't treat you as having turned villain by leaving New Wave – which they won't now, because you joined another hero team with a major public accomplishment."

That was when the waitress started bringing food in, so the conversation paused for a bit as we started eating.

After a while, she spoke up again. "Coil was able to target Taylor's dad, right? That means he probably knows her identity already. What about you? Do you have any family he might target?"

"Worried about me? Don't be. I don't have any family or anyone else close to me. Remember, I don't even have a real civilian identity, seeing as I'm not originally from this plane of existence."

"You keep saying that…what does that mean? Why can't you tell me?"

"I have something I want to show you this afternoon. I'll tell you a little more about it then."



O O O



After lunch, we went back to the warehouse base. Then I held out my hand, and Agate phased into existence with colorful lights. Without waiting for Amelia to respond, I opened a portal to the other world, which I decided to call Earth M.

I suggested to Amelia to check her GPS signal to verify that it was a different world, but to my surprise, she said, "I can already tell by the different strains of bacteria in the air, there are some that simply don't exist on Earth Bet."

"I haven't been able to find any human settlements on this world yet," I said after bringing her to the edge of a vast forest using another portal back to the warehouse and then a second portal here.

"That means all this biomass is available for you to use freely."

She went up to a tree and touched her hand to the trunk. "Amazing…this species…"

"I told you before that I come from different plane of existence entirely. Not like the parallel worlds the Entities can access. This is another of the parallel worlds, similar to Earth Aleph. I was experimenting with this yesterday and figured out how to open these portals. Over time, I will develop even more abilities, because my powers don't come from the same source as parahumans."

She turned back to me. "Rather than coming from a different plane of existence, how I do know you didn't just get some of Professor Haywire's stuff?"


"I don't actually have any way to prove it to you, which is why I didn't want to talk about this before. You can use your ability to check for lies on me again if you want, but does it really make any difference? I can't prove that I'm not just delusional, or from a parallel world that I thought was a different plane of existence. It's like that for the things I know too, isn't it? There are always other possible explanations for why I have powers and apparent precognition without a Corona Pollentia. I could be an Endbringer in human form, a human-based projection by a cape who does have a Corona, or I could have been told these things and given some Tinkertech by other capes who tricked me into believing that I'm from a different plane."


Her eyes assessed me, looking as if she wanted to believe me. "I'm still not sure I can believe you, and there's still not a lot of proof about the whole Scion will kill everyone thing. But you have been right about a lot of other things and I do believe that you believe what you're saying. I can't honestly say it's impossible either…so why did you come here, if you're from another plane?"


I gave her an appreciative smile.

"The parallel worlds like Aleph, and this world, Earth M, all exist within the same reality cluster, which we can also call a plane of existence. All of these worlds share the same set of physical laws, but there are other planes even beyond them, with different laws. I come from one of those planes. On my plane, there were some records of events that happened, or would happen, on some other planes. I had read some of the records about this plane we're in now, which is where my special knowledge comes from. However, at the time, it was little more than entertainment and curiosity. Travelling to or from other planes wasn't supposed to be possible, and nobody knew if those records were even real. But one day, two individuals with godlike powers arrived on my plane, and everything changed."

"That sounds an awful lot like what happened to us with Scion. Did your plane also have Entities?"

"No, they were different. These two were travellers from other planes, not other realities within the same plane. They also didn't come from the same plane, but two different ones. One of them was just exploring, having just discovered how to travel between planes. The other one had followed the first one, and was an old being that had been able to travel the planes for a long time, and did not like that other beings not of his race could travel the planes, so he attacked the first one. I was caught up in the middle of their battle and the second traveller tried to kill me just for seeing him. The first traveller was more reasonable…he gave me the ability to travel planes myself in order to help me escape."

I turned around and looked at the sky in melancholy.

"To survive, I was forced to leave everything behind and travel to a random other plane, then I found myself in Brockton Bay. When I arrived, I discovered that something had blocked off the way out, so I couldn't leave anymore. I was in a foreign world, penniless, injured, and alone, with nothing but a bit of special knowledge, which might not have been reliable, about the past and future."

There was a moment of silence, and then Amelia walked up to stand beside me.

"Kaleidus, tell me honestly. Do you actually want to save the world? Or do you just want to go back home, to your own plane?"


I looked down and sighed. I didn't answer for a few seconds. "That second traveller…before I escaped, he summoned a legion of monsters to attack my plane. It wouldn't be safe to go back, even if I could. For all I know, everyone on my world might be dead or enslaved by now. I can't say that I'm looking forward to fighting Scion. I don't see it as my obligation, really...I'm stuck here right now and don't have a choice, but if I found a way to escape the barrier, I can't say I wouldn't be tempted to leave for another, less fucked up plane. I mean, if I told the right people the method to defeat Scion, isn't that already enough? I have no family and friends here to fight for. I was just a civilian back on my plane, and this isn't supposed to be my fight."


I clenched my fists and trembled. "Heck, even if we won against Scion, how do I know everyone won't just turn against me because I'm from another plane? How could they know that I'm not just an alien hiding in a human body, just as bad as Scion? The future I know where humanity won against Scion, the person who saved the world, she was just a lonely eighteen year old girl, she sacrificed everything she had and still…after the fight, the people she saved betrayed her. They thought she became too powerful, too dangerous. They took away her powers, shot her in the head, and threw her body in the middle of nowhere in an empty world. Is that the fate that awaits us at the end of this road? I don't know if I can be that selfless, fighting for a world that will only fear and hate me," I finished my rant bitterly, not looking at her.


But through Agate, I saw that she was appropriately shocked and was watching me with a look of pity.


"I'm sorry," she said finally, in a quiet voice, after it was clear my rant was over.

I turned to face her. "You of all people shouldn't be sorry, Amelia. Do you know what the first thing I did was once I knew that I was in Brockton Bay?"

"What?"

"I looked for Panacea. You have no idea how relieved I was when I found you. Even though I was a stranger to you, you weren't a stranger to me. You were like a bastion of hope when I felt as though the ground was falling away. You were proof that the things I knew weren't entirely useless, and that with that knowledge, I might survive even though I was essentially still unpowered at that time. I know it must feel like an invasion of your privacy, but it was like a lifeline to me."

"But…why? Why me? Was it just because you needed healing?"

"No. I obviously couldn't go to any of the villain gangs. The PRT is dangerous and corrupt, and they also have protocols for dealing with interdimensional travelers that wouldn't be good for my health. Although I knew of Skitter too, she doesn't trust anyone, and certainly wouldn't have teamed up with me if you hadn't been there when we met her and revealed yourself as Panacea. You were the best, and really, the only choice, the only person who would help me and who I could trust with the knowledge of what lies ahead. I didn't expect things to turn out so badly with the Dallons, but I knew that you would be willing to help me eventually once you heard my story, despite all your own personal troubles. And I was right. So thank you," I finished with a smile.

She looked away and then to the ground. "You helped me too, Kaleidus. These past few days away from Carol haven't been so bad. Even though I can't see Vicky anymore, I feel…freer. And now that there's someone who I can talk to who knows about my secret…it's like a huge weight off my shoulders."

"I'm glad, then."

We spent a few more minutes simply standing there in amicable silence.

"There is one more thing I want to show you. Come."

 

[Eiri Fllyn]

Volition 3.5

I led Amelia to the cave where I was keeping Coil prisoner. I had thought long and hard about what to do, and in the end I decided that there was no way to keep this a secret for long, if I wanted to take over Coil's organization without making the girls suspicious of me.

I had already told them about Calvert being Coil, and about his power, after all. As long as I kept Coil prisoner, Thomas Calvert would be missing, and the PRT would have records of it. Even if I orchestrated a plan to capture a "Coil", using his body double, the lack of a Corona Pollentia would easily give him away.

The biggest problem was that the mere act of successfully taking over Coil's organization would be suspicious, if the girls believed that the real Coil was still missing or at large.

My mysterious past was already suspicious enough, and without further evidence that Calvert was in fact Coil, the girls might start wondering if I had been Coil the whole time.

Taylor might even use her bugs to track my movements if she thought something was up. That would make things very difficult for me. If I let Amelia make relay bugs for her, I would never be able to do anything without her notice.

I brought Amelia in front of the crate that was Coil's cage, and opened it, revealing the unconscious body of Calvert.

"What the…? A body?" Amelia took a step back in alarm.

"Calm down, he's alive, just unconscious. This man is Coil, also known as Thomas Calvert. Yesterday when I was spying on him, I deduced that he was at his base in both of his timelines, and I had just developed my portal ability, allowing me to strike directly at him when he was vulnerable. The chance was too good to pass up, so I took it," I said.

"Are you sure this is Coil? Sorry, I'm not doubting you. It's just…this is too sudden. Where is his costume?" Amelia asked.

I grabbed a box from nearby and opened it to reveal Coil's costume, which I had neatly folded.

"After I captured him last night, I used his costume to pretend to be Coil, allowing me to start subverting some of his subordinates, who never knew who the man behind the mask was. As for checking whether he's really Coil…why don't we wake him up and ask? You can detect whether he's lying or not."

And so I moved Coil out of the crate and removed his gag, but keeping his blindfold and restraints on.

I equipped an electronic voice changer before beginning the interrogation.

Amelia touched his skin, and he woke up with a jolt.

"Hello, human," I said in a warped voice.

"Hello, who am I speaking—"

I ignored him and continued. "I will toss coin. You tell heads or tails. Answer wrong, die, understand?"

Then I tossed a coin as I said, and it landed on heads.

"Wait—surely it isn't necessary to test my luck? I am willing to cooperate with you."

"Answer correctly, you cooperate. Wrong, then not right human, worthless. Heads or tails? Answer, three seconds or die," I said, touching a pistol to his forehead. "Three—"

"Heads!" He answered, with a hint of panic now.

"Correct. Now I toss again."

I tossed it, and again the coin landed on heads.

"Heads," he said.

"Correct. Again."

"Tails."

"Correct, again."

"Heads."

"Correct, again!"

"Tails."

"Good. Pass, you have," I declared, and gave a meaningful glance to Amelia, who nodded. The point of this test was twofold. His power would allow him to guess both heads and tails at the same time, so it would prove that he was Coil, with the timeline splitting power. Additionally, it would force him to close off any other timelines he had going, and get stuck in this one.

Based on my original plan when capturing him, I should have captured him in both of his timelines, and he might not have shut either of them off, since neither was a safe timeline. From his perspective, if I suddenly woke him up in this timeline, but didn't wake him up in the other one, it would make sense to keep both timelines open as long as possible, to get information about me during the interrogation in this timeline that he could then close and use to deal with me in the other timeline.

"If you are satisfied, may I know who I am speaking with?" Coil asked coolly.

I removed the gun from his head.

"I am Erkshminialhhathrr, the Light-Eclipsing-Nova-Vividly-Echoes, in your tongue. Questions, I have many," I said. "Answer, and live."

"If you would remove my restraints, I would be happy to speak with you and answer your questions in a civilized discussion."

"Volshmhaar!" I yelled and punched him. "You eat civilization me? We eat stars' feces for ten thousand years! You cannot eat monkeys!"

Amelia stifled a choke, and looked at me as if I had gone crazy.

I winked back at her and put a finger to my mouth.

"I'm…sorry? There must be a misunderstanding, I mean no insult," Coil said, after recovering from being punched.

"Abggddarshha? Mnuoklklafshm gu mnuotenaiarongg. You, wait," I said, then walked away for a bit, and came back after half a minute.

"Damn translator. It is fixed now. I have questions for you, human," I said.

"Ah, as I was saying, if you would remove my restraints, I would be happy to answer your questions in a civilized manner," Coil repeated himself.

"No. You will answer my questions or die. We have noticed that you have sent agents to monitor the human child known as Dinah Alcott. What is your intention towards her?"

"Dinah? I believe she has the power to see the future. I am interested in her power," he answered honestly. I expected him to try lying first…but I suppose he must be using his power right now and lied in the other timeline.

"You answer truthfully, but not completely. What do you intend to do with her?"

"Ah, I do have some plans for her, but they are not certain yet—" Coil started, then I punched him again.

"Do not stall! I know you are using the parasitic crystalloid's ability to try different answers. It will not work."

"My apologies. I had been planning to persuade Dinah to join my cause," he said.

"And how would you have persuaded her?" I pressed.

He was silent for a moment. "Do you have some special interest in her? I can agree to stay away from her."

I put the gun back to his head. "Answer the question! How would you have persuaded her?"

"I would have given her drugs," he finally revealed.

I glanced at Amelia, whose face had darkened ominously upon hearing Coil's answer.

"Pathetic human!" I boomed. "So you would have imprisoned and forced her to become addicted to drugs, using her addiction to make her do your bidding! You wanted to enslave her? Foolish! Volshhar! She is the future vessel of Heaven-Touching-Shadow-Winged-Divine! The crystalloid parasites do not have the power to see the future, only the Chosen of the Star Spirits! She shall be a part of the Great Journey, not your human quibbles! Repent in darkness while the High Priests decide what to do with you!" I ranted like a fanatic, then gave Amelia a signal.

Coil fall back unconscious, and we stuffed him back into the crate.

"There you have it. Despicable, isn't he? There's no line too low for him to sink to," I said.

Amelia continued staring at the crate we were keeping Coil in. "Yeah…"

"You know, his power is pretty damn useful. Think we should give him a taste of his own medicine, make him work for us? With your powers, it shouldn't be too hard to brainwash him," I said nonchalantly.

"W-what the fuck! I'm not going to brainwash anyone!"

"Well, we can't release him or send him to the PRT, either. He's too dangerous for that. Seems like a bit of a waste to just kill him," I said with a grin.

"That's not funny, Kaleidus! I'm seriously not going to brainwash anyone. It's just wrong," she protested.

"Even if he would have been willing to brainwash people?" I asked with a raised eyebrow. "Is it so bad to turn a force of evil into a force of good? We don't necessarily even need to alter his brain directly, if you're still uptight about that rule. He can be conditioned and re-educated slowly, or we can make a kill-switch of sorts."

"Ugh, stop, you're creeping me out now! No brainwashing!" She blocked off her ears and stormed off.

I laughed loudly as she ran off.

I knew she wouldn't be willing to do it, but it was worth a shot. There were still other methods I could try to make Coil my slave.

 

[Eiri Fllyn]

Volition 3.6

After that, we went back to the warehouse but she gave me the silent treatment. She continued working on our new armoured costumes while ignoring me.

"Don't be like that Amelia, it was just a joke."

"I know," she said.

"Then why the long face?"

She didn't answer me.

I left the warehouse and bought some ice cream.

When I got back she was sitting down despondently on a crate, not doing anything.

I put an ice cream cone in front of her. "Here, have some of this. You'll feel better."

She glanced at the cone, then gave me an insulted look. "I'm not a little kid!"

"I know," I said, in a mirror of her words and tone to me.

She turned her head away.

I kept the ice cream cone where it is, in front of her, and started eating my own cone. "Haven't had one of these in a long time. It's really good."

After a while, I finished my cone. "I guess I'll have another one then," I said, and retracted the cone I had in front of her, bringing it towards my own mouth.

She stood up with her hand swept out and grabbed the cone as she gave me a fierce glare. I let go and she started eating the ice cream.

"Listen, I won't ever make you use your powers on the brain if you really don't want to. But working on brains is very dangerous if you don't get any practice. If an enemy Master brainwashes one of us, I would hope you could undo it. I don't want to see you fall apart because you made a mistake at a critical moment."

"You're…not afraid that I'll do more than just undo it? Change a little extra while I fix you?"

"I've known you could affect the brain all this time and still let you heal me," I said, looking at her seriously.

"Why do you trust me so much?"

I watched her pained expression with bits of ice cream surrounding her lips, and considered what to say. Her reaction to my joke about brainwashing Coil seemed to be going in a different direction than I initially expected. I thought she might be suspicious and angry that I might want her to do something reprehensible, sulking that I wasn't who she thought I was.

"You've been nothing but good to me, so why shouldn't I trust you? Besides, like I said, I sought you out specifically because I knew what kind of person you are."

"But I'm not a good person, not really. I'm not sure I really would have helped you if I'd had a choice, if things didn't blow up at home. I stopped caring about the injured and sick a long time ago. Healing was just a chore, something I made myself do because people wouldn't understand if I stopped. I'm—I'm heartless, aren't I? I'm so fucked up."

"You're good enough for me."

"But…! Why? I just…don't understand!"

But in reality, she wasn't really upset over the wrongness of brainwashing somebody, of destroying a person's personality or changing someone's personhood.

She was upset that she didn't care more about it.

She was afraid of being unable to stop herself from doing much more, once she started, unable to resist doing the things she secretly wanted to do, deep down.

Just like that creepy tree-human thing that she used to make new costumes, it didn't bother her at all, to the point where she didn't even notice it.

And mixed with all of that self-hate was a fear of losing the one person she still had to keep the loneliness at bay. Me.

"You still don't get it?" I said in a soft voice. "I've seen how bad things can get. I've seen what sorts of terrible things you can do when you lose control. I've seen you at your absolute lowest point, when your worst fears came true. When you used your powers on Vicky."

Her face went white.

"When, in a moment of weakness, after Bonesaw paid you a visit and forced you to break all of your rules, you were desperate and alone and you just wanted to disappear, but Vicky didn't let you. When you let yourself just one little indulgence before the end, and made her love you the way you love her."

She flinched. The unfinished ice cream cone fell out of her hands, hitting the ground with a splat.

She protested weakly. "I-I w-wouldn't do that!"

"You wouldn't. You wanted to fix it right away, only she didn't let you. She was afraid that you'd mess up her mind even more and ran away."

"Stop! I don't want to hear this!" She shut her eyes and covered her eyes.

I moved closer and loomed over her trembling self.

"Then, she was catastrophically injured. You saved her life, but there was so much damage, you needed more time and new biomass to fix her. You fixed her body, but not her mind because you knew she'd fight you if you fixed her mind first. It was done and you were ready to say goodbye. But you wanted to see her smile again. To have someone hug you before you left forever. Victoria wouldn't remember, it was just a way for you to get closure."

"N-no, don't say anymore, please!" She stumbled backwards, then hit the crate behind her, and fell down. The crate, being empty, was pushed back while she hit the ground.

"You wanted her to be happy. You could tweak, adjust, change things to make her better. You had all this leftover material to use, from the healing cocoon you made for her. So you start making her better. When you're done, you start undoing everything, all of the physical and mental changes. But you're so tired, so scared, so lonely, you need take a break first."

I could hear her beginning to hyperventilate as I surreptitiously switched my words to the present tense.

"You change more things. More things you have to fix. Days pass. She's a giant mess of spilling flesh and twisting curves now."

She curled up into a ball and made a strangled cry.

"You lose track. You don't remember what she was supposed to look like. You can't change her back."

I fell silent, observing her sniffling and crying. It occurred to me that if I wanted to, I had the means to break her completely. More so than Jack Slash and Bonesaw even, because they were known monsters and I was somebody she trusted.

The past few days she had been going with the flow, but she had already been teetering on the precipice the moment she decided to break her rules and run away. I was her last hope, someone that could tell her what to do so that she didn't have to think about it and drown in all her self-hatred and guilt.

But I wasn't Jack Slash. Unlike that madman who simply wanted sadistic entertainment, I had goals.

I bent down and wrapped my arms around her, pulling her head to my chest.

"Don't touch me!" She struggled against me, but I was fully clothed and carefully avoided letting her touch my exposed face.

"It's not your fault," I said in a soothing voice. She continued struggling, and I pushed on.

"It was Vicky's aura and your shard sabotaging you!" I said in a strong voice.

She stopped struggling. "W-what?' She asked in a quiet whisper.

"Don't you see? It was never your fault. Vicky's aura was pressuring you for years. Then, at your lowest point, your shard took advantage! It took away your ability to fix her! It took control of you, and made you change Vicky into an echo of the Entity that died! It wasn't your fault! It was Vicky's aura and your shard that was at fault, even if the deed was done by your hand! There's a monster hiding inside of you, giving you dark thoughts pretending to be your own, and you've been holding it back all this time!"

Her eyes finally found mine and I saw the horror etched in them.

"But it hasn't happened yet. It doesn't have to be that way. I'm here now and I won't let you fall apart like that again!"

There was a glimmer of hope in her expression again.

"So, don't worry. Don't blame yourself. Blame your shard. Blame Vicky's aura. You're already on a different path. You're in control of yourself now."

"But…what if…" She whispered, gripping tightly onto my coat instead of fighting me now.

"But nothing. You don't have to fight this alone. I'll be with you every step of way. I've already seen you at your worst and I'm still here. We're a team and we're in this together now. When you lose your way, I'll hold your hand and guide you. When you fall apart, I'll gather the pieces and put you back together. When you can't hold back the monster inside anymore, I'll bear the burden of your sins with you."

I grabbed her hand that was clutching at my coat with my own left hand, skin exposed.

She flinched and panicked, trying to pull away, but my grip was iron. "Look, you are in control Amelia Claire Lavere! You're on a different, better path now! You have escaped the chains binding you at the Dallons! You are the master of your own power now, not the other way around! You—"

I choked and fell forward, eyes bulging with a shocked look, and collapsed on top of her, twitching spastically.

"Kaleidus!"

"Oh god, oh god, what did I do? Kaleidus!" She shook my body and channeled her power into me. From her hands her power traveled into my nervous system, forcibly calming down the randomly firing signals.

A massive headache struck me as the feedback from the nerve signals wound back up into my brain. But my seizure didn't stop, instead it grew worse and I started foaming at the mouth.

"A-am I losing control? Why can't I fix this?" She said to herself in fearful, panicky tones.

I started hallucinating. A kaleidoscopic swirl in my mind—it shattered into a trillion reflective mirrors—the crack of thunder and fire burning through my veins—a white hot rod sinking into the base of my neck—my muscles contracted unnaturally and tore themselves, blood vessels popping everywhere, and my whole vision was red.

"This can't be happening!" Amelia cried with tears falling down her cheeks.

My heart constricted oddly and cells began dying en masse. My skin and bones cracked and blood exploded outwards like a fountain.

I heard a shrill scream before my body froze completely and I felt another white hot rod sinking into the base of my neck—

[->-]

—saw Amelia holding my unmoving body in a cocoon.

It was a strange sensation, being disassociated from my body, and all of its sensations. I floated around as if being controlled by something else.

'Kaleidus, I can't do this anymore, you might actually die from this!' Agate thought in a painful tone to me.

I wanted to tell her that I had to be harder on myself than anybody else, but for some reason that wasn't working.

My thoughts felt sluggish, barely coherent even to myself. A white hot rod sank—

'Kaleidus! Oh no!' Agate's voice came into my mind one last time before an excruciating pain—

[-<-]

I gasped and opened my eyes.

"Oh thank god, Kaleidus!" Amelia's tearful and bloody face loomed over mine, the walls of the cocoon covering the rest of my vision.

"Amelia…" I said weakly. She buried herself into my neck and sobbed.

"I'm so sorry!"

"It's okay, Amelia, everything's fine. I'm fine now."

"No, it's not! I lost control and you almost died!" Her voice was muffled and distorted by sniffing.

I stroked her hair slowly. "But I'm fine now. I knew you would come through for me in the end. It's like I said, you're on a different, better path now. You've broken through and reclaimed control."

The distraught girl simply continued to cry on me.

'Kaleidus, please don't ever make me do that again!'

'Sorry, Agate. I'll try not to. That was pretty freaky even for me,' I thought back.

I had asked Agate to use her ability to send signals to my brain in an offensive way, instead of sending me her thoughts and senses to me, followed up by inappropriate Reinforcement. She couldn't use the actual Reinforcement spell, but I knew generally how it was supposed to work, in particular the part that adding too much prana to an object would destroy it.

Thus, I had her repeatedly attempt to "Reinforce" my body without the proper spellwork, resulting in my body destroying itself. My brain didn't get any "Reinforcement" of course, otherwise I might have just died right away without Amelia being able to save me.

Still, it was a very risky, potentially deadly, or even torturous, course of action. But to be a magus is to walk with death. If there was anything I wouldn't ever forget about the Fate universe, that had to be it.

I continued to whisper reassurances to Amelia for a long time, until eventually she lifted her head when her tears were dry. She looked at me with an expression that looked like total despair.

"I'm sorry," she said monotonously.

'Kaleidus!'

There was a kaleidoscopic swirl in my mind—it shattered into a trillion reflective mirrors—

—darkness came over me, my consciousness slipping away—

—the crack of thunder and fire burning through my veins—a white hot rod that was in the base of my neck lit up again—

—I woke up again and saw Amelia running for the door with her head hanging low.

—and we moved.

—Energy surged through me like an unstoppable torrent being forced through a single tiny straw—

I crossed the gap in what seemed like an instant, running with truly Reinforced legs and our combined prana racing through our new artificial magic circuit converted from nerves.

Our body was incomparably stronger—far too much to be the result of a shoddy Reinforcement.

We knew instinctually that this was Amelia's parting gift, making us superhuman before disappearing forever.

But how could we let her go?

Our arms closed in and wrapped around her from behind.

"Wha—"

"Did you forget what I told you already?" I spoke loudly with a hint of anger. "When you lose your way, I'll hold your hand and guide you. When you fall apart, I'll gather the pieces and put you back together. When you can't hold back the monster inside anymore, I'll bear the burden of your sins with you! You think you can just give up and decide to disappear on your own?"

"K-Kaleidus? How?" She said. I couldn't see her expression from behind her, but I knew it must have been shocked.

My voice kept rising. "People don't die when they're killed! They die when they lose their will to keep going! I promised that I would be with you every step of the way, do you think I'll let myself die that easily? You weren't the only one fighting to revive me back then! We were fighting together! That's why I came back! That's why I'll continue to come back whether you like it or not! Compared to death, how could a little sleep keep me down? If you want me to let go of you, then you'll have to kill me!"

After that, there was only the sound of our heavy breathing.

A few minutes later, she leaned back and sank into my hug.

"Sorry..."

"Stop apologizing already!" I replied in an annoyed tone.

"…then, thank you…."

"Are you going to try to run away again?"

"No," she said softly. I relaxed my grip on her and turned her around to face me.

"Why are you still crying, then?"

"I'm not!" She wiped her eyes with her sleeve.

"Yes you are. I can still hear your sniffs," I said.

"That's 'cause…I'm…happy!"

O O O