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Leona is in the Third Rail, knowing full well that Trina is not going to
like it. Well, they didn’t give her a way to contact the Keys and Keyholders
that are living in that white pocket dimension, so if they want to file a
formal complaint, they can figure out how to do it, and let her know. As it
turns out, Mithridates was completely right. After the initial shock of
millions of people all over the world suddenly developing time powers,
patterns, and afflictions wore off, the Global Council held an emergency
meeting. It was decided that everyone exhibiting temporally unusual signs
and symptoms would need to report to their local government offices. It
wasn’t a done deal yet, but it was looking like they were intending to round
everybody up, and stick them in protective custody somewhere until they
could figure out what to do with them. Leona’s independent nation of Arvazna
may indeed have a very specific purpose. The refugees already living in the
Superscraper could find the place to be pretty crowded soon.
Leona is trying to keep in the loop with what’s going on with everything,
but so far, the U.S. is the only government cooperating with her and her
requests, because she has a preexisting relationship with them. While
Senator Morton awaits further orders, he’s actually been incredibly helpful
in this regard. He’s outed himself to the world as just another one of these
weird time people, and no one has had the time to investigate his claims in
particular since there are so many others to deal with.
She’s getting a call from one of the other parallel realities. It’s from the
Parallel. “Hello? Can you hear me?” Tarboda asks. “Is this thing working?”
“It’s working. I read you five by five,” Leona answers. “Is this important?
I’m a little busy at the moment.”
“I assure you that it’s vastly more important than whatever it is you’re
doing. I have someone here who says he knows you, and he also says that if
you don’t come talk to him, my whole planet is going to be destroyed.”
Argh! Leona actually doesn’t know too many people from the Parallel, but she
can’t say she’s a fan of that reality, as a general rule. “Okay, I’ll be
there in a minute.” She turns the dial on her device accordingly, and
transitions over.
Ramses is standing next to Tarboda and Fairpoint. “Thank you for coming.”
“Report,” Leona says plainly.
“I’m the Ramses that lives here, in case you didn’t realize,” he begins.
“I’m a powerful leader here, but I am not omnipotent, nor universally
revered. I experience political opposition, and other obstacles.”
“Cool story, bro. Get to the point,” Leona urges.
“A vast army is planning an assault on your reality, the Third Rail.”
“Why?” she asks.
“Because you stole every single weapon in the entire universe capable of
killing more than a few dozen people,” Parallel!Ramses explains.
Leona just stares at him. “What the fuck are you talking about?”
“We don’t know how you did it, but you did it,” Parallel!Ramses goes on,
“and various scientific groups were able to trace the destination. You
probably thought they wouldn’t be able to, which was not a crazy notion. It
took them a long time to figure out, but now that they know, there is no
stopping them. Not even I can prevent the attack.”
“Ramses, I can honestly say that I have no clue what happened to your
weapons. It wasn’t me, and if they were anywhere near Earth, I would know
about it. There are quadrillions and quadrillions of people living here,
which I imagine amounts to an unholy amount of weaponry. That’s not exactly
something I could hide in my basement.”
“There were fewer weapons than you may have guessed,” Parallel!Ramses says.
“We do not fight with each other. We only prepare for outside attacks.”
“If there weren’t too many, then why don’t you just manufacture more?” she
asks.
“They’ve tried,” he clarifies. “They get stolen too. Time, right?”
Leona takes a deep breath in, and holds it there for a moment before letting
it out. “If the weapons are gone, how do they intend to attack?”
“They’ll dispatch unmanned ships to act as relativistic kill missiles,”
Parallel!Ramses answers. “They’re not technically weapons, which is why
whatever you used to accomplish this feat did not take them as well.”
“I told you, I had nothing to do with this. Wait.” Leona looks down and away
to think. “There may be an answer to this.” She looks at her transitioning
device. “He can’t hide from me anymore.” She looks back up to
Parallel!Ramses. “Can you stall them?”
He nods. “I’m already doing it. There are some legal hurdles before they can
transition to other realities, but those will not stop them forever.”
“I just need to find some answers. I promise you, Ramses, I have far too
much on my plate to even consider executing a plan to take your wee guns
away. But I’ll tell you this—and you can relay it to your little buddies—the
Third Rail will defend itself, and I’ll serve as the spearhead, if I have
to. I’m certain that this vast army is severely underestimating the forces
at my disposal.”
“Are you just posturing?”
Leona turns the dial. “No.” She jumps back to the Third Rail.
She’s standing before Dalton Hawk, who is sitting on a hammock, enjoying a
bowl of fruit, like a cliché. “Madam Matic! How did you find me?”
She waved her hands in front of her chest, and whispered, “magic.”
“Want some raspberries? They’re really good for you.”
“I would have thought that you would be freaking out right now. All time
powers have been unleashed in the Third Rail.”
He laughs. “I know. It’s great, right?”
“This is what you wanted all along?”
“All part of the plan.”
“Everything you’ve done up until this point has been in opposition to this
situation. You’ve been suppressing temporal manipulation in all its forms.”
“Or is that just what I wanted you to think?”
“Explain,” Leona demands.
Dalton struggles to get out of the hammock, and set his bowl down on the
table at the same time. He notices that she doesn’t budge to help him. “No,
it’s all right.”
She just clears her throat.
He makes it back down to the ground, and adjusts his clothes. “Let me tell
you a little story.”
Leona can practically feel the flashback trying to take over. “No, I don’t
wanna hear your life story. Just tell me what you want, and why it appears
to be the opposite from what you wanted before.”
“You’re bossy.”
“I’m the boss.”
“Fair enough. But this will require some background information, or nothing
I say will make any sense.” He waits for her to protest, and when she
doesn’t, he goes on. “As you know, temporal energy explains why some people
have time powers, patterns, or whatever. The thing is, though, everyone has
access to temporal energy. If they didn’t they literally wouldn’t exist.
When you met Alyssa, you discovered that she was born with her ability to
generate illusions, but she had spent all of her life without the ability to
tap into that gift. You changed that when you gave her the energy to
process. There was a reason you were able to do that. Danica could have
turned off all special temporal energy, and left just what people needed to
exist from one second to another. Instead, she left certain sources
available, like the immortality waters, to relieve the pressure.
“If she had stopped it all up, and the Omega Gyroscope failed, what happened
the other day would have happened without my help, and of course, she didn’t
want that. I did. Well, I mean, I didn’t want all that death, destruction,
mayhem, but it was a necessary evil. The Gyroscope is good at bending, but
it does have a breaking point, and I had to reach that, so I employed Alyssa
to modify it to halt all special temporal energy, and when Cheyenne was
born, she released it all at once with a force so powerful, the dam burst.
Now not even the Gyroscope can put things back as they were.”
“And why do you want people with powers?” Leona asked.
“Why did you come to me today?”
“The Parallel. They’re coming to attack this planet.”
“That’s why.”
“Why, what? You want people with powers to fight against them?”
“If that’s what it takes. Someone, or someones out there can protect this
version of Earth. Aldona’s orbital defense grid will be great for the
Reality Wars, but not this. These people aren’t ready. The world needs
heroes. Over.”
“They won’t have time to figure out what they are. They won’t have time to
train,” Leona argues. “You took too long.”
“Oh, they’ll have time,” Dalton replies confidently. “They’ll have more than
enough time.”
“How? A time bubble?”
“You get them all into that giant ship of yours, and I’ll teach them
everything they need to know, and I’ll take however long I need.”
“So, you built it?”
He shakes his head. “No, I don’t know where it came from, but it’s yours,
ain’t it? So let’s use it to do some good.”
Leona scowls at him and seethes. For the most part, they don’t want to give
the antagonist what they want. If the team can find another way, they
should. She once again has to take a detour from her work, but it must be
different than the other times she broke Trina’s rule to only focus on the
Keys. This has to qualify. The Reality Wars are supposed to start after the
Reconvergence. And that will never happen if these rogue Parallelers kill
everyone in the Third Reality first, including Cheyenne. Let's just say that
that’s who Leona is protecting. And hey, a whole planet gets to reap the
benefits. Bonus. “I’m not going to help you do anything. You could have
brought me and my team on this, and made things a whole lot easier. Now I
have to clean up this mess myself, like I always do. You can choke on those
grapes for all I care.”
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