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Things were a little awkward at first. Leona was a lot less powerful than
Senona originally believed. They didn’t think to ask Echo or Clavia about it
at some point, or the truth might have been clarified earlier. Senona lived
in another universe, and their access to information about
other universes had its limitations. They were aware that one Leona
Matic was a time traveler in Salmonverse, but not that there were multiple
people who went by the same name. They were thinking of an alternate version
of her, who was far more powerful, and therefore better equipped to help
with the effort at Origin.
This other Leona was from a different timeline, and only survived the
transition because she was the one who went back to the past to save Mateo
from torture, thereby creating the new timeline. She had a number of
different time powers, which she managed to procure using organ transplants.
The exact details of her exploits remained a mystery to this day. Senona
didn’t realize the discrepancy. It wasn’t like they hadn’t heard of
alternate selves before. It was simply an unknown unknown to them. The issue
was that Alt!Leona never promised to aid in the efforts at Origin. To their
knowledge, she had never even been there. Once discovering the difference
between the two, Senona’s initial reaction was to let this Leona return to
her life with the team, but she didn’t want to do that. After she asked for
her own wish way back when, Senona mentioned that they would have to call
someone for aid. When she pressed for clarification, they explained that
that was how it worked. They couldn’t do much on their own, and could not
leave Origin themselves, so they always recruited others. Leona volunteered
to be one of these agents should the need ever arise. It now had.
For two years, Leona was the boots on the ground of the operation. Even
though she couldn’t do as much as the other Leona, she wasn’t powerless
either. Besides her normal teleportation, Senona provided her with temporary
abilities. These included the means to travel all over the bulkverse on her
own, do so invisibly, and with a certain knack for persuasion. She also had
a number of ancillary abilities, like stamina and strength, which let her do
the job without getting sleepy or fatigued. She did still sleep, and had
time off. In fact, she had full permission to travel to any universe she
wanted, and do whatever she wanted. But like professional chess, the clock
only ran while she was working, and she didn’t want to delay her return to
the team.
Meanwhile—if such a concept had any relevance outside the normal passage of
time—Olimpia and Ramses were getting to know their son, Echo. They didn’t
have to do any work for those two years, though they joined Leona on
precisely two occasions, when the wish went beyond her scope alone. Today
was the last mission. After this was done, the team members would go back to
Salmonverse to be with their friends. Clavia would return here, and rejoin
her brother. They weren’t slaves or anything, but they were not allowed to
live in Salmonverse. That was something that I decided long ago, and while I
gave them a pass on that for recent stories, it was never going to be a
permanent thing. They are too powerful. Any problem which comes up here can
be solved nearly instantaneously if they’re involved. They got to go.
“We understand,” Echo said, psychically, but also out loud. “But I demand
periodic visits.”
That can be arranged. We’ll talk later.
“Oh, are you taking requests?” Sanaa Karimi interjected from wherever
she was in the timestream. “I would like a real life pink pony. Sparkly fur. It has to cuss a lot.”
Sure, I’ll get right on that. Hold your breath and wait.
“I’m gonna tear out your eyeballs, and jam your thumbs into them so you
can’t type anymore,” Meredarchos added.
You know where I live, asshole.
With the brief and unhealthy transuniversal psychic conversation over, Echo
refocused on this last mission. He and his parents wanted to help make it a
good one.
Leona was watching him. “Everything okay?”
“It’s fine,” he replied. “What do we got?”
“This is a funny one,” she answered. She had barely finished her last job,
and was still wearing her adventure clothes. Since she couldn’t be seen,
this wasn’t necessary, but it helped her get in character. “Not funny,
ha-ha; more funny, oh God. A young man is playing a game called
Scourge of the Valley, and his older sister has asked that we make
sure he wins. The way it works, you and your competitors are summiting a
mountain. In this world, death is more of a nuisance, and not final in most
cases. If you reach the summit first, it’s yours, but only temporarily,
unless you made it there without killing anyone. If you killed anyone on the
way to get an edge, they will come back as ghosts, and fight you for the
summit. If you lose that second round, you will die for good. Our man is not
a skilled climber, but he won’t try to kill anyone. He wants to prove that
it’s possible to win without violence. She doesn’t think he can do it.”
“This sounds too easy,” Ramses decided. “All we have to do is kill everyone
so this man doesn’t have to. He’ll win by default. As long as they really
will come back to life, and it’s fine...”
“Senona doesn’t think it works like that,” Leona explained. “If we serve as
the man’s agents, invisible or no, he will be technically responsible for
those deaths. They will become his enemy ghosts. We have to keep them from
winning without killing them. We have to give him what he wants: a
clean and bloodless win.”
“That’s impossible,” Olimpia thought. “If this guy’s sister doesn’t think
he’s a fast enough climber, he’s probably not. The competition is probably
fierce, and they will be killing each other for that top spot. As soon as
even one of them makes it, he’ll have no chance. It will be over. We can
protect him from attacks, but we can’t help him climb.”
“Wait, what are the physical laws of this universe?” Echo questioned. “Do
they have temporal manipulation? Can we just teleport him there without
raising eyebrows?”
“They don’t have anything like that. However, according to the sister, they
will probably accept something weird. If he’s at the summit, and didn’t kill
anyone, he’ll win. The culture is really weird like that. But that’s just
the bloodthirsty audience. Apparently, a lot is riding on this. It could
potentially change the world, because no one has ever done it nonviolently.
But that won’t work if we use tricks. It has to look like he did it the way
he claims he will. That’s what the sister is really asking for, not
only a simple win.”
They went quiet, and started thinking through the dilemma individually.
Every once in a while, one of them would think they had an idea, or even
articulate it, but it wouldn’t work. Too many ideas relied on people
noticing that it didn’t seem genuine. Finally, however, Olimpia thought that
she had it. “Help me understand how this multiverse thing works. Every dream
anyone has ever had, and every story that has ever been told, exists
somewhere as a real, tangible, universe?”
“Yeah, essentially,” Echo agreed. “Some are more stable than others, though.
Dreams don’t last very long. If their laws of physics are weird, they won’t
survive past the duration of that dream. Even if they’re mundane, they’ll
probably collapse anyway, because of how fleeting they’re being observed and
utilized. Branes based on stories are generally more stable, but the less
popular ones still don’t last long.”
“I think the one I’m thinking of is pretty popular, so likely stable, but it
still might look weird,” Olimpia began. “If all of the other competitors
suddenly act confused, and even fall asleep, it will look suspicious, won’t
it? It’s not exactly violence, but they’ll assume he poisoned them, and the
revolution part of his win might not succeed.”
“Ah, you’re thinking of the Honan Enchantment,” Ramses realized. “You’re
probably right about the optics, but it’s still not a bad idea. We just
can’t do it to all of the competitors. Fortunately, that would not be
the only universe we have access to, and we have all the time in the worlds,
right? We need to find out how many competitors there are. A ranking would
be great for us, so we’ll know how to prioritize. Then we can come up with a
list of ways of slowing people down. One or two of them fall under the
Enchantment, another one goes temporarily white blind—we’ll make sure they
don’t slip off the edge—and a third—I dunno—gets the runs, or something.”
“That’s pretty gross, father.”
“I’m just trying to get this done without hurting anyone,” Ramses defended.
“Diarrhea is only temporary, and everyone gets it. We’ll pick the guy who
ate a big breakfast.”
Leona thought about it for a moment. “This is going to take more time than I
hoped, but as long as we get back home in 2550, I’m willing to at least
produce these two lists, and see if we can come up with enough ideas to
avoid violence. The rankings are a good idea. If the brother isn’t the
absolute slowest contender, we could leave some of them alone, and
let them lose naturally.”
And so, the agents got to work. They really rushed through it, zipping in
and out of various branes, taking whatever they needed, even if it was only
an ultra-strong laxative. Some of the ingredients were harder than
others. For instance, for some reason, they were fully visible to the locals
where they were trying to retrieve Honan Enchantment. It took a little time
to convince them to give some of it up, but since they only needed a very
tiny bit, it was okay, because it wasn’t enough to condemn a large
population.
All told, they needed 24 ways to interfere with the brother’s competitors in
Flipverse. Six of them were probably not going to win either way, so they
were left alone. The competition was still pretty heated. The woman
unfortunate enough to be saddled with diarrhea just powered through it, and
didn’t let it stop her. It did slow her down, though, which was enough to
get her killed by the guy whose ropes they lathered with glue. He accused
her of sabotaging him, and freehanded his way up to her, cutting her
rope in retaliation, and plummeting to his own death with her.
They severely underestimated one of the untouched competitors, but the
interesting part was that he too felt no need to kill anyone. Though, to be
fair, that was probably thanks to the agents, and not his convictions. They
reached the top at about the same time, and the rule in that case was that
they would have to fight to the death. In a twist, despite barely knowing
each other, they pulled a Hunger Games, and tried to jump off the
cliff at the same time. Normally, the judges wouldn’t care. Suicide wasn’t a
big deal for them. But there were no other contenders at that point.
Everyone else had failed or been killed. A ghost couldn’t win unless they
had someone to best at the summit. They simply could not allow there to be
no winner at all, so they were spared, and declared joint winners. A little
derivative, but it was ultimately better than one of them winning alone. The
world they were living in wasn’t ruthless, and the judges weren’t evil. But
society had kind of turned to shit. Even though it was technically okay to
die, it was unhealthy to be so casual about murder. Not even Castlebourne
was so careless. They were more focused on pushing life to its limits,
rather than making death itself feel the goalposts.
“It sounds like it went well,” Senona said once they were back on the
platform on the waterworld where they lived.
“I would say so,” Leona agreed. “Our task was to help him win this one game,
not the whole revolution. That’s up to the natives now, so I think we
objectively succeeded, even if it was a tie.”
“Makes sense,” Senona said. They turned to Olimpia, Ramses, and Echo. “Have
you three said your goodbyes? I was unable to procure a daypass for you,
Echo. You will be staying right here, while they switch places with Clavia.”
“Yeah, we had a meal together in Moderaverse,” Echo responded. “We are
prepared to part ways...for now.”
Now back to Leona. “Did you find some moments of joy during this job,
or were you always just itching to leave?”
“No, it was a rewarding experience,” she answered honestly. It wasn’t that
way every time, though. Some people asked for not-so-great things,
predominantly for military purposes. Senona didn’t discriminate, and Leona
tried not to judge. The simple rule was, if they figured out how to get to
Origin, and their wish was feasible, it was granted to them.
They nodded tightly. “Perfect. Your commitment is hereby complete. I thank
you for your service.” Senona whisked them away.
They found themselves in an unfamiliar place. They had no idea where the
hell they were. A gargantuan tree trunk towered over them, and disappeared
into the clouds. The rest of their team appeared before them after a few
seconds. “Oh, hey,” Mateo said. “Welcome back...to Ramosus. This here is the
Tree of Axis.”
“What?!” Ramses exclaimed.
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