Giorno Giovanna had an office, but it wasn’t on Celestia City, the Hub, or even Earth Stand. It was in a pocket dimension not listed in any directory. Not even the other Overheads knew where to find it, because he would always come to them if they needed to talk, not the other way around.
However, occasionally one of the agents of his Intelligence Division would need to speak with him somewhere discreetly. The office was the best place to do that.
Today, Olivia had said she needed to give him a report in person.
She stood in front of his desk – refusing to sit down – pacing in front of a holographic display. “Right, boss, I’ve noticed something very suspicious.”
Giorno nodded. “I’m listening.”
Olivia pulled up an image of an upright bear creature that looked like he had stars in his fur. “This is Skarn. We know that. Think very closely – what else do we know about him?”
Giorno narrowed his eyes. “That he is one of our allies. Part of a semi-major trade route. A known patron of the arts, occasionally even donating to ambitious artistic projects of our own.”
“And what about his origin society?”
“The Congeries. Class 2.”
“And has anyone ever been to the Congeries?”
Giorno’s eyes widened. “I assume nobody has by your phrasing of the question.”
Olivia nodded. “Oh yeah, the only evidence that the Congeries exist is the ships that go along the trade route and Skarn’s little family of representatives. No Merodi has ever seen the Congeries, and we don’t even have it on any of our maps. We’re just content having this bear and his family show up and give us presents. That’s what’s suspicious.”
Giorno folded his hands together, frowning. “This is a rather glaring gap in our intelligence.”
“And I know how to remedy it.” Olivia brought up an image of another bear, this one in a set of robes that wouldn’t look out of place on a wizard. “This is Skarn’s son, Arthon. He’s currently here to gather information on how the trade route has been going. Since the route has largely been ‘we get stuff without giving it to Skarn’ there will be no complaints. He will leave shortly.” She brought up an image of her old Puddlejumper. “And I will follow him back to the Congeries to see if there’s a reason we’ve never been invited.”
Giorno nodded. “Need any backup?”
“This is a stealth mission. The fewer the better. If you have someone specific in mind I’ll take them, but I’d like to get going as soon as possible.”
“If that’s what you think is best. Come back safe.”
“I always plan on that, amigo.” Olivia smirked. “He’ll never even know I’m there. The number of cloaks on me and my shi-”
“I’m aware how much stealth technology you have at your disposal. That’s why I’m allowing this at all. I would fear fallout otherwise. But I trust that you know what you’re doing.”
Olivia smirked. “Aw, thanks! Tell Roxy she’s in charge of my office while I’m gone.”
~~~
Olivia rarely needed to use her Puddlejumper anymore. Most of her work could be accomplished in one of the Intelligence Division’s secret bases where all the computers in the world were at her disposal, and her reach could extend into the Internet of any nearby nation. Most of the espionage efforts she was responsible for involved single worlds close to Merodi Universalis or the USM, which nobody really trusted.
Occasionally she’d try to hack her way into the Melnorme. That never worked. Over the years they hadn’t changed a bit. Merodi Universalis was finally able to afford some of their goods, but after years of talking to a brick wall, they rarely bothered. The Melnorme were there and nobody wanted to deal with them unless absolutely necessary.
Regardless, it made Olivia slightly giddy that she got to use the Puddlejumper again. She was going to trace Arthon back to the Congeries and explore the area for herself – all the while being completely invisible. Skarn claimed the Congeries were a Class 2 society. This was certainly possible, but from what she’d seen of their ships they weren’t that far ahead of the Merodi in terms of technology. She had them pegged as a low-Class 2. Merodi Universalis was a high-Class 3 with the addition of Skaia’s Dream and Earth C, so the gap wasn’t that far.
So she was relatively confident they wouldn’t be able to detect her. Just to prove it to herself she did a few loops around Arthon’s ship to see if it triggered any reaction. She got nothing.
Arthon’s ship was a personal vessel about four times as large as the barrel-shaped Puddlejumper. Like just about everything Skarn and his children were associated with, the ship was a work of art. It was vaguely manta-ray-shaped, with two long protrusions flowing from its head down its back. The ship appeared to be made of metal, but it moved like a living organism of muscle, flesh, and bone. The coloration of the metal continually shifted from yellows to reds to purples in a way that was always aesthetically pleasing, but seemed random.
Olivia grinned, pressing a few buttons. It couldn’t detect her. Good.
Shortly thereafter, her scans told her that Arthon had transported from the surface of Earth C to his ship. She put her hands on the controls, readying herself for a stealth chase.
All of Skarn’s ships had what was known as a ‘whirlpool drive’ to the Merodi, given the way it affected the ships and all who used it. Visually, it looked like the translating entity was stretched into a noodle and then swirled around a single point until it vanished, like something falling into a whirlpool. …Or a black hole, but the ‘black hole drive’ already existed elsewhere that actually used black holes to create FTL travel.
The whirlpool drive was fast, known for corkscrewing through numerous universes in the spaghetti noodle state, creating travel time between the start and end universes. The motion would leave, temporarily, disturbances in the universes it passed through. Olivia would need to move quickly to follow these disturbances.
Luckily for her she had the fastest most state-of-the-art dimensional drive installed on her Puddlejumper: the hummingbird drive. It was designed with one thing in mind – making lots of dimensional jumps really, really quickly. The amount of mass a hummingbird drive could move was small, but Olivia’s Puddlejumper was one of the smallest ships around. With just a bit of tweaking and a lot of government funding, this particular Puddlejumper was one of the fastest dimensional ships in the entire Merodi fleet. It followed the corkscrew easily, jumping through universe boundaries long before the residual traces of dimensional travel would fade. She actually had to slow herself down so she wouldn’t pass Arthon’s ship.
She checked her navigation, watching a little white dot cross the Q-Sphere ever so slowly. Now that Merodi Universalis had been to multiple universes that manifested the Dark Tower, they were able to find the actual location of the Dark Tower. Traveling to the Dark Tower was never a good idea since it would just send you somewhere random, but since the Dark Tower had connections to every universe, it could be used as a navigational landmark. No more did the computers have to give a big question mark when you asked ‘where in the multiverse are we?’ It would always have a general idea.
Not that it would have a map of nearby universe arrangements. With their current large-scale understanding the multiverse was just a mish-mash of fuzzy blobs on a screen. But at least they’d always know which Sphere or in-between area they were in.
It looked like she was heading to the relative multiversal ‘south’, though not straight down, so they weren’t going to hit the tremendous Celestialsapien territory. They were heading to, surprise surprise, an area of the Q-Sphere that had no data available.
She was going to fix that.
It took about twenty minutes to arrive at the destination universe. Or, more accurately, universes.
Arthon’s ship stopped whirlpooling through the multiverse in a realm where there were no stars or planets, but rather a soup of space filled with bizarre structures. To their left, they could see a seemingly endless structure shaped like DNA, except made entirely of precious metals. To another side, there was a fractal cube with holes that appeared to go on forever. In another location there appeared to be a rotating planet – except it was disc-shaped, making the ‘rotation’ defy normal three-dimensional sense.
Olivia’s sensors told her the space of this place was akin to the Paradox Space encountered by Eve and her friends in the Combine-Horrorterror War, though considerably milder in the ways it fused universes. Time was linear and space was mostly three dimensional, but with a flexibility that allowed for bizarre, yet beautiful constructs such as the disc planet.
Olivia had no doubt that this place was the Congeries. A realm of universes sewn together into one physical plane you could fly through, from one set of physics to another…
If Skarn and his children were responsible for creating this place, she wouldn’t be surprised. The structures had clearly been created with an artist’s intent, meant to please the eye rather than serve a purpose. She couldn’t imagine the disc-planet was comfortable or even livable, and she couldn’t imagine what the point of an infinite fractal cube floating in the middle of space would be.
She kept following Arthon’s ship, which had opted to cruise through the Congeries at subluminal speeds, which Olivia wasn’t going to complain about. She took the opportunity to sort through all the signals running through the multiversal soup of this place. To her surprise there was very limited communication – highly unusual for a society that would call itself Class 2. Was it just that they used a method of communication she couldn’t detect?
She shook her head – that wasn’t it. Arthon had sent off a simple ‘I’m back’ message, followed by a brief report on what had happened in Merodi Universalis. But there was no response, and she only picked up a handful of other messages going by. One of them was about the construction of ‘a new piece consisting of planes U899, V924, and K101.’ Otherwise almost nothing.
She picked up a few simple radio-wave transmissions, but the soupy space of the Congeries corrupted the signals beyond recognition. If she hadn’t just seen Arthon’s ship send a signal that could cut through the mess, she would have assumed it was the nature of the Congeries that was keeping communication to a minimum.
Clearly she had to learn more about this place. Since there appeared to be no Internet, she was just going to continue following Arthon to get more information. She kept scanning the entire time – if messages weren’t going to provide her with anything, she was going to go off of visuals.
Skarn clearly enjoyed fractals and bizarre geometry in his Congeries, since that was a recurring theme with the ‘works of art’ all around her. Most of the fractals were composed of physical materials that folded in on themselves using tricks of spatial distortion to give the appearance of a truly infinite construct, when in fact there was a very finite (if large and complicated) pattern within the structure. Some of them moved, including a mess of orange thorns that rippled in a mesmerizing pattern, accentuated by what Olivia guessed was a star stretched into a string and somehow kept burning.
She supposed it was possible she was just flying through the ‘fractal’ section of the Congeries, and that in another section there might just be paintings of famous individuals the size of a gas giant, or something.
Skarn hadn’t been lying about his artistic attunement, at least. Though she found herself wondering how he made all this art. Given the few messages she was able to parse, she assumed it was created via the fusing of different parts of different universes together into the Congeries. She would love to know exactly how that was accomplished.
Then she got to watch one being built. In an area of the Congeries that was relatively empty, she saw dozens of bubbles appear – each one containing the undeniable shape of cosmic superstructures, telling her each bubble was a complete universe of the standard ‘stars in space’ variety. The bubbles were far smaller than they should have been, but when you were placing universes within universes via physical boundaries local size tended to only matter if you wanted to travel from one to another.
The bubbles were stretched out until each of them came to a point. The tips of every universe were cut off and grown in size until Olivia could see they were blue-green planets. These dozens of planets phased in and out of tangibility, lining up with each other. The planets fused together, creating a spindly, tree-like construction. Much of the remaining galactic superstructures of the universes were twisted into the shapes of beautiful, white leaves and placed at the ends of the planetary strings.
It was beautiful.
It was also horrifying because every last one of those planets had been a version of Earth. They’d just fused dozens of them together into long strings. She imagined billions of people suddenly fused with rock, dying instantly for the creation of art.
Maybe they were uninhabited Earths?
…Nope. She was getting a lot more radio signals than before, and a few higher-level methods of communication that made it through to her without much corruption. There had been no warning for any of these universes – they had just been swiped up and fused together. Their entire societies just gone.
Olivia began to doubt that Skarn was a low Class 2. She kept following Arthon’s ship, her fingers flying as she sorted through all the data she had just gotten from witnessing the creation of that multiversal structure.
The first thing she realized was a glaring flaw in the process. Even a miniscule bit of reality anchoring or powerful magic would keep it from having complete dominion over a universe. It was only able to exercise its will on universes that truly had no defenses. Merodi Universalis wasn’t in any danger from this technology… If it could even be called technology.
She detected that the energy came from somewhere deep within the Congeries – so far away her sensors couldn’t give her an accurate reading on its location. Whatever it was, it was powerful, and likely well guarded.
Clearly, Skarn wasn’t as nice a guy as he made himself out to be. This was good to know.
Arthon’s ship arrived at what appeared to be a normal planet floating in the Congeries at first glance – but scans told her it was really a forced fusion of four worlds. A highly volcanic world, a frozen world, a desert wasteland, and a world with violent atmospheric storms. Somebody was trying to be clever with the four elements when they made this one. It notably wasn’t any more massive than a single planet, unlike the tree construct which had sewn the planets together into strands.
Arthon’s ship landed in the outskirts of a city situated between a mountain of ice and a volcano, protected by the large plane of sand it was built on. The city hardly appeared to be something of a multiversal society – it looked closer to medieval than anything else. Stone buildings, fires, livestock… There were clearly a few magic lights around, but no technology aside from Arthon’s own ship.
He got out of his ship. He was as bearlike as always, his robes billowing in the violent winds of the world. All the citizens of the city were human – and every last one bowed to him in reverence and fear.
He ignored them, floating away from the city with his magic power toward the icy mountain.
Olivia decided not to follow him just yet – she needed information. Given the fact that, apparently, most the citizens of the Congeries were probably just like these people, she would have to get information the old fashioned way. By talking and gossiping. She was good enough at that. She was going to have to look a lot less conspicuous…
She parked the Puddlejumper a few meters off the ground in an abandoned alley. She pressed a few buttons on her wrist, activating a disguise. She still looked like herself – her face was her own, and her getup was still white and purple, but all of her cybernetic enhancements were hidden. She might have looked slightly flamboyant, but one of the best ways to blend in was to stand out. No one ever suspected the eccentric loudmouth of being the spy.
She leaped out of the Puddlejumper and grinned. The winds were strong enough to blow her white hair into her face, forcing her to tuck it into the back of her shirt. She remembered the time when she was still Sombra and her hair had been short, not to mention purple. Good times. She had no intention of going back to them, though.
Putting on a cheeky smile she walked right out of the alley.
“Hello people!” She shouted.
The people looked at her with fearful eyes and tired faces. They spoke to her in an unknown language.
Olivia blinked. “Huh, it has been a while since the translator came across a language it didn’t know…” She pointed to her mouth. “Keep talking.”
Apparently this was a rude gesture, because it made one of the burlier men swing at her. She ducked, twisted under his arm, and threw him to the ground. She was way too small to do that, but cybernetic enhancements did wonders. It made the crowd gasp at how quickly he was taken down.
Olivia dusted her hands. “Now that that’s out of the way, how about you all keep talking?” Instead of pointing at her mouth she rolled her hand in front of it, trying another method of communicating.
They definitely didn’t get it, but they started talking amongst themselves, and that was good enough for her. She waited for the translator to have a full picture of their language. Then she opted to make herself invisible to freak them out.
“Where did she go?”
“Was she a ghost?”
“Was she one of the lost spirits?”
“Arthon has come… and now her… this cannot be a good sign.”
“Are we material in a new work?”
“She could be here to kill us all!”
Olivia learned several things from this. One, out-of-context things that couldn’t speak the language weren’t unheard of. Two, they were thought of as dangerous. Three, they feared Arthon something fierce. Four, they were well aware that at any moment their world could be recycled into a new ‘work’ for Skarn’s fancy.
Evil artists, what will they think of next?
Her original plan of just walking around and talking was shot because of the unexpected failure of the translator – they now knew she was something truly out of context – so she was just going to have to eavesdrop. Luckily her presence was triggering lots of conversations that gave her plenty of delicious, useful information.
The city they were in was called Nierva, and the planet was Quanera. The people definitely knew of their position in the Congeries – a work of art meant to be admired aesthetically, and that was it. A select few, mostly members of the Church of Skarn, believed that being part of the art was the way to spiritual enlightenment, but they were a minority.
There was one conversation in particular that stuck in her mind, that of a husband and a wife. She never learned their names.
“Arthon is here,” the wife said.
“Mhm,” the husband responded.
“He’s going to take more of us into his mountain, isn’t he?”
“…Probably.”
“I can’t keep doing this. I can’t keep wondering if us or our kids are going to be taken next time he comes back!”
“Brell promised us she was working to end the horror.”
“Brell makes promises and never keeps them! She’s still one of them. Who cares if her works are for us?! She still makes them! She has no power over her brother!”
“Look, I know she’s not as benevolent as some would have you believe. But it’s something. We have to hold out hope for that.”
“And what if a fissure appears and rips Quanera apart? What then!?”
The man had no response. He pulled her to him and held her tight.
Olivia left. These people lived in constant fear that their entire world could be crushed just for a piece of art. She wondered if, elsewhere, the people who lived on the ‘works’ even knew why they were where they were. The tree of Earths wasn’t told anything or given any warning. They were probably still completely baffled.
And then Arthon returned, shaking her out of her thoughts. He pointed at three seemingly random people, levitating them into the air with his power. Then he floated off to the ice mountain.
Olivia decided it was about time she figured out what exactly he was doing in that mountain. She activated her levitation harness and floated after him, still as invisible as ever. He gave no indication that he noticed her or was even able to.
The mountain of ice was surrounded in the whipping winds of the world, but Olivia was clever enough to use Arthon’s powerful form as a windshield. The mountain itself was swirling with clouds, the winds having refined the one jagged peak into an ominously smooth shape. Arthon landed near the top, at an entrance to a cave of ice.
Olivia continued floating off the ground to avoid slipping on the ice and making a noise that might alert Arthon. She did have sound mufflers in place, but that wouldn’t stop vibrations traveling through the ground directly to him.
The ice cave wasn’t very deep. There were a few meters of tunnel that served to keep the wind from whipping through too horribly, and then a single cavernous room the size of a large house. Floating in the center of this space was Arthon’s work.
It was made entirely of naked human bodies, moving through a mechanism composed of themselves. A body started out fully healthy, barely aware of what was happening. Its legs and arms would be intertwined with the limbs of others, and it would start screaming – screaming before the pain began.
The bodies were ripped apart down the middle, like going through a zipper, severing limbs from bodies and then carrying the remnants further down the chain, where they would be stripped and separated further by razor sharp bones, flesh, and other moving parts of the human body. These loose parts would then become the framework of bones and flesh that moved the next body into the zipper, tearing them apart.
The cycle completed when the loose parts were sewn back together by unconscious human bodies, creating a full human being once again – who came to, remembered what had happened last time, and started screaming.
Arthon tossed the three humans he had collected into the mechanism and watched as it absorbed them, becoming slightly larger. Their clothing and accessories fell to the ground into a pile that had clearly been growing for a long, long time.
Olivia decided now was a good time to get out of there. She moved to leave, floating toward the exit of the cavern.
A magical alarm went off.
How!? I got in just fine! She didn’t wait – she blasted into the winds of the world, trying to calculate a teleport. All she had to do was select the coordinates of the Puddlejumper…
An invisible hand of psychic energy grabbed her and pulled her back into the cave. Arthon brought her to him – though he was holding her upside-down.
Olivia dropped her cloak. “Ah, hola!”
Arthon turned her upside-right now that he could see her. “How did you get in here?”
“You know, I think it was because I was using you as a windshield. It probably thought I was just another one of your playthings!” Olivia grinned. “I really should have been more careful and left exactly how I came in, but y’know, was sorta weirded out by the human zipper.”
Arthon’s bear-like face smiled. “It is evoking the reaction it is meant to. Unbridled horror mixed with fascination. You have a better eye than most who come here – all they usually do is lose their lunches on the ground below.”
“Bet that’s difficult to clean.”
“A simple wave of my hand,” Arthon said, squeezing Olivia to remind her of her current predicament. “I wonder which of the worlds you rode in on… One of the new Earths perhaps?” He sniffed her with his huge, wet nose. “Hmm… Impossible to tell, there were many there. If you are from there, Father has gotten careless – bringing something that can hide from me into the Congeries is just asking for trouble.”
Olivia kept her smile, looking around for anything she could do. She had the teleporter ready, but she was close enough to him that he would just be able to follow it. She needed to keep him talking. He looked like a guy who liked to talk, so that shouldn’t have been very difficult. “Do I detect some daddy issues?”
Arthon growled. “Your eyes, while astute, make dangerous observations.”
“Pff, seriously, what am I gonna do, tell him? Aren’t I just a grub to your bearishness?”
“You are not a grub. You are a pigment that just needs to become part of a masterpiece.”
“You do realize some paints are made from grubs, right? Or do you not bother to learn about the worlds you smash together here?”
Arthon smiled. “You don’t understand, do you? What the Congeries are? We do not simply smash worlds together. We make the truly impossible from scraps, turning everything into more than it once was. We evoke emotion in our great works. We create. We do not destroy, or ‘smash’, as you so eloquently put it.”
“The human zipper looks a lot like destroying.”
Arthon held out an arm at his work. “This is art on a small scale. My father has taken to limiting himself only to large-scale constructions that are not as finely-tuned as this masterpiece. Here you see an eternal cycle at work – of destruction and creation. I may not be human, but I am aware of the human condition, to which this work speaks. You are constantly eating yourselves alive with your cultures, only to create the next generation.”
“Why not make it out of, I don’t know, fake humans?”
“Then the intent behind it would be lost,” Arthon said. “It really is the representation of human suffering.”
“Yeah, you’re crazy.”
“By your standards. I am but an artist – a far better artist than my father will ever be.”
“Theeeere it is,” Olivia said, smirking. “Hate the old man much?”
“He is growing o-” Arthon blinked. “Hold on.”
Shit. Olivia kept her smirk level. “What?”
“You’re sending signals out.”
“Oh, you can sense that?”
Arthon crushed her tighter. “You’re sending signals that can pierce the dimensional veil. No universe like that would allow themselves to be shaped… Where are you from?”
“Ah, you got me. Starcross Society, agent Nadia Harris. See, we’ve got reason to believe that yo-”
Arthon squeezed tighter. “You’re lying.”
“Well, I’m not, so I guess we’re at a standstill. They will come looking for me, you know.”
“And I will meet them in battle!” Arthon shouted. “No outsiders are allowed in the Congeries! I will find where you are sending that information and destroy them!”
“Yeah, good luck with tha-” She felt the hand crush her pelvis into a dozen pieces, driving pain up her body. She was dropped to the ground, presumed to be helpless.
“His mistake”, Olivia grunted, drawing her still-invisible gun and blasting Arthon in the face with special bullets designed to cut through magic and sting with the fury of a million hornets. Arthon, despite his power, had to reel back and clutch his face.
Olivia thought about activating her teleporter belt – but she knew he’d just follow her. Even if she got the Puddlejumper back, he would know where she went.
So she did the next best thing. She kept fighting without any control over her lower body. She used a bomb to blow herself through the tunnel of the cave and off the mountain. She knew a teleport still wouldn’t work – too flashy – so she made herself invisible. Surely she could still elude him…
“Ay, caramba,” Olivia muttered when she saw Arthon fly out of the cave and look right at her. She braced herself. He pulled her forward with his telekinesis and rammed her body right into his real fist.
There was a sickening crunch.
~~~
CRUNCH.
The sound of static filled the room.
“That’s all the Puddlejumper had for us,” Giorno said. “It returned on a completely automated subroutine, with no pilot.”
He put his hands behind his back and surveyed the room. All twelve Overheads of Merodi Universalis were there: Relations, Expeditions, Military, Research, Aid, Expansion, Education, Justice, Cultural, Commerce, Oversight, and Labor. Most had expressions of horror and fear on the faces and those that didn’t were struggling to remain expressionless.
“I called you all here because we have a decision to make, and it’s a hefty one all of us need to consider carefully. How do we respond to this? Even the Divisions that usually do not concern themselves with outside matters are needed. Because a declaration of war is not out of the question based on the information we have seen.”
O’Neill raised an eyebrow. “That’s my Division, Giovanna.”
“Do you wish to argue that you have sole authority to declare war or even to discuss it?”
O’Neill took a look around at the many faces. “No. It is a group decision. No commander should attack without consulting or thinking it through.” O’Neill leaned in and fixed Giorno with a glare. “I would have appreciated being told ahead of time, though.”
“It is fair he gave it to all of us at once,” the Justice Overhead spoke up – an Earth Tau’ri Asgard. “In order for us all to form our own opinions.”
“Agreed,” the Oversight Overhead said, an Equis Cosmic mare known as Sarsaparilla Fern. “Giovanna has not overstepped his boundaries.”
“Can we talk about less extreme measures before outright war?” a version of Luna named Jingle asked, the Aid Overhead and Princess of Squeaky’s world. “It seems a little hasty to just jump to that after one attack!”
“It’s not just that,” Eve said, her face having shifted to one of barely controlled rage. “While Olivia is our friend and close ally, we wouldn’t be going to war over just that. She was spying. What Giorno and I see is something else – utter brutality for the sake of art. Horrendous things like that are why we are out here, Jingle. Your division should understand that more than any of us.”
“I’ve also been in an actual war, in case you’d forgotten,” Jingle responded. “Ask Squeaky some time about how brutal that was. Merodi Universalis has never been in a war with any power strong enough to actually threaten us! The people don’t know what it’s like – they just encourage us to liberate worlds from horrible kings and tyrants. We aren’t prepared for this.”
“Jingle's right,” O’Neill said. “All the action we’ve taken in our entire existence has been sure. There have been risks, yes, but only to small groups of people and teams who know the danger. If we try to fix that universal train wreck of a place, we will have to fight something that is somewhat stronger than us! We won’t be able to protect the population from that kind of power.”
“So what, we just let them keep turning people into zippers?” Renee blurted. “I’m sorry Jack, but I’ve spent too much of my life diverting as much as I can to help everyone. It’s not like this Skarn is Them. We can’t even lay a scratch on Them, but it seems to me that if we take Skarn and his very limited family out, there is no leadership for the Congeries. Eve, how many people have they sent to us?”
“I’ve only met with Skarn, Arthon, and Brell,” Eve said. “Never anyone else. They rarely talk about the Congeries, even when pushed – and I can see why – but what I do know is that they are the rulers of it. Brell mentioned, only once, an estranged brother. I have my doubts there is a living mother, but I suppose it is possible. That’s maybe five individuals that are responsible for all this pain.”
“That’s an assumption,” the Research Overhead pointed out, beeping like the robot he was. He had no name that wasn’t a string of numbers, and was a humanoid being with a smooth, starry face without any facial features.
“You run it through your processors, R.O., all the information we have suggests they are a very very small group of people ruining so many lives.”
The R.O. didn’t hezitate. “It is the most likely conclusion. But we lack information. And they no doubt have armies.”
“No doubt,” a human version of Celestia spoke up – the Education Overhead, Celeste. “But Arthon was concerned that Olivia was transmitting. He was afraid of what she could do, even if he wasn’t showing it.”
Overhead Jingle shook her head. “Yes, yes, but that doesn’t change anything. Skarn is still dangerous, and we aren’t ready for a war. Not one of this magnitude.”
“How can you just let Skarn have his way?” Eve asked.
“We may not even need a full war,” Renee added. “Since the targets are so few in number, strike teams could be arranged, like we do in most circumstances. Corona would be more than willing.”
“If we attack like that and fail we will have a war,” O’Neill pointed out. “It’s likely they’d find a way to get off a retaliatory strike even if it was successful.”
A voice that had been quiet up until that moment spoke – Ava Jandice, Earth Stand, Overhead of Labor. “Maud, what do you have to say on this matter?”
The Overhead of Expansion knew she wasn’t being asked because of her Division, but because of her future-sight. “I do not see great destruction in the near future. But you must remember; this is an event of multiversal significance. Prophecy in these matters cannot be relied upon. As for my personal opinion, I am undecided as of now.”
Ava nodded, sitting back in her chair, thinking about something. Eve took the moment to take her in – a thin middle-aged human with smooth black hair and sharp fingernails. She was a woman with a lot of power at this table, which surprised a lot of outsiders. She was in charge of labor, how did that give her a lot of power?
Because the Labor Division was specifically designed to keep the other Divisions in check. Its responsibility was not the individual labor force of each universe – that was more local government or Oversight’s deal – but the people who were employed in the government. All the other Divisions, even Intelligence, were staffed mostly by the Labor Division.
Eve may have been the face of Merodi Universalis, but internally speaking, Ava held the most sway.
She wasn’t a king, or even a president, and the other Overheads could easily overrule her – but her position still meant something to all the others in the room.
Eve didn’t know her that well. She rarely dealt with Ava directly, almost always talking to a lower agent of Labor to get new ambassadors and liaisons. From the few times they had interacted for an extended time, Eve had found Ava a bit distant and calculating, but trustworthy. She had a Stand but for the life of her Eve couldn’t remember what it was right now.
She noticed Ava was looking around the room, judging everyone’s expressions. Eve noticed that everyone was waiting for her to say something, rather than jumping in.
“I think this decision needs more than a single meeting,” Ava said finally. “And more than just the thirteen of us. We need to make the final decision on what to do, yes, but we have advisors and other trusted individuals we would like to consult.”
Giorno nodded. “Then we shall break. Only people with enough clearance though, understood?”
The twelve Overheads nodded.
“Good. We will reconvene in twenty-four hours local time.”
~~~
CRUNCH.
The sound of static filled the room.
Corona punched the computer screen in front of her. Lady Rarity, Eve, and Renee didn’t even flinch at the destruction of Eve’s personal monitor.
“I’m going. Now,” she said.
“Oh no no no no no,” Renee said, grabbing Corona’s shoulder. “The Overheads are debating full-out war over this.”
“Why is there even a debate!?” Corona blurted. “That was Olivia!”
“I know,” Eve said. “Trust me, I know. But going over there, right now, without a plan, will be disastrous.”
Corona opened her mouth to shout – but Lady Rarity put a hoof on her. “She’s right, Corona.”
Corona’s face shifted from rage, to conflict, to depression. “Right… Right…” She slouched into a nearby chair, hand to her head.
Renee adjusted her glasses. “Eve and I believe we need to retaliate. O’Neill and at least a few others believe we can’t handle a war.”
“Precision strike,” Corona said.
“That’s one of the things that have already been brought up,” Renee said. “O’Neill countered with the very likely possibility of retaliation against Merodi Universalis on a large scale.”
“That’s why we aren’t just charging in,” Eve said. “The evil king is a little stronger than usual. If we fail on a normal mission, we just try again later or give it up. Here, failure brings us very disastrous consequences.”
Corona nodded. “Right… Right…”
“What we need to do is make a compelling argument that we can win,” Renee said. “Which is why we brought this before you. There’s a lot of data Olivia got us – can you sift through it, see what you can learn?”
Corona scooted up to a secondary monitor. “It’s in here, right?”
Eve nodded.
Corona took a breath and tapped into the computer with Raging Sights. She brushed most the information aside easily as useless – just more reason for her to hate Skarn and everything he and his children stood for. What she really needed to look at was the data about the Congeries and how physics interacted.
It didn’t take long for her to find something very useful.
“It’s basically like the area around the Green Sun,” Corona said. “A bunch of different universes meshed together so that you can move from one to another just by walking – or flying. It’s actually much simpler too, no causal time loops or lines that turn into fractals. Just a soup of mostly three dimensional space.” She furrowed her brow. “It’s a much bigger space, though. I can’t tell you how big it is. But I can tell you the direction of its center. That’s where the Shaping mechanism is.”
“Is the Shaping Mechanism a Green Sun thing then?” Renee asked.
Eve lit her eye and scanned the data Corona was looking at. “…It’s not on the level of the Green Sun,” she reported. “It’s a much lower construct, though I can’t tell you how it functions.”
“I can,” Corona said. “Raging Sights just ran all the numbers from the data here. It’s… Well, I would call it primitive, but no sort of technology this powerful should be called primitive. You know how I derived spells that could alter reality? And the way the TSAB can move universes?”
Eve nodded. “I’m aware.”
“It’s combining the two things. First, it goes into a universe and slowly alters it to be ‘moldable’. It takes a couple hours, based on these estimates. We have technology that could alter a universe’s physics faster than that. After the physics is set to ‘moldable’ he physically moves the universe into the Congeries. Since the universe is ‘moldable’ it will respond to Skarn’s will. …Or whoever’s controlling the Shaping Mechanism, since it appears his kids have made some stuff too.”
“That doesn’t sound simple or primitive,” Lady Rarity pointed out.
“It actually is. There’s any number of D-Sphere universes you can grab that physics preset from,” Corona said. “I could make a ‘moldable’ universe without too much difficulty. It would take a bit of experimentation to tease out what part of the D-Sphere actually makes it mentally moldable, but after that I’d have a push-button alter-universe device.” She paused. “Okay fine, we’re not the Collection, it’s not just a button-push. It takes a while. And any sort of physical anchor or resistor would completely tear the process apart, keeping the universe from being ‘moldable’.” Corona smirked. “Easy defense against having our universes be Shaped. Just create a bunch of reality anchors.”
“Every world already has several of those,” Renee pointed out. “To prevent certain locations from being manipulated.”
“I can’t use Seraphim in government buildings I don’t own,” Eve muttered. “Though, all these anchors are thanks to you and your work perfecting them for Earth Shimmer.”
“Thanks.” Corona nodded slowly. “All you need is one of those anchors in a universe and he can’t add you to the Congeries. I’ll write that up in a report – you have a viable defense against his strongest weapon. What else does he have that really makes him terrifying?”
“Skarn himself has more magic than you or me,” Eve said.
“And that scares away our army why?” Corona asked.
“Good point. I’ll need that report by tomorrow so we can present it at the meeting.”
“I’ll see what I can do as Research Second to sway the R.O. I’m not expecting much.”
~~~
O’Neill slammed his hands down on a table. “Okay campers, I need a war projection.”
In front of him were three members of the Military Division: his Second, Thor the Asgard; one of the high Commanders, Yellow Diamond, and the military genius Squeaky Belle.
They had just finished watching the video and were currently going over the information they had on Skarn – which wasn’t all that much.
“The mechanism by which Skarn shapes the Congeries is the largest concern,” Thor said. “Defending our universes will be difficult against such a force.”
Squeaky shook her head. “It’ll be us declaring the war. We can attack when we have an appropriate network of dimensional stabilizers ready to defend. I can’t tell you how much that would cost though, nor really what kind of stabilizers we would need.”
Yellow Diamond folded her arms – she had to sit on the floor away from the table because she was so huge. “Defense isn’t the biggest problem. Moving within the Congeries is. No matter what you say about our worlds, there Skarn can shape whatever he wants. Even with every ship and soldier equipped with dimensional stabilizers, he could still hurl entire worlds at us.”
“It’s unlike you to be the voice of caution,” Thor pointed out.
Yellow Diamond smirked. “Oh, there’s a simple solution to that too. Celestias and Lunas. We have access to a lot of planetary movers who’d be willing to fight. Not to mention the mover ships of Equis Cosmic.”
O’Neill furrowed his brow. “Perhaps. But if we’re occupied facing against the very world we’re fighting in, the armies of Skarn can attack us while our asses are in the air.”
“We know nothing about his forces or their numbers,” Thor said. “All we know of their citizens are the one city Olivia saw. We can assume much of the Congeries are like that, but there has to be somewhere they make their ships. They will have an army to deal with unexpected threats brought into the Congeries.”
“Suggestions in a war scenario?” O’Neill said.
“Don’t,” Squeaky said. “Just don’t. Too many unknowns. They could be hiding a million impervious kaiju.”
Thor narrowed his eyes. “If it were necessary to engage, which I advise against as well, the best action would be to attack on multiple fronts, the major battles serving as distractions so stealth teams can make it to Skarn himself and cut off his connection to the Shaping Mechanism.”
Yellow Diamond smirked. “I say we can do it – and here’s how. We have hundreds of powerful individuals that are either under us or owe us favors. Place all our forces that aren’t required for defense into a single spearhead assault and charge right for their center of power. Nothing could stop everything fighting at once.”
“That assumes we are able to find the center of power,” Squeaky said. “Which we won’t. Given his power over space, Skarn could just move where he and his mechanism are any time he wants! We can’t just portal in to the right location because the Congeries are a mish-mash of universes. We’d have to play ‘hide and seek’ with him.”
“Too many assumptions,” Thor said. “Which is why this is ill-advised.”
O’Neill nodded. “Exactly what I was saying. We don’t know enough. We also aren’t ready for a war.”
Yellow Diamond folded her arms.
“Write up your recommendations by tomorrow. We need to see this thing stop before it takes us down with it.”
~~~
“…In conclusion, I want to remind everyone what we do here at Merodi Universalis,” Eve said, addressing the Overheads the next day. “We aren’t some group that thinks we’re too good to help others, or too enlightened to worry ourselves with the plights of the less fortunate. It is essentially our mission to alleviate pain brought on by the evil in the multiverse. Today, it’s a mad tyrant who torments those around him out of a sense of aesthetics. I ask us to prove that we can act selflessly – even sacrificially – to hold ourselves to the values we claim are close to our hearts.” She sat down, adjusting her wings.
O’Neill had already had his turn. He hadn’t spoken anywhere near as eloquently, merely stated that there was only one of his advisors who thought the war was advisable while the other two, and himself, argued against it. He didn’t give names but everyone knew it was Yellow Diamond who was pushing for the war. He had decided to let military information speak for itself – an argument based on logic.
The only evidence Eve had was some science Corona had come up with to effectively defend Merodi Universalis against the Shaping Mechanism, and a few thoughts on how strike teams could infiltrate the Congeries. She had relied almost completely on emotional appeal, seeking to tap into the good side of the other Overheads. She may not have known them all personally, but she did know the leaders of Merodi Universalis were good people. They wouldn’t have been allowed this high if they weren’t.
Giorno, being the only one standing, took it upon himself to lead the conversation. “Then we need to put it to a vote. Do we go to war to free these people, end the suffering, and avenge our lost agent, or do we refrain for the interests of the safety of Merodi Universalis? All for war, vote now.”
Eve, Renee, and Giorno didn’t hesitate. The Justice Overhead raised her gray Asgardian hand shortly after.
Eve looked at Jingle pleadingly. The Overhead of Aid gulped, but nodded. She raised her hoof, in the end unable to just ignore the people suffering under Skarn.
Just a little more, Eve thought. The next one she was hoping on was Celeste of Education. The Celestia shook her head, keeping her hand down.
“Five,” Giorno counted, clearly not liking the number himself. “Votes for peace?”
O’Neill raised his hand instantly. Research, Oversight, Education, Commerce, and Cultural soon followed.
Notably, Maud and Ava didn’t move.
“Six,” Giorno counted, deflating ever so slightly. “Five for, six against, two abstentions. The motion is denied.”
Eve let out a depressed sigh – they were just going to let Skarn be.
“Ahem,” Overhead Jingle said, drawing attention to herself. “We should cut off all ties to Skarn and demolish his trade routes. Do not tell him why, just cut all ties. If anyone disagrees with this…” she left the sentence unfinished.
Ava nodded. “Any disagreements?”
There were none.
Ava turned to Eve. “That’s your responsibility.”
Eve nodded. “I’ll cut him off the next time he comes. We don’t exactly have a way to contact him without revealing we know where he comes from. All trading vessels will be turned away.” She turned to Sarsaparilla of Oversight. “Think you can work with Commerce to remove anything he’s given us from Merodi Universalis?”
Sarsaparilla nodded in confirmation.
“Then we’re done,” Giorno said. “There will be no war preparations. We can all get back to our jobs.”
Everyone nodded and awkwardly shuffled away, returning to their normal responsibilities – many with heavy hearts and confused minds.
~~~
Corona stared at Eve blankly. “…Denied?” The two of them were alone in Eve’s office.
Eve nodded. “It was denied. We’re cutting off all cultural and trading ties with him instead, and we’re not telling him why.”
“That’s not good enough!”
“I know!”
“Then do something!”
“I’m not the queen, Corona!” Eve shouted. “I do not get to decide everything! It may seem like it since you deal with powers outside Merodi Universalis all the time, but I can’t do anything internally without asking for favors. This decision involved people other than me! I’m sorry, but we decided against taking action.”
“Then I’ll go and to it myself.”
“No, you won’t,” Eve said. “If you go alone you’ll fail and bring the entire wrath of Skarn down on us for it.”
Corona clenched her fist, clearly still thinking about it.
“Corona, if you try to go, I will have to arrest you. Please don’t make me do that.”
Corona released the hold on her fist, sighing. “…Why couldn’t we have just agreed to fight him?”
“Because everyone has their values and responsibilities. I’ll be the first to admit that I’m somewhat disconnected from the actual citizens of Merodi Universalis who aren’t my close friends. I may be more willing to risk them than the Overheads who deal with them all the time. And you’ve turned yourself into a warrior. You’re used to battle and confident in your abilities in a full-scale war. Maybe too confident.”
Corona wanted to feel offended at that, but she couldn’t bring herself to really get upset. “So we just… Have to do nothing?”
Eve nodded slowly. “That’s right. We have to do nothing. Well, I get to shun Skarn to his face, at least, but otherwise nothing. Those people will keep suffering and we have to pretend we know nothing about it.”
Corona looked blankly at the ceiling. “I thought you designed Merodi Universalis so there wouldn’t be bureaucracy we had to cut through to do the right thing.”
“Renee did that, mostly,” Eve said. “And… well, nobody was acting out of petty or selfish reasons as far as I knew. They took what they knew about the world and what they thought about life, and made what they believed to be the right decision. I can’t fault any of them, for they all had to have an internal struggle.”
“Who voted for us?” Corona asked.
“Me, Renee, Giorno, Freyr, and Jingle. ...Jingle …She changed her mind to join us. I need to go thank her.”
“…Eight against? It wasn’t even close, was it?”
“It was actually six to five. Two abstained.”
Corona blinked. “W-why?”
“Maud abstained because she doesn’t trust her own visions in matters this large. I expected her to be forced into making a decision for the sake of tiebreaker. But I have no idea why Ava abstained. She’s one of the most politically active of all of us, why would she hold back?”
Corona shook her head. “I don’t know and I’m not going to think about it right now. I… I need to go see Lady Rarity. And Toph.”
Eve nodded. “Sure.”
Corona turned to leave.
“Oh, Corona, one last thing?”
Corona looked at her.
“When you go to bed tonight and start festering over your anger so much that you think about going again, don’t. It… it won’t end well for you.”
Corona nodded slowly. “…Yeah. …Thanks for the advice.”
Eve smiled at her as she left.
~~~
Skarn the Shaper walked into one of Eve’s private meeting rooms. He was a dual-horned humanoid bear, just like his children, though notably his skin looked less like fur and looked more like stars. It wasn’t quite the white-and-black appearance of a Celestialsapien, but more akin to looking into a nebula where entire galaxies were born. Ethereal lines of magic popped off of him, signifying his power. He wore little aside from a loincloth, gloves, and a necklace that glowed with a deep cosmic power.
He was very surprised to find Eve alone in the meeting room. “…Where is everyone else?” he spoke with a deep, but pleasant voice. “I always look forward to meeting new people, and Cass is such a treat.”
Eve looked at him with angry eyes. “Because this isn’t going to be a pleasant meeting.”
Skarn looked at her, expression shifting to sadness. “Oh. What happened?”
“They told me I should just leave a message for you and refuse to see you. I told them I’m mare enough to tell you to your face.”
Skarn finally recognized that the hostility was towards him. “What did I do? I’ve done nothing but give your world goods and art! I’ve asked for little in return!”
“All trade routes between Merodi Universalis and the Congeries have been suspended indefinitely. You and your children are no longer welcome in our space.”
“Evening, what brought this about?”
“Believe it or not, this actually wasn’t my decision. I’m not allowed to tell you!” She pressed her hooves together. “You wouldn’t have liked the suggestion I made either.”
“So you’re angry enough to cut ties, perhaps more, and I don’t even get to know why?”
“Nope!” Eve said. “And I’m here personally. Not out of any sense of honor or obligation, but just to make it cut more.”
Skarn narrowed his eyes. “You found out.”
“Found out what, Skarn?” Eve blinked innocently. “Do tell.”
Skarn narrowed his eyes – he knew that was a trap. He wasn’t sure they knew his big secret – and for all Eve knew, his artistic fancies may not even have been the secret he was thinking of. He always struck her as a man with lots of secrets. Not a nefarious one, but she’d clearly been wrong about that.
“This is a betrayal,” Skarn growled.
“This was a rejection,” Eve corrected. She wanted to follow up with react if you dare or something similar, but she wasn’t going to egg him on to war. If he attacked them then… Things would be a lot worse.
Skarn curled his bear claws into a fist – and for the first time he let his amiable demeanor fall, replaced with a cruel snarl. “I put a lot of work into forming this connection. I saw you as a people willing to change, to understand. You would have learned to accept me given enough time. But you’ve gone and cut it off early.”
“And why is that a problem with you?”
“It’s dishonorable,” Skarn spat. “If you have an issue with me, tell me what it is to my face.”
“Skarn, it’s time for you to leave.”
He pulled his fist back.
“There is one Corona Shimmer watching this meeting, looking for any excuse to pull the trigger on something particularly nasty.” She was bluffing, of course – she wouldn’t let Corona anywhere near this meeting in her current state – but she did have Seraphim ready, and a few other precautions were in place.
Skarn glared. “You have lost a valuable friend today, Eve.”
“Valuable and good are not the same thing.”
Skarn pulled back, turning to the door. Before he left, he glanced over his shoulder at Eve. “You would have been so beautiful among the Congeries. The brightest star among it all…” He left and slammed the door so hard it fell off its hinges.
Eve let out a sigh. “That wasn’t ominous at all.”
Pinkie popped out of a nearby potted plant, putting her sniper rifle ‘precaution’ back in her mane. “You picked up on that too, huh?”
“Yep. And I don’t need you or Twilence to tell me that isn’t the last we’ll see of him.” She spread her wings and stretched her hooves, trying to de-stress.
Pinkie nodded. “Yep. He’ll be back. But so will just about everyone else we’ve encountered. It’s how things work. There’s no way to tell when he’ll be back.”
“Yeah…” Eve said, shaking her head.
Pinkie fixed her with a concerned glare. “What are you going to do?”
“I’m going to go talk to Corona and make sure she gets through this. Wanna come?”
Pinkie nodded. “Yep. I’ll do whatever I can to get her back on her feet.”
~~~
“…And so we’re not going to war,” Renee told Allure as they walked the streets of Celestia City near Allure’s home.
“…No offense Renee, but I’m kinda glad we’re not,” Allure said.
Renee smiled sadly. “None taken. It was the popular decision after all, and I have to live with it even if I disagreed with it. And live with the people who thought differently.” Renee nuzzled Allure. “Don’t worry, I won’t hold it against you. You do have a daughter to think about, after all.”
“Yep.”
“How is she, by the way?”
“She’s sixteen and I swear she just skipped the teenage rebellious phase,” Allure said. “I know she’s not a normal kid, but I was still expecting something.”
Renee smirked. “Not every teenager in the world has to rebel.”
“Teenagers who speak to Alushy on a regular basis?”
Renee pondered this. “…Good point…”
“Yeah. Point is, she’s weird. Not that I’m complaining – the weirdness is great.”
“When it isn’t creepy?”
“Huh? Oh, right.” Allure rubbed the back of her head. “I stopped being weirded out by her creepy observations a long time ago. It is who she is. I don’t have to figure out how she does it. For all I know she could just be ever so slightly Aware, or have some prophecy gift, or something. Doesn’t matter, she’s Minna. Always Minna.”
“That’s precious,” Renee said, sniffing.
“Pff, stop overselling it.”
“I am not ‘overselling’ anything! It truly is one of the most precious things I’ve ever heard!”
Allure rolled her eyes. “You just keep on telling yourself that.” They arrived at Allure’s front door. “Want to come in?”
“Ah, apologies, but I am a busy mare,” Renee said, adjusting her hat. “I do believe I must check on Corona and Pinkie’s team.”
“You should try the pirate accent again. That’s sure to help.”
“Allure there’s a time and a place fo- actually, you know what? No. There isn’t.”
Allure giggled. “See ya, Renee.”
Renee winked at her. “Bye.”
Allure entered her home and walked to the living room. Minna was staring at a glass of juice. She may have been a teenager, but she didn’t look all that different. She was taller than before, but her figure hadn’t rounded out that much, and she rarely wore anything other than black dresses.
“…Trying to burn it?” Allure asked.
“Huh? No. I was just going to drink it. And then…” Minna pursed her lips. “I dunno.”
“Get one of your inklings?”
Minna nodded. “I feel like everyone’s just dodged a bullet. A huge bullet.”
Allure wanted so badly to tell her about the non-war, but Minna definitely didn’t have that kind of clearance. “I’m glad everyone’s not getting shot, then.”
“Mhm,” Minna said, staring at the juice. “It just felt… I don’t know, more personal than usual.”
Allure looked at her. “Do you have any idea what that means?”
Minna looked at her and smirked. “Mom, there was an ‘I don’t know’ in that sentence.”
“Ah. Right.” Allure rubbed the back of her head.
“By the way, Nova’s hired me to watch Stardust again. Sunburst had a convention he really wanted to go to.”
“Oh, that’s great!”
Minna chuckled. “You do realize Stardust calls me the ‘creepy babysitter’ right?”
Allure rolled her eyes. “She likes you just fine.”
“The kid’s got a morbid curiosity.”
“And you don’t?”
“It’s a different kind!”
“I sense denial.”
The two laughed. A perfect image of a family enjoying peace.