"What the..."

Ethan exchanged a look with the PRT sergeant he was discussing the current state of unrest with, as they tried to work out the best method to deal with this new ABB attack. There were gang gunmen hiding in several places in the building ahead of them, firing on a group of Merchants who were across the street in another building shooting back. They'd evacuated the surrounding area without too much trouble and Sergeant Williams was of the opinion they should let the idiots run out of ammunition then round up whoever was still alive afterward.

While seeing the point and at least partially agreeing with it, Ethan couldn't in all good conscience sit by as people shot each other, even if they were criminals. Even so, and despite his own parahuman abilities, he was disinclined to get shot himself in the process of stopping them. So they were slightly at an impasse.

The whole thing was compounded by the ongoing trouble throughout Brockton Bay that had flared up a couple of weeks ago after the E88 had managed to kill Mush, which had left the Merchants furious. Skidmark had, in return, tried to kill Victor, but somehow missed entirely and got completely the wrong building, which turned out to be owned by Lung.

The man hadn't taken it very well. No surprise there, he wasn't the forgiving sort. So he'd taken it upon himself to wipe out the Merchants, which if it wasn't for the stupid amount of destruction caused as collateral damage, most people would have applauded.

The entire situation had devolved into total chaos. New Wave had been pulled into it, mostly by accident, when one of Lung's attacks had nearly killed Lady Photon and Brandish. Glory Girl had gone off the reservation completely and kicked the shit out of Lung, jumping him without warning having tracked down his civilian ID somehow and only just missing killing him. Armsmaster had subsequently taken her down, allowing Lung to escape. She'd then escaped in turn when Shielder and Laserdream came after Armsmaster, who barely made it out. New Wave were now in a state of high alert and very defensive, not surprisingly.

Kaiser had taken advantage of the chaos to expand his territory, then run into the new group the Undersiders who had just formed, the quartet somehow ruining a number of his plans and driving him into a fury. The two gangs, one far larger than the other, appeared fairly evenly matched for some bizarre reason.

Coil's men kept popping up apparently randomly, aiding or resisting each side in turn, making everyone very confused about what the nutcase wanted.

The Protectorate was caught in the middle of all of this, desperately trying to keep a lid on it before the city was ripped to pieces. The Mayor was absolutely livid, Director Piggot was worse, and there was the distinct possibility of the National Guard being called in and martial law being declared.

Which, Ethan was convinced, wouldn't actually stop the violence, it would probably just make things much, much worse.

Four capes were now known dead across the three major gangs, two were missing, three new ones had turned up having probably triggered during the troubles, and he himself was on the verge of a minor breakdown.

He'd even stopped making jokes. That was how serious it was.

And now a special effect like something from a movie was forming in an alleyway to the side of the road their squad was on, a sphere of blue crackling lightning growing steadily and causing arcs to leap from every metal surface in the vicinity.

"The last time I saw something like that, a killer robot from the future came out of it," Williams quipped, leveling his containment foam launcher at the still-growing sphere. The six-man PRT team followed suit, two of them armed with M-16s instead of the non-lethal foam shooters. Assault stood ready, tense and worried. Behind them the shooting between the two buildings kept on going, a small part of his mind wondering how the hell the gangs could get so much ammunition, they always seemed to have enough to fight a decent size war.

Still crackling viciously, the glowing sphere stabilized at about six feet in diameter, the bottom edge visibly sunk into the surface of the alley, which was smoking where the energy met it. A delay of a few seconds was followed by a loud pop as the thing suddenly vanished, a wave of warm ozone-scented air briefly blowing across them.

Blinking at the abrupt change in lighting, as the thing had been very bright and the morning was fairly dim and wet, Ethan stared at what was revealed.

"Kid Win?" he asked in shock.

The man standing there was wearing something very reminiscent of the Ward's costume, although as he inspected it, he realized that it was different in key details. The man was clearly older, probably in his late twenties or early thirties, rather than seventeen, six inches taller, and more solidly built.

He also looked like he'd seen hell and barely escaped.

Looking quickly around, the man was muttering to himself. Ethan could barely make out a running dialog of technobabble, something about 'universal transit being a bastard and painful too,' and a comment that made him wonder, 'I hope I finally found a safe one this time.'

The new arrival had arrived looking to the side so all they saw was his profile, but he turned around in the process of inspecting his surroundings, freezing when he spotted them. A tentative smile spread across his face under his helmet visor. "Assault?" he asked querulously. "You're alive!"

'Oh, that isn't worrying at all,' Ethan thought with a sense of trepidation.

The man suddenly moved towards them, limping badly on one leg, which he could see had damaged armor over the thigh which looked like it had been melted. All the troopers raised their weapons in warning and he stopped again, a few feet closer.

"Stay there and identify yourself," Williams barked in a commanding voice.

The man ignored him completely, looking at Ethan with what seemed to be slightly shocked wonder. After a moment, almost in a whisper, he asked, "Do these names mean anything to you? Skitter?"

Ethan stared, then shook his head.

"Weaver?"

Shake.

"K… Khepri?"

Shake.

The man seemed to relax very slightly. He paused, then spoke again.

"The Techno Queen?" This was accompanied by what looked like an involuntary flinch as if he expected something to happen.

Ethan shook his head once more.

"Thank Christ for that," the man sighed. "Marceau? Banshee? Shy Girl? Starfield?"

The last name evoked a shudder from him.

Yet again, Ethan shook his head, wondering what the hell was going on.

Taking a deep breath, the man asked another series of names. "Saurial? Raptaur? Kaiju? Ianthe? Metis?" He paused again, then swallowed hard. "Varga?"

"Nope, never heard of any of them. Friends of yours?"

This provoked an incredulous stare and a short, bitter laugh.

"The last one. Taylor Hebert."

"Never heard of him."

"Her."

"Of her. No. Sorry."

"Don't be." The man suddenly looked very tired, but happy. "I escaped. I got away from her. Finally!"

Very slowly, and with no further sound, he dropped to his knees, then gently tipped over onto his face.

Ethan and the seven-man PRT team exchanged wondering glances. "What the fuck was all that about?" one of the troopers asked.

"Got me. Come on, help me get him into the truck. We need to get him back to the Rig and into medical then interrogation. You two, process the scene, normal Tinker protocols. Williams, give me a hand here." Issuing quick orders, Ethan was already feeling for a pulse. The guy was alive, but clearly stressed to, and beyond, the limit.

They soon had him gently restrained just in case, stripped of anything that looked like it might be dangerous, and lying on a fold-down cot in the back of the PRT truck. In the last few minutes the shooting from the warring gang factions had abruptly stopped, making him briefly wonder about the cause, but at the moment he had a more important issue to deal with.

He was almost a hundred percent certain that this was actually a version of Chris, or Kid Win. Older, more tired, and seriously smashed up, but still the same guy.

Which raised some very strange questions.

Calling in an encounter with an unknown parahuman, now in captivity but requiring medical intervention, Ethan sat beside the new arrival, watching him and wondering where he came from. And more importantly why he'd come.

"This guy is fucked up."

"Is that a medical description, Doctor?" Director Piggot looked curiously at the older man, who shrugged.

"It is when the patient is this fucked up." Picking up a clipboard, he leafed through the paperwork in it. "He's been shot, stabbed, burned, poisoned, with at least three different poisons by the way, irradiated, exposed to several diseases I've never even heard of, probably spent more time in a hard vacuum without protection than he should have..."

"I was unaware it was safe to spend any amount of time unprotected in a hard vacuum," Piggot interrupted.

"It isn't." He looked annoyed at the interruption, so she waved for him to continue. "He's had at least eighteen bones broken in the last probably two years or so, several more than once, he's suffering from malnutrition, concussion, scurvy, iron deficiency, and he has herpes."

The Director looked at the unconscious man in the bed, who was hooked up to half the medical equipment in the Rig infirmary, then discreetly took another step away from him.

"Will he live?"

"Oh, sure, we're good at what we do. I'd suggest calling Panacea in if you want a quick fix, but we can do it the old fashioned way. He's on a serious antibiotic which is nicely dealing with all the low level infections he has, a cocktail of supplements for the malnutrition and other issues of that type, and we've treated the burns from the most recent injury. Whatever the hell that was. It looks like some form of directed energy weapon wound to me."

The doctor put the clipboard back where it had come from. "He'll probably live. Guy must be as tough as nails to have survived this far. Impressive for all the wrong reasons."

"And the DNA test?"

"Ah. That's where it gets interesting."

Leading her to another desk, he picked up a computer tablet and poked it awake, then flicked through a series of test result graphs. "That guy is a near-perfect genetic match to one Chris Jacobs, PRT code name Kid Win. Minor differences only, closer than brothers, although not quite identical twins."

"A clone?" Piggot was surprised, but not shocked.

"I doubt it. None of the normal markers of cloned genetic material are present. I'd say he was completely normal, based on this."

"I see."

"I don't, but that's not my job."

"No. Thank you, doctor. How soon will we be able to talk to him?"

The doctor turned to inspect the patient. "Three days at least."

Piggot sighed a little. "We need to know who he is and where he came from."

Shrugging, the doctor put his tablet down on the desk. "In that case, you need a parahuman healer. Panacea could fix him in minutes. Othala would take a little longer."

"I'm not asking the E88 of all people for a favor," the director snapped.

"In that case you only have two choices. Wait, or ask Panacea."

"We're not her favorite people at the moment."

"I know but that's not my problem. I've told you what the choices are. Now go away and work out what you want to do, I have other patients to deal with and you're in the way."

She glared at the man, who glared back, unmoved.

"One day, Doctor..." she muttered.

"We'll both be dead by then, Emily. Goodbye." Turning away from her he stalked off across the infirmary to where a pair of paramedics and a nurse were dealing with a badly banged up PRT trooper, the woman hissing in pain from a seriously broken arm.

Annoyed, but not enough to push any more, Director Piggot stomped off towards her office. She was trying to work out the best bribe for New Wave to let them allow Panacea to help fix whatever weird double of Kid Win was in the infirmary. She didn't want to do it, but she had to know what was going on.

"Thank you."

Amy merely nodded, standing up. The man in the bed looked somewhat familiar, but she wasn't interested in who he was or why Piggot had been prepared to offer her family practically anything for her to heal him. Neither did she particularly care what happened to him next.

"I'm done here," she announced to the doctor, who of all the people in the room she at least had a modicum of respect for. "He'll wake in about half an hour, as you requested."

"Thank you, Panacea," he said, nodding to her respectfully. She gave him a very small smile, then turned to her PRT escort.

"Please take me back to shore, now." The trooper glanced at Piggot, who made a small gesture, then headed for the door. She followed him, wondering with an internal sigh how much longer she could go on before she snapped and did something… interesting. Shortly she was sitting in the ferry back to the dock, shivering a little under her costume.

She wondered if she should have mentioned the well-disguised technological implants and enhancements the mystery man had in several places, then shrugged. Not her problem. Let the PRT figure it out.

Ethan watched as the man that had dramatically appeared in front of them that morning stirred, then opened his eyes, blinking a little. His gaze was unfocused at first, then sharpened, as he looked around the interrogation room. He was sitting on one side of the table, Ethan and Director Piggot were on the other. The man was restrained, his wrists bound with zip-ties and connected to a loop sticking out of the table with another one. He'd been dressed in a standard PRT uniform, all his equipment at least temporarily confiscated, and was wearing a domino mask in the interests of nominal adherence to the Rules.

He tugged on the restraints for a moment then seemed to lose interest, inspecting both the people watching him with a curiously sad look. "You got me healed," he said after a moment. "Panacea?"

"Yes."

"So she's alive too. And both of you still are. Weird."

Ethan exchanged a look with the Director, who raised an eyebrow slightly. He himself was present only because he was the one who had been there when the man arrived from wherever he'd come from.

Casting a glance to the side, the man looked at his reflection in the mirror that ran across the side of the room, behind which was an observation gallery. After inspecting it, or possibly the mirror itself, he turned back to them. "Now what?"

"Who are you?"

Director Piggot leaned forward a little. "And where did you come from?"

"I'm Chris Jacobs, as you no doubt have worked out. DNA test, I'd guess. Fingerprints and retinal scans will be either identical or almost identical as well. I used to be called Kid Win, back when I was a Ward. Before I ran into… her."

Piggot stared at him, as did Ethan. "Time travel or parallel world?" the director finally asked.

He looked approving. "You worked it out faster than they usually do. Parallel world. More or less. Little bit of time travel in there as well. What's the date here?"

Visibly mulling over whether to tell him or not, the director eventually said, "February seventh, twenty-eleven."

The man, or Chris, if he was to be believed, looked rather worried at this.

"I see. I left the last place on December eighteenth, twenty-twelve. You have my alternate here, don't you? You said 'Kid Win' when you saw me, you recognized me." He was looking at Ethan, who nodded.

"We have a Kid Win, yes."

"Has he worked out his specialty yet?"

Ethan looked at Piggot, who gave a gesture of assent. "No."

"Modularization. That might help him." The man smiled grimly. "It took me a long time to work it out."

"Why are you, hmm, I'd guess about twenty-nine or thirty, when our version is only a little over seventeen now? If you're only from a year and a half or so ahead..."

"I've lost count of how many times I've jumped now, it must be dozens. There's a certain amount of error in the world jump, about plus or minus a year normally. I think I'm about twenty-nine, yes, but I've lived through more versions of twenty-eleven that I can remember. The last time was the longest in one reality, close to two years. The shortest time has been a couple of days."

"Why do you keep… 'jumping', is it? From world to world?" Piggot sounded genuinely curious, as was Ethan. "Are you looking for something?"

"I'm running from something. Someone."

"This person is following you? Hostile?" Now both of them were worried.

Alt-Chris laughed, an ugly sound of despair. "Following me? No such luck. She's always already there. I can't escape her." He looked around wildly. "But this time I have, you didn't recognize her name. Normally by now she's made her first move. I've finally escaped."

"Escaped who?" Ethan asked slowly, feeling an internal shiver at the look in the man's eyes, a look of near-insanity for a moment.

"Hebert. Fucking Taylor Hebert. The Escalation Queen, the World Destroyer, the Fury Storm. She has many names." He glared at them, leaning forward. "She is everywhere," he hissed. "So many powers, so many names, so many variations. From stupid little abilities that are barely worth mentioning, to powers that would terrify a god. But she always works out how to use them, works them out more than anyone should be able to. You can't win, not against that. All you can do is run. I ran. I'm still running." Leaning back he relaxed so suddenly he almost went boneless, closing his eyes. Ethan exchanged another look with the director, seeing she was as disturbed as he was. "But maybe I've finally run far enough."

There was silence for some while, until he spoke again, not opening his eyes. "One version of her triggered with this stupid power. She could manifest and control exactly four hundred and seventy-three grams of confetti over an area of approximately one kilometer." He chuckled for a second or two. "What a pointless ability, right?" Opening his eyes he looked darkly at them. "You know what they called her less than a year later?"

Ethan shrugged, shaking his head.

"God-Empress Papercut. She took over the city in two months. New England in only three more. The entire fucking country in another two. By the time I turned up, she ran the world." He shivered. "You don't want to know what she did to people who went up against her."

Once again there was silence. Ethan was wondering if this was some bizarre joke, but the haunted look in the man's eyes suggested it was anything but.

"My original reality, she triggered with an insect control power. That was fucking terrifying. Swarms of bees everywhere. She took over the city. I managed to get out. Next place, same thing, only she made the bees. I ran. Next place, even worse, she was a fucking insect herself. And her range was about five miles rather than two blocks. She'd taken over the country inside six weeks. I jumped a lot further that time, trying to get away from insect versions of her. Took three more jumps. One of them, she'd taken over the entire local world-chain, killed Scion, Alexandria, ran the entire place."

He shivered again. "Scion's a bad guy, by the way, he's an alien who's going to destroy the world. Sorry, should have mentioned that earlier. And Alexandria is Chief Director Costa-Brown, she runs Cauldron along with Eidolon and several others. They're evil, but trying to save people. Just really, really badly." He snapped his fingers. "Oh, right, the Endbringers are Eidolon's fault somehow. Kill him and they stop."

"WHAT?" Both Ethan and Piggot shouted in shock.

"Oh yes, Coil is… Wait, do you have Coil here?"

"Yes," the director mumbled, looking like she'd been hit with a cattle-prod.

"OK. He's Thomas Calvert." Piggot went pale, then purple. "Has a base in an old unfinished Endbringer shelter under the middle of the commercial district. His power lets him run two parallel time lines and pick the one that gives him the result he wants. Normally he ends up kidnapping Dinah Alcott, she's one of the most powerful precogs in the world. That's usually around March or so. The Undersiders work for him, Tattletale is being blackmailed by him and the others are locked into his influence in other ways. She's a thinker as well, really powerful deductive and inferential abilities. Usually ends up a friend of Heberts, makes her even more dangerous."

"Jesus," Ethan breathed. The man sounded flatly sure of himself, as if this information was only of passing interest.

"You're certain you've never heard the name Taylor Hebert?" he asked again, suspiciously.

"Doesn't ring a bell," Ethan admitted. The director didn't seem to be listening at the moment. "It's not a common name, but there are probably a few around. But I've never come across it as a new trigger."

"Thank god." Alt-Chris closed his eyes again in visible relief.

"You wouldn't believe how dangerous she is. Even when she's being a hero, everything ends up going weird, and somehow she normally benefits. As a villain she's even worse. Some of them, they play it for laughs. They're scary. Some of them, they take it seriously. Way more seriously than any other villains normally do. Those ones are fucking terrifying. Like, make Jack Slash go pale and run, terrifying."

He heaved a deep sigh as Ethan kept listening with a slightly open mouth. "The worst ones are the ones where she doesn't go either villain or hero, just does her own thing. Those ones are simply weird. Eventually a sane person needs to either join in or get the fuck out of the universe." He looked at Ethan with a small, crooked smile. "I got out. The giant lizard Taylor was… freaky. Even if she was one of the friendliest people I've ever met who just wanted to help." Alt-Chris shuddered. "And the people she made friends with, they went just as weird. Amy Dallon is a deeply, deeply scary girl."

"Panacea?" he asked incredulously. The man in the chair opposite him nodded. "But she's just a depressed snarky healer."

"Count yourself lucky, then. When she gets happy, the shit has hit the fan. And it's too late then."

He shook his head sadly. "Then there's the mime Taylor, the one that would make Lovecraft weep in terror, so many tinker Taylors… She has an affinity for tinkering, even when she doesn't trigger as one, she ends up doing weird shit that would be classified as that normally… You name it, she's done it, or been it, or turned into it." He glanced at the mirror for a moment, then turned back to Ethan. "The spider-centaur version of her was horrifying. And again, mostly just friendly. Which is the worst part. Don't get me started on the flying demon version. Magic makes things worse."

"Magic?" Ethan echoed weakly.

"Magic. Very bad juju." The man snickered at his own joke in a sort of tired manner. "But I'm free of her. Finally. Maybe this world won't get destroyed and I can finally relax."

"Destroyed?" Ethan was getting tired of repeating words that their visitor had said like some parrot but didn't seem to be able to help it.

"Oh, yeah, lots of places get destroyed. Scion does it sometimes, she does it sometimes, sometimes they do it together. That one where she ate the planet, plant monsters everywhere… That was fucked up."

Director Piggot suddenly stood. "Thank you for answering our questions. Someone will be in to show you to a secure room. You understand we can't let you go free at the moment, there are a large number of questions still to be answered, but for now, we're satisfied you mean no immediate harm. Assault, with me."

Heading to the door, she hit the button to open it, stalking out when it opened to reveal two heavily armed troopers on the other side. Ethan looked after her, somewhat confused at her abrupt departure. Standing as well, he smiled a little weakly at the older alternate version of Kid Win, who shrugged with a look of understanding. "Um, what she said," he muttered, motioning after the director, then hurried out after her. As he left the room the troopers entered.

Some way down the corridor he found the director pacing back and forth, with a face like a thundercloud as his mother used to put it. A very worried thundercloud.

"Do you believe him?" she asked.

"He seems too scared to be lying," Ethan replied cautiously. "But I can't say I understand half of that. It seems very strange even compared to the shit that normally happens around here."

"Armsmaster and Dragon have analyzed the residual traces at the point you found him," she said. "They agree that it seems very likely to be the result of some form of interdimensional travel although they currently have no idea how it was done. Armsmaster is checking his armor but so far has found no technology in it that would be capable of pulling off an interdimensional jump."

"So it might be something he needs to rebuild each time?"

"That's possible, certainly. Likely, even."

"Do you believe him about this Hebert girl?"

She turned a worried face to him. "It's… not as unlikely as it sounds. We had a contact a day ago from one Daniel Hebert, who suspected his daughter Taylor may be a parahuman."

Ethan felt blood drain from his face.

"Oh, fuck," he mumbled.

"Quite."

"Where is she?"

Piggot swallowed. "In the power testing room downstairs," she whispered. "After the PRT building got hit by that E88 action last week, we had to move the Wards here as well. So she was brought over here this morning, about the time that guy turned up. Miss Militia is talking to her and trying to discover more about her powers."

"What are they?" he asked, feeling a horrible sense of trepidation.

"Apparently she can summon a book."

Ethan relaxed, feeling stupid. "A book."

"A book. Just the one. It's described as very weird looking, disturbing actually, and in a language no one but her seems to be able to read. But there are some very… peculiar… things that have happened around her which her father thinks were because of that book." Director Piggot sighed a little. "It sounds stupid, but after what our friend in there said, I'm worried."

"It's just a book. If you're worried, we can take it away from her."

"Doesn't work. It returns to her. Just disappears as soon as it gets too far away, and ends up right back in her hands. And she gets really pissed off as well."

A sound behind them made them look, to see Alt-Chris walking towards them accompanied by the two troopers, one either side behind him, the left one with a firm grip on his arm. They stepped aside to allow them all past.

When they'd moved away, the alternate version of Chris Jacobs nodding politely to them as he passed, Ethan turned back to Piggot. "How long ago did she trigger?" he asked in a low voice.

"Just over a month ago. In school, the result of a bullying campaign as far as we can determine. That hellhole Winslow."

"Damn. That place is bad."

"It's worse now with all the trouble, the gangs practically run it. Her father pulled her out two weeks ago." They started walking, trailing the troopers and their guest who were just rounding the corner in front. "She won't say who the bullies were, just clams up and looks upset. Not a happy girl. Hopefully introducing her to the Wards will cheer her up, or at least give her someone to talk to. She's definitely got powers, we just can't figure out exactly what they are. I think she knows but for some reason doesn't want to say."

"That's not surprising if she was bullied into triggering. That implies one hell of a lot of bullying."

"It was pretty bad," Piggot nodded. "A locker full of biological waste."

There was a thud from just around the corner where the elevators were, which they were only twenty feet from now. Ethan tensed, as did the director, combat reflexes coming to the fore. Both of them knew the sound of a body hitting the floor when they heard it.

Another thud, then Alt-Chris shot around the corner, his eyes wide with horror.

"Locker?!" he screamed, grabbing Piggot by the shoulders and shaking her. "It's fucking Hebert, isn't it? That's the normal trigger for her. Winslow, right?"

"Let go of me and stand down, you fool," Piggot ground out, trying to reach her sidearm. Ethan moved to hit a pressure point in the man's neck, but he suddenly released her, stepping back, pale as a sheet.

"You said you didn't recognize the name," he moaned in horror.

"I didn't," Ethan replied, almost feeling sorry for him. It was something in the eyes, the look of a man who has walked through hell, come out the other side, then just as he went out the exit felt something tap him on the shoulder.

"Where is she?" Alt-Chris asked, swallowing and looking like he knew what the answer was going to be.

"Power testing," Piggot replied after an evaluating look.

"What's her power?"

"She summons an old book."

Alt-Chris went pale green. "A book."

"Yes."

"Written in a language no one can read?"

"Correct. Do you know what it is?"

He looked sick. "I have an idea, based on previous versions of her. She has an affinity for that as well. Please tell me that you haven't let her read from it."

Piggot looked at Ethan, then back at the man who was trembling. "Why wouldn't we?"

"Oh, god," he said faintly. "You have to get her off the Rig. Right now. What's she doing?"

Glancing at her watch, one hand still on the butt of her weapon, Piggot answered, "If they're running to schedule, meeting the rest of the Wards."

Ethan hadn't thought anyone could go that color and still be alive. "The… Wards…?" their visitor choked out. Piggot nodded.

"Including Shadow Stalker? Sophia Hess?"

"Yes." Piggot looked confused, alarmed, and annoyed. "Why is that so important?"

"Hess is the one who bullied her into triggering, you fucking idiot!" the man screamed, whirling and charging towards the elevator. "We have to stop her or..." He let out an inchoate yell of frustrated horror, slamming his fist repeatedly on the call button.

"Oh, shit." Ethan couldn't work out which one of them said it, the director or him, but they ran after the gibbering man, diving into the elevator behind him as the doors slid open, not paying the two semi-conscious troopers a second glance. Both of them were of the opinion that Alt-Chris was far too scared to be lying.

Hannah led the worried looking tallish brunette teenager into the large exercise room that was part of the powers testing and assessment area, as well as being used for general training. Several young people were gathered around watching both of them. The girl clutched the large, leather-bound book to her chest like a security blanket, almost trying to hide behind it. Wide eyes behind a simple domino mask under glasses looked around, assessing the situation. Hannah could see that she'd marked every exit in the room within a second of entering it, and probably mapped out exactly the route she'd take if she had to run.

It was very sad, but based on what she knew of the girl's history, not surprising.

"These are the Wards. Everyone, this is, for now, Summoner. She hasn't settled on a name yet, or whether she'll join us, but I'm hopeful. Summoner, this is Clockblocker, Gallant, Aegis, Kid Win, and Vista. Shadow Stalker is…" She looked around, sighing. "Where the hell is Shadow Stalker?"

"Went to get something to eat, she said she was bored and hungry," Kid Win replied with a shrug. He stepped forward, holding out his hand. "Hi, Summoner. Nice to meet you. What do you summon?" The boy had a friendly smiled on the visible part of his face.

"This book," the girl replied in a soft voice, letting go of it with one hand to shake his quickly, then returning the hand to its former position.

"Cool. Or… I guess cool," Kid Win said slowly, tilting his head to look at the cover of the tome. "What book is it?"

"My book," Summoner said quietly. "It tells me things."

"What sort of things?" Vista asked brightly, coming over and holding out her own hand. "I'm Vista."

"Hi, Vista," Summoner said with a faint smile of her own. "It tells me things I'm not supposed to tell anyone else. They can't handle it if I do."

"Why not?"

Summoner shrugged a little, running one hand through her hair for a moment before returning to hold the book tightly. "I don't know. It's not like the things are bad, just strange."

"Can I see?"

The brunette turned to the speaker, who was Aegis. He smiled at her. "I like books."

She looked undecided, glancing down at the object she was holding, then nodded shyly. "I guess. Just for a second, though."

Opening it, she leafed through it for a few pages, the stiff parchment crackling, then turned it around to show them.

Vista stiffened, her eyes so wide they looked like her eyelids had been surgically removed and her pupils expanded to the maximum. A faint sound came from the back of her throat, before she dropped in a faint. Hannah stared, then looked at the others. Clockblocker was frozen as effectively as if he'd used his power on himself, Kid Win was vomiting in a corner having dashed there with a shout of horror, Gallant was kneeling on the floor with his hands over his face, and Aegis was breathing heavily, his skin almost yellow with shock.

Taylor turned the book around and peered at the picture she'd shown them, then shrugged slightly, closing the book carefully. She looked towards Hannah. "That was weird," she said in the same quiet voice. "It was just a picture."

"Of what?" Gallant moaned, sounding like he was about to be sick. "Hell?"

"No, silly," she giggled. "Just something interesting. There are lots more, want to see?"

"NO!" All four conscious teenagers screamed the word at the same time. Hannah was checking on Vista, finding that the petite girl was simply unconscious.

A sound from behind them made them all look, to see the figure of Shadow Stalker lounging in the doorway watching them with what seemed to be idle curiosity. "What happened to the losers this time?" she asked, her tone one of contempt. Summoner turned around at that point, having been looking down at Vista with concern on her face, which for some reason made Shadow Stalker stiffen.

"Hebert?" she said in a low tone full of shock.

"YOU!" The cry of absolute rage that emanated from the previously quiet and unassuming teenager was astounding. It made the room resonate with fury. Standing completely straight, Taylor was pointing at the dark figure of the sixth ward, radiating a level of anger that was terrifying in one so young. "Sophia Hess. The Bitch from Hell." The other Wards looked at each other, then Hannah, who was feeling suddenly like there was something very important that she'd missed.

"What the hell are you doing here, Hebert," Sophia demanded, entering the room like she was stalking a criminal.

"Because of you, I spent a week in the hospital. Because of you, I nearly died. Because of you, I lost my best friend," Taylor said in an icy voice, sounding like she was pronouncing sentence at an execution. "Because of you, my Dad nearly died from stress. Because of you, I triggered." All the Wards, and Hannah, gasped in horror.

"Oh, fucking hell," the older woman sighed, moving to separate them and hoping against hope that this situation could be resolved somehow.

"Fuck your dad and fuck you, Hebert," Shadow Stalker snarled as she pushed her masked face right up against the other girl's. "You're a loser, you got what losers get. Nothing you do will ever change that. What power did you get? Something pointless and weak, I bet."

"I got this," Taylor stated with venom in her voice, holding up the book. "Something much better than your pathetic walking through walls running away power."

Sophia punched her in the eye before she could say another word, or Hannah could stop her.

The book went flying, as did the Hebert girl, in opposite directions. Staggering back she collapsed against the wall ten feet away while the book landed half-way across the room.

Everyone looked on in shock as Sophia laughed. "Just like I thought. Weak, Hebert. You're just prey. Just like your useless father."

The girl, who had been staring at the floor while massaging her face, her mangled glasses in one hand, twitched. At the words, she looked up very slowly, her eyes narrowed and radiating a level of anger unlike anything Hannah had ever seen. It was eerie and unsettling. Even Sophia took a step back, abruptly going quiet.

"Useless? Weak?"

The voice was a soft purr, unlike her former way of talking. She held out a hand and the book leaped off the floor, smacking into her palm a moment later. The girl wasn't even looking at it at the time. "I'll show you who's weak, you bitch."

Hannah noticed with horrified fascination that the book fell open in her hands and the pages turned without her touching or looking at them. Taylor kept staring at Sophia, but began speaking in a strong, slow, and horrible voice.

"Y'ai Cthulu, ya-uln sll'ha Cthulu, nog hai, nog geb-agl, y-hafh'drn goka nilgh'ri. Uaaah."

The voice died away. The terrible look of anger did not.

"Is that it, you weirdo?" Sophia said after a few seconds, in tones of deep contempt.

"Wait for it," Summoner smiled, a smile like someone who'd just lit a fuse that was crackling towards her most hated enemy.

The lights flickered, and the entire room trembled a little.

"He's here," Taylor whispered, her smile widening. "I can't wait for you to meet my friend."

"Oh, God, we're too late," Alt-Chris moaned, as the ghastly voice echoed around them while they ran, Piggot puffing along at a surprising speed for such an unfit woman, although she was going red in the face. Ethan shivered, there was a tone to the voice that was deeply disturbing aside from the language which made his hair stand on end. How they could hear it several corridors away from the powers room he had no idea. It wasn't particularly loud, but it carried in a very strange manner.

"What do you mean?" Piggot gasped. "What was that?"

"An invocation." The lights flickered, making him look around. "One that was answered." He suddenly changed direction, pelting towards the nearest emergency exit and slamming the door open, a gust of wind and rain coming in. Ethan followed, seeing that even though it was fairly early in the afternoon, the sky was going dark. A major storm seemed to be blowing up.

"Leviathan?" he asked in shock, the effects not unfamiliar.

Alt-Chris shook his head. "Nothing that safe," he replied in a shout to be heard over the sound of the rain and the wind, which was becoming stronger. "Fuck. I still haven't gotten away from her." He slammed his fist into the railing surrounding the emergency stairs. "FUCK IT!"

Looking wildly around, he dived for the stairs down to the lifeboat that was hanging above the water just below them. The Rig shook as the wind picked up even more. Behind them, the door slammed shut, Director Piggot apparently having decided not to, or having been unable to, follow them out into the now-torrential rain.

"What the hell are you doing?" Ethan screamed at the man over the sound of the wind. He was quickly undoing the entrance to the lifeboat.

"What does it look like, you idiot," he screamed back. "I'm getting the hell out of dodge before whatever Hebert summoned turns up. It won't harm her, I'm sure of that, but everyone else is fucked."

Ethan reached out to grab the man, intent on stopping him. His quarry ducked, twisted, then stabbed him in the gut with two fingers, a violent electric shock dropping him to his knees completely unexpectedly. "Sorry, Ethan, but I can't let you stop me."

"What did you do?" Ethan wheezed, barely able to move.

"Built in taser," Alt-Chris replied, holding up his hand. "Gift from a version of Bonesaw, one that wasn't evil, fifty or sixty jumps ago. She built my jump generator into me as well. It should be recharged by now, but I need to get onto land to use it, or I'll drown on the other side. See you. Good luck."

He ducked in through the entrance to the evacuation boat, lights coming on inside and on the front, sides and rear of the small vessel. Ethan gasped for breath, watching helplessly. The entire Rig was shaking now, and seconds later the Endbringer sirens went off across the city, echoing weirdly across the water.

Suddenly the alternative version of Kid Win reappeared. "Damn it. You were always one of the good guys," he grumbled loudly, grabbing Ethan by the shoulders and dragging him inside the boat, then closing the hatch. Strapping him into a seat then taking the one at the front for himself, he quickly flipped a few switches and lifted a protective cover before slamming his hand down on a large button in the middle of the simple control panel. There was the sound of a number of explosive bolts firing with a sharp crack, then a brief falling sensation that ended in a colossal splash. Ethan passed out at that point.

"That's not the sort of thing you see every day," a voice screamed in his ear. Ethan twitched, then jolted awake. He looked wildly around, finding he was now on the muddy ground some distance outside the city a few dozen yards from the water's edge. The man who had half-kidnapped/half-rescued him was standing next to him looking off to the side. It was absolutely pouring with rain and lightning lit the sky every couple of seconds. A weird howling sound was coming from the direction Alt-Chris was looking in.

Shaking his head Ethan rubbed his hands over his face, then tried standing up. The man beside him offered him a hand without comment, which he used to drag himself to his feet. Turning, he looked in the direction that the other man was, then froze in horror.

A very familiar figure, that of the Endbringer Leviathan, was next to the Rig, which was tilting slowly into the water. Huge waves battered it, slopping up into the city, which was steadily flooding, but for some reason not really reaching them here. He could make out lifeboats launching from the structure as the occupants evacuated in a hurry and hoped that his friends and wife were on them.

The Endbringer, although present, wasn't the cause of the disaster.

No, not at all, it wasn't.

If anything it was a victim of the true author of the chaos and destruction, which was the absolutely vast creature that was holding the struggling form of Leviathan at least a hundred feet in the air, looking at it with an expression of cold alien curiosity. Huge bat-wings spread out to the sides, lightning striking them repeatedly with no effect other than bright flashes. The creature towered more than three times the height of the Rig itself out of the bay and was obviously standing on the bottom, over a hundred feet below the surface of the water. In its tentacular grasp, the Endbringer looked like a rubber duck in the hands of a bathing toddler.

"What the fuck is that?" he screamed in repugnant horror, pointing wildly. The tentacles, the scales, the parrot-like beak large enough to swallow a trawler, all those were bad enough, but the vast intelligence in the dead eyes was cold and indifferent, alien beyond belief.

"Great Cthulu, I'd say," Alt-Chris said with a shrug. "Not as sleeping as we're told."

They watched as the thing wrapped a few more tentacles around the writhing Endbringer, not even using the huge clawed hands which it was supporting itself on the Rig with. Leviathan gave one last mighty heave, then was torn into two pieces, which quickly disappeared into the immense beak. Ethan gaped in horror.

"So much for that," his companion said evenly. "Not lying, that was sort of cathartic to watch. Always hated those things, I've seen too many people killed by them." He pointed. "Look, that's probably the Hebert girl."

The tentacled horror was looking down at the rig, on which Ethan could barely make out a human figure. Reaching out with an immense hand, Cthulu held it carefully in place so she could step aboard, then lifted it to his shoulder, where she moved to stand next to his head, apparently willingly. The Great Old One turned back to the Protectorate structure, glaring down at it for a moment, then lifted a huge beyond imagining foot out of the water and brought it thundering down. The entire construction disappeared under the surface in one titanic mass of twisted metal.

Somehow appearing satisfied, the creature turned to look in their direction. Even over a mile away, Ethan froze, pinned in place by the malice in that gaze. Eventually it moved on, returning to the city. Slowly, Great Cthulu began wading in that direction.

"Well, time to go, I think," Alt-Chris said, almost cheerfully. "Sorry about your world. Look on the bright side, once she's stomped everyone she's got issues with she might unsummon him. She might not. Heberts are always unpredictable, the only thing you can be sure of is that they'll top whatever you try. Although I have to admit I've never seen one go this far in one shot before. Makes you wonder what she'll do if someone figures out how to kill that thing."

Stepping a few paces away, he turned back to Ethan. "I'd offer you a ride, but this only works for me. Thanks for the healing. Pity about my armor, but it was getting really beat up anyway, so I should replace it. Good luck, Ethan." Glancing at the creature in the distance which was now pulling the entire PRT building out of the ground with its bare hands, he shook his head. "I think you'll need it."

The crackling sphere of light faded into existence around him, becoming brighter and brighter, to the point that a dazed Ethan was forced to shield his eyes with his hand. A second or two later it disappeared with a loud pop, leaving behind it a smell of ozone and a pit in the ground.

The red-clad hero looked at the pit, then very slowly turned to watch the ancient horror from beyond exact the revenge of a bullied fifteen year old girl, knowing that there was nothing at all he could do about it one way or the other.

Eventually he simply sat down in the mud and waited.