[justify][h1]EVERY MAN IS GUILTY[/h1]

Power begets power.

It was such a fundamental concept, borderline obtuse in its execution at times, and yet it alone was responsible for keeping the multiverse from collapsing under the weight of its own nonstop growth. Power begets power. How else to explain the improbability of two beings infamous in their own circles for near omnipotence running into each other by mere happenstance in this vast supposedly infinite cosmos but three simple words. Power begets power. While the yeomen of the multiverse slept comfortable in their beds believing magic and gods to be the mere stuff of legend fate tugged at the strings to guarantee that those most likely to corrupt the balance found each other in isolated locations such as this, solving the problems they themselves created away from innocent eyes. Power begets power.

That rule was why they were here today, if not directly responsible then at least guilty by association. It had been a long time since Beramode had been subject to the whims of [b]Fate.[/b] Many an age had passed since he had [color=ed1c24][b]conquered[/b][/color] her chosen champion and freed himself from her endless schemes, but like all spurned lovers she found indirect ways to interfere with his schemes from afar even now.

Enter Krü, with two pithy accent marks sitting atop the last lonely vowel in his name.

Krü who appeared to him not unlike like a bipedal shrimp one night cap away from looking like he was trying to lull Red Riding Hood into a false sense of security. Whose sharply alien appearance was a stark reminder that even though humanity had become the most populous species in existence, after Gaia shattered the original Earth into a trillion shards and scattered them across the greater finite curve, they were not the only species with ambitions on greatness.

Krü, whose agents had been running into his like errant pieces on a chessboard for thirty years now. Fighting. Bonding. Fucking. But mostly throwing a wrench in carefully laid plans until we once again return to the scene at hand, two beings of incalculable authority agreeing to meet on a dying world, as gentleman were won’t to do.  All over one stupid city. Beramode stood at a serviceable six-two, tall without towering with long limbs and broad shoulders as he made his way out through the folds between dimensions. Appearing without fanfare where once he was not. Wearing a three-piece business suit of charcoal grays and blacks, trailed by curling smoke with every step, a black mask with no discernable markings cover his face and shoulder-length white hair swept along his scalp. He wore black gloves, black shoes, a black tie, and everywhere he went the light was swallowed up by the twisting fingers of shadow that cackled in his wake.

And though he stood on an island some fifty feet from Krü’s own, wearing a mask with no mouth, Beramode’s voice carried perfectly over the distance.

[color=662d91]“So, I suppose this is the part where we start throwing galaxies at each other.”[/color]  Beramode drolled. Snapping his wrist and summoning a deck of cards from some hidden place upside his sleeve. [color=662d91]“Sounds like a fun time, don’t get me wrong, but I’ve got things to do and they don’t involve dying. However improbably that might be. And you seem like the kind of guy whose fun to keep around. How’s about we mix things up for once. Tell me, Krü, do they have card games where you’re from?”[/color]

[h1]OF ALL THE GOOD[/h1]

For nearly thirty years the world had buckled under the weight of one name, empires had crumbled, but the South Americas had remained untouched. A shining jewel hidden amongst the rubble. Hector Cabrera had gotten his start as a minor drug lord, selling through the mayor of Neo Babylon, using his global connections to spread into the great yawning emptiness left behind when the Russian Mafias and Chinese Triads faded. Little more than an attack dog for the New-Age Gilgamesh. But that was before he had found it, hidden in the Titan’s Range, an artifact of some distant age that had never come to pass in this version of the universe sunk improbably into the deep stone. It told him the truth of this timeline and all the lies that had peddled to him by his patron, and then it had promised to make things right…

The man who had once been Hector Cabrera had been reborn, a neon blue skeleton in a glass case, his every thought a flicker of electronics across the surface of his containment unit and another lash of electricity against its prison. When he spoke his voice was hollow and digital. Naked jawbone only moving to exhale another pall of steam across the space in front of him and his face never shrinking, blinking, nor showing any emotion before the gaudy alien thing before him.

[color=0054a6]“Very we—”[/color]

Light flooded the favella from above along with the distant crackle of reactive camo coming undone. Casting all those things that would rather remained hidden into view. Crooks, goons, and cronies. Not a one of whom had not been modified in some way by his experiments, twisted mutants, tumorous growths covered by the moldy green plant life from which The Narco lich gleaned his name. Each one of them quick to reach for their weapons only to find drop them to the ground with a hiss and a thud as an invisible wave passed over their position, but not over him, above and around him.

But never over him.

[color=808080]“Hector Cabrera, Mano de la Muerte, Lich of Rio. Put your hands in the air.”[/color] It was a familiar voice that greeted him, pronouncing his name and title with an exaggerated flare, before returning to the familiar comfort of the English language. It was accompanied by the all too familiar sounds of rifles being trained on him and bodies shuffling into position moments before he appeared, tall and strong, larger than any man had a right to be with black coattails trailing him. [color=808080]“You know as well as I do that trade with unregistered aliens is forbidden by the League of Nations. You’ve fucked up big this time. I’ve been itching to send one of Solmon’s lap dogs to Tartarus on a stretcher, just give me an excuse.”[/color]

[color=0054a6]“Still pretending to be something other than a glorified scavenger, Rodrigo? I’ve been waiting to do this for a very long and I’m glad you could be the first one I say this to…”[/color] If he’d lips, he’d spit. If he’d eyes, he’d glare. Somehow even with the perfect monotone of his electronic voice the anger filtered its way through the cracks in the static until the whole neighborhood buzzed with static. Ignoring the firefight that started as soon as he turned, the sound of bodies that belonged exclusively to his men hitting the floor and the occasional crack of thunder as another high velocity shell buzzed off his defensive barrier, he scribbled his name on that piece of paper. Enunciating each word with another outpouring of hate from the wrinkled neon blue folds of his perfectly preserved brain, [color=0054a6]“Fuck you, Rodrigo. Fuck the Black Dog Mafia, fuck Solomon King, but most of all… [b]Fuck Neo Babylon.[/b]”[/color]

[h1]HE DID NOT DO[/h1][/justify]