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EVERY MAN IS GUILTY


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 Fate. Many an age had passed since he had conquered 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.

“So, I suppose this is the part where we start throwing galaxies at each other.” Beramode drolled. Snapping his wrist and summoning a deck of cards from some hidden place upside his sleeve. “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?”

OF ALL THE GOOD


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.

“Very we—”

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.

“Hector Cabrera, Mano de la Muerte, Lich of Rio. Put your hands in the air.” 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. “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.”

“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…” 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, “Fuck you, Rodrigo. Fuck the Black Dog Mafia, fuck Solomon King, but most of all… Fuck Neo Babylon.

HE DID NOT DO
Beleth never understood the concept of mass sacrifice, why was it that quality was only better than quantity until the moment you were committing heresy, and who was going to clean up afterwards? Certainly not his standoffish master and certainly not his incompetent underlings. No point in going through all the unnecessary pomp and pageantry when you could get the job done with just one untainted soul.

One doe-eyed daughter tempted by vanity.

One would-be prom queen spurned by jealousy.

One aspiring starlet willing to do anything for the approval of others.

One shining star basking in the glory atop it all.

One withering old woman grasping at glory.

Beleth sat across from Bethany just as he had ninety years ago when she had been a little girl easily wooed into the tent of a travelling fortune teller on the wharf by plastic stars hanging from the roof and a fog machine. He had looked so much more glamorous back then. There was something haggard about him now sitting there in his mustard yellow three-piece suit with hints of a black bodysuit peeking out from beneath his sleeves and a tie pulled tight like a noose around his throat. It had not been strange to hear prophecy spill from the hollow innards of the yellow teddy-bear head that covered his entire head, it had been easy to ignore the frayed fur and torn ear, the way his bloodshot eyes stared out from the great gaping pits where colorful cartoon eyes ought have been.

It was only now that Bethany realized she had never seen him blink.

But who was she to judge? Time had been kind to her but even kindness had its limits and it seemed in some strange way that as glamor faded from his appearance that it had begun to fill her life like one bucket emptying another, the only times she’d failed the ones where she doubted him, countless surgeries had rendered her a modern mummy with more plastic than flesh stretched of a fading frame. With black sunglasses and gaudy makeup to distract from her encroaching mortality. The curtains of her villa drawn shut and only the flickering candlelight to highlight the host of her life and her guest for the evening.

“Oh Beleth, you’re the only man who never betrayed me.”

“You have bad taste in men, Beth.”

“Not so bad, just picky.”

“Seven husbands picky?”

“I get bored easily but I’ve high hopes for the eighth.”

“. . .”

“You never told me why you did it, why you picked me, I know you did. It’s okay to be honest with me. I figured out what you were long ago, what you really are, I’ll never understand why you like to dress it all up in a veneer of falsehood when you’re are the only real things in this world.”

“You like to hear yourself talk too much.”

“Oh that’s just the actress in me, you’re so mean, you always were. I thought you’d lighten up now that I’m old but I guess I like that about you. My only regret is that you never showed me your face. Can’t you do this silly old girl a favor an—”

And for just a moment she felt her heart stop.

“I suppose that wouldn’t be possible.”

“Not even if I wanted to.”

“All the same, I don’t regret it, I even brought you a gift to express my gratitude to you.”

“Is that what that is…?”

“Yes, I even wrapped it for you.”

“In its own flesh.”

“Yes.”

“You didn’t have to do that.”

“It’s nothing between friends. Don’t think I’m trying to obligate you to me either, I lived a full life. Ninety years is long enough for me, I’ll pass the spotlight onto someone else, but you know I’ve finally got my first great-grandchild and I wouldn’t mind another ten or fifteen years just to see them grow. I didn’t get much opportunity with my children and…” Beleth wasn’t the sort of man to repeat himself. Not even for the sake of clarity.

Well, Beleth had come too far to back down now, with a sigh he turned his attention back to the ritual. From his sleeve a remote, the wide-screen television flicked to life with the last faded recording of a one famous newscaster. From beneath the table, the flame-scarred handgun of an ill-fated hunter. And from his inner pocket, a string of teeth collected from a ravenous beast. A gloved finger to the curling ursine smile of his ursine helmet to signal her silence followed by the same reassuring ‘whatever you want’ she had tried to use to seduce him since she’d been old enough for such a thing. That last fateful forecast predicting an incoming storm buzzing every time he tossed one half of a deck of playing cards into another but no such set had she ever seen, dragons and kings and faeries peeking out between shuffles with an ominous eye flat on the back with such detail it could be felt peeking out from the second dimension.

“You were always so obedient, Bethany, that’s why I liked you. Always doing anything I asked of you. You only have to do one more thing for me and eternal beauty will be yours, don’t hesitate now, you’ve come too far and you’re too beautiful for hell.”

“I never doubted you,” She said with love in her voice. “But what a strange ritual.”

“Three objects, Bethany, three objects to recall undying vanity from its scattered place in the stars. Three objects and one silly old woman to act as an anchor. Say the magic words, Bethany, don’t lie and tell me you’ve forgotten them now.”

“Are you sure?”

“The words don’t matter Bethany, it’s the spirit behind them. Hurry now. The storm is ahead of us, the clock is ticking, do not miss the sacred hour or the opportunity will never come again.”

Beleth had never been much of a talker but when he did the world moved, she could hear it now, battering on her windows with sheets of rain. Rattling her old bones with thunder. She could feel every injury creaking in this old joints as she steeled her resolve and she spoke, into the empty ether, across the multiverse with a conviction that made the world bend at its seams. Once upon a time, Bethany had been a pure untainted soul but after ninety years of grooming she was wretched, bloated with corruption until she was nearly unrecognizable. What hadn’t she done in that time? Now she was ripe, like a cow waiting to be slaughtered, arms spared out to her sides as she offered her body, her soul, her mind gleefully to something beyond her comprehension.

The flesh sack oozed.

“Ooh Eeh, Ooh Ah Aah, Ting Tang Walla-Walla Bing Bang!”
This is a narrative driven fight between me and @Odium.
Uuuh, this is the continuation of a long-running setting, think of it as one big sandbox with heavy exploration, intrigue, and combat elements. If you’re interested in joining shoot me a message. Otherwise, everyone involved already knows what I’m about and how I like to do things.


@Liaison told me to post it in the Arena.


The year is 2042, after nearly three decades of war with the forces of darkness the world is finally at peace, but the scars remain. Japan, Taiwan, both Koreas, and the bulk of mainland China simply do not exist. Europe has been ravaged by constant land wars, some states like Germany are nigh unrecognizable ruins, others like England and France have fared remarkably well. While the United States perseveres as always, ready to take advantage of a world where its two largest competitors have been wiped off the map, and what of those continents and countries where evil’s heavy hand did not fall? The so-called Third World, the Arfricas and the South America, nature abhors a vacuum and a massive one has been left waiting for someone bold enough to fill it…

None of it matters, not to you, because you live in the center of the universe: Neo Babylon.

Five years into their thirty-year war with the forces of evil, the gods raised lost Empyrea from the ocean, the wellspring through which all magic flows into the world and they surrounded this newborn paradise mountains taller than the sky, they filled the sky and the land and the sea with monsters, and they trapped the whole thing in a never-ending storm. It’s said that all the world’s miracles come true on Empyrea. Plants that cure any disease and metals that never break, and then there’s its crown jewel is Neo Babylon, where heroes from a thousand different worlds gathered to stare evil in its unblinking eye. A miserable city where life is cheap and the only currency is power. Whatever the gods had planned for Neo Babylon, it became something else entirely, a thousand different interests from just as many universes have turned the city into a veritable dystopia ruled from the top down by a flesh-eating oni and the mega corporations that have managed to worm their way into his good favor.

Good job Hero, you made it to the frontlines, unfortunately the war is already over. You can go back home if you can find a way there but while you’re here you better find a way to make yourself useful and fast, you’re a commodity and your greatest resource is that you’re an unknown-unknown, but nobody stays a mystery forever. Maybe you fancy your chances better outside. On the inland sea or the great forests. Think you’re one of those nomadic types who can spend their time searching for inner peace in the master’s dojo but trust me when I tell you this, power begets power, trouble is gonna come looking for you sooner rather than later so you best prepare while you can.
Edited for missing punctuation.
I am playing Alice Ansegisel, she does not have an up to date profile, I may or may not write one.
Alice Ansegisel had been a hero, once upon a time, and not just any hero either. She’d been the greatest hero in the galaxy. She’d trained with the Count of Vermont, rescued the Princess of Storms, and outrun the Pale Rider. She’d vanquished foes all the way from Halptide to N’Arague and to list them all would be a feat unto itself, but more incredible than champions of darkness slain, she’d always shown mercy to those who sought it with sincerity in their hearts. But that had been long ago…

Before the formation of the Great Fault, before the fall of Celesin, before before had meant anything.

Alice was neither the avatar of destruction nor pillar of justice that people imagined when they imagined legendary heroes, physically she had not aged a day since she was nine, mentally she was somewhere between several thousand years old and ‘its impolite to ask a woman about her age.’ After protecting the Dominion throughout the entirety of the cataclysm she’d watched That Man return to power and been left wondering if it had been worth all the effort. On that day Alice retired. Now she was an old woman, living in a homely little cottage deep in the woods of some small planet, with naught but few old pictures and trophies to celebrate a long life in service to others.

She’d taken up knitting as a hobby.

Sometimes, Alice still took up arms, when some cosmic tyrant or demonic lord threatened the realm. But only when she felt like it was absolutely necessary. Even stronger than her resolve to remain neutral in these dark times was Alice’s belief that the next generation of sorcerers and champions ought to be capable of solving problems on their own, without having to rely on tired old women, after all she had already failed to keep the Dominion from falling and being reborn as the Domination. She’d taken an apprentice since then, and she was a spirited one, but she’d already graduated to become a powerful hero all of her own and she was in the process of testing another’s resolve.

Knock-Knock-Knock

It was for that very reason that Alice sighed when setting the little brown dandy she’d been knitting off to the side, already aware that it was not her apprentice standing outside of her mushroom-shaped homestead in that way that all good witches were aware of all the things that went on in their territory even when outside of their immediate line of sight, climbed to her feet with a groan and made her way to the door where a nine-foot-tall grizzly bear with honey yellow fur and a tiny red fez stood waiting for her.

“Good afternoon, Poh, how has my apprentice managed to screw up today’s mission?”

“Afternoon, ma’am, an’ pardon me for speaking outta turn but I was under the impression that Sammie weren’t your apprentice yet.”

“Pish-posh, the title is just a formality, I don’t want her getting a big head is all.”

“Mighty wise of ya, don’t want her gettin’ ahead of herself now, don’t think the Thousand Acre Woods could survive another Synestra. Nope-nope. Sammie’s too cowardly for all that, anyhow—”

“…”

“You’ve got mail.”

The bear presented her with an envelope clutched between a pair of dexterous claws, pristine white, with a familiar return address and a richly golden wax seal with a florid exaggerated A in the center.

“Goodness, what could that man possibly want from me…”

==========

Dark brown smudges on the envelope smelled of semi-sweet cocoa, indicative of her Christmas gift's enjoyment.

Inside was, as expected of such an eccentric, nothing of obvious worth -- he never bothered to use his words. Instead of a letter, it contained cookie crumbs; small photo prints of the eponymous Mister A figure skating around Eternity, buck naked as usual; him, again, relaxed in a Uvaldian tangerine hot spring surrounded by a host of dead uniformed Ulvadian Popojijos; and him dressed rather professionally as he, as evidenced in the scene, arbitrated a dispute among ducks; and, finally, a card that, on one side, was a tarot of The Devil and on the other side a spell glyph of metamystical wayfinding complete with coordinates to some place or another.


==========

Alice had since taken the letter into her home, set aside the scalpel she used to undo the wax seal, grabbed her reading glasses and gave the whole thing a once over just to make sure there were any details about the letter that she had missed. There were not. For a long time after she sat there in silence until Mr Poh began to wonder if she’d fallen asleep without him noticing, almost reached out, only for her to begin speaking as soon as the impulse entered his mind.

“Winn, dear, tell Sammie that I’m going to be taking a trip.”

“Yes ma’am.”

“Make sure that she does all of chores and doesn’t slack off.”

“Yes ma’am.”

“Water the plants and make sure they get plenty of sun too.”

“Yes ma’am.”

“And tell my husb—”

“Pardon me but I’m thinkin’ you oughta get goin’ before sundown if it’s that important.”

“Oh very well.”

She got cranky after sundown.

Alice, who had eluded the opportunity for a physical description outside of the vaguest terms so far, was just about four-feet-and-eight-inches tall with pink hair that fell down to her waist when it wasn’t tied up and a pair of bright pink eyes. Her skin was baby smooth and her face was acceptably cute. Alice could look like an adult any time she wanted, despite the not-aging thing, but that was not the shape of her soul so-to-speak and maintaining that form for any significant period of time became mentally taxing. Alice was not really a little girl or an old woman. Alice was some strange amalgamation of the two that bonded with an angel an unknown number of years ago and when the magical disguise dropped she looked more like a statue with ball-joints rather than a real human. Alice dressed like a grandma ought to. With a long modest dress that fell below the ankles and a blanket that hung over her arms at all times and a shoes that made the little clickety-clack sound when she walked across the wooden floor. Alice lived in a giant mushroom in the middle of a magical forest on some unimportant planet in what had once been the Mystic Dominion and was now something much more dangerous that wore it like a skinsuit, Alice had tamed the local bandit king, a vicious honey yellow Gau named Winn Poh, and now he was her personal errand boy. Alice sent everyone she knew a basket of cookies every Christmas and had been estranged from her husband for the last century or so, he knew what he did, but did not seem overly concerned about the delayed date of his return.

Alice had once, in her youth, kicked her way through no less than three Antaran Precusor Flagships. Alice was not the biggest deal that the multiverse had ever seen, but children had slept easy in their beds at night knowing that she was there to protect them from the things that went bump in the night, but her brand had fallen out of favor since she refused to fall in line with the King of the Night and now she like a moth eaten Raggedy Anne doll was just a relic of a distant past.

She had been a hero once, and with a sigh, and a moment to arrange herself inside her favorite chair, she supposed that she still would be—because Autun had been a very pleasant fellow that one time.

==========

One act of interdimensional astral projection later and Alice found herself waking up in some distant universe with fluttered eyelashes, and something felt horribly off, naturally she could had not brought the entirety of her Everstone exoskeleton with her on the trip but she ought to have a greater range of motion and perception inside her spiritual body. This felt like she was occupying a vessel. One that felt terribly heavy beneath the weight of whatever that sticky pink something oozing off of her body was…

“Looks like we’ve got a gate hopper, Tom.”

“I can see that, Jerry, little old thing must have gotten lost.”

“We ought to show her the way back, Tom.”

Before the mystery could solve itself Alice was accosted and when she turned to look at who was speaking to her in this dimly lit alleyway she’d found herself in, her head spun too fast, so fast that she was staring directly behind herself at a pair of horrified little yarn men stubby little woolen limbs and wide black button eyes and a pair of extra long needles like swords. Their rich red-black uniforms were made of a fine felt that someone must have put a lot of love into sowing before assigning them the brutish little personalities they had.

“Gentleman, there appears to be a misun—”

“AIEEE!!!”

In his panic the first one thrust his needle forward and the second followed suit because if they were going to make a bad decision why not do it together, and Alice much to her eternal disgrace, was so unused to having a body that did not have any bones that she failed to dodge before the two razor tips punched through her gooey abdomen. Piercing her grandmother dress at the breast with what would have been a very precise attack on her heart if they had not been stabbing a woman made out of goo—so that’s what the pink stuff was!

“Excuse you, a man does not stab a lady without permission!

With permission still seemed dubious but just as the impulse entered her head her hands extended into two gushing torrents of pink slime, slamming into the little woolen men, violently glueing them the nearest wall and oozing into the gaps in their knitted little bodies until she realized what was happening and at once the amorphous mass broke off from her wrists. Leaving her hands dripping. Only then did the rest of her body orient itself. Turning a full one-eight-degrees one joint at a time until she was facing her attackers, slightly dizzy, and wearing her best stern face.

“Gentlemen, have you learned your lesson?”

“Yes ma’am,” They responded in a submissive monotone. Their gaps oozing a constant pink that called out to her for instruction with a voice in the back of her mind what sounded like popping bubbles, and against her better judgment she did. “Now, will one of you tell me where I am?”

And so they did.

“Aye ma’am, you’re in Cookieham Palace at the coronation of the one and only King Yarnles III.”

“Party crashing I do believe.”

“Yes, that’s right."

Outside, that is to say beyond the alley, she could see a palace made entirely of cookies and candy. With towers made out of gingerbread and capped by upside down ice cream cones. Visibly oozing vanilla beneath the crinkled construction paper sun that hung high above a painted blue sky with clouds of cotton moving in predetermined patterns. And somewhere within an ominous presence. And Alice, Alice gasped: "Autun, you fool, what did you do. It was just an arts and crafts starter kit."

Alice is now embodying Glittering Love (D-03-109), an abnormality that made entirely of glitter glue. It takes the form of a pretty young woman and charms unsuspecting victims into accepting its blessing. The blessed feel stronger and more energetic than ever as long as they do her bidding. They actively spread their blessing to anyone they come in contact with so long as they maintain a pleasant demeanor, but if Glittering Love loses her temper, they explode and transform into smaller variants of glue monstrosity designated D-03-109-2 and rampage until Glittering Love is appeased or subdued at which point they die off.

Alice currently does not have access to her all of her old powers, as she is inhabiting a new vessel, but will surely gain more over time as she becomes more familiar with her temporary body!


A/N: Autun's letter was written by Circ)
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