KARMABULIA

By Bren Hunter

Backlit by the barest golden haze of a defiant sunset making itself known through seemingly endless slate, stratocumulus clouds, Brian Braddock tumbled down from a corner of the sky above the sprawling Braddock Estate. The brawny, brilliant, and blond man had lost which way was up, and relished in that helpless feeling that could only come from flying under his own power — without his hovercraft, without his amplification suit. During his tumultuous tenure as champion of Earth 616, he had flown for the cause of battle, for the purpose of fleeing from physical (or more often psychological) hazards, and for inexpensive recreation. This was none of those things. This was an intimate conversation.

Linda McQuillan closely mirrored the improvisational flight path that Brian set, but did so with a much greater degree of poise and precision. Where his landing on the roof of the baroque-designed Braddock Manor looked rough, Linda softly set down on her toes, the thin blonde ponytails covering her head bouncing against her shoulders in the process. Where Brian was clothed in black slacks, and a heap of irony — in wearing a tee shirt inspired by the gold, white and green flag of Ireland — Linda was uniformed in her Captain UK amplification bodysuit. That second skin was white in the shoulders, arms, and thighs, with a red bodice and blue knee-high boots. She had left the headpiece of her costume back on one of the two alternative Earths that she was temporarily assigned to protect during the extensive reorganisation of the Captain Britain Corps.

“So…” Brian said, not looking at Linda.

“So…” Linda said, finding his diffidence to be contagious.

“What would you like to…” Brian dropped that presumption, and blanched momentarily. Finding a formal timbre of his London-accented voice, he asked, “Is there anything that you would like to discuss?”

“Nothing,” Linda shrugged effortlessly. Steeped in silence, she winced, and performed an imagined shrug off of the unexpected awkwardness that was suffocating them. Approaching a strident tone, Linda said, “I don’t know. This was your idea. You said it was — what was it? Something distinctly 616 — a ‘bereavement support group’?”

“Yes,” Brian said, suddenly discomposed. “And it was Rachel’s idea.”

Without thinking, Brian took a spiraling leap from the rooftop, and shot towards the thickly wooded property to the north. Well aware of Linda following by his side, Brian casually went on, “She said that I’ve never talked about Meggan’s…” — The big D got caught on his lips — “…Evolution. Rachel is doubtlessly correct, but it was hardly a conscious choice on my part. I needed to be away from the Manor for only a little while. I could never have imagined that my return would herald the dissolution of Excalibur and the ruin of my relationship with Betsy. Hell, Rachel even said that if I hadn’t invited her to stay at the Manor, I would live without adult human interaction.”

“Think she’s right?” Linda asked without malice, as she deftly avoided careening into a tree.

“No. …Perhaps. …Probably,” Brian verbally stumbled, just before he rocketed up above the treeline, and smoothly continued north. “Frankly, even after everything she’s done for me, there’s still something about Rachel that makes me want to act contrary to whatever she says. Thusly, right here, even without her, is adult human interaction.”

“Is it within the realm of possibility that she wanted you to talk to her about Meggan?” Linda pushed, speaking in Earth-238’s version of an English accent.

“It is, and I will,” Bri promised, already feeling like the cad. With a silent sigh, Brian slowed his flight until it was a mere hover, to look at Linda full on. “It occurred to me thatyou might need it more.”

Struck silent by the simple act of consideration, from a universe away, Linda took some time to consider the words, “I loved Meggan and I’d give half my ribcage to bring her back, but Rachel shared a kind of bond with–”

“I meant: because of Rick,” Brian said weightily. Like the word ‘death’, the word ‘again’ went unsaid.

Tenderness and annoyance fought for dominance over Linda’s gaze and tone. What she said was, “I haven’t suffered worse for losing my husband twice, Brian. I have had the freedom to behave in all manner of self-destructive ways, to burn my way through the grief. With Jane, you can’t have that. I think Ray has a point — private grief is never enough. I know it’s been months and months, but maybe you haven’t yet found the chafing, messy core of what you’re feeling.”

“I always stored my grief in the bottom of a bottle,” Brian helplessly shrugged. He and Linda were hovering in place above the organic farm that Brian had financed years back. In his honour, the retail operation of the farm had been called Braddock’s Bounty; in recent months, Brian had convinced them to change the name to just Meggan’s. The visible reminder helped Brian to say aloud, “Meggan wouldn’t like that.”

“The only way to honour Meggan is to live your life in a way that she would be proud of,” Linda paraphrased something Pete Wisdom had said, to each of them, during the massacre on Otherworld.

Brian smiled, but the expression soured into a grimace, as he rapidly took to the air once more. Approaching post-human speeds of flight back towards the Manor, Brian hauntedly said, “I can’t remember what made Meggan proud of me. Was she proud of me? I don’t know who she’d want me to be. She can’t tell me now, which makes itimpossible to know.”

“Live your life in a way that will make you happy. That’s all Meggan ever expected from you,” Linda said, swaying nearer to Brian in flight. “You have to know that. You’re just forgetting yourself.”

“Maybe, but I can’t find the components to build that life. The blueprints are lost, burned to ash, perhaps,” Brian metaphored.

Linda didn’t offer an immediate response. She looked to the western side of Braddock Manor, which is where she had chained her prisoner, and where he remained. The man was an interdimensional traveller who had continually jaunted from alternative Earth to alternative Earth, without registering through Otherworld’s Hub. After the massacre, such unregistered, extended cross time capers were no longer allowed, beyond individual accidents. After evaded several newer recruits to the Captain Britain Corps, and after injuring one of them, Linda had chased the traveller down to the Prime Earth. She had contained him, confiscated his technology, and had decided to check in on Brian before returning to Otherworld.

Gently, Linda asked Brian, “I won’t push, but don’t you think Captain Britain would be a part? A majority even? Earth 616 isn’t hurting for more champions, but after all that you’ve–”

“For too long I did fight off the responsibility of Captain Britain. I naively thought I could shed it like my uniform, strip it from my bones when my Otherworldly strength was drained from me,” Brian said regretfully. “My one super power that has never failed me is my narcissism. I can never stop thinking, and I can’t absorb new ideas fast enough to keep myself occupied. On a daily basis, my choices, feelings and thoughts end up beneath the mental microscope in my head. I’m always analysing myself.”

Brian and Linda landed, in tandem, several feet away from Cap’n UK’s bound prisoner. The man, of ruddy complexion, was clearly attempting to sever the arcane tech-infused chains that held him in in place, nigh-immobilised. Once he saw Captain UK, the man cut at the chains faster with the only shard of his timeship that remained. All the while, he shouted Earth-444 specific slang at Linda, which she could only assume to be pejorative.

To Linda, Brian continued, “I know that without the strength Meggan gave me, without the purpose Excalibur afforded me, and even without the extra abilities that I have retained, I could still be Captain Britain. I would be. Brian Braddock died years ago, and Captain Britain was built from fragments of his flesh and memories. Captain Britain is who I am. I don’t doubt that in the least.”

“Then why haven’t you been actively serving as a protector of your realm?” Linda agitatedly asked. Her eyes mostly on Brian, she delivered a quick roundhouse kick to her prisoner’s head to convince him to quit his fussing. “You stopped fighting before Excalibur disbanded.”

“Being Captain Britain is my destiny, my responsibility, my zenith, and there is nothing else I would rather be,” Brian reaffirmed. “And yet, I can’t feel — I don’t want to be Captain Britain. Isn’t that what you said, that I should build a life that will make me happy? Being Captain Britain does not make me happy, it would not make Meggan proud. Being Captain Britain only brings death.”

“Ensuring the orderly continuance of Otherworld has fallen to you,” Omniversal Majestrix Opal Luna Saturnyne stated solemnly, and yet with the slightest cut of disdain. Opposite the live holographic image of the Majestrix, the five newest recruits to the Captain Britain Corps were seated in chairs that the Starlight Citadel had ergonomically molded to their forms, and aesthetically molded to represent the style of their respective home Earths. To those five men and women, the mere presence of Saturnyne’s hologram was grandiosely imposing, despite her diminutive frame, playfully-styled frost-blonde hair, and seductively alabaster attire.

Saturnyne amended, “Fallen to each of you, while the Supreme Guardians of the Multiverse remain occupied with the minutia involved in the ongoing process of reconstructing the Corps. Although there remain too few worlds defended by your kin, you have all been selected from Earth-series worlds on which a member of the Captain Britain Corps has already been assigned. Since every one of you possess the strength of character, the fitness of mind and the integrity of body to be worthy of the Corps, your placement is to serve the interests of Otherworld itself. Never again will Otherworld become under siege; you will see to that.”

“Presently, you will contain and retrieve a threat that has the potential to be more damaging to the Corps than the mad acts of Sat-yr-9 and her followers. You will find your target on Earth 616, which exponentially increases your mission’s urgency. On that Prime Earth, it becomes more probable for your target to spread its diseased nature. The threat was once like each of you, a Corpsman, but it has derelicted from every duty that is to be expected from a member of the Captain Britain Corps: protection of the multiverse and upholding the moral standard of one’s home Earth. It has shed itself of its uniform, and so it has shed itself of its personhood. It can only reclaim its identity after a trial has been held.”

“Your target will not be easy to subdue; particularly since your training has focused on mending and defending. To compensate, I have prepared a biographical synopsis and psychological profile of the target, which I expect each of you to have memorised and analysed within the next thirty minutes. You can only defeat your target if you know it. A member of my Avant Guard will be available to answer your questions thirty minutes hence.”

The holographic representation of Saturnyne dissipated, and when it was replaced by a hologram of the offense to the colours of the Captain Britain Corps, the Majestrix made certain that it was created in a physical space well apart from the location she had deigned her own image upon.

Mystical technology lay dormantly embedded into the pale blue, strident red and pristine ivory cloth that made up Brian’s most recent Captain Britain costume. In design, the ensemble was meant to act as an amplifier for the strength, agility, imperviousness, flight and enhanced senses that came to Brian, because of his body’s ability to absorb and metabolize an energy matrix, which was focused through dimensional interfaces on every England on every alternate Earth. In practice, the amplification suit had been carefully torn at every seam, stuffed full with down feathers, and re-sewed as the blanket that was wrapped tightly around the half-sleepy Jane Meggan Braddock.

Brian watched his blue-eyed daughter burble and giggle, with honest amazement on his face. It still surprised him that there could be a more beautiful blonde than Betsy, than Courtney, than Meggan. Unable to look away, Brian thumbed each spine of the fourteen books that lined the shelf on the wall beside his chair. Every one of them felt too familiar. The first sentence of each came to his mind, unbidden, and he decided that if he was to tell a familiar story, he would tell the most familiar story:

“Not so long ago, there was a young Squire — a boy really — who only wanted to understand how pieces fit together and why anything works. There was also a Wizard, who fancied himself to be the king of every kingdom, and he wrote a Destiny for the Squire. He offered the Squire unimagined strength and asked him to become the greatest champion of his kingdom. In a sense, he offered the opportunity for the Squire to willfully choose his own Destiny. The Squire did what he thought was right, and he became a Champion for not only his own kingdom, but that of many distant kingdoms beyond the horizon of his vision. For the Wizard, the battles that the Champion fought were nothing more than a game — the Wizard… tortured the Champion to the brink of madness and beyond death, but it made the Champion only stronger. It prepared the Champion for the event of his Destiny: a cancer in reality, which the Champion defeated. In just a little time, nearly everyone managed to forget that the Champion’s destiny had ever existed, let alone that it had been fulfilled.”

“That was all right for the Champion, though, because he thought he met his new Destiny. To his eyes, she was the most resplendent beauty of any kingdom. Her body was covered in brown fur, her fingers were webbed, she had ears out to here, and perfectly earthy blonde hair. The Champion put aside his hat with the ‘C’ on it, because he wanted nothing more than to be with her. The miracle of it all was that she wanted him to be her Destiny too.”

“Just as the grown up Squire and the tolerant, patient, glorious woman, who chose to be with him, thought that they had escaped into happily ever after, another Destiny was dropped into their laps. Another woman — such a pistol — literally fell from the sky, trailing wisps of flame and iron chains behind her. Everyone in the kingdom had thought her dead, but here she had returned, Reborn. Bound with two others, they became Champions of many kingdoms, in preparation for another Destiny, which they too completed as expected. They protected the magic of every kingdom, as well as the fire within the Reborn woman. With their collective Destiny behind them, the Champion and the Reborn became lost between kingdoms. The Reborn went so far as to give up her everything to bring the Champion home. This allowed the Champion to be reunited with his Chosen Destiny just long enough to marry her. …And to bury her. But not before you were born from them. All the while, the Reborn found herself a new Destiny in a far-off kingdom, but her Destiny was unwritten, and she fell from the sky over this kingdom once again. Without the comfort of the others, or anything resembling a Destiny, the Champion and the Reborn… well, they…”

Jane had fallen asleep. Brian silenced himself to breath in the sound of her sleeping. It wasn’t for many minutes that he noticed a stylised female voice interrupting the soft music on the radio across the room: “–addition to the riot, the Garda Siochana have received a ransom e-mail from the International Destabilizer Movement dictating terms for the release of the hostages held within the Northern Ireland Assembly. Rather than money, the Desta–“

Despite listening for some seconds, and closing the distance between him and it, Brian stared at the radio with utterly impassive eyes before setting his hand on it, and shutting it off.

“–abandon every duty held sacred to the Corps, and yet fraternise with Earth 616’s protectors and heroes? That is senseless,” Gwydion decided aloud, with a hologram of the target’s known associates reflecting in her eyes, and photographically burning into her memory.

“Or shameless,” Dame Equilibrium put forth. “No guilt there. Single-minded self-righteousness is what we must be prepared to be struck with.”

Jutting a thumb at the hologram, Captain Star deadpanned, “Personally, I’m going to be more prepared for the woman who can punch me across the room without laying a hand on me.”

“My crazy-love for it wanes when the fish is this pulpy. It’s too much of a visceral reminder that I’m eating raw fish. Raw. Fish.” –Scott Wright punctuated his point with two shakes of the spicy tuna roll that he pinched between a pair of chopsticks– “I get this mental image of sitting back to watch television, and plucking my goldfish out of its aquarium to take a hearty chomp out of it.” He swung his chopsticks again, in the midst of a dramatic traumatized shudder, and then took a bite out of the tuna roll.

The energy signature of the Phoenix Force softly crackled across the table, as Rachel Summers telekinetically forced the rest of Scott’s tuna roll down on his plate. Leaving his mouth free for explanation, Ray mirthfully demanded, “I’m dead tired here. I should be at home in bed. So why did I have to try your ‘favourite Sushi Bar in London’, if it’s striking a chord with your gag reflex?” A swept hand encompassed all of Fluid, the modernly industrial, but classically designed, restaurant that lay beyond the booth they were comfortably seated in.

“Because I’m addicted!” Scott enthused. “This is the heroin of sushi.” He took up his tuna roll again to finish it. “That is the meth of wasabi. And that… I don’t even know what that is, but I have to put it on every bite I eat.”

Rachel regarded the bowl that Scott’s chopsticks were pointing at, and she sniffed, “Looks like worms and flower petals.”

“It’s not!” Scott garbledly insisted through a mouthful of rice and fish and, possibly, worms coated in flower petals. Despite his determination, his face fell into an expression of worry.

“It probably is,” Ray conspiratorially remarked. “They know that we’re newbies, and they’re fucking with us.”

Scott took another nearly fearless bite of his supper, and sat back to chew with a defiant gleam in his eyes. Because of a lost bar bet the previous week, Scott was dressed in a red leather bodysuit — from high-collar to high-heeled boots — that was styled to mimic Phoenix’s original Excalibur costume, right down to the studding of blunted spikes. As overly lean as Scott was, his frame was athletically built, and so his costume was broader across the shoulders than Ray’s had been. The mutant wore his honey-brown hair short on the sides and back, but long on top, letting his bangs flop down over his right eye, in celebration of his new hairplugs. Scott also sported a single button of a beard, just below his lower lip, which Ray had threatened to shave off if she had been provided any utensils sharper than chopsticks.

Having never dared to touch the unidentified toppings, Rachel Summers chewed her meal in greater security. Her simple outfit included black boots, navy jeans, and a lilac tanktop, on which was emblazoned a blue Phoenix emblem. Her naturally red hair was highlighted with metallic crimson, and cut to just above her shoulders. As always, she wore an oddly iridescent gem, mounted upon a silver necklace. Ever since she had been conscious of her continued bond with the Phoenix Force, which she had thought to have left her in the timestream, she had chosen to use the Time Gem for nothing more than anchoring herself in this timepoint. Its power was both greater and lesser than the Phoenix Force itself, and more power was simply the last thing that Rachel longed for.

“Look. I wanted to be polite, but that’s boring,” Scott broke the silence apologetically. “I mean, I know the days of black leather hadn’t yet come, or gone, but this costume… you chose to wear it? Huh? How? Why?”

“It was about empowerment,” Rachel stated proudly.

“Oh! I know this one: ‘You’re not laughing at me; you’re laughing with me’. Post-modern before it was fashionable,” Scott said, satisfied with his baseless inference.

“No,” Rachel over-enunciated in annoyance. “I was forced into a uniform much like that one, in my home quantum universe, when I was enslaved as a mutant Hound. After escaping, I chose to <em>own</em> the uniform, and make it my own, rather than being owned by–”

A scallop roll slipped from Scott’s chopsticks and hit the plate of soy sauce, splashing them both. Rachel found herself interrupted by the uncontrollable laughter bubbling out of her mouth, which earned her an annoyed, embarrassed glare, and an “it wasn’t that funny” mutter, from Scott.

“I’m sorry — I just –” Rachel blurted, silently pleading with herself to stop laughing. “You picked up a mile of highway in Campobasso yesterday, and yet you drop a little sushi roll today.”

“It couldn’t have been a mile; I had only grown to fifty feet tall,” Scott insisted.

“It was a mile!” Ray repeated definitively.

Rachel had literally bumped into Scott a month ago, when they were both volunteering for the Sawledale Fell Rescue Operation. They had recognised each other, just barely, after having briefly met back during Ray’s Excalibur days (and Scott’s Excalibur nanoseconds). Although their socialising was limited to post-operation rehydration and overeating, they had each taken to specifically inviting the other whenever volunteering for a search and rescue group that was undertaking a recovery too dangerous for normal humans. Yesterday had been an earthquake in Campobasso, Italy; today had been a flood in Llansantffraid, Wales.

“Why didn’t you mention it on your radio show?” Rachel asked, genuinely puzzled.

“Wha-at?” Scott feigned confusion.

Smirking, Rachel admitted, “It may not be on Radio One, now that you’re not on speaking terms, but it wasn’t much of a scavenger hunt to spot the radio show you’ve been airing online.”

“No, I guess it– I couldn’t find the narrative in it. There were no character conflicts — no Micromax or a villain — just Scott and the aftereffects of an earthquake,” Wright said. “None of that is what my show’s about.”

“How’s that working out for? Doing radio production indie-style, I mean?” Ray asked, leaning slightly forward. “Something of a flashback to college?”

“It’s fine,” Scott replied clippedly, and filled his mouth with rice.

Eventually realising that he wasn’t going to elaborate, Ray asked, “And you’re teaching? Radio and Television Arts, was it?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, how’re you liking it?” Rachel asked, growing irritated.

“It’s… fine,” Scott struggled to find the words again. “You’re in school too, aren’t you?”

“Business management,” Ray nodded. “As a student. I don’t know how you find the time for school, work and volunteering. When classes were in session, it took everything in me just to keep up. I don’t even know if I liked it! …Or if I learned anything. God.”

“Then why bother doing it?” Scott bluntly asked.

“It’s something. All I know how to be is a super-hero fighting for a world that fears and hates me. That’s not enough. Not even close. I want to be a part of that world; I’m not going to change myself according to other people’s standards, but I don’t want to be set apart.” Rachel took a quick deep breath, after gulping at her green iced tea. “I already did that for too long. I still want to hurl guys like King Bedlam into brick walls, I just don’t want that to be all I can do.”

Although the audio couldn’t be heard above Sophie Ellis-Bextor’s “The Walls Keep Saying Your Name”, a plasma television screen hanging over the bar hooked Rachel’s attention. The words ‘Exclusive Footage’ were written on the bottom of the screen, where several men in Destabilizer uniforms were hurled out of the back of a black SUV, extensive communication gear extending from its roof, before it swerved to a stop. A man clothed in militaristic navy blue garb, concealing every part of his body other than his eyes, rolled out from under the SUV. The man stood just long enough for the union jack on his chest to become visible, and then sprinted out of view of the camera, as the SUV erupted into roiling blossoms of fire.

A blipvert, including frames from the actions already seen, filled the gap before a shot of the Northern Ireland Assembly building smash cut to the screen. The camera zoomed in on a window, which shattered outward with the flailing body of an armed woman, also clad in the Destabilizer uniform. With a pair of the hostages clinging to him, the navy-clad costumed man repelled down the side of the building. The text on the screen switched to: ‘Captain Britain.’

“That’s clearly Union Jack!” Scott shouted out. “Clearly.”

Her eyes on the screen, Rachel remarked, “Brian’s gonna want to know about this.”

“I trust that you comprehend the threat that your quarry poses, and have devised means for containing it. Please remember, though, that the civilians of the Prime Earth are not to be harmed (because if you do so, the paperwork is like an angry bleeding blister). Also remember that, as far as your quarry has sunken, that fall began from the position you all hold now. A modicum of respect should still be afforded,” the member of Saturnyne’s Avant Guard primly advised the five Captain Britains. With his words spoken, he touched a nub on the right wrist of his well-tailored jacket, and an entire holographic control panel energised around his arm. Dancing his fingers through a memorised sequence upon the holograms, a pillar of white — whiter than white — light coalesced in the heart of the chamber.

“Let’s do this. I am ready to rock!” Captain Star shouted, punching a fist into his open palm enthusiastically.

“What does that mean?” Dame Equilibrium pondered. “You’re about to go into convulsions?”

“I’m gonna rock that bastardly bitchface,” Captain Star attempted to clarify.

“Is ‘rock’ a sex metaphor?” Scotland, The Brave asked.

“Like stone?” Gwydion wondered.

“We’re going to take the target down. To the ground,” Captain Star explained exasperatedly.

“Couldn’t we do it with a wiser choice of words?” Dame Equilibrium asked in a tone of acidic politeness.

“Yeah, there are definitely more better ways to say that,” Gwydion agreed. “Wait. I was going to say eloquent.”

A crick and a creak. The distinctive sound of skulking assaulted Brian’s ears. Focus. Letting the soothing sonance of Jane’s breathing pale to mere white noise, he focused his senses on the sound of the other. Not enough. Despite the enhancement of his senses, he couldn’t determine height or weight from the noise; at least, not without his amplification helmet. Didn’t matter. Soundlessly padding into the darkened corridor, setting each step onto the floor with practised fluidity, he grasped for the touchpad set into the wall outside the doorframe. Quicker. A numerical code rapidly entered caused an energy signature, akin to heat distortion, to rain down the open doorway. Almost safe. The Otherworld-designed mystical barrier, tempered by technology, fully activated and shifted itself to invisibility. For now. Worst case, Brian only expected the barrier to keep Jane safe for a handful of extra seconds.

In fewer seconds, Brian launched himself down the hallway, kicked the lightpanel with a well-placed toe, but halted his flight, full stop, once the corridor was illuminated. His body stretched out and flush to the floor, Brian hovered stilly in midair, with his open-palmed fist holding centimetres away from the face of the skulker. Beneath her ankle-length silver duster, the midtwentysomething woman was clearly physically fit, from her days of working for the Canadian government, but everything about her body was rounded and soft. The only severity to be found on her was her seeming-unnaturally blood red hair, hanging halfway down her back and brushed extremely straight to the left. Brian swiftly uprighted himself, rooted his feet to the floor and pressed his open-palmed fist against his own chin in a pose of embarrassed contemplation. From what he could see of the woman’s face, the left side hidden by her hair, she remained completely composed.

“I. Am. Dreadfully sorry, Ananym,” Brian said to his child’s governess, his simple words burning with guilt. By way of explanation, he said, “I don’t commonly hear you move.”

“I don’t commonly move while intoxicated,” Ananym returned in an even tone of voice. It was the only tone of voice that Brian had ever heard her speak in, since being introduced to her through a mutual ‘workplace’- and family-friend in the Hume family.

Relaxing away his needless tension, Brian recalled where she was coming from, and asked after her boyfriend, Whitman Knapp, “Whit’s doing well?”

“Splendidly,” Ananym said. Matter-of-factly, she added, “His apartment has been officially christened according to every local tradition.”

“You should spend the night with him. And another day…” Brian suggested, as if it were the most bloody obvious thing. Mostly, he was coming across as one’s embarrassing father trying to fit in with his one’s friends. “Now that Rachel’s classes have finished for the summer, she has plainly demanded more Girl’s Afternoons Out with Jane…” Catching his snub after several moments, he amended, “Which… you… could certainly join, if you would like to, tomorrow. It’s not my decision. I will be out of the Manor.” Brian nodded at the doorway they were standing adjacent to; inside resided Brian’s older brother, resting comfortably in the coma their sister, Elizabeth, had put him in. “Jamie needs to be examined by Moira at her Skye Isle Research Centre… I think I mentioned that already…”

Unsure if Brian would pick-up again after yet another trail of silence, Ananym mumbled an, “Oh-kay.” Blinking heavily, she felt emboldened by her intoxicated state, and posed the question, “Why did you hire me if you were planning to be a full-time parent?”

Brian took a fecund pause, hoping the right words would spontaneous give birth to themselves in his mind. “Every parent is full-time,” Brian replied evenly, in a literal interpretation of her words. The slight awkwardness in his inflection, and a stung smile acknowledged the intended implication of her words.

“I apologise,” she blurted, inadvertently thrusting a hand out, and then drawing it back, her fingers to her lower lip.

With complete understanding, Brian tried to say, “Apology acc–”

Continuing in her somewhat upward lilting apologetic voice, Ananym overshared, “As I told you, my father is Belasco. I was raised by the staff at Hull House. It is deucedly possible that I have contorted notions about parental figures.”

“There is truly no need to ex–”

“And, apparently, I have fewer notions about propriety. Why did I just–”

Brian stopped her with: “I want to learn that the world can be a place of beauty — that the violence in my past was worth something. That’s why you said you wanted to take care of Jaye.”

Spreading a discomfited grimace, Ananym dryly said, “I should know better than to toy with the dark forces of melodrama. Always repeats on me. Like spicy food.”

“Those words are why I hired you. When I was with Excalibur, I distributed invitations to my house, to my life, out to every psychotic and post-human with a grudge against Captain Britain. I won’t let Jaye suffer for that. Neither will you, because you can protect her. You know what this life is like; as Witchfire, you were a member of every Flight in the greek alphabet. You have fought to protect. At the same time, despite the confusion this job can only create, I am… curious to see if you can perform your job and stay true to what you always talk about: finding your way back from a life of violence.”

“It was Whitman who found me, and brought me back to myself, when I was consumed by violence. Now, I simply deny failure. I won’t get lost again. I refuse to put him, or Jane, through that,” Ananym stated, the formality in her tone being replaced with stony determination.

“It’s that simple?”

Amid a level of cheery enthusiasm, carefully measured, Ananym affirmed, “It’s that simple.”

Gwydion, Dame Equilibrium, Captain Star, Bwbach, and Scotland, The Brave stumbled back through the dimensional interface, returning to Otherworld’s Starlight Citadel after a bracing battle. Considering Saturnyne was awaiting them, in person, each Captain Britain felt varying degrees of shame at the state of their uniforms. All of their uniforms were missing minor gashes that had been torn or shorn away, and all of their uniforms were singed.

“Fecking Human Torch,” Captain Star mumbled.

Alysdane Stuart, also called Caledonia as the Corpsmen had learned in the briefing on their target, was the only present Captain Britain whose uniform remained in pristine condition. She felt as much shame as the others, though, because she was being detained within a hard light bubble. From the moment her impromptu prison had passed through the dimensional interface, she had been shrieking nonsensically, and punching the inside of the bubble with her awe-inspiring strength. By the time Saturnyne sashayed to a spot just opposite of the bubble, Alysdane wasn’t wincing in the slightest whenever the kinetic force of her blow would bounce back against her.

“Never be yuir slave, foul cow!” Alysdane spat, and slammed her forehead against the forcebubble to further get her point across. “The Fantastic Four will come f’r me! They saved me once, they took me in, they won’t abandon me!”

“You truly do have no idea what has happened here? The interdimensional security measures that we have taken?” Saturnyne asked, looking down on Caledonia, even though she had to crane her head back to look at the woman hovering in the air above her. “Every member of the Corps whom you trained alongside has <em>died</em>. They were all murdered — not that you would shed a silver tear.”

Abandoning words, Caledonia returned to bestial shrieking, and kicking at the forcebubble.

“Show some restraint,” Saturnyne gritted in disgust. “Really, though, why the histrionics? Why are you behaving like a grueling kack-bitch from a demon-series world? I want to end your exile!” At that, Caledonia went silent, and Saturnyne continued, “Otherworld has suffered, and now would like to reevaluate your status as a criminal. We would like to find equity, and have little interest in continuing your punishment.”

Saturnyne watched Alysdane calm herself through deep breathing techniques, watched her eyes widen. “No one here is going to hurt you.” The Majestrix reached out for Alysdane, and her hand passed through the forcebubble. Alysdane gently pushed a probing had of her own at the bubble, but it remained firm against her touch. Saturnyne laid her hand on Alysdane’s cheek, and smiled at her softly. “No one here wants to hurt you.”

Alysdane took pause to consider Saturnyne’s words, and the palm of Saturnyne’s hand pulled back to visciously slap Alysdane across the mouth. “Bitch. Don’t call me a cow.”

“Don’t be a cow!” Alysdane hissed.

Flatly, Saturnyne ordered, “Captain Star, reacquaint the slave with her cell.” Regarding Alysdane, Saturnyne took on menacing sweetness in telling her, “Don’t worry, sunshine. Mommy didn’t turn it into a meeting chamber or a horse’s stable. Your cell is exactly how you remember it.”

A side-effect of having spent an eternity and no time at all within one of the binding forces of the multiverse, known as the timestream, Brian and Rachel were prone to flashforwards: spontaneous trickling downs of past and future information they had once absorbed, but had been unable to process. More often than not, flashforwards assaulted them in their dreams, and it was rare that said flashforwards occurred simultaneously. Rare, but not impossible…

Brian Braddock stood centre in Brian’s field–Brian Braddock stood centre in Rachel’s field of vision– of vision, while everything around Brian Braddock appeared hazy, as if seen through a soft-focus lens. Despite the lack of sight, the surroundings smelled –surroundings smelled warm and tasted familiar to Rachel– warm and tasted familiar to Brian. Brian Braddock, appearing to be no older than Brian was now, proffered a folded Captain Britain uniform, but when Brian moved to take it –Rachel couldn’t move, couldn’t talk– his body didn’t respond.

“It feels lighter than –I expected,” Brian Braddock admitted to Rachel– I remembered,” Brian Braddock admitted to Brian. “It really is just cloth. Smooth on my fingers. Makes it easier to let go.”

“I never thought it would be you. It seemed impossible –seemed impossible, and it still is– and yet you always knew it, even if you didn’t understand it.” Brian Braddock held the face of his Captain Britain helmet in the palm of his hand, and pressed –pressed it against Rachel’s face– it to Brian’s face, bringing darkness–darkness.

“…You knew, didn’t you?”