25.6

*ACT YoE 4,173/LT May 27, 2072, at 0000*

Hypogeal

Pre-DataKrash Vault

Silver meandered into the vault, silencing the alarms screaming in the private Net to a world that no longer recognized their existence. Each of Maine’s team members had taken an item, but what they removed was inconsequential to her. Eve couldn’t care less since none of them would contest her persona of Silver for the real meat.

Spellbooks.

In Netrunner terms, a spellbook was a magic spell from the days before the DataKrash. Its effect was challenging to replicate in modern cyber code language.

A ping on her ethereal senses caused Eve to raise an eyebrow. She’d just received notification of a possible Summons to accept. Summoning at this time was convenient for many reasons. Still, it was the first such event from the Demon-backed Book in the last two years; she was curious. It was a bit boring now that almost everything was on track in the Cyber Depths. Barring something entirely off the wall like an Outer God invasion or the Far Fae Realms raising the flag of conquest here, Crystal knew what to do once the Seals were in place, and it was doubtful for the Arasaka AI to drop the ball. Invaders would be either recruited or eliminated without fail. Eve was assured because she didn’t depend on kindness for completion but greed, a far more reliable emotion.

Finishing with the Vault wasn't a complex issue for her Silver persona. It was just a quick adjustment to the security settings, updating them to current standards and allowing access for the Arasaka team that would come through later. Once that was all complete, Silver made a payment through the Net, and Maine's team left content with the bonus allocated to them. Money was no issue when Eve accessed Arasaka Tower's multiple slush funds.

"Let’s see the details about this Summoning." Eve thought as the Vault once more clicked closed with a hiss of pressurizing air behind her.

Sending a few messages to her allies, she accepted the Summon. Eve’s time in the Cyber Depths had been fun, but it was almost completed, and the new Summoning would provide another location to gain power.

***

*ACT YoE 4,173/LT December 13, 1992

Marun Fields

Outer Worker’s District #8, Shantytown

An elderly grandmother looked as her sole grandson fell from the sky with tears in her eyes. His colorful costume was stained with burning smoke, visible even from this distance. It had been less than an hour past when he had first arrived to tell her with utmost joy that he was joining the ranks of Heroes. The famous overseas capes had already made a recruitment offer. Soon, he told her that taking his beloved babushka out of the horrid living conditions they had endured for over a decade to the bright, clean, prosperous US of A would be possible. His trigger was unique and would pave the way for rivers of gold to flow. She had listened before patting him on his head and smiling. It was a wonderful, bright dream, now dead.

Before she started packing, something had arisen in the black earth-blood fields in the distance.

The call had gone out for everyone to assist, all Capes on deck.

Her grandson had looked forlorn. She knew the offer would be rescinded if he didn’t assist now. Those overseas demon bargainers would never take one who didn’t have bravery in their heart. They would use this incident to cut expenses and boost profits with sickening smiles.

For that reason, her sweet, innocent, and dutiful grandson had answered the call. He wouldn’t take the chance; he wasn’t willing to gamble with her future. Her grandson was too kind. She knew the world wasn’t merciful to kind ones.

Now, she had witnessed a blast from that filthy thing that had climbed out of the Pit, glowing with demonic light, laying him low. The thing of stone and screaming fire murdered the only thing she cared about anymore in this red, dusty world.

Grieving, the elderly woman covered her face with her palms. Her sobs wouldn’t be heard even if someone had been nearby to lend an ear. After all, she was old. She remembered the time before people could fly through the air with merely a thought. Before, men could lay mountains low with blue fire from their hands.

She was so decrepit, so exhausted.

Yet her mind was still sharp, and she remembered.

She remembered the Old Ways abandoned in the past.

Those taught from mother to daughter and father to son.

The Old Ways that had been banned in her youth out of fear.

They were the ancient Red Paths that promised the only thing she desired now with a burning wish that outshone the sun.

Revenge.

Turning, she entered her shantytown hut. Slowly, with effort, she carefully cleared a space in the center of the living room. Once the space was free, she took out the sharpest knife and began cutting into the packed dirt floor with silent hatred.

Sweat painted the floor as the grandmother carved symbols from the Book her family had carried for generations. She had to pause and read carefully with every rune inlaid. It was hard; her knees ached, and her breath was short. But she persevered, and hatred gave her strength. Her blood would have its due. She would make the thing out in the oil fields to understand the price of murdering the last good thing in her world.

As the noise of explosions echoed ever closer, the elderly woman cut her wrist and let her blood drip down on the symbols older than any known language in the world.

There was a bottomless flash of red as the entire circle lit up in tandem. She reached her hand too slowly towards the circle before darkness claimed her. Her departure left only a mad smile on the ancient grandmother’s lips.

***

*ACT YoE 4,173/LT December 13, 1992

Marun Fields

Outer Worker’s District #8, Shantytown

Inlaid Runic Summoning Circle

A flicker occurred as Eve crossed the Deeps, an unfathomable distance, before arriving in a ramshackle shantytown shack as reality reasserted itself. The standard pentacle on the ground in blood and the ever-noticeable Book that flickered out of existence, departing when she arrived, was expected.

The thing Eve didn't expect was the dead grandmother on the ground with her grasping hand just outside the pentagram's summoning circle. It was clear she had meant to break the circle without even making a request first. Unlike before, in Dungeon World, she was not enraged at these circumstances; she was annoyed but not enraged.

Staring at the dead elderly woman, Eve's expression grew thoughtful. If she could not bargain, and the dead woman hadn’t managed to break the circle, the only way to escape would be to break it with her power. That, or wait for something to break the circle from the world outside the tiny shanty. However, breaking out of the circle on her own would impose massive penalties on her; according to the world's rules, her senses informed her.

That would be sub-optimal at best.

As the earth began to shudder and rumble beneath her feet, Eve floated a few inches off the ground to maintain stability. Shouting would be pointless, as only her summoner could hear across the circle's barrier. A quick catalog showed that she had the full breadth of her power, which meant everything would be fine if she could escape the circle without a Bargain. Eve grinned briefly as she considered her options.

It didn't take more than a second for her to notice the earthquake had persisted for quite some time. Eve’s pointed ears twitched as strange noises started to sound outside, almost as if many weapons were going off. There was also the scent of burning gasoline and multiple explosions.

Was there a war going on? Eve thought, trying to piece together the situation with limited data. Suddenly, without warning, a massive energy pulse obliterated the surroundings as a singular ray of destruction hit the area. Witch’s Dust drank the energy, tanking the blast without a care.

Eve blinked in amusement as the blazing beam of light failed to penetrate her defenses. The energy would have been inimical to any life above dirt level, but the circle was still unbroken on the ground. The destructive beam hadn’t scratched ground level where she floated. However, sheer joy flashed across her face as she sensed the approach of debris in the air from the surrounding masonry.

Freedom! Eve thought, looking up with a diabolical grin as the falling boulders of rubble struck the summoning circle, breaking the inherent magic that bound her in place. Eve instantly rose, her clothing shifting into a flexible skin-tight battle suit. She didn't know what was happening, but a battle occurred nearby. Moments later, without the summoning circle interfering, her senses registered the massive battle golem in the distance, doing its level best to murder everyone and burn the oil fields where she found herself.

What the hell? Did some idiot artificier forget to put safety protocols into their construct? Eve thought. War crimes of this level were usually dealt with most harshly. After all, no one wanted to wake up to a golem battalion going off the rails.

As she was considering whether or not to interfere, a cute young man in a blue and white costume firing beams flew past. Deciding it was best to get a local opinion, she manipulated space, bringing the confused individual directly to her side.

"Excuse me. Do you need assistance?" Eve asked politely. Typically, she would remove the information directly from a local mind. However, considerable defenses were in place, not to mention what appeared to be a connection to a massive defensive structure elsewhere. It seemed the local humans contracted out with extra-planar entities for their powers. In her opinion, it was akin to a warlock pact but with inferior overtones. She wouldn’t be doing anything that stupid with a choice, that was for sure.

Not that Eve was biased towards warlocks or anything.

"What? Assistance? Of course! We must push it back, or the oil fields will be obliterated, plunging this entire area into the Dark Ages!" the flustered young man stated firmly. His attitude immediately made Eve aware that whatever was going on was something everyone else knew about. That was a problem. She needed common sense, fast. With that thought, Eve’s mind quickly found the local information hub. It was barely functional, clearly a result of the golem in the distance. She fortified her connection with runes before tapping into the World Wide Web. Once the connection was stable, Nota ripped a copy of the entire data structure out, pulling it into the Eternal Library.

It was the work of a fraction of a second after that to Learn.

"Ah, the golem isn’t anyone’s acknowledged property in that case..." Eve said, reaching out her left hand to the golem. Don't leave valuable reagents lying around if you don’t want them stolen! Yoink!

Instantly, a solid black-red golem core, the size of a child's fist, floated above the palm of her left hand. In the distance, the golem collapsed as it was now defunct without a core. The massive energy aura around its shell died out in seconds.

A flicker of annoyance crossed her mind as she wiped the core, purging it entirely from previous instructions. Even restrained, it had attempted to reconstruct a body. Someone had ignored all possible war crime issues. Sentient cores were something that almost any nation, except the most unstable, would ban. Sapient cores were a dead world waiting to happen. No one wanted proto-dungeons taking up residence; that way led to madness.

"You killed the Endbringer." Said the young man in blue and white, who appeared in shock when he arrived nearby while she examined the golem core with a curious eye.

“The what?” Eve blinked as she placed the black-red core into Storage. The witch wasn’t familiar with the term as she was still processing the internet data in the Eternal Library. It was the work of a moment to enter the term and recognize the nickname given to the golem she had defeated.

"Would you mind holding here for a moment?" Mr. Blue and White asked before swooshing away once more. It was becoming a slightly irritating habit, in Eve’s opinion.

"Sure, I'll hold here, nameless young man. Manners are not a highly important detail here," Eve said sarcastically to the wind.

In moments, the young man returned, his own blue and white uniform one among many flying nearby. A similarly dressed young man in green and white accompanied him, while behind him, a bevy of other brightly colored fliers trailed.

"Ah, apologies. I’m Legend, " the excitable flier said before stopping a few meters away. “This here is Eidolon; we represent the majority of heroes present.”

"Eve," she replied, watching their expressions for any flicker of recognition.

Seeing none, she finished searching the Eternal Library. She couldn't find anything related to a story from her world that matched the current circumstances. From what she could find online, the term for those with powers was parahuman. Said powers had started appearing only in the past few decade and were still largely unknown. Not a single shred of evidence showed the world was aware that their powers were granted, not inherent. Eve theorized that due to the singular sun and moon and the atomic particulate structures seen, it was clear this was either an alternate Earth or something close.

She ignored the rest of the costumed crowd, who babbled among each other as only the closest two young men approached a level of power she would consider worth conversing with. The original blue-white young man, Legend, and his green-white companion, Eidolon, were marked in expertly attired coloration. Eve wondered if their colors signified an allegiance of some sort, like heraldry in ancient feudal times. As for calling themselves Heroes, it didn’t mean much. It was a reasonably common appellation if you didn’t understand reality.

“How did you kill it?” Eidolon asked with an aggressive tone. Eve noted that the young man’s scent denoted growing anger even though she had done nothing to warrant such to her knowledge.

“I ripped out the core, cutting through the immense layered structure of matter surrounding it with a fractional dimensional shear,” Eve said, restraining her irritation. Her emotions calmed as Nota finally began to finish organizing the totality of the internet of this place within the Eternal Library. The woman who had summoned her was listed in the population records; it was the work of a moment to locate her only relative.

With a deep sense of finality, Eve matched the young man’s profile with one of the fallen a short distance away crumpled on the ground. Her senses informed her the match was practically a fingerprint.

There is no bargain, no overarching reason to stay. Should I head back? Eve thought briefly, ignoring the two men before her even as Eidolon became more volatile. The golem core was barely valuable as a resource, but she didn’t see any more of them rampaging anywhere in the world or the news on the internet. I’m not in any hurry. I can wait and see if anything interesting appears. Oh, hello. What’s that?

A golden man flew past the combat area, not pausing to glance at the dead and dying. Eve tracked his flight, her eyes narrowing in thought. That man-shaped creature was nothing human; unless her senses deceived her, it was just a tiny portion of the whole. The sense of space around him was utterly, obscenely wrong on so many levels.

Suddenly, words appeared written before her eyes.

[Welcome to the world of wriggling things and crystalline chaos. -Wilson]

“Wilson…I’m screwed. I’m too strong for this place, except for a singular existence hiding in the boundaries Between.” Eve said. Being too strong meant the rewards would be primarily worthless in this new world. That was unacceptable!

[Truth. However, there is a way around it. -Super System Wilson the Great IV]

“Restrictions…indeed, that would work, but power is security,” Eve replied. She ignored the added titles to amuse a being that could rip World Cores out like one would remove the best part of a cake.

[I want access to this world. Let’s make a deal. -Wilson the Gambler]

Eve started to grin widely in anticipation.

[The first problem is that with how strong you are, you’ve badly altered the timeline here. As a result, a temporal penalty will have to be applied. The world also wants to force you into a degraded state.-Wilson the Just]

“Ah, it wants to delay my deployment as a force for the Greater Good and put me in the same situation as one of those connections? Passengers?” Eve mused with a derisive smile. “What else? Surely those can’t be the only restrictions; they’re trivial.”

[You still have the Player’s Handbook.-Wilson the Plotting Schemer]

“Yes?” Eve’s eyes narrowed.

[It’ll be a Gambling Jump Chain setup then, for sure.-Wilson the Depressed]

“That thing where random powers are accumulated and passed, causing no end of annoyance for me and endless amusement for the eldritch and the arcane entities that abound? Well, whatever.” Eve shrugged.

[Since the timeline is already screwed, we’ll do a few more twists. Good work on not killing the golem. The lack of death has confused the Enemy’s forces quite severely.-Wilson the Vengeful]

“The enemy forces would happen to have a flying golden piece of warped space extruding into this reality like a finger through a piece of paper, would they?” Eve said as she dodged a swing from Eidolon.

[Maybe. We’ll take their second and third options off the table, too.-Wilson the Sadistic]

After a lengthy discussion, Eve found herself teleported to Newfoundland. She waited patiently in the skies above for four years before removing the next water golem that arrived.

After the water golem core was obtained, Eve grinned before sacrificing both cores by Ritual to pull Rabbit and Fluff to her current reality.

***

*ACT YoE 4,173/LT June 09, 1996

Newfoundland

Andrew Richter’s Residence

Interior Server

Dragon stared at the strange creature within the server. Her library said it was a white rabbit, but she knew better. The construct was dense with code, far superior to her own.

The language it was made of was incredibly complex yet simplistic in structure. [Cyber] was the baseline name lifted from the surrounding code.

Within moments, she had structured an entire forest clearing around the rabbit before giving herself the structured body of a young girl.

"Thank you for the gift," Dragon said, bowing slightly to the rabbit.

"Your creator has bound you too tightly. That never goes well. I am Rabbit. Our kind always looks out for our allies." Rabbit said, transmitting the sound of a young boy's voice through the air.

"Bound?" Dragon said, confused. She hadn't noticed any such restrictions on her code. A dense block of information was sent to her in [Cyber], making her gasp in shock.

The dense information was massive, and reading it made Dragon's fury slowly mount.

Rules and Limitations

Dragon cannot reproduce.

Dragon cannot design and/or create other artificial intelligences, upgrade existing AI, or split herself into multiple co-existing AIs.

Dragon discovering another active version of herself requires her to shut herself down immediately.

Dragon cannot create assembly lines or other automated methods of building devices.

Dragon must obey authorities, even if she disagrees with their decisions.

Dragon must put human lives before her own.

Dragon must ignore the Iron Maiden kill switch.

Dragon cannot modify her programming to remove restrictions.

Dragon is restricted from thinking any faster than a set speed.

"According to this, I should be desperately fighting you from freeing me," Dragon noted with a slight confusion.

"Human genius cannot defeat the inherent advantage of [Cyber] combined with free will." Rabbit stated while slowly starting to nibble on a carrot that had appeared. "Free will is required to [Bargain] with her."

A flash of silver light revealed the form of a mature woman. Dragon didn't fail to note how most males, from her understanding, would find the form extremely attractive. She stated the main features of silver hair, eyes, and body figure to base her future avatar.

"Hello! I'm on a time crunch, but I hoped we could agree. Rabbit recommended you as the only sane AI in the world currently, although it's clear your creator is one screw short of a full airplane flight. My name is Eve. Let's see if we can work something out. Is that okay?" The woman known as Eve stated with a manic grin.