24.9

**ACT YoE 4,171/LT March 4, 2070, at 1202**

Heywood, The Glen, Basketball Court #1 Bleachers

Sebastian Ibarra, known as Padre, was terrified. It was a normal emotion in his opinion when confronted with the closest thing to a god he’d ever seen. The sparkling silver girl hovering a foot or so over the bleachers watching the nearby basketball game didn’t look threatening, not at first. She looked like something you’d find in a high-end corporate fashion show. Moments ago, however, this sparkling silver piece of magic moonshine had ripped the kinetic energy out of speeding bullets. That was exactly when his blood chilled in understanding. Blocking bullets was easy, even being bulletproof wasn’t that unique. There was plenty of cyber technology that could do either or both.

However, manipulation of a fundamental aspect of energy without tech, that was utterly horrifying. Sebastion wasn’t uneducated, not after working for years as a Fixer in Noir City. The law of conservation of energy was nothing new. After all plenty of corpo labs were trying to break it every day.

That knowledge of physics was how he knew what the sparkling girl had done was insane. Direct manipulation of pure kinetic energy without so much as a single pulse of electromagnetic waves. Without words. Without gestures. Just pure will. It was exactly like Sebastion imagined the world had been carved into existence according to the Good Book. There was a lingering hope it was perhaps some sort of biological technology. No, biotech wouldn’t be able to handle the energy demands to stop merely a single bullet.

Madness.

However, the Padre wasn’t one to let terror keep him hostage. It also helped that Crystal didn’t appear to be deifying her associate in the least. They acted more like siblings, although there was little doubt in his mind who the big sister in the relationship. It took less than a moment after solid processing the situation for him to link the sparkling silver girl-next-door to another silver woman.

“Silver Sword.” Sebastion muttered aghast. The woman who had been visibly recorded as cutting through the Blackwall like a molten blade through cheese. She didn’t look the same, not even close. For one, the woman recorded was a goddess with ample assets and a face fit for advertising. On the other hand, this girl could rip bullets out of the air, so it didn’t take a leap of faith to consider shapeshifting par for the course. What’s one more miracle after all? Just a number. She’s practically an Uncrowned Empress.

Those two words were exactly what came to mind when Padre fit a title to Crystal’s silver-clad Patron. A Patron who probably only cared about the Valentino gang because Crystal cared. People like her didn’t consider a gang as anything more than ants. It cost her nothing to care, and therefore it was a solid investment to do so if it brought benefits. Especially since the obvious was clear to anyone with half working cyber brain. Crystal held the Valentino in enough esteem to give a shit if something happened to them.

If there was ever ironic proof of concept that my methods of investing were worth it, this is it. Our continued worth is predicated on the fact that one of our own gives two shits about us. God help us, or He already has I should say. Sebastion thought with a devious grin. It was a precarious situation on one hand, true. On the other it was a blessing of monumental proportions. The answer to a prayer that had been spoken and thought for decades. His faith solidified like metal armor finally cooling in a mold.

The world looked brighter in the noon sun. People were safe.

Crystal’s Patron might be able to wipe the Valentino, perhaps even the entire Noir City off the map with an errant wave. On the other hand, it was absolutely certain that nothing could touch the Valentino without her agreement. Decades of people watching made Padre absolutely certain this Silver Sword wasn’t someone who let others play in her sandbox. No, she was the kind of person that chopped off someone’s hands metaphorically and literally speaking. The kind of person who considered something theirs and didn’t hesitate to establish facts with violence.

“Hey, tell the old man what will happen in the future.” Crystal asked tapping her distracted Patron in the back

Sebastion Ibarra kept his expression calm and heart from racing due to extensive cyberware as Eve spoke lazily of the future. It wasn’t everyday someone informed you that the world they existed in was a splinter of a much larger reality. His initial impulse of disbelief was ruthlessly crushed by pragmatic logic. When someone was so powerful, there was a point where they didn’t bother lying anymore. It just wasn’t a decent use of time. Moments later after Eve finished, Crystal demonstrated her upgraded prowess. Watching a girl turn her hand from flesh to pure liquified blood and take a knife to her heart without even blinking was disorienting. Reality is changing swiftly. Adapt or die, just like any other day.

“Careful, he’s taken too many hits to his worldview in a short time. Give him an elixir, Crystal. Otherwise, his brain might pop like microwaved corn kernels.” The young silver woman said with a cautious tone.

Padre felt a small glass philter held to his lips as Crystal poured the contents down his throat. An ecstatic shudder went through his body as a wave of pure good with a faint aftertaste of blood emanated from his core. The world snapped into focus like his body had shed decades of deadweight. His cyberware informed him the age of his body had just sharply reversed.

“Even now it’s hard to believe? I suppose I can give a small demonstration then.” Eve said before Sebastion felt something grab hold of him as the world around froze into stilled silence.

The ground fell away beneath the group as the earth’s surface shrank into a tiny dot, even that dot vanished from view. Padre gulped as only the tiny light of the sun marked his home in the vast tapestry of stars. “Watch, mortal and understand.” Eve said thrusting her hands up into the firmament above the group.

Sebastion watched in horror as the space seemed to ripple like waves in a pond before two delicate hands ripped a crack to somewhere else. The same force that had transported birds, floating orbs, crystals, shrubbery, and more pulled them into the shattered space.

“Look around you, witness the Void. The end of all things in existence, and the beginning of them as well.” Eve said as Sebastion realized that everyone was glowing with a strange silver light. It looked like something out of an expensive science fiction novel from decades past. Upon closer examination swirls of silver dust moved in sparkling twists around the group, at the same time they generated the lightshow.

Padre felt certain that the only thing between him and complete annihilation was this delicate seeming silver dust. Raising his eyes he looked at the emptiness beyond called the Void and shuddered. In the distance to his right, he could see a glimmering wall of shining sparkling dust that stretched into infinity. On the left there appeared to be an enormous colored eye of multiple shades that did the same. It took only moments to realized what Eve meant by being a sliver of reality displaced between two planes of existence.

“Such emptiness.” Sebastion said his mouth attempting to fill the vast nothingness with sound that was eaten before it could carry.

Eve took a sideways glance at him and transported them back to the bleachers with a hand sign. “The seals that Crystal will place in each city controlled will be a massive favor to an entity of Power. One so far beyond your understanding it might as well be gibberish for me to describe. Suffice to say that I will distribute more understandable rewards after getting my own. If you question the value of what I grant, merely look at Crystal to see it.”

Padre nodded; it was like an intergalactic middle woman from those old science fiction stories he’d loved. Perhaps the right word was interdimensional in this case?

It was something the underlord of Heywood understood well, after all every Fixer took a cut. This was just on a scale that Padre’s mind even now was forgetting the better to protect his sanity. If anyone had looked at Sebastian Ibarra now, they would have seen a youthful body returned to primo age. At least until they looked in his eyes. Sebastion’s eyes held a broken calm, the same type that veterans of the Fourth Corporate War could be seen in the psych wards with.

“Will there be others like yourself coming to our world in the future, Uncrowned Empress?” Padre asked letting the title that seemed to fit slip past his lips.

Eve gave a wide smile and said, “Without doubt. Even if nothing else arrived, the Dragons are certain to enter your world. The chance to double their hoard without much risk? There is no possibility they wouldn’t take such a divine opportunity.”

“Dragons…” Sebastian murmured his eyes slightly lost. What could a gang of criminals holding territory do against the likes of a dragon? They would be nothing in front of such a creature, exactly like he was currently in front of Eve. It would be death, perhaps slow, perhaps fast, but inexorable no matter the speed. “Is there anything that can be done? Without power of our own…”

Eve’s eyes flashed with a glint as she finished his sentence, “You’ll be crushed like ants. Some of the Dragons might take you as servants, but the vast majority will be fodder to the terrors of the meta-planes. Horrors would devour your people like locusts at a banquet of wheat.”

Padre heard the emphasis in her words and shuddered. He’d seen the worst that men and woman could inflict on each other. The knife of betrayal though was nothing compared to the images conjured by Eve’s single echoing word.

“Do something!” Crystal said shaking her Patron by the shoulders with a slightly desperate look.

“Relax. Did you think I was going to leave the people you cared about in the lurch?” Eve said shrugging off Crystal’s arms. “Of course not. How could I convince you to travel with me if I left you worried about those left behind? As long as the Free Cities are sealed, I swear on the blood of my family and the Name of my brother. The rewards I will grant will be sufficient.”

Padre felt the world shake around them for a very brief moment as if something impossibly large was nodding in agreement. Although it made no sense logically, it almost felt as if the world itself agreed with Eve’s words. After all, what world would welcome invaders by choice without first raising up their native species. The thought was a lightning bolt of realization. The very shard of a world they currently lived on had no interest in being completely passive. It was just, before mana was accessible the options had been limited. Could she have planned this from the beginning?

If indeed Crystal’s Patron had planned this from the moment she entered this reality.

If she had seen the path forward from a mere glance.

Obscene.

It was the only word Padre could use that fit. He knew more than most that power without precision was a knife without a handle. However, precision without planning was like a blade without an edge. Planning at the level Padre suspected could almost be considered foresight. Except in his opinion the number of variables was something only an AI could process. If there was one thing, he was certain of, it was that Eve was no AI.

One only had to look at the smirk as the Crystal shook Eve’s floating form effusively in excitement to know that fact. The sparkling silver dusted deity said, “Now, words are nice, but I can see you would prefer something more binding from your expression, Padre. I happen to have a gift in that regard.”

A parchment etched in silver words phased into existence in front of Sebatian. It floated for several moments before he raised one hand and cautiously accepted it. Reading over the terms and conditions his eyebrows raised in surprise. “The entire gang would fall under your protection with the exception of…Julio Palacio?” He glanced at Crystal’s brilliant smile as she tugged Eve’s arm in excitement making the connection instantly with the help of his cyberware’s recall. A single life for the entire gang, even more one who always had unsavory rumors floating around them.

Padre looked at the contract and sighed. He couldn’t do it. The Valentino didn’t betray their own so directly, at least he didn’t. “I’m afraid I can’t sign with such a clause.” Even before the words exited his mouth the contract’s silver letters had shifted removing the sentence.

Padre looked at the wording for a long moment before finally pricking his finger with a knife and placing a single thumbprint at the bottom. He was no idiot. The wording would grant protection to the gang, true.

It never said when that protection would activate though.

Sebastian wasn’t willing to sign with a clause directly singling someone out, but he wasn’t stupid. The previous words had been an indication of intent. As the contract flashed into ashes, he felt the energy sear into his body binding it to the terms.

“I will cleanse the rot from the Valentino. That will be the fastest and easiest method to protect your people, priest.” Eve said her eyes lit briefly like blazing coins. Turning to Crystal, the witch gave a single command, “Start the spring cleaning.”