There is too much at stake. Return to your time, traveler. Perhaps history will forgive me.
Silver's last words echo in your head as whatever force kept you anchored to this time lessens, sling-shotting you forward through time.
As you hurtle forward you can see the timelines arrayed before you vibrant and full of life. Curiously, silver flecks of energy distortion fill each one compressing the timelines and increasing their vibrancy tenfold. Ahead, only a few short months, they twist towards a temporal node, a fixed point in time. This node is corrupted, laced with veins of black and crimson. Beyond the node...nothing. There is no timeline past this cyst in time.
As Silver's power over you drops completely, this node fades away revealing the prime timeline you are familiar with. With horror you find that you can see the corruption leaking through from that alternate history in small gaps in the prime timeline centered around Silver's era.
***
You have a headache. This sounds ridiculous to you because it does not even begin to describe the painful ringing in your head. You can vaguely make out that you are propped against a large white refuse container between two tall buildings. The sky is overcast but the world is silent. The street is clean, the area has a sterile feel. There is a single faded poster on the building across from you. Can't quite make it out from the awkward angle that you are sitting/laying at.
Timeline gets up slowly an heads toward the poster across the way.
ugh where and when am I, why does my head feel like i took one of my tanks to it? Why don't I know what time it is, why cant i teleport?....Anubis help me Ive lost my powers! What did Silver do to me?
Timeline fiddles with his pip boy to see if he can determine where or when he is.
The poster is a wanted poster depicting the 10 most powerful heroes of your original time. All but Infinity Man have been crossed out. When you left it was Infinity Man, Hurricane, War Marshall, and Purgatory left battling X-tinct.
These were the most powerful and influential heroes this era had known.
As you are soaking in the ramifications, your peripheral vision picks up movement. A woman dressed in all white loose-fitting clothing walks at a hurried shuffle towards you. She is slack-jawed and seems to stare past you. She shambles past the alleyway seemingly oblivious to the world. A barcode is stamped on the back of her neck.
Your pip-boy beeps, completing its environmental scan.
TIME: 2225, MONTH UNKNOWN DAY UNKNOWN.
LOCATION: NEW ANGELES METROPOLIS, CALIFORNIA.
Your pip-boy seems to be buggy. The "please unplug charger" sign keeps flashing despite it not being charged. Also this is vastly different from the New Angeles you remember. You grew up in that city and it had a lot more...color than this sterile landscape.
Your accident happened in 2224, sending you several hundred years into the past. This is only a year or so after you became Timeline
Timeline tries to flag down the woman.
Excuse me miss could I bother for just a moment?
Timeline checks his pip boy to see if he can figure out what happened in only a years time.
Timeline recalls the superheroes and what their powers were.
Your pip-boy connects to the aethernet.
The news just after your accident depicts an all out battle between X-tinct and the last "rogue" heroes. The newscaster laughs inappropriately when Purgatory is slain on screen. The remaining battle is not shown seemingly for political reasons.
There is a newscast covering the explosion at your brother's lab. The footage is compiled from several different viewpoints of all the people watching the Sierra mountains. A blinding point of light expands into a massive ring that buffets the entire city and potentially beyond. Multiple rings continue to pulse seemingly not harming anything in the way. Follow up reports declare that the Q.O.R.E. facility made an accidental breakthrough in quantum physics that resulted in harmless enthalpy waves. In the months afterwards, Q.O.R.E. does not feature prominently but new technological breakthroughs are made in their wake at a ridiculous speed. The cure for every known disease, light speed travel, and the equation of life have all been solved. Crime has disappeared.
The woman's name is Carla Mendez, a career psychologist but for some reason is listed as Missing by the aethernet system. Emit keeps his distance from her only for the local police(?) arrive dressed the same as she and teleport her away.
Emit convinces them that he knows the mysterious "N" after which they leave him in peace, still all smiles and bliss.
Emit reunites with his brother who seems to know all about the current state of the world. He "invites" Emit to join him at the lab. They begin the journey via hovercar only for Emit's powers to return upon approaching the source of energy radiating from Jason's lab.
In a brief moment, Emit sees the entity "N" in all of it's terrible presence. It is a creature of pure enthalpy which on the surface has cured disease and banished crime but which seems to be dragging all timelines into a white singularity in time and space. Timeline's very life is threatened by his presence as his molecules are in a constant state of flux.
Fleeing the creature, he arrives in the year 2119 at the current FermiLabs in the US. He convinces Carmen Mendez, Carla's ancestor to allow him full access to their equipment in order to design a reversal of his brother's work. The work takes over a year to complete and counting the timeskip he did to convince them of his abilities, he enters the timestream device on December 12th, 2124.
The device you and Carmen have created roughly resembles your brother's work. There were multiple calculations and formulas the two of you had to fill in from scratch but when you power it up it seems to have the same energy readings as your body's cells.
If this works, you know that you will be reversing the event that created your powers in an attempt to bind the entity known as "N" to it's polar opposite thus ridding the time-ways of their influence.
With such cosmic stakes you know you have only one choice...despite what this means for you personally.You slip the memory ring onto Carmen's finger and step between the arcing energy conduits...
* * *
The energy contacts with you with a thunderous CRACK! The lab around you disappears like an etch-a-sketch being erased. The energy burns at the edges of your consciousness as you once again find yourself in the time-ways. Stretching to the left and to the right is your own prime timeline, and multiple other timelines glow radiantly in an infinite array in front of you.
This is not how the machine should be working...
*crackle*
A white glow can be seen far to your right, the only sign of the "oneness" that N is enforcing on the timeline.
You try to move but the machine is acting like a tether to the lab...
*zzzzZzzZZAP*
To the left, flashes of silver and dark red arc in the past, a sign that Maximum Silver is still holding out...for now at least.
You can feel your power limits being reached...and then exceeded. The machine is overloading you with energy in an infinite loop!
*Crackle* *ZAP*
The energy tears you apart...into three separate versions of yourself! The explosion sends all three of you rocketing in separate directions. One of you grabs for the prime timeline but misses tumbling away into the void. The second you turns with a look of terror on his face and attempts to teleport the third you to safety. Don't worry! I'll stop the machine!
* * *
You (the third) crumple to the ground in an abandoned alleyway. Dumpster stench wafts your way and you can hear the almost comforting noise of traffic and music blaring from apartments.
While the experiment was definitely a failure, you did learn something from the experience and if ever you were to try again the DC would be reduced slightly.
uhh this alley again what is so important about this damn alley i got to look into this but more importantly when the heck am I and why didn't that work?
Timeline now stuck in his hero suit that his powers aren't working beacuse thats what he was in to protect his identity at the labs lifts himeself up off the ground. Shaking off the fact that he just split again and this time was flung into the void and who else knows where and begans staggering out into the street trying to get his barings.
Ok Emit think what went wrong maybe there was a uknown variable I didnt account for but what ugh I feel like i got hit by a cosmic truck. Okay first thing first find out when I am and if i affected the timeline in any serious way by doing that experiment.
Timeline looks around the street from the sidewalk trying to get an idea when he is while fiddling with his pipboy to figure out when he is and if there is any news of what he did that may have affected timeline.
One hand on the wall, you stumble to the mouth of the alleyway. You spot a poster attached to the wall. It's a wanted poster depciting the same ten heroes you saw back in 2225. Only 3 faces have been crossed off. Recluse, Thrive, and Hexcraft.
Your Pip-Boy beeps as it has established the point in history.
You stumble forward into the street and aren't looking close enough as something fast clips you from behind sending you sprawling. Something crashes ahead of you. You crane your head to look and a bicycle messenger seems to have clipped you only to have crashed into the back of a car in the street.
Horns start blaring as the hovercars try to avoid the unfortunate young man. Two black-and-red uniformed individuals descend from the air on similarly colored hovercycles. You are aware these two are the current time period's military force which has replaced all domestic (i.e. Earth-based) police forces worldwide. They are referred to as Omega-nons. You also know that in this time period it is routine to be genome-scanned and if you aren't pure-blood you are lower caste and if you are unregistered (as surely you are) you can suffer fines and imprisonment.
Thats not good I got to get out of sight but im sticking out like a sore thumb in my costume... stupid temporary temporal displacement power degeneration maybe i have enough juice for a small port.
Timeline looks around for a good spot to hide thats close by to try to teleport.
Your vision is still blurry from the incident. The alleyway is right behind you and there are multiple hovercars around. Without a good idea of the layout, the nearby buildings might not be a good idea to teleport into with your teleport powers being wonky.
well this is a tight spot i got myself in.
Timeline looks back to the alley looking for a place to hide or somewhere to run.
The alleyway does extend a ways back and there are multiple side alleys as well as a large dumpster and several assorted garbage cans.
You spot one ground floor backdoor a little ways back with a barred window next to it. Opposite this door there is a basement door entrance with steps that go down. There are fire escapes for each building about twenty feet up, ladders locked in the retracted position.
Timeline runs down the alley and spots the barred window door they wont check a door thats barred and attempts to teleport on the otherside of the door so he can hide and catch his breath until the authorities leave the area.
hopefully i still got a bit of juice left
Here goes nothing!
I will need a Power Check or a Hero Point to use your teleport. A short hop like this is a low to medium difficulty check.
You are able to slink away with ease. Through the barred window you spy an empty room filled with lots of random accouterments. Dumbbells, rugs, broken fans, empty bottles and stacks upon stacks of magazines are apparent.
You snap your fingers and there is a loud hum as your powers take a second to build up and...
...You find yourself inside the building. Moments later, one of the red and black hover cycles moves slowly down the alleyway the rider glancing side to side as if looking for something or someone. After a few minutes of moving back and forth down each alley they speak into their communicator for a minute, shake their head and fly off.
The backroom you are in has an open doorway into the front area which is filled to the brim with CD's in dusty covers. The front door and shop window are boarded up. From your hiding spot you can see a set of stairs leading to the floors above.
Timeline waits until it seems that the coast is clear then trys to change his outfit so he wont stick out.
alright my powers are spotty but that worked maybe i can get out of my suit so i dont stand out.
hmm with my powers on the fritz i might need to be creative lets see if i can find any useful tech incase i need to come up with somthing on the fly.
Unfortunately your ability to change your appearance still seems stuck. Fortunately, you do find a large trenchcoat and fedora on a nearby hatrack wedged between an ancient flatscreen television and a tub filled with aged stuff animals. The coat and hat serve to cover most of your costume and is not terribly out of place as it is winter.
The entire floorspace in here seems to be stuffed to the brim with multiple collections of outdated devices and collections of every sort. A path of sorts winds between the stacks of paraphernalia.
With your keen eye for technology you can identify each of the devices you see. So far you have only seen tv's, small handheld games, a jukebox, and what looks like a broken riding lawnmower? These could perhaps be cobbled into a useful device...if you knew what you needed.
There are piles upon piles of this stuff and it would take sometime to look through it all.
Timeline puts on the trenchcoat and hat while looking through all the junk.
You find several useful components including a compact motherboard that could be used for a somewhat complex handheld computer device.
SsszZz Ssssss *zap* ssSsszzZ
As you progress through the towering piles of paraphernalia you hear the sound of static. it's faint but seems to be coming from upstairs. The entire building is quiet except for this sound and the sound of you rummaging through the heaps of stuff.
SsszZz Sssss-
The noise stops abruptly.
The hairs on the back of your neck raise. Every electronic device in the room begins to crackle to life. Your Pip-Boy is working normally however.
Today in New Angeles, We have the heartwarming story of-
-goes the weasel, POP! goes the weasel POP!-
The cow goes moo, the dog goes bark, the elephant-
SsszZz Ssssss *zap* ssSsszzZ
I would rather die then marry you!
That's not a knife...this is a knife.
-only line of defense against the scum of the universe.
Oh nice I could make some interesting........What in Anubis is going on?
Arcs or dark lightning jump between the electronics. from around one of the corners of junk stalks a wolf-like creature made of the same dark energy. It bares it's teeth revealing an abyss of nothingness in between.
It leaps for the attack!
It mauls your leg.
what are you foul beast.....ahh!
Timeline attempts to dodge out of the way.
Timeline aims his wrist blaster at the creature and fires.
Bad doggie...down boy
You attempt to summon a knight's shield from the Round Table and...
...a metal garbage can lid appears in your hand.
The energy hound crouches defensively but the beam hits true. The wound is only a graze however and it renews the attack.
It leaps towards you and vanishes midair...
*zap*
... only to reappear behind you and attack!
a garbage lid really oh well...
You close your eyes, blocking out the static for a moment and the familiar heft of a crusader's shield replaces that of the garbage can. Not the right time period that you wanted but still functionally the same...
Your aim is a bit off this time, and what energy does connect is dispersed harmlessly in the energy hound's crackling fur.
The energy creature snarls at you before opening it's mouth wide revealing the infinite abyss inside. The electronics in the area begin to fritz as a small bead of darkness forms between it's jaws and turns into a line of void energy that covers the area you are in.
SsszZz Ssssss *zap* ssSsszzZ
why wont u go down
You pull up the shield at the last second deflecting the beam to the side. Electronics spark in protest and a large hole is seared through a set of thick encyclopedias the next stack over.
You summon a set of black full plate armor complete with towering shoulderguards. Again not the exact set you were looking for but functionally just what you want. Your crusaders shield dissipates back into the ether however.
Once more you hit the hound this time it's reflexes are not fast enough to avoid the brunt of the attack and it yelps in pain.
SsszZz Ssssss *zap* ssSsszzZ
The hound whines and a rip in space-time appears and it leaps through disappearing from sight.
where did you go creature?
You hear more than see a static discharge outside in the alleyway. It seems to have attempted a retreat. It certainly didn't get far.
you wont get away!
You teleport into the alley just ahead of the limping hound. Sensing it's foe will not let it get away unscathed it readies for a final assault.
You fire dead center and the hound shrieks, drops of ichor spilling onto the asphault. It seems winded but still kicking.
It bays a mournful howl into the smog-ridden sky...and darkness begins to descend around the area. Akin to the night sky but no pinpoints of light shine in this darkness.
Timeline grabs his ears as the hound shrieks.
You only glance at the opening darkness above you but that is all it takes. You glimpse the unknown and it glances back into you. You see yourself, a withered old man spinning, endlessly spinning in the blackness of...nothing. Instinctually you shrink from the effect and the avatar of this nothing, the hound.
Your turn because it's Dazed.
i got to put this thing down
You place yourself between the hound and the entrance to the alleyway, knowing that you only have one shot. Steadying your aim you fire just as the hound leaps for you.
The beam hits dead center with a satisfying impact adn the hound is sent flying. It crashes into some garbage cans, clearly unconscious even before it hits the ground.
The hound's form dissipates with an audible *pop* and it leaves behind something worrisome. A small gash in space appears where it had fallen. It hovers maybe a foot in the air and is radiating multi-colored light.
Got him! That was a close one but what is this anomoly
The anomaly is a tear in the fabric of reality. The kind of tear created when something or someone punches a really big hole through it.
Like say...attempts to create a spatial-temporal anchor between two points in a timeline. The very thing you just attempted.
The multi-colored light given off from the portal matches your own energy! You and only you can absorb it without harm, likely sealing this smaller rift and perhaps gaining some of your power back.
The creature was some kind of manifest entity from the very emptiness between space and time. You've heard of these creatures using rifts to enter reality and devour any kind of energy they can find. Like a hungry energy vampire wolf. It's presence would have actually continued to increase the size of the hole as it fed on more energy.
Recalling the Pipboy's earlier warning, you surmise the device you created had the side effect of punching a hole in space-time halfway between the two temporal anchor points you had set. Like ripping a phone book in half with your bare hands, the device has created the beginnings of some kind of temporal rips centered in this time and place. The small one here is just a wrinkle compared to the hole that must be growing here...somewhere.
Gain 1 PP
You may now use up to Rank 3 of your powers without need for a roll.
Timeline closes the rift.
ive got to find the big one
You use your own energy signature to try pinpointing open rifts and overlay it over a map of the downtown area.
There are three on the map...but none of them are of the size you'd expect for the larger rift...something must be shrouding it or preventing it from showing up on the scanner...
Closing the smaller rifts could help you pinpoint the larger rift.
Locations:
East: Appears to be coming from an orphanage on corner of Downing and Comb streets.
South: Coming from the main loading dock for the Queen Martian Shipping Co.
West: Coming from the penthouse sweet of a local skyrise. Current resident is unknown.
Timeline decides to head to the orphanage first to not put children in danger.