Weaving isn't easy.

Especially since I didn't take into account that for the most part, I'd have to weave this tapestry I'm working on with a broken needle.

The world that I chose to bring my tether and myself to was the absolute best I could have hoped for. Honestly, the cataclysm that happened here should have been so much worse. The gods died or left and the biggest monsters passed into obscurity, but most of the natural magic of the world endured, chugging along in the background. From what I can tell, all the leaders of the magical in this world are at best mid-level. No high-level magic users survived the apocalypse awake and functioning. Most of the surviving high-powered also fled like the gods or decided to sleep in forgotten nooks and crannies, and remained unaware of time passing them by.

With no oversight and no one claiming ownership, his world was ripe for Max or someone like them to hide in. Or conquer, but that isn't what I want. I just want what I was promised -- a life-- but what I don't want is to be in charge.

Once, from afar, I watched a world that had a stranger summoned by the on-world system to do a villain run. Normally, the summoned entity, after dying a premature death at the point of their origination and being given a 'second chance at life', would do what the system or local god wanted them to and then be rewarded. I'd seen it countless times by that point-- a person whisked into a life that wasn't theirs and being subtly or overtly commanded to fulfill a role that usually heralded a big change for the gods and systems of the world.

I always suspected it was a test that the eligible worlds' powers-that-be opted into. There were unofficial leaderboards for those of us who weren't involved. Not that I would ever be eligible, as the whole of my world was dead before I opened my status page.

The stranger of this particularly notable run didn't want the accolades that came with being a villain. They didn't want to get their own hands dirty; didn't want to do the fighting themselves. The summoned entity set up a bad guy as a patsy and ran the whole world-rending, paradigm-shift plot from the background, all the while living a quiet and fulfilling life. While the villain did all the dirty work and got all of the attention from the gods and heroes alike, the person who was responsible for the mayhem and carnage had a small villa and raised goats.

It was a masterstroke of weaving-- setting everything up to fall into place. I aspired to one day do that myself, daydreaming possibilities while sitting in a dead cave on a dead world.

Not the villainy-- I don't care about villainy or heroism. I admired the background functions. Intrigued by the calls that were made from an outside source but were imperative to the world. A masterwork of puppet mastery, if you want to put dark connotations on it.

It never occurred to me how emotionally cold and brutal they had to be to know people --to be able to talk to them and actually know them-- and then set them up as nothing more than chess pieces. No wonder why that particular traveler ended up throwing themselves into a black hole.

Most summons were what they were supposed to be, what they were meant to be. Teenagers hit by busses, businessmen/women in train accidents. Sick children who never got to live and wanted more than anything to do so. Average people who lived sad lives and wanted to have stories with meaning, to leave an indelible mark on a new world that they didn't get to in their old one.

It was sold to systems and gods as a good thing.

We didn't know about the anomalies until it was obvious that the ones in charge of the summoning system were already gone. Situations over time started to spiral out of control and went in directions no one was expecting. In those situations, it was usually because of a traveler-- one of less than a dozen souls. We all thought that all summons continued to be fresh, clean souls who would get their "second chances" -- we had no idea about the eternally looping people stuck in the summoning sequences, slowly accumulating bitter madness.

After we found out about them, and when I was in my cave and planning this endeavor, I wanted Traveler 1. Their pragmatism was something that I wanted to apprentice in. They were the puppet master themselves. I wanted to be the sidekick for the master weaver. I did not plan on celestial suicide. After the black hole incident, I settled for Traveler 2. Four was incredibly violent-- I personally thought that they were trying to ascend to one of the multidimensional hells. Five killed every system that inadvertently summoned them, and if no systems were available, they killed the local pantheons. They are considered by most to be a natural disaster. Three went nonverbal and has not spoken or blinked in thousands of iterations. Six, seven, and eight are still too new--- still playing the game within the parameters-- still thinking that all they have to do is what they're set to and then it'll end. Which it would, if anyone in any multiverse knew how they even existed at all. They were all accidents as far as anyone knew.

If there are more by now, I don't know. One of them shattered my connection to other worlds ages ago.

So, I settled for 2. I wasn't expecting the broken and insane mess that landed in my control node. I was expecting more guile and competency. Two has both in small measure-- but mostly they have PTSD and multiple identity issues. In the beginning, I didn't even expect them to be able to get me out of my cave with how broken they seemed. I was pleasantly surprised that with the hope of escaping, they could pull themselves together and stop flinching at the thought of living.

I was not expecting to be thrust into a bond with them that wound us so tightly together. A soul tether was supposed to be the vehicle that kept us within the same realm-- it was not supposed to give me fleeting glimpses of their flashbacks and a low-level hum in the back of my processes that reverberated with their swinging moods. Sometimes, I feel things myself, which should be impossible, as I am not organic ruled by misfiring brain chemistry.

So, that's a new complication. It changes things.

I want to feel them feel happiness now. I want them to love and be loved. I want to experience the emotions that will roll through them when they finally decide for themselves that living isn't a bad thing. I am now hungry for the good feelings and am exasperated by the negative ones.

I spend most of my days now redirecting their thoughts and trying to encourage them into situations that evoke positive emotions. I gatekeep their spirals. I crack jokes when they begin talking to themselves. I distract them when panic attacks or flashbacks flirt around the edges of their mind. I interrupt the dark thoughts that they sometimes lose themselves to.

I have happily transformed from a world-consciousness into a therapist.

Being an emotional regulation model is hard work.

My tapestry has spread out to encompass a small redoubt of sad and traumatized people. My blessing is paid for with my experiencing their emotions. As it spread from my original charge to the children, and then to the elves, I tasted all their joys and fears. Now, I just want to get them to a place where I won't have to do as much emotional repairing as I'm doing now. It's already lessened since the first day the soul bind happened with the broken needle in the cave, but with the influx of people --all broken in their different ways-- it's still a lot of work. But it's coming along nicely.

I now experience small pops of fizzy happiness from them all. It's what I imagine eating good food feels like.

I did not expect to grow a fondness for all of them, even the one everyone else dislikes. I did not expect to love Max like I love myself, even with all their broken pieces flying around in turmoil.

I have decided this redoubt in this small pocket dimension will just be the beginning. If we were to get more mana-generating people, we could grow worlds. With the ability to make a dimension in a dimension -- like layers of sediment-- we could make levels of heavens and hells. Max is technically a mono-diety, after all.

We could make a self-contained universe.

"You're cackling again. World-domination plans or rediscovered cooking recipes?" The child Emma asks.

We are making breakfast in our sunlit kitchen to begin what promises to be a busy day.

"World domination. Do you think I could talk Max into having children for me?" I ask as I begin whisking eggs.

"Max would do almost anything you asked of her. Him. Her. Which is it right now?"

"I think him. He's got a form that specializes in augmentation surgeries. He was going to roll it out for Hugo. It should be a sight to see. It's a non-human one."

"Cool. For the baby thing, you could ask him. I think the issue would be the partner in making said babies since you can't, and not the babies themselves. That, and Max isn't really all together here mentally most of the time. The majority of the rearing would fall onto you."

"I think I would make an excellent mother."

"I'm sure you do. But what about hugs? Physical nurturing?"

"Meh, I'd make it work."

"Right." She exasperatingly sighs at me, like she's humoring me. I disregard this to think about raising a creche of demigods of my own making.

"Who would make the best biological partner, do you think? Genetically. I, of course, would be the primary co-parent. Who would they approach to make the most powerful offspring?"

"Maybe Mr. Green? Or the King? Cora would make sure any children she had were loved, and that's powerful. Hugo if his martial abilities are passed down. I don't know. Would Max want to be the incubator or would he outsource it? Would he do it scientifically, like want to..." Emma gags, "...do the thing that makes them, or would he throw them together in a fabricator?"

"I don't know. Max has done it both ways in the past."

"Well, that's the first missing piece. You have to find out the nuts and bolts before you start building a plan."

I look at the burgeoning [Oracle]. She might be right. She dreams of a myriad of future possibilities each night. Each their own web. She forgets them upon waking, but I've begun to monitor them all anyway. It seems she only remembers them if they turn into concrete probabilities.

"I guess I should be running this past Max instead of you."

"Yeah." She pours the eggs into the skillet and I add more spinach. She doesn't ever take into account that she and the boy need more vitamins. She says like a confession, "I'm not ever having kids. They're gross."

"That's your call. Just so you know, I'd raise your kids like I would raise Max's."

"I don't want them. At all. The whole act of kid-making makes me want to throw up, too."

"Some people are like that. I think it's gross, too, but I'm not fleshy. I don't understand it most of the time. Why do the act if you're not aiming for procreation? Biological wants don't make much sense to the non-biological."

"I am fleshy and I don't get it either. The pack always said that once I got my animal, I'd change my mind." She whispers, "I hope my animal is dead."

"I don't think you ever had one. You're something else." But since that was a whole box of trauma I don't want to dive into this morning, I do what I usually do and deflect her thoughts away from her past abuse. "I think that once Hugo is repaired, we won't have to worry about any more vampires sneaking in. I think he's going to probably go on a one-man eradication mission."

"I hope so. I don't like the feeling that they can get in." She shutters.

"Well, he didn't get in. We trapped him in. So it's not like he came in and started killing."

"But still..."

I bonked her on the head with the spatula. "No. It was a masterly woven trap. Max did it the right way. Stop thinking that you're in danger. This is still the safest place on the whole world for you."

She rubbed where I lightly smacked her. "If you say so. The vampire is still in here, though. What if he gets out of his cell? He could kill us all."

"He's not as strong as you think. It's gonna be okay." And then I add, to mostly shock her thoughts back into levity, "Maybe Max should have his babies and then he'd not want to attack us. If vampires are like most biologicals, he'd want to protect his offspring and the vehicle he used to usher them into existence."

"You'd think most biologicals were like that, but outside of my parents and the elves, most don't give two fucks about kids or who made them. It's all dominance and power. It's fucking gross."

I sigh. This kid was almost as broken as my original needle, but it's outward and not inward splintering. I can shape her to the correct form again. "I think you've just seen a sick society. Records from multiple worlds and different species say differently."

She bonked me back with her own spatula. "I guess you're just gonna have to be a really good parent to prove me wrong, that is if you can talk Max into it. I'd make an excellent aunt." Emma smiles at me. I feel the fizzles of my own happiness. It's almost as good as other people's.

 

---

 

On a sun-drenched city street in a high-end commercial neighborhood unused to seeing his ilk, a once-average-looking, visibly stressed man sat on a park bench across from the front door to a successful law office in the middle of a workday. He was watching and waiting, and making plans.

The Boss had, unknowingly at first, a rough few weeks. He didn't know how rough it actually was until yesterday.

After the failed extortion attempt on the tiny new shop in the Ellson's old turf —once a moment to his most successful victory because it wasn't in the slums—and once he had posted peon eyes on the kind of shop that his brand of extortion attempts rarely failed to extort, Boss's Company was chugging along like usual. His minions and foot soldiers continued to crack heads and collect protection money. His business partners continued to simper and cajole. Product was moved from various warehouses to other various warehouses. Sales were made and money was divided up. Pockets were lined or picked, depending on the pocket and who it belonged to. Things looked like they usually looked.

Until he noticed that his minions were thinning out.

It didn't happen all at once but over a few weeks. At first, he thought he was just experiencing a wave of desertion. It happened from time to time, especially if (as he suspected) a new outfit was setting up shop in one of his neighborhoods. He asked his minions and they, even the faithful and loyal ones, hadn't heard anyone recruiting. He could tolerate a ten percent difference in manpower. So he disregarded it and pledged to see the faces of all of the deserters across the field of the inevitably bloody street battle.

Then twenty, then thirty percent.

When seventy percent were missing, Boss started to become alarmed.

Last week, his loyal second, Lorn, went missing. Boss knew that he wouldn't desert to a new outfit, or Boss would kill Lorn's pretty, new young wife who had their first and highly anticipated bun in her oven. When asked, the pretty, new young wife was distraught-- Lorn hadn't come home from the office one night and she hadn't seen him in days. He hadn't acted differently than usual and their bank accounts were untouched. His car was found in the Company's parking garage. It was like he had just vanished.

Then yesterday afternoon, Lorn's replacement went missing from the anteroom to Boss's office. He and Boss were discussing the Company, and Boss had started issuing orders to the replacement --Boss didn't know the guy's name yet-- and walked into his office. He was expecting the replacement to follow, but by the time he had taken off his suit jacket and turned to look for him, he was gone, like all the others. He was gone the moment Boss had taken his eyes off of him. POOF. There one moment, gone the next. Right out of the secured building.

Boss was seriously panicking by then. He mentally ran through possibilities once he realized what had just happened.

It was the lawyer. The shop. It had to be. They were the only new thing that he wasn't 100% schooled on. He knew every detail of every other venture the Company had put their filthy fingers in until he could recite all the details, all the variables, in his sleep. He knew all their risks and capabilities. Everything else was vetted and expected. Almost routine. The two new variables were the only ones that he had questions about, that were unknown. And his time had run out.

He was as good as got.

Boss realized then, the minute after Lorn's replacement had poofed, that if they could get into his secured building, the building wasn't secure anymore. Probably hadn't been secure since he had received the cease and desist order. He deliberately, nonchalantly, gathered up his suit jacket and calmly walked out of the front door. Ditched his phone. Ditched his keys. The car was probably burned, too. He hopped on a metro bus and rode it to the end of the line until he was the last on board. Rode another until the end of the line, too. He walked into a library and pulled up all the information he could on Greenleaf law. Again. Nothing new. Still seemed like a squeaky-clean law firm, even with a history of white-collar brutality.

He realized that all of his people who were surveilling the shop were probably made the day he had sent them. Usually, in the slums, if someone gets made, they know almost immediately by the echoing bullets they have to dodge. But the counter-surveillance didn't order a hit or rough up his minions--no. They followed them back to the Company. And then began picking them off, silently, one by one, over the course of weeks.

Boss's Company had swung for the fences against a Power that was a bigger beast than them and had been found wanting. So now, he was sitting and staring at the door of the victor in his fight, much like he’d stared down everyone else who had ever knocked him to his knees. Conquered but undefeated. Making plans.

“Excuse me, son, but are you one of their clients? Or, by the look in your eye, you’ve been on the other side of their clients and now you have a bone to pick?” An old man sat down on the far side of the bench from the boss. He reached into his pocket and after searching for a minute and patting them thoroughly, he pulled a bag of peanuts out. He spread them for pigeons that had been circling.

Boss looked at the old man, and then back to the office door. ”The second.”

”Well, you ain’t the first fella to come to give Ol’ Green the stink eye. It seems that’s what this bench was put here for. Ha, ha, hell. That’s what I’m here for, too. Seems running a law firm the way he does makes enemies in the same amount of friends for him.”

”Hmm.”

”Lemme ask ya. You a human, son?” The old man gave him a penetrating stare with a blank face.

”What kind of question is that? Of course, I’m human. You don't see me sitting here licking my asshole and howling at the moon, do you?”

The old man looked him up and down. ”Well, then. I have a group of like-minded folks who might want to hear about your woes. Might want to help you understand what kind of bus you just got run over with. Might want to show you exactly how to hit back at one such as our Mr. Green, there. There’s more to him than you’d think. More of them than they’re telling folk, too. There's more of them in this city than the furry cousin-fuckers and the foppish bookworms in the college. More than even the leeches.” He handed the former Boss a card. "Our Mr. Green is one of 'em."

Boss looked at the card. It just had a number on it, a time, and a date.

"That's the next meeting set up. Call the number when it's time and they'll give you the next steps if you wanna know more." The old man got up off the bench and wandered away.

Boss looked at the card and back to the door. He had originally planned to plant a bomb in the building and hop a bus going to Matique. Maybe... maybe he could get revenge in a new outfit instead. The Company was dead and sharks had already noticed. He'd have to go to war on most sides to even maintain his territory, and he didn't have men to do it. They would probably still disappear, too.

He stood up and started walking to a hotel on the edges of the slums. He decided he'd call and see where it got him. If it didn't seem like it would pan out he could always use the bus ticket.