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[Fiction] For the Stars [AW] [IW]


Long

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Three years of rage and wrath. He thought back to that fateful day. Her sentenece was handed down, and she was lead away. Thn there was a gunshot. She knew it was coming, she'd smiled at him, and in an instant she and their unborn child died. He'd wanted to fly into a rage, but hadn't, calmly looking to the cameras, his eyes deep and sorrowful blue. "There is your justice. A nova who submitted. And yet was still murdered. She will be the last."

Then he'd vanished from view. The next time the Media saw him, He was leading a Teragen raid to free Novas being detained in China. Before the Teragen had been powerful, but backed now by someone with Long's power, they were a true force to reckon with. They swept aside the best of Chinese military, and freed the hostage novas, including one Long had once been forced to leave behind.

The Japanese stormed his home, overreacting in the extreme as his neice and nephew defended their father and inadvertantly killed all three. His response was Terrible to Behold. The nova stood on atop Mt Fuji, and unleashed his most powerful attack, scouring Tokyo from the map in a matter of seconds. A handful of Nippontai assaulted him, but by that point, he was far beyond their ability to handle. He didn't kill them, but he did injure them enough to force them to withdraw.

He'd lost everything, and now he was a pariah to even the Teragen. To that end he spent his time in deepspace, far from the reaches of anyone contemplating his next move, while Utopia searched everywhere for him. From Deep Space he'd strike out, his first targets being COMA, which in the span of months he annihilated.

He'd had seventeen Elites hunt him on the battlefields, and seventeen novas fell to his claws. Only Caestus Pax would prove his match, his better, but in the end It wasn't enough, as he always had a way to escape. Finally he'd grown tired.

"Why do I fight? Timeslip spoke of other worlds where anything is possible. Why can I not go there? There's nothing but the cycle of wrath and rage for me here now."

He focused out in Martian Orbit, and roared. TAKE ME TO WHERE TIMESLIP DIDN'T DIE IN THE TRIAL!" There was no sound in the silence of space but reality shifted and the multiverse opened up just the same.

He Emereged where he was, and Telleported into Earth Orbit. He quickly found Japan, but it wasn't where he was being drawn. That was south America. He smiled. Where ever she was, she was here, she was alive. She'd probably yell at him, but in the end it would all be worth it. Be allowed Gravaity to grasp him and began plummeting to Earth in the form a brilliant blue shooting star. "I've come to find you again Timeslip."

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Something was about to happen. That much, the inhuman creature known as Timeslip knew for certain. Other inklings came to her: visions of deep space, such as that reflected in her ever-present aura; a feeling of time and space woven in interlocking threads between universes; the fierce face of Ryu, seeking something... seeking her.

"Prepare for a visitor," her voice echoed in a thousand chords to her priestesses. "Long is coming."

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He made planetfall in the Pacific ocean, sending up a nice wave for the surfers to ride when it neared land. He shot from the depths, a streak of blue energy arrow-straight for Coricanchac, and the Temple dedicated to Timeslip.

He set down at the entrance, the guards looking somewhat suprised, but not overly so. He didn't care, he could smell her within, and that was what really mattered, baselines were far beneath his concerns.

He stalked through the temple, errecting his temporal defenses instinctually, there was no telling what sort of person this timeslip was and he had just basically barged in, even if it looked like he was expected.

He made his way to the inner sanctum and smiled.

"I've come seeking audience with the mistress of the stars and time, My name is is Shenlong."

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With a deep bow, the High Priestess explained, "The Portent of Things to Come expects you; follow me, honoured Long." The slender Incan turned, ritual robes flaring in a wide circle - and a slight aura flaring as well, denoting her firmly as a nova - before settling once more to hang straight and long as she let the visitor to meet her goddess.

Said goddess was just completing a resumption of her solid form as the two entered the room. "And here you are again..." Timeslip began, the strange echoing voice filling the room before it stopped short. "No, not again," she realized, noting subtle differences in this Long. A slightly different tone to his quantum signature, a bit more muscle in certain places, both of which could be explained away by time and effort, but something far more different was evident. The strings that tied him to the universal skein were not those of her native home, and that was unmistakable.

"Palla, leave us." With the dancer's grace for which the nova had been named, Timeslip's High Priestess bowed and departed the massive star-filled chamber.

After a long look, inscrutable for her form, the Portent of Things to Come asked, "From where do you come, and are you still known as Long, traveller?"

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He followed dutifully and stood before the Goddss that was Timeslip. She was far different than his own, but still nothing he saw made him turn away. The faint constellations actuallly added to her stunning beauty in his mind.

"Nobody has called me that for three years now. Most know me as Shenlong now. My Chrysalis resulted in enough newness that my name changed." There was a faint smile. His time in chrysalis had helped him come to grips with his fate, and had set him on this path.

"I came here seeking a new home, a world where the woman I loved hadn't died to a human assassin's bullet."

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There was very, very little in the world - either this one, or that which she used to call home - that could stop Timeslip cold.

This was one of those very few things.

Taking a seat on a throne that seldom saw use, the would-be goddess motioned Shenlong forward with a guesture, and when she spoke, there was somehow a softness in that incredibly alien voice.

"I'm sorry. I know that there are many worlds where my analogue did not find the means to escape death at the hands of those opposed to her. You have my condolences in that the one you knew fell."

There was a moment, then: "Tell me: was it the bullet that struck in the garden, in Japan? Or another, perhaps surrounding a trial?"

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Cold Blue eyes seemed to freeze over, one of the only signs of his bitterness. "It was at the conclusion of her trial. I had tapped ever resource I had, called in many favors, but she was still convicted to life in Bahrain. In It was decided by the Dogs of Utopia that it wasn't enough, and someone with very special tech arranged to shoot her. As she was led from the courthouse blood errupted from her chest as the supersonic round struck her. I was ten feet away when it happened.... All I could do was watch her die, not quite smiling, and then her eyes close forever."

The massive frame shfted slightly. "My next action doomed me. I unleased my own retaliatory attack, destroying the entire building the shot had come from, and sending a meam of light across the horizon. Before anyone could say anything I teleported her corpse into space, particularly Ganymede, the moon of Jupiter, the only place I thought she could rest in peace. I returned home to be swarmped by the media and Even Nippontai.

They backed me into a corner, forcing me to use the attack again, which carved a huge swath out of Tokyo. I was left only with the Movement, and even then I was something of a pariah. I wandered as she had, before finally returning to the last safe place I knew. There I slept through my chrysalis, and awoke with a new mission.

"Shen-Kahn proved right, in his words before he died. The humans I protected had turned on me, my fellow novas turned on me. I was now well and truly alone, because I had once forsaken my own people."

So I taught them the meaning of loss, blasting cities and towns from Orbit, hiding within the solar system. I eliminated COMA first, ttally and completely. I was hunted by Pax on more than one occasion, but I managed to get away because he's too full of himself.

Eventually I realized that I'd lost everything, and that my lessons fell on deaf ears. They were really just me getting revenge for my lost life and family. Timeslip often took me to other worlds when she was alive, and I began to think "perhaps there is a world where my wife did not die, one where perhaps I had, or where I simply was not. I could start over there."

"It was as if the veils had parted. After years of despair I had a hope, and I pushed my power to the limits, and bent reality to my whim, or at the very least found a world where what I desired existed."

"That has lead me here, to you."

He looked at her.

"I have no expectations, and do not come expecting things to be the same. I do not want the same as it was. You aren't my wife, and I am not the nova I was when she lived. But I would like to start again in this world."

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  • 1 month later...

"And so you found your way." The words echoes with an utterly inhuman mixture of coldness and warmth, clinical sterility and empathic understanding.

"Know this, Seeker-for-What-Was-Lost. I have changed more since that trial than most can imagine. Before, I was a Portent, but with only the barest understanding of what that meant. Now, I am the Portent of Things to Come. The threads from here split in many directions, and a good many of them bring you sorrow and loss and bitter resentment. Those that lead to joy are few, and they are the thinnest and most fragile of threads; even now as we speak, they shimmer in and out of existence in the great river of all."

Timeslip gazed at and through this version of Long, the gaze so intense that even without seeing her eyes he could feel them bore through his mind and heart and soul and into the very thing that bound him into the multiverse. "Knowing the risks, knowing that you will most likely fail to find happiness, would you still proceed with me?"

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"The future can only be what I make of it."

He smiles, his massive white teeth gleaming even in the temple. He was so much more like Shen-Khan, and looked so much wilder, and more primal, in touch with his godhood.

"I choose to stay here for now. If things do not work out then they do not. There are infinite possibilities out there, and I have nothing but time."

He walks towards her. "So, Portent-of Things-to-Come, tell me of this world if you would. I know that I am in the Western Hemisphere, but it is very different than the one I know. Would you tell me, or perhaps, show me what has happened."

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  • 2 months later...

With an invisible smile, Timeslip recounted for this variant of her former husband how history had unfolded here. She told of the early visitors to South America's wild shores, how the pox had nearly wiped out the Aztec... but made them all the stronger when true conquistadors tried to take on the New World and died in the effort.

As she recounted the moments, building the world for her guest, the starscape woman moved through the great domed chamber; images appeared and faded on the walls and in the air, portraying events of the distant past, unrolling the growth of a great culture as though it were a canvas, a scroll of the long years in vivid truth.

At the end, she stood directly before the great bestial nova, her stars shining in bright constellations that shown in patterns across his fur.

"And that brings us to where we are today. The One Race is not quite so developed here as in my original thread, but does not face the same opposition, either. Here, we can develop as we should, can become the gods that we are destined to become. Here, I am truly the Portent-of-Things-to-Come, and my worshipers are not few."

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"I care nothing for worship and adoration. I long ago accepted who I truly am, what it is that is my gift. If there is no need of an Avatar of War, Then I'll return to a more rewarding path. I was more than happy teaching my children, and those of like minded friends, before everything was taken from me."

He smiled. "The children never judged, they just accepted the one truth. That the only limit to what we can do is the one we place on ourselves."

In her mind she can see images of Long training about half a dozen nova children, Misato and Benkei among them, looking just like she remembered.

"My apologies. Some of my abilities are somewhat new, and not fully mastered yet."

He looked at her. "Do the others like us have a place to teach the young about ourselves or is it as fractured as in my reality?"

She could see the bearing of a mighty warrior, and the hope that all that would be required was the knowledge and patience of a teacher. With what had been said, it was easy to understand just why he would prefer it, it allowed him to revel in his power, for constructive, not destructive means.

"Such a minor difference, and things are so different." He chuckles. "Im almost scared to ask what your original world was like."

"Why did you choose this one to be your home?"

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  • 1 month later...

"The warm welcome by Pachacamac was certainly a factor," Timeslip replied. "And the semi-isolationist Incan culture reminded me a great deal of when I was living with Ryu in Japan." The comment would have been confusing under different circumstances, but both she and he were adept at juggling the various realities of the interdimensional cosmos.

"And there are advantages to being a goddess." Looking around the vast chamber, at the attendant priestesses and the rest of the temple, her point was overwhelmingly obvious.

"But the core reason I remain here is that this is where my child was born. This is her home thread, even though it is not my own. And that is a special tie, giving this world a mark distinct and indeed beloved amongst all others in my eye."

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"But isn't her basic genetic structure tied to the reality of that both of her parents are from?"

He smiles. "That said, home is where you most feel comfortable."

He looks to her. "So I've seen the city on my flight in, but I wouldn't be adverse to a tour."

There was an obvious curiosity about his other self's daughter, one he and his Timeslip would have hads.

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"I think a tour would be in order," Timeslip voiced in her echoing tones as she rose from the floor in flight.

"But you are wrong about the ties that bind one to a world. While her genetics originate in my homeworld, a connection with a temporal thread is established at the moment of independent life, a connection that will remain for all her days. You must notice that it is always easiest to return to your original thread when you cross the lines; when she learns to do so, this will be the thread to which she can always return at a thought."

With no further commentary, Timeslip swept out of the temple, leading the familiar stranger and showing him the sights of an alien home.

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