The announcement was broadcast to everyone in the Eternal Sphere Corporation, everyone subscribed to their services, as well as everyone else involved in the incident, including Lucifer and the rest of the Wise Men, the lesser Aspects and Welch Vineyard. A few people who had been caught in the crossfire also received the message, along with compensation that mysteriously appeared in their bank accounts.
To the citizens of the world where the Eternal Sphere Corporation kept their headquarters, the broadcast appeared to come directly from their offices, on a channel so secure that the President had tried to shut it down and failed. The figure who made the announcement looked a little like Welch Vineyard, who a lot of the senior executives knew to be an ex-employee confirmed dead several centuries ago. Even as they panicked and made some rash stock market decisions over the sudden ghostly reappearance, the form changed to something even more frightening.
Nothing about the stranger's physical appearance stayed the same when an observer looked at them for a second time, and no two observers could agree on exactly what kind of person they had seen. Female features morphed through a sliding scale to androgynous, then clearly male, before shifting back to something else. The personality of the face shifted between various human traits - diligence and laziness, passion and cynicism, kindness and sarcasm – but still contained that edge of an entity possessed of obvious power levels beyond anything that had ever existed in the world before. While the figure was always beautiful, it was an ageless, eerie glamour that began to invoke fear of the alien the more an observer stared and tried to hold a clear image. Not that the stranger seemed hostile, only angry, indignant and vengeful, and only to certain individuals. Of those who knew they were the target of the wrath, there were a few unfortunate suicides, only half of which were actually less voluntary deaths arranged by other senior executives who thought it would somehow lift suspicion off them. Seconds after making the call, they knew it had been completely futile. The voice spoke to them personally, as it did everyone in the world, possibly the Universe.
"We trusted you," said the voice, shifting as much as the face, "We made no attempt to stop you when you grew up to learn of us and glean our knowledge. We inspired your bards and geniuses and we even enjoyed it. And yet we were naive. We assumed you would live by the same rules that we do."
"You who claim ownership to the worlds that you create in the image of our own, who treat them as your domain as Gods, or even worse, as commodities to be bought and sold," growing anger crept into the voice, "Images of other worlds you cannot yet stand upon with your physical form, that you claim to be your own fiction, and yet, though they were stolen from what was already there, you accuse others of stealing if they dare to share your inspiration and further the expansion of your creation! You who play political games with entire worlds when you gave you the inspiration only so that you could expand our worlds and experience the sheer joy of creation! You who would take the gift of fire, create only one flame and bar it in the cage of your own hearth!"
"You have wronged everyone who relied upon you," proclaimed the voice, its every accentuated syllable like a rumbling storm, still far away but already an indication of how much destruction would lie in its wake, "Every form that had grown its own awareness inside one of your creations, and yet you still tried to treat as your commercial stock, like the most vile slave trader. Everyone who has had themselves and their world destroyed, changed beyond recognition by an upgrade or abandoned for a newer version. And not just your creations, but those who rely on them, for their own livelihood, for their inspiration, or even for sanity and any semblance of a meaningful life. Every customer who became a devoted fan and was betrayed by your paranoid, cut-throat corporate action. Every small business you swallowed up, every ally you betrayed, every creator you found a copyright clause to halt. They are all sins that stain your hands. And don't claim that you only did it to survive as a business, that artists need a realistic hand to direct them. Because you went far above and beyond what you could have done if you only wanted to protect yourselves, when you had so much power that you were never under threat."
For a brief second, the image stabilised back into that of Welch Vineyard. This time, it was the woman's avatar, looking very enthusiastic in her 'vengeful Goddess' act. One hand balanced on her hip, the other holding out a handy stick with a wagging finger pointed at her audience. The image would have been ridiculous, if entire worlds hadn't now been certain they really were looking at the face of an aspect of Tria. A second later, the image was gone, back to the more chaotic general form of the one worshipped as a deity even among a corporation who thought they were deities themselves.
"Out of respect for those who rely on you, and so that we do not resort to your own method, we will not simply remove their support in this Universe. But nobody will be on your side now that they have seen you not only fail, but also anger Tria. You do have competition in this Universe, and they do have support. And when you will inevitably forget this warning, they will still be there."
"This goes for you too, by the way. You know who you are. We know what you're doing and we aren't ignoring you."
With this last message, cryptic to all but maybe two people in the entire Universe, the image faded forever from the various media it had been broadcast onto – public screens, televisions and computers, virtual environments or, on very low tech worlds, unusually vivid waking dreams.
The Universe would not go back to normal afterwards for a very long time.
"I prefer the one I have," commented Welch. The avatar she examined only resembled her in so much as it was female. Its hair was short, bright pink (admittedly an awesome colour) and was slicked back. She wore an outfit that sort of resembled the one Welch wore now, but with a shorter skirt, also bright pink. None of this annoyed her so much as the fact that it was an AI. True, it was the AI of a spaceship or planetary defence base or something cool like that, and it was designed not to get her into quite as much trouble, but she still preferred having a full range of sensations and not having even more problems with existential self-doubt as she currently did.
"Yours is getting tatty," insisted Gabrie, "We can't keep bumping you back to earlier points in your personal timeline over and over again, you'll strain it and end up erasing yourself from existence. Your memories are already a tangled mess from all the things Tria needs you to not screw up again. Not that it stops you half the time. And we can't keep moving you, or one of these days we'll slip up trying to insert you smoothly into a destiny. We really need to move you to somewhere you won't be in the front line so often, but that's exciting enough you won't go off and make your own trouble."
"We're only doing it the straightforward way now because we're working on a whole batch anyway," added Iselia.
This thought made Welch go slightly pale. If the two lesser Aspects were to be believed, Tria did not intervene directly with someone's timeline unless They had already caused damage by Their actions and were repairing said damage, or in cases such as Welch's, where a person's existence in the Universe had practically been redone from scratch. She had been sad to find out that the main reason Gabrie and Iselia interfered so much with her destiny was that it still didn't support itself without their constant maintenance.
"We're going to get into a fight with those guys again," said Gabrie, "A real fight, this time."
"The Ten Stupid Guys, or those corporate weirdos?" asked Iselia.
"Both, probably," replied her sister, "And we're gonna be challenged by heroes again. I can feel it coming on."
"If that's the case, Welch, you need to clear out fast. Fights with those guys always get rowdy."
"Make the tea before you leave," said Gabrie.
Welch did as she was told, then logged out of VR. The Captain was approaching the replicator room again, and she would probably be badgered into giving up the recipe for something. She didn't want the crew to find out what she used most of the ship computer's resources for whenever they weren't looking.