"Doesn't seem like much, doesn't it?"
Colin hummed, his eyes on the screen which was showing a green wireframe overlay of the building just across the street.
"… are we actually going to go in? Or are we going to just sit here all night?" asked Ethan.
Colin turned from the middle console screen and glared at the man, who shrugged.
"Hey, we've been sitting here for nearly fifteen minutes while your scanner thing in the back has done its job, but I don't think that you're going to find anything different than what you found two years ago. Nothing ever happens at Temples, that's kinda their thing."
The pair were parked outside what was known as a Temple of Trinity (which were often viewed as places of local myth and legends, due in part to the rumors that surrounded them), because Ethan had reported that the caretaker Brocken Bays single Temple, had actually been spotted on a daily basis.
Which was something that caught the PRT's attention upon hearing; Temple caretakers were rarely spotted outside certain events, or only seen by those that volunteered at the Temples and were seeming made to be leaders of the place. Even then however, it was just a passing glance, with them vanishing once more soon after.
Many people wished to meet the caretakers, mostly because f of all the rumors that surrounded them, rumors that many people believed and caused them to seek out the caretakers by traveling to the Temples.
It was whispered that one could receive healing, receive advice, or even receive a prediction of their futures, all supplied from the mysterious caretakers who maintained the Temples in near secret.
While not actually considered a major threat, Temples of Trinity were always watched for potential Fallen influence, primarily because of the fact they only really started becoming active when Tāwhirimātea first showed up. Before that they were either places that filled the role of a community center, offering things like a soup kitchen or a daycare center, or even places for the homeless to sleep overnight, on top of being the source of some urban myths.
There were only four recognized groups of the Fallen in the US, with a fifth being noted for Shari-Hulud, but that group only had a token presence outside the European/Asian continents.
The McVeays were followers of Behemoth, the Crowleys, Leviathan, while the Mathers patterned themselves after the Simurgh.
As a general rule for the cults, the Fallen tended to speak of their belief of Endbringer worship, but like so many things, it wasn't as simple as that. Different branches followed different rules, with some fully, 'drinking the Kool-Aid,' while others were more flexible in watch they followed.
Strangely, Tāwhirimātea (who was regarded as the strongest Endbringer by many), never gained a true following, much to the surprise of the Thinkers of the world. There were talks among the other Fallen cults about Tāwhiri, and how she was prepping the world for the end of days, cleaning away the impure and unclean, but aside from that there were no centralized following of the Endbringer.
The closest thing that fit the bill, were the Temples of Trinity.
While never really a big concern (as nothing ever seemed to actually happen at the Temples), the nature of the them and their urban legend status, meant that they PRT kept on eye on them, just in case.
On one hand, each Temple was basically a community center, mixed with a multipurpose house of worship, seemingly always having what people needed to pray to their faith while being maintained by their seemingly invisible caretakers for continued everyday use for things like soup kitchens.
It was within two years of Tāwhirimātea first appearing that they really started popped up, picking little out of the way places to set up, somehow always avoiding things normally associated with capes (fights, property destruction, people acting strange), all the while seemingly just always having what someone needed within them.
Need a place to stay? The Temples would have a bed. Need food? The Temples never ran out. Down on you luck and needed a job? The Temples had connections and would find you one. Needed advice or a place of sanctuary? Nothing ever bad happened at the Temples, and one would find their woes, be it bad parents or an abusive spouse, suddenly not being a problem.
The Temples ended up ticking several of the PRT's boxes for, 'needs to be investigated' over the years simply based on the rumors and single of events surrounding them.
The fact that Nice Guy was found dead inside one in New Mexico when the Slaughterhouse Nine past though a town, with the people inside being very confused on to why the man with gun and knife hadn't been stopped as he walked in while Crawler ran around outside, but also having no idea on how he died, also played a heavy part.
But with practically no evidence coming forth after the months of investigations, no sign of anything of note, no Tinker-Tech, not even a hint of actual confirmed cape activity (other than what appeared to be just a string of remarkable coincidences), the PRT was forced to downgrade how much observation they would/could do at the Temples.
It didn't help that for all intents and purposes, the Temples seemed to simply be community centers, and had the bad taste of being more than interested in the Endbringers. So, there was only so much resources the PRT could point at a potential problem without them simply wasting energy to watch place that never did anything.
Still, having the caretaker of one suddenly start appearing in the open, enough so that he was noticed, warranted looking into.
Brockton Bays Temple of Trinity was located in the Docks, tucked in just beyond the areas where things started to fall apart and a strip mall that housed a few empty buildings. Which didn't help the rumors surrounding the place.
Despite being called a Temple, the building looked like nothing of the such, instead appearing to simply be a structure that was perpetually under reconstruction.
The three-story building had a layer of scaffolding surrounding most of it, repurposed into supports for a mix of oranges and tan awnings, angled to direct any rainwater away from the building. There were several lamps hanging from seemingly random places, lit even now despite the fact that sunset was still nearly two hours away.
But the most eye-catching part of the whole building, was the sigil painted beside the door.
A large red feather, with a split down the middle, set to a yellow background.
"How is it that you found out about the caretaker showing up on a regular basis?" Colin asked Ethan. "You weren't exactly clear on that when Piggot asked us to investigate."
Both of them were seated in Colins jeep, doing some basic observation and scans with the Tinkers heavily modified vehicle.
Though it was most Colin that was doing them, as Ethan hadn't done more than poke at the glove compartment mounted screen when they first pulled up.
Which was, upsetting, to Colin, as the Temples and their caretakes had long been a mystery to the PRT; having a caretaker show themselves for longer than a day was something that only happened once ever few years at best.
Ethan shrugged. "There was talk of the caretaker being around more, so I did a bit of subtle checking an ended up running into the guy. I told Piggot, who brought you into it (don't look at me like that, you were Tinkering), and now we're here."
"Why do I have the feeling that you're not sharing everything?" Colin asks. "Because I greatly dislike the fact that you have 'stumbled' across this information, at a place which is considered an unofficial Fallen front, who have known to kidnap capes and people for introduction into their ranks, because this place is outside our normal patrol routes and there is no reason for you to be able to 'run into the guy.'"
"… this seat is going to taze me if I don't give you a good enough answer, isn't it?"
"Most likely."
"And it will hurt, won't it?"
"Getting shocked tends to be uncomfortable, yes."
"Fuck, I didn't think this through," Ethan mutters. "And now I'm stuck with the paranoid guy that would knock me out in a second."
Colin raised an eyebrow; Ethan wasn't helping his case there.
"… alright look," Ethan starts, twisting slightly in his seat to look at Colin. "These places tend to serve as community centers, so they sometimes have events and help out the, you know, community. And I uh… they tend to have poker or card games every other night and I have been going to them at least once every two weeks since I've come to the Bay."
"What?!" Colin snapped. "And you never told anything about this?"
"I never tried to hide it!" Ethan snapped back. "Puppy knows about it, and even Piggot knows and asked me to keep an eye on things just for this very reason. Hell, even before my time in the Protectorate I was going to these places, more often or not just to hang out with the others there just looking for some time to relax somewhere like I was."
"If that is true, then way is this the first that I am hearing of it?"
"… do you really read every report that gets filed?"
Colin conceited the point after a few moments; he did not in fact read every report that was filed, as most of the daily ones could be summarized in a meeting, or he would pull them up for reading if someone mentioned them in said meeting.
"Still, this seems like something that I should have been made aware of," Colin countered.
"Considering everything that goes on in this city, keeping an eye on a place where the biggest strangeness is that it doesn't have cape activity, other than rumors and hearsay, seems silly, no?" Ethan asked. "Kinda like how you've been pointing a radar dish at the place and hoping that you spot something new even though everyone has tried that."
Ethan did have a point; Temples were rarely a center point of cape activity, despite their strangeness.
Though it wasn't just a radar dish that Colin was pointing at the building, it was also a high energy scanner, an laser tacker, and an multispectral scanner. But he doubted that Ethan would care about that information.
"Fine then, if following an established protocol is 'silly,' what was your plan?"
Ethan shrugged once more. "I figured that you and me would walk inside, talk to some people, you'd see the caretaker and want to speak to him, he'd make some cryptic comments and allude to some future event, then we'd hang out with some of the people there for a while to see if we can find anything, and then we'd leave and go get M/S tested while you send the data from your Tinker jeep to Dragon so that she can take a look at it. Then you'll spend some tie with youth girlfriend both looking for a lead or something that you missed."
… as much as Colin disliked the plan, it had its merits. No one had ever found anything when preforming an outside investigation on a Temple, it was anyways the people on the ground that ended up encountering… strangeness, however limited it was (though his disliked the 'girlfriend' comment)
Colin breathed out though his nose sharply. "Fine, we'll head inside. But we never separate," he demanded over Ethan's words of 'finally.'
"And if either one of us says to leave, we do so, understood?"
"Of course, bossman," Ethan quipped back as he opened his door. "Just two blokes heading in to hang out and play a poker game."
"… pardon?"
But Ethan was already outside, leaving Colin to hurry and finish setting things up for their absence, including, remotely turning on the body cams that they were wearing, notifying Console what they were doing, and having them ready basic M/S containment for them when they came back.
Ethan was already waiting beside the door by the time Colin had caught up to him. He pushed off the side of building and placed one hand on the door, ready to open it.
"You want to go first, or me? You know, breach and clear?" Ethan asked with a smile.
Colin glared and Ethan chuckled as he walked inside. "Relax," he said over his shoulder. "Nothing ever happens here, remember?"
Colin followed., thinking that there was a first time for everything, and so he was prepared for most things.
Including walking right into a lobby that wouldn't be out of place in a small-time hotel.
A handful of tables, a coffee machine, a reception desk which had a teenager being it working on something, a few random pictures on the walls, with said walls being a soft tan color and having a mural of sea life on one wall; nothing fit Colins preconceived notions of what the Temple would look like on the inside, instead it seemed to be nothing of the sort.
There were even mountings of fish on the walls; Colin noted several types that were commonly found in the bay, as well as some found further to sea, as well as… a boot?
"Hey Cass!" Ethan called out as he walked towards a door in the back of the room, past the desk. One of three that spilt off the main room, Colin noted, and the only one currently open.
The girl behind the desk, Cass (long blonde hair, athletic, good facial features), grunted as she tried to use some tools and glue to attach an orange arm onto some orange, white and black device made of plastic and metals. Various bolts and other attaching bits surrounded her, some even in front of the desk where they had likely fallen.
"Hey Ethan," she said as the man walked by. "There's a game going on with the guys in the back." Her eyes flicked up to look at Colin, before pursuing her lips.
"And there is a spare chair ready for your friend."
"Great! See you Cass!"
The girl grunted as she continued to work on her device, and Colin left her behind as he followed Ethan though the door and into a hallway lined with doors.
As well as artistic representations of the Endbringers showing up every few picture frames.
Ah, that was better. Even if they weren't arranged to invoke fear or respect, instead were shaped along like lines of a representation of what they were, with Leviathan lurking within in a wave, or Behemoth wading through a volcano, with Tāwhirimātea taking up at least half of the images, as well as…
Was that the members of the S9?
… It was, complete with some of them having red x's though them, arranged almost like the wall of the FBI/PRT/CIAs most wanted.
"Cassandra has been living here for months," Ethan spoke softly as they moved, ignoring the images on the walls. "She apparently diched her family in a fit of teenage rebellion and went to her uncle before ending up here. Pretty sure she was or has family that was a member of E88 based on some comments she makes, how she acts and some of the things she talks about. Something happened that caused her to run here and try to change herself, and the word is that its slow going."
Colin hummed and filed the information he'd seen so far; things had changed in the last two years.
"Rune?" he asks just as softly, thinking of the young cape that had been spotted less and less over the last few weeks.
"Might be," Ethan mutters. "It does fit the timeline, but every time I've seen her, she's been building this or that, and on things that don't seem to be the normal type of hobby building. A new Tinker maybe? Someone that was unlucky enough to get born into the wrong family?"
"Maybe," Colin admitted. "If she was stuck in an Empire environment and wanted out but couldn't, that would fit the Tigger bounds. But I bet that if we grabbed anything she had, all we'd find out was that it was some kind of model. We'll have to leave it be for now."
That was one of the frustrating things when dealing with the Temples, they could have something that either looked Tinker-Tech or clearly was the result of powers, yet when the PRT would push on that, citing various the legal rules that the PRT used to intercept Parahumans before they became a public nuisance (causing a public disturbance, threating the public, building something that could be dangerous), they ended up finding something that could had been made in random Joes garage.
Colin continued to follow Ethan, who walked like a man who knew were he was going. A right at a junction, past several more doors, then Ethan was walking through another open door, one that had the sounds of voices coming through it.
All the while, Colin kept his eyes moving, eyeing closed doors, the Endbringer images, and what looked like a multiscreen set-up computer set up barely visible through a door at the far end of the hall.
He noted the rapidly rolling code, marking it as something to look into from the outside, all while it tugged at the edges of his memory.
Colin had seen some of that code before, but where?
He entered the room after Ethan after a moment, taking it in.
It was seemingly set up as a multipurpose fun room, large, with chairs and tables dotting here and there, of both the card playing variety and the common type, as well as some couches arranged around themselves, a set of dart boards, a pair of pool tables, and some kind of mural on the far end with pictures surrounding a grey skull/helmet of some kind.
Colin noted Ethan speaking animatedly with five others, all seated at one of the few tables still in use in the large room. There were others, like the man and woman at the fair end speaking to one another, or the older gentleman sleeping in a cushioned chair, but they were the biggest group current in the room.
"-ust got back then Mark?" Ethan was asking one man.
The man in question, Mark, nodded (heavy set, black hair, mustache, likely of Spanish descent due to accent), and spoke.
"Yeah, was nice visit to the family, sister had another kid. Met with my old PRT captain for a drink or two. The old coot is still training people up in New York, he many have lost a leg, but his mind is still sharp."
"Is he still an asshole though?" asked the woman beside him (brunette, thin, has signs of drug use on her arms, Canadian?)
"Oh yeah," laughed Mark. "That's why I only had the one drink!"
"I'm guessing that your friend is going to play, right Ethan?" spoke another male (white, muscular, shaved, wearing a Dock Workers uniform).
"There's another chair, man, Daniel won't put out another chair unless someone else was comin,'" spoke another (Older, due to drug use or just age? Receding grey hair, shaky hands, white).
"Yeah, he's going to play. Finally got him out of out of the office," Ethan said with a laugh.
"Take a seat then," Mark instructed. "Daniel will be back shortly; he's the dealer."
Colin kept his eyes peeled as she sat, he noted that Ethan placed him at the end of the card table, a place where he could move quickly if it came right down to it.
Considerate, Colin was feeling rather naked without his armor or any gear beside the two holdouts hidden on his person.
And the taser.
And the collapsible nightstick.
And the micro-flashbang.
"Colin," Ethan started. "This is Mark, Sara, Jack and Jeff. They usually show up on nights like these to keep us all company though the night."
Colin nodded at the group. "Pleasure."
"Great, we're all here," said the jittery one, Jeff. "Now where's Daniel with the cards?"
"He'll be here Jeff, just give him a moment," Sara consoled, before turning in Colins direction.
"First time in a Temple?" she asks. "You got that look about you."
"… it isn't what I expected," Colin admitted. "So far it seems to be more like a hotel more than anything."
The one with the Dock Workers uniform, Jack, laughed. "Well, some of the rooms do get rented, and there are a number of beds upstairs, so I guess that's one way to look at it."
"Considering the rumors," Colin continued. "I am surprised that there isn't more things involving the Endbringers, aside from a few pictures."
"Despite what people say and think, the Temples don't actually have anything to do with the Endbringers or the Fallen," Sara explained with the patient tone of having to said this before.
"The most of anything related to them that happens here, are theoretical discussions about them. Hell, the only reason that people even talk about those rumors is because of the fact that there is a network to track where Tāwhirimātea was going and set up places like this to help out."
Colin knew that wasn't true, several Temples had adopted Tāwhirimātea was something of a patron; while it wasn't full worship, the amount of speeches, merch, paintings, and the general fact that they didn't share the same set of fear/hatred/revulsion that the rest of the world had for Tāwhirimātea. Instead most of them had something of a mythical respect and understanding of the Endbringer, even selling toys and pictures books of it while they talked about it in self-assured tones.
(though to be far, even the S9 and other Endbringers had merch you could buy if you looked hard enough for it. And Colin understood respecting the Endbringers, for if you didn't you tended to end up dead when fighting them)
"So no hidden rooms in the basement then?" Colin pressed.
Sara laughed. "Not unless you count the boiler room; I've been volunteering here for seven years, trust me, while this place does have its…oddities, it's a good place, filled with good people who look out for one another. Not much ever happens here."
Colin filed the information away; one of the thoughts from the Thinkers was that each Temple had a Stanger/Shaker field around it, one that gave good luck or 'pushed the badness' away from the area, allowing for good fortune.
The fact that those words were on an official PRT report always made Colin shake his head.
"You can ask more questions you know," Jack added. "Most due when they first come here. It's different, therefore, curious."
… a fair point, and one that had Colin hadn't quite considered. While he had planed on asking questions, he had been concerned about what he could ask and how many were appropriate and not suspicious.
But if he was playing the part of a newcomer that was curious about everything…
"What is with the skull?" Colin asks, gesturing towards the far wall. "It doesn't seem to fit the rest of the room. I can see the pictures of people, but what do they have to do with the middle image?"
Sara was about to reply, when another voice spoke up.
"Actor sahd zwong hesh point half hesh travelling on foot. Impending mishap and fall at complex node. Half-hesh point sahd-zwong. Impending intersection with Tenno hesh sahd-pahk zwong, outcome unclear. Risk of uncontrolled consequence propagation. Will observe and contain via Quill Daniel secondary. But first… Swazdo-lah, I see that Colin has joined us, you were anticipated. Our interaction now begins."
The man that spoke wore armor, a dark shade of red, with plates on his shoulders, stretching from his elbows to his wrists, a set of greaves, with final a central piece covering his chest and stomach. His helmet featured a grill-like covering, hiding his face, a pair of extensions on the sides of the chin, and had a large dome shaped position on for the top. Random orange lights dotted the armor, while some type of leather or fabric covered the places that the armor didn't.
As he stepped up to the dealer's side of the table, he nodded at Colin, and placed his hands on his hips.
"We are ready. Good."
"Finally," Jeff ground out. "Can we just play now?"
"Dani-boy!" Ethan called out. "Good seeing you."
"Ethan," stated the newcomer, nodding at the man, before turning to Jeff. "Introductions first, then the game will proceed without delay."
He then turned to Colin to speak
"I am Daniel Bobrow, caretaker of this Temple. Know that our interactions shall be limited in scope, but our actions will affect the course of the world."
"How did you know my name?" Colin asks sharply, taking in every detail of the man.
The mask hid his face well, and his body language was relaxed and carefree. Even his tone of voice was at ease, well-spoken as it was, even with that hint of an echo. And no cape name, but a 'real' one, likely an alias, standard form for caretakers.
"You were known, and it was known that you would come," stated Danial as he withdrew a deck of cards from under his chest piece and began to vigorously shuffle them; as if that was enough of an answer.
"It was inevitable, in one form or another. Hello and well met."
"It also helped that Ethan mentioned you," Jack added. "Said something about wanting to see if you could relax enough to work that stick out of your butt."
Daniel nodded, his hat dipping ever so slightly. "This is true as well, and to answer your question, the wall represents those that are gone, but not forgotten. At the center? A friend and ally; Growl, creator of the Sliver Weave."
"I've never heard of the Silver Weave," Colin stated. "Was it a cape team?"
"Hah, probably before your time then," Mark said. "The Silver Weave was what everyone used before we had things PHO and the Nexus. It was there where the old PRT classification really got started and took off. Nuker, Shifer, Rubblers, Enthrallers, Stormers, Reckoners, Chaos, Pillagers, those were just a few of the names that we kicked around in the early days. And just like now and PHO, we talked about it on the Sliver Weave. It was the first site to dedicate a part of itself to capes and all they did, even had a part set aside for PRT members and capes alone; you could say it was the original idea behind PHO."
Colin frowned in thought. "I've never heard of it." And he liked to keep track of that kind of thing; PHO many have been the main site for finding out about capes, but the PRT maintained their own site, and there were several others out there as well.
"Well, that would be because it shut down quite a number of years ago," Mark continued as he tossed ten coins on the table; the others followed suit, with Ethan tossing twenty (Colin noted that need to pay Ethan back after this). Daniel pushed out a number of chips to each of them
"Didn't keep up with the times; the Weave was for messaging, talking about things, and keeping up with the latest in technologies. As time went up, new sites popped up while the Weave stuck to its guns, and it dwindled away until Growl turned his attention elsewhere."
"He was a friend, one who assisted us in our work," added Daniel. "But we did not beseech him to stay, it was known that our paths would diverge, just as we will meet once again."
"… so, not actually gone then?" Ethan asked.
"No one is ever fully gone," stated Daniel, as he finally began to deal the cards (much to the pleasure of Jeff, who betted instantly).
"We retain a part of them within ourselves, never to be lost. House rules."
Colin glanced at his cards; a seven and a five. He wasn't fully aware of all the rules of poker, but luckily blackjack was easy to play, and he would learn quickly anything else he needed from watching the others.
"You will not win for the first two rounds," Daniel stated to when it got to his turn. "The permutations do not allow for it."
… Definitely a Thinker then, of some manner of Precog least. It fit the handful of other reports about the caretakers, though they never could account for anything else that happened in the Temples.
Because then that would mean there was an army of high-powered grab-bags doing civil services.
"Do you often make predictions?" Colin asked as he asked for a hit. A queen.
"Only when they are certain, and foreseen." Daniel said smoothly as he took Collins cards and two chips.
"You're a cape then? Is that why you didn't ask if I knew how to play?" (Jeff lost after asking for two hits; he huffed and sank into his chair)
"No," replied Daniel. "I did not ask because you are the type of man to ask if he did not know something, you thrive on knowledge. If you found yourself lacking it, you would seek it out long before living in ignorance."
(Colin mentally marked Daniel as an seven for Thinker abilities)
The game ended with Mark wining via dealer bust, and the cards were shuffled once more.
"Based on what I see, it seems strange to me that you are the dealer," Colin noted. "You don't have a chance to win with your power, outside the normal house advantage."
"Victory is not everything," Daniel replied smoothly. "Life is more than a series of stones upon one walks."
"… Do you often make cryptic comments when talking to people?"
Sara snorted. "He's been like that ever since I met the man seven years ago."
"You've known him long then? You said that you've been here for seven years."
Daniel, like all of the Temples caretakers, never were spotted with consistency, it was people like Sara that took care of most of the surface
"Well… this is the longest that Daniel has been here," Sara admitted. "Usually he would only show up for a day, maybe two. But he was the one that give me the keys to the place."
"You did not need me as much as the building needed you," Daniel stated as he took everyone's cards (house won, Jeff busted). "And you needed the building to light your way."
"I wasn't in a good place in those years," Sara clarified, her fingers ghosting over the track marks. "I was just walked down the street by Daniel stopped me, handed me a pair of keys and pretty much told me that the place was in my hands."
Sara shook her head with a laugh. "It took me a few days to work up the courage to come here, and I was mostly because I figured I could find something to sell. But when I got here…"
The woman trailed off, her eyes far away.
"There was food, good food too, and it was a place where my ex wouldn't find me, so I stuck around. But then a homeless man wondered in one night, looking for food and a place to stay. I let him stay, helped him out. Then it was a kid, looking to get away from his parents, then a runaway pregnant teen, then a man that was looking to get to the top of the building to jump off."
Everything snowballed from there," she explained. "Just one thing after another, another person that needed something, and this place provided. Next thing you know, it's been seven years, I've been clean for all those years, my ex out of my life, and I have something I look forward to doing when I wake up in the morning."
This was why the PRT was so interested in the Temples, less for the possible capes working in the background and more for what was happening. All the little coincidences, people pulling their lives together, getting what they needed when they really needed it? All happening in one place like this? Yet no one like Jack Slash, or the Empire, or the Elite weren't trying to take things over or take advantage?
For while some had made moves towards the Temples, they always ended in disaster for those that tried to force the issue. The Temples even survived Endbringer attacks!
The PRT didn't want to lose what was happening, as ripping the curtain away from the Temples hadn't worked any of the times they'd tried it, and with the state of the world as it was, they couldn't afford to destroy something that was helpful to them.
No matter what some of the Directors thought.
Colin on the other hand just wanted the answers more than anything, an explanation to what was happening.
(and to maybe see if a little bit of that luck would come his way)
"… sounds like you knew what was going to happen," Colin said to Daniel. "Precog power? How accurate is it? Or is it something that you can't control? You just get visions."
"There is no such thing as a Precog," Daniel stated. "Not even the Simurgh can see what will be, only what was, and from there, extrapolate what can and could be as an extremely good guess. What you perceive as the future is nothing more than a series of events formed from other events, shaped by the actions of others, and the others before them. Consequence brushing consequence in an ever-expanding equation, a circle of action reaction and action again. Fate and destiny are nothing more than our actions preset upon by another, built upon the past, shaped upon our choices; we all are simply reacting to the echoes of what was."
"However, our observation and knowledge of this places us in line with Schrödinger and his cat. By knowing that we have no choice, we choose to have choice, thus fate becomes meaningless, as actions into what could be, alters the very face of what will be, but it always be as it was. Or we will choose not to, and the result is the same."
"Every choice has already been picked and acted up, so everything has always been; but while everything has always been, we choose what will always be. Quantum superposition if you require a more accurate turn of phrase, Mr. Wallis. One and Zero, the same, but different."
The table was silent, each member of the poker game letting the words sink in.
"Very profound, and disturbing," Sara said.
"The Universe often is," Daniel added. "But it will never be our place to bend it to our will, we simply must listen to the music that it creates and learn how to flow alongside it."
"Others would disagree with that," Ethan stated. "I for one would love to know if I am going to win a hand tonight." With that he pushed a trio of chips at Daniel, who took them with ease to add to the pile.
"Or what I did to cause the wifey to get mad at me. You know, the little things."
"It is far easier to know what could be, then it is to know what was," stated Daniel. "With what could be, you can see the steps one needs to take to archive the path you wish to follow. But with what was… you find only regret, for you see all the might-have-beens. I know this well."
"For that is why I wear the mask, to atone for sins long ago, for the tendrils of my actions still linger. It is not to protect me from the world, but the world from me. Foolishness, a lack of trust and comprehension and understanding, this led to my grand mistake. And now I wait, watching the permutations tumble for as long as needed, so that I may fix it."
"Can't imagine," Mark sighs. "I have too big of a family to do that."
Several of the other members nodded, even Ethan, which Colin found ironic. He himself understood Daniels sentiment, he had done something similar after all as Armsmaster. Giving up everything to pursue his goals.
"It is a lonely life yes," Daniel stated, his voice full of more emotion than Colin ha heard so far. "And my choice to follow it has cause harm and pain to those of my blood, but… If we… if she… This path, these catalogues of possible futures…. This one was the only one where her future end bright. My daughter… she will understand one day, for this path ends so well for her. Just like those that that journey though these doors."
"Ok, nice, cool," interrupted Jeff. "But can we play a real poker game already? Rather than all this… metaphorical shit? I'm losing money here."
Daniel sighed and reclaimed the cards to deal again.
"Some take longer than most to find their way however. But it is always a pleasure to see when they do."
"I think that went well," Ethan stated, flicking a five into the air and catching it as it came down.
Colin didn't say anything, to focused on mentally categorizing and retraining everything he'd seen and heard while in the building.
The body cams he had was limited in scope, he would be working mostly off the sound for reference.
The pair had stayed for several hours, caught up in talk about the city, the game (of which Sara walked away being the final winner), and to a lesser degree, the Temple. The sun had set during that time, leaving the pair to walk in the mostly dark, as several streetlamps were out on the street.
Behind them, the Temple glowed under the light of its lamps, singular brightness in the night, daring in a small crowd as people flocked there for one reason or another.
"I mean, I walked away with eight more dollars than I stared with, so a good day in my book."
Colin really didn't, aside from the initial talk, everything shifted towards simpler topics, as if no one wanted to talk about the heavy subject that had been touched upon then and there.
He had had the chance to walk around the building for a bit, under the pretense of going to the bathroom. None of the doors were locked, but there were too many rooms for him to search in the limited time he had without it looking suspicious, and he hadn't found anything worth looking into with what he'd seen.
"Wanta stop for food on the way?" Ethan asked when they got to the jeep.
"No."
"Come on Colin," Ethan begged. "We both know that they aren't going give us good food before we get M/S'ed, aside from those cheap bars they hand out."
Colin let his door shut, and waited for Ethan to do the same before replying, looking right at him as he did so.
"One, we don't eat in my jeep; because of the Tinker-Tech inside the PRT won't clean it without me being present, so I might as well do it myself. And two, there is nothing wrong with the bars, aside from the fact that Robin keeps taking the strawberry flavor."
"I thought that was you!"
"It isn't, he pilfers them from the break room as well."
Ethan chuckled as Colin started up the jeep. "Well I just got a net loss for tonight, I bet Linda that it wa- holy shit!"
Colin reached for his taser automatically, even his mind reminded him that the glass was bulletproof and that he should go for the defense screen instead-
Daniel was standing outside the passenger window, arms behind his back, his impassive girl-like mask being light from behind.
Ethan turned to look at Colin, his arm shooting out to point at Daniel even as he made some unknown noise of surprise.
The man lifted one hand to knock at the window, prompting Colin to lower it (after he hit the button to alert the PRT to a possible situation, and the other one that would trigger the flashbangs on the outside of the door to go at another press).
"Ah, good I have caught you," Daniel stated calmly, ignoring Ethan still shocked look. "My apologies to your hearts, but an event has changed, prompting another meeting at this time."
"Sure, no prob Dani-boy," Ethan said through his heavy breathing. "But if you wante-"
"My time is limited, and ever changing; I shall gift both of you with advice, and a khanung, a warning for future events that shall come to pass," Daniel stated. "First, Ethan, take this."
The man passed a small set of papers to Ethan through the window.
"Tickets, for an upcoming show in the city; your wife will enjoy it, and you will enjoy her enjoyment."
"Well thanks Dani-boy," Ethan says as he takes the tickets. "Linda does like show-"
"And when you hear the Howl under the half-moon," Daniel interrupts, clinging onto the tickets so that Ethan could not take them. "You will not let her out of your sight, or she will find herself discharged, permanently. And no amount of manipulation of physics will save her."
"And you Colin," Daniel continued, turning away from the shocked Ethan. "Take the time to acknowledge and cherish those closest to you. For your line of work dictates that one will never know when one's song will end."
"Furthermore, know that there is a difference between the right thing to do, the correct thing to do, and the proper thing to do; all is relative, no more than definitions and descriptors one must stand beside, a fact you know all too well."
"You will stand on a precipice, of which there will be no right answer, and when the time comes Mr. Wallis, what choice will you pick? What infinite number of possibilities will you close off? What doors will you open or shut for another? Where will you stand, when another's actions do not fall within their words?"
"Now, if you will excuse me, a woman of stone has chosen to control a puppet down a path for which the consequences will be dire. And I require thirty-nine dollars to defeat her, Sho-lah."
And just like that, Daniel walked off into the night, leaving the pair alone to stew in shock.
"… do the reports on the other Temple caretakers speak of this kind of thing happening?" Ethan asks after several long moments of watching the man walk away.
"Now you understand why I wanted to check this out," Colin countered. "The PRT wants to understand this and make sure that it doesn't get turned against us."
"… that doesn't answer my question."
"… strangely," started Colin as Daniel walked around the corner. "The PRT keeps a tight lid on their investigations into the Temples, sticking only to generalizations and what has been seen to match at each location to the others. And I just believe we've found out why."
"Fuck," Ethan sighed, leaning back in his chair. "I know that the PRT and the Protectorate have secrets, but that… that was fucking scary. I can see why they don't like to talk about it. Wonder what they got dug up to get so spooked, huh?"
Colin hummed as he pulled up the readings from his jeeps scanners and began to check them over to see what he had.
"… there is a jammer on the building."
"What?"
Colin cursed as he pulled up everything from the last few hours. "People came and went, the sun set and the winds changed, but according to this, the building is exactly the same as it was when we pulled up. No heat changes, no increases in any electrical signals, no disruptions to the air form the doors being opened, nothing. And the body cams don't show any errors, but there isn't anything recorded!"
"… And I'm guessing that we can't show up with the PRT or as capes to looking for something on the basis that we found, nothing, and that nothing messed with your equipment. Right?" Ethan asked.
Colin grunted and started the car.
Ethan huffed and tuned to look out the window. "At least we had a good night."
"Debatable," Colin countered as he began to drive back towards the PRT HQ.
Ethan laughed. "Figured you say something like that."
"… you're not going to be able to use those tickets by the way," Colin said with some regret after a minute. "They'll get confiscated as evidence."
Ethan looked over at the man, then down to the tickets in his hand.
"… Fuck."
A/N: You know, I keep forgetting to say thank you to everyone review/commenting about this story, so let me say it now.
Thank you for sticking around and reading this, really.
Because this is taking longer than I both hoped for, and had anticipated.
I genuinely believed that Taylor would be running around in a Warframe by this point of the year, and while I could just cut out portions of the plot like this one and just jump to the good parts in a few chapters (*thinking* seven max, four if I was ruthless about it and gave no shits for the long term plot), then I would either have to work out a new metaplot, or just retcon things after the fact, editing the chapter order so that things get added in after the fact.
The main reason for the time it is taking is my own fault, I started out with a simple idea, started going for it, and then had another, than another, and then I thought on how to make them work, to explain things so that they don't come out of the blue, so that there is a progression in place to get to points that need them.
Add that to my procrastination where there are days where I don't do anything with this story (and days where I get 6k down), as well as my own brain working against me by asking myself, 'is this good enough? Does it make sense? What about this part? What does this look like? That? This? What expression are they making? Was is being built and why? How is it being built? What does the area look like? Why is this happening and not this? What caused it to happen that way? What is the airspeed velocity of an unladen swallow?'
Yeah, that kind of thing.
The end result there is that I have made an truly impressive mountain of a plotline, with twists and turns, key point and hidden points, as well world building needed to sustain said plot. All things I want to work on, but am finding it slightly daunting with the scope and size of things, and end up feeling inadequate in my skill as I watch other stories update several times a week, while I can barely manage on if I don't do anything else (but that's a personal thing).
Not to even mention the times like in this chapter, where it started with Armsmaster working on a helmet, which would tie into an upcoming plot line on whos helmet it was, and then him thinking about the tech and himself, only to have Ethan come in talk about checking out the Temple.
I realized that most of it wasn't any good and ended up cutting all of that bloated mess out, keeping some of the working parts, and ended up with this.
Hell, I ended up not even liking this chapter, because while it works like for the Quill part (as well as helps hint at a number of things), it doesn't really push things forward. Furthermore, I also get sidetracked by coming up with new ideas, new plots, ways to better link the hints of Warframe into Worm so that when it all comes together, it is many strings combining into a coherent system.
I even had an idea about doing something with the Boston Games with 'Yokujin,' and how it messed with the dynamics there, while writing this. And I want to make it because it will show off a Warframe in action once more.
But at the same time, I don't, because I never really wanted to show off 'frames in action until later, because they're SpaceNinjas. Unless it is for something like the open world, Warframes would stealth their way into position, then strike hard and fast, vanishing as soon as the job was done.
For every time that the PRT has them on their records, there are three others that they have no idea about, and I wanted to follow that path until we found ourselves behind the curtain, and can see what has really been going on.
For while they can do the whole 'one-man army' thing, that isn't what they are geared towards in most cases.
Making the Nova/Nilbog side-story was a knee-jerk reaction to me trying to please everyone, all the time. And while I like it for what it will bring to the table later, I should have placed it after we met a different Piggot, as explanation for why she is acting the way she is.
So I need to decide, how am I really going to proceed?
See, I can continue as I am, with chapters coming as they've been done (with me keeping my buffer going), I could abandon the current plot and just for straight for the meat of things (with flashbacks happen to explain stuff later), or I might just do what I should have done in the first place.
Wait until I have an arc done before starting it off and posting it over several days before vanishing into the Weave once more until the next one is done, then repeating the deal over with the next one.
… I might just do that, but then that runs the chance of me not posting anything for months, as (just like some of you guys) I really just want to get to the juicy bits (even if that is a selfish thing to say because of the ego boost of what I thing are good twists and ideas that I believe will happen).
Which runs the risk of everyone thinking I've abandond this, which isn't going to happen.
Because that 8,848 meter mountain that I've set myself up against?
I am going to climb it, no matter what, one way or another. I'm not going to be one of the Worm fic writes who peters off before the Endbringer arc, I have plans well beyond that.
Now though? It's late, I finally (finally!) finished this via linking ideas together until it flows, which I feel is noticeable in places (But that just might be my traitorous mind), so I'm just going to post it without doing a heavy one-over and get to bed.