Word of thanks to my friend, who collaborated and encouraged me with this project.


She stood at the bottommost landing of the stairs, where there would be as much space possible. It took many loosened and sharp stones, but with enough time, she had carved a circle, scrawled with instructions biding reality cast her forth to a place of her choosing. All that was needed now was to follow the calling in her heart to activate it.

The enactment of a mystery requires the separation of common sense from reality.

One, or zero. One, or off. I can, or cannot. These rulings must be overturned and mislabelled, so that the improbable can become the instrumental.

For one of her distinction, this meant dislodging her own common sense. Then, those circuits hiding in her body would be roused, and told how to pervert laws. This would be performed by envisioning a shock so powerful the mind would be rattled in its bone cage. And in those few seconds of disorientation…

She only needed a blink of an eye to recall the agony, the weightlessness under her feet as she was inverted, pulled upwards into the burning hell, to feel her flesh melt from her bones, forever and ever and ever-

Mystery was enacted.

She muttered something archaic under her breath, almost white noise were it not parsed.

Around her, the scratchings in the floor grew bright, and she stood in a pillar of light, stretching up into the darkness, like a tunnel.

And then she began to fall upwards.

Her breath hitched, remembering yet again the last time this happened.

"No! Wait!" She whimpered to nothing, as she kicked at it. She wasn't ready for this to happen. It was too soon. She hadn't even done anything worthwhile with her life yet, so short as it was.

"No! Stop! I can't! Not again!" She screamed, and she recalled a cavern. A group below her, staring, disbelieving.

And a man, with his smile-

"Someone! Help-"

She was pulled away from the temple ruins, and thrown through the stars, towards another world.


Apparently it was a cliche to have your back turned to the door so you can see the magnificence of the city through the window of the office. But who could resist, especially when the lights were turned out.

It was architectural magnificence, to see one skyscraper after another, all of them aglow with yellow and white light through their windows. In the streets, cars of every model. It was a thrumming coalescence of everything good about humanity. Down every path a neighbour, in every room, food and shelter.

What need did people need of stars now? In this era, they had become their own wondrous constellation.

This complex web… he could go on about its beauty forever, had there not been a knock at his door.

"Sir?"

"Entre-vous!" He jokingly called out.

Ms. Sarah bowed slightly in deference before walking inside. The woman had the unfortunate handicap of being a Negro, but such deficiencies could be overlooked thanks to her sheer studiousness and competence.

"Sir, your prediction, it panned out," Sarah said, getting straight to the point, as she handed over a folder.

"Did it?" He murmured, half in amusement, half in surprise. He had been warned, but he always hoped otherwise.

But looking at the graphs, he saw the statistics agree with his African assistant, even if she wasn't sure what she was looking at. The other analysts were told it was all just recording equipment, but how could you explain the functions of a Bounded Field to them?

"The readings from the graphs spiked just an hour ago. At your word, we can mobilise any asset you want, including… well, the girl in your employ."

He leaned back and considered. It was tempting to use her, true. But at this stage, without knowing the enemy's abilities, it would be like using a sledgehammer on a fly. Too much chaos for too much of an uncertain pay off. No, he would trust in the power of delegation, as all wise men did.

"Alert the Security Bureau. Have a general APB out for a woman with white hair, who is capable of paranormal feats. Apprehend or terminate with prejudice. But if she is accompanied by another who doesn't seem to be local, have the officers on site hang back, and return a report directly to me."

Ms. Sarah saluted, and marched back out, and he turned back to his city.

So it began, as was forewarned. The interloper coming for his prize. Well, magus or no magus, her time was over. A good old publicly announced execution would prove who was most worthy of the ring, when the time came.


Patchwork I - America, 1933: Beacon of Bloodstained Progress

Compression Factor: B

Present Assets: ?

Present OpFor: ?

Present Chaldean Assets: N/A


It was a murmuring that brought her slowly back to her senses. Shifting, she felt something under her shift with her weight, supporting her body in a manner to make her comfortable, while something soft had been thrown over top of her.

"...h jeez, what was I thinking… thinking I'm sort of Florence Nightingale, picking up every stray I find out of the goodness of my heart..."

As she opened her eyes blearily, she saw a blue blob pace back and forth, worrying with a woman's voice.

Inexplicably, she was just about ready to open with a tirade about useless noise, useless worries, and useless exertions, but she only managed to get as far as, "nnngh". Was this going to happen every time she used that Mystery to travel? To awake like a newborn every time?

"Oh, you're awake!" The blob approached, and as her vision slowly adjusted itself, she found herself face to face with a classic blonde-haired, blue-eyed beauty in a slim sky-coloured dress, kneeling at her bedside.

She squinted quizzically at this figure, vaguely registering this was probably the first human being she had met … ever, really.

"Can you understand me? Are you able to talk? Just… I don't know, blink if you have-"

"I'm fine," she groused, the patronising more than her own energy motivating her to sit up in the bed. Looking down, she found her formerly naked body now clad in a long, button-up shirt, though the right sleeve still lacked an occupant as it awkwardly flopped against her side.

"Well, you say you're fine, but you landed on the roof of my apartment, naked, when I was just out for a smoke, so… I'd say you're more lucky," the blonde half-explained, half-excused. "And your injuries… you were still bleeding when I found you!"

"I was hurt?"

She began to examine herself, somewhat blankly. A ritual like that shouldn't have left any damage… she was better than that, and it wouldn't make any sense…

"Yes, your forearm was bloody as hell. The sleeve's covering it, but…"

As the girl trailed off, she looked down at her remaining limb, and indeed, her gauze covered hand was poking out through the end of the left sleeve.

It was only a moment's glance before paranoia made her thrust her hand out before grab her hostess by the wrist to drag her down to her, letting her come face to face with her own furious and frantic glare.

"My rings! Where are they!? Did you take them from me!?"

Her bandaged hand was wrapped only by linen, and there was no sight of the brass loops that should have sat snug ahead each of her knuckles. Without them, she was truly naked. Those were her own. Anything else put on her was at the will of others, and they could just be as easily stripped away.

"Where are they!?"

The blonde woman tried to pull back, even with her guest holding fast with such desperation that newly-awakened girl was being half pulled from the bed.

"Stop it, you're resting! They were bloody and in the way of the bandages! I had to wash them!"

"Give them back!" She hissed. "Give them back, I need them-"

She tried to pull the blonde in, but really ended up dragging herself forward, and unfortunately, off the bed. With a yelp, she slammed into the wood floor. Despite the small drop, her condition and her lack of preparation left her sprawled out, having had the wind knocked out of her. She coughed, as she forced herself to her knees and one hand in an attempt to rise. It was not the body holding her back, unfortunately, but rather her swimming vision and throbbing head that kept her balance shot to hell.

The woman's expression changed instantly, furrowed brow loosening to widen her eyes in shock and concern as she knelt down to hoist her charge back to her feet. The one armed girl was eased back onto the bed, while the blonde held her hands out in a placating gesture.

"Look, I'll get them, alright? There's no need to panic. They're drying out in the kitchen right now, just stay right there and I'll get them, alright?"

The woman slipped out the door, leaving the other to catch her breath as she sat on the raised mattress. Now that her worries were assuaged, she actually took the time to raise her bandaged hand, and truly look at it.

It was strange. She wasn't sure why, but looking at it made her mind race, for some reason simultaneously excited and anxious at the sight, as if she should know better about it, but she didn't. Wounds should naturally make anyone worried… but why, for a few moments, did she feel like she wanted to smile?

The blonde came bustling back, hands cupped together around something-

"Give-give it here, now-"

The woman sighed loudly as she dropped them onto the bed next to her nagging guest, who immediately began the long and labourious process of biting each bronze ring so she could slot her remaining fingers through them.

"I would have returned them, anyways. Honestly, going nuts over some jewellery-"

"Don't make infantile assumptions!" The girl snapped. "They're all I have!"

That sucked any remaining argument out of the older blonde woman, who seemed very self conscious about her presumptions, while the traveller calmed down further as she sagged against the headboard of the bed.

"... I apologise for my earlier unseemly actions." She said, after a pause, while she tested the feeling of the flesh of her fingers bunching around metal as she flexed them. "Panic is no excuse for assault. I should have acted with more dignity."

The blonde woman rubbed the back of her neck, taking in the awkward pause, "Um… well, I don't know about that. You're somewhere unfamiliar, and if you really treasure those rings, I guess anyone would have lost it if they had lost theirs…"

"Thank you. May I know your name, then?" She asked, deciding to restart this situation properly.

The blonde shrugged. "Felicity. What's your name? I have to say, you are really unlike anyone else I've seen around here."

"I wouldn't be surprised if people like me are are a rare sight," She smirked. "Still, not to be impolite. My name is O…"

She trailed off from her instincts, as she found no memory to pave the road she had been unconsciously walking on.

"O…?" Felicity repeated in confusion, and she saw her guest's face contorted into a grimace.

"... I don't remember," 'O' sighed. The past was still a void, but dredging up one letter was still a start. O it would be, then. "That letter will have to suffice as identification, for now."

"Amnesia…?" Felicity diagnosed under her breath, something clinical in her voice as she scrutinised O further. "You're annoyed, not surprised… how long ago did you realise you suffered memory loss? Is it part of how you arrived here? You just… dropped out of the sky."

O held up her hand, stopping the questioning, because hers were going to be more important.

"First things first, Felicity, I need to know where I am. I can answer your questions more accurately after. Which city did I arrive in?"

Felicity didn't answer immediately, but the number of expressions she switched through began to worry O.

"I… I'm from Seattle, but I'm not sure we're still in Seattle, because…"

O's caretaker struggled to find the words to encapsulate things, driving the amnesiac to greater worry. Finally, she abruptly stood, sliding her chair back with her knees. "Come with me to the roof. It's better if you saw it for yourself."


O was further dressed in a skirt and a pair of slippers, before being led to an elevator in what she realised was a multi-story apartment building. So she believed, anyways, if there was something anachronistic to the structure, it was the elevator itself, an old-fashioned wooden thing whose door was shut by hand.

She had begun filing away that oddity when Felicity returned them to the roof. On the paved ground was a small, mild crater, more a stone engraving of a cobweb than anything implying impact force, but O looked at it, understanding she must have fallen there. But like the elevator, that fact was filed quickly away, as instead she quickly walked to the edge of the roof, to look past and see where she was, and she realised none of it made sense.

Something she hated about the birth of modern society was its light pollution. Once upon a time, man ventured across the seas and the plains because they could look up and see the map of the cosmos charting their path. But the end of exploration was marked by the indolence of man, as they sat down and decided to blind themselves with the light of their creations, until they no longer bothered looking up, as there was only a murky, foggy haze that blocked out the spheres. Antarctica was perhaps the only place left in the world untouched by this.

And so it was here, with a city without end. Before her, O could see nothing by skyscrapers of all ages and eras. Low rise brick, mid rise stone, high rise concrete, and sky-scarring glass and steel, all arranged in blocks with no consideration of organisation. Just pillars of man's desire for expansion, up and down like a graphed seizure. The main thoroughfares cutting the blocks up were peppered with a constant barrage of lights, of cars that moved slowly about, full of people caught up in their own business.

The sky above was a cancerous mix of orange and black, the air laced with city lights and dust.

Yes, dust. O saw in the distance where the edge of the city was, and it was also the edge of the world. Rising up from the horizon was a giant wall of grit and soil, being thrown by the winds in a perpetual storm. The few buildings at the edge were lightless, and the streets empty, showing that nobody was bothering to do anything about the dust storm swallowing the city besides perhaps move inwards.

She couldn't place the where or even then when of her location. Felicity saying she was from Seattle meant little. There was no city that had this geography. There was no time a dust storm like this ever existed.

"Felicity… what am I looking at?" O asked, more on reflex than anything, as she stood stupefied at the unreal sight.

Somewhere in the back of her head, she thought of a city in flames, but even that adhered to some sense of apocalypse by definition. This… made no sense.

Behind her, O could hear Felicity fidget with her words, as she tried to explain something she knew little more of than an amnesiac did.

"You're… looking at America. I think. All of it. What's left of it."