"A new race of humans?" Johnny chanced, his insides squirming with an odd excitement at the thought.
"Perhaps," Alecto mused, "up until now I haven't quite been sure what purpose they could possibly serve. I certainly don't wish my girls to become lowly attack dogs for the masses again." He took a long sip of liquor to drown the bitterness that rose in his throat.
"But I am certain that Bubbles herself must have anger in her heart for what was wrought on her."
"Understood." Johnny then looked down at his feet, unable to think of anything to say. He felt a little foolish not being able to follow his future self's train of thought.
"But..." Alecto said, eyeing the boy craftily, "when you turned up I realised that you yourself are the beginning of something greater."
Johnny's head snapped up.
"That perhaps you and little Bubbles would make a good team."
The teenager sputtered. "But I couldn't possibly-"
"-I will train you. After all, my brilliance is your brilliance." Their eyes locked.
"Once you are both ready, take Bubbles back to the past with you- Him and his talents will accompany you, naturally. Let the child exact her revenge. While she's there, she will help you to establish yourself as Townsville's true ruler. Then once you are me, Lord Alecto shall be even more powerful. This empire will look a paltry outpost in comparison to what we could do."
"But... what about the girls?"
"They will never have to suffer in the first place. You will have the knowhow to imbue them with invincibility upon their birth."
Things began to click in Johnny's mind. "So then... Alecto would feed Alecto."
A confirming nod. "Like the serpent biting its own tail."
Johnny frowned. "But then how come you're not already-"
Alecto held up a hand assuringly. "The timeline shall rearrange itself once you carve out your new destiny."
The man stood, finished with his drink.
"If there's one thing I've learnt, it's that fate is yours to control. And before us is an opportunity to do just that."
With that, he left the room, turning the lights off behind him. Johnny slumped over in his chair in the near-blackness, his mind racing while a heavy tightness constricted his chest. To be the embryo which Alecto was contained in was one thing, but the idea of actually becoming Alecto... not decades into the future, but now...
Images sailed through his mind's eye. Of his life back home- he felt nostalgic. Then of his parents and friends- a bittersweet affection, before he remembered how they were to withdraw their love for him later in life. He was powerless to stop that.
Then he thought of the three little girls that would one day be his: Buttercup the troubled street waif, the wilting, catatonic Blossom, and the floating mangled piece of flesh that was Bubbles. There were three little mistreated souls beneath those ghostly faces, ones that would come to depend on him. And it seemed that he had already let them down.
From the messy layers of emotions suddenly piling up on him, he could only discern one: an unrelenting anger. Anger at all that had happened to him.
And it was then he realised: he did not need to become Alecto. He already was.
T. B. C.