As Wodime Kirschtaria also known as Lio Hebert in this world watched Taylor Hebert, his sister succumbed to sleep, and now rather peacefully sleeping he felt something ugly and unpleasant rise within him. His hand gently continued gliding along his sister's curly dark hair while he tried to understand what he should do now.
He would be lying if he said that the death of Annette Hebert and the breakdown of his sister into a sobbing mess was a pleasant experience. It was not. However, what made the whole situation feel a lot more personal was a simple fact that he knew. He knew it all and for a rather long time. The death of Taylor's mother was something that the stars whispered to him for a long time. He awaited a day with grim anticipation. They did not exactly tell him how and who and where would die per se but something more along the lines of a great tragedy or a grave danger.
The part that made him feel truly awful was the understanding of that he could have prevented it, but simply decided not to. The death of the most important person is something that Taylor must experience to live through incoming hardships. And it wasn't his so-called "magus" logic, no, the world told him that it was necessary for him and for her to survive. If he would have to guess Annette Hebert's death was constant in any world or dimension where his sister lived until the very end of her story.
Simply speaking he could have gone against the vision that the starts gave him a glimpse of and in that case, Taylor's mother would survive. She would survive and die together with her daughter and husband in the next few years. He wasn't sure of the cause but at the moment of their death he could feel a slight impulse from the Neptune planet. In this case, it probably meant either some kind of natural disaster or the attack by Leviathan, one of the Endbringers.
Which connected to the next point of why he didn't have the brightest vision of the future before his eyes.
Taylor was important. And not in the sense that she was important to him or to this family. She would have a very "heroic" future if he was to believe what he manages to get from this world sky. Animusphere brand of magecraft wasn't exactly the most powerful without careful preparation and the right timing. The phrase about planets lining up taken rather seriously, when it comes to Astrology Department. However, what it mainly specialized and was good in was what essentially was an observation and prediction of what to come. You may call it a future prediction or a really advanced deduction.
Since the day he has been born into this world, he has rather fast understood that space wasn't as explored as it was at the time that his team has decided to "repaint" human history. It didn't really change much for him, but the neglecting of the idea to explore the planets beyond Earth with a far better tool than was even in his time was most infuriating for Wodime.
So back to Taylor. It was more or less a popular idea in Astrology Department of Clock Tower that every human or sometimes even a sapient being has a connection to a certain celestial body. It was a rather an amusing theory that while had some proofs to back it up had as many refutations to it. When he first looked at this world sky, he got some things that made the theory more or less a fact. While the main and most important things were in the same place such as the sun, Constellations, and other well-known celestial bodies the moment Kirschtaria's look grazed the night sky he understood that there was a difference. So using some of her blood that he easily acquired when Taylor accidentally cut her finger with a knife and quote-unquote "unholy ritual" he managed to deduce the object that corresponded with her. It was out of his field of reach, but he got a shape of a butterfly in his head for a few minutes. Using this knowledge and a bit of the Internet, he managed to find that apparently there was only one celestial object that reminded others of a butterfly. NGC 6302 also known as Butterfly Nebula was a rather distant but nonetheless beautiful creation of the world.
And if "Lio" decided to go with a sub-theory that the person's importance to the world directly corresponds to the "magnificence" of the body that they connected to his sister was beyond important for this world survival. While he could have just shrugged off the idea that average girl with no special talents and powers whatsoever could be, crucial to this world's future but Kirschtaria Wodime knew far better than doing something so stupid. He witnessed once himself that a single mundane person can restore the history set ablaze, destroy the fiction that was endangering the reality from within and overcome the foreign worlds.
Deep within his thoughts Lio Hebert left the room silently after covering his sister with a blanket and made sure that nothing could interfere with her dreams.
As he left the room, "his" magical circuits lit up and the familiar pain shot through his body. The other factor that made his life so much harder was a complete loss of his previous circuits. When he first grabbed the control over this body and tried to activate them by forcing magical energy trough them it nearly killed him. After getting over an initial shock of understanding what he lost and how truly bad his situation is, he started doing one thing that was forbidden and tad bit suicidal. He started slowly and carefully bit-by-bit transform parts of his nervous system in pseudo-magical circuits. That was the main reason why he spent so much time at the hospitals and near death-state. While most of the mages stopped doing this for the simple reason that the amount of paint was enough to kill, the other thing that prevented from doing this was a high chance of necrosis and a possibility to partially lose your natural circuits. Wodime wasn't exactly new to the agonizing pain, and the possibility of necrosis killing him was somewhat low. He didn't try to instantly transform a whole nerve in a single instance, but instead Kirschtaria was slowly changing it using his rather precise control of magical energy. He failed at least a dozen times and nearly died several times, but the reasoning behind taking such risks was rather simple.
You can hardly die if the world didn't allow you to. He could feel the invisible force manipulating and influencing some parts of his life before the age of 10. The moment he stopped feeling a strange presence he stopped his "attempts at suicide" as some other mages could have called it. Why was he so sure that something was helping him? Too much coincide and the unnatural change in things. He can list at minimum a few dozens of stories about how "unlucky" he was.
One time he simply went to the shop to buy some groceries and this very moment someone decided to rob this same shop with him inside. The thief was clearly under some kind of drug and couldn't even talk properly. He also had a gun and was rather aggressive, so the moment oblivious to the situation Wodime entered the line of sight of a thug he tried to shoot him. The gun simply jammed and when he tried to fix it the thief shot himself in the foot. The third shot landed on his Mp3-player and ended Wodime's enjoyment of some rock music. Love for this kind of music he picked up after his prolonged contact with Kadoc. While he himself prefers relaxing looking at the sky above, Kadoc's taste in music was indeed good. Blond was rather pissed off and ended the whole hostage situation with a "skilled" throw of a nearby wine bottle.
Even after all this tedious and unpleasant work, the quantity of his magical circuits was rather small, and he would prefer not to remind himself about their quality. Nevertheless, it was enough for him for now. But if Wodime needs to talk about something positive in the whole situation it was a rather enjoyable experience of relearning the very basics of magecraft and the lack of constant need to be careful with his control. Every mage was an explorer deep within their soul and the lack of an awful wound that nearly left him powerless in his previous life was a rather nice change of pace. He still sometimes feels rather sorrowful about his father's attempt to end his life, when he still was a student at the Clock Tower, but he was not really a person to dwell on the distant past.
By turning off and on the flow of energy, he tried to clear his mind and get rid himself of the feeling deep inside his heart. Using the nearby wall as a support as not to fall on the floor, he allowed himself to fully emerge in the conflict within his mind. In the battle of his feelings against his cold nature as a mage.
"Fuck" A single quiet word escaped his pale lips, while his teeth started to grind against each other.
The main reason why there even was a debate would he should do now was because Kirschtaria Wodime a Mage hated with all his being to lose those who he calls his friends and allies. Even if all his third life he tried to keep distance between himself and the Hebert family for their and his own sake he still was a human. If somebody was, capable of living with a family that fully counted him or her as part of itself for over 14 years and managed not to form at least some emotional connection or relation he or she was well beyond saving and should be put out their misery.
He fully embraced an idea to live a quiet life and enjoy a normal life for the time being. Each time when he lost somebody in one of the simulations he felt grieve, he felt agony and hated himself, but he never allowed himself to stop dead and lay until death will come. Through the pain and tears he alone and shattered reached the goal and saved his… friends. The feeling of warm blood covering his hands and an awful sound of dropping blood whose source was a slowly dying friend in his hands still sometimes haunts him in dreams.
He tried and failed to distance himself from his family. He attempted to maintain the status quo where neither he nor the Hebert family could forge a strong bond. Why? Being a mage is to walk with death. Besides, being the only true mage in this world with a mission to reactivate Counterforce while scheming to destroy two giant alien worms that probably were the sources of powers is rather dangerous. No, scratch that. It was an extremely ungrateful work with a big chance of dying and there was no reward. To free humanity, he needs to find a way to capture and destroy the "shards", and that probably meant getting rid of every power. Which would make him the number one target of the whole parahuman community. Even if he is to achieve his goal, he will be marked a villain and the name of Lio Hebert would become a curse word.
"Not the first time, really" A sarcastic remark raised from the bottom of his mind and was instantly drowned back.
The moment Wodime tried to mess with this world order everyone will make their goal to hunt him down. And he would get no real support because the public image of heroes was rather "heroic" and children raised in the environment where a hero is someone you should support and talk to when you in trouble. He was sure there are some groups that disliked capes, but they either hide extremely well or all of the groups were more or less just a bunch of angry civilians.
While the Protectorate probably would not fall to the level of blackmailing or taking hostages using his family, other groups that didn't care too much about their public image he was not sure about. Many would like to have somebody who can make their opponents permanently useless, and Kirschtaria feared to give this world knowledge of magecraft. Certain types of it didn't exactly need circuits and as far as he concerned the parahumans who called their power "magic" were laughed at.
He started slowly descend the stairs. Each next step becoming harder to make than the last. The guilt started to overpower reason. When he finally reached the ground floor, there was a storm in his mind. Grabbing his old white coat and after he tied a scarf around the lower part of his face he opened the door and entered the silent neighborhood. This year winter was much harsher than the previous times. His breath quickly transformed into a white vapor. As his eyes looked at the ground as if he tried to bury a hole there, he started to move slowly towards the direction of the hospital where his father now rests.
Then he stopped dead on his tracks. As if all of the momenta was drained from his movement, he simply froze in place. His head snapped, and Wodime's glare pierced the sky above. He stood there for several minutes observing the sky with a glare that became colder with every passing moment.
The stars were telling him that it was not the end. Taylor and Danny Hebert still needed to face more hardships. This time the disturbance came with a flavor of Mars and Mercury. Heart and brain meant the influence on the mind and emotions in this case something physiological. Knowing that in the next year, they will enter the high school Wodime started to have some ideas. And he didn't like the implications. There was also a familiar feeling that he felt when the Beryl decided to be open about his betrayal.
"Fuck it!" He said quiet but powerful.
He made a decision. A decision born from his heart that lacked any real logic or grand plan behind it. From this moment forward, he will no longer listen to what the world told him to do. From now on, he will take the destiny and bend it in a way that will allow this world, and his family meets a happy ending. No longer he would take the easiest path and allow his future to be determent. If the world could reach a happy ending only with a sacrifice then he would become one and protect Taylor. His sister. An innocent child has no need to go through the hardships alone. Death of Annette Hebert was the first and the last loss that the Hebe… no, his family suffered.
He would become a sacrificial lamb and use his third chance to ones again change the world for the better. This time he too will have a reliable ally.
And then he disappeared into the blizzard of a winter night. He still needs to check his father and come back to Taylor in the morning. He has a lot of catching up to do and needed to finally become a good brother.
"I always wanted to have an adorable younger sister" After his mind was freed of darker thoughts, Wodime's mind reverted back to his true self. A little awkward but a sweet human being.