1.4

I sat in a tropical paradise, feet bare swaying gently in the water. The first time I pictured materializing on a tropical beach, I discovered the wonder of time zones, namely how half the world didn't get the sun's light at any time. It made relaxing a bit difficult understandably, though I had found a good suitably abandoned beach on the second try.

The sparkling waters were a poor mirror, but I stared into them anyways, watching the shadowy reflection of Schrodinger's face. It was vague, ghostly like the moon is during daytime, and constantly chopped by the tides. It was my face now I supposed, flicking a too-small foot breaking the reflection into fragments once more.

I wasn't myself anymore. Other-me was probably closer to me than I was now, perfectly unconcerned with murder and violently dying over and over again. My previous self probably would have been too cowardly to do something bold like killing Jack Slash immediately after realizing his situation. He'd probably do something like what I was doing now, relaxing in the tropics and questioning the reality of his existence.

On my arm, the Swastika armband had been covered up with a smiley face made out of duct tape. I had liberated a single roll from twelve different random storerooms and now had a healthy supply whenever I needed it in an abandoned warehouse. I would get clothes to not have to wear but carrying them around and changing whenever I moved would probably be too much of a hassle.

My main concern wasn't the non-stop train of fatalism. I had a power that probably trumped every other existing being in the Wormverse, entities included. Without magic I wouldn't be dying anytime soon. I was worried about the non-compunctions over violent murder. Vigilante justice would be a better term, but it's what it was. Humans generally didn't have zero reservations for violent murder. No lack of hesitation, no lack of gut-wrenching after being ripened in a mostly violence-free society over the years. There were obviously outliers due to the varied nature of humanity, but for the most part people's tendency for violence was vestigial, unused. I was firmly in the even-knives-are-scary group that detested violence in all its forms before, which made the change all the more concerning.

My choice to immediately kill Manton and Jack was so unlike me I couldn't call myself the person I was before. I was Schrodinger now.

In a blink I was no longer on the beach, now feet dangling off one of the support struts on the Eiffel tower. I sat not inside, but on the lattice of metal that was the exterior. The view of the city was disappointingly ordinary, the trundling masses of humans moving along in their day-to-day lives, city buzzing with life.

Another blink and I was on the edge of the Grand Canyon. It was the dead of night so the view was ruined somewhat. I did need some sort of timepiece soon. I tried to teleport to the Empire State building, but when I teleported the sun gleefully burned into my night-calibrated eyes. I started falling off the edge before I reappeared in the Grand Canyon.

However, the searing light continued to burn into my poor eyes. Not only was it daytime, tourists had arrived in droves, surrounding the spot I had materialized in. Tourists, people with the lowest survival instinct pulled out their cameras and began snapping off pictures. Someone even had flash enabled even though it was the middle of the day. Others yelled and ran, or called people on their clunky phones. It was probably 2011 and the smartphone was just hitting the public I supposed.

I pondered the time period a bit. It had to be close to or during the start of canon considering Cherish, who otherwise wouldn't be in the Slaughterhouse. The PRT rig was also still around, meaning Leviathan had yet to attack. The yelling and picture taking was rather annoying though, so I teleported to the top of Mount Everest.

Another question was why was the Grand Canyon full of tourists? I had been gone a few seconds, and somehow the sun had snuck up along with a horde of sweaty sightseers.

I was thinking about the disparity so hard I forgot Mount Everest's peak doesn't exactly have the most welcoming environment, choking to death. I reappeared back at the beach and had an epiphany.

When I had popped into the Number Man's office and "through" his window, I had casually teleported into a parallel Earth. The same thing occurred when I appeared on the Empire State building. For some reason or another, Earth Bet never had an Empire State building so I couldn't be there. Instead, I had appeared in a parallel Earth which did have one, apparently which had a different time for whatever reason.

Picturing illegal money, I grabbed duffel bag after duffel bag jammed with cash from jumps. I could probably just request money from Cauldron, but this way was more fun. I pictured a computer store and quickly found out that being an obvious parahuman guarantees fast service. By fast service, I meant the store was closed and I left the money on the register to pay for the computer, laptop, and phone I picked up.

They were a bit clunkier than I was used to, but after a little setup on the phone, I was pleasantly surprised at the features. Benefit of reverse-engineering tinkertech probably. While the phone I got working in a couple of minutes, getting used to the UI, I puzzled what to do with the computer and laptop.

I needed internet access as well as power to make use of either. The desktop computer went into the warehouse, but I brought the laptop with me to Brockton Central Library, because I needed to go to the plot city at least once. It was closed, as you would expect for a Library in the middle of the night. In a dark corner, I set up the computer, inputting 'April 12th' as the date. In the early hours of the morning, I connected to the wireless and began acquainting myself with the internet. Many things remained the same, like the search engine and wikipedia. In fact, I spent most of my time on wikipedia looking up events that ended up not occurring, like 9/11 and whatnot.

The Empire State Building was built, but destroyed during Behemoth's attack in 1994. Casualties in the fight were apparently extremely limited, but still numbered in the triple digits due to a fast evacuation. It had been replaced with another iconic tower as part of the massive rebuilding process following the attack. My guess wasn't exactly right but the reason was. I couldn't teleport onto a destroyed building while picturing a complete version.

Looking at recent news, it looked like Heartbreaker remained unfound. The Slaughterhouse Nine were almost always under the radar so nobody had noticed the missing Siberian or Jack Slash himself. Thinking about what was currently happening in Brockton Bay, I had another epiphany. After packing the laptop back in the warehouse, I materialized in a certain tinker's lab.

It was empty, so I appeared next to a certain tinker's bed this time. Taking the knife out, I held it over her sleeping throat, and lightly tapped with my free hand.

"What the fuck is it?" she sleepily said after half-waking up. Then the realization that someone had tapped her awake behind a locked door, and said person was currently holding a knife to their throat, hit her. She awoke rather quickly after that.

"Vy good morning sunshine!" I enthusiastically announced. "I have a vunderful proposition for you. You get unlimited resources anda shot at saving zee vorld!"

"Door me, Number Man's office," I said to the air.

When it became clear nothing was going to happen, I said, "Door me or I knife Conte-" a rectangle in space opened up immediately revealing the Number Man hard at work on his touchscreens. I pulled her up by one arm, ignoring her curses and vivid descriptions of violence, and led her through the door. The Number Man had noticed by this point, and had already moved his hand in a loving embrace with his face.

"Bomb tinker, probably vill be useful for making zee bomb I vas talking about," I said to the Number man before reappearing in Bakuda's room.

Taking out a red marker, I defaced the wall with a large redRACHE. I would have used blood, but Bakuda was already in Cauldron and mine wouldn't stick.

It wouldn't be fair to inflict such a punishment without inflicting an equal loss on Empire 88 though. If both Lung and Bakuda were taken out, there would be nothing stopping them from rolling over all the territory, and probably no Coil to reveal their identities either.

I could do something easy, like knifing Kaiser, but-- Wait, why didn't I just knife Kaiser? If Kaiser died, Purity's group would probably splinter off without the threat of Purity's daughter being held ransom by him. Hookwolf's group was just violence-happy idiots without much of a vision towards city control. Kaiser wasn't exactly a nice guy either, he was a criminal lynchpin. Truly the number of problems that could be solved with liberal amounts of knifing seemed to only be growing.

So I appeared right in Kaiser's bedroom. I ignored all the fanciness, and quietly crept up to the sleeping man. Using the patented Siberian method, I stabbed him in the throat until he was dead. It was getting somewhat routine by this point, even with all the metal blades he tried to stab me back with. At least there was blood so I could write a suitably fitting phrase.

"Der Kaiser liegt"

I probably should be worried about how knifing was the tried and true solution to my problems so far. I added "solve a problem without threats of murder/knifing" to my mental list and cheerfully went back to the tropics.

The sun glared into my eyes, blinding me, but I stayed anyways.

It would be a waste not to enjoy such a knife day.