Mirage being a 'created' character is partially an in-joke, given her status as an optional & her moveset/equips. She was basically added in later, and this fic makes that literal. I find messing with gameplay/story segregation fun.

In case anyone's wondering, I'm not going to ship Fayt/Sophia in this. They always seemed more like brother and sister than boyfriend and girlfriend to me. While Luther is encouraging them to bond, he's doing that because he sees himself and Blair in them. He's kind of pushing them to grow closer as siblings because he's going to have to push Blair away, and that's making him realize how precious a relationship like that with your family is. The idea of them dating would weird him out, and they're probably going to pick up that attitude. There are types of love other than romantic, after all.

The fic is a slight AU anyway, so I'll elaborate a bit on Maria:

Her mother took her and went into the back of beyond, where there were shady groups and the Federation wasn't paying much attention. Because of that, she was able to tell Maria about her powers and force her to try to gain some conscious control over them.

The testing of Fayt and Sophia, by contrast, was more scientific due to better equipment, but mainly consisted of verifying that they actually did have such powers. Small children are not the best at keeping secrets and the Federation was obviously keeping an eye on those families for their own protection: Robert Leingod was all kinds of valuable. They would have been at some risk even without the genes.

The idea was that Maria would end up with actual control over her powers, and could then teach Fayt and Sophia when the time came. Of course, if anything went wrong, the two important genes, as far as they knew, were Connection and Destruction, the ones they'd need to get to the Creator's weird higher dimension and kill him/it. When the fate of the universe is at stake, sadly, individuals are expendable and Alteration was kind of a 'Johnny of all trades' backup/pinch hitter, not one of the vital ones. Better the stunt double messing up and killing herself than the star.

You may have noticed that what is said here about how she met Cliff and so on isn't in line with the game. Of course, Maria's backstory is subject to change (especially changes that would conveniently bring it in line with canon by gametime). Alteration gene, after all. I wanted to play with that gene, and the ability to alter your own life history is an interesting thought. Maria doesn't so much have a backstory as backstories. A multiple choices past. She's an unhappy person with the ability to play god and try to fix her life, except when she forgets she can. There are limits, on her power, however, like making an alteration that would keep her from ever having the power to make that alteration. Of course, her power was made to kill, so it's possible for her to kill herself with it like that, it's just she would instinctively pull back from doing so, in the way it's actually close to impossible for a human being to slit their own throat.

Try to imagine that your finger is a knife and even pretend to do it. Freaky, huh? Instinct is interesting.

This chapter is just slices of life like the last one, really. The theme is Monday-Moonday, hence the first scene taking place at night and focus on supportive female characters. Not to mention Mirage's themes. Has anyone here read Eight Days of Luke by Diana Wynne Jones?

On Sunday, the Creator, on Moonday, masks and illusions (but ones that give life, not ones meant to decieve and harm)… I'm not using Sophia or Maria for the Moon/Moonday, because the Moon just reflects the sun's light, the way Mirage was meant to be a mask for the Creator's benevolence. The moon is not the equal of the sun, in astronomical terms, although it does have quite a lot of effect on human life, via tides, and the fact it's closer would also have fit with Sophia. I've already decided who gets which chapters. Blaire on Thursday is amazingly appropriate, although that's half a Matantei Loki Ragnarok reference.

Disclaimer: I don't own anything, TriAce and such do.

After the military driver dropped him off (these things always had good wine, for whatever reason), he was tipsy enough to fumble with his keys for a bit before remembering that, right, it was after midnight, he wouldn't leave Sophia alone this late without a babysitter (not when he had valuable military secrets and she was a kidnap risk), and Ashton always sat at the table in the living room near the door so that he could hear anyone knocking.

Luckily Ashton had keen enough ears (not that he was the sort who made ear jokes about Expellians) to have picked up someone trying (and failing) to open the door. It swung open just as he was about to knock.

"You just opened the door after midnight without checking who it was?"

"Your minder called to let me know that you were being driven home."

Right, he'd asked them to.

"And," Ashton added as he took his briefcase and ushered him in. "You'd be amazed by the kind of intimidation factor Expellians have."

Right, it would be kind of like opening a door to find that your intended robbery victim was carrying a loaded gun.

"Anyone who would keep trying after seeing these," his ears, "wouldn't have been stopped by a locked door in any case."

"Good point." That was one of the three reasons that he'd hired Ashton. If he'd hired a bodyguard that might have made people assume that he had some reason to expect people to go after his daughter. It was as good as announcing that she was a valuable hostage. Surrounding her with dangerous people, on the other hand? The symbology faculty was generally known to be dangerous when they put their minds to it. It was easy to get the license to have symbols placed on your body when you had a good reason to want them, like research. Security clearances also helped.

"Coffee?"

"It's…" He looked at the clock. "Almost four AM."

Ashton waited for him to explain the apparent non sequitor.

Right, this was a soon-to-be-ex grad student. "I'm not getting any younger," he admitted, sitting down at the table that Ashton had covered with papers, the way he did any work surface he was given access to.

"You probably shouldn't mention that in front of Sophia. It worried her."

"She should probably get used to the idea, so it doesn't come as a shock later." He'd had a long time to get used to the idea that he was doomed. The question was whether or not anything could be saved. "What are you working on?"

"The Grant Proposal." What else?

"Oh, That Grant Proposal." With the capital letters. He chuckled. "Let me know if you ever get anyone to actually fund it."

"It's plausible. Both of you said that you'd back me on it, in exchange for access to it."

"We can't stick our necks out too far." Funding a trip to capture a minor deity to interview as a primary source in order to study these entities and their relationship to symbology? "It's a fantastic idea. They exist, they've been defeated in combat, but no one's ever tried anything like this before."

"Physics, symbology: they're all studies of the fundamental reality of our world, but there is a third area of study that, as yet, no one has truly attempted to apply the scientific method to…"

"Yes, yes, I've heard it before, remember." He chuckled. "If it works, you're really going to make a name for yourself."

"Compared to what most cutting-edge research costs these days, this would be pocket change. Superstition aside, it should be a lot easier for a sponsor to give someone trying to make a name for themselves this sort of money as opposed to Dr. Leingod's budget."

"Clever." Ambitious young man, not that there was anything wrong with that. He clearly had a passion for research, and in order to do research you needed backing, that was how it worked.

That was what they'd done, by going to study the Time Gate…

"Actually, I have some things to review for tomorrow."

Ashton started putting his papers away with rubber bands and practiced, organized movements. He was good at packing them up and spreading them out again. "Do you want me to cover for you? Until when?"

"…do you think you'd be up to taking the nine-o-clock lecture?"

"…can I fudge it by just doing practical demonstrations of the course material?" To wow the undergrads.

"It certainly wouldn't hurt your popularity." Although he had already been given a faculty position anyway, it couldn't hurt to be well-liked by the students.

"That works." He stretched. "I'll get going, then."

"Are you actually going to go to sleep?"

"No." Of course not. Sleep was for the weak and humanities majors.

"…What did you make and is there any left over?"

"I made nothing. Well, some bacon and I chopped some stuff up." Sophia wasn't allowed to use the real knives. "Sophia and Fayt made omelets, grilled cheese, a salad and chocolate shakes. There's some shake left." The receipt would be in the usual place.

The sugar might help. "Stay and pour me some of that shake? Is there anything you want me to look over?"

"I wasn't doing anything really groundbreaking today. Just editing a couple papers and The Grant Proposal. I don't mind hanging around, though."

Dr. Esteed opened his briefcase, Ashton turned on his datapad so he didn't use all the space on the table again. It wasn't done to look over people's shoulders when they were on a computer, but his guess was that Ashton was taking a break to just fool around online instead of anything serious. It always got a little lonely in the summers, when his wife went on her vacations (he always meant to attend, but…) and the normal flock of students had decreased to the ones who lived too far away to go home for causal trips and the commuters.

He liked this apartment, and appreciated the soundproofing, but after spending the best years of his life in the dorms and or on research trips living in close quarters, often it was too quiet.

Then, suddenly Ashton burst out laughing. "Are you kidding me? Someone like that actually exists. And is a wanted terrorist."

"Oh?"

"You know the old game where you create a profile and search the dating sites with it to see if they exist?" With trillions of people, there was almost certain to be someone with just about any given name and tons of people created profiles and never got around to deleting them.

"Hmm… What is your type? Female, into some form of self defense…"

"I don't like dating people I intimidate." And Expellians were fairly intimidating. "Krausian woman, about my age, blond, practices some form of self-defense on the expert level, well-traveled, into some kind of noble cause, related to someone borderline newsworthy, first name Mirage."

"Why Mirage?"

"Because I wasn't expecting someone like that to exist?" Krausians weren't the largest race, and just because there was fairly certain to be some Krausian with that first name didn't mean that there would be one that fit the rest of the criteria. "Mirage Kroas. Sadly, her dating profile says she's not single. I… don't think she created this account for herself." That was an understatement. "She's a member of Quark." Or she would be.

"Well, there would go your security clearance."

Ashton sighed. "She's a practitioner of a hereditary martial arts style. She champions the voiceless, she's got ambition to change the world in spades, she'd make great company on research expeditions, and if I dated her, I wouldn't be able to go on any of those."

"You'll live."

He shrugged theatrically, chuckling under his breath as he closed his datapad and stuck it in his bag. "I should head home so I can put on something appropriate for heading a class before I hit the labs."

"The labs? What time are you heading in today?"

"Five am."

"…I'm sorry. I wouldn't have asked you to watch her today if I'd known." Well, if he'd known that he was coming home this late, anyway.

"Someone had to watch her, and I got a lot done. Sleep is for the weak, anyway." He waved goodbye as he headed out the door.

Then the cheerful expression vanished.

Either Sophia's powers were acting up again and his idea for someone that could get close to Maria without suspicion had been based on subconscious knowledge of exactly who fit that profile, or something temporal was going on and the character already existed even though he hadn't made her yet.

That was going to cause headaches, either way.

"Luther?" Blair peered into his Workspace.

He held up a hand. "Can't talk. Debugging."

She wandered over, curious as to what would take up his full attention like this, not to mention that why he would put up the marker on the door that said he was in/available when he was allegedly trying to concentrate? He was going over the logged records of his own actions? "What happened?"

"Either someone hacked my admin account, time travel exists outside of the Eternal Sphere or something really weird is going on." He'd been thinking that if a character like this Mirage didn't exist, he'd have to invent her, and according to this, he had. Created not just a character but a person and inserted her years before Sophia's 'present.' And, according to the timestamp, he had done that this morning, his time, which was when he'd had the idea of making a character like that. Except obviously he couldn't become her now, he wouldn't kill and replace a real person.

Blair stood behind his chair, tapping her foot. "I told you that you should just use the controls everyone else uses instead of hooking your neural net into the Eternal Sphere." Although those units were selling like hotcakes. Full immersive virtual reality, as opposed to looking at a screen?

"I have surge protectors."

"You also have a very vivid, not to mention overactive imagination and you've customized this system to work with how you think. When you drew up that character profile, you thought of it in terms of what keywords you'd give the system to have it generate one for you, didn't you? And since you were already hooked into the system, and your whim is the Eternal Sphere's command…"

Now, he paused, and turned around to look at her. "How did you know that I was drawing up a character?"

His notes were spread out all over, and even though they were in code, "…It used to be our scribble-language, remember." They barely used it anymore, even though they were at the top now, and they'd thought that was when it would be the most useful to have a language no one knew. They barely used it anymore, and Luther kept adding more and more symbols and never even offered to tell her what they meant.

His poker face was still up. "I'll keep that in mind," he said, before turning back to the console.

Hadn't she done everything she could to make it clear that they weren't rivals? What had happened? She didn't want the leadership. The credit for the Eternal Sphere was his, and she would study it. The virtual reality, the AI, how interacting with it changed people… She'd already written books, she was already an authority on several things, one of the few people in the world doing actual research that wasn't medical. She was one of the few people in the world who didn't want what he had, didn't he know that anymore?

She couldn't ask what was wrong, not when he might suspect that she wasn't his friend. Trying to get him to expose a weakness would just confirm any suspicions he had. "There's no proof that dying in a dream can kill you in real life, but it's possible that it's actually the Eternal Sphere that has to worry about your subconscious, not the other way around."

"I actually did set it up to execute some commands when I thought them. It would be rather odd for one of my characters to start reciting ritual symbology language in the middle of a conversation whenever I had an idea," he admitted, as something of a peace offering. "But I didn't give the signal to start listening for that."

"Maybe there's a bug in the on/off switch for the mental programming system?"

"That's a lot more likely than the alternatives," he admitted. When a change was made to the Eternal Sphere at a certain point in time, it would affect the Sphere from that point on. For instance, arranging for Mirage Kroas to be born had caused her to exist in the time he'd currently been in, after having lived through the intervening years. However, from the perspective of his world, Mirage should have started existing yesterday morning. Until then, a player could have visited Kraus or joined Quark and she would not have been there.

Or they shouldn't have found her there. She shouldn't have existed yet.

Sophia was able to make changes to the Eternal Sphere that became retroactive and even affected the records of how the Sphere had been, affecting the past and present of his world as easily as her own. Maria and Fayt should have the same capability, not that he'd dared experiment with the powers of those two. Fayt could destroy not just objects themselves but all the records of them, all evidence they'd ever existed and all the backup data that could have been used to restore them. Potentially.

Of course, an AI changing the past was theoretically impossible, but so was an AI just materializing in the real world, completely ignoring the conservation of matter and energy.

The trouble with the theory that this was nothing more than a simple error on his part was that according to these records Mirage Kroas had been programmed in yesterday, at the exact moment when he thought her up, and yet, according to the backups he'd pulled, she had existed before that point.

He couldn't blame everything on Sophia. Making the mistake with the on/off programming that Blair suggested was reasonable. He should go over every line of that interface. That would explain how she'd been created by accident, but not why the records claimed she'd always been there at the same time.

The only things that should be able to interfere with his world like this were the genes, and… Oh.

That was it: this was probably Maria's doing. Unlike Fayt, she hadn't subconsciously locked down her power, and unlike Sophia, she hadn't been trained in how to use it, she was just figuring it out as she went along.

The most likely scenario was that once Mirage existed, Maria had at some point decided to make an alteration to her. Perhaps something meant to protect her that would last into the future or she might have consciously decided to make it retroactive.

And for Mirage to always have been that way, Mirage would have had to exist always.

Fayt's power was simple, in the way a sword was simple. Deadly and terrifying, yes, but straightforward, and Fayt himself was doing a good job of keeping it under control and making sure it didn't inflict any collateral damage. It was easy to plan for what Fayt might do, even if the only real defense was to not get him angry at you.

Sophia's power was practically made of collateral damage, or effects, at least, but unlike destruction it was an inherently gentle power. Part of why Sophia would never want to hurt anyone was because if she was connected to something, hurting it was like hurting herself, and she wasn't a masochist. Connection was certainly the most far-reaching and potentially earth-shattering of the three, but the nature of the power itself kept it at 'mostly harmless.'

Maria's power was Alteration. It couldn't easily be classified: it was too amorphous, able to change even itself. The real wild card of the three.

Luther decided then and there that he was staying as far away from her as possible until the time came. She'd be around twenty then, hopefully she'd have enough control over her powers not to use them randomly and enough self-control and maturity to realize that it was wrong to change people without their consent.

Fayt and Sophia were like Blair: known quantities. They could be relied on to do certain things in certain ways, because they were certain sorts of people.

For instance, if Blair thought that he was about to commit geno, or technically xenocide?

Maria, however, embodied changeability, and if he was there when she was experimenting with her power there was too much risk he'd get experimented on too, as this demonstrated.

"I'll see you later," Blair said, after losing her patience with being ignored as her brother sat there, lost in thought.

One night, Maria had woken up to find that she suddenly had a big sister. If Maria hadn't been able to feel how everyone had been altered by those years of her presence, it would have scared her how everyone seemed to remember spending years with this person except her.

Mirage was a great big sister. Smart, strong, the daughter Master Kroas had always wanted. It eased the part of Maria that knew what she was and what had been done to her to see that even when he had a real daughter, Master Kroas still wanted her around. Mirage wasn't jealous of her, either.

Maria would have wondered if she'd made her, except her powers couldn't make things. She could only change what was already there, and she knew she hadn't kidnapped and brainwashed someone or anything like that.

Master Kroas was happy, Cliff really liked her… Maria really liked her…

The question was who had the power to make people? Because she had felt it when the world changed, felt the ripples of a power that was like hers. That was what had woken her up and made her go find Master Kroas just in case, only to find Mirage practicing.

Mirage fit in so well because someone had made her so that she would fit in so well. To do what needed doing, to play around with Cliff, to learn, to look after Maria: she felt like a missing piece that really should have been there all along.

Except Maria knew better.

Because she fit there so naturally, it was easy enough to alter things so that Mirage really had been there all along, so that Maria had memories of that. Had been watching Mirage all her life, not suspiciously, but curiously.

Someone had made Mirage. Someone like Maria, and the only reason she could think of to do that was because of her. Someone had made Mirage… for her. Used a terrifying power that could change everyone's memories and cause people to be certain ways to do something really nice. Mirage wasn't brainwashed (she'd checked), Mirage was just Mirage, not a tool. They'd made a person that would be happy here as well as make everyone else happier.

She'd thought of her power in terms of twisting people, in terms of a woman being willing to see even her own daughter as a thing to be used for whatever nefarious goal she'd had in mind. The idea that it didn't have to be like that? That this power could be used without it being abused?

It was a comforting thought, but she still hated remembering what her mother had done. Hated thinking about what she could do, and how everyone might react. She couldn't get rid of her powers, but she'd been thinking, for a long time, about locking them away. She couldn't alter herself so she didn't have them, but she could alter her memory of them, right? If she didn't know she had them, if she didn't remember the things her mother had forced her to do to learn how to control them, then maybe she wouldn't use them?

That worked.

For a few years, anyway.