This chapter exists to demonstrate exactly just how scary Valka is as a being who is both immortal and endlessly accumulating powers.
Now, as the pre-cripple Vader guy would say,
This is where the fun begins :D
Why did this feel familiar to her? Why did it feel like she had done this before? Why did running down alleyways and dodging cars as she tried her very best to escape what felt like a long-time coming feel… preordained? As it was meant to be?
She hoped it wasn't meant to be, that would mean her parents should have died, and that she should be abducted by strange men with scary weapons. It would mean that she had smaller and smaller chances to escape, and even slimmer ones to uphold prolonged freedom.
But then again, the power she had was getting more and more unreliable. At first it was just that, reliable, and provided succinct answer to her question. In numbers, of course, but always precise and always numbers as percentages. But it was getting even more unreliable, even more so than before with its '1st and 14th' answers. Now, it was starting to say words. And it had chosen the worst possible time to do so.
"There she is!" a man's gruff voice called out. She spun and caught sight of one of the men in black military gear and carrying an irregular gun. Wasting no time, she booked it around the corner she was making towards already. However, the sound of footsteps was close on her heels.
Praying to whatever on the Earth or beyond could hear her, she mentally asked her question and hoped more than anything it would just help her.
"[Will I get caught if I keep going down this street?]" She thought.
"What street are you on?" Her power asked.
Asked.
ASKED.
It had gotten worse. Not only was it not giving the right numbers, but not only was it saying words, but now it was ASKING her questions! Risking a glance around the corner containing the men, she saw them even closer than before. She'd gain ground if she ran now but still be caught if the men didn't lose her. Taking another risk, she decided that her power hadn't outright failed her so far, so she would just have to trust it.
"[I am on Daniels Street.]" She thought and would be very annoyed if it suddenly decided to begin acting normally.
Thankfully, it didn't. Instead, it replied with: "Keep doing whatever this is."
Still trusting her power to save her, she did as it said. "[Please, help me.]"
"I can. Just get to the nearest alley and you'll be safe."
Obeying, she took off in a run down the street. The contingent of men behind her finally had a line of sight but refrained from firing their weapons. Likely in fear of being seen shooting a little girl, no matter how sparsely populated the street was.
She almost skidded past the alleyway when she got to it, a tight entrance leading to a wider break in the buildings. The mistake lost her valuable time and distance from the pursuers, and the fact that they'd capture her in this alleyway would be a certainty. She just hoped that her power was still trustworthy enough to listen to its directions.
Glancing back at the entrance, noticing the men squeezing through, she wasn't able to stop herself from bouncing off a person standing there in the middle of the alley, as if… waiting.
"Well, you're certainly an interesting one." Her power said.
She looked up at who she had collided with, them not having even flinched. It was a woman, with slick and shiny raven-black hair that reached her mid-back. She wore a fluffy-necked green parker and a deep red lipstick.
And she stood there with an air of confidence not even her uncle could have matched, despite being mayor.
Yes, whoever this woman was, Dina Alcott knew she would be okay in the end.
"Yes. As I said you are now safe." Her power said. And that's when it hit Dina. This woman was talking to her, THROUGH her power! Dina knew it more than anything in the world. More than gravity pulling you down, and more than one plus one equals two.
The last of the men had entered the alley, and the woman reached down and pulled Dina up behind her, interposing herself between Dina and her assailants.
"Give us the girl." The man in the lead demanded. No offers of safety were made, however. Something that Dina took particular not of.
The woman smiled. It was not a normal smile. There were genuine smiles, fake smiles, intimidating smiles and pained smiles. This, this wasn't any of them. This was a different smile. A smile that was not normal.
"Dinner first would be nice boys. Although, the flowers are nice."
Dina didn't even blink, but she certainly did so after noticing what had happened just to make sure her vision was alright. All of the men's guns were replaced by bouquets of exotic and unrecognisable flowers. It took a few more moments for the men to realize, likely because they tried for the triggers to find them gone and exchanged. Dropping the guns like they were toxic waste, each of them drew the pistols strapped to their waists.
"Chocolates too?! You shouldn't have!" The woman chirped. It was delivered so much on the border between sincere and mocking, that it started to get hard to believe that it was her who was doing these things. The men, seeing things as a lost cause turned to retreat. It should have been obvious with how things were going, but they all were still surprised to find the tight entrance to the alleyway was completely sealed over – like it wasn't even there in the first place.
The woman's voice and 'un-normal smile' drew their attention back. "Now, now. We weren't done."
And then she raised her foot, stomping back down on the pavement. Almost instantly, like a pulsing wave, the men's legs fused with the pavement and partially turned to stone. They all began panicking.
"I could have turned you all the way, you know." The woman commented. "The best part is that you'd still be sentient, your soul trapped in an inescapable and undying prison." The 'clack' 'clack' of her high boots sounded against the ground as she approached the men as their futile attempts to free themselves bore no fruit. "Oh and the soul is real, just so you know. So is Hell, want to see?"
A click of her fingers was all it took. Dina was sure it didn't even take that, the woman only doing it for flair. But the single man disappeared all the same. The woman tapped her foot for a good amount of time, at least until all the men had recognised the situation they were in and stared at the spot where the teammate had disappeared with a sufficient amount of worry. As much for themselves as the man.
Done with her tapping and waiting, the woman nodded once. "That should be enough time." With another click of the fingers, the man returned. A few things were different about him.
On a positive note, he was no longer fused to the concrete. But that was where the positives ended. He was curled up on his side and shaking so much his teeth could have come loose and the rampant mumbling he was doing wasn't about to help.
"Golf, what happened?" another man asked his teammate, using his callsign.
The woman rolled her eyes. "I told you, Hell."
"My father… Opened his ribcage… Asked me to dance…" The man muttered brokenly, but louder for others to hear. The strike team turned back to look at the woman, their terror increasing.
"Oh, that's nice sweetie. But back you go…" She spoke. As soon as the trembling man heard this, he immediately snapped to attention. Crawling desperately to the woman, he pleaded, begged, and bargained as much as he could. But just before he was able to touch her, he disappeared again.
"Now, I don't have the time for a tailored demise for each of you. Well, maybe I'll just…" one of the men completely petrified. "Just that one. The rest of you, I'll leave to a friend."
As if stepping out from nowhere, a person appeared. Well, calling them a person would be generous. It was a humanoid being with pale purple skin, a bulbous cranium and tentacles where the mouth should be.
"[Why have you disturbed me, Lazarinthian?]" The creature in the ornate robes demanded, their words injecting themselves directly into the mind.
"Why the hostile attitude, Qulbeyan? And after I've brought you all these lovely meals." The woman said to the thing, Qulbeyan apparently. Qulbeyan looked over the woman's shoulder, seeing the men who had resumed their attempts to escape, some even trying to break through their stone legs in order to flee.
"Whilst I doubt it will be a... fulfilling snack, considering. However, I shall still accept. One doesn't get many brains to feed upon when renouncing killing." And with that, Qulbeyan strode – no, floated – towards the men. Meanwhile, the woman returned to Dina and crouched down, offering her hand.
"We should probably leave," she said to Dina, "He's a bit of a messy eater."
Now, by this point, Dina was scared beyond belief by the woman. She could seemingly bend reality to her whims and had… fed, these men to a monster. Sure, they were trying to capture her, and they did kill her… her… her parents…
Dina felt the compulsion to glance behind the woman and watch whatever was about to happen to all the men. They deserved it. Dina knew they deserved it for what they had done. She knew they did more than just her parents.
The woman somehow sensed what Dina was feeling and shook her head slowly. "Trust me, you don't," she said. "Not yet at least, and especially not by Qulbeyan. His kind doesn't even exist in this universe. Please."
Dina paused. She looked at the woman in the eyes and saw much. But most of all she saw sincerity. Sincerity that came from an age beyond age, and had no more room for lies for what need did they hold?
Dina took her hand.
"I am Valka Firstborn. Please to meet you, Dina."
- - - - - Lazarus - - - - -
"Hey Dunkan, open up you little brat!" Valka shouted as she kicked in the door to the alchemist's lab that she had taken herself and Dina to. She didn't tell the pre-teen that she had warped the both of them to another omniverse. Dunkan was the most reliable alchemist Valka knew and he only hung around close to the edge of the Cosmere multiverse. Not exactly close by.
Dunkan, to his credit, was practised enough with Valka's entrances and almost avoided dropping something this time around. He cringed at the sound of shattered glass and slowly turned in his swivel chair to face the lady he had known for all his life.
"What do you want this time, Valka?" the man asked tiredly.
"Just need your talent to get out a little parasite."
"Parasite?" Dina echoed softly. She was still very disoriented by the rapid succession of events that were happening.
"Nothing to worry about. Mainly because Dunkan here is going to take care of it." Valka pushed Dina towards Dunkan a little bit.
Dunkan sighed exasperatedly. It wasn't uncommon for Valka to burst into wherever he was, demanding that he 'open up' despite having always already destroyed the entrance. Making sure nothing else was going to break, Dunkan took a piece of equipment from his desk that resembled some kind of stethoscope. But instead of how one would normally use a stethoscope, Dunkan stuck the larger end in Dina's forehead (eliciting a tiny squeak from the young girl), and put the smaller, matching ends up to his eyes. Humming and harring, he swiftly came up with an answer.
"Yeah, I can get rid of this. Give me half an hour to gather up the solution I need for the extraction."
"Perfect." Valka smiled and nodded. "Dina, you stay here whilst Dunkan works, I'll be back before he's done."
"A-are you going?" Dina asked, fearfully.
Valka nodded. "Just for a little bit. I'm just going to go and have a chat. Perhaps make a threat or two."
With that, the woman walked back out the door they had entered through. Making an unsatisfied grunt, Dunkan began gathering the ingredients needed to get out that little sliver of something in the young girl. It wasn't every day that you had to pull something out through a dimensional link, but it still wasn't the first for Dunkan.
- - - - - Lazarus - - - - -
Thomas Calvert decided that whoever this woman was – she was likely just as much trouble as Styx would likely turn out to be. She had just been standing there, waiting, and summarily took out her men before they could take even a breath. He had closed the timeline as soon as the first man had disappeared, and his camera feed went blank. It was a loss of an opportunity, for sure, but there would be others.
Thomas Calvert, for that was the mask he currently wore here and now, made a disappointed hum when the other him closed the timeline they were in, leaving just him in his home. He was sitting at his dining table, which existed purely for guests and a place to wait in a 'safe timeline' in case he planned on doing anything exceptionally risky like today. A lunch sat before him, premade by a meal delivery company as he didn't even bother to do such a task himself.
"I can see the appeal," Valka said from across the table eating her own meal, "It certainly does save time."
Calvert, now Coil with the sudden appearance of someone else at his table, would have jumped out of his seat in shock if he wasn't already completely and utterly dumbfounded at this intruder's presence. It was luck he did, because this way he was able to recollect his thoughts before he did anything rash. And so the first thing he did was split the timeline. One he had just sit there, the other he initiated the conversation.
"Hello, I-"
"I merged those last timelines." Valka interrupted. This stumped Coil.
"I'm sorry, what?"
Valka looked up for the first time since she was noticed there. "Those two timelines you were using to kidnap Dina. I merged the kidnapping happening with you not being at that little hole of yours."
"Couldn't have anyone interrupting, now could we?" Valka in the second timeline completed the words.
The explanation stunned both Coils, but even more it increased the threat that this woman registered to him. The Coil who hadn't spoken went for the gun he had taped under the table. At the same moment he found it missing, the Valka in the 'first timeline' pulled out the gun the second Coil had thought to be under his table. But that couldn't be right… could it?
The first Coil felt for the gun under his own table. It was there.
"Do you need some more convincing?" The second Valka asked.
"Or are we ready to listen?" The first finished.
Coil gulped.
"Good." Both ladies said together. "Then we won't need this."
The second timeline closed. Coil couldn't even react even if he wanted to, his mind had frozen from impossibility after impossibility. Valka placed the gun gown on the table, the food she was eating already seemed to have vanished.
"I'm going to make this clear, Mr Calvert. I do not like repeating myself." Valka stated. "And I do not just mean in words, but actions as well. I have saved Miss Alcott from your kidnapping already, and to repeat such a rescue – which I will if needed – will not put me in the best of moods."
She locked eyes with Coil. The man's gaze was trapped, unable to break away from those grim orbs of hers.
"Not angry, per se. It takes far more than such a silly little thing to anger me. But then again, your men only mildly inconvenience me and I'm sure you know where that got them."
Valka seemed to stop herself short, and Coil could feel her gaze piece his body and right into his very soul. Something that could be quite literal, if her sending that man to hell was to be believed.
"Oh no wait, you cut yourself off before seeing the fate I left them to. Oh well, nothing for it then." Valka shrugged.
This encounter felt even more dangerous to Coil than his brief meetings with that woman in the Fedora. Like tap dancing on the edge of a knife compared to someone holding one across the room from you. All the same, Coil rallied what little courage he had at that moment to ask a single question.
"What do you want?" he asked.
Valka blinked, somehow seeming surprised. "What do I? What do I want? Oh, ohohohohoh!" Valka threw her head back and laughed. The sound was melodic, but Coil couldn't help feeling nails on a chalkboard going through his mind.
Valka then snapped out of the laughter and her head back down, all pretences of formality gone but still keeping a jovial tone.
"Mr Calvert. I don't want anything. It's you who wants something, yes?"
Coil wanted to answer but couldn't.
"A bit of advice, was it? Oh, well, I'm certain I can accommodate something as easy as that now."
Valka stood up, almost making Coil have a heart attack on the spot. She moved around the dining table, her hand stroking the length of it as she moved up towards Coil. He could hear his heart pumping louder and louder as if her approach was a volume dial being slowly turned up. Placing a hand on his shoulder, Valka looked down at the seated man who dared not meet her gaze.
"You, Mr. Calvert, are entirely not my problem," Valka said calmly. She then leaned down so that her mouth was less than an inch away from his eye and whispered her next words softly.
"I would recommend not making yourself one."
And then just like that, she was gone. And so too with her, some kind of pressure. With its now absence, Coil could think of it as something like a fog. Not a physical one in any way, but something… else. In hindsight, he could notice its effects. His shutdown of strategic calculations, the utter unwillingness to act, the amount of fear the woman struck into him, the primal urge that just shouted at him to harm that woman – to kill her by any means necessary – entirely muffled.
Still not sure if his thoughts and feelings were still his own, Coil decided that what the woman had said to him was indeed, the best advice he had ever gotten.
- - - - - Lazarus - - - - -
"…and so that ended up fixing a good bit of the powers as well. God rid of all the yucky bits; the enhanced aggression, the limited neural use, the soul/unsoul touching, and the inhibitors." Dunkan listed off.
Valka turned to the man, intent on looking him in the eyes for the next part of the conversation following Dunkan removing Dina's 'guest'.
"Inhibitors? Dunkan, I am older than computers in her world would be able to calculate – those fancy superhero ones or not. I didn't notice any inhibitors when I hijacked the spatial portal."
"And what about possible power variations?"
Valka hesitated. "Well…"
Dunkan clicked his fingers into a point towards the first Lazarinthian. "And that's what was the thing. From what my test read out, she should have some influence on those percentages she reads out now."
Valka's eyes slimmed easily into a deadly glare. Dunkan knew it wasn't a real one, or else he'd be floating in the vacuum of space by then.
"Are you telling me that you just allowed a girl – who is not even an adult yet – to gain PROBABILITY MANIPULATION." Valka raised her voice.
"No, no, no. Nothing that… much. Just some probability influence. She's not going to be changing zero percents into one-hundreds any time soon, if ever." Dunkan reassured. He knew the dangers of someone with unbridled probability manipulation and would have removed the girl's powers altogether if he had seen the slightest hint of that particular ability manifesting. "She should also now get a gentle stream of probability on an unconscious level now, no more need for questions unless she wants to. It'll need to be trained up a bit – without this little guy," Dunkan tapped a thick glass vial, agitating its inhabitant, "she won't have anyone to pilot her power for her. It's all man-u-al now."
Valka nodded, satisfied at last. "Good. I'm going to take her back to her world, and team her up with the newest Lazarinthian. I intended to get Taylor a team set up before I left the girl to her own devices, make a solid starting point I wish many of us had."
"Like I've been telling you." Dunkan agreed.
Valka smiled but groaned at the man all the same. "Screw you Dunkan. Screw you…"
If you see a mistake or a sentence that doesn't seem to make sense, let me know so I can also fix it!