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EARTH DATE: AUGUST 18TH, 2011.
Baizil Soleli considered herself a lucky troll.
She'd died due to being crushed by a rolling Ferris Wheel. Had her soul shoved into a fancy gemstone that was decoratively placed ON said Ferris Wheel. Yeah, that was bad. Left Barzum behind and she was... It was a sad, sad day.
The silence was deafening inside of that stone.
Tried to possess a bunch of fools who touched the damned thing. Wound up in the then-one-hand of Trizza Tethis, former Heiress to the Alternian Empire Throne...
Turned out the fancy gemstone was also FANCY MAGIC TECHNOLOGY and could grant the ability to regenerate a body from blood splatters.
So Baizil did so- killed a clown who'd tried to kill the Heiress by bursting out of the remnants of her body- wound up tag-teaming with said Heiress for a while. Met a troll she could hate. Time traveled a bit. Reunited with Barzum. Adoped two alternate universe versions of herself and her sister (and her alt self was a boy that time!), and...
Yeah. Generally, despite the crazy ups and downs, Baizil Soleli was happy with her life.
Still, let it not be said that the universe didn't sometimes throw shit in ones face.
It started like a shivver down her spine one day while she and Xefros were watching the twins roughhouse in the yard with Amisia.
And then it was more of a vibe, a vague impression. A sort of soul resonance with Baizli that she usually only got with Barzum before they'd split.
She shrugged it off.
And then it rammed into her full force from behind at the same time the twins froze up and suddenly started clutching their heads.
She saw it then.
A train car. She was small- flat chested in a way that wasn't just her age- no, this was Baizli's perspective- this was his perspective from another time and---
Joey was there. Young, human... scared. Cowering before Baizli as he walked with menacing intent and--
A voice, a shout, and Baizil felt herself tumbling despite sitting in place- Baizli fell, looked upwards....
A horrified Xefros looked down.
And then pain and Baizil was gasping for breath, clutching her own head, Xefros holding her because she'd almost actually fallen off of the porch over the goddamned railing and...
Xefros looked just as freaked out as she did.
"Holy Fucking Shit what was THAT!?" She asked, but then had to get her wits about her because Barzum and Baizli were crying in the yard and the Kids Took Precedence.
Mayuri poured out a cup of coffee for Baizil as she sat in the cafe's back room office.
"The Professor will be right with you," The alternian girl smiled, and walked off.
This cafe was... something else. It was a weird ass Diaspora Coffee Shop themed around time travel and parallel dimensions and...
Honestly, it was the best place Baizil could think of to go.
And then a woman walked into the room- alternian, tall, long hair dyed and piercing rust red eyes... Time Aspect written all over her.
"Sorry for the delay," she said, walking to sit down in the chair next to Baizil. "The, ahhem, local mad scientist was unable to make it on such short notice, so I'm filling in for him." She offered her hand in greeting. "Kurisu Makise."
"Baizil Soleli," answered she, shaking the hand.
"So... Mayuri tells me you had an incident?" Kurisu asked.
Baizil nodded, explaining the incident in vivid detail. Explaining that even in another galaxy, Baizil's own twin had experienced the same vision that she, the twins, and Xefros had seen. That even Joey Claire, halfway across town, had felt rattle in her soul.
Kurisu nodded, as if expecting that. "That sounds like a common event we're aware of among alternate selves." She went to gather some notes from a bookshelf. "We at the Future Gadget Lab have been researching such things independent of others, sometimes we gain insight that Atlantis or The Alternian Stargate Progamme are unaware of. Other times, they call a phenomenon by a different name." She sat back down, offering a folder. "Officially, what you and your alternate selves experienced is called an Unending Memory Bleed. However, we have a few other names for it."
Baizil opened the folder, reading through the text there.
"Zone Ripples?" Baizil asked of one.
"Some call the individual dimensional realities within a cluster 'Zones," Kurisu offered.
Baizil frowned. "What about Soul Ripples?"
"Same concept as a Zone Ripple, just a slightly different name." Kurisu answered. "The idea in both is that if an event is strong enough within one reality's instance, it will ripple out across the souls involved, rattling their counterparts across the multiverse. They differ in that the Zone Ripple only focuses on neighboring realities affected, where as Soul Ripples echo across all instances. I don't think either fit your scenario, truthfully."
She reached a finger out, and tapped a line.
"This one."
Baizil looked at it.
"'Reading Steiner: Backlash Premonition'?" Baizil asked. "But this says that Reading Steiner is a Time Bound thing and-"
"None of you involved in the incident are Time Bound," Kurisu smiled. "I'm well aware of your Aspect Binds. Who isn't aware of Joey Claire, Lightbound, or Xefros Tritoh, Ragebound? Or you, Doombound?"
Baizil worked her jaw for a moment. "It's... not exclusive at all, is it?"
"In our experiences with the Multiverse," Kurisu began, "we've found that sometimes, there are things called Fixed Points. Events that happen across multiple instances of reality. Diverting from those Fixed Points can sometimes be rather... hard to avoid." She paused. "Sometimes, no matter how desperately a person works to avoid that fate across countless, countless iterations... there is no changing it. And when that event becomes ingrained in the very fabric of the multiverse's conscious mind... There begins to become a wish to divert those outcomes by those aware of it fully. This grants Reading Steiner to those involved regarding the incident, Time Bound or Not, regardless of the circumstances they face."
"You mean...?" Baizil trailed off. "That really happened out there?"
"Many, many times, likely, for the vision to be so strong and consistent across the lot of you," Kurisu nodded. "The fate of your alternates was not pleasant, I'll give you that. However... know that this vision transpired means that there are those aware of that fate... and there are those that wish to see it avoided elsewhere."
Baizil took a sip from her coffee mug, finally, and relished the bitter taste as it soothed at the headache she was feeling.
Kurisu continued, "In some realities, others will die instead of your alternate. In others still, nobody dies. In yet more, perhaps everyone dies. It's hard to say, but the very knowing that an event is about to happen can sometimes allow that event to change. Choices upon choices upon choices..."
She gave a smile, and asked. "Is your mind at ease now? Do you have any more questions?"
"Why now?" Baizil asked. "Why not... back when I first died?"
"If I had to wadger a guess, I have two options that are likely the case," Kurisu held up her index finger.
"One. The section of timeline that this death happens in was a blank void, unfilled and uncertain, teeming with potentials until a quantum waveform was colapsed and superimposed across realities as a new 'baseline.' Compared to the then that was, this is a relatively recent change in the structure of reality."
Baizil shuddered at the implications.
"Two. The section of timeline that this death happens in was always happening as a potential in only a few timelines, however... somewhere in the multiverse, a story adapted these events." Kurisu frowned. "The concepts and events were then broadcast to a world- possibly multiple worlds, regardless of how common their frequency may or may not be in the real reflection of reality- and thus, the reaction from the audience is the result."
"The... Audience?" Baizil frowned. "I know back in the day, the Clowns performed for themselves as much as the Audience, building off of their reactions to things to guide a live story to--" She stopped.
"You're starting to understand," Kurisu said with a nod.
"So... the Audience, who-ever they are, witnessed these events happen and wished they didn't happen." Baizil looked Kurisu in the eyes. "But the Audience doesn't even have to be people watching it from the outside. It can also be the people involved dead center."
"The Barzum left behind, as you've described the visions, is distraught with the loss of her other half," Kurisu relayed, raising a finger with each name spoken. "Joey Claire, threatened, watching as a friend takes a life in her defense, Xefros Tritoh, forced to kill in defense of another, and carrying that weight for the rest of his life." The three fingers close, and she concluded, "Given enough repetition across the Multiverse, those three souls will wish time and time again that something different happened- and thus the echo resonates across their souls into the others."
"And Baizli, the other me," Baizil started- "the one who died..."
"The one with the most regrets and wishes for change of all," Kurisu said. "A wish to have not made the choice they made. To not have to abide by the rules of old Alternian culture. A desire to warn themselves of a bad ending." She paused, then concluded, "To reload a past save, so as to make a different choice. Reading Steiner: Premonition Backlash."
Baizil Soleli returned home that evening, finding Xefros looking distraught, and the twins curled up in their aunt Barzum's arms and...
She looked Xefros in the eyes, and said, "Looks like you and I are always tied up together to the end, Xef." She gave a comforting smile. "Let's make the best of the life we've got and not worry about the what ifs, alright?"
"The whole thing makes me feel numb," he said, grimacing. "...How can you even look at me after--?"
Baizil grabbed him by the face and kissed him. "Because I know now that if push came to shove, you'll always do the right thing for the people you care about."
That she'd cast aside her immortality... that she was mortal once again...
It was a comforting thought, to know that in this reality, he was on her side.
"Those uses? They're not us," she said. "They were complete strangers to eachother who got caught up in a bad situation. We are the only Uses that matter to the here and now. You hear me, Tritoh?"
He nodded. "I hear you, Soleli."
Baizil pulled away, and smiled. "Alright then. Now let's got comfort the kids, alright?"
She had it good, in this world. Probably the best she ever deserved. She'd make sure the alt-twins had their life good too.
Barzum Soleli knew she had it good.
Her twin had died. She'd been left alone.
...And now she knew there were other versions of herself out there in the multiverse that had suffered the same damned fate.
...But Barzum Soleli had gotten HER Sister BACK. Baizil smiled at her and the kids before taking them in arm and explaining that it was just one potential nightmare that would never happen now.
Alternia was long gone- a pile of rocks floating around in space if not already compressed into a blackhole after being exploded.
Barzum Soleli had it good.
Far, far, far too good.
She hugged her sister, and the twins, and she didn't let them go for a good while longer.
She couldn't find it in her heart to blame that young, so so very young alternate Xefros.
They'd all gone through a vastly different trial by fire and come out the other side alive in this reality they called home.
...And that was the only thing that mattered for now.
"Sometimes," Joey Claire said, sipping at a beer as she and her Moirail gazed out into the forest off of the back porch of her hive. "I think back to the other mes out there, and I wonder what they go through."
Xefros sipped at his own beer- neither of them ever really seriously drunk alcohol at all due to the lives they'd led, but today was enough of a headache to warrant a single beer each.
"Yeah?" he asked, wondering where his Moirail was going with this.
"And then things like today happen, and I see what could have been, how badly things could have gone if we'd met in some other way. Some different way..." Joey frowned. "And I look at my other self in this case and I feel nothing but pity. Alternate selves, even. What a cruel way to be introduced to Alternia's nightmares."
"Crashing a spaceship into the desert is pretty nightmarish," Xefros said, "but it's got just enough fantasy to it to keep you suspended--" They both stopped, looked at each other, and chuckled at the unintentional pun.
"Yeah..." Joey took a shakey breath. "Fighting to the death on a train bridge over a pit of spikes is... a lot more real than it has any right being." She took a long swig of beer, and held the bottle into the air. "To the other us's innocence lost, may it one day be recovered."
Xefros raised his own bottle in the air in agreement. "Aye, to their innocence lost. May it be recovered."
"Crazy as our lives were..." Joey smiled, sadly. "I wouldn't change a thing, and past me was an idiot for ever trying."
"Yeah," Xefros agreed. "On the changing things thing. I wouldn't." Joey side eyed him, and he added, "Also, past you was just tired, frustrated, and on the verge of a breakdown after seeing another you self sacrifice to a time loop. She wasn't thinking at all about what lay ahead for her. What was ahead for all of us."
"I know," Joey sighed. "I just hope that other me out there gets a chance to have that happy ending, where-ever she is..."
The camera pulled outwards- away from Diaspora- out of the Alternia Galaxy- past the Rift between galaxies, and past all the other Galaxies in the universe...
Out of the Multiverse, pulling along a whirling tunnel of energy before hurtling towards a glowing mass of bundled multiverses...
Paradox Space.
Our view pulls into one bubble of many, focusing in towards a certain frog resting within a SBURB Session long since won.
The camera darts into an eye, focusing inwards on a spiraling galaxy... then down towards a certain planet...
Alternia, with its pink moons and green interloper...
Through the clouds, through the night sky, over the mountains and towards a lake where a bridge lay broken, and a train lay half submerged in the water.
The camera pulls down onto a young human girl, lying cuddled up against her partner- a young alternian boy- as they struggled back to consciousness after having been flung off the bridge during the explosion.
...Their future was still uncertain to many, least of all themselves...
But...
A piece of debris was shoved aside near them- a young Barzum Soleli gasping for breath as she awoke, and realized that she'd survived.
She was alive.
And then she dug into the rubble, and pulled out the unconscious form of her twin brother, his mask long since missing, and used as 'proof' that he'd been killed by the human girl when prompted to by Marvus Xoloto.
In this reality... a mere vision of forewarning had caused the lot of them to freeze up, and a pointless waste of life had been adverted.
Barzum took off her mask, looked at its face, and threw it aside before kneeling in the water and washing off the paint from her face. Then, she grabbed her brother, flung him over her back, and staggered over towards Joey and Xefros.
They'd survived a shitty hand by choosing to work together this time... and with the sudden train derailment...
Barzum took a shaky breath.
They'd continue to survive together in the future, too, if they could continue to work together.