xx49.07.28 | 14:15 | Monday

Hmm. Hmmmmm. Hmmmmmmmm.

No, I'm not writing that. I don't ... I'm just not writing that. I'm not even THINKING that.

Maybe something interesting happened this morning. Maybe. Apparently Daniel and C2 stayed up late going through recent news—by 'recent' I mean the past two years, the timeframe in which Segregation events have been happening. They were looking for anything unusual, any evidence of supervillain schemes.

They might have found something.

It was C2 who first saw it, apparently she's good at finding patterns. Or the absence of patterns? Anyway, when I went in, in the morning, they were arguing. Well, Daniel was trying to argue, C2's pretty much impossible to argue with.

"—no, I just ... you've got a point, there might be something here, but you're jumping to this huge conclusion—"

"I disagree. If you examine my reasoning and the evidence I have based it on I think you will understand what I'm saying, and understand also that the leap I am making is not so large. Please look at these specific articles again. Please note the dates and locations. Please—"

"Curls, thank goodness—could you talk some sense into this friend of yours? She's got this bizarre theory that the supervillains are stealing georods."

I just stared at them—this was pretty early and I was kind of bleary.

"Charlotte," said C2. "Good morning. It's possible that—"

"Oh no, don't go spreading your bizarre theory meme to my sister, she'll pick it up and run with it until she's brought the whole WORLD down—Curls, for your own safety just turn around and walk out, right now."

"Walk out or talk sense into C2?"

Like I said, I was bleary.

"Charlotte, please look at these articles..."

So about an hour later I was starting to understand what C2 was saying. There DO seem to be a lot of georod thefts over the past two years—except very few of them were specifically FOR georods. Usually other things were stolen, or there was a fire or other accident, and georods were counted among the lost or stolen items. Compared to the years previous there's a rise of more than 500%, which does seem significant—and that's just those losses and thefts that are on record.

"It's just mad," Daniel was saying. "If they wanted georods they'd go to one of the big production plants—or the caches in Dzodestra, there are thousands of georods just sitting there, RIPE for the taking, with all the fighting going on I bet nobody would even notice."

"Perhaps that is exactly what has happened," C2 said, quietly. "If nobody noticed then the thefts would not be reported. If they were clever about it, and we have no reason to believe that they would not be, then they would not take all of the georods in the caches, only some. It's likely the disappearances would not even be noticed."

"Uh-huh, I see, so now the absence of evidence is being counted as evidence, yep, that makes SO much sense. Okay then, so why haven't they hit Powerstone? There's a huge production plant there—"

"If you could please try to remember my secondary theory—"

"Not this again, this is even madder than your georod one—get this, Curls, C2 thinks that the bad guys are based in Powerstone City."

I stared at C2. "Huh? Why?"

"Because very little has happened there over the past two years," C2 said. "Crime remains constant; high in the poor areas and low in the rich areas. There have been several fires and there was a series of explosions in a block of apartment buildings six months ago. Aside from these events, nothing of particular significance has happened."

"Again, you'll note, no actual evidence," said Daniel. "Just 'nothing bad has happened'."

"If you compare Powerstone with similar cities, the fact that very little of significance has happened is in itself significant. Crime is rising all over the world, especially violent crime. In particular, and I assume this is at least partly due to Segregation, disappearances are increasing—except in Powerstone City."

"Look," said Daniel, "let's just ... let's just go back to the basics with this, all right? Can we do that?"

"Of course," said C2. "Basics are very important."

"First of all, why do they want georods? They're like the worst power source in the world, they're basically obsolete, if they need power then why not use the new invert fusion matrix tech? IFM cores are more efficient, cleaner, cheaper, easier to produce—easier to steal, even, georods are too unstable to teleport, you'd have to move them the old fashioned way."

If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

"I don't know why they want georods. But perhaps there is something special about them. One characteristic seems obvious; georods are the only power source in the world to possess an aura."

"So what? That doesn't mean anything—"

"It may not seem significant to us, but it is a point of difference that should be acknowledged."

Daniel breathed out heavily. He was getting annoyed.

To be honest, I was kind of enjoying this.

"Fine, point of difference acknowledged," he said. "And just to show I'm being fair, I'll add this; georods have some military functionality. They can be weaponised."

"I'd like to add one more point," said C2. "If the criminals behind the georod thefts are scientifically promoted then this could, perhaps, have something to do with their motivations. There is a proven link between auras and scientific promotion, specifically that you must have an aura to be scientifically promoted. To clarify, every scientifically promoted individual in the world has an aura, although not every individual with an aura is scientifically promoted. Perhaps the supervillains have discovered a way to use georods to enhance their own promotions, an interaction of auras artificial-to-natural."

"...okay, maybe you're ... maybe you could have a point there." I didn't like the way Daniel looked at C2, then. "I didn't think of that. I mean, it's really unlikely, nobody's ever managed to create anything that's been able to enhance powers to any significant degree. General consensus is that messing with auras is a real bad idea. But. If they did figure something out then, yeah, okay, maybe they'd need an auraed energy source to power it. But forget that for a moment—let's say it is the supervillains who've been stealing georods. And let's say they're using them to make weapons. That'd fit in with all these disappearances, all this brainwashing, mood control tech—what if they're building a secret army?"

"To attack who?" C2 asked. I answered:

"Everyone. Right?"

Daniel nodded. He looked serious.

"Even conservative estimates puts the number of Segregated at well over twenty thousand. Add in private mercenaries and others they've recruited, and who knows how big an armed force they could be amassing."

"I understand what you mean when you say 'everyone'," said C2. "But even with those numbers it seems unrealistic—"

"Yeah?" said Daniel. "You think? You looked at what's going on in the world lately? It's not like NoZo ever had a huge standing army, most of their 'soldiers' are 'peacekeeping' in Dzodestra and those back home are just glorified security guards. Free Paradise too, their guys are just bug killers, all their training and weaponry is designed for fighting giant ants, not other soldiers. Amiana have their mobile suit units, but they're busy war-profiteering in Dzodestra. What's left of Mist is hardly worth mentioning, New Bala don't even give their guys guns, and Horne is barely a country. As for the Dzodestrans, they're too busy fighting their mortal enemies the Dzodestrans to bother with anything else. And if these supervillains are developing weapons ... hell, who knows what they're cooking up, mobile battle platforms, power armour, bio-engineered battle plants—"

"You REALLY don't have to sound so, so GLEEFUL about it—"

"Look, all I'm saying is, it wouldn't take much to conquer the world right now, not with the state it's in. With the right tech, the right people, and most importantly the right plan, I could see it being feasible with, oh, you could probably get away with a starting army of say fifty thousand soldiers—if, as I said, they were properly equipped and trained. That's taking into account their mind control and brainwashing tech. Every population centre they conquer will give them more potential troops and support. The other thing is, who knows how many supers they've got on their side? What kind of powers they have?"

"All right, stop talking," I said. "You're just getting me down, now."

"It's uncomfortable to think about these things," said C2. "But necessary. It seems strange that your parents and the other scientifically promoted—"

"C2, you can really just call them 'supers'."

"It seems strange that they haven't uncovered anything during their investigations."

"Huh," I said. "That's not strange at all. 'Taking it slow', 'being cautious', they're scared of doing anything in case it's the wrong thing. They're frightened of revealing themselves to the public, they think people couldn't handle us, well once those supervillains start riding into cities on the backs of giant mutant plant monsters THEN we'll see what they think of us!"

"Calm down, Curls, you don't want to blow out your Opal again."

"I don't even have LUS turned on! And I WON'T calm down, not when all of this is happening—Daniel, you're agreeing with C2 now, right? About the georods and everything?"

"Not agreeing. But I concede that possibly—"

"Okay, so, isn't that a lead? Isn't that something we could follow up? Can we, like, 'mark' places with georods, production plants and caches, can we ... can we do something to maybe catch them?"

"Hey, we're not the ones with twenty thousand brainwashed minions at our disposal. We've got you, me, C2, Mum and Dad, a handful of their old contacts and the dozen or so supers they're still friendly with—and most of them aren't interested in anything except keeping their heads down and living their 'normal' lives."

"Perhaps we could petition independent organisations for support?" C2 said. "Or perhaps a government, or—"

"Don't be naive," Daniel said. "For a start, the only government that's remotely super-friendly is Free Paradise's, and even they 'tolerate' rather than 'accept'. But forget that anyway, because we can't trust any organisation, we have no idea what kind of influence these supervillains wield, anyone we approached for help could be working with them. If there's one thing I KNOW about this whole crappy situation, it's this: we're on our own."

I went off and had a bit of an angry sulk after that. Now I'm writing all of this out, to try to get it out of my system and try to find ANYTHING that might lead me to ANYTHING. It's so unfair. Why can't any of the supers see that we NEED to be fighting this? I know there aren't many of us left but ... but there have to be NEW supers, right? Like C2?

Except the supervillains are grabbing them, too. Veronica Flux and The Head and ... and everyone like them. New Powers, that's what Dad calls them. Not 2nd Gens like Daniel and me, but people who spontaneously promoted after The Event. It's really rare but it's definitely possible ... but not ALL of them have been brainwashed or recruited or whatever by the supervillains, right?

Right?