Another time, another place, a city burns. A shark, swimming through the air like it was water, had been terrorizing the people for hours. At one point, an enormous ape had climbed city hall with it in hand, swinging it at the planes scrambled to shoot it down. Stretching back from the outskirts into the mesas, a trail of glass shines in the sun, evidence of the melting heat projected from the maw of the beast. Dozens of aircraft had burst into flames and crashed down to earth, few of their pilots able to escape with their lives, and fewer of the civilians anywhere near where the beams of disintegrating energy were directed.
While initially a simple terrifying event to occur in one city, after a radio station on the scene transmitted an emergency broadcast across every frequency it had access to, a vast swath of land was informed of the fact an enormous tailed ape had challenged the military atop a building with hitherto unknown weaponry. An eyewitness brought in by the station in question likened the event to ‘A bolt of God’s divine wrath, spat through the mouth of a demon’, and led to fierce debate over whether this was a sign that God had objected to the policies of the current administration in a most vigorous manner.
Amidst several riots, ignorant pedagogy throughout the media, and silence from the government, one man decided to follow the trail of glass to its source. Spurring his horse to speeds unimaginable to the ordinary citydweller, who would regard the thirty five mile per hour maximum of the Model T as dangerously reckless and impossible to achieve except in ideal conditions, he rides across the sparse forest, slagged dirt etching a route around Savannah.
Coming up to the end of the trail, the man slides off his horse, patting its side gently before giving it a slap. The animal gallops away from the area as the man kneels down and touches the oldest bit of glass trail he could find.
“Fulgurite. Looks like the CSIA is back in town. Hunter Army Air Force Base. This place is brand new, a perfect staging ground for those snake faced tyrants to hatch another of their schemes.”
Finishing his monologue to himself, the man considers whether or not to get another apprentice, so that his speeches wouldn't go to waste. Shaking his head, he denies the urge. Not another one.
Briefly considering using stealth, this was a United States air base after all, at least on paper, before discarding the notion at both cowardly and unlikely to have any actual effect, the man pulls a six shooter from his pants holster and walks in. Immediately he is assaulted by the smell of ozone and charred flesh, parts of people left behind after a ray of disintegrating energy passed over them. The man hears voices coming from a room up ahead, and he presses himself up against the wall, revolver held up toward the sky as he listens around a doorway.
“-But with the paradox generated from transporting to a temporal position before the message was sent, any action taken from that point on would be rejected from the timeline as an unnatural interference. As long as no one knows what’s happening at any given point, they can act as they please without having to expend massive amounts of energy for the universe to accept the changes. With how static our timeline was, is, and probably will be again, the knowledge of how events were meant to go caused as sort of temporal stagnation, to my understanding, thanks to how many were able to look back into the past and comprehend that there was a chain of events leading up to their moment in time. Leaving that note of the coordinates is the most that would be possible if I were to keep from polluting the consciousness of whatever reinforcement happened to read the report and investigate where they point. And so, we come to a point after events have taken place, while leaving enough room for whatever will have happened without our intervention to take place without us learning anything about it.”
That voice… It couldn’t be. The man rounds the corner, pushing his gun ahead of him and assuming a shooting stance. In the next room, a man wearing a black suit jacket with fabric that shone in the dim light generated from the bulb hanging from the ceiling stood facing away from the investigator, speaking toward what looked like a smaller version of the creature that had terrorized the city so recently in a bandolier. It was dragging one of the body remnants to a small pile of similarly charred corpses in the middle of the room, but froze when it caught sight of the man with a gun pointing into the room.
“Confederate clone, evil alternate reality clone, doppelganger, or prank? I've got my gun trained on you, so don't try anything funny, especially if you’re that last one.”
Turning slowly, the man in the suit jacket faces the doorway. The clothes are different, as is the face, skin color, and general method of presentation, but the voice is the same. It was his own.
“William Slaughter. Such a surprise, seeing you here. In my recollection, this base had never been important. Evil alternate future self, by the by.”
Knowing better than to allow a monologue to begin, Slaughter shoots his double in the chest, only for the suit jacket to briefly glow white at the point of impact. The alternate clicks his tongue.
“I won't comment on rudeness, an abstract concept used only to lord power over those not inducted into the system of behaviors, but you should know better than to think that would work. It wouldn't work on you, after all, and I am you. Thirty One, take injection six.”
Nodding toward the suited doppleganger, the creature being used for manual labor gestures and one of the objects strapped around it flies off its mount. The syringe plunges itself into the back of the creature’s neck, fluid injecting directly into the spine below. Anticlimactically, the creature falls over backward. Slaughter doesn’t relax, however. He glances down toward his wrist, where his hidden weapon lay concealed under his shirt. It was getting difficult to use it now that the name it was giving him had been spreading throughout the channels of Lemuria, but even a future version of himself had a chance of not knowing a knife was hidden up their own sleeve, particularly when it was just an alternate version. He was only going to have one shot at using it though, and from what he had just witnessed, this ‘him’ had diverged quite a bit.
Noticing the expression on his face, the suited man laughs condescendingly.
“Oh no, I’m not all you’re estimating me to be. This particular wonder of biological engineering is in fact a result of a collaborative effort between myself and several others. The axiom of control still doesn’t strike my fancy, though you may wish to dabble in automata more quickly than I did. I’m sure you’ve been around to start to realize how utterly unreliable people are.”
“Making minions, you think of something new every day, don’t ya.”
“Facetious though you may be, the concept is sound. There’s a reason the Confederate States Intelligence Agency constantly used it against us. When they are programmed for obedience, you don’t get the situations like the one with Hardy.”
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Slaughter shoots his doppleganger again.
“Sore subject still, I see. That narrows down the timeline a bit. You’ll get used to the betrayals soon enough.”
“Draw already. You introduced yourself as an evil copy of me, so you’re not exactly here to plant flowers and free mind control victims.”
“Oh, how astute. You’re almost intelligent. Such a shame your story ends here. Get up Thirty One.”
From the ground where it had fallen, the constructed thing stands with a smooth motion at the edge of human possibility. A gun floats from one of four holsters strapped to its sides, two on each, and into its right hand. On the other side, another follows suit into its left, and the creature’s tail snakes its way into one of the two remaining holsters, dexterously sliding around the grip and onto the trigger. The final weapon simply floats up to point toward Slaughter, now at the receiving end of four separate guns. Speaking for the first Slaughter had heard, the creature directs a question toward his double that makes his heart sink.
“Master Grimfang, wouldn’t killing him generate one of the paradoxes you mentioned?”
“That is a most interesting edge case! Indeed, if this were in fact a past variation of myself, to even make contact with the my past self could have catastrophic consequences. Not to mention the headaches just from being in the same time, changing my personal timeline can destroy my mind, ironically murder any I attempt to save, and in the best case scenario leave me trapped in a reality with no memory of a ‘me’, where the differences become maddening and impossible to keep abreast of. However, with the shattering of the computational model of the universe into a function multiverse, that allows for non-maniacal actual alternate selves. I could warn this self of all the terrible things about to happen, and have a chance of affecting the future because of it. That leads to the question of whether my information would even be accurate for an alternate reality-”
Another bullet, well spent for cutting off a monologue. If anyone knew how he could drone on once he got started, it was Slaughter himself. Grimfang, the moniker attributed to him by the Lemurians he fought, after his usual drink and his secret weapon. If the new version of himself had a similar identifier, it meant he knew not to get close already. Slaughter usually tried to draw attention to the fact he had a gun, and was a fair shot with it, to bait out whatever trick the other person had brought to the fray. Usually the one to play their hand first would be at a disadvantage, but with himself he couldn't rely on the element of surprise, whereas the same couldn't be said for working against him.
“You're running out of bullets, I'm afraid. Such a shame I never advanced through the axiom of Katastrophi. So sad that you will be unable to do anything effective before your inevitable death, and my rule of your world. I'll start with raising the temperature. Five degrees of increase adds four percent to the suicide rate, and seventeen percent to crime, so I will simply advance the ecological clock a few years. You haven't found out yet, but it's not even people like us that are in the process of killing all life on the planet! Alternate planets like this one, sure, but in non-bardo, non-time-splinter, non alternate reality Earth, extinction events are common thanks the common man. It's even more depressing than you ever thought.”
As the Grimfang in a suit begins to laugh, Slaughter considers his options. He had already fired half of what this gun could hold, which left three bullets to escape. Fighting down a wave of self loathing about not being smart enough to have prepared told useful in this scenario by drowning it with another type of self loathing, he focuses instead on the accomplice, still standing there waiting on confirmation about paradox prevention. That was a potential avenue.
“Messing with your past self is among the stupidest things you can do with time travel, other than the same with a part self that is also time traveling. I'd expect that kind of myself, especially after living long enough, but you seem like the type of minion that doesn't want to kill their boss, even indirectly.”
Not even wavering in its aim, the creature scoffs at the assertion.
“I am able to make inductions based on incomplete data. Master Grimfang hasn't finished his monologues yet, so his audience is not shot. Simple enough rationale.”
Nodding at the statement, Slaughter considers for a moment, then books it for the entrance of the base. Either he got away or… He was shot in the back four times. His future self had been right about at least one thing though. Regular bullets being shot from regular gun wouldn't be enough to take him down.
Still hurt though.
Flat out running toward his horse, Slaughter breaks right as soon as he passes the doorway to remove line of sight and fire. Raising his toes as he steps, he drags his spurs along the ground, building up a charge in the mechanisms he had built inside the boots. The moment he passes the outside entrance to the base, he jumps up and stomps one foot on the ground, jarring loose a latch in the sole of his shoe and releasing the pnuematic hammer within to launch himself into the air. Bullets pass beneath him, traveling the paths he would have taken without his wondrous invention, left, right, center, and down. Glad he had strung his horse a fair distance away, Slaughter inspects the route around him for potential cover, and finds none. Trees in the distance, flat ground, and little else. Thinking quickly, he decides to temporarily cannibalize his hidden surprise.
Using his utmost focus he pulls the venom sack from the rattlesnake head hidden under his sleeve, taking care to not accidentally set off the spring trap and have it bite him. As he falls to the ground, Slaughter reaches down and puts the snakemeat into his boot. Specifically, into the valve that compresses air into the mechanisms. Distracted by his attempt at cleverness, the man fails to stick the landing and smashes into the ground at the speed of gravity. Fortunately, he manages to limit the damage to his body, and keeps from setting off his boot.
In the doorway, the minion steps out into the light, glaring at the grass ahead of it for daring to exist. As though it was a tangible malevolent force, the grass nearest the creature begins to wilt and brown, dying from what appeared to be hate alone. Slaughter decided he would rather not be next, and yells out at the base.
“Too bad for you, I’ve got a snake in my boot!”
It wasn’t the best line, but as he smacks the shoe into the ground, the pressurized blast of air vaporizes the condensed venom into a massive cloud of poisonous mist, blocking the man from view of the entrance. It wouldn’t last long, and wasn’t exactly dangerous, but the unknown was the greatest advantage Slaughter had going for him. Cursing himself for having tied his horse to a post, the man charges to the wooden outcropping gun drawn. Bullets follow him, but none hit his steed, and that was the important part. Fanning the hammer, Slaughter launches his remaining three shots into the rope, severing it from the hitching post, and throws himself onto the saddle.
Halfway over the horse, head on one side legs on the other, he grabs the reigns with his left hand and kicks with his left foot while pulling right, hoping the horse would understand it was time to run away from the bullets. Thankfully, the beast of burden had already been fairly spooked from the loud noises and was ready to bolt even before Slaughter had fired three chambers right next to it. The last he sees of the base as he rides away is the creature firing wildly after him after having walked through the poison cloud, the three physically held weapons going in almost random directions, likely due to the effects of the venom, while the single floating gun repeatedly strikes near the fleeing duo of horse and man.
This wasn’t going to be something he could handle on his own. Slaughter was going to have to do something he hated. He was going to have to find people for a collaborative effort, and convince them that he was dangerous enough that it was worth dealing with each other long enough to kill him. If there was one thing he knew, it was that everything that could go wrong over time would, and that since a him who managed to survive all of that existed, they were dangerous.
The Peerage was going to be getting a new bounty, and it was going to be for William ‘Grimfang’ Slaughter.