On the outside, the structure was beautiful. Tall white pillars of carved stone rose tall above the mountains, at least a few hundred feet. The majestic mountains stretched off into the distance on the descent into greece, showing beautiful forests and verdant plains. And off in the distance... the ocean just visible at the end of the foothills. On the inside, hallways lined with beautiful statues, paintings, and a handful of armed guards wearing equipment that looked like an homage to ancient greek warriors.
Progressing further would reveal a massive garden, vibrant, beautiful, and at its very heart.. a modest gazebo covering a series of chairs, with one final tree at its center. . The fine mist that sank down from the ceiling was warded away from its contents, but still fell onto the plants.
The chairs had a variety of styles; a simple platform of cushions on which its owner lay, casually eating grapes, wearing an ancient style toga. A tall, golden throne with a powerfully built man with a long, curly black beard, a golden javelin leaning against it, wearing a similar outfit.
Various other chairs lay around the circle; but only two others were filled. One stone chair, rough and durable, was split in two, clearly made for two occupants; and currently had an armored man with an eye-patch leaning back in it, a raven perched on his shoulder. And a boy who seemed no more than a teenager, at most, wearing a similar white toga, sitting in a more simple, comfortable, cushioned chair.
The seeming youth leaned forward in his chair, looking at the others. "My friends. I've been watching ongoing events, and have both terrible and wonderful news. The first is that Ragnarok has been, at worst, postponed, and possibly prevented entirely."
The remaining three all sat up abruptly. All sign of relaxation gone. The one-eyed man leaned forward. "What!? You've been telling us for centuries that the cataclysm would strike in just a few years hence, and the invasion would follow! Up until forty years ago it was always vague, and then suddenly you could pinpoint it to the day. And now... its gone? My valkyries have been gathering the fallen for this battle for so long none of them can recall a time beforehand, and then just... pfft... nothing!?"
"Precisely. I couldn't predict what it was, but I could predict that, in a few years, in march, a detonation of unprecedented power would send mile-high waves across the earth, wiping out all life near the coasts. But... we couldn't predict the cause. We assumed that, perhaps, the Jotun would be launching some secret, unstoppable weapon to begin the invasion. The moment Lightning died, however, that prediction... vanished. The only conclusion I've been able to reach is that, in a moment of madness, the titan would have momentarily accelerated to a speed greater than light, collided with a wave, and caused truly stupendous destruction. And... the Jotun would take advantage of the chaos to invade."
The men stared at each other for a moment. All of them looking thoughtful. The man with the golden javelin pulled to his feet. "Perhaps the Jotun used some form of... mental manipulation. Targeted him at a moment of weakness and drove such terror into him that he fled. Still. If it has only been delayed, how long until it occurs?"
"That is the bad news. Where before, I could pinpoint one specific future... this Eyeball character who killed Lightning? He can also see the future. From the moment he gained that power, my visions fragmented. In one of these possible futures, he kills the Titan known as Spike. In another, in a moment of madness, that Titan briefly becomes so dense that the continent collapses beneath him, and a wave of devastation destroys North America. In another, an army of machines conquer our world."
The one-eyed man nodded. "But.. Ragnarok. The invasion. Does it still occur?"
"Aside from the possible future in which the Titan goes mad and crushes a quarter of the world, devastating the rest of it and ultimately rendering the earth uninhabitable... the invasion will still happen. But instead of only those handful of humans we managed to get offworld surviving to rebuild elsewhere, their escape hidden by our struggle to ensure the Jotun die alongside us... its an invasion that will be a struggle. One that will cost millions, even billions of lives. But now? Its an invasion we can win."
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***
When Jason entered the hideout, there was a roar of cheering. Beers raised, glasses of wine; various figures, ranging from those he knew, like Butch, Emerald, Ripper, and a Clone sitting at Nicky's table, to a variety of more ordinary-looking men in suits, to monstrous metahumans with obvious deformities and capabilities, some he'd seen on the news.
As he reached the table; a seat across from Nicky had been left open for him, with the same steak he'd ordered the last time he'd been here laid out, Ripper clapped him on the back. "Great work, Eyeball. And not just at the escape."
Nicky gave a nod, smiling. Beside him, Swiftblade was... wearing a dress, rather than the blue outfit. Long, red, with white gloves down past her elbows. While she looked good in it, it just didn't seem to fit her; though everyone seemed to be wearing nice clothes at the moment; Jason's own plaid shirt, jeans, boots, and cap seemed out of place.
"When you killed a Titan, you established a reputation. Everybody knew to be concerned about you; though there was quite a bit of talk that you'd just gotten lucky. Then... we hear you got caught. That probably would've hurt your reputation... if Spike hadn't shown up on camera looking like he'd lost an eye and been fairly badly hurt. You vanish for a while... Ripper tells me you spent a few days drugged unconscious while they decided what to do with you. Annd... now you're back. The news hasn't even reported your escape yet... they're still talking about your upcoming trial."
Jason shrugged. "They might send some poor schmuck in as a stand-in."
Nicky nodded. "Yes, sometimes they do that. It isn't common, but they've charged fugitives without them ever being in the court-room. But. Right now... the heat on you is insane. Honestly, I'm considering relocating the club in case a drone or something followed you here. We need to deal with that."
Jason gave a low sigh. "Yeah. I figured. But.... the search is mostly going to be focused here in vegas. If you can give me a hand with something, I'd like to just pull up what's left and continue my original plan of moving north. If the offer to join the family still stands, I'd like to do so.... and to enlist a good plastic surgeon."
Nicky laughed, and raised his wine-glass. "I know just the guy. We'll get you settled. New face, new fingerprints, whole nine yards."
"Perfect. Once we get established up there selling Reflex, I've got a few things to work on. Stuff to kill robots, for one thing, we all know those damn russian killing machines are going to end up biting us in the ass... but I've been thinking about how to either kill Spike... or just deal with him permanently."
***
In the darkness beneath the mountains west of vegas, in an old abandoned shaft that had been a gold mine in days of old, a dark red humanoid machine slowly studied the walls; and made marks on them with a chisel at designated heights. Larger machines; treaded, with powerful digging claws mounted to their body, moved into place; starting to burrow through the rock; and after a few minutes of digging, revealing a seam of gold and silver buried within, surrounded by quartz.
As the machines slowly worked through, sorting the ore into useless debris and potentially valuable chunks, smaller robots carried buckets further into the mine; dumping them into smelting chambers, where they'd be converted into spools of metal wire.. only to be fed into the row of fabricators even further along.
Hundreds of meters from the surface, in a shaft no living eye had ever seen, another humanoid robot carried another small robotic drone, tendrils dangling from it; one of the dull red-orange metal spikes that it had used to convert Clone's bodies into Pale Ones... and added it to a rack.. beside hundreds of others that it had already completed, ready to crawl onto a new human host.
The machine... reading the scripting on its case, it felt the name 'Ascension' was appropriate; the 'Dark' added on by some hand after it was initially contained clearly inappropriate... studied its preparations with care. It knew of these humans, and their weaknesses and strengths. It would spread its production to a thousand different places, all over the world, especially those where there were few human eyes to oversee it. And when it was ready... Communism would rise again. The people would be liberated from the tyranny of fascism, whatever guise it chose to bear. Both in mother Russia, and around the world.