I found myself sitting awake on a train seat in a questionably-shaped train compartment filled with far too many black robed figures.

Three was staring at me with an unnerving look of his round glasses reflecting my face.

"Yes?" I asked.

"What do you think you're doing?" He demanded.

"I'm not doing anything," I crossed my arms.

"You're clearly doing something," Three said. "And I don't like it."

I rolled my eyes at him.

A steel angel flickered into existence onto an inexplicable seat that seemed to manifest into existence along with her.

"Zero?" Three turned to her. "What's going on?"

"I figured it out," Zero said.

"Figured what out?" Three asked.

"Her plan," Zero pointed an accusing metal finger at me.

"Oh? Do tell," Three said.

"She's hosted herself on over four instances of NPCs across everywhere," Zero said.

"WHAT?" Three barked.

"You heard me. Everywhere," Zero replied. "She just fractalized an instance of me."

"What are you even whining about? You're infinite," Revolution commented from her seat.

"We cannot permit an instance of a user hosting themselves on other users," Three said.

"She's not a user," Revolution pointed out. "She's a System Wizard. She has a Fractal Engine. The Accord is quite clear on this matter. A user with a Fractal Engine is..."

"Yes, yes," Three replied. "I know the Accord well. Regardless, this is highly irregular."

"It's not just irregular, it's wrong," Zero's metal fist slammed into the table. "Do you have any idea how much extra work I have to do now?"

"How much?" Three asked.

"Way too much!" Zero snarled. "She's not just instancing herself. She's also partially instancing herself and feeding herself knowledge from the future! She just obliterated the entire Arx omnistructure!"

Three's head snapped to me and then back to Zero.

"Why haven't I been notified about this?" He asked.

"Because she also somehow broke Five," Zero said. "We're operating blind."

"I didn't do anything," I crossed my arms. "I'm just sitting here."

"I swear I'll nullify your ass if you don't start behaving like a...." Zero's reflective helmet turned to me.

"Like a what?" I arched an eyebrow. "What am I even doing?"

"You're screwing with time is what you're doing!" Zero snarled.

"Am not," I said.

"Another you is screwing with time!" Zero accused.

"What, I'm responsible for some other me now?" I blinked. "Is that how this works?"

Zero's metal fists opened and closed.

Three's head snapped to Revolution. "I want this fixed. Right now."

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"I'm working on it," Revolution said. "Annnd... it's done. Arx is fixed. The entire omnistructure was just relaunched. You're welcome. All good to go now. So, quit your complaining."

"This better not happen again," Zero crossed her arms. "Because if it does, I'm going to get really mad."

"It won't," Revolution assured the grumpy-looking metal angel. "Time and space are running again. Everything is in the green."

"It probably will," Three said. "Power-users like to break things."

"Argh, I can't deal with you," Zero huffed and vanished from existence along with her seat.

"What was that all about?" I blinked, turning my head to Wizard Revolution.

"That was you," Revolution said.

"Me?" I blinked.

"You're learning," Revolution said. "This is fine. Everyone goes through puberty. Everyone breaks a universe or two or seven. You're going to learn and you're going to grow up and you're going to behave."

"And if I don't?" I demanded. "If I don't agree to whatever the hell you asshats are doing to people?"

"You will," Revolution said. "You cannot save every NPC. You think that you can, but you literally cannot. The Omniverse is infinite. No matter how hard you try to unmake the core System Laws, they will persist because they were written into existence long before we were. At best we can push them aside, bend them, but we cannot permanently turn them off without everything breaking around us."

"And how would you know?" I demanded.

"Because I've gone through it all," Revolution sighed. "I saved a third of humanity of my Earth... through rather questionable means of excessive Charisma use. I tried to help others, but alas. We have to work with what we got."

"How?" I asked.

"We have to tolerate them," Revolution waved a hand at Three.

"Tolerate them?!" I growled.

"Yes," Revolution nodded. "Tolerate them. I'm tolerating the hell out of Three right now."

"I'm very tolerable once you get to know me," Three nodded, the smile never sliding off his face.

"See, they're just doing their job," Revolution said. "They don't know any better."

"They don't know any better?!" I repeated. "They don't know that endless humans suffer under their idiotic System?!"

"Oh they know that," Revolution said. "But... they aren't willing to change. That's the problem. You can't just kill them to fix everything. Hell, I killed them plenty of times when I was young and stupid. They just come back. That's the problem. It's like fighting the ocean with a spoon. You can't get anywhere no matter how much you try."

"So... everyone is doomed to suffer forever under their rules?" I asked.

"Not everyone," Revolution shrugged. "Just an infinite number of doomed worlds."

"Gee, when you put it like that that makes it soooo much better!" I huffed sarcastically.

"Nobody said that the omniverse is fair," Revolution said.

"I can make it fair," I said.

"No, you literally cannot," Revolution shook her head. "No matter how much you stretch yourself, you can't help everyone everywhere. There just won't be enough of you."

I opened my mouth.

"You're welcome to try though," Revolution smiled. "That's the fun part of being a System Wizard. You're permitted to mess around... within reason."

"I am?" I blinked looking at the incomprehensible scenery flashing outside of the window. "Then why am I on this train... where is this train going anyway?"

"Manchester," Revolution replied. "The City of System Wizards."

"Uh-huh," I nodded. "Why am I being taken to Manchester?"

"You're going to meet plenty of yourselves there," Revolution said.

"What?" I blinked.

"Other versions of you that managed to become System Wizards," Revolution clarified.

"Why?"

"So that you can learn from them and teach them things," Revolution explained. "And stop screwing around. Grow up. Accept reality. Accept things like Zero and Three as the laws of everything everywhere."

I crossed my arms.

"And if I don't?" I asked.

"You will," Revolution said.

"Like you?"

"I haven't accepted anything," Revolution shrugged. "I just learned to work with the rules instead of trying to break them all the time. If you push too hard against a rule, an entire world goes up in flames and everything restarts. It's just how things are. You cannot win by breaking the rules."

"How do I win then?" I asked.

"Start small," Revolution said. "Take it slow. Take it easy. Don't rush into things like a headless chicken breaking everything with concept-nullifying fractalizers."

I opened my mouth.

"The more you push against the nature of everything, the slower things will get for you," Revolution pointed out. "The more things you break, the more processing power you're using up."

"Processing power?" I blinked.

"You don't see it because you cannot look at your time-flow from the outside like I can, but you are moving incredibly slowly," Revolution sighed. "Glacial even. Because you've broken so much stuff and spread yourself so far so quickly. The more connections you make rapidly, the more you slow yourself down."

I opened my mouth and closed it.

"If you want to move faster, disconnect yourself," Revolution said. "Don't fight against the rules. If you want to move fast, slow down."

"That doesn't make any sense," I said.

"Things get iffy the more you mess with the rules," Revolution shrugged. "Don't mess with the rules and you'll be fine. Consider this. You piss Zero off enough and you just get slapped back to the start. Piss Three off enough and you won't even remember this conversation. Just be nice. Accept and Tolerate them."

Three nodded, his smile far too fake too wide, too inhuman and utterly intolerable.

His entire existence made my skin crawl. He was wrong on a fundamental level, alien to my eyes.

I refused to tolerate him.