Belltower's in a dress shirt and slacks, sleeves rolled up to his elbows as he leans over a table, focusing on vials and checking for impurities in the deep purple substance by eye. In another two rooms in this odd, suburban house that, for some reason, has rooms with no windows made of concrete on the inside. He watches them for a second longer before sighing and lighting another cigarette.

"In the future, try to be a little quieter with your takedowns. I was gonna squeeze them for intel in the suite." He speaks, much calmer.

Katherine raises an eyebrow, "I thought squeezing was why you broke their arm." Then quickly follows it up with, "I was following an instinct, but I think… I don't think I can actually tell instinct from just like… Noise."

Jacob frowns, "I broke their arm because of a gunshot and that. Just be more careful, this isn't a disciplinary action." He takes two vials and makes his way to the rooms, forcing the captives to drink with manipulations of the jaw and throat. A second after its all done, he shuts off the lights, turns on white noise generators and shuts the doors.

"I'm glad, I've never been written up in my life, or missed a day of school. I do not actually know how I'd handle an official reprimand. My gut says lots of crying." She puts the giant hand cannon down. "I misunderstood what regenerator meant as well I think, I assumed I had to make them chunky pulp to get them to go down, like we needed to with the last one."

"They still need their brains." Belltower moves to a fridge, pulling out a TV dinner, and then a second one. A microwave starts chiming as it warms them. "You did well in the engagement though, they didn't have a chance to shift shape. They don't really start healing fast until they're huge." The microwave chirps in completion, he slides the food over to Katherine while digging into his.

"Oh thank you!" She says as she sits down to eat, "You're not going to believe it but I threw a handful of cat treats in front of them which grabbed their attention then opened fire when they looked away."

"It's…actually not as bad as some other thing I've heard about. Knew a Belltower like…twice my age. She threw a dress at a target, dunno why, but it apparently distracted them for so long she assembled a whole gun and shot them with it." He chuckles, "She was this short persian chick, looked thirty something at ninety something."

"I wonder what kind of Belltower I'm going to be," Katherine muses as she takes out her phone, writing down numbers. Logging the bullets expended, then going through all her guns again. Swearing angrily that her Sig had jammed again without her touching it. "This thing's haunted." She said looking at the gun like a rotting piece of fruit.

"Hopefully you won't be." Jacob shakes his head, "Like I said, NWO isn't a career path for you. Too many people you care about."

"Oh do only NWO get to be Directors of things?" She asked looking to him, "I'll just be equally cool at something else. They'll write books about me."

"Directors of field Constructs usually, yeah. You can get a cushy job in a Comptroller position, run a continent or something." He's nearly done with the meal.

"Management seems boring, I just want really cool titles and badges. Certificates, and maybe bric-a-brac." She's already hoovered down her meal and is gnawing on a protein bar. Taking a small packet of protein supplement out of her self-sewn pockets.

"I'd suggest the Shock Corp." Belltower chuckles, "But you'd go crazy with how often they're away from home. Union hammer, they get tanks and walkers and all sorts of past the bleeding edge hardware that can take out a building."

"I could ride a gundam." She squeaks with glee as she moves to a cupboard in the kitchen grabbing the glass, mixing her protein supplement into protein shake with water. "I kind of really like this though, just going out and quietly murking things before I go back home to my loving family."

Belltower shrugs, "Everyone's got their passions. Used to have more fun with it. But it's all kinda…boring now. Not even counting the loops I think I'm in quadruple digit bodies." He casually admits, brewing coffee in a machine.

"I feel like I'm good at this, but I have no memories of killing people. My record doesn't have any discharges on file. As far as I know looking into the LAPD I'm a homicide detective who never solved a case, or shot anyone." She says quietly, more to herself, "Thinking body counts I mean. That just doesn't sit right, but I'm at… Three. Seven, forgot the police on the last loop. Eight."

"If we're counting loops, that number gets real stupid. I killed the same hundred people a bunch of times." He sips at the fresh black coffee."

"Then yeah, three. I think. That doesn't seem right though." She finishes her protein shake, before finally deciding to just drink water, having an appetite again was exhausting and boring.

"If you want, I can recommend an exploratory psychosurgery, see if there's recoverable memories. Your medical covers that I think." He considers, scarring on his forearms sticking out from the bruises of getting knocked into a wall.

She looks at them for just a second, but has always made great pains not to stare at things no matter how interesting. "I'll talk to Sophia about it, but I think I'm at a point where if someone gets anywhere near my brain pan, they'll be removed from theirs."

"I'd be the one doing it." He chuckles, "Psychology is my wheelhouse. It's not actual surgery, just chemical exposure, some hypnotism and a lot of applied psych." Considering how to phrase it, "Think of it as a very scientific dream journey."

"Eesh." Katherine said, thinking of her occasional visions. "I do not like having visions or dreams. They're all… A waste of time. I have only so much before this whole thing goes to shit. Like of course, god I hope it doesn't, but I don't want to waste waking hours…. I guess they're sleeping hours. Still." She looks at him, "I'm always worried I'm going to say or do something that's going to make people around me snap like a bear trap. You probably offered that psychosurgery thing to be nice, but all I can think about is how consenting to a mind-thing could lead to an easier scramble."

"Huh, you think like I do." Jacob says mostly to himself. "Then I'll just see about getting you a bigger dosage of these." He points to his cigarettes, "You've been ripping through them."

She laughs, "No I haven't I…" She reaches into her pocket, and realizes that she was one cigarillo off her count. Meaning she was losing track of how many she was smoking. Then she returns to her spreadsheet, trying to figure out how that happened, when she saw it written down clear as day. She pulled it from inside her wallet slightly sticking out of both ends, with a deep sigh of relief. Everything was fine, she hadn't lost count. She had placed it aside in case the Director needed it. "Maybe you're right."

The Director pulls a pack out from a pocket, fresh and unopened, tossing it Katherine's way. "I keep a sixty day supply." His voice is still very light for how terse he is, sitting against a kitchen counter.

"How did you know I was saving one for you?" She said suddenly as the pack landed in front of her. "I swear to god are you psychic?" She breathes a deep sigh of relief as she took one. The pack was much better than homemade.

"No, failed out of that course." He chuckles dryly, "Hyper-perceptive though, you've got enough leavings on your fingers that I'd guess you've smoked eight in the last six hours. Last one you dragged a little too deep on, so there's barely visible reddening from the heat on your thumb and forefinger."

She looks at him, shocked, "You noticed all that?" Taking a drag with a smile, watching a spider almost fade away from the top of her palm.

"Half my anxiety is trying to see everything. The other half is succeeding." Belltower jokes dryly, "It's useful, like I said, Sherlock Holmes shit. I ID'd those two by blood specks on Zayn's shirt that matched our timeline."

"That's so sick." Katherine said looking at him, "Is it something you trained, or like a procedural thing?"

"Bit of both. They think it's just unconscious procedures from the anxiety, like how you were tilting odds without thinking about it. I want to know everything, so, I do." He throws a cigarette butt into a trashcan, "It's got its disadvantages, hyper-perception means if I stop smoking, I'm gonna be whining into a pillow from the bruises."

"Mood," Katherine agreed, "Not having phantom noises and weird shadows constantly is vastly preferable. Though I hope I don't get as good at controlling my surroundings as you are at seeing things. Or else I'll never know if anyone is doing things because they want too, or because I subtly tilted twenty coin flips in my favor thirty years ago."

"You aren't." Belltower assures Katherine, "You're still a drunk with a baseball bat. I don't think you could reach forward a year, much less twenty." Its not said with heat, just repeating what he's stated before. "I think the longest I ever shifted the odds was a year, four months and three days. And then I got my throat slit for it."

"We were in that loop for… Hundreds of years." Katherine said quietly, "Is that not shifting… Hundreds of years?"

"No, it's the same six hours, over and over. A question of muscle, not precision at that scale." He answers, looking for something in either the room or Katherine, its unsure past the mirrorshades. "The backlash already hit, it's never something that saves up, it's a rebound immediately as it happens."

"But… nothing happened. Does it sometimes just hurt… Random people?! People…" Then she winces, it hitting her. "It's across the entire timeline. It'll snap out at someone you know, even if you don't know them yet. Fuck." She very quickly pulls out a second cigarette, this one nearly inhaled entirely in one drag.

"Thank me later." He dryly laughs, taking another sip of coffee. Looking into the black of the drink to distract himself.

"Christ." She says, then finally, "Fuck." She has been swearing much more lately than normal. "So… I get trapped in a time loop create a perfect scenario, and the backlash is, you're tortured for a hundred and fifty years, but it only happens because the result of that torture is us meeting and me respecting you."

"You'll find the universe isn't cold or uncaring. It's a cruel bastard." He's staring out the window at the stars, "Full of vicious hate at the apes living in it."

She inhales the last of the cigarette, "That's… I'm not going to sleep easy for a very long time about that. Christ."

"You want sleeping pills? Ours carve out dreams too, make me clock out in minutes." He offers, shrugging, "Otherwise I stay up for five days at a time."

"What I have now works well enough," She says after a moment. "I think I might try to get a lot more precise with time stuff though, I hadn't realized how fucked what I was screwing with was. I've been just throwing it around for jokes and fun."

"You want to order Doordash or something? I know you've got nutrition goals." Belltower switches to a topic less serious, "And I'm craving chocolate, thinking about it." He tilts his head, smirking as he says it.

She looks at him, and tries not to think too much on paradoxes, the purposeful, the coincidental, or any of it. "Yeah, you ever had chocolate dipped thai chiles?"

"The only words that made sense there were chocolate and dipped." He laughs as Katherine gets her phone out.

Finally she just has to say the thought. "You're not me teaching me from the future right? I don't like… Go through some heavy life choices and then come back to create a loop where I teach myself to be better in some way?"

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

Belltower stares, "No. I'm not you from the future." He's very dry.

"Because I don't know why I'd cut three inches, and twenty pounds. I think you might actually have a lower deadcarry weight than I do." She says looking at him, "Unless maybe… I figure some shit out in a hundred years?" Now studying his face, slowly raising her phone trying to nonchalantly snap a photo.

He's still staring, "I'm not you from the future."

"But… Could you tell me if you were?" Katherine takes her glasses off now squinting at the man. Trying to figure the probabilities out it was… Improbable, but was it impossible.

"This is the oddest question I've ever received." Belltower admits, "I was born in Kentucky for christs sake."

"I mean… You can say you're born anywhere… But I guess I have no reason to doubt you. If you're lying it'd be for my benefit. Unless this is a revenge scheme because I turn into a monster later in life." Still studying him, "Did you know I'm less paranoid now than before the loop?"

"...Really." He's now staring very concerned at Katherine, "Because this is…impressive."

She nods, "Yeah, here… This one is from when I was twenty five. It's starred for Remember, things seem real at the time." Looking back to him, "It's a grounding thing. If you believe something absurd, and read something else that was absurd it helps you go 'oh maybe I'm not thinking logically.'" She explains.

"Everyone in the agency has been replaced to perform an extended experiment on me. Everything they say is slightly off. If I participate in the birthday party this evening, they will kidnap me to be experimented on. They know that my gene line is the only thing possible for saving humanity. I pray I do not have to kill for the sake of humanity." She finishes looking up at him, "June Fifth, Twenty seventeen."

"You know, when I have those sorts of thoughts, they put me in a padded room for a week." Belltower continues staring.

She looks back at her phone… "I wrote agency. The LAPD isn't an agency. Neither would the homicide division be one." She takes another drag on her cigarette, before just putting her phone away for now, not sure when she lit the new one. "Did you have those thoughts when you were me, or when you were you?"

He sips at his coffee. "There's a crucial difference between us that I think torpedoes this whole plan." Belltower's voice is even, and somewhat amused.

"What's that?" Katherine asked, staring at him… Or maybe the he she will be?

He rolls his eyes, almost laughing, "I like men, agent."

"Oh thank god." She said, finally putting the thoughts to bed, "Ok, then there's just no way."

"Besides the fact, of course, that I look nothing like you, have no similar features at all physically and mentally I am wholly different. But no, it's because I'm bi that you think we're not the same." He sighs, deeply.

"Yeah, mostly. I think I'd do pretty much all that other stuff you mentioned to help and or fuck with me. It's good to know yourself, Director Belltower." Katherine says with overwhelming relief.

He sips at his coffee, letting the situation roll off him, "You are unbelievably odd." Belltower grumbles, "And I need to drop some octaves soon, or I'm going to lose it."

"I'm keeping this look I think, if only because Giant twenty two year old paired with a fourty year old twunklet makes me giggle." Katherine says as the cigarette finally truly starts to wick away the last of the anxiety.

"A what?" Belltower demands answers.

Six hours later, Belltower is reconsidering his relationship with humanity as a whole, still staring at a complex array that empirically proves his…twunklet status. "What the fuck does this even mean, you've said words, and they're supposed to have meaning, but they don't."

"Oh bullshit." Katherine says frustrated. "Xena, the warrior princess. That's a Herbo. Luke Skywalker, that's a himbim You know this. You grew up with these. Then you've got like your blonde stereotypes, those are bimbos, and Buzz Lightyear, that's a himbo. That's the first and second dimension of the array pretty to hunk, male to female. It's three dimensional. This exists perpendicular to a bear to twink profile. You just add -let to any male presenting person under five eleven."

"I'm average height." He complains, pointing at the images of short men.

"Yes, mid is an insult now." She explains calmly, trying to keep the frustration out of her voice. The conversation having gone on for hours now. "average is actually worse than being just ugly or pretty. Ugly is at least engaging."

"I-" He sputter, "What is today?" Jacob hisses out, sighing after, "I feel like I have no idea how people work anymore."

"Honestly… Very poorly." Katherine says with a sad nod. "Do you still want me to answer the question about the Robin Hood disney cartoon, that's a… That's a very long talk that goes some places. I don't know if we can get into m-preg today."

"Putting a pin in that." Belltower gets up and turns off the white noise generators with a press of a key on a laptop. "We've got two targets to squeeze for intel. Who do you want? Zayn or Carla?"

"I feel like Zayn's going to sexually harass you, but she weirds me out in a way where I get very gun twitchy. I think it's just a protective instinct though." She very quickly adds, "Because you're my co-worker and teach me shit, not because… Nevermind I'll just take Zayn."

Belltower nods, moving into the room with Carla, turning the light on and receiving a scream in response before the door shuts.

"Eesh." Katherine said as he walked in, before turning the door to Zayn's room, receiving an equally blood curdling shriek, "Jesus christ calm down." She says annoyed, "You're fine, you're fine it's been six hours."

The woman is cuffed to a table, eyes bloodshot, shivering in the light with scratch marks on every nearby surface, still having nails by dint of regeneration alone.

"I brought you some water!" Katherine said cheerily, "How you holding up champ?"

"W-what the fuck d-did you do t-to me, B-binder!" Zayn grows, shaking like a leaf while looking at the water.

She very gently raises the cup to the cuffed woman's lips, "I injected you with a medicine that makes time go slower. You experienced three hundred and sixty hours in only six! That's about… Well, twelve days I think?" She stops before she can sip touching her chin, "Oh wait no fifteen," Then looking at her "Oh shit sorry." This time letting her drink.

The cup is gone in barely a few seconds, greedily drained by someone parched. Then Zayn has a realization, "T-tell me that w-water wasn't dosed." The grain of screaming is heavy in her voice, two weeks of isolation and torment having cracked any fight left in her.

"No, I'd just jab you with a needle. I don't need to dose you. The hard part's over, we can just talk now." Katherine's being her normally warm and cheerful self. "I just need you to confirm your network of contacts. That's all!"

"I've got req-" Zayn coughs, sputtering blood onto the desk from a raw throat. "Shit." She groans.

"I've got a gallon jug, do you want more water?" Katherine says sweetly, conveying concern.

"No, I've g-got requests." She shivers, "H-how do I make it o-out of this? Alive." Zayn asks, concerned about her life, though a frown can't be seen past the pained twist in her face from whatever torments she faced alone here.

"As far as I know, we don't kill unless strictly necessary. Stuff like this makes killing very unnecessary. If no-one in your network is alive to chase you, and you don't go obliterating cubicles full of people anymore, then… I don't see why I'd have to hunt you really." Katherine nodded, "Everyone else is going to be dead in fourty-eight hours anyways, we just want confirmation that this won't happen again."

The shapeshifter stiffens at that thought, "I…don't think I can give you anything." It's a very scared statement, she's nervous even admitting it.

"Okay, because you don't have it, or because… Look, I'm reasonable. Tell me why, I really need something to tell my boss so he doesn't come back in with the needle." She leans forward appreciatively.

"They're…" Zayn looks around the room, tattoo's flickering in the light, a yellow pupil dilating like a wild animal's. "Family. I can't just…"

"Oh. Would they come to get you?" Katherine said, the smile gentle, "That's a confirmation in itself I suppose."

"C-can I get something to e-eat?" She asks quietly, not able to make eye contact.

"Of course, but really quick, is there anything reflective that I need to be worried about? I'm not wearing my glasses, my eyes don't really reflect light, and everything in here is matte. Is there any reason I'd need to be concerned?"

There's a click of something metallic in her mouth as her jaw stiffens, barely noticeable. She doesn't comment on it, but it sounds a lot like a tongue piercing.

"Ok," Katherine says, taking out the giant hand cannon, seemingly out of hammer space. "I'm not going to shoot you, they're not going to leap out of a mirror staring into this. I'd like it, as a sign of good faith, for you to take the piercing out."

Zayn stares at the gun with a wide-eyed expression. "O-okay, I g-got it." Her uncuffed hand reaches up to her mouth as she slips a ball piercing out of her tongue, reflective metal shiny in the light. It clacks against the metal table.

Very quickly, Katherine puts the barrel of the cannon over it, before pulling it away sliding it into a piece of cloth. "Do you still want something to eat, or… Did that," Katherine said gesturing to the covered piercing, "Solve the problem."

"I-I'd still like to e-eat, ma'am." Zayn looks at the table, shivering.

"Wonderful," Katherine says, standing up and opening a tiny folded up tablecloth in cheap plastic. "Let me set the plate then, we got pizza. Do you like cheese, pepperoni, or ultimate. I like Ultimate, but it's like, how many pieces of pizza with olives can you eat in a day?"

"Wh-whatever, just, hungry." The shapeshifter stiffens as she says that, a hunger pang rattling her. "Meat's b-best."

"No worries," Katherine said, getting up leaving the room to grab an entire pizza box, and a gallon of water that was set aside already. Turning back into the room with her dominant hand still on the cannon. She opens the door with her foot and a violent kick, cannon at the ready as she does so.

Zayn flinches at the kick, clenching her jaw and staring up at Katherine.

"Sorry, hands are full." Katherine said apologetically, "And I'm paranoid about the mirror thing." She places the box of pizza, the gallon of water, and a small container of mix-in lemonade, and a glass, "I didn't know whether you'd be thirsty thirsty, or just like need water but sweets better thirsty. The Pizza's for you as well! Whole box, delivered a few minutes ago. That's the cool thing about time magic everything just kind of shows up when it should." Then she moves over, and gently uncuffs her other hand walking away slowly but confidently back to her seat.

Zayn grabs a pizza slice, her teeth a row of sharpened fangs, taking a bite, and then another, apparently starving as she moves through half the pizza in minutes, stopping out of too much food moreso than a lack of hunger. She breathes out, "I s-still feel like you're gonna kill me."

"So the thing is, I do not need you alive." Katherine said very bluntly. "I don't want to spend two hours cleaning this room, or three hours having you dig a hole in the desert. I don't think you're ever going to put yourself in a situation where this will happen to you again! Maybe I have more faith in you than you do." Another big smile, "I'm just looking for confirmation so that when we clean house I don't have to come back without my temperance."

She flinches at the mention of 'clean house', getting quiet and staring at the table again, a flicker of a tear in one yellow eye forming.

Katherine casually inspects her finger nails, waiting quietly. She wants to point out the entire swathes of people that were brutally torn apart, or her boss that was going to be victimized, but knew that anger had a time and place. So she did something worse, she smiled, and she waited.

"O-okay. They'll c-come for Carla, not me." Zayn says quietly under the straining light of the concrete room, "P-probably an hour or two till they c-catch our scents, f-follow through the P-penumbra." She looks at where her piercing once was.

"Ok, I'm going to confirm with my boss, and I intend to let you go. If you show up to die with them that is very much your choice." She says smiling, as she walks over, and knocks on the other door with Director Belltower still in investigation.

Through the door can be heard crying and a very soft, supportive voice, barely audible as to what its saying, but the tone alone says much. The knocks don't receive a response for a few minutes until Katherine hears a quiet "Come in."

She opens, the door quizzically, "Should we talk in here Director?"

Belltower is across the table from an openly weeping shapeshifter, holding a cup of water to her while she recovers, nodding. "We've just been talking. Their social situation's interesting." He comments. "They're in a cult. Sort of."

"They're also going to be here in an hour." Katherine said, "For Carla apparently, following the scent through the Penumbra."

"Hmm, okay." He stands up, pulling a sidearm and pointing it at Carla, considering his decision for just a second.

"I implied I might let the other one go, but I didn't really make any promises about this one."

A gunshot rings out as Carla slightly rises to pay attention at Katherine's words. She falls forwards, bullet through and through her head, embedded in the wall behind. "I was gonna kill both of them. After they crack, all they've got waiting is a revenge killing." Belltower holsters his weapon, "Their society isn't one for informants."

"I offered to let her die fighting with her people, it means it's her choice." Katherine said with a shrug, "But it's business, I'm not very attached either way. I'm assuming you'll do the same to me once the loop breaks."

"You're paranoia's acting up again." Belltower says, moving outside the interrogation room.

Katherine lights a smoke, "Probably," Before stepping into the other interrogation room, and blowing Zayn's head off with the hand cannon.

"This is where we take off, gotta hit their main location, set up an ambush with the ATF guys." Jacob pulls his suit jacket on, starting to button it shut. "You can bring the Barret."

"Hell yeah." She says, skipping out of the blood soaked room with a slice of pizza in her mouth. Then picking up a blood stained cup, "Do you want any lemonade?"

"Copper and iron aren't my favourite flavours, no." Belltower smirks.

She looks at him, "It doesn't remind you of kissing?" Then she realized something, "Only vampires mouths taste like that?" It was a question, "I've had three partners, and the first one got hit by a bus before we did much."

"That's…huh." He blinks, "Yeah, normally you don't get a taste of blood. If they're good, you'll usually taste gum." He's putting together a gun from a briefcase.

"I wonder if my relationship with blood and intimacy has desensitized me to some things." She said, taking a sip out of the glass, before going, "Blech, bone shard." Pulling a sliver off her tongue with a slight gag. Then getting her things together to go as well.

"You know." He stands up with the assembled submachine-gun, "Sometimes you do things, or say things, usually both, that make me a little worried for your long term mental health." A magazine pops in, silvery shells inside.

"I'll invite you to board game night then, you the girls, and I can get matching T-shirts that read 'Trainwreck Watchers Anonymous' or something." She laughs, sadly, "It's why I'm pretty sure I don't get a happy ending. I'm going to have fun now, and worry about long term mental health when it becomes a problem."

Stepping out the door, Belltower quips, "Welcome to the Union, that's standard practice." Before opening up the driver's side of the sedan and starting the engine.