“I’ll do…” Victor wanted to agree right then and there. But then he thought back to Lillie.

“When do you plan on going to Los Angeles?” Victor asked the President.

“After we’re done with the East Coast. That’s where most of our troubles lie, Victor,” Jeffords explained.

“I’ve come from Oakland, sir, and it needs your help just as much.”

“I can agree to that, son, but that doesn’t change the facts. Most of my men are here. If I extend them into the West Coast, I’ll be paying every day to keep it under my control,” Jeffords told him.

“I’ll have to speak to my friends, then, Mr. President. I can’t very well make a decision without them,” Victor said.

Jeffords looked disappointed, but he shrugged.

“Ah, you’ll come around. Come now, let’s see if I can’t change your mind with a tour,” Jeffords said.

****

The base was too big to walk around. Instead, the President had them teleported around. Portals opened up for them to take them from edge to edge, beginning with the giant wall that served as their blockade.

Victor noted that when the portal opened, it had the same look about it as the one that had shown up in the final battle. He must’ve been there that day. I just didn’t get to see him.

“The blockade’s the first thing that we made. It’s always expanding, making room for our citizens as we gather more of them,” Jeffords explained.

Thick enough for their entire group to stand on, high enough that Victor could look out over the camp and had a railing to protect them from falling over.

As Jeffords continued guiding their group, soldiers walked up to him to salute and give information. Every few moments he’d have to stop to issue an order, though a good number of them were tackled by his assistant instead.

“The soldiers are good men. Trained and given the nastiest Seeds we could find out there for a killer,” Jeffords explained.

He gestured to one of the soldiers, who walked over and saluted.

“At ease, soldier. Show them a little of what you can do,” Jeffords asked.

The soldier nodded and held his hand out over the wall. A burst of flame twice as tall as a man leapt from his hands, then winked out.

Jeffords stood in wait for their response, though he didn’t get any.

“It’s impressive,” Amadeus finally said.

“But not much to someone of your calibre, I understand. I’d like to see what you can do, blondie,” Jeffords asked of him.

“Me?”

“Shoot, I’m not colorblind, am I?” Jeffords asked with a chuckle.

Amadeus walked up reluctantly to the edge of the wall. He held out his hands in the same way the soldier had, but instead of fire, clouds formed in the distance. They circled around an area and Amadeus’s hands began to shake.

He took a deep breath, and the hair on his skin rose. Then lightning fell in the middle of the plains to blind their whole group. Victor and Lillie both raised a hand against the harsh rays, but Jeffords just smiled in response.

“Strong for your age, aren’t you?” he said.

“Oh it’s nothing,” Amadeus replied bashfully.

“We could use that, son,” He patted him on the shoulder, before continuing the tour.

He took the three of them around the other parts of the little city as well. New Columbia he called it, since DC had been taken over by the monsters.

“We’ve got a good resistance going there. You should contact them,” Victor told him.

“As a matter of fact, that was exactly what my men were going to do. I’m glad to hear it was in good hands,” Jeffords said.

They took another portal down to the field, where people walked among them. Many watched in awe of the man and some even cheered as the president walked past.

An open tent was at the end of their walk, where people were walking to grab their meals. Jeffords nodded to the workers there and ordered them to continue. Some kids walked up and stared at the old man, and he played around with a few while Victor watched.

“No one pays here?”

“Can’t justify an economy under these conditions. No way to maintain it or ensure a monopoly doesn’t start up. So, I deal with the wolves that try to get on top of the common man, and beat ‘em back down so it’s easier for the rest of us,” Jeffords explained.

Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

After the President was done, they moved onto the next part of their tour. It was a section of the camps far away from each other, fitted with computer equipment that still worked.

“And these are our top researchers. The Fall’s done plenty to rile up scientific interest, and these folk are here to capitalize it.”

There were people in lab coats running all around the place. Some went into tents with Seeds in their hands while others ran around with papers held under theirs. There was a section of the grounds where a scientist was recording soldiers and their Seeds, all of whom had fire abilities.

President Jeffords led them to one of the larger tents filled with scientists, who all greeted him with respectful looks and straight posture. All except a single figure at the back of the tent, who was hunched over a desk and observing a pair of Seeds.

“Our top man on the case is one Professor Cooper,” Jeffords introduced him sardonically.

The man at the back simply waved a hand in the air. He didn’t even bother looking up from his work.

“The least you could do is look up, Cooper,” Jeffords told him.

“Doesn’t matter, Jeff. Working here,” the Professor.

“Jeff? They’re on a first name basis?” Amadeus whispered.

“Guess so?” Victor replied.

“Greet the kids or I’ll cut your funding,” Jeffords said.

The professor stopped and looked up finally. He had bad posture and wiry brown hair over a thin frame. A lab coat adorned his pant and shirt combo, and he had bags under his eyes from lack of sleep.

“Can you even? It’s not as if you still pay me,” Professor Cooper said as he stretched his arms.

“True, but I could still have you thrown out of the camp. Now play nice with the guests,” Jeffords explained.

The Professor passed a glare to Jeffords but then turned to meet Victor and his group. He took them in a moment and nodded to himself.

“You’re Wielders, I assume,” Cooper asked.

“Strong ones too,” Jeffords added from a seat beside the table. That seemed to get the professor’s attention, and he paused to examine them from head to toe, without any regards for personal boundaries.

“What kinds of concepts are they? Or are they Material-Types?” Cooper asked them.

“What?” Victor asked as the man took a measure of his arm and looked at his nails.

“Metal? That is interesting.”

“I’ll leave you with the good professor for now. Mei Li and I have some work to do before we get back to the tour, so if you’ll excuse me,” Jeffords explained.

They were fully in the hands of the professor after that point, and he made them do a group of tests that seemed esoteric. They used their Seeds on moving targets, displayed their most base abilities and how much they could do, and then how fine their control could get over them.

“Among the three of you, I’d rank Amadeus as the physically strongest,” Cooper explained.

That pricked at Victor’s pride, and he pulled out his dual pistols for display.

“With these, I can cause just as much damage as Am can.”

“Do those come from your Seed?” Cooper asked.

“No?”

“Then they don’t count.”

Victor grumbled, and Amadeus tried cheering him up. But despite that, it just made Victor more annoyed with him.

“Defensively, Lillie is your best bet,” Cooper added after seeing the size and thickness of her light panes. He had some soldiers blast it with their Seeds, and she withstood the assault easily.

“I can pop blades along my hands for the same thing,” Victor replied.

“Yes, but you’re competing against the wrong people here, Victor,” Cooper told him. “Tell me the names of your Seeds again.”

“Bladebody Edge, Whisperer’s Tongue and Ant-to-Man Tesseract,” Victor said. He left out his Timewalker’s Origin, despite the fact he’d already revealed its synergies to the professor.

“Each of those Seeds is for a completely different purpose. You’re a generalist. The guns are just a nice bonus,” Cooper said. “Why did you pick them out, though?” he asked.

“The Seeds?”

“Those very same. You had much choice back at Washington, I assume. Why not take something more suited to your powers?” Cooper asked.

“… I wanted to see what Synergies would arise,” Victor replied. Though he didn’t mention which Seed specifically he hoped to get Synergies with.

“Well, you succeeded. Some of those abilities you’ve mentioned don’t fit into anything I’ve seen in my time. Are you sure you don’t have an extra Seed you forgot to mention?”

Oh yeah! Silly me, so I have this power to go back in ti-

“Nope,” Victor said in actuality.

“Shame. I’ll have to study you more later. I think we’re done here, then,” Cooper stated. He’d had his fill of fun, it seemed.

“Wait, what about that thing you mentioned earlier? The Conceptual or Material type?” Victor asked. Maybe with it, he could get a hint to his own Seeds origins.

“Oh, that. That’s just a classification system we came up with. Material types have abilities to manipulate something in the real world, while Conceptual types are based around concepts. Pretty self-explanatory.”

“Do they all come from the same place?” Victor asked.

“Of course. You find them beyond the Gates, integrate them into your being and then use the abilities. And you only get to have a few or more, depending on the person.”

“All Seeds work like that?” Victor asked. “None of them could force their way into your body, or be related to two concepts at the same time?”

Cooper raised an eyebrow.

“I’ve only ever seen one case of it not being. A Seed that let the user manipulate technology and create portals. We have a special name for them.”

“What are they?”

“Rule-breakers. I thought the one we found was just an outlier for no reason. But if you’ve found a second, that means there’s bound to be a third, and a pattern along with it…” Professor Cooper said. He moved closer to Victor, seeing him in an entirely new light.

It was unnerving to the young Timewalker. And it didn’t help that Cooper smelt like he hadn’t showered in a few days.

“Well, have you?” he asked.

“No?” Victor replied. He didn’t break even for a moment while the Professor had his gaze on him.

“What’s happening here?” Jeffords’ voice spoke as he walked into the fray. A portal closed behind him and he clasped his hands behind his back once more.

Victor watched as Professor Cooper shrunk away from him. He looked diminished in the President’s presence, and he had to wonder why.

“Just checking the kids. Very interesting Seeds, Jeff,” Cooper said. He stuffed his hands into his lab coat’s pockets and walked away from them.

“Good to see you agree. Help them get more use out of them if you could,” Jeffords told the man.

Cooper nodded lazily and quickly shuffled back into his tent for his research. Victor watched him go, and looked inside to his Timewalker’s Origin.

The little mobius strip made of clock hands seemed so strange. Rule-breaker was a fitting term for the thing. It did defy the usual laws. It didn’t integrate in the same way as other Seeds, nor did it show the same kinds of descriptions on its abilities.

“The good professor will be here whenever you need him. Let’s move onto the rest of the tour shall we?” Jeffords asked him. Victor nodded, and a portal opened up to take them there.