Sagittarius sighed softly as she waited to get an update on her plan from earlier. This had been a bit of a long wait. A longer wait than usual it would appear. It was starting to get a little taxing now. This whole procedure just reeked so much that Sag was getting physically uncomfortable having to shift through some of the data here. It was really not setup to be anything good for anyone but the former Libra.
Sag didn't know why she was pretending like all of this information was somehow a surprise to her. This hadn't exactly been something she wasn't expecting. Given how Libra had generally operated and seeing just this one case about Idris. How many others had been through this?
Sag couldn't think too hard on that right now. If she did, she was going to loose her focus on this one goal here. She'd been trying so hard to get this all approved and through everything that if she didn't stick on it, and unravel the one loose end she'd get nowhere. It was the way to take down dynasties like this after all. Pull at the one thread until it came loose, let it then unravel in all of its glory in one big messy pile.
That way this could be used to launch a full investigation with a dedicated team, maybe getting the current Libra involved. Sag smirked. Who was she kidding? The current Libra would have to get involved and make sure to cooperate in order to cover their own ass. Or they were going to get sunk alongside the old Libra.
It was pretty clear how the operations ran aboard that right now. The more of the old Libra's horrors got discovered, all of that neglect to allow the prisons to reach such a bad state, this Libra quietly tried to sweep it under the rug, doing the bare minimum to offer out some justice. It was not the dumbest choice. A big scandal could make the whole ship look bad. This way justice was handled, bad people got their sneaky due. The one problem was that the innocent people who needed to be given out the justice weren't getting it.
Sag could excuse most of the rest. It was hard to run a tight ship sometimes, and if people found out neglect had started to get that bad at the top of the leader and every single horror story of prison saw light of day, it would go really badly. Sag would never allow that of course, horror stories needed to see the light of day. It was the only way to prevent future horror, but Sag could at least understand it.
However, there was just no way to even begin to justify good, innocent people having to suffer for the sake of a goal like that. Well truth be told, Sag would tell you there was no goal that could ever justify that good innocent people would suffer. It was with that in mind that Sag turned back to the book she'd been looking over as she waited. It was about an oddly similar situation. Sag often wondered if this really was fiction. A leader in a powerful position, about to have innocent souls suffer because of an oversight, except in this one, they all took responsibility.
Sag needed something like it to restore faith in the fact that this was how it was done. There was a middle ground to be achieved where everyone could walk off head held high, where the people understood and above all the innocents got to run free. She turned to the next chapter, intent on keeping at this until good news came.
Susan Danvers was confused. Or lost. Or…well she didn’t really know at the moment. Things were very difficult to process at the moment and she had no idea where she was or what was going on. Things had all blurred into a confusing mess from this one singular point in time and she didn’t know what to make of anything. It felt like it should be a nightmare, with some of images plaguing here there just wasn’t another explanation and yet everything just seemed to also feel ever so real, a little too real.
It had begun when she’d been rather rudely jolted awake from her nap.
They’d been going along in the old Giadar, just chatting away for a bit about this and that and she’d slowly managed to drift off to sleep. Mom and Dad were talking with each other up front about something or the other, probably something boring and important like how they were going to pay for the trip or how they’d make up the days at work. She’d then mentally chastised herself for thinking it was boring, knowing that he eighteenth birthday wasn’t too far away and those were things she needed to also be thinking about.
After than she’d turned to her sister to see that Daph and Jess were having one of their whispered conversations with each other. They were simultaneously the cutest moments that she’d ever witnessed and also the most annoying moments that that she’d ever witnessed. She always had no idea whether she should be letting out a proper “Aww” or just groaning in frustration. She loved to her see her sister so happy and Jess too. The girl was someone who’d been through a few things Susan couldn’t even begin to imagine so to see how relaxed she was now was heartwarming. On the other side of the coin, it now meant that Susan was left without anyone to talk to. Interrupting either of the two conversations was completely out of the question. In the end Susan had let out a quiet huff to herself before settling down in her seat.
She’d wriggled about a bit trying to find the most comfortable spot in the seat. The transport was kept in pretty good condition, but the seats being a couple of decades all was all too clear and most of the padding had flattened out entirely too much for it to provide here with any sort of proper comfort. After a lot of covert uncomfortable shifting in which she had to make sure not to jolt it too much and disturb her sister and her girlfriend, Susan had found a position that she was confident about maintaining for the duration of a nap.
With that settled, it hadn’t been long before she’d drifted off to sleep. Then there’d be a sudden jolt and Susan had woken up to feel the car tilting rapidly in one direction.
At first she’d not known what to make of it. Usually when they hit a speed bump somewhere she’d wake up and proceed to rib her dad about forgetting about it and falling asleep on the job. However, when they hit a speed bump it was just a quick jolt upwards, here she could feel the car swerving to one side and then somehow it was suddenly turned in yet another direction.
There was a burning sound from somewhere and an unusual smell was coming in through the open window. Susan was starting to suspect that maybe somehow despite all the Giadar’s very effective safety measures, something had failed and they were in an accident.
Then they spun around rather sharply and Susan could suddenly see the side of the road. She’d immediately turned to the side, seeing if she could make out anything from the side window which was now looking out to the middle of the road. All that had been visible was a slight plume of smoke. There was also a flash of orange and then suddenly she felt pain like she’d never felt before.
It was a sharp piercing feeling that burned in a truly horrible way and Susan’s mind had temporarily gone blank with the pain. She had no idea what had happened and she’d closed her eyes and squeezed them, willing the horrible pain to go away. There was also the feeling something warm and wet trickling down her shirt and she quickly tried to open her eyes to find out where that sensation was coming except.
That’s when she realized she couldn’t see anything anymore. Her eyes were definitely open but she was seeing some kind of dark void of empty blackness, as if the world was a computer screen that had suddenly been turned off. She could feel adrenaline start to pump through her veins as her chest seemed to seize up with panic. Whatever had happened, it was getting even worse.
It was by this point that she’d tried to dismiss this series of horrible things as just a nightmare and she’d nearly succeeded until the pain had shone through her panic once again. She didn’t know a lot of things about how dreams or nightmares worked, but what she did know was that you weren’t supposed to be able to feel pain in them, at least that’s what she assumed was the reason for pinching yourself to check if you were dreaming.
She’d tried to calm herself, repeating herself that things would be okay. She tried to listen into what was happening around her and she suddenly realized that she couldn’t hear anything. She’d heard the sound of the transport falling out of hover, the sound of something hitting something and odd squishy noise that she hadn’t been able to identify but now she realized that there was absolutely no sound, not the gentle patter of the Giadar’s engines running in the background, not the constant sound of the ocean they were driving next to or the sounds of nighttime birds chirping to each other. Something was definitely very wrong.
Then she’d felt a sudden jolt, like someone was trying to pull her away for something. The only thing was, this didn’t feel like a tug by Daph or Jess or her parents. This felt like someone had tied some sort of rope around her and was pulling her along. Strangely enough, she could feel herself move, and she realized she suddenly didn’t feel her own body weight. It was the same feeling she got every time she went down a particularly steep hill on a rollercoaster, except this feeling of weightlessness did not go away after a few seconds. It was like she was being dragged away somewhere as if she was a balloon being pulled by some invisible child. Her eyesight and hearing were both still completely unresponsive and that was how she currently found herself.
She was floating along something that felt like an unnaturally cold current of air, being pulled by some force that she couldn’t see unable to decide if this was a nightmare or if the pressure she felt around her waist from whatever was pulling her meant she wasn’t in a dream.
After a few moments of trying to pick through the myriad of horrors that hid assaulted her one by one, Susan finally just let go and let her mind wander. She didn’t want to think anymore if her thoughts just weren’t going to make sense. She’d wait, the pain that had been oh so powerful had slowly faded to a very dull throb by now and it was almost gone. She didn’t know if she was safe but there didn’t seem to immediate danger. Susan was going to wait this out and see what happened. Right now she was alone, blind and deaf to the world. There really wasn’t anything she could do besides panic and she’d already done plenty of that.
Her world continued to remain as the rope tied around her and the cold swirling around her for quite some time. It felt like years to her but for all she knew it had taken only minutes. All she knew was that after some amount of time she suddenly got a new sensation and it was the strangest one yet.
There was a sudden spike in the temperature around her and it became hot, going from uncomfortably cold until she found herself now feeling uncomfortably warm. It was a very unusual change in temperature and trying to process that almost made her miss what came nest. Almost.
There was a sudden blast of concentrated coldness coming from what appeared to just be a single tiny spot in front of her. It slowly started to grow, until it eventually encompassed her entire being and the uncomfortable cold had taken over once again. Then she felt a squeezing sensation powerful enough that she almost felt like she was going to stop breathing…except, she realized in yet another moment of panic, she wasn’t breathing anymore. Somehow she wasn’t breathing.
She instinctively put a hand over her heart as she started to feel like toothpaste that was being eked out of a nearly empty tube. The comforting beat of her heart was missing. She didn’t know what to feel anymore. If that was to be believed she had to be…dead. Except that couldn’t be true could it? Maybe she was just having a really, really bad dream? Had she fallen into a coma or one of those vegetative states people talked about that she’d never truly understood? More thoughts raced through her as she tried to make sense of everything she was discovering around her body. Right now, none of this was making any sort of real sense.
[Narrator]
The demon neared his destination, the three brand new souls in tow. Once they’d gotten into the air, all he’d had to do was run his soul scanner over the three souls, sending every little required detail into the second largest database across all of reality. There’s been some kind of alert triggered on his scanner as it was sent off which meant that something was not quite right about this death. Considering how young the three were, the demon wasn’t surprised. He shrugged it off and continued his journey. It wasn’t like he had any part to play in processing such alerts, that was upto his fellow demons who worked as operatives in The Undead Router.
Soon, he was far enough away from the confines of Earth that he quickly dipped out of the eight dimension that he was currently gently gliding through and willed the portal to The Afterlife pocket dimension to open. It didn’t take too much longer, the opening sequence had become very optimized over the years and it was much easier to slip through than when he’d been in his early one thousands several millennia ago. He easily slipped inside, sliding smoothly into reality’s largest pocket dimension.
Once inside, he felt the familiar squeezing sensation of the area adjusting to the newcomers. Soon the sensation ended and the demon maneuvered his payload in the direction of the underworld’s entry point. The entirely of the afterlife was covered by a massive expanse of magic and energy that was commonly referred to as The Ether. It served as both a barrier for those were not deceased and wished to barge their way into a place they didn’t belong and also as a collection and destruction point for all the waste from The Underworld itself. It was a rather scary point of spacetime to be caught up in and the demon took care to skirt high about it as he journeyed towards the one opening in the beast.
It was a magnificent sight, in the same way that the eye of a hurricane about to destroy an entire city is a magnificent sight. The Ether itself was an entire black ring of almost pure darkness, according to legend the darkness had been created and provided by the Prince of Darkness himself. In the center of this nothingness shone the one singular opening. It wasn’t necessarily a bright opening by itself, the underworld itself being rather dark, but there was an array of lighting runes that circled the opening, caught up in the ever swirling vortex of The Ether and that created a brilliant spinning disc of light that shone in the darkness like a beacon of hope.
The demon gently glided inside through this spinning disc, taking care to ensure that the souls he was transporting did not accidentally get caught on either the ether or the edge of the disc. Managing three strings at once wasn’t a particularly easy task but he had plenty of years of practice and soon he was descending down onto arguable the most magnificent view you could ever get of the underworld here at its highest point.
Below him there stood a magnificent castle, shining brightly with light, and so massive that it was visible on the planetoid that it was built on even from so far away. Bordering it was the brightest point within the underworld, The Rethe which functioned as a sort of interdimensional sieve sorting souls so that they arrived at the point they were meant to go. Beyond the Rethe, there were rings of planetoids gently orbiting around the central planetoid which was the largest of them all. These rings continued out about as far as the eye could make out and it made for a wonderful sight especially with each planet shining with its own mix of light.
The demon soon descended down towards the Rethe, gently guiding the three souls down towards it as he let the strings around them gently unravel. They began their descent where the all-consuming force of the Rethe would soon draw them in like reality’s most powerful vacuum as it would then proceed to sort them and spit them out towards the direction they were meant to travel in. A job well done, the demon took a turn, heading towards his own home to take a break before he would be handed his new assignment.
[Susan]
Susan was still trying to wrap her head around the possibility that she might be dead when suddenly the persistent pressure which has so far been her grounding point for reality vanished, and she was left with the feeling of floating freely across a giant expanse which she had no real sense of.
Then she felt another tug. This one was different to everything she felt so far. It was almost a mix of the tugging sensation and the squeezing sensation like she was about to get flushed down the world’s largest toilet. Suddenly her eyes came to life and her ears seemed to open up.
A blinding white light, too bright to look at filled every edge of her vision while an odd constant ring seemed to fill her ears. The sudden attack on her sense completely overwhelmed after the hours of having no sensory input whatsoever besides the gentle tug that she’d been feeling all this time.
With that she barely even noticed that somehow she’d now come to a stop as the sucking sensation stopped. Whatever had pulled her in, it had finished the job and she was now stranded in who knows where, an impossibly bright light shining across her field of view while a ringing noise completely drowned out all of her thoughts. It became a little too much for and suddenly she was seeing black as she felt herself lose consciousness.
Susan woke up once more at some point to find herself still trapped in the eternal light and noise from before. She tried to move her hands to cover her eyes and ears but found that she somehow couldn’t really move them. She felt herself tell the hands to move but physically she couldn’t tell if they moved or not. With her eyes completely unable to see her own self, she had no sense of where her limbs were anymore. A fresh wave of terror washed over her.
Susan found herself waking up all over again. It seemed that she had blacked out once again with the realization of her being unable to really move her limbs. She had no idea how long she might’ve been out or what was going on where, but the one thing she did know that now the unbearable cold she’d felt for quite some time now had been replaced with what seemed almost like a soothing summer breeze. The whiteness and the noise were still very much there but the breeze helped calm her down a bit.
She managed to free her head of her panic enough to try and manage a few coherent thoughts once more as she tried to analyze the situation that she currently found herself in. It was hard to really imagine what this place could be, and despite all the outlandish answers that her mind managed to generate, she kept coming right back to one specific answer. The fact that she could be dead.
It made an unfortunate amount of sense. She hadn’t been able to see or hear for a long time until she arrived at whatever place this was and now that she could finally sort of see it was a blinding white light. She’d read enough books to figure out that quite often that’s how people tended to describe death. It wasn’t like she’d spent too much time imagining how it might feel like herself, but if she ever had to describe what death felt like, a blinding white light was definitely something she would include.
Her lack of a heart rate and breathing added to that. She was no expert on biology but she’d read through enough books with random science trivia to know that the human brain could not survive for longer than a minute without oxygen. Considering that she had not felt the pressure that came from the devices that were supposed to deal with that issue during major accidents, she could safely assume that if she hadn’t been breathing all this time, she probably never would again.
It was a startling moment of realization as her mind managed to somewhat fit the pieces of the puzzle together and she realized that it all did in fact made sense. The weird motion that she’d felt of the car, the smell of burning asphalt and that horrifying, horrifying pain she’d felt right before the weird sensations had begun.
Her memory of those moments were blurry and marred by her sleepiness but now that her brain had gotten ample time to process it while she’d been unconscious it was spitting out images that all seemed to add up to the fact that their car had gotten into a crash somehow and whatever had happened during that had somehow injured her enough to kill her. That meant that the feeling of something warm running down her side had been… She nearly gagged then realized that she physically couldn’t. It made for an very odd feeling in her throat and she fought down the thoughts that flooded her mind.
The last thing she needed was to try and vomit due to imagined images of her own dead body, which just so happened to be a sentence that she’d never ever imagined she would be thinking, not even in her wildest dreams. Susan let out a sigh, except once again it lead to a weird feeling of her facial muscles moving to complete the action but her lungs not actually having any air in them to expel.
As the was trying to wrap her head around all of that another thought struck her like a sledgehammer. If she was dead…did that mean, Daph, Jess, her parents? What could have possibly happened to them? Were they here with here, wherever here happened to be? Had they died? Had they survived? A bucket load of thoughts dumped themselves into her brain.
For the third time in she genuinely had no idea how long, she was panicking and on the verge of blacking out as she tried to process the implications of what could’ve happened to her family. Her first thought was that they’d be here somewhere with her so she wouldn’t be alone. Then she proceeded to immediately feel guilty about wishing her family was dead and with her. They had their whole lives ahead of them, especially Daph and Jess and she couldn’t be selfish enough to wish them to join her in whatever afterlife this was.
The conflicting emotions tore at her like a pack of hyenas attacking an abandoned carcass as she tried to stamp down the stubborn part of her mind that was terrified of spending potentially what could be the rest of eternity all alone and stuck in whatever this eternal blinding white was while imaging all sorts of possibilities for what her family could be going through at the moment.
As much as she wished for them to have all survived, she couldn’t imagine what it might be like for them to find themselves at the end of whatever horrifying car accident they’d gotten into only to find that she was dead. If her current mess of emotions was anything to judge by they were probably not much better and the thought then immediately made her feel even worse about herself. For the third time she succumbed to the barrage of feelings that were rapidly battering at her mind trying to wear her down.
Jason Hardy went rather still as he pressed the button to deactivate the call he’d just been on. He had no doubt that the DIC on the other side was telling the truth, there was no faking the heartrate and the tone of voice there, not to him which meant this was not one of the many millions of prank calls of this nature that he’d heard of, this was the real deal. A code zero-nine-nine had finally happened despite all the evidence that suggested it never could.
He had to admit that he couldn’t exactly be surprised at this point. He’d seen far less likely things happen a few too many times over the past few septillenia of his life. The mere fact that the probability of this occurring wasn’t zero was proof enough. It had been oh so long since this reality had begun after all, with enough years the probability of enough deaths happening for one of these to happen should’ve been something her properly prepared for except the problem was that he definitely hadn’t done so. He could already feel that whatever this was, it was going to lead to some trouble and he didn’t have to glance at the future to confirm it. Situations like this didn’t just happen for the sake of it, they happened as a precursor to things that were much worse.
Putting his thoughts aside, Jason tapped in the required code to the tiny dial on the center of his chest. The green robe that he was currently wearing transformed into his official attire, a sensible pair of long black trousers with a buttoned up shirt and tie also in black. The whole lord of the dead aesthetic that Jennifer had at this point forced him to wear wasn’t something he was particularly fond but he couldn’t argue with the simple fact that it got results. If he was going to be the lord of the dead he did in fact have to look the part and that had come in handy more than once. He donned his long black cape. It was the only thing he had managed to deviate on Jennifer’s wardrobe plan on as he’d managed to get streaks of lightning in his favorite lime green zigzagging all across it.
He then tapped the tiny headset that sat above his ear and it expanded into a pair of green tinted dark glasses before he made sure to double check that his rather short hair was combed neatly. He then realized that he had no idea where he needed to be going. Well I’m already forgetting things by this point. Oh dear, this is going to be a hot mess and I’m definitely going to have to get Harry and Jen involved. This is going to be a circus before the day is out.
Jason quickly pulled up the name of the DIC that had called him from his memory and proceeded to then track his info through his wrist mounted computer and found the section that the DIC was supposed to be overseeing. Instantly a clear picture of the interior of that space was dredged up from the depth of his mind and he focused on it as he deactivated the computer and focused on his destination.
Fixing the route in his head, Jason proceeded to quickly step his way out through the third dimension, entering twenty seventh dimensional space. He only had to take one step to his left before he was stepping outside at his destination milliseconds later. He checked the time. He’d promised to be there in fifteen second and he’d ended up taking 16.4. Things were already falling apart.
He tried for a gentle smile at the two demons that were now staring at his as if they were afraid of being incinerated on the spot for daring to exist. His smile didn’t seem to have reassured them all that much as he was quite sure the one that was most like the operator who’d spotted the death let out a barely audible squeak.
He tried again. “Um, good morning. I take it you are DIC Cataln and Operator…” Jason glanced for a second at the nametag. “…Jack.”
Both of them nodded a little too hard.
“So, if you kindly escort me to the station and show the problem,” said Jason, keeping his voice as calm as he possible could. There was no real point telling the demons to calm down, most of the ones who didn’t work with him on a daily basis were terrified of him and that was something he’d come to expect, especially from the slightly younger ones.
Once again there was a spot of slightly overenthusiastic nodding before the operator Jack, gestured towards a station on the left side of the wall. Jason could immediately see the warning on it and nodded, following behind the two who were walking as if they were about to be lead into an execution chamber.
As they walked, Jason took the time to glance at the giant screen installed on the wall directly opposing. The telltale sign of a class 9 emergency was on display with the display having changed color. The number one next to the number of serious emergencies was a relief. This one might be the worst that could possibly happen, but at the very least it was going to be the only one for the moment which meant it would be much easier to deal than if the workers were a little too busy going through other smaller cases at well. A quiet day like this one was about the best time for such an emergency and gave Jason a bit of hope that this could be resolved without too much undue hassle as far as the deaths were concerned at least. Dealing with the required edit of the timeline was a separate matter entirely, but that he could discuss with his siblings later.
“Your Highness, this is the one,” said Catalan and Jason quickly turned to look at the station that he was now standing in front of.
He was taken aback at there being three names but he took it in stride and quickly memorized the three names on the screen. All three of them were certainly young but none of the names really rang a bell. There was no way to tell just how they would be important to the timeline and that was odd. This code was meant to fire for people who had massive impacts on the timeline so it couldn’t possibly be wrong, but it would mean these three were very far from whatever it was they would accomplish to effect the timeline quite that much. That was certainly an interesting development.
He quickly tapped the screen, looking for a couple more details on the exact time and location. He was going to need that to try and view the incident in action so that he’d have something to go off on when timeline correction operations were launched and when the three souls needed to be processed.
The coordinates were also quickly memorized along with the exact time and planet of origin. He nodded thoughtfully as he realized it was Earth 27. That was certainly an interesting one. It was one of the very few planets from the light light dimension that was slated to become an interdimensional superpower in the not too distant future. It was a rising power that had a lot of good things predicted for it. That certainly could explain a lot in terms of the impact these girls could have. This was going to be quite a nightmare to deal with.
A code zero-nine-nine with more than one person and in a planet with quite that much potential. It was all lining up to end up being a rather major emergency and Jason did his best to hid the worry that was rapidly rising within him. He’d hoped things were good after seeing it was a quiet day but this suggested things were certainly going to become exactly as he’d feared when he first heard the news. This was going to cause some major waves across reality. Finding out the cause of this would be absolutely paramount and he knew there was no chance he could hand this out to just any timeline correction team. He took a deep breath. First he’d have to sort out the souls and find some preliminary info after reassuring the two demons who’d brought it to his attention.
He turned to the demons and gave them a measured smile. It was important to not to undersell the situation to the two of them but at the same time he couldn’t exactly let there be chaos running through The Undead Router. Everyone needed to be on top of their game for the underworld to keep running. Three deaths, no matter how important to the timeline simply could not be allowed to stall the processing of the millions of others that occurred every hour.
“So, this is bad, I’m sure you two know that very well,” he began, testing the waters lightly to gauge the reaction of the two demons.”
They both nodded vigorously, the worry he’d seen in their faces increasing just a little. He’d have to reassure them a bit.
“But, this will be handled. Its not the end of reality or the timeline. Problems like this can and do happen and they’ve happened before. I will personally assign a few members of The Alpha Pack to deal with this, this can’t be handed to just anybody, but I’m sure they will take care of this with anyone barely even noticing it. So, yes, thank you for the duty you’ve done here. Keep at it. Keep us informed of anything more you get. Now don’t worry yourselves over this and get back to work. I will reset the emergency code now so that the screens return to their normal color.”
An interesting mix of expressions passed through the demon’s faces. There was awe at the mention of The Alpha Pack, slight fear and worry but mostly relief. It seemed they were glad the problem was being taken care of and they could move on.
They both proceeded to bow.
“Thank you your Highness,” echoed Catalan.
Jason acknowledged it with a nod. “It is I who should be thanking you. Well enjoy the rest of your day.”
On that note Jason proceeded to quickly type in the security code that revert the color on the station’s display to its normal hue which would then simultaneously also reset the main screen at the center. The two screens soon let out a gentle beep as his instruction was carried out and Jason gave the two demons one final nod before stepping right through to the twenty seventh dimension once again, this time headed for his recreation office as he liked to call it. He needed to get this particularly bit of work done in some extra privacy before he called in The Alpha Pack to deal with this.
Milliseconds later, he was entering the cozy confines of the room that had been rather fittingly named Ben’s Den by his siblings. His middle name Benjamin was reserved exclusively for the people he had a personal tie with and this particular office was designed explicitly for him to work on more personal matters rather than the much more formal one that he used for more standard underworld procedures.
This office was among the smallest rooms in the castle, smaller even than most of the bathrooms as Harry very often like to remind him. It had no proper desk, just a rather old but very comfortable couch with a tiny coffee table in case he had to actually write something neatly, a shelf with some of the essentials, a mini fridge and plenty of blankets.
Everything was a bright lime green that was offensive to the eyes of anyone that was not him and that was how he liked it. If anyone was going to invade his private office, he’d prefer them to be always thinking of running away while they were inside.
He collapsed onto the couch, sinking softly into the lime green cushions as he laid down full length on it, making a couple of clicks with his tongue to trigger the lighting system. The lights quickly flickered on, self-adjusting to his preferred brightness of just a bit on the dimmer side without making things so dark that the average mortal would be unable to see. It lent itself rather well to the laid back atmosphere of everything else in the office.
As he lay down, Jason took a deep breath, feeling like a nap would be a great idea at the moment. The thought of diving into this new problem just wasn’t particularly appealing at the moment. He quickly stopped those thoughts before they could go any further. He had a duty he needed to fulfill at the moment and as much as he could put this off for a little bit he knew that would only cause further problems down the line.
He had to evaluate this situation as soon as he possibly could and dispatch the relevant teams to deal with the consequences that such things tended to often have. Jason quickly held out a hand to summon his trusty computer towards him, the laptop zooming gently into his hand as he sat up slowly and placed the device into his lap.
He placed his hand on the top as it quickly scanned his palm print before quickly opening up. Jason quickly typed in the coordinates and location into his laptop’s death location app and soon he was getting a detailed view of the area through one of the trillions of satellites that were currently in orbit around various planets.
The photo currently on his screen was a live feed and Jason could see a tow truck taking away what looked to be a rather primitive transport module. Jason frowned. That was a fairly common occurrence on the streets of Earth. Earth 27 was better than most of the other Earths, but it was certainly no stranger to a high amount of deaths from the terrible designs used on their vehicles. That was going to be hard to spotlight. Whoever had caused the chain of anomalies that caused that death would’ve done some careful planning and made it look untraceable.
Jason let out a sigh. He zoomed in a bit closer to the road, hoping there was maybe some glimmer of something hidden in there that could suggest a slightly less common version of a vehicular accident that might be easier to find a cause for.
Instantly something caught his attention. There was a slightly odd looking section of the road. He ramped up the zoom on the satellite’s camera to maximum hoping he could spot it more clearly but the resolution was simply not quite enough.
Jason frowned. It was hard to tell but something had definitely happened to that road at some point in time. It was impossible to tell based on the images here, but there was a slight chance that something had happened to the road recently and potentially caused this accident. That would certainly warrant some looking into.
Deciding that was about all the image of the current death location could provide him with, James switched to a different software, loading up older footage from that time and quickly downloaded the past fifteen minutes worth onto his laptop.
He waited patiently as the ridiculously slow transmission speeds of the Earth satellites tried to process his request and then finally confirmed the data was on its way. Knowing that it was probably going to take a good twenty minutes for the data to fully reach his laptop, James set it aside on the couch and got up to organize the rest of his response. He was going to have to check the schedule of The Alpha Pack to see if they would be able to come into properly address this issue and he’d have to do a recheck of the rules surrounding such deaths before he let the three girls enter into underworld proper. They were probably stuck in a constant state of freaking out at the moment being in the Rethe but there was simply nothing he could do about that until all the procedures had been put in place. Hopefully they were going to forgive him for it.
Jason proceeded to grab one of the few rather thick binders that he had tucked away on his little bookshelf, checking the handwritten title on the spine. “TMC – Schedules”
It was one of the heaviest and most important written documents to ever exist, containing every little detail about all the various teams that were responsible for the maintenance of the timeline, a duty that had fallen onto Jason as an unforeseen add on to his maintenance of the land of the dead.
He flipped past all the newer entries, quickly going towards the very last page which contained the schedule of the oldest and uncontested most powerful team mentioned in the binder: The Alpha Pack. He knew it was going to be impossible or all of them to show up but at this point if at least one of his two siblings, both of whom were the leaders of said team, could show up that would probably be plenty. They’d potentially be able to shift around he schedules of some of the other members and enlist a couple more if needed. Jason right now simply needed the best to be taking care of this rather delicate matter so he just couldn’t waste time sending out teams of less experienced people while waiting for the entire Alpha Pack to be free.
Leafing through the pages, Jason found that at least Jennifer did appear to currently be on a weeklong vacation of some sort and to his surprise Harry seemed to have taken a day off as well. He had no doubt whatsoever that Jennifer had probably played a major role in whatever that was, but it meant that he could definitely summon both of them and they’d be free enough to come. He knew they’d probably turn up in a heartbeat even if they were in the middle of a giant invasion, but he’d rather not disturb them unless they were in fact free, he knew they worked just as hard if not harder than he did to keep this reality from collapsing in on itself in a fiery inferno of chaos.
He quickly snapped the binder shut and returned it to its place before walking back to the couch and sitting down. The laptop predictably was only sixty percent done. That was going to take a few more minutes to fully download. Making the required call now was probably a good idea.
Jason tapped his wrist mounted device, switching it to the communication feature as he brought up the speed dial list. Right at the top was the conference option for both his sister and his brother and he pressed the call button.
He stood there waiting as several rings went out, echoing out in a constant monotonous “BEEP BEEP BEEP”
There was a small bit of static on the other side and the familiar voice of one Harry Hardy blasted over the speakers with all the enthusiasm of a five year old hopped up on caffeine.
“Sooouuup!!”
Jason let out a sigh. This was going to be a very interesting conversation.
Harrison Hardy let out yet another yawn as the pirate in front of him continued his monologue. He had heard this particular version “I am Captain Fill in the Blanks of the Fill in the Blanks and I rule the Fill in the Blanks seas where I command everything and you are pathetic, you stupid piece of trash that I will totally lock up in the brig of the Fill in the Blanks where you will rot for all Insert Largest Time Period Pirate Captain can Fathom Here” a million and a half times and that wasn’t even an exaggeration. Pirates really needed to up their game at some point and come up with some original material.
