The Council of Terra - Part 1

⛓Six Feet Under⛓

TW: 18+ | Slight Descriptions of Violence | Mature Language

PT 380, Dimension Y-062

Hestia Lorenz

Voices rattled across the rolling sand of the baseball field, kicked up by soles of the cleats of the Kingston Wyverns, dashing across home plate! A lone, red-headed girl came up to bat. The scoreboard’s innings had made it to their limit, the score finally tied, last up to bat was Hestia Lorenz.

Her teammates bit at their nails with anticipation. She tucked her hair roughly into her hat, sucked in through her teeth, and stepped up to bat. The one person who made any audible noise was her Mom in the stands, Rhea Lorenz. A red-headed woman just like Hestia, famously much taller than her own mother. She was gifted a phoenix necklace by her Mom, it was the very first thing written in her will. Rhea let out a hearty cheer for Hestia before everything fell silent again. Even the dust fell to the ground in anticipation. The wind blew against her face, the trees looked her way.

“Strike one!” The umpire cried out as the first ball skittered past Hestia’s face.

Her eyes blinked rapidly, as if trying to regain composure. Her bat nearly touched the ground, meaning she had swung at it, even if her reaction time was shot. If only she had seen the ball coming from a mile away. This time, focus on the pitcher. Eye on the ball. She shook her bat in a cheeky circle, as if saying “come and get me!” The next ball flew with a curve to it, but Hestia’s training prepared her. As if picking a fly mid-flight out of the air, she sent the ball into the stands. Which sat behind and to her left.

“Foul ball, strike two!” The umpire’s voice screeched.

The final ball. Hestia’s teammates' voices began to pipe up, along with other supportive parents including her mother’s. Her reaction time wasn’t shot, everything was there, she reassured herself. She closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and rolled her shoulders before the last and final ball came barreling towards her.

“Strike 3!” The umpire’s voice concluded.

Following the embarrassing after-game pep talk with the coach, Hestia’s Mom drove her home. They sat in the car in relative silence. Hestia leaning against the window, glancing over at her Mom occasionally in disgust. Disgusted at what the Lorenz name brought her, expectation, and not the good kind of expectation where if you don’t do good you’re considered “average”, the black and white expectation that came with her family name.

As a Lorenz, if you succeed, you are acclaimed as a hero, a savior to humanity just like Terra Lorenz, Hestia’s grandmother. If you fail, the curse of Terra follows you. In Terra’s case, it involved being seen as a terrorist and an enemy of the United States government. Someone to be hunted. In Hestia’s case, it meant her dreams of becoming a professional ball-player were set back twice as much due to the reputation her family had. It was akin to rolling a dice whenever she walked into a room with someone who knew of her family’s history. “Maybe if they’re a little more liberal they’ll let this one slide…” Hestia often thought.

While her Mother was not a war hero like her Mother before her, Rhea was revered for different, but similar reasons. Finishing what Terra started and maintaining rights for mutant-kind across the United States. With some help, Rhea was able to finish Terra’s work and assist in the grand-opening of Meta Island! (What Hestia liked to call it.) Terra was hated and loved as a war hero and potential savior, Rhea was hated and loved as a political figure. So what was Hestia?

“-a disappointment!” Rhea’s voice sounded. She had begun to focus on Hestia once they pulled into their driveway. When Hestia looked back, confused, Rhea assured “Don’t think you’re a disappointment.”

“Then what might I be?” Hestia asked cheekily, half-expecting a lazy answer.

“Things like this happen. You’ll have many more chances to prove yourself. I know you’re a great ball player. All we have to do is keep practicing. How about this? Maybe I can start using some of my powers to amplify my throws. It’ll be like a real professional is throwing you fast-balls!”

“Only if I get to do the same to you first.” Hestia jeered.

________________________________________________________________________

The next day, Hestia went to school. Monday was the day that presentations for history projects started. The assignment was to “focus on a figure who changed our perception of history.” This felt like too lofty an assignment for a mere freshman to find one single person who changed humanity’s perception of our world. So Hestia chose something closest to home, her grandmother. Not a lot was “solidified” in documented history involving Terra. But one thing was known for sure. She freed metahumans from the MFI’s containment camps. So Hestia chose this.

She walked into school, Averting her eyes from most of her baseball team. She felt some wandering eyes pierce her soul as she passed some of them in the halls. Others were more sympathetic, or didn’t care. When her friends approached her at her locker asking about the game, she immediately changed the subject.

After shambling through some classes, she excused herself to use the bathroom. On her way out, she saw some girls she knew chatting it up loudly. As she went to leave, they took notice of her.

“Hey Hestia! I heard Evelyn put out a hit for you after what happened last week.”

“What happened?” She asked innocently. Hestia truly had no idea what had happened, her mind was so swallowed by the events of yesterday that it was like every other event in her life was a blink in her existence. The other fifteen years were spent slowly watching a curve-ball fly past her face as she failed to hit it.

She was snapped out of her thought. “Um, you don’t remember? You got her in trouble with the Dean! You saw her smoking and spilled.”

“Oh…Sorry. I forgot. What ended up happening to her, anyway?” She remembered now. She saw her smoking her vape in the bathroom and told the Dean of Students after they were each caught on camera walking out of there around the same time.

She felt a light slap across the back of the head from one of the other girls.

“This isn’t a conversation. She got suspended, and now her parents are pissed. I thought you knew about girls' rules. Girls don’t snitch on other girls!”

She turned to face the one who had delivered the slap to her head. It didn’t hurt, but it was just enough to bother her, and take the situation a little seriously.

“Hey…I said I was sorry. I’ll remember the rule. I just didn’t want to get in trouble too.”

“That isn’t enough! Next time, you won’t be so lucky!” The girl facing her declared as she delivered a hearty slap across Hestia’s face. Nearly bringing her head to the ground. The girls snickered to themselves and ducked away before anybody came.

Hestia watched as they left. “Stupid, you should’ve just not let yourself get involved! Is that weak sorry the only thing you had to say in response?” Her inner dialogue prodded at her as she sat against the wall of the bathroom with her hand on her face. A small amount of light began to radiate from her hand, and the pain faded.

The Power of Olympus was what she and her family were blessed with. The power was passed down to Rhea, and then to Hestia. However, Hestia never had time to use it to its full potential. Except for its healing capabilities, which she prided herself on. Terra was not a strong healer. This was Hestia’s one claim to fame. She was better at healing than the great Terra Lorenz! Who never needed to heal herself, she was far too strong for such a meaningless ability.

Hestia wasn’t.

She had fallen off the monkey bars and sprained her leg as a toddler, and Rhea took the opportunity to use her own power to heal Hestia to stop her from crying too loud in public. From that moment, every time Hestia scraped her knee, fell off her bike, or had a hangnail, she healed herself quickly.

“...For my project, I decided to do my grandmother, Terra Lorenz.”

There was a pretty slide with appropriate transitions that flipped to the next slide of her presentation. A portrait of Terra was displayed along with a block of text. She felt the judgemental eyes of the class piercing into her. A privileged girl like her doing her famous grandmother when she’s done nothing of note? Pathetic.

(editor's note: this is a commission I got from my friend!)

She stood awkwardly at the front of the room, passionately going over different known facts about Terra’s life. Geeking out about niche photographs and videos showcasing Terra’s special fighting style, which involved telekinetically controlling pieces of her signature weapon, the Artemis Armor.

“To summarize, one of the most notable things that Terra ever did was stop the MFI, Meta Facilities Incorporated. The general populace thought that they were allies to all meta-kind, but they turned out to be running an underground operation which jailed metahumans and used them in labor camps hidden throughout the United States. Terra was the one to stop them and set the metahumans free! Does anyone have any questions?”

A young man rose his hand, Hestia was quick to pick him to answer, surprised that anybody had something to say about her presentation at all.

“Wasn’t that choice essentially what led up to the meta-mutant civil war?”

“Oh, well. I guess so? I don’t think it’s fair to say that it was Terra’s fault though.”

“Well, if they weren’t let out all at once, then maybe the U.S. could have accounted for the population problems that followed. Maybe the death toll wouldn’t be as high.”

“True, but I don’t know how that could’ve been stopped. Sometimes true change takes real rebellion. My grandma was ready to bear the weight of her mistakes.”

“I wouldn’t exactly call her a ‘hero’ though.” The young man huffed. Hestia was on the border of tears. She felt like she wanted to vomit as she glided to her desk.

Hestia arrived home. Rhea had gone to work for the day and had notified her that she was working a late shift. These days the house is empty. Hestia put in her earbuds and practiced her swing in the backyard. One year, the year after she learned the truth about Santa, was when Rhea presented her with her favorite Christmas gift, An Ai baseball pitcher that learned based off of the batters tendencies. It allowed Hestia to improve without a pesky batting partner to keep her occupied.

Despite baseball being a team sport, Hestia never became friends with many of the people on her team, many of which were men. Who formed their own cliques which did not allow girls like her. She convinced herself it was because she tried too hard to be “one of the guys.” The game was more important to her, anyway.

She held her bat up to swing, but was distracted when she heard a loud noise from inside of the house. She gently set the bat down and walked inside. The TV screen, which wasn’t even on when she had walked in, was filled with static. It felt like a callback to the horror movie Hestia had watched last week with her mother. However, it was the height of the day. She turned the TV off, and with it went the static. Hestia stepped back outside.

Only to see a bright red sky. Just like the stories.

Scorched Earth, red skies, the end.

Screech!

Tire tread was violently eaten up as Rhea turned into the driveway. It was the first time Hestia had truly seen her mother use her powers. Like an angel coated in red, she jumped over the roof of the house and gently landed in front of Hestia. She lifted the phoenix necklace that lay under Hestia’s shirt, cradling it in her hands.

“Take this, go to olympus, and run. We need you as far away from here as possible.”

“Mom, what’s happening?”

“I don’t know. But it means you have to run. Hold the necklace, and think about Olympus. Just like all those pictures I showed you, the stories I read you.”

“I-I can’t! What’s going to happen to you?”

Rhea grabbed Hestia’s hand with inhuman strength. A grip that Hestia couldn’t hope to break. Her vision was blurred as a visage of red only found in her nightmares flooded her backyard.

“Think about Olympus!” She demanded, implanting the thought of Olympus into Hestia’s head, like a switch, her body disappeared from Earth, and reappeared on top of a mountain suspended in the air, disobeying the rules of gravity.

Hestia’s body was shaking, her molecules had been removed and subsequently rearranged. She keeled over on her knees, throwing up on the ground. She rose to her feet, regaining her vision and allowing for her heart to slow a beat. Allowing her to realize what she held in her hand.

It was her mother’s disembodied arm.

Even above the heavens, the red that swallowed all living things engulfed the world. Heaven and Hell along with it.

________________________________________________________________________________

PT 394, 14 Years Later, DRU HQ

Enzo Eclipse

“Fake world. Fake world. I have to go back.” These words repeated over and over again inside of the mind of Enzo Eclipse. For five months, all he could think about is those he left behind, whether or not they were AI, code. Whatever they were.

He sat in a featureless room. The walls were a shiny white. The only thing adorning them was a sign that read “Jackie’s office”. Enzo was waiting for his supervisor to finish her report to Captain Jackie. Enzo was the first of his kind (second, technically) who inhabited Dimension Regulation HQ. It was mostly inhabited by Glitches, those who lacked a home dimension. They were given two choices, serve DRU, or die. The second classification was Outcasts, like Enzo’s supervisor, Petra. Outcasts left their dimension by some means. Petra is able to live with her family as if DRU was just a day-job. Enzo was assigned a new title. Insider. A living being that DRU created.

After exiting his simulation, Enzo was essentially on the same level as a Glitch, forced to undertake dangerous missions to protect dimensions within DRU’s database. Due to Enzo’s body being physically unfit, he was given preverbal training wheels. The easiest jobs. Patch a dimensional rip here, apprehend a harmless glitch there. It was almost embarrassing. The embarrassment was the last thing Enzo worried about when he had to sit down to eat lunch with the room filled with beaten and battered glitches who had lost out on an easy day's work.

Past the door Enzo sat next to, Petra sat across from Jackie’s desk. Her office was adorned with many artifacts from years of fighting for DRU. She kept commemorative items from missions that meant a lot to her. The most recent was a star-shaped necklace that read “STARDUST” on its underside. The tall woman before Petra had an eye-patch and long, pink hair. Equally scarred and ageless. She sat back in her chair, resting her boots on her desk. As if already proclaiming to Petra “eat my shit!” She sat with her blind eye towards Petra as she explained Enzo’s situation.

“He wants to go back into the simulation. Is he valuable enough to DRU that you can’t simply put him back? He had a sister in there, she was very real to him. You knew he would be like this when you let him out due to Edriel’s influence, but you did it anyway.”

“Putting him back into the simulation is more complicated than you think. Edriel effectively disabled the simulation. Enzo is a failure of an experiment, he wasn’t on the top of the boss’s order list. He wanted an indistinguishable clone of Tempest and Terra Lorenz. We failed at both objectives, now Master N is pissed. Frankly, I do not have the time to think about your problems.”

Petra looked despondently past her old friend. The simulation was made to recreate Enzo in Tempest’s image; this was ruined when the AI who was in charge of the system, Edriel, decided to change many major events in would-be Tempest’s life, turning him into Enzo Eclipse of the Kubota Family. A failed experiment next to another failed experiment that was much higher priority than him.

“You aren’t the Master’s puppet.” Petra hissed as she walked out of the office. Enzo looked up at her with hopeful eyes when she stepped out. “Let’s go talk about this over something to eat.”

Enzo and Petra sat in the cafeteria eating processed sandwiches. Around them stood the main area where glitches resided. They came in all shapes and sizes, cultures and aesthetics of one dimension represented with each new glitch that inhabited the cafeteria. A familiar man sat across from Enzo and Petra. It was Nova.

If Enzo was supposed to be Tempest Lorenz, Nova was supposed to be Terra Lorenz. His first failure as an experiment had to do with his conception. Instead of his artificial body developing to look like the original Terra’s, he developed into a man. Inside of the simulation, his life was very similar to that of the original Terra’s.

He continuously pushed his curly orange hair away from his face as he quietly sipped on his miso soup, listening into Petra and Enzo’s conversation with little subtlety.

“Who even is Master N? Why does he care so much about me and Nova?” Enzo pried.

“That old geezer is the creator of DRU. He wanted that simulation to shape you into someone you are not. It's as simple as that.”

Enzo locked eyes with Petra. “Why can’t I go back in? You’re hiding something.”

“Have you ever heard of the story of Azathoth?” Nova piped up.

“So now you say something.” Petra muttered.

“Azathoth is known as the blind idiot god. He is the master of all creation, but everything he created is unknown to him. All of reality is merely a part of Azathoth’s dream. When he awakens, all things end. Everything goes black. No warning, no red skies, no Radio. His eyes simply open, and everything ceases. That is what the simulation was like for us. We woke up. Why would the simulation have any reason to exist after that?” Nova explained.

“How can you even say that? You had a daughter in the simulation.” Enzo countered.

“I loved Rhea. But there is no going back. Your sis, Emi was her name, right? Just because you didn’t spend enough time with her doesn’t mean you shouldn’t treasure the time you did spend with each other.” Nova responded as he finished his meal and left.

“You didn’t spend a lot of time with your sister?” Petra asked.

“She was always sick, I was always trying to provide for her. The jobs I did for the Yakuza got harsher the more I asked for money.”

“That’s hard.” Petra reflected.

They sat in silence. Enzo thought back to his time in the simulation. He remembered his little sister’s face. Even when she was in the hospital, she wore a permanent smile. Every job, every night spent in the clutches of harmful crime lords. It was all wasted when Enzo could’ve just spent it with the only thing he cared about. In the real world, what was the point when he had nothing to live for? Before he was to make a choice, he wanted answers.

“Take me to dimension Y-062. That’s where this all started, right?”

“Why the hell would I take you there? It was destroyed by Radio fourteen years ago. Jackie might be pissed if I were to go!”

“I thought you said you didn’t care about Jackie anymore. You decided to take me under your wing when you became my supervisor. I need to know who Tempest Lorenz was before I continue on. I want to know who I was supposed to be.”

“You want to go to a broken world to find remnants of Tempest Lorenz? It’s unlikely we’ll find anything. He died about forty years ago.”

“I don’t care. I need to know. Besides, I have this as my guide.” Enzo held up a kitsune mask imbued with special powers. On the back of it, many pressure sensors and minuscule lights, creating a complex network of coding attuned to Enzo. It read “Dimensional Augmented Reality Mask”.

“We might find some really bad stuff if we go there, you know that, right? Y-062 is where the first Radio attacks happened.”