Neo Static: The Permutation Particles Polka - End

Aqua was in the middle of the tunnels; she was cut up and badly bruised but she kept swinging. It wasn't long before Suki was with her and she let her know that the job was done.

Darius, Twofeathers and Suki ran through the complex as Ul'ran zombies clambered after them. Wanting them to join the party.

Frank looked at the countdown on his chronometer. Only 18 more seconds to go before they were all aligned.

Angst, Ruffo and Angelissa sat at a table sipping tea as others walked past.

Max hovered off the floor, his fingers moving about seeing the data-streams of timelines before him and shaking his head 'no', dropping a few strings and gathering more and shaking his head 'no'.

Dan picked up the dice once again as everyone around the table waited for what was going to happen. It all resulted in this dice roll. It was all or nothing on this one.

"It's about time you joined the fight," Aqua shot at Suki.

"Sure thing, girlfriend," Suki said. "You think what I was doing was a picnic?"

"Yeah," Aqua replied. She took out a huge beastie with a punch, sending it sprawling back into its buddies. "Now, let's see if we can hold them off!"

"Madness," Twofeathers replied. No matter what corner they turned or what room they entered it seemed that the Ul'ran were already there. "This is madness."

"You don't know the half of it, sister," Suki said. She was rubbing her elbow; her arm was sore after dispensing a lot of charges with the Godhammer. She hoped Max was correct with whatever he was doing since it seemed like it was going to be the end.

Darius took out his cross necklace and gave it a kiss for luck. Twofeathers did a double-take at him and then she let out a chuckle.

Frank checked the shotgun and was about to join Suki and Aqua in the tunnels.

"There's nothing you can do there," Max said to him.

"What?" Frank looked at him. "You're kidding right?"

"Frank, when have I ever misled you?" Max asked.

"The question is when haven't you misled me," Frank said. His impulse was to go and help the kids out in a overwhelming battle. But he trusted Max to the very end of his life.

"Can I get you ladies anything else?" the waiter asked.

Angst nodded and flashed him a smile and the waiter turned a little shade of red.

"Mom," Angelissa said.

"I'm not your mother," Angst said to her, "Well, I... I could be your mother... Wait... I am your mother?"

"What are we doing waiting here?" Ruffo asked. She had a sound of agitation in her voice. She didn't know where they were and what they were doing but it was nice just to sit and catch their breath for a little while. "What are we suppose to be waiting for?"

"You will know when you see it," Angst said. She leaned over and gave Angelissa a kiss on the cheek, letting her know full well that she would be the mother she would never know.

Max's fingers were moving across like he was playing a huge harp. That's when he noticed blood on the tips of his fingers.

"Now you know how Bryan Adams felt," Maggie whispered.

Max noticed that his fingertips had thin slices like papercuts but it wasn't stinging at all.

"... and that's when you notice the cuts on Max's fingertips, each finger that he's been weaving with has left tiny droplets of his blood in it..." Tim said.

Dan's mouth dropped and everyone around the table looked up and he added, "You mean?"

"Yep," Tim stated with a sly smile. "Exactly. Now make your roll and let's just see how well the code was written."

Dan shook the dice in his hands and let them drop onto the table. They did their dance: the negative dice landed on a 1 (which was good to see) and the positive dice landed on a 6 and this meant he rolled it again and added it to the total.

Dan picked up the die to roll, Tim turned his attention to Peyton.

Aqua had taken a critical wound to the neck. Blood was pumping out due to her adrenaline being pushed to the limits, but she cracked a smile since she was going out on her own terms. She grabbed the huge beast in front of her and with all her might snapped its neck like a twig, letting out a primeval scream of victory before she staggered back.

A wall of beasties swarmed toward her.

"Nooo!" Suki screamed and that's when her face changed from a tween to a woman of rage. Mustering every ounce of strength she had she took the Godhammer in her hands and snapped it in two. "She you losers in hell!"

The explosion ripped through the tunnel.

"What is it?" Darius asked of Suki. She stood still for a second and let out a gasp.

"I don't know," she replied honestly. "It just .... I don't want this to sound corny... but I felt like something bad happened."

There was the sound of an implosion echoing off in the distance. A ripple and a wave of energy began washing through the area.

"Sweet," Twofeathers said. "Now what!"

Frank let the shotgun drop to the floor and he hung his head in shame. "Was this all for naught?"

The waiter placed another round of ice tea in front of the ladies, and they all smiled and raised their glasses in a toast.

"Ha! I win," Morganfokker whispered. "You lose, like the failure that you are!"

"Would it kill you to know that this was the game plan all along?" Maggie said with a knowing smile. "A sleight of hand so simple that you'd not be paying attention to what the other hand was doing."

"What?" Morganfokker said. "No, it can't be."

Max let the strings go from his bloody fingertips and let out a sigh of relief.

"Game. Set. And Match, Morganfokker!"

It was a sound like someone receiving a call on their cellphone, a little ding that seem to echo about the realms. Max hovered off the ground, light shining around him like beams from multiple lighthouses as cracks began to appear across his body. The ultimate sacrifice, he turned to the apparition of Morganfokker and lifted up a hand and simply waved at him, like he was waving to a friend who was moving away... and that's when Max seemed to implode on himself... creating a black hole sucking in the streams, data, and other realities with him.

Before everything went dark...

Janus the Two-Faced God

Previously on New Year's Day...

ENDINGS

AND BEGINNINGS

Invocation Final

... and finally moving beyond or is it within to the place where the Kami dwell which is only really the world without deception where Valhalla is only the present without fear and the wingbeats of the valkyrie only the passing of the present into the past to make room for the future, the skull a shrine, the spine is Yggdrasil, or the reverse and the reverse, here where the truth happens and the layers upon layers of confusion and delusion and history and fragments and iterations no longer obscure and obfuscate but are simple cartography, the sword and pen and tongue and thought, the runes and circle and words a map to find his way...

... and would he not then divine the route home? who would not after so many worlds and centuries and battles seek the safety and the surety and certainty and the continuity of home? who would not ask that gift from the Aesir and would they not grant it to one so deserving?

... when the time and a chance to make magic, real magic happens is this not the spell Akimoto should be casting?

... yet Maggie is still sick, and Max is still trapped, and his companions still stand watch, ready for the next battle...

[he has the sense of deja vu, the feeling of remembering the feeling of a dream, and so he knows that the magic is working]

Akimoto says the names of Freyr and Freyja and the names of the runes and draws his blade across his palm to make blood. But he does not do so for himself.

Roll Credits

Max closed his eyes. He drew a slow puff from the cigarette in his mouth. Inhaling the toxic fumes once again and savouring it.

"I'm scared," Suki said. "What's going to happen to us all?"

"We've been going in a loop non-stop for 15 years now," Frank stated. "It's time to take it to the next level."

"Like in a video game?" Suki inquired.

"See," Frank interjected. "She still calls them video games."

"I get the point," Goner said. "Yeah, I see it now, don't go all 'I told ya so' on us now!"

Frank cracked a smile for the first time in a long time.

"If we were movie characters what would be doing now?" Suki asked.

Max opened his eyes and tousled Suki's hair. "We strut."

Mr. Clean's Team - Endnote

TOP SECRET

RECONNAISSANCE OFFICE

Washington, RC

Office of the Director                                                                              December 27th, 1999 AX

MEMORANDUM FOR: MS. MORNINGSTAR

SUBJECT: THE MAGENTA TASK

We sent a second cell team to investigate what happened to the first cell team.  

Pilot had inserted prime Clean team at coordinates 44 - 33 - 23. The prime Clean team hadn't returned to extraction point at the appointed time. When second team arrived at the coordinates there was no sign of the prime team ever being there.

Second team then went to the chateau to locate target. Target was never there. This is according to eyewitness reports from people in the chateau and waitstaff.

Either some ajfdjofijwoeiojeofjoejowjoijoijefojoeiohwoeiohfiopwjiojiowjfowejofjwioejwoejfewf 

ddjkfjdofjioejojfijejoeifjeifs  or it could result of  fsdklfjkfjasklfjsldjfklsjdfkljsdklfjklfjkl dkfjdkjfklsdjkljdkfjdkfjksdjfdjfldjflsjdfljsdklfjsdklfjsdklfjklsdlfjsdklfsdklfjsdkljfklsdfjkldlsjfdklj

Sincerely

Agust Blooom

Mr. Clean's Agency

Defrag: Bring Two

Previously... 


Half an hour later he was finishing the first donut with a smile. “Thanks, Cal.” 

“You're welcome,” Callan said. “I feel more than a little responsible for you being stuck here.” 

“Don't be ridiculous. You needed back-up to stop whatever the hell that was, and I told you to call me anytime. It's not your fault the – what did you call them?” 

“Guàiwù.” 

“That they set the building on fire.” 

“If you hadn't intervened with the police, the truth may have come out. Which would have had further undesirable consequences.” 

“Like us being sent to the looney bin.” Dex smiled again, bit into the second donut. “Callan, I don't pretend to have clue what is going on with all this weird, mystical stuff. Between your Guàiwù and Darius' Undead I am way outta my depth these days. But I figure I became a cop to stop bad things from happening to people and this qualifies.” 

Callan nodded. “There has been an alarming rise in manifestations of ancient evils lately... However, if I may speak honestly, my real concern is not with the return of forces from the past but with the arrival of... even stranger forces from the future.” 

Dex had been a detective for years now. He had the instincts. “You're talking about Max.”

Fallen Final

"One day he was gone.

"Max had already been burnt out by the time we stormed the Temple. All the shifting, all his 'cubed' experiences, all the stress and uncertainty. Then being trapped here. Losing Maggie, again. None of us were totally surprised that he left. Dex was bitter, Wraith was angry, Callan was resigned, but none of us were surprised.

"And I was the least surprised of all, because Max had told me that he was going."

Wraith straightened in her seat, her frame tense. This was new to her, a story she hadn't yet heard. Darius glanced at her as he sipped his tea, and continued.

"He had come to believe that he was the problem, that Morganfokker was behind all of it and that he was carrying Morganfokker's signal, his sickness, with him. He thought that he had screwed up and gotten all of us trapped here. And he realized that as long as he was around we might never find our way clear of all the bad weird shit. I know, it's pretty egotistical when you think about it, but he might have been right.

"So he said that he was going underground, that he would go into hiding, use some of that weird identity magic he knew, and we would see what happened. And that he would try and find a way to make things better, and if he did he would come back. I nicknamed it the 'Once and Future Cube' plan. Make no mistake, things were still bad after he was gone - the Demons were relentless - but... Things were less weird without Max around."

Wraith was shaking her head but it was impossible to tell what she was feeling behind the mask.

"So," Marshal said. "Why did he tell you? When he didn't tell anyone else?"

"I'm not sure," Darius replied. "I've wondered about that. Why do you think he might have told me?"

Marshal considered. "The way you talk about everything, you seem to understand a bit of what it was like for Max."

Darius considered, a glimmer in his one eye. "I like to think I did. I tried to. So is that why you decided to tell me?"

"What?" Marshal blinked.

Darius smiled slightly. "You can tell me now, why you decided then to tell me about the 'Once and Future Cube'."

Marshal took a deep breath. A strange look on his face. "I... I knew..." He wasn't sure if he was making things up or remembering them. "I knew that I would need someone's help to get back."

Wraith stood up. Darius asked, "And why would you be coming back?"

"Because there was a chance... A chance to make things better."

"And what would it be?"

He thought about everything he had studied in Haven, everything he had learned from the Arcana. He thought about what he had seen in the borderlands, the ruins, the Demons. The Dragons and the stories that Darius had told him.

"If... If you could use one of the Grids to take control of an Eye... You could fly the Eye through one of the Gutters, out past Frontline... To where the Demons come from. It must be a portal. That would be your way to get out. Or shut them down. Or both. And now that the bulk of their forces have advanced on Haven..." He blinked again.

Darius grinned. "Alright Max, let's try it." Wraith nodded. "And we'll see what happens next."

Reunion Part Final

Suki was driving. “Their eyes didn't look right.” 

Angst was in the passenger seat. “I didn't recognize those weapons. I think they were partly psychic.” 

Goner was behind Angst. “This is unbelievable.”

Frank said, “Get to the highway. We have to get some distance, figure out if they can track us.” 

Angst saw the sign approach then recede behind them in the early morning light. “Goodbye Jones Heights,” she whispered. 

“What's the last thing you remember before this version?” Max asked. He was between Goner and Frank in the back seat.

“Shorelines,” they said. 

“Okay... I don't remember where I was before that, and I don't recognize some of those names, but you guys found me during the Event. We were together for a while after that.” 

“We thought the Event shifted us here,” Goner said. 

“What happened next?” Frank asked. 

Max looked down at his hands. “A lot. A lot of bad things.” He glanced at Angst, then Frank. “I don't know if I should say. Some version of them may still happen to you.” 

“To us? What's that supposed to mean?” Goner asked. “What happened to us?” 

“Do you know how or why you became Marshal?” Frank asked.

“No. Maybe I was hiding? Or maybe it was a trap. To me it feels like a lot of time passed after the Event. I feel like I was alone for a long time.” Max glanced at Suki. “I think I met some other versions of some of you. I don't know, it's all pretty jumbled.” 

“Well, it's good to see you again,” Angst said softly. 

Max smiled. Then he winced. 

“Max?” Frank asked. 

“There's just a lot going on up here,” he said, rubbing his temple.

“Try saying it,” Frank said. 

“I keep thinking the words Realtime, Fragmented... Citadel, Underground, Purgatory.” 

Goner chuckled. “What? Don't any of you follow pop culture? Realtime was the latest album from the DJ Mana Junkie, Fragmented is this season's big cable TV drama, Citadel is one of the hottest superhero comics out there, Underground is the best-selling biography of corporate whistle-blower Simon Light, and Purgatory is catching all the buzz on the international film festival circuit.”

“Shit, what is going on here?” Suki said. 

“Yeah, I forgot how weird and confusing things could get,” Max said. 

“No, I mean here, out there.” She pointed out the front window. They all looked outside the car to see the road start to blur, the trees start to shimmer, the sky start to ripple. 

“Can you feel that?” Angst asked. 

Frank said, “We're shifting.”

Goner sighed.

Suki smiled, tears in her eyes.

Eigenvector

"I haven't seen Cube in days," Gauntlet says.

"He's on assignment," Brogan replies without looking up from the datapad.

"Is the file available?"

"It's deep cover. Classified."

"Understood." She turns to leave. "Sir?"

"Yes?"

"Nevermind."

*

Three days later, Gauntlet and Viking are in the field, sniper training for an upcoming op. Gauntlet in the grass on the trigger of the .50 Cal, a mashup of Futhark runes and Bagua trigrams painted in nail polish along the barrel. Viking laying beside her, spotting, running through the Artemis mantras he will use when the time comes. If there is any surveillance on them it will be visual only, from Hermit.

"He left a note hidden in my bunk," Viking whispers. "I'll show it to you when we get a chance."

"What did it say?"

"That he wouldn't be coming back from the mission, that hopefully it was because he went rogue and not because Brogan's ambush worked. He apologized for not getting a chance to move on Brogan, and for leaving us in a difficult situation. He said that he hoped we would meet again, and that hopefully we'd remember each other if we did..."

"Hm." She adjusts her scope.

"So what's our play? You have to know he's right about Brogan."

"I think Brogan's only a puppet. I think it goes even farther. Maybe the whole MK-Omega project is dirty. So we watch and we listen, maybe look into Cube's first tour with the Cadre, try not to tip our hand, and maybe we can get a glimpse behind the curtain... And then 'To Be Continued'."

"Ha. That's what he wrote on the bottom of the note."

Channel Plex: Season Finale

Max closed the seventh laptop.

The quiet in the motel room sounded strange. After so many voices, so much music.

Then he thought that he heard the sound of a helicopter approaching.

The phone on the pillow buzzed again. He crawled over to it. There were bright lights outside, shining through the curtains.

Max picked up the phone. Tires squealing, shouting.

The text said: KEEP GOING

Gunfire.

Leaving Purgatory

Max and Maggie were already gone before The They arrived to investigate the disruptive incidents that had happened in Purgatory. The digitized healing of structures and objects was well underway, knitting together the fabrics that were damaged, erasing and modifying memories of those involved.

The They hovered over the lifeless husk of Morganfokker in the apartment and consumed it.

Several blocks away in a diner.

"Mmmm," Max said as he put down the coffee mug. He had the nature of a child in his posture. "Man, I'm ever going to miss this!"

Maggie let out a chuckle.

"You knew all along what was going on?" he said. "This was all a trap to ensnare you."

"I don't just get by on my good lucks," Maggie stated. She took a sip of her tea and smiled. She glanced up at the clock on the diner wall. "You better finish up, it's time to go."

Max chugged the remaining bit of coffee and his body quivered with delight; he might have to make a special trip back here now and then just for the coffee.

Maggie took Max into her arms and they embraced.

"Answer me this," he began. "If we're in Purgatory, what happens if we died here?"

"Well, let's just say it's the final chapter," she told him. "Though, on another note there's something you should know..."

"Oh," Max replied. 

"Prepare for some change when you leave here," she told him.

"Oh," he repeated, his curiosity piqued now. 

"What colour do you like, pink or blue?" she asked. 

Max pondered a few seconds before his eyes widened like a dawning of a new day. Maggie embraced him and they kissed just as their world brightened up.

Max disappeared in a blinding flash of light.

Maggie's avatar fell to the floor of the diner.

All Good Things...

Dan's eyes flickered open. He was covered in a cold sweat.
It was dark out and he glanced over at the alarm clock. 3:33am. His throat was dry and parched; he got up out of his bed and into the small bedroom/sitting room. The tent was hot like a furnace; his body produced a huge amount of heat and the closed flaps made it unbearable. Dan slept in a tent in the bachelor apartment, since a man shouldn't eat, sit, and sleep in the same room. And walls or barriers were needed for defining and keeping the mind focused and sharp, due to the changing environments.

Damn. It was a dream.

In the kitchen he poured water from a pitcher in the fridge. He stopped and took a couple of deep breaths to calm his nerves down a little. He was still going over the things in his minds. His skin had the feeling of a billion pins stabbing into them, like the dead weight of sleep... or were they pencils reanimating him back to this version?

No. No it wasn't - I transcended.

Was it a dream? He wasn't quite sure what the hell had happened, but it was an experience. He scrambled over to where he kept his journal and with pencil in hand began to furiously scribble down notes. He didn't bother on sharpening the pencil when it got dull, he reached over and grabbed a pen and continued to write down every little thing that his dream world had unveiled to him. It was a visionary quest, similar in nature to what the natives of North America have experienced in their sweat lodges. Whatever had happened he wanted to make a record of it before the tendrils of sleep reached out and comforted him again.

He put the pen down at 6:06am and looked over his transcript. 44 pages all jotted down like a madman's scribble. Satisfied, he decided to crawl back into bed and get at least another hour of sleep before heading over to the restaurant for coffee. Just before his head hit the pillow a cellphone rang. And Dan's eyes widened upon the realization that he hadn't bought one.

Lost in Thunder

As the small ship finally broke apart beneath her, Kitty imagined what things would have been like if she had never followed Maus off their homeworld to Citadel. Conditions there had been improving since Chem and Vlad had overthrown the Lich-King who had forced her people into poverty. Magics hoarded away in the Castle were being shared, bringing healing and hope to the lands. Opportunities for work, and even adventure, were many. 

Maus had left with them, though. Joined the world's saviours aboard the Nexus Wave and flown for the stars. And, later, to her death. 

And now Kitty was adrift amongst those stars, the final battle raging around her. Rand unconscious, floating away from her, bleeding into the ether. She couldn't see if Drake had escaped from the wreckage. She spun, aching from the wounds, dizzy from all the combat, trying to see... There it was. The Nexus Wave. 

Only it wasn't swooping in to rescue her; it was charging straight for the very ship she had been undercover aboard for months. The key she had stolen from Vixx was sealed in an enchanted case, now adrift with the remains of the escape craft. Without it he wouldn't be able to unlock his dark and murderous prize. Maybe Chem and Vlad could do it after all. So she wished them well and tried not to wish they were sailing towards rather than away from her. 

She knew that wishes sometimes came true - she had wished to join her sister in the stars, and though Maus had fallen by the time Kitty reached Citadel, well, she had fallen in battle against foes of peace. And so Kitty had found her, in a way, after all.

To Be Continued

The Professor addressed the latest team. The newest Dragons. It wasn't the first time the roster had been replaced, or recombined. He had worked with so many of them throughout the strange non-years of the Metaplex, the liquid time of plureality. All of the lost and the found, the warriors, the outcasts, knights and assassins, witches and spies. The different teams gathered and sent on their missions, and always The Professor there to guide them, to never really be a part of them. Except the times that he had been, or the times he was never there at all - though most of those he couldn't remember... 

Dexter, Wraith, Darius, Callan. Frank, Goner, Angst, Suki, Aqua. Akimoto, Tatterdemallion. Cromwell, Bern, Caden. Siltailus, Falador, Rickson, Cloak, Nurendemyr. The Kat, Misfit, Silver. Odin, Merlin, Kele-De. Mick. Marshal, Michelle, Nick and Jonas. Nick, Pat and Charlotte. Soma and Heresy. All the Travelers, the Blueberry Hill Gang, the Shelter Team. Bishop, Twofeathers, Trump. Pretty George. Maggie Magenta.

And now, Stone and Riveta, Donnelly and Mayganne, Scorpio. He had explained to them as much as he could, what he was allowed to, what he was able to. And what the plan was. Desperate and uncertain, but the only way the Professor could think to turn this situation around. It wasn't safe to contact Simon Light in any local versions - the Professor had had to quarantine him. But maybe if they went far enough around... Find him, some version of him, somewhere else...

There was no telling if any of them would make it, or who they would be. If they would remember or understand anything. If they would find him and reach him. If that would be enough of a convergence to change things. If this would save things or end them.

The Professor had briefed them. He had taught them all the mantras and visualizations that he knew for transferals. Had exposed them to specifically modulated energy fields. Had read them modernist poetry, shown them certain movies. Tried anything he could think of to help them.

And now he was going to send them into another world and hope that they would somehow return...

DAY THIRTY 22:00PM

Yum 

They were sitting there in the diner, sipping coffee and chatting. It had been nearly 24 hours since the events had occurred. 

Max sat at the end of the table, close to the window.

His fingers drumming out the beat going through his head. He didn't know he was doing it, though it made for a ambient sound throughout the diner. The ashtray dancing on the table, adding a crystal cymbal sound now and then. Music was pumping through his veins. 

The waitress strolled over with a full coffee urn in her hands; she didn't even have to ask if they wanted more and she began refilling each of them.

Max, Simon, Riveta, Stone, Scorpio and Suki were all tired, going on 2 days without any real sleep at all. 

All of them knew that they had things to do and people to see but they could do that tomorrow. Right now, it was just time to sit back and enjoy each others company.

As the last of the coffee was refilled Max said, "Thanks, Alice." 

"No," the waitress replied with a smile and a wink; she began dropping creamers onto each of their saucers. "Thank you, Max."