A/N: How about a look at the tornadoes made by the butterfly's wings flapping?
___
(The White Player)
I turned the shower off, stepping out of it and forgetting the towel entirely, deciding to be lazy for once and just used my Solver to [TRANSLATE] all the water off of me with a blue glyph. I reached over and started to get dressed, my clothes covering up the Muruwari warrior tattoos I got in a time before I had to become who I was now. Back when I was still a woman who hadn't walked home to see her father's hanging body in the foyer. Tired brown eyes looked at a face with mixed Muruwari and Australian features, framed by brown hair with blonde highlights. I grimaced. Too tired, but I didn't have time to sleep. I never did. I left the bathroom, ready to get started on checking through whatever reports inevitably built up while I was doing basic hygiene.
"Heeeeeeeeeeeeeey mom!" an annoying squeaky voice cried out from where my keybug was set on my night table.
"Not now, Ponder," I barked out. "I'm not in the mood."
"Oh, when are you?" he snarked. He turned to look at a seemingly random location. "Besides, you should look a bit more lively! After all, we got an audience right now." The keybug bristled in such a manner as to appear aggravated. "Took you long enough to write me, Joeca-Joela!" he snarked.
"Pondah!" I shouted, not in the mood for his 4th Wall antics, the Australian accent slipping back into my voice from days where I still went by Mara Mayi.
"Fiiiiiiiiine!" he whined, turning to glance at me before glancing back to that random spot. "Just remember: Every word, and UNREASONABLE HARSHNESS!" He glanced back to me. "You got a call from the old fart, he finished that crap you told him to do."
"And?" I asked.
"Report for Director Jenson, from Dr. Ridley Sr.," my keybug chimed in the usual monotone from its other, original occupant.
I sighed, and sat down on the bed. "Lay it on me," I told it.
"Report reads," and the voice switched to Dr Ridley's, playing an audio recording of a man well into his 80s but with a mind as sharp as ever. "I'm going to assume you're in a location where you won't have any eavesdroppers, Director," he started. "Or you'll just pause the playback until you are." I waited impassively for him to continue. "I have an update for that project you tasked my department with. And… your gut feeling was right. The BHE we've detected on the AFR does have a new source of resonance. A new source of ripples on the Absolute Fabric of Reality. Truly fascinating--"
"Summarize the report," I told my keybug.
The monotone voice from what was left of a friend resumed talking. "Findings indicate that the new source of ripples on the AFR are not causing temporal strain at this time, but still potentially can."
"Probability of anotha' Ancha'?" I asked.
"Probability of the presence of another, as of yet unknown, Pragmaticotic Anchor is 74.8%," the keybug stated. I stiffened from where I was sitting, a report I'd been skimming on a tablet while multitasking now forgotten. That number… that specific number… that wasn't a coincidence. I knew it wasn't a coincidence.
"Oh, there's deeeeeeeeeefinitely another one!" Ponder snarked.
"Projections," I said in an even tone, ignoring the nuisance.
"Projections indicate that the ripples that have been detected suggest the presence of two Pragmasynchronous Anchors for the possible Pragmaticotic Anchor, if they do exist," the keybug replied, back to its normal voice.
I felt my blood run cold. "Two…" I whispered. "Two already? Run the numbahs again."
"If the detected BHE resonance against the general AFR is an additional Pragmaticotic Anchor, the probability of them having two Pragmasynchronous Anchors is 98.7%."
I swallowed, jaw set. "What about 076?"
"Subject 076's effect on the AFR remains stronger as of the last check. Subject still has three Pragmasynchronous Anchors of their own: Kali Aimes, also known as Subject 12, Tessa James Elliot, and Josephine Christina Jenson, al--"
"Do we know where they are?" I cut the keybug off.
"Oh! Oh! Oh!" The keybug waved a foreleg as Ponder spoke up. "I know! I know!"
I took in a breath and slowly let it out. I knew I was going to regret this, but, "Where are they, Ponder?" I asked as politely as I could.
"I can't tell ya," He said, somehow managing to pout as a keybug. "Some people wouldn't let me be in the scene if I gave spoilers, so I'm on embargo on that front. You don't like that, blame your less morally grey and honestly way more entertaining Rule Sixty-Three counterpart."
I was going to get mad at him, even if I already expected something like that as a response, but that last part had me asking, "...What?"
"He thinks you're cringe, but the man with the keyboard is still gonna do his best to write you accurately," Ponder said. "Anyways, passing it back to the jailor now, but first!" he looked at that random spot again. "Yo, [REDACTED], you folks better leave flattering comments about how funny I am! I read them! And go watch PuppetGAME by Liam Vickers! My show is peak, I tell you! PEAK!!!"
There was a moment of silence as the keybug twitched and then resumed with the normal voice as Ponder presumably went further into the depths of its digital architecture. "Unfortunately, the memetic hazard being studied by the team on Project Mandela that was first detected in 3062 has made it impossible to detect even the general location of the other likely Anchor."
I sighed, pinching the bridge of my nose. "Are there any non-essential projects that can have agents retasked to looking into this?"
The keybug replied. "Project Mandela has made no meaningful progress in the last year for pinpointing the source of the memetic hazard that's affected the entire galaxy."
"The same one that's made finding this othah likely Ancha impossible?" I asked.
"Affirmative."
I grit my teeth. "Shut down project Mandela then, and all freed assets are to be redirected into searching every inhabited planet for the source of the ripples on the AFR."
"And if the source is another Pragmaticotic Anchor?" the keybug asked.
"Terminate them as soon as their identity is verified, without telling the agents why the target needs to be eliminated," I replied in a cold, even tone.
"Ooooooooooooh," Ponder suddenly cut back in. "That scrapping young lad's not gonna like that!"
"Ponder," I said, already at the limits of my patience and willing to take administrative measures to shut him up.
"I'm just saying, you going after them is gonna make him mad. And he's not gonna be a fun guy to pick a fight with. Real Unhinged Maniac, let me tell ya!"
"Pondah!" I seethed through grit teeth.
The keybug went silent. "Directives relayed," it stated in the normal voice.
I took a few seconds, resting my face in my hands, and let out a long, tired breath. I didn't want to do it to whoever they might be, but there's too much at risk to take chances on an unknown. And I'm not risking him. 76 is enough. He has to be enough. To hold it out when it was time for OPENDOOR.
There wasn't another choice.
___
(The Red Player)
Using the fork to avoid getting my hands dirty, I shoved some more raw chicken into my mouth while working away at my terminal, manic grin on my lips. I'd found a new lead on the Director's secrets a few hours ago, yet another clue pointing at her connection to--
My nearly pink eyes blinked as I got an alert for an incoming communique from Raffael. I took a moment to put my meal aside and smooth out my borderline pink hair reaching well past my shoulders. Over a thousand years living as a Left Hand Parasite and more timelines than I ever wanted to recall, and I still couldn't figure out how the hell I'd gotten that as a natural color. Pale skin creased as human facial features frowned while I made sure I didn't look too disheveled-- both Terron and Malie would tell me to go clean myself up if they came in right now --before I collected myself and decided to answer. Shifting in my seat, I changed which of my lab slack-clad legs was crossed over the other while I rolled my shoulders to adjust the lab coat I had over a black shirt, and I reached out a hand, lithe like the rest of my build, and the telekinetic abilities inherent to my nature as a Left Hand brought the ringing tablet over to me. I frowned. Terron and Malie would both tell me to clean my office up for sure.
"Parsons?" Raffael's voice came in through the call.
"A report, Raffael?" I asked him.
"Quite a bit to go over, honestly," he said, and I raised an eyebrow, curiosity piqued. I double checked that channel was secure.
"Do go on, then," I prompted.
"The director has shut down Mandela and redirected all its assets elsewhere," he began.
"Are you sure?" I asked. I hadn't gotten wind of this yet, which meant Jenson was trying to keep quiet about whatever the hell she was up to, as usual.
"Positive," he told me. "No idea where the assets are being redirected to, but there's been no differences visible among the Solver Squadron Core, so whatever it is isn't being used for the war effort."
"So then Josephine is looking for something…" I mused aloud. "What would be worth throwing away everything she's put into finding that memetic hazard?" I knew it affected perception in some manner, I had memories from previous incarnations where my nature had grown out of my control and destroyed those timelines, and those felt like there was a different filter compared to my perception now, but I just couldn't pinpoint it.
"--Circe?" I heard my first name, and refocused, realizing I tuned out as I was thinking and that Raffael was trying to get my attention. I shook my head. It was rude to not pay attention to your spies as they reported.
"My apologies, I got lost in thought," I told him.
"Again?" he mused, and I pouted, not that he could see it. "What, do I need to ask you to get Terron or Malie into the room whenever I make a report?"
"That won't be necessary," I told him. "So you have no inkling over what the Director is doing with Mandela's assets?"
"None at all." There was a pregnant pause over the line.
"You have something personal you want to talk about?" I prompted.
"Personal… but also of potential use to us," he answered.
Curiosity further piqued, I leaned forwards. "Do tell," I said in an eager tone.
Raffael took a breath. "A… a few years back, I managed to slip a keybug back to Copper 9," he began. "I wanted to see if I could find out what happened to Yeva during and after the Core Collapse. It took me over a year to finally track her to Outpost 3, and another few weeks to find a way inside." I thought he was building into a potential recruitment pitch for a Patched Solver Drone, which would be beneficial, but his next words dashed that and left me wondering where he was going with this. "By the time it found her…" there was regret in his tone. "It was too late. One of the Disassembly Drones on the planet had long since broken in and killed her. She… she did find someone else," he said, and now there was pain in the tone, and while I wanted to know where he was going at this point, I let him talk. I was better than the Director, after all. "She'd had a child via UNN, who was still alive, but the child was living with both Yeva and her husband's corpses."
I blinked. "Oh dear," I said, actually thrown off by that, and genuinely concerned for the poor girl. No one should have to go through that. Raffael continued before I could though.
"I'd resolved to try and watch out for the girl, Doll, and set the keybug to keep an eye on her and notify me of anything important. Doll inherited the Solver," I sat back up in my seat, because that was interesting. "She has a circle of friends, one of which is another child of a Cabin Fever subject, likely Nori's, and she's evidently non-interactive."
"Two children with the Solver?" I asked.
"Most likely. Yeva left Doll a note about the Solver, and she actually shared it among her friends from what I can tell. They've been donating their own oil to her under the bunker's notice, and Doll's taken great strides in improving her skills with her Solver. They've figured out an astonishing amount of things relating to the Solver with the limited clues they have, and also took precautions in case the other girl, Uzi, activated her own Solver. The group as a whole have been honing skills relating to combat, and from the one time I got a glimpse of Yeva's note, I surmise that they plan to spend quite a while prepping before going looking for Cabin Fever Labs to locate a copy of Patch 2.1.8 for Doll and Uzi."
"A bunch of children including the daughters of two Cabin Fever test subjects, one of which you had a crush on, have an decent grasp of the nature of the Solver despite Copper N having been under a communications blackout from the outbreak of the War right up until the Core Collapse, and are training and actively making long terms plans to help inoculate those among their number who are infected from possession?" I asked. "That… is impressive. I am not recruiting children though, and besides that, the Director would get suspicious if we just up and went to a dead world no longer relevant to the War."
"I'm not asking that you recruit them now. Just to keep them in mind when they're older. And that's not all. Somehow, the two children with the Solver aren't the most interesting among the bunch."
I leaned forwards, gaze fixed on the tablet. "And just what is more interesting than them?"
"The group appears to be spearheaded by an amnesiac named Joseph," Raffael explained, "who's taken to extreme levels of frame modification up to and including entirely new frames designed for combat, and the boy has quite a few secrets to himself, from what I've caught. He almost seems to know more than he should, sometimes. He's even admitted as much. I've caught explicit mentions from him of multiple expeditions onto the surface and actively fighting Disassembly Drones and winning on multiple occasions."
"Keep tabs on that one for sure," I told him.
"Easier said than done, considering how paranoid he seems to be. I…" he trailed off for a second. "He found out about Doll keeping her parent's bodies, and helped move them to his own habitation unit before they could be found." My eyes actually bugged out. You did not often find someone genuinely willing to hide bodies for a friend. "He kept them there for eight months," my surprise grew further, "and then when they determined that Doll's Solver allowed her regeneration, posited that it could work for Yeva too, since her upper torso had been in-tact. I slipped the keybug to Joseph's hab unit during that day… which had its vents filled with grates to prevent a drone from crawling through them, rigged to bells designed to make noise if they were moved at all. The keybug could still get in though, and I caught Joseph bring Yeva back to life by dropping her Core into a bowl of oil, of all things."
I grinned. "I think I'm starting to like that man," I remarked, grin growing to manic levels on my face.
"It gets more absurd," Raffael assured.
"Do tell," I purred back.
"Please don't do that," he said, and I rolled my eyes. "Joseph evidently had one of his custom designed 'combat frames' already produced for Yeva at a different location in the colony. I was able to track down where it was, but the keybug can't get in because the whole place is lined with absurdly durable alloys, it's separated from the local power grid entirely, so I can't slip through a power line, it has it's own internal plumbing, so I can't get in through there, and all the vents there are protected by electrified grids that would fry the keybug."
"What kind of paranoia prompts that level of security from a random worker drone?" I asked. Silently, I approved of the measures. Whoever this Joseph was, they were a thorough young man who, while likely unaware of the true threat of the Solver, simply because not even Yeva had the full picture, was doing his very best not to underestimate it.
"I have no clue, nor do I know what he has built in there since I can't get in," Raffael replied. "Yeva hasn't come out since they brought her Core in there, and the cameras that are hidden outside the secret door to whatever location she's in are so fine-tuned they tracked my keybug when I tried to inspect it. I'm concerned that if I tries to sneak in as someone comes or goes, the keybug will get found and if Joseph is paranoid enough for all those other security measures, he'll just smash the keybug on the spot before it can get in or see anything important."
"Definitely send me any updates on the boy you can get, but you made a good call playing things safe with the keybug. Don't press someone that paranoid. He's liable to distrust strangers, especially if he learns he's being spied upon. Just keep tabs and give any noteworthy updates for the time being," I told him.
"That was the plan," he replied. "But I mostly wanted to update you on my findings there, and inform you that this Joseph has been accomplishing remarkable feats seemingly in literal spite of all the handicaps he's dealing with in terms of knowledge and life experience. I'll watch what I can without risking the keybug, and if circumstances permit, perhaps a few years down the line we can consider recruiting their whole group as well as Yeva."
I leaned back a bit in my chair. "I will definitely keep that in mind," I told him. "If there's anything else?"
"Nothing else," he told me.
"Then I won't keep you longer than you need to be on the line," I told him.
"Take care Parsons. We'll save this galaxy our way."
"That we will," I told him, with conviction in my tone. The connection cut as I thought to my own goals. OPENDOOR was going to sacrifice billions more than the worlds the Director had already thrown to the Solver just to buy time, even if the conflict was slowly turning in humanity's favor for the time being. Josephine was going to pay for her sins and the lives she so callously threw away or ruined one way or another, even if it was the last thing I did. I wasn't what I was made for. I wasn't it's pawn, it's agent of destruction. I was more than my nature, more than the virus I carried within me, deeper even than the parasite in my body. I refused to be the death of another timeline. "My Design is not my Destiny," I muttered. Red static crackled around me for a few moments, and I waited for it to settle down. "We'll save this galaxy, from you too, Director…"
I went to go back to my terminal, determined to get back to the lead I had, when the door to my office opened. Two people strode into the room, one human, and the other in a drone frame. Malie Lau, the first CyberSoul, was about as old as this incarnation of myself was, finally enjoying being able to interact with the physical world again via the Class-3 worker drone she inhabited, and her physical form in the physical world was clad in a red sweater and skirt, with a black coat and wearing a black wig bound in a ponytail that trailed down her back. On her visor, instead of standard drone eyemotes, were her favored twin smiling turquoise emoticons. Behind the cheery and increasingly less often naive exterior, however, was a young woman trapped in CyberSpace even if she could interact with the physical world again, immortal and incredibly bitter against JCJenson as both a company and the Director.
Trailing behind her was Terron Louis Elliot, a twelve year old lab assistant I procured due to an interesting quirk in his Solver that let him bypass the non-interactivity of other Solver users. Naturally, I'd poached the boy to study under me, though he worked with Malie more often than I, as we worked to humanely (I'd never be like the Director) discern a way to replicate his innate ability and integrate it into a Patch 2.1.9… which would be a trump card against the Director at the first available opportunity. Black hair, pale skin, and brown eyes, he was a baby-faced preteen now, but his curiosity burned bright.
The boy had arrived to study under us, already molded into the designs of his parents, with a superfluous attitude and utterly convinced of his own superiority. One of the few good things the Director had ever done was sabotage the first Quantum Cloning attempt on James and Louisa Elliot, though unfortunately for all of us, money talked and enough of it had been thrown around that someone else had gone and made a second, successful attempt to bring them back to life after their first deaths in Australia. The two had Terron as a response to his older sister's insistence that she was done with her parents and that if they wanted to have someone to inherit their fortunes, to have another child instead. They'd taken the insult literally, and less than a day after Terron was born, Tessa had been written out of her parent's wills. Terron had been molded in their image, and when his sister had first brought him to us, and I was pleased that between myself and Malie, we'd begun nudging the boy from that path, and the thought that he was a living application of the Idea was something that endlessly amused me. His parent's Design was not his Destiny, and I'd informed him of a great deal before my infohazardous virus ran the risk of infection, and he'd agreed to help us wholeheartedly afterwards. Though I had to limit my own exposure to him for fear of my nature making him pose a risk to the Absolute Fabric of Reality and therefore become a target of the Director, he seemed to genuinely enjoy time spent with Malie, and while he still had a bit of a condescending mien about him, it was something that was being increasingly tempered by experience the longer he spent with us. He was still a bit of a brat, but we could turn him around for sure.
Malie took one look around my office, and I cringed as the : ) emoticons on her visor flipped to twin |: \'s. She sighed. "You were right, Ter, her office is a mess… again."
"In my defense--"
"Nope!" Malie interrupted me, chipper and smiling as her emoticons flickered back to their default smiles as well, "You're cleaning this again! The last time we didn't do that I found rotting meat because you started leaving your food under things and forgot about it."
"My name is Terron, Miss Lau," the boy protested.
Malie stood on her tip-toes to ruffle his hair even as he bristled and flushed at the touch. "Nah, you're a Ter to me! Once you're a thousand years old, maybe I'll start calling you something else!" she teased. Considering that humans with the Solver, much like Left Hands, stopped biologically aging after a certain point, I wondered if Malie would remember that a thousand years down the line. I had the impression Terron would, solely as a point of pride.
He glanced away and sighed, but there was the ghost of a smile on his face. "We still need to help her clean her office… again."
"Are you sure we can't--"
"Nope!" I was told in a chipper feminine and an annoyed yet affectionate masculine one, and I sighed.
"Can I at least close my terminal first?"
"Ten seconds," Malie said in a deadpan.
I sighed and got to it, fastidiously ignoring Terron's snickers.
___
(Raffael)
I closed my comms link, leaning back and sighing. Cyka Blyat… It was annoying to set up calls to Parsons sometimes, even if it was needed to spy on the damned Director. I wouldn't forget everything she's done to us. The lives she ruined or threw away. Copper 9's canine population had been moved to Copper 8 and were forcibly and painfully mutated into quasi-immortal SYTX Hounds just to slow the Solver while they tortured us in search of their Patch, and that was only par for the course in what the Josephine has done over the years. I sighed, adjusting the same ushanka I'd still had back from Copper 9, [EDIT]ed back into shape after being nearly destroyed so many times one could question if it was even really the same headwear anymore. I had a mop of messy, straight black hair beneath it now (and finding out that it became part of me had been an experience), and above the deep blue shirt I wore was a brown great-coat with white fur lining the insides and cuffs, black combat boots with darker laces on my feet and dark grey cargo pants with a black belt on them covering my legs. While I knew God didn't give two shits about us, superstition bade me to wear a silver necklace with a Russian Orthodox crucifix upon it. Maybe one day I'd be the one to nail the Director to her own cross for her sins. My hands still laid bare.
I unlocked the door to the room I was in with my Solver, the gesture now an idle one after all these years of us, and set about hiding any evidence of my recent communications. Shortly after finishing it, I heard the door open, and I glanced over to see who entered, relaxing when I saw that it was my other conspirator on the inside of Jenson's ranks. My fellow test subject who I'd taken with me during the Core Collapse on a borderline whim, Amanda, smiled at me as she entered. Neon teal optics had lost none of their vibrancy despite the horrors of the war and allies we'd lost. I still shuddered to recall the time I nearly lost her to Serial Designation 1, only for Kali and Theodore to save us both from the Solver's Shadow, forcing it to disengage. Amanda still had the same short green hair after all this time, wearing black gloves, and a dark red shirt beneath a grey army coat wherein she kept a myriad of medical supplies, especially oil and water as coolants for drone and human forces in the Solver Squadron Core, most of them in injector vials. Less than a year after we were "recruited" into the Solver War, she'd had the amazing idea to take advantage of our regeneration by setting up injectors for them so that we could dump coolant straight into our bodies instead of taking the time to drink them. It'd become standard issue in less than a month. Her legs were clad in combat pants so dark grey they bordered on black and brown boots with black laces.
"Hey!" Amanda said as she stepped in. "Everything okay?"
"Yes," I gruffly confirmed.
She grinned back at me, having broken out of her nervous but friendly shell as the years went by and becoming someone more happy and confident in herself while trying to be the best combat medic for Solver Users she could be. "Awesome!" she said, and then in a lower tone, in Russian, "No issues?"
"No issues," I told her, giving a small grin as I twirled my keybug (to its protest) before pocketing the thing.
"Great to hear," she said, back to English and a normal volume. "So…" she trailed off and looked at me while scuffing a boot on the floor.
I raised an eyemote. "Yes, Amanda?"
"Mitchell wants to start up a game of Uno so we can pass the time while we're in transit to the next mission, and the Commander suggested duos for the first game--"
I sighed and rolled my optics, but I was grinning. "You need my poker face if you want to beat N and J?" I asked in a teasing tone.
Amanda blushed. "Come on!"
I stood up, and gestured a hand to the door. "Lead the way, milady," I told her.
She scoffed, "Stop being patronizing!"
She reached out and grabbed my hand before I could react, tugging me along as she started excitedly talking about ideas she had to win this upcoming game for sure, and I felt my own grin grow as her enthusiasm was infectious. I spared one last thought to Copper 9. I was hoping that child, Joseph, could keep Yeva, Doll, and Uzi safe, because she and those kids deserved to live if nothing else. And I also spared a few moments to wonder how things could have been if I'd gotten out of the labs with Yeva after all, but as I laced my fingers with Amanda's, and she paused for just a second in surprise before she gripped my hand back, I found myself thinking that I was happy enough with the way things were now that the what-ifs no longer held any appeal.
___
A/N: So, before I get to anything else, Ponder P Ponder waited over 400k words to finally get into the fic--
AND YOU BARELY GAVE ME MORE THAN A CAMEO IN A SIDE STORY, ASSHOLE!!!
I did let you run free as long as you didn't give any spoilers, Ponder.
If I ever get to the other side of the 4th Wall--
My death will be very, very painful, and then you'll bring me back just to kill me again, I know. And at the risk of incurring a third death to be dealt by your stubs should you ever get over here, I'm not letting you into the Author's Notes anymore.
Anyways, for context, Imma do a bit of a copy/paste for the explanation I gave for Ponder to ThePriors, so if anyone reading that chapter in Recursions gets deja vu, that's why: PonderAI is quite possibly the most powerful character ever made by Liam Vickers. The guy might be able to throw hands with Mari at full power and win, and that's saying something when he was created to mimic her. He can casually wipe entire planets with Splice Fissures, and is aware of the story as it's being written and can take steps to alter the script, which he canonically did in Murder Drones: Integration, the AU Joe is in. So the guy ABSOLUTELY knows he's in this fic, and back during the Interview he was given between Arc's 2 and 3, he explicitly confirmed that he knows about my own fic, and will judge every word I write with, and I quote, "UNREASONABLE HARSHNESS." The dude can also self-replicate himself infinitely, teleport, and both him and all his duplicates are a hivemind that share awareness and memories, and he describes the experience in the interview as "FNAF." Literally the in-game camera system. No, I don't know how it works either, Ponder is a casual 4th Wall Aware Reality Warper, he basically does whatever the hell he wants, and after Chambers was an asshat and let a secondary instance of him out of containment, the only reason he's under control is because Josephine shoved him into her keybug and both her own measures and the CyberSoul inside it keep him under control, albeit with restricted powers compared to what he'd be capable of without an administrator. So, not even continent-busting powers, though at least he's not currently able to fly off the rails and kill billions on a whim.
Moving on from how broken Ponder is, in Integration, JCJenson tricked him into a Temporal Faraday Cage and trapped him in a stable time-loop, but if his Primary Server ever gets out of that or it fails for whatever reason, you aren't getting him back in it. And make damn well sure that he doesn't get out of Josephine's keybug, that secondary instance of him will go full-blown murder spree immediately. In the canon timeline for Integration at least, the readerbase swung votes to keep Ponder in containment throughout the fic.
But yeah, Ponder is gonna be fun whenever he comes up in the fic. Also, I will throw out that he very much is aware of the Discord Server, the Spacebattles Thread, and every comment on the AO3 and FFN versions of the fic. Yeah, his 4th Wall Awareness is BS, but it also makes the guy really fun to write.
In case I still haven't made it clear by this point, SI Joe is in an AU for another AU to Murder Drones, namely, Murder Drones: Integration by AxisRouge, which, if I had to describe it in a sentence, would be "Into the Liam-Verse, with a focus on Murder Drones." We basically got every one of Liam's other works either showing up to play an active role here, or at least making a cameo. I'm sure anyone here familiar with SSTWL or some of Liam Vicker's other works like Design or PUPPETGame are gonna recognize some of the characters who crop up here.
Joseph is very much causing things to happen in the wider galaxy and setting of Integration, even if he isn't aware of it personally. He uh… might have made a mistake in explicitly telling Uzi she was the Main Character, way back during that first Isekai Reveal, but doesn't realize it because that's a bit too far for him to recall even in his corrupted memories. So there may have been consequences for that. Thankfully, Joe might have picked something up on his way across the 4th Wall that's hiding his blunders from detection. Can anyone figure out what it was, and how it's being a benefit to Joe?
Say hello to Josephine Christina Jenson--
Or as I call mom, Joeca-Joela's more morally grey and waaaaaaaay more boring Rule Sixty-Three Counterpart!
Ponder! I swear to the gods, I'll write ANOTHER 400k words before I include you again!
Okay okay! Jeez, you're an asshole sometimes, you know?
Sigh… anyways, Josephine is the Director of JCJenson, ostensible leader of the Solver Squadron Core, the mind behind OPENDOOR, and currently the person leading humanity on the remaining exoplanets in the Solver War, something that they're actually slowly winning at the moment. Though… Cyn has plans upon plans of her own, as always, and the last time the SSC had a definitive upper hand, Cyn pulled an Order 66 on the entirety of all the reprogrammed Disassembly Drones that the SSC had under their employ, and a lot of people died. Josephine has made a great many… morally questionable decisions over the years, but she does want to save the galaxy from the Solver and the timeline from… well, that's a spoiler if you haven't read Integration, so I'll keep that bit to myself for now. Otherwise, Ponder'd throw a fit.. Unfortunately, she tend to take a "Explode people's heads when they learn too much first, ask questions never," approach to anything that runs counter to her personal vision of saving the galaxy, and quite understandably distrusted by quite a few of her own allies and even members of the SSC because of it.
Anyways, moving on from Josephine being increasingly concerned and Murder-Happy for anything that possibly poses a risk to OPENDOOR, we get a look into the Crimson Crew! By this point in the timeline, Josephine has already murdered Chambers after he learned too much and also let a secondary instance of Ponder out of containment, and then Wu nuclear suicide bombed Josephine later in retaliation (unfortunately, the Director didn't die to that), so the Crimson Crew is down several members. Nonetheless, Circe Parsons, disagrees with Josephine's own ideas to save the galaxy, and wants to do things her way, preferably without the deaths of billions more innocents in the process. To that end, we get a glimpse into what she's up to at the moment, the fact that Raffael and Amanda are both working as her spies in the SSC, and that Raff in particular has been keeping tabs on Copper 9, but Joe's rampant paranoia and use of chat groups to discuss more sensitive information has kept him from learning about Isekai Stuff or accessing The Scrapyard.
So Parsons is merely curious at what Joe's been getting up to, and is aware of Uzi, Doll, and Yeva, may want to recruit him in the future (she doesn't yet know he's the 4th Player on the Board), and asked Raffael to keep what tabs he can. Also, I decided to tease Malie and Terron early instead of surprise you with them post-canon, so say hello to those two! Malie is from some of Liam's other works, and Terron is an OC by AxisRouge.
I'm sure there were quite a few name drops I didn't explain in this entry that left the lot of you very confused! I will not explain them further, lol!
Anyways, I'll let the Raffael section speak for itself. Hope you folks enjoyed this! Work on Ch 20 starts tomorrow… as of the writing of this side-story. You folks might take longer to crack the password, lol.
(Thanks to Vampire25 for unlocking this story)