Mind Superior
Strength: standard
Body: standard
Agility: standard
Background
As we roll out of the sheets, the first question we must ask ourselves is how did we get here? Now by ‘here’ I do not mean the entirety of our lives in a large philosophical notion of existence, but I mean why are we here, naked to the waist with my brother’s fiancee’s palm wrapped around my throat? And of course I do not mean ‘we’ in the sense of you and I, because you were not really in that sweat plastered Bedroom with me, her, and him.
I only include you for two reasons, the first of which is to make use of a simple narration technique which helps bring the story alive. The second is the far more elaborate, and far more necessary reason. You need to be there with me, warming the cold wood paneling with the fire in your soles, staring at the livid beauty before us as she tries to choke the life out of you. If you are not there with me, if you do not travel at my side through my journey you will never comprehend anything as it truly is, as I see it. You will be tempted to criticize, judge, or moralize my behavior as you see fit. You may find my actions bold, stupid, dishonest, despicable, or even dare I say it, likeable. This is not my concern. You know nothing and I would sell the entirety of your opinions for a bridge in Manhattan.
However, this is my story, and despite what the Sentinels may claim about me, the only version of the story that matters is mine. And you weren’t there. That said, I feel like telling it to you anyway, but to do so properly I must start with the beginning and the end, at the alpha and the omega, the origin of all that matters for me; I must begin with myself. I am a bastard.
Personality
This differs from what my brother once categorized me as. He called me an annoyance and an egotistical ass. I am not an ass, I am a bastard, and I feel I need to clarify the difference. An ass digresses from the rules and regulations of normal human behavior primarily out of ignorance or slothfulness. A bastard perceives those same regulations, recognizes them as ludicrous, and dedicates his life to violating them at every turn as a benefit to humanity as a whole. An ass borrows your weed whacker and never returns it; a bastard annexes your lawn and executes your dog as an Enemy of the State. An ass pleasures your wife then runs out the window as he hears you pull into the driveway. A bastard demands you bring your virgin daughters before him as he claims the Droit Du Seigneur over the peasants living in the territory belonging to what he now defines as “The Barony of Badassia”. To complete the rule of three I should probably give you a third example, but that’s your problem.
The difference between an ass and a bastard should now be clear, and these differences have distinct practical applications. The response to an ass is varied, but is always based in pity; you can correct his mistake, ignore his follies, or at worst beat him to prove a point to others. A bastard is not to be pitied, he evokes either admiration or loathing, and nothing else. The only solutions are to worsphip him or to have him shot. Before I begin our story it is important to know this. I am a bastard. I will never quit, and I will not be ignored. Let us begin,
Environmental awareness 4(6)
It began as most sibling rivalries do, with a philosophical debate about the nature of morality. He believed our powers were best suited for subtle manipulations of the timestream that left humanity unaware of the debt it owed us. I believed our powers were best suited for cheating the stock market, sneaking into the Playboy Mansion, and tweaking world events to cause a nuclear showdown every decade or so. I no longer actually believe that these were objectively better options, but there are no objectively ‘good’ options, and these were sufficiently entertaining for the time.
He spent all time on his path as I did on mine. We eventually moved past the altruism vs objectivism debate, and onto something more universal. He found his work engaging, challenging and fulfilling. Mine convinced me it was all pointless. Really, all of it, life, death, existence, all of it completely pointless. The entirety of universal history was a set of dominos that had been tipped over so long ago that no one remembers what started it all. When you can see outside the dominos and manipulate it all so that things fall your way, you experience euphoria. Then glee. Then amiable pleasantness. Then moderate anxiety. Then you get pissed and start kicking the dominos across the floor. I could take anything I wanted, and therefore I wanted absolutely nothing, and the only person who could understand me was being a massive prick about it.
I tried to convince him it was all a waste, that despite all his attempts, all the powers we commanded, that manipulating events to guide the time stream would be pointless because we were outside of it. No matter how much virtue he places in his work, its nothing more than a game, and one he should have gotten bored of by now. We argued for some time, a nihilist neer-do-well and pacifist with a God complex. And he says I’m the egotistical one. Suffice to say the discussion did not go well; if you’ve never seen Zen swear it’s a funny thing. Its one of the few things in the world that still retains some element of surprise to me, and that’s what makes it so entertaining.
It was at that point that he shifted out and I was left with some bleak sense of raison d'être. My new purpose in life would be to show my brother how pointless his was.
Teleportation 6 (12)
My first attempts were crude and unnecessarily direct. I shadowed him from a distance; anytime he did something, I’d undo it. If he’d save a busload of school children, then I’d shift them over the mid-Atlantic, only to see him shift them back a moment later.
If he’d spend his day arranging events so that a young Congolese boy became an artist, I’d spend the better part of the night finding ways I could turn him into a soldier. Yes, President for life Jean Zoma, I did that. You’re welcome world.
It eventually became so bad that his friend MegaTon would show up every now and again and to annihilate me out of sheer spite. I would of course always know that he was coming, wait till the very last millisecond before he would fire, then move out of the way so that he would blow up an office building, or a rainforest, or something like that.
However while this was all relatively amusing, it wasn’t really accomplishing what I wanted it to. Rather than reveal to my brother the ludicrousness of his goal, it only made him more convinced that things would be working perfectly, if not for my interference. It was at that point that he tried to murder me.
Super Speed 4 (16)
I’m sure Zen could go on and on about time-space manipulation, and matter and energy, but what good does that do you? Your stuck inside the continuum, so you can never really comprehend what exactly we’re doing. For this reason I will define time manipulation as moving very fast. That’s’ not exactly what it is, but for you, that’s basically the general idea.
When Zen hit me, I thought I was going to regurgitate my lunch. I also came to a very quick realization. No one had ever hit me before. They never could. And now this avowed pacifist had just done it. That has to be ironic, doesn’t it? I responded in a mature and dignified fashion, by attempting to hit him back.
We went back and forth, forth and back, shifting all over the place, moving through matter, energy, space, and time, all that crap. But that doesn’t help you much in imagining it. A few people who witnessed it said it looked like two hazy smudges emerging from nothing, shooting into each other, then disappearing again. From what I later understood, Zen apparently had some big plan to have the Alpha Sentinel Dr. Raven scramble my brains without killing me, thereby neutralizing me while they could still claim some sort of moral high ground. However at one point I shifted south instead of north as he had guessed, and the whole thing just sort of fell apart.
The fight ended non-spectacularly. We both simultaneously realized how pointless it was for two people with nigh omnipotence to try and fight each other, so we just sort of stopped. He went on to try and save the world one domino at a time, just as he had before, while I altered my strategy.
Danger Sense 4 (20)
I can foresee nearly every conceivable event, worlds and possibilities without number, and most of them are all practically the same. Men are born, play their petty role upon the stage, then die. This happens a lot. Even in some cases where they die, then play some role in the world, and our reborn, the basics are all there, it’s just the order that’s been tinkered with. It’s not that extraordinary.
You will notice I talk about my brother a lot. That is because he is one of the few things in existence that still surprise me. He sees everything I see, as I see everything he does, yet still manages to come to the wrong conclusion. Additionally, because we are both outside the continuum, he is the only actor whose moves I cannot predict. The same is true for me of him, although he may never admit that.
It is for this reason that I still continue to annoy him. For the most part I no longer attempt to play the supervillain just so I can laugh maniacally in his face. That route was getting me nowhere. I now feel that I must show the absurdity in the overall structure of human society which he holds so dear. Little things, little rules and expectations, which are all utterly meaningless when you look at the big picture. Yes, I parked in a handicap zone. The old crippled sack of flesh is going to die in three months and five days whether I park here or not, so does it really matter?
I now turn to the action which I first began this story with in an attempt to lure you into the narrative. It appeared that my brother still held one social contrivance in deep respect, despite that he knows as well as I that it has historically been a staple of slavery, subjugation, discrimination, and physical violence. Additionally, why any woman would want to marry my brother is a question even beyond my abilities…
(its not really; I know why she did it, but I choose to over-exaggerate for comic effect.)
Power Manipulation (Immunity: tactician) 4 (24)
I am the anti-plotter. I am the anti-tactician. The more you know, the more you know that what you know is so much less than what you could know. And once you know all of that, you realize that everything you know, everything there is to know, is not worth knowing. You see?
I must be clear, this is not about chaos. It is very fashionable these days to talk about anarchy and destroying the social order. That’s not what I’m talking about. For starters, chaos needs order. Without order, chaos is just the way things are, which makes it mundane, boring, and orderly. That’s why the whole thing is pointless. Chaos, Order, Life, Death; it doesn’t matter if they all fall in a straight line or if you throw them onto the floor, because they’re still just *vulgarity*ing dominos.
And yet I still find myself flicking one over every now and again just to prove a point.
She was so still between the sheets. I put on some of his clothes; I think we kind of look the same right? Well, we do when the lights are out. I slithered into bed next to her and did my best Zen impression. While it isn’t pleasant, I am aware of the fact that my brother copulates. However from what I can tell he does not do so often enough, and so she was more than willing to meet me half way.
My visions showed that if I kept at a steady pace I could finish before she realized the stranger in her midst, Zen would never see my actions until she told him, and he would realize the utter absurdity of trying to make a monogamous bond with another human being. However what I could not foresee is that he would return home whilst I was still within her ‘midst’, to inform her of some pressing danger somewhere, as caped couples do from time to time. As the lights flicked on, she saw him, then saw me, realized I was not him, and lunged for my throat.
I quickly shifted across the room and attempted the Droit Du Seigneur line I quoted earlier; unfortunately I couldn’t get so much as an annoyed sigh out of him, which defeated the point of doing it all, so I didn’t really feel like finishing. She was rather irritated at the whole incident as well, and wouldn’t have let me even if I asked.
Perhaps it accomplished nothing, but it amused me for some time, so I don’t truly regret it. Eventually I will prove my point, but after that I don’t know what I’ll have left. I might kill myself, but maybe not; I feel this world still needs bastards like me.
