Leon awoke with a groan, tensing against frigid wind that blew just hard enough to almost make him shiver.
He was on a mountain top surrounded by a massive plain of snow and ice, the air just above freezing.
Before he had a chance to properly assess his current situation, a heavy thunk rang out from beside his head and he rolled away worried his head would be next.
Looking up, he saw the man who'd been addressed as Auros was standing there with an exasperated look on his face.
"If I was going to kill you, I obviously could, and would, have done it well before you woke up, fool."
With a severe expression on his face and his baseball cap missing, Auros looked…like Leon…but different in subtle ways.
His face was sharper, he lacked Leon's black patch and his hair was stark white all the way through instead of just at his bangs. He lifted and held a massive greatsword in one hand like it was nothing, resting it on his shoulder. It was a nondescript gray, like something you might find from a novice blacksmith, but in Auros's hands it practically seemed to vibrate with energy.
A playful voice came from behind Leon, "You'll have to forgive Auros, he's been kicking about for longer than either of us and its made him…well, kind of a jerk."
"That would be Nexus, as he's called now," Auros said, his voice audibly done with the man.
Looking up at Nexus, who was sitting on his heels with a mischievous look on his face.
Another doppelganger.
Supposedly we all have something in the realm of one in a billion chance of meeting someone who looks just like us, but here Leon was with two of him not only staring him down, but having kidnapped him.
Nexus, similar to Auros, bore Leon's general resemblance with the exception of significantly more joyful signs on his face, in addition to a more gently rounded facial structure.
Their voices even sounded similar to his.
"Get up."
Auros's voice reverberated through the air as he grew impatient with Leon just laying there.
"You've been squeaking by with sheer brute force, and honestly I'm sick of watching you. If you're going to pretend to be a swordsman, you're going to bleed for the honor of being good at it."
Nexus chuckled and said, "That's his way of saying we're here to train you."
Leon looked at Auros swinging his sword impossibly fast through the air, the greatsword moving fast enough to make a buzzing sound as it cut the air apart and looked back at Nexus and asked, "What are you going to teach me?"
"You're taking this pretty easily," he answered with an amused expression.
"Is getting upset about it going to change anything?"
Auros answered by slamming the greatsword into the ice and saying, "No."
Leon shrugged and said, "Then why bother getting all wound up?"
"As laid back as last time, I like that about you," Nexus said with a laugh, "I'm going to be teaching you proper magic instead of letting you piddle along with this System guided nonsense you keep failing to cast."
Before Leon could tell him that he couldn't cast any spells at all, Nexus nodded past him and said, "Might wanna move, bud."
Without waiting, Leon pushed downward and launched himself into the air right as that slab of steel swiped right where his head had been seconds prior.
"Leon. I'm sure you're probably feeling lost right now, aren't you?"
He landed on his feet ten feet away, digging his fingers into the ice to stop himself from sliding too far.
"You probably feel like things are too easy, don't you?"
Auros flicked his wrist and sent the sword spinning like a buzzsaw at Leon, taking a single step and appearing behind him and grabbing his shoulders to hold him in place.
Leon's reflexes froze in place, watching the sword spin at him in slow motion while he moved to break free of Auros's grasp. He tried to at least, since the man's grip felt like titanium bars locking him down. Up until now, nothing had even come close to overpowering him, or even pressuring him really.
He had completed dozens of Gates, fought enough bosses he'd honestly lost count since they hadn't really impacted him all that much. It should go without saying that this was not the normal Gate Walker experience, and now Leon got a small glimpse at what it felt like to be on the brink of life and death.
Seconds passed by, feeling like hours, as the sword spun towards him and he struggled, fighting to break free.
In the last moment before the sword arrived, Auros leaned in and asked, "Why are you about to die?"
The sword finished its final rotation and slammed into Leon, crashing into his chest at full force.
He heard Nexus laughing behind him as he wondered, "Why am I about to die?"
Jennifer stood in an office that could have easily been in any building around the world. There was absolutely nothing of note within, from the desk to the "You can do it!" poster behind her, she was convinced it had to have been specifically designed to be the purest definition of unimpressive.
Similar to the office, the man behind the desk was practically indistinguishable from the average person walking the street prior to the Tutorial Tower taking those kinds of people away.
Looking up from the paper documents she'd handed him moments prior, Marcus raised an eyebrow at the sloppy handwriting and barely detailed reporting. He sighed as he pushed himself back from the desk and said, "She's really not getting any better, is she?
Oh Lilac…what am I going to do with you?"
"May I be totally honest with you, sir?"
Looking at her like she might have the actual answers he was looking for, he nodded.
"I think its time to move on."
Marcus tapped his forefinger on his desk, flicking his eyes between the young woman whose life he'd irrevocably altered and the reports she'd handed him before asking, "Why?"
Jennifer sighed as she said, "Lilac is…she's spiralling sir. She spends her off hours drinking and fraternizing with the mercenaries she should be contracting. In fact, I have reason to believe she has a team set aside just to spend time with her. I understand she's been through something traumatic, but at this point she's endangering herself and the teams she's commissioning."
Several minutes passed as Marcus started pushing the papers around on the desk, either stalling for time or considering what to say.
"Do you remember the experiments, Jennifer?"
The question took her off guard and she shook her head slowly, unsure what he was aiming for.
"The concept was simple. Find children who were compatible and introduce Void energy to their mana and create the first Void Mage. All of our records and research said it should have been possible and our preparations were flawless, or so we thought."
He gestured to a chair that appeared from his inventory and continued, "As it turns out, nothing involving the Void is simple. Something we weren't aware of is that any human that even perceives the Void goes, at least a little, mad."
A confused look crossed her face as he lifted his head in acknowledgement.
"The Crimson Affliction."
Her eyes widened as he waved away any questions, "That single miscalculation cost you all of your peers. Forty nine perfectly innocent children and teenagers, all dead in the wake of our shoddy predictions. It was a terrible day, and in an excessively long life of terrible days, it was the worst I'd seen in a long time."
She waited patiently as the overhead fan rocked slightly on its languid rotation.
"In that project, we introduced barely a sliver of Void energy to your test group, not even enough to cast a single spell."
He stopped talking and there was silence for a moment before she said, "Well Void energy is intense, that much per person without any training or previous exp-"
"The entire group," he cut her off with a solemn expression.
"What?"
He opened his hand and a tiny pinprick of glowing purple and black fire burned itself into existence above it as he said, "We used this much for your entire group, not per person."
Jennifer's eyes flickered to red as she reached out to the flame and gestured for it to come to her.
The little impossibility bounced from Marcus's hand to her own and she felt the incredible amount of power it contained just levitating over her palm.
"What I want you to remember, Jennifer, is that Lilac was exposed to the Void itself."
She looked up at Marcus in shock, almost losing control of the flame as she did.
"The Void…the Void isn't like any other type of affinity or energy, Jennifer. Technically the Void doesn't even exist, even as you're holding a tiny drop of it there. The coloration, the presentation of fire and slight heat, that's your mind struggling to give it a form so you can even perceive it."
"What do you mean she was exposed," Jennifer asked.
Pulling up data on System screens he shared with her, he flicked through the various reports and information from follow up expeditions into the Twin Gates Lilac's team had entered.
"Gala says that the Residence of the Betrayed Gate that you two entered was filled with an amount of Void energy she'd never encountered before. The problem is, due to the way it was decreasing over time, she believed that the Gate had lost its original source of Void energy and what we're measuring now is its residual quantities."
Jennifer thought back to Lilac's behavior inside the Gate, paranoid and borderline frantic at times. Lilac had clearly been hearing and seeing things, but Gates were weird so she had just chalked it up to some kind of status effect. Thinking it through now, it made more sense that they might have been brushing up against some kind of incredibly dense Void energy repository.
Marcus's face scrunched up in visible anger as he said, "When you brought Aya, the woman you found inside the Gate, out…Lilac stayed behind, as you recall."
It wasn't a question.
"She found…I'm not quite sure what to call it. It wasn't a Gate, I know that for sure. I guess you could call it a tear in reality, a space where you can go from what is to what isn't."
The whole concept was difficult to describe by its very nature, after all how can you verbalize the idea of nothing in a way that has enough weight to feel tangible to someone.
Now, how do you describe going there?
He gave up trying and moved on, "My point is, we know that exposure to the Void causes madness in almost all cases. You'll also note that Lilac hasn't gone mad."
Pieces of a puzzle Jennifer didn't know she was looking at began appearing, some slotting into place and others jumbling out of view, but he was right about that.
Lilac never had the Crimson Affliction, madness as he called it. Her eye stayed that deep blue, and she imagined it would be the same under her eye patch.
"Even with all of that, its been months now, why hasn't she seen a therapist or something," Jennifer asked.
Marcus rolled his eyes and shrugged, seemingly asking how he was supposed to know. He sat silent for several minutes before sweeping up all the documents and reports and putting them to the side and asked, "How is Leon doing?"
A little smile appeared on Jennifer's face as the topic changed to something more pleasant.
Leon was, well Leon.
The guy couldn't be stopped and almost always had a smile on his face, even when he charged into Gates alone. The few expeditions he went on with a team always came back safe and, because of how strong he was, stronger than they'd left.
He was maybe a little too fixated on Gate Walking, but it never hurt to be passionate about something.
She told Marcus all of this and he responded by nodding, an almost relaxed expression on his face as he said, "Good. Is he having fun?"
Jennifer nodded as Marcus tapped at something on his System screen.
"You guys won't have to worry about him for a few days, so feel free to take some time off. I know it must be exhausting chasing after him, especially with you looking in on Matthew's group."
The Uplifter's Initiative remained high on Marcus's list of priorities, even after its extensively proven success. Currently the goal was finding Uplifters whose interest and temperament aligned with teaching so the Bureau could expand the program to a public service spanning the globe.
That was still a ways off, but Jennifer had standing orders to keep an eye on promising individuals, particularly since Uplifters weren't inherently bound to the Bureau, even though most of them chose to stay and work alongside them. Even in the case that an Uplifter decided to leave, the Bureau still gave them full support until they were properly established and able to carry themselves.
A questioning look from Jennifer brought a response from Marcus, "He's being trained by…external parties. Unfortunately, they've got solid grounds to take him for this training whenever they want, so we're mostly going to just have to live with it."
Jennifer liked Leon quite a lot; he was a good friend and an even better Walker, so she was glad to hear he was safe and training up to, somehow, get even stronger.
"Director Terrance was hoping for an update on Matthew as well, if you've got any new information."
Jennifer pulled her tablet from her inventory and flicked her way through to the young man's dossier and gave Marcus all of the updated information, from him settling down with the Goblins and that he had just gone out on a trip into the new wilds of Earth.
"Goblins are a good group to start out with, I'm sure he'll do well there," Marcus said quietly.
"Terrance probably won't have a great opinion of them, all things considered, but he seems pretty content with Matt just being free to pursue power and his interests at his own pace."
He was talking to himself, something Jennifer had seen him do more than once.
"How is Amy doing," Jennifer asked.
"She's doing well, working with Gala for now," he mumbled while he jotted notes into his System.
Something crossed Jennifer's mind and she asked, "Director, why do you have so many young people around you? It seems like it would be better suited to the Bureau's needs to have more experienced people."
It was true that Marcus seemed to be surrounded by people in their early twenties, despite clearly being in his early to mid forties.
Though she hadn't had the thought, it was also odd that so many of them were women, something that Marcus had already realized not that long ago.
"Call it the price of leadership," he said.
"What do you mean?"
"I'm not a strong believer in fate…but the Founder often said that the universe moves to the rhythm of a song nobody could hear. Things and people moved in alignment until they were where they needed to be, and honestly I think that's why. You might not believe this, but I actually had very little to do with most of the people in their current positions."
He was right, Jennifer did find it hard to believe that someone responsible for so many plans with countless moving parts just coincidentally found himself surrounded by young, attractive people.
Seemingly sensing her disbelief and smiling deviously, Marcus asked her, "Why do you feel like you have the right to ask me this?"
Sitting up straight, she said, "I'm sorry Director, I-"
Marcus waved his hand, dismissing that as he said, "I'm not mad. Answer the question."
Relaxing somewhat, she said, "I'm honestly not sure. I never really feel like I have to be all that formal when I'm with you."
Nodding, Marcus said, "My brother, the Founder, was practically an open door for people he thought could do good or that he could help. He believed, whole heartedly, that everyone had the potential to do incredible things and if given the chance and proper opportunities, would do so in every case."
The news that the Founder was Marcus's brother certainly explained why he had so much trust in him, but what he said next caught her even more off guard.
"My brother was…overwhelmingly powerful. Seeing so many Walkers call themselves the strongest or the best is almost comical when I think about what he was capable of…and what it cost him.
He believed in others and more often than not, that belief got him hurt or taken advantage of.
Despite that, he just couldn't turn away from the people he loved and protected."
That made total sense to Jennifer, which she said.
"That seems pretty obvious though, who wouldn't protect their family just because someone outside tried to hurt them."
Marcus chuckled and said, "Not his family. Us. Humanity."
The room they were in didn't have any windows, but even with that, Marcus turned to a wall as though he were looking out at something Jennifer couldn't see.
"The Founder did everything for humanity, sacrificing his health and wellbeing for the greater good. The Bureau he built is designed specifically to work toward preparing us all for a future only he could see."
The room briefly sat in silence, a clear moment for Marcus to remember and pay homage to someone long gone. The Founder, obviously, was someone of extreme importance to the Director and Jennifer was loath to break this rare chance to reflect, but all moments must end.
"Did he ever tell you about it," she asked gingerly.
He laughed pensively before saying, "Nope. He kept saying that knowing was worse than not."
Looking Jennifer in the eye, he said, "The things that are coming…I've seen a glimpse of them and with all my preparations, all the work of the Bureau, I'm not sure we're prepared. You asked why there are so many young people around me, right?"
She nodded and began to say he didn't need to explain but he cut her off, "The oldest members of the Bureau are out doing things none of you should ever have to do, hell some of them aren't even on Earth. Some of your generation are here, working in elevated positions because you're just capable of what we need to be done, while some of you are at the ground level, making things happen en masse. We've got information and knowledge no other organization in the world has, a jump on things that are coming up even if we don't have all the details. The time is coming when I will step back and it'll be up to all of you to lead the charge, after all the Bureau wasn't built with the intention of being around forever."
The information came as a surprise to her, which she voiced.
"At some point, humanity has to stand on its own, Jennifer. It'll need leadership, powerful people, and much sooner than anyone actually believes."
By now, several months had passed since the 'coffin' had been found inside the Gate and the Emerald Dawn event had been announced to be unavoidable.
It was something few people thought about, but at the upper echelons there were talks and rumors of what it actually was and even with utmost secrecy, it was inevitable those theories would trickle down.
"We're in the last stretch," Marcus said, almost to himself, a strange mix of relief and apprehension settling over him.
Jennifer searched his face for answers, but the man had seemingly retreated into himself, considering things well beyond her periphery.