Martin wasn’t sure how it happened but they had all become friends with Mr. Canard. Maybe that was the natural thing to do after threatening to kill someone... or maybe it was the fact that they all shared the rare trait of having skinwalker spiders inside of their brains. Regardless of the reasons, after some rest for Cottie’s sake, they had ended up in an atompunk 50’s futurism style SCA diner, enjoying an all-day breakfast of pancakes and ice cream.

A round, chonky, pill-shaped droid had brought the group holo menus, skirting along the aisle with a low hum of a fusion battery. A robot bartender’s arm was mixing bubble tea cocktails at the bar.

[Well this place is all sorts of whimsy.] Cottie thought. [How do human operated restaurants even compete with the super owned ones?]

[With a struggle. Luckily there aren't as many heroes as regular people. The SCA doesn’t license most of its tech to mundanes. Most earth-based industries are decades if not centuries behind in development.] Mr. Canard shrugged. [The value of the Acadian dollar has really taken a hit over the years too, massively tanking against the SCA cryptocurrency S-credits.]

Ember had given up on her looks, and had accepted the fact that she was going to wear pajamas all day as penance for her future crimes against humanity. A group of kids in the booth nearby pointed at her and called her “Sleepy-Kitty-girl-hero”, asking her for autographs. Ember had to sign their shirts after the waiter drone had blessed her with a color-changing, glow-in-the-dark marker per demands of the rambunctious children.

Mr. Canard had smiled at her, blue and red halogen stripes of the cafe’s interior reflecting on his bald head. [Ah. I remember being young once! It’s nice to remember, nice to think without a constant migraine, thanks to this spider symbiote in my head. Those were the good old days. We could do anything. Much less rules for heroes. The precogs weren't as organized back then and hadn’t yet imposed their rules upon everyone. Why, I remember setting an entire field on fire with the boys just for some laughs.]

[The prognosticators exist for a reason. They prevent disasters! What if someone died from your field-pyromania?] Ember thought back at him, not feeling her own argument. Alexa had managed to break her belief in the power of the precogs. Her and her supervillain dad had clearly found a variety of ways to skirt and manipulate the future seers. Why couldn't precogs catch Alexa? Why were they always one step behind her? Was it because she made all of her plans in 2424, harvested resources and assembled her tools there?

[If just one fourteen year old girl villain could control the hand of Equality, who knows what kind of a power is held by an entire organization that can manipulate precog visions at will.] Cottie thought at her friends. She was feeling rather concerned about these invisible enemies. She liked seeing, knowing what she was facing. Not being aware of who or what she was up against was worrisome.

[How did she do that anyway?] Martin thought of Alexa’s ridiculous inception letter. [Did she have a precog power? Or is she really that good of a planner? Did she plan to bring all of us together, to unite us all with brain-spiders? How far back in time did she start pushing us into the right direction?]

Martin temporarily unmuted Spiderbro to see if his little skinwalker shard could bring anything of value to the conversation. This had been a mistake as Spiderbro had immediately started to chide Martin.

[Unbelievable! I just processed that letter memory! She could have just let us be and we would integrate, become one like Joseph Canard! There was no need to brute force you into being a super!] Spiderbro was feeling extra irate. [None at all!]

[Ah, come on. It wasn't for nothing. If we went to the future and you lost yourself there we would all become skinwalkers.]

[You didn't have to go into 2424 with her! If you just remained still, sat calmly on your butt and did nothing at all like Mr. Canard there, we would integrate and that would be that! I nearly died for nothing from that raygun of hers! You nearly died! She's a terrible human child! A menace that dismantles everything she interacts with!]

[I can't believe that I'm thinking this.] Ember sighed. [But I'm agreeing with your brain spider thing. If you just stayed away from Alexa you wouldn't be bound into her schemes.] She tapped her pancake mountain. [Seriously, none of this bullshit had to happen!]

[If none of it happened, I would've killed you sooner or later.] Cottie thought at Ember.

[You… Argh! There had to be a better way than this!] Ember waved her hands. [I have zero mental privacy now! Zero! You all have no mental privacy either! How are you okay with this? Martin is a freaking hive mind now, not a person!]

[Says the girl who had control over hundreds of avatars of herself,] Martin commented.

[It wasn't the same! They were me, sure, but they were mere copies, Martin! Not other people! This invasive bullshit needs to end! God!]

[You are very interesting indeed.] Mr. Canard sent. [When you're singing to each other and not at me, I can't hear you at all. I feel that you are sending something, but it's like on an entirely different wavelength or something.]

[Yeah…] Martin thought back at the teacher. [Alexa created me to be a bridge between skinwalkers and people. A super that controls skinwalkers…]

[Manipulative, conniving, little bitch.] Ember fumed.

[I believe someone promised to be her caring sister?] Cottie raised an eyebrow at Ember.

[Stay outta my thoughts, Equalizer! I can think whatever I want, damn it!] Ember shot back. [Nobody invited you fuckers into my brain! God, how I miss my privacy!]

[I do wonder how you kids have an Enforcer on your side. Here I thought that the Equalizer order existed only to murder supers that go mental.] Mr. Canard thought at the trio. [Also, I believe that this belongs to your boss.] He slid two of Alexa’s backpacks at the teenagers. [Don’t worry, I haven’t taken a thing from these. I’m not a villain.]

[Alexa! Friggin Alexa, that’s how!] Ember moped. [She’s been harvesting gold and diamonds from that dead planet, bribing the Equalizers and god knows who else with it! God I thought that the Equalizers were immutable too, but they can apparently be influenced with mere millions of dollars in gold! That freaking girl probably bought Cottie as a personal bodyguard for herself for decades!]

[I’m not a bodyguard! I cannot be bought. I’m...] Cottie frowned the tiniest bit.

[Of course you are! You follow Alexa, upon the orders of Eminence Equality. You protect her with that freaky anti-super gun. You stopped me from attacking her. How are you not her bodyguard?] Ember pressed her point.

[Em. Don’t harass Cottie. She’s a good person, unlike you.]

[A good person? She’s a super-killer!] Ember shot back. [The SCA doesn't murder supers we try to reeducate them into being good people!]

Martin sighed. There was no dissuading Ember from being mildly antagonistic towards them.

"I'm just thankful that Alexa is not here now.” Ember muttered, stabbing her pancakes. [Her being stuck in S-stasis up in Titanomachy is a brief reprieve from dealing with her in person. I can find solace in the fact that whatever horror she aims to inflict upon me next won’t be for…]

A doomsday siren suddenly blared across the restaurant, all of the screens flashing white. The siren resonated across town, wailed from within every SCA business with a somber, ear-piercing screech.

"Damn. That's not good. I haven't heard the doomsday alarm in ages!" Mr. Canard said. [A supervillain attack? But why? Saint Mary is so small. There’s nothing of value to target here except for that one bank…]

An SCA emergency broadcast logo flashed on every screen in the diner, including the holo-menus. Even the screen on the pill-shaped robot in the aisle displayed the same thing as it froze in the middle of bringing the kids another order of ice cream.

The logo flickered, breaking up into weird, colorful static.

Martin suddenly felt that something was terribly wrong, as Spiderbro kicked into defence mode, trying to protect his mind from a possible external influence. There was no SNN announcer, no hero on the screens warning them about the event. The screens shimmered with strange, fractal static, patterns of colors simply dancing across them.

The hair on Martin's neck stood up. He felt something akin to the bank's hypno-pacifier within the static, except it wasn't telling him to be calm. [Pay attention. This is the most important thing you will see in your entire life,] the fractal pattern whispered. It wasn't intrusive, it wasn't dominating, it simply asked to watch, to hear it out. It didn't force, didn't push, it simply asked for polite observation of what it was about to present as indisputable facts.

The fractal pattern organized itself into the face of Alexa. The four people at the table gasped. Everyone else in the restaurant fell silent.

"Hello, world." She said.

"Oh no." Ember whimpered from her corner of the booth besides Martin.

"You undoubtedly know me as supervillain Cassiopeia Terror Nova, the Doombringer of Saint Mary that was recently sentenced to one hundred thousand years in Tartarus. This little show of mine is being broadcast across every SCA channel around the planet, straight from Titanomachy. This is the doomsday emergency announcement system. It cannot be faked. It cannot be ignored or blocked.” Alexa made a deep pause and smiled. “I am about to use it to destroy the Superstate from within."

Mr. Canard frowned. He suddenly felt that maybe it wasn't the best idea to help a supervillain get arrested as absurd and contrary as that sounded.

Alexa had a plan and this was seemingly the culmination of it all, the destruction of the SCA. The girl had somehow taken control of the Emergency broadcast system, turning it into a weapon. What was her plan? Was she about to turn every human on the planet into brainwashed zombies? Would she make the world watch her forever, glued to the screens until they all died of old age or...

Mr. Canard blinked, turned his head away and looked at the sun-lit street through the window. He felt no influence, no pressure to keep watching.

“What you are about to see, is what really happens inside the Tartarus simulation. The SCA and the heroes have told the world that there is no pain, no death, no suffering in the simulation. That even centuries of the program take just a day to complete. That the villains within it get re-educated over many years of pleasant camping-style therapy, able to rejoin society when they reemerge from the simulation. I wanted to experience Tartarus myself, from the perspective of a villain, wanted to see what it was really like.” Alexa sighed, making a pause.

“This is what it’s like. Welcome to the long term Tartarus simulation, featuring me as prisoner and Hero Resonance as long term warden. You know what I am about to show the world, Resonance. You know what you've done. I suggest you RUN now before her Eminence sentences you to an execution by an Equalizer. Run and hide under the biggest rock you can find, because when they find you, it definitely won't be pretty.”

Ember choked. She felt paralysed with terror, panic clawing at her chest. She knew exactly what she would do just a few days ago if she had absolute power over Alexa in a simulation for thousands of years.

Alexa’s image broke up into fractal dust, reassembling into a picture of Hero Resonance standing over Alexa. The hero was adorned in her suit of gold and red, eyes flashing with golden glow from within.

Resonance poured gasoline over Alexa as the girl stood in some giant pipe, her arms bound. The hero and the villain were on some concrete embankment, possibly inside an abandoned power plant. Storm clouds rolled over the city of Centralia, water pouring from the pipe down the hillside.

"Why did you force my brother into being your minion?" Resonance asked. "Did you make him rob a bank with you so that you could ruin his career as a hero forever?"

Alexa nodded. "I just wanted to have a friend for once in my life.”

"Liar!" Resonance yelled. She ignited a lighter, bringing it to Alexa's face.

"I'm going to get everything out of you and then I will reset the sim again and again until you don't remember this little interview of ours." Resonance spat.

“Kill me and you will regret it.” Alexa answered with a serene expression. "With each action you only dug a deeper grave for yourself and the Superstate."

“I regret nothing! You’re here because you are absolute evil that needs to be cleansed from the world! I have no pity for the likes of you, villain. I have already broken many of your kind in the sim.” Resonance extended a hand with the lighter.

The screen flashed with fire and Alexa screamed. It was Resonance again. Resonance maimed, executed Alexa over and over in the simulation, resetting the world again and again until there was nothing left of Alexa's spunky personality. Until she was just a normal girl that responded to Cassie who lived in the concrete room in the basement underneath the floor in the house number 8 Primrose Drive. Even then, Resonance did not stop. Hero wasn't wearing her super suit, in the sim as she pretended to be Cassie's sister, but everyone watching could tell that it was Resonance as her eyes blazed with gold and her hair a brilliant orange, sometimes floating as if held up by an invisible wind.

Resonance kept on attacking the girl, albeit far less brutally and far more insidiously, pretending to be her friend, her sister, to find out her fears and dreams, only to strike her down psychologically. There was a counter in the corner showing the amount of years passed and the amount of deaths caused by Resonance. It kept ticking on up and up.

With each action of Resonance on screen, with each broken bone, each insult, each death of Alexa, the real Ember broke down further and further as if it was Alexa who was stabbing at her heart now. She watched, growing paler and paler and she understood that it really was her - Resonance that was currently doing irreparable damage to the Superstate, Tartarus and herself with her actions. There was no coming back from this show, no erasing memories of billions of people across the world.

Ember swallowed. She had been exposed to the world as a monster and brought the rest of the heroes down with her. In her greed and want to punish and dismantle Alexa quicker Ember had destroyed everything.

Titanomachy wasn't destroyed physically. Alexa had not pulled the station down from the sky, had not murdered a single person except maybe for her digital self. There was no recovery from this, no way back. The reputation of the heros had been struck a fatal blow, the belief of humanity in the honesty and justice system of the Superstate had been shattered.

No matter if the news stations would denounce this broadcast as fake or computer generated, no matter if newspapers screamed that it was a lie. The seeds of doom, of doubt, had been planted in the fertile soil of human minds tilled with the most basic hypnotic suggestion and nothing would ever be the same again.

The doomsday emergency broadcast had come straight from Titanomachy, from the SCA. The station had signed its own admission of guilt. They would have to declare that the station was hijacked, hacked by a villain, or admit that what Alexa had shown the world was true or deny everything and lose all trust.

"Holy shit. She really did it. She embarrassed every hero in the world." Martin muttered.

He looked at the de-aged, changed, pale face of Ember, her eyes full of tears, her mind full of fear, horror and regret. While he hated her for what her digital ghost did to Alexa, he also knew that she would never become Resonance now. The final nail had been struck into the coffin of the future Admiral and Resonance had done it all by herself via one of her copies.

A final scene flashed into being. It was Alexa running away from a strange super made of lasers. Her silver hair was flying in the wind and part of her skull was missing. Eye lasers burned the world all around her, cutting apart number eight Primrose Drive.

"If I am dead, know this." The voice of Alexa said from the screens. "The Superstate Division Three will hunt me down in an attempt to silence, to kill me, in order to hide the truth about the SCA and their misdeeds. All of the precogs are being fed lies to hide what is really coming. Prepare yourself. The war for the future of our planet begins in earnest and I am and have always been on the side of humanity."