The Beginning of Everything

Svelte but gangly graduate student—Brian Braddock—stumbled forward through the boggy grasses of endless dark moors. The skies cried tears of silken scarlet, and the droplets rained only on Brian's naked form. After being spoken to by gods whose voices shred his clothing to ragged threads, Braddock scarcely noticed that the rusty rain stitched itself into a crimson costume to cover every centimetre of his skin. A flax lion, matching the colour of Brian's blond locks, emblazoned upon his chest with a low roar. Despite the layers upon him, he still felt nude. Naked, but strong.

A similar transformation appeared to have been performed on the man who had been chasing Brian, the man who had killed every colleague Brian knew at the Darkmoor Nuclear Research Station, the man called Joshua Stragg. The burly brute was now fortified within a gleaming gold suit of Medieval armour. Visually comparing Stragg's defensive plating to his own skin tight bodystocking, Brian hardly though it fair. And so his voice gave away that he was a boy longing to be a man, in asking, "Wh-Who are you?"

Stragg, now the Reaver, calmly removed a heavy broadsword from its scabbard on his hip. Resolutely, he replied, "Your executioner."

"Hold on," Brian pleaded, more scared than angry. "What have I done?"

"You chose the path of right. I have been chosen to murder you with might," Reaver evenly explained. Hefting his sword with both hands, and running at the boy, Reaver growled, "Defend yourself."

Remembering how strong he felt, Brian Braddock lived.

The End of Everything
... One Year Ago, Almost

Most nauseating were the screams. They sounded like the death wails of universal constants and mathematical laws. Maddening, shockwave-inducing shrieks of the like had not been heard since the chaos storm of Mad Jim Jaspers, and every single scream buffeted against Meggan Braddock, again and again. Stronger than all that, Meggan remained unharmed.

Disoriented, she batted her blonde bangs away from her eyes with her fists—a futile act—only to find that her eyes would lie to her. Everything had come undone because of the merging of physical, astral and metaphysical space. The entirety of everything was incomprehensible. And yet it was not.

Behind the insanity, beneath the twists of fate, inside the chaos, Meggan could see the pattern. The pattern, the threads of the Alshra, struggled to assert itself, The Way it once was and would be. Maintaining her sense of self amid chaos made her muscles burn, in a trying, constant effort. Holding onto herself was holding back the pattern; she knew if she would just release, the pattern would flow. Reversing reality entropy would be simplicity compared to continuing to exist in the chaos storm.

Letting go, Meggan declared, "My true birthright comes now!"

Remembering how strong she felt, Meggan Braddock died.

Everything else lived.

The Present

Unaccustomed to anyone -- aside from his own self -- banging open his office's double doors with such vigor that they clapped against the adjoining rust-coloured walls, Joshua Stragg angrily gripped his solid teak desk and shoved his seated self away from it. The strength in the middle-aged man's meaty arms sent his desk chair rolling back towards one of the tempered glass windows that made up three sides of the his office, which sat upon the highest floor of the tallest building in Harrow, England. Clad in an amber wide-lapeled suit, which exaggerated the shoulder span of the raven-haired Joshua's already stocky frame, the CEO of Stragg Enterprises made no move to embrace or acknowledge his visitor, even though it was his own son. Joshua did not even rise from his chair, when he complained, "Jase, if I have told your mother once, I have told her four-thousand eight-hundred and fifteen times: schedule an appointment if you want to see me."

Jason Stragg, in the prime of his mid-twenties despite his unnaturally silver hair, sourly bobbed his head in response. From a distance, he looked fit as a runner, although up close, Joshua could see that he was lazy. In spite of the disapproving scoff from Billeh, Joshua's executive assistant who had followed Jason in, Jason sat down atop his father's desk. Between his riding-gloved hands, Jason clutched a silver briefcase to his chest, hiding the Blue Sun logo on his tee, and languidly kicked at the air in his green board shorts and strappy boots. As if conspiratorially, he countered, "The stewardess always finds it funny that you think either of us would want to see you."

"Your mother's name is Triss," Joshua corrected his son, in the voice that came most easily to him.

"I do know my mother's name," Jason returned in the put-out voice that Joshua felt came easiest to Jason. "Somehow I manage to remember it. I'm not sure how I do it. It's not like I write it in a schedule book every time she visits me."

His words an incensed sigh, Joshua questioned, "Is there a reason that you're here?"

Although Jason kept his copper eyes on his father, he sharply pointed a finger in Billeh's direction, over his shoulder. Jason crisply order, "Don't walk away. Come here." Taking his briefcase's handle in one hand, Jason pointed to the space between himself and his father, and hopped off the desktop. While he set the briefcase on the carpeted floor, and sank his hands into his pockets, Jason musingly shared, "It's curious. I dreamt of coming to you, like this, one year ago, almost. You were even wearing that tie in my dream."

Fingering his wide tie, Joshua dubiously interjected, "I bought this tie last--"

"Curiouser." Jason dramatically shrugged. "That suit, though, you weren't wearing that." As Billeh anxiously approached them, Jason shook his head, disdainfully continuing, "I'm certain it wasn't that colour. More of a brownish shade, I think." Side-stepping behind Billeh, Jason wrapped his arms around the young man's shoulders, holding him as a buffer between himself and his da.

Joshua appraisingly tilted his head back, and let out a clipped, "Ah." Cackling out a mollified laugh, Joshua exclaimed, "Thank god. Thank god, I understand now. I thought you were here to ask for money! But you're just dating Billeh."

The letter opener in Jason's left hand tore a groan and a gurgle from his father's throat, and sprayed arterial blood across Jason's gloves, and Billeh's face, shirt, and raised palms. Joshua's hands instinctively grabbed for his own neck wound, pressing on it, but the strength in his arms waned with each spray of blood that escaped his body. With anything resembling liveliness leaking out of him, Joshua's legs trembled and dropped his body, sending the two younger men skittering away from him. Joshua heard Billeh sputter out some sort of question with "why" in it, as his head smacked to the floor. As Jason's boots stepped into his field of vision, he thought he saw his son retrieve a curved two-pronged blade from an ankle-sheath.

Jason answered, "He didn't spank me as a child. I never learned boundaries."

Darkness brought pain as bright as steel; 'twas the last Stragg would ever feel.

South of Meggan's Organic Farm, south of the forrest, Braddock Manor stood proud in the heart of its family's ancestral acreage. Bombed and burned countless times, hardly a single brick remained from the original homestead, but the original cornerstone remained for true. Where the long driveway met the home, a temporary trailer from the Jamie Construction company had been raised. Much like how the farm had been dedicated to Brian Braddock's late wife, Jamie Construction was a subsidiary of Braddock Solutions that was named in honour of Brian's comatose older brother. The logo for Jamie Construction --emblazoned on the trailer-- was a red racecar, because of Jamie's racing days, and the fact that the company largely employed mutant, magic and mechanical super-speedsters.

As a result, the interiors of Braddock Manor had been completely renovated in just over two months since the explosion in one of the upper bedrooms. The exterior had been entirely reinforced with modern materials -- mirrored laser-proof glass, obsidian ceramics, and gleaming steel -- and the construction team was still in the process of building the Baroque-style facade across the face of the Manor. Being their day off, no sounds of construction invaded the family room on the ground floor of the Manor.

It was the squeal of Jane Braddock that drew Rachel Summers into the room. It was a sound both grating and delightful. Jane, Brian's blonde infant daughter, ran across the plush purple carpet, with a wobbly assuredness to every reckless step. She steadied herself with a hand on the sofa, as she ran towards her father's open arms. When she attempted her run without the support of the sofa, she almost immediately tumbled to the ground, face first. Brian was in the air in an instant, but by the time he reached his daughter, she was already sitting upright, and giggling relentlessly.

Brian continued his flight over Jane's head, and landed in a comfortable crouch behind her. He smiled all the while, despite releasing a painfully-held terrified breath, and then shared his smile with Rachel. "Would it be a bother to trade powers with me?" Brian asked of her, and offered to her, off-handedly. "Telekinesis would be a boon when I'm around Jaye."

"My teke already gives me a rough equivalent of your strength," Rachel pointed out tartly, and rested a hand against the doorframe. Her shoulder-length red hair was pulled to either side in pigtails that matched Jane's own. Putting on an air of diffidence, Ray had to ask, "Why would I give up my telepathy and psionic time-travel for little more than lickable, impervious abs?"

Taking Jane up in to his arms for a tickle, Brian reminded Ray, "You would be the chosen protector of this realm."

"I was chosen by the Phoenix Force." It was Ray's turn to teasingly remind, "I believe your choosers attempted to tame my chooser, once."

Seemingly dismissing the idea with a shake of his head, Brian released Jane, letting her take another attempt at walking on her own. "...Children are supposed to fall, anyhow. It wouldn't be healthy to take that away from her."

"No, it wouldn't be," Rachel agreed. After nodding, she gave up her position at the doorframe, and padded towards the comfortable lounge chaise, with a paperback novel in hand. She draped herself across the chaise sideways, hanging her legs over the right armrest. Placing the novel on her abdomen, she forgot about it easily when Jane came crawling in her direction.

Unable to take his eyes off Jane, Brian enthused, "You should have seen her at the Leoben Zoo the other day. She couldn't stop laughing at those green monkeys."

Grinning in amusement at Brian's amazement -- if not the content of the remark itself -- Rachel inquired, "That was when all of those prisoners were released by that vile-but-cute Kree boy? Or was that when Parliament sent you a personal invitation to locate the Prime Minister and the Royal Family."

"The day of the prison breakouts," Brian grit out through a tightened jaw, as pleasantly as could be. From the look he was suddenly giving Rachel, she could tell that he wasn't fond of her implications. "Jane's hardly over the fever she had when the invi-"

Nodding in remembrance, Rachel crossed her legs at the thighs, and asserted, "Then I would have been at the zoo, had Micromax and I not been rounding up the escapees from Crossmoor Prison." She smiled genuinely, though, and made no further complaint at Brian's lack of help. She had to admit to herself that she was being passive aggressive, and even that was bitchier than she wanted to be in front of Jane. Lacking a segue, she asked of Brian, "Want Jane to tag along on my back-to-school shopping? Ananym only just got back from Edmonton. We should let her--"

"Why would I need you to take Jane?" Brian asked, looking back and forth between Rachel and his daughter, who sat herself down on a plush seal toy.

"Your meeting with Braddock Solutions this afternoon," Rachel replied, finding his absent-mindedness strangely charming, since the cause was Jane.

"What?"

"Brian," Rachel said, finding him slightly less charming. "All you've talked about for the past month is your business case to prove the profit in them designing a cure for Jamie's ailments."

"Meeting got cancelled," Bri said succintly -- not even using a full sentence -- and then began sniffing at the air.

Watching Brian crawl towards his daughter, Rachel scoffed, "How can they do that to you? You own the company."

Brian craned his neck in every direction, attempting to locate Jane's diaper bag. "Jaye needs to be changed," he stated factually.

"Ugh," Rachel groaned, quickly riled up. "Is this how it's gonna be? Should I lock up my telepathy? If you want to keep this secret, I'll have to take extra efforts to--"

Halting his search out of guilt-induced mortification, Brian tried to explain, "Braddock Solutions' CEO has sold their medical research and development division. She has decided to focus on their consulting competencies. Without those in-house resources--"

"They just gave up?" Ray incredulously assumed.

"No." More abashed than before --actually blushing-- Brian repeated, "No. No, I threatened to hostilely take over as their Chief Technologist, and if they refused, I threatened to take over as their Chief Executive Officer. ...Our, ah, discussion only descended from there. I was too humiliated to present my project. They thanked me for my capital, promised to make me an even richer man, but asked me to let them--"

The trill of the telephone interrupted Brian. Since the cordless handset rested within Rachel's grasp, she picked it up, and spoke with the voice on the other end. After offering a couple of quick pleasantries to Dane Whitman, she teke'd the handset towards Brian, telling him, "For you." While he spoke with Dane, Rachel spotted a strap wrapped around the leg of her chaise.

By the time Rachel dragged the diaper back out from under the furniture, she found Brian staring impassively through her. His eyes took on an inquisitive shade, and he dropped the phone onto the sofa. "Joshua Stragg is dead," he said, as if the words were nothing more than random phonemes strung together.

"The Reaver?" Rachel recalled the correlation between civilian name and code name from a night of drunken origin-story tellings with Excalibur. "Your Reaver? The super-villain?"

Brian's eyes focused on Rachel's, and then there was a delay, like sattelite communication, before his facial features offered a critical look. "He hasn't been called that since I wore my first Captain Britain costume. In fact, Stragg was never convicted of any crimes, and has never been charged with any, since his attack on the Darkmoor Nuclear Research Station. I check in on him periodically. He doesn't even have speeding fines."

"Wow," Rachel stated, morbidly impressed. "...Are any of your old enemies still alive?"

Cradling Jane up against his right shoulder, and hefting the diaper bag over his left shoulder, Brian's movement seemed automated. He made no indication of having heard Ray's quip, and had that spacial geometry look in his eyes. Striding out of the family room, he announced with some determination, "I want to investigate this."

"Wha-at?" Rachel laughed out, as she followed him into the hallway.

"Stragg was murdered," Brian restated, particularly feeling the weight of that final word. "And it was rummy enough for the Weird Happenings Organisation to be called in. The police think Stragg was killed by his assistant and his son. Can you believe that? I need to know what happened. Hell, I should help if I can."

Watching Brian ascend the staircase, Rachel called up, "I didn't know Brian Braddock was skilled in the forensic sciences."

"I was referring to Captain Britain," Brian adamantly reported.

Evaluating Brian with curious eyes, Ray asked, "What will he do?"

"Anything a vigilante does to find a killer without mucking up the police investigation," Captain Britain resolved. "...And if I can't be of help, I'll take Jane to that history museum I was telling you about. It's only three blocks away from Stragg Enterprises' headquarters." Brian climbed the stairs, proud and strange, the champion of diaper change.

Directing the cab driver to the warehouse, a public storage facility that was favoured by Stragg Enterprises, was an uneventful task. Jason Stragg had expected to lose his way, and pay twice the expected fee. Even though he still got himself lost on campus, on occasion, he managed to perfectly remember and recite the route to the warehouse. It was the exact same route he had taken to follow his father to this facility the last time, almost a year ago--

"Be a mate," Jason Stragg said in his most disarming tones. From his left hand, he deposited his silver briefcase onto the industrial chic reception desk. "Point me in the direction of your staff microwave," Jason requested, amid a hopeful smile and widened eyes. From his right hand, he deposited a plastic Masters of the Universe lunch-pail beside his briefcase. "My boss has me eating on the go, and nobody likes a cold kel--

Green digital numbers on the microwave's display reached the one minute mark, and continued to count down. Jason felt oddly inspired to whistle the tune to a television game show that he couldn't remember actually watching. All the same, the music blew out between his lips, while he waited for the magic thirty-seven--

After jabbing at the door release, Jason reached into the microwave and carried out a human hand. His father's hand, to be precise. Jase retrieved a meat thermometer, and sank it into the flesh of the hand, at the wrist, where it had been detached from the rest of the body. Watching the needle move on the thermometer's face, Jason tsk'ed at his overestimation, and stored the hand back in his lunch-pail. He would need to let it cool down closer to the normal body temperature of thirty-seven degrees celsius. The biometric scanner attached to his father's storage unit door would be checking for Joshua Stragg's fingerprints, and for a normal body temperature. It had been specifically designed to avoid the use of severed fingers and hands to--

The heavy steel door unlocked at precisely the time that the computerised biometric locks chirped their approval. Jason shoved the door open with his shoulder, causing the overhead lights to flicker on, once the motion was detected. Standing at the back of the concrete box was a gleaming gold suit of Medeival armour. It was just as Jase remembered it from the mere glimpse he had seen of it, just as he remembered it from the dreams that she brought to him. It appeared to be utterly uneffected by the passage of--

Jason placed his palms on the helmet of the armour, but yanked his hands back when the armour made a sickening clang, and then came at him. The heavy unearthly metal pieces collapsed towards Jason, coming apart. Most of them clattered to the floor, but the helmet practically head-butted Jason--

Semi-conscious, laying on the concrete, Jason felt he couldn't move. The ceiling looked as if it were a vast lake, and a woman swam out of it. Her presence was comforting, in a way that only came with familiarity. Everything about her body was round and voluptuous, except for her ears, which were pointed. Endless blonde hair haloed her face, and when her lips parted, the purest of music sang out--

Following the directives given to him in the notes, Jason crawled into the pile of disassembled armour. The chestplate was lined with a silky obsidian cloth unlike any other inside the armour. It was smooth to the touch, and lightweight when he tore it out. Sleeves and legs unfolded, revealing an entire bodystocking. Like a present under a tree, it was where she said it would be.

Diving out of her bedroom window, Rachel Summers summersaulted and twisted with the same slow grace as if she were falling through water rather than air. She was covered in a forrest-green v-necked bodysuit, which had long and wide leg slits that were barely stitched together. Gold splashed all around her, because of the waist-length cape that came over her left shoulder, and the studs that trailed her right shoulder. Hovering only a couple of inches above the expansive front lawn, Rachel telekinetically delayed her landing. She telepathically called out for Brian, insisting that if he took longer than her to get ready, then he was primping too much.

That brought Brian bounding out the front doorway. He wore a Union Jack tee shirt, white pirate gloves, navy cargo pants, and black combat boots, because one of his costumes was still in a lock-box, and the other had been recycled into a blanket for Jane. Pushing off the concrete steps with his feet, and with his Otherwordly ability of flight, Brian looked to the sky. He admitted, "I've never flown as far as we're headed, as fast as we'll need to travel, without my amplification armour. Are you sure we shouldn't just take the 'Runner? It's been fixed, good as fondue."

"I'm faster. And I can catch you if you fall," Rachel offered, teke'ing his body close to her own.

Tilting his head chidingly, Brian pursed, "Don't do that."

"Don't do what?" Ray ditzed, while Brian felt the unsettling sensation of his body moving without his control. His hands balled into fists that punched his own hips, with his elbows poking out at an angle that pumped his biceps out.

"I'll be sure to look my most heroic when you're catching me," Brian dryly promised.

Beaming beatifically, Rachel bolted straight up in the air, and Brian followed under his own power. Ray reached back to her cape, which was flapping and whipping against her body, and yanked a printout from a slim pocket.

"What do you have there?" Brian asked.

"Map," Rachel answered, continuing to fly upwards until the landscape below provided the same aerial view as the one on her papers. Before it did, she spotted a folded sheet of paper, from the same laser printer, tucked in the back of Brian's cargo pants. "And what do you have there?"

Brian bent his legs at the knees, as he halted his skyward progression. "Press release. I was trying to read it when you accused me of primping," he told Ray, and shook the paper at her derisively. While he unfolded the paper, he summarised, "Stragg Enterprises has developed precisely the sort of medical nanite prototypes that could reconfigure Jamie's brain."

Rachel initially overshot Brian, and she stopped her flight to get a better look at her map. Glancing up from the papers, she encouraged, "That sounds promising."

Blindly hopeful, Brian said, "While we're there, it couldn't hurt to take a look."

"I think maybe it could," Rachel sassed, unimpressed. "God, did Braddock Solutions hire you as a corporate spy?"

"Rachel, please."

"I'm serious."

"I honestly don't give a toss for my company's profit margin."

"But you want those prototype nanites."

"What if I do?"

"What are you going to do? Copy their blueprints? Steal the nanites?"

"I might. For Jamie. I can't keep..."

"What?"

"I can't keep pretending that he's dead," Brian whispered, the fight draining out of him. "Christ, he's my brother."

"Your psychopathic murdering brother," Ray needled.

"I grieve and accept Meggan being gone from my life, because I believe that her essence is fused with the multiverse. I am thankful for the time I had with her, and I am eternally thankful that she doesn't have it as bad as my brother," Brian admitted, wistful at the thought of Meggan, but disgusted at the pity for Jamie. "He doesn't deserve to be pitied, like that. But all I can think of is how close I came to losing him, on Skye Isle, when Magma melted the 'Runner. I have to save Jamie, if I can."

"Even if you woke him from his come, he will still be wildly powerful and beyond insane. He doesn't deserve you stealing for him," Rachel resolved. She held her ground, while Brian began to circle around her. "You certainly shouldn't steal nanites for him. They won't do you any good."

"You can't know that until we try," Brian pleaded, continuing to circle.

Rachel assured him, "I can." No explanation needed.

"Then you forgot to mention precognition when you were listing your powers this morning," Brian snarked.

"I knew your meeting with Braddock Solutions was coming up. I examined Jamie's mind, myself, last night," Ray revealed matter-of-factly. "His brain isn't human any longer. When your sister put him into a coma, she wanted to kill him, and he wanted to die. Jamie used his reality warping abilities on himself and reorganised the lobes of his brain. I can't understand how his thoughts work, and clearly, his own brain doesn't understand either. He's only alive because some semblance of self-preservation is reorganizing his brain back together, but it's slow going. Medical science won't make it work any faster."

Brian let the nanite press release paper fall from his hands.

"I still want to know why the Reaver is dead," Brian impassively expressed. With superspeed flight, he set forth; Ray chased after him, pointing north.

With Rachel hovering at his side, Brian Braddock strut into the sun-filled crime scene. For an extended moment, Brian was vaguely unsettled by having Rachel tower over him, but he felt a need to keep his feet on the floor.

While a medical examiner lurked by the corpse behind the desk, a pair of WHO agents dragged the blinds shut. Brian recognised Agent Gabriel as one of his sister's ex-boyfriends, and recognised Agent Double as one of his sister's ex-bestfriends. They, on the other hand, appeared to not recognise Brian at all. They stared right through him, Rachel too, as they crossed the office to join the m.e.

"Am I unrecognisable without my mask?" Brian quizzically asked, while patting at his own face with his fingertips. "...Wait. That doesn't..."

Shaking her head emphatically, Rachel admitted, "Silly Cap'n, I'm in their thoughts. They think we're not here."

"They would have let us in," Bri admonished, as they approached Stragg's desk. "WHO respects us. Their director always fancied you, and I... I am a National Treasure..."

The playfulness in Brian's tone trailed away as he watched the light in Rachel's eyes turn flat. Her lips tightening, she stared down at Stragg's body, which was missing a hand and seemingly drained of blood. What looked like an occult symbol was carved into his chest, right through his suit stained blood-brown. The letter opener that had been stolen from Billeh's desk stuck out of Stragg's wrist where his hand should have been.

Self-consciously positioning his hands at his sides, and then clasping them behind his back, Brian found himself overly aware of his own hands, and completely unsure of what to do with them. Out of the corner of his mouth, he asked, "What should I be doing?"

Rachel didn't respond right away, her attentions clearly on the conversation between the WHO agents. After an uncomfortably long pause, she quickly said, "Look for clues."

"What constitutes a clue?" Brian shrugged. He paced to the opposite end of the office, hoping to find something the WHO agents might have missed. Nudging aside a potted plant, he felt himself sighing. As he realised it, he said it: "This isn't what I do."

Chomping her teeth together in a useless expression of frustration, Rachel pointedly asked, "Then what do you do?"

Brian said what he'd said before, "That is the clue I'm looking for."

Cloaked in cloth born of magic and born of science, Jason Stragg entered the Londoner's home unnoticed. The home's occupant -- a clairvoyant who was often in the news for providing assistance to government agencies, and to Excalibur when it existed -- had retired to her bedchambers, and wouldn't have even overheard Jason's footfalls. Covered in Otherworldly amplification armour, he silently floated rather than walk. He was the Reaver.

The armour had the consistency of spandex, but with a matte finish. It was almost entirely black, from booted toe, to gauntlet fingertip, to nearly the top of his head. The only variation was dark charcoal highlights -- the lion emblem on his chest, the piping dividing his shoulders from his torso, the union jack styled cuffs at his wrists, the half of his facemask that covered from his nose to his throat, and the union jack insignia at each of his temples. The only part of him that could be seen were his eyes, and his silver hair. In truth, his armour was a dark variation of Captain Britain's original costume, which had been created in exactly the same instant, many years back.

Lurking into Miss Emelia Witherspoon's reception parlour, only one treasure caught Reaver's eye among the many arcane artifacts glittering around the room. He floated directly towards the desired wall, and then straight up, until the Adnexus Trident hanging on the display was within arm's reach. Bringing his body to the treasure, rather than having to reach for it, Reaver wrapped one fist around the staff, and one fist around one of the three curved prongs. Spinning away from the wall, he soared back towards the doorway, but found the passage blocked by Captain Britain.

Calmly, almost pleased, Reaver said, "She told me to meet with you here."

"You can see me?" Brian flustered at the Reaver. He turned his head to the right, and seemed to irritably tell the wall, "He can see me."

Floating back a few feet, Reaver confirmed, "I can see you."

Still talking to the wall, Brian asked, "Why can he see me?"

"Why would I not be able to see you?" Reaver asked. "You are my Other. One always sees only as much as one needs to."

Brian offered a nod of comprehension, although he offered it to the wall again, rather than to Reaver.

Speaking louder, with some indignance, Reaver said, "I take it the instructions on your invitation were clear?"

Swiveling his head in Reaver's direction, Brian tossed a Hallmark-looking card --which read, You're Invited To My Robbery!-- onto the floor. Stern and clear, Brian replied, "The invitation made it easier for my friend to find you." --He indicated the space between himself and the wall-- "She's leading WHO and the police here now. They have some questions they would like to ask you about your father."

With a newfound urgency to his movements, Reaver slid both fits to the base of the trident, and swung the weapon in Brian's direction. The staff telescoped out to a foot longer than it was before, while Brian was bending back at the waist. The three diamond-sharp prongs sliced across the Union Jack tee on Brian's chest, but only hit unstable molecules. The small tears to the material were stitching closed, while Reaver launched into a momentum building arc, and Brian rolled the flare of his left glove down to his wrist. Reaver swung the trident in a defensive figure-eight, as Brian came at him, but the trident got away from Reaver. One of the prongs stabbed his own cheek, eliciting a, "fuck", that was muffled by something invisible bending his arms back, and bashing him against the ceiling.

"Bitch, please," Rachel Summers scoffed, once she allowed herself to be seen. She languidly held up a hand, and a fiery energy signature lashed out from it, binding Reaver to the floor with telekinetic force. When he couldn't move, she clapped, declaring, "Ownage."

Rolling the flares of his gloves back up his arms, Brian somberly asked the Reaver, "Did you kill your father?"

"Having said that," Reaver remarked, attempting a nod despite the telekinetic bindings. "Does your throat burn now?"

"What did you say?" Rachel demanded.

With absolute bafflement in his throat, Reaver admitted, "I don't know
why I said that."

"It doesn't matter," Brian insisted, quickly getting to, "You said she told you to meet me here. Who is 'she'?"

The name came to Reaver, even though he'd never known it before. "Meggan."

Skeptically, Brian entreated, "When did she tell you this?"

"This afternoon," Reaver responded.

"What did she say?" Brian implored, nothing else mattering. "What words did she use?"

"She didn't use words, exactly, but she told me what was happening, and warned me that you wouldn't understand my reques--"

Reaver went quiet when a rotund woman smashed a vase over Rachel's head. Not until after she had taken advantage of her surprise did the elderly Emelia Witherspoon cry out, "Steal this, ponce!"

Groaning, Rachel stumbled against the wall, and Brian caught her, while Jason used the stolen trident to pole-vault through a stained glass window. "Catching me," Rachel murmured. "That's what you do."

"Sometimes I get clobbered too," Brian offered.

"Then it's your turn, next time."

"Next time."

"Rachel? Rachel, darling?" Emelia proclaimed, utterly distraught once she recognised the two former members of Excalibur. "I'm dreadfully, dreadfully sorry, luv. In my vision, it was the burglar whom I smashed. Why would my vision not imbue me with knowledge ever so true."

From the blackened night sky above the Greenwich peninsula, it almost looked like a twelve-year-old's birthday cake -- covered in white frosting and candles lit up for all to see. The brilliant ivory marquee, with its saffron support towers, was known as The O2. When Black Air had done their reality-tearing magic one year ago, almost, it had been known as the Millennium Dome.

Brian Braddock hadn't come for sightseeing. At blistering speeds he fell out of the sky. The words "ransom" and "explosion" flit past his ears, but he couldn't identify the source. He knew they weren't coming from his destination. With the same ease as if he had simply taken one step forward, he landed on his feet beside the south entrance to the O2, by the shore to the dark River Thames. Three steps forward, Reaver was crouched down on the pavement.

When he took his first step forward, his ankle spasmed, but the occurrence had ended once he landed the next step. Brian closed the distance between them, finding that Jason was unlocking his silver briefcase. Inside of it was a blood vacuum unit, and it was absolutely filled with liquid life. The blood was an oddly fluorescent shade of red, and teeming with golden granules.

As he adjusted a valve on the vacuum unit, Jason mildly asked, "Did you bring your mentalist girlfriend?"

"No," Braddock answered. He rounded Reaver, and crouched on the other side of the briefcase. "She hunted you for me, but I asked to speak with you alone." When Jason made no move to stop him, Brian examined the mechanics for signs of an explosive or weapons, aside from the trident that was openly laying beside the briefcase. Brian went on, "She is with the police now. I assume she is bringing them here, to ensure I make the legal decision."

"She should not question your intentions," Jason dismissively remarked. "You deserve the freedom to act without distractions."

Staring Jason down, Braddock aporetically said, "Maybe I would, if people stopped killing their parents."

Comprehending that there must have been others, and recently, without knowing of Moira MacTaggert, Jason's eyes offered genuine apology, before finding their resolution. He slowly posited, "In a waking dream, Meggan warned me that the damage to reality could cause my actions to be foreshadowed. I swear to you, my actions have all been out of necessity. My father was weak. He stole resolve from you, because he feared you. In his terror, he was your greatest enemy without your ever knowing it."

"How was he that?" Brian questioned, disbelieving but patient to learn.

Standing to his full height, Jason expressively explained, "The Reaver was meant to force your hand. You have been introverted since Meggan's death, but you should have been combating as Captain Britain. A simple foe, such as my father, could not have enflamed your conviction, but he would have kept you in the fight. Meggan learned of this in her infusion with infinity. Meggan told me--"

Every time Jason said Meggan's name, Brian involuntarily tightened his jaw. Finally, he cut in, "Don't talk ab-- You don't know anything --anything-- about--"

A storm of profanity rained down on Brian and Jason, prompting both of them to look up. Sliding down the slope of the dome, after likely falling from a support tower, was a middle-aged man dressed in clunky green and yellow armour. As he tumbled over the edge of the dome, Brian got a better look at the man's face and armour; he recognised the man as Albert Potter. Albert had gone by the name of Hurricane, when Captain Britain had fought him in his younger days. Bri believed Rachel had mentioned something about Albert being set free from Crossmoor Prison, and that Scott was still looking for him.

Shooting into the air with magical flight, Jason caught Potter, saving his life. Still struggling to recall something that would prove his words to Brian, Jason called out, "This Prime Earth requires a balance. An agent of Right was not created alone." --Drifting back down towards the ground, Jason saw that a bomb was strapped to Potter's chest, and he punched the man in the head twice-- "Merlin and Roma gave birth to an agent of Might to work against you, to work with you," Jason continued, as he dropped Potter, and then kicked him in the head.

Diving in to tear the bomb from the unconscious Potter, Brian incredulously asked, "You killed your own father because you wanted, what? To take his place? You want to fight me yourself?"

"It was my father's destiny to combat you, not mine. I have a different path; one that is just as necessary, if not more so," Jason insisted. He took the bomb from Brian, and haphazardly tossed it into the river. "He squandered his destiny. Resultingly, there is a great saturation of the Otherworld energy matrix in his blood. His is the only sacrifice than can save this world. He died to save this Earth and every soul on it."

Brian examined Potter as best he could, ensuring that his airway was clear and that he had a steady pulse. When he heard Jason's last words, and the distant police sirens growing nearer, Brian made eye contact with Reaver. "Save the world from what?"

Kneeling beside Potter, Jason assisted Brian in binding the unconscious man's wrists and ankles. Taking some time to remember the music that had come from Meggan's song, Jason eventually said, "Your wife rescued all of reality from Black Air's reality-warping influence, but there was a flaw in her fix. That flaw has festered, and the threads of spacetime are about to tear. Blood magic can heal the flaw; it is not what Meggan would prefer me to do, but it will create the strongest seal. I know it. ...This is not a thing you should be burdened with, but I am sharing this with you, because I need your help. I need your blood to temper my father's, or this place will be the carrion of spacetime."

"You need my blood?" Brian asked, shaking his head in a lacking of understanding.

Reaver moved slowly and obviously in lifting the trident from the pavement. Stepping away from Potter, Jason laid the trident out flat across his palms, and held it out for Brian to grasp. "Might alone cannot bind reality. Right must make it hold."

Blinking in embarrassment, wishing he could think of a more coherent question, Brian stuttered out, "Is Meggan okay?"

"She loves you. She is love."

Believing, with little rational idea of why he might do so, Brian took the end of the trident. Expecting his Otherworldly strength to be greater than his Otherworldly invulnerability, Bri stabbed the trident into his thigh, wetting the prongs with his blood. Grimacing, without letting himself whimper, Brian handed the trident back to Jason, who drove the trident into the bag of his father's blood. The trident drained the blood, causing a dark turquoise glow to flow through it. As the trident began to generate electricity, Jason reserved all of the enhanced strength gifted to him by his amplification armour, and bashed the Adnexus Trident into the pavement. He punched the hilt of the trident repeatedly, until it burrowed all the way into the ground.

The river roiled and bubbled over in deference to the explosion of Potter's bomb, but that discharge was a child's sparkler compared to the streamers of cerluean energy that bustled out of the hilt of the trident. Swirling waves of light washed over the O2 grounds, revealing colours that had only been seen previously in dreams. The light was warm and intangible, and yet it felt like Meggan's inviting arms and a healing touch. The glow turned the colour of Meggan's hair, and just beyond it, Brian could see Jason wafting off the ground. Clomping through the light show, Brian moved fast enough to grip the back of Jason's bodystocking, roughly holding him in place.

His arms flailing from the shattered momentum, Jason beseeched, "You could let me go. In this chaos, no one would blame you. I can help you. I promise I will take no more lives. You can let me go."

"I can't," Brian said. "You killed a man. It's wrong."

Although Jason wore amplification armour, and Brian didn't, Jason was only human. Bolstering his hold on that armour, Brian smashed Jason face first into the concrete. And smashed him again, until he lost consciousness. The light show receded, but blue and red emergency lights took its place. Brian believed the kid, could sense the rightness of this Earth; he felt Meggan's presence anew, and he did what he had to do.

Author's Note: The opening to "One Year, Almost" is an homage to Brian Braddock's origin in Marvel's Captain Britain #1-2, and Meggan Braddock's death in Marvel Omega's Excalibur #24 (written years before Marvel's Uncanny X-Men #465).