[Fateverse Side Story: NC Bundle] Overture
The Ringmaster: Chapter 1 of 13
Warnings: Crossovers, Fateverse, sci-fi, brief swearing.
Disclaimer: Recognizeable characters belong to DC/Marvel.
It is edifying, but not completely necessary, to have read the Dark Nights: Metal event.
Visit The Fateverse Glossary for important terms, concepts, and people.
Notes: See postscript; linked footnotes may open in a new tab.
Overture
Theorist 905 has spent the bulk of his Network career labeled an obsessive old man, or more often a deranged fool. Having glimpsed the tidy walled city that was the primary DC trunk before it erupted to tangle with its neighbors, he feels it’s a deeply unfair stigma-he has seen deranged Bruce Wayne designations.[ 1] He is both offended and disappointed that anyone in the Network could compare him to that.
But Wade (Wades, four of them so far) thinks there’s merit to his work. He hasn’t yet gathered the gumption to take his findings to the Savant, but the competency board has admitted his research is being conducted well and may produce interesting results. They still say it’s not robust enough for Senior Theorist status.
Fuck them, anyway.
They’ve given him a second subject, though, which has already given him so much more data… It’s the first time they’ve found two with almost identical resonance (Steve[ 2] wants to call it the Wade Effect, but has been unanimously vetoed every time he suggests it, so it’s currently called phasic doppling).
The warders almost rioted over the shift in custody, but Theorist 905 knows his subjects very, very well, and pointing that out seemed to appease them.
Outwardly, his research subjects are almost nothing alike. One of them is lean, long-limbed with subtly distorted features, like a man warped on a taffy-puller, face usually fixed in a sweetly solicitous smile. The other is gaunt, scarecrow-thin and a few decades older than the first, with a near-constant murderous grin. To a casual observer, even their minds are polar opposites: one light and easily distracted, the other dark and heavy with plots and lies.
But they’re the same, at their core; their effect on the Timestream all around them, their resonance phase, is so similar they had to be transported by conduit instead of by timeslide.
Subject One fights his inner chaos even as he thrills to see it manifest around him. Subject Two rides his inner chaos into battle and uses it to burn down cities (three, at the time of his capture).
They are always kept separate. Bruce cannot risk them coming into contact with one another-yes, because it would contaminate his findings, but also because of the simple truth that putting two Jokers in the same room will almost certainly end with death.
Currently, they are behind one-way glass in two neighboring waiting rooms, where he can see them both with his own eyes but they have no way to know (or reason to expect) that there are other subjects.
Subject Two very likely believes he is one of a kind; his narcissism is nearly unparalleled. Maybe one of these days, Bruce will show him the Fridge and its catalog of Jokers, just to see him fly into an incoherent rage. They’ll need new numbers to count all the ways he’ll accuse the inmates of being frauds.
“Good morning,” he says to both of them. On his left, Subject One perks up…on the right, Subject Two yawns theatrically.
~Good morning, bestie!~
~Oh, is it morning? How droll.~
“The glass in front of you will create a series of flashing lights-please focus on your reflection.”
He hits the switch.
Steve, who specializes in the Fidelis Effect, has been one of the few Theorists who support Bruce’s work. He’s shown Bruce papers on soul-polarity, on subject singularity, on specific subject designations who are inexplicably similar in wavelength despite varying wildly as people. He actually nodded when Bruce posited that all Jokers were essentially one Joker, in almost the same way that all Deadpools are one Deadpool.
Steve gave Bruce a resonance flash that has been known to induce a Fidelis trance in Wades.
At first, nothing much happens.
Then Subject Two’s pupils contract to pinpoints. His mouth falls open and his hand begins to move.
“John, focus on your reflection,” Bruce reminds Subject One.
Subject One falls into the trance as well.
Their vitals are low and steady, slowly settling into the same rhythm. The sensors in their respective rooms show that they are writing, and moreover that they are writing the same thing-a series of numbers.
Bruce sends a partial copy as a query directly to the Sysadmin.
The reply is a segment of a Monitoring Sim projection.
When he queries the Central Database for a match, he smiles in triumph.
DC structural trunk
88052-01190-ß
Local years 1986-2018 CE
He turns off the flash signal.
They stop. They blink. They look at their hands, then at their reflections.
They grin the dragon-grin from beyond worlds.
teeth
longer and more pointed than average
chemical-tinged
jusssst you ‘n me, babe
blood-stained steel, rage, rage, rage
takes ya back, mmmm?
the beginning is
the end is
the beginning
Bruce takes a breath and finds his center.
~Oh, how fun,~ the grinning Jokers say in perfect synch.
.End.
Notes:
1 Theorist 905 witnessed nearly all of the events of Dark Nights: Metal through remote scanners in place in his home timeline (some of the only scanning the Network has been able to perform since the wall around the New 52 was created). When the wall broke and the New 52 were exposed to the multiverse, an enormous entropy cloud expanded to consume nearly the entire DC trunk of the timestream, including his native timeline.
2 Theorist 503 (Steve Rogers ND109) was introduced in An Unconventional Symphony. His Senior Theorist application project focuses on the way the Fidelis Effect acts on Wade Wilson subjects.
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