Author's Preface(skip if easily distracted by shiny things
): I will say this about "Chronos". It's an idea I've had for a while. In many different forms, for a few years. The basic skeletal structure at least. The actual story itself came to me as one of my ideas for AutumnSkyline's challenge "Justice" on 9thwonders. Of the ideas I had, I'm going to most likely also be writing two more- "PunchDrunk" and "How Do You Own Disorder?" are the working titles. Obviously, one I thought to be the best(read:I got it down on the metaphorical "page" first), which ended up becoming "Judgment." Even as I came up with the story in a ride home from the psychologist's office along with the other three, it didn't quite solidify in my mind until I combined my ideas from my aborted Five Years Later fic and some ideas from another fic that never were used. Finally, it became more than a one shot when I wrote a post for an RPG that has been expanded to become the second chapter. What I hope to accomplish here is to expand the Heroes Universe. I've seen it evolve like most fictional universes- at the beginning people being tepid to write anything experimental, then expanding into stuff like crack, creepy, angst and slash. One thing that I haven't seen here is a Cosmos type story.
The idea of a Cosmos story is draw from the comic book inspirations of Heroes and to do what Marvel and DC accomplished. That is to create a cosmology or set of cosmological rules and figures that are unique to said universe, putting things in perspective as cosmology in the real world attempts to do with our lives.
In other words, the "Gods"(this is quite the secular fic, at least for now) come marching in and with them come titanic struggles for Existence itself.
Obviously the Great Questions will be asked and answered, though ask me no questions I will tell you no lie will ring in your ears upon said answers.
Enjoy.
Chronos
Chapter 1:Infinite-
Dear Diary.
Thank you.
For you have been my one companion, true and steadfast, over all these years. Though you were never whole(like me, one could muse), always scattered about different times, place, notebooks and hard drives and barely legible writings scrawled on obsidian, you have given me solace.
This will be my final entry, and left in a place, a time very dear to me. No doubt it will be thought the ramblings of a mad man and quickly discarded. Jesus didn't self-publish. Not to compare. Not to compare of course, especially when The Sometimes Sort Of Good Book sits on a hotel drawer nary five feet away from the bed I am sitting upon while writing this. Though I say it anyway, because I think all those given great power, have to take responsibility for those actions they take or do not take.
And Jesus didn't royally fuck it all up.
Needless to say I look up to Him for that, as well as the figurative looking up to those vast and mostly empty corridors called the Heavens. Ah, the Heavens. One of my favorite topics, and I suppose I should put down some musings here. The heavens, I have walked along them, strolled upon the edges of great and grand nebulas, felt the cold of Pluto's surface against my skin. They are quite simply the only thing that have made the last few years worth living. I've walked to the ends of it and peered into the great abyss and seen...
Seen nothing.
Obviously, that was not a fun night(well, it was night on Earth, but I was currently vacationing over on Saturn for the views of the rings.)
Or week.
Or month.
Or life.
That was one of my more disappointing lives. It was the same body as always, same imperfections. Same power over the universe. I have never quite been able to form an apt metaphor for it, sadly. Those that witness it have no idea of what they have witnessed. It simply...is. It is and it was and it shall be and it has been since the beginning of Time itself. To them at least.
I reckon this might be the best way to describe my power. How I do it. The other stuff- how I work, how it came upon me, should come later. If only because I've spoken to Mammet(my favorite writer) and he enlightened me of the benefits of non-linearity in story telling.
Too bad this story is true. I'd have to lie to publish it. I'm an awful liar.
How does it work? Simply, I am walking or floating or gestating around the universe one day or night or eon and focus. I focus so hard it hurts.
Every time.
Every time it hurts.
Then the pain is gone, and I'm standing outside of it all. Weightless, formless, a state of being that could be best described as the closest thing to not existing without actual typical mortal "death." I'm standing outside of it all, and events run by my "eyes" or whatever I see with when I am like that. The events are as they happen to everyone else, simply witnessed more objectively. They are bright blue orbs in the darkness of the Outside, glowing and pulsing, quaking and rippling in solid, liquid and things in between. Constantly changing shape, always in flux- living and dying billions of times before my eyes. Yes, events do die. I remember that the Boston Red Sox winning that World Series finally had lived in '82-85, then died. It crawled out of the Grave Of Light in the backroom of the Outside and slowly fought its way back- I was proud of it then. When they die it's like another light is turned off in an already shadowy room. A cold fills the air unlike anything else, a cold that grips the inner reaches of my soul and clamps down upon it.
It hurts so much when they die. I come to care about some more than others- mostly the happy ones. The Wall going down I nurtured from a little baby blue in the black. For some reason I had a peculiar affinity for the way Socrates died, and while it made me weep crystals that shattered on Neptune for a few decades, I made sure to keep it as it was.
They say history is not written in stone. They are correct. It is not written in stone, it is told by little illuminations of the abyss. The events run by my eyes, sometimes so fast they blur together and I have to play Time Janitor and sweep them apart, sometimes so slow that I think finally it has all stopped, finally I have been granted release.
I am never released. I must be on the time line. Though line is a painfully archaic term and construct for it. It is more like...like the largest room you have ever been in, seemingly endless. Yet you walk to the end and there it is, and the exit is so much more beautiful than the door you came in through it makes the travel all worth it. Yet as I mentioned before, I am never released from the room, the exit stays locked as I pound until my fists bleed out star systems and I pant, sweating out gas giants and red dwarfs.
I stand in the room, the Outside Room, and my "fingers" play little tunes of Mozart and Bach and Chopin upon Existence, which turns inside out and spits up copies of itself with funny looks on their faces. Rewind, fast forward, slow, ellipse..., whatever may be. I can make it all brilliant colors or dull monotones. Yet my eyes are so sensitive, they have seen so many things, I keep it at Goldilocks setting.
I'm sorry if that is not much of an explanation. I can tell you about who I am though, if that is to help. My name has been forgotten over the times. Names are never important, only what we do, how we live, how we make our little feng shui decorations in the Room. I do not remember the first life I lived. I have died so many times, I do not fear it anymore. My "bodies" if you can call them that are whatever is demanded of them, shifting with loud cracks and waves of light into the right thing for the situation. Most of the time they try to stick to Homo Sapiens, which is nice. Familiarity helps out sometimes as I choke and wheeze back into another lifecycle, looking down to see I'm bipedal again. Makes things easier to adjust to. Yet now...now I feel the oddest thing.
No, I do not feel.
I know.
It will all end soon.
It will be my fault.
For I have made a terrible mistake, and my ulterior motive in writing this is so that you know. It is a bit of a long tale.
It began as I stood in a field, wiping off my shining armor of blood. Fallen warriors who had died noble deaths. I had no regrets. Then I would be filled with them, as something appeared that I had not expected- and it had been so long since I had been surprised. It was an ecstatic feeling, yet the thing that appeared seemed more joyful and confused than I was.
"Takezo Kensei?" The thing, which I would later know as Hiro Nakamura, asked.
"Yes. That is one of my names."
I have been called so many things, in so many tongues. This one was elegant and stately, and I took to it, little knowing it had sealed my fate.
"I am Hiro Nakamura." The thing said, and bowed goofily. In shock, I contained myself- for it had not happened in so long. There was always Brother, always Brother in the corner waiting. Yet...
"Finally, the day I have waited for, for so long. One like me."
NOTE: This is a take off of Zyndro's masterful portrayal of Mitclan in Hostel Environment, but a separate character that shares only inspiration and name.
Chapter 2:The Owls Are Not What They Seem To Be-
Mitclan sat. Sat and thought. He- "it" would be a more apt descriptor, decided.
Mitclan was a good name. Even if its true name had not been spoken in longer times than humans could comprehend. A satisfactory replacement.
A fine name, a name to send shivers down spines and rend the very flesh of hearts torn from their "users"- as if humans used them! Humans thought of hearts as simply what kept them going, and sometimes in disgusting courting rituals they termed "romance"(as if it mattered what they called the putrid exercise that consisted of jaw flapping, spraying of pheromones, and exchanging of inner juices!) Sometimes in those courting rituals they would speak of an odd thing called...it made Mitclan sick just to think of it.
Love.
That was their little jaw flapping, gum rotating, tongue flipping(oh, the tongue- that pink colored thing washing itself endlessly in clear juices...Mitclan hated it especially) exercise to make sound that they termed "words" for it. Mitclan had an intense distaste for words, as they operated on what was a completely needless level! If only these humans would use those thinking things(big ugly sacks floating around in juices, more juices, simmering endlessly!) If only they used those "brains" they so prided themselves upon to conjure about the idea of simply focusing on something hard enough(they focused on slaughtering and raping each other hard enough, made complicated devices and based their whole lives around it- murder and procreation) that they could do as Mitclan did. A few of them had mastered the skill, but none of them proficient enough- except for Summer, who he loathed for her combined realization that her species was so utterly, horribly flawed as it was, along with an optimism for them. Except for Nyral, the young Maori who was mute to all of his brethren, speaking only to Mitclan, and only spoke in code languages, twisted tongues of ancient realms and ghastly deeds that delighted Mitclan.
Yet Nyral was too flawed, flawed with a sense that his "tribe"(human-speak for a grouping based upon who ejaculated into previous persons and other such trivial pettiness) was important. The day Nyral first took the circumcision rite, baring pain in a way that gave Mitclan some hope for Nyral and the homo superior species, was the day Mitclan also gave up on Nyral. Once Nyral had ceased life as a carbon based being fueled by reactions of little bits they called "cells" maybe he would turn around. Until then, Mitclan would have to focus on the current Quad or find another group. Why had Mitclan chosen that name itself, that of the Ancient Lord?
Mitclan's ill-fated last project, a villager without a name who was doomed to be offered as a sacrifice atop the great temple, had worshiped that Lord.
It was the closest thing Mitclan ever came to honoring the dead, or anything else that could be considered compassionate.
Mitclan decided on the Order Of Things, and marked it, paying special attention to the 10 Laws, of which Mitclan would give Betty and Jason a small glimpse years later, a mite in a cosmic potential of horrifying experiences, sending her to put her juices into a waste unit, and him to contemplate blowing out his brains with an Ortgies caliber 7.65 automatic.
The Order Of Things was thus, anthromorphized through the 4 Names Of The Great Beasts-
First Betshiva, who the humans had taken Shiva and Bathsheba both- all from half heard whispers of the truth.
Then Argor, who the humans had mistakenly taken Jason from, as the true Argor carried more in common with the ledged of Pellias than Jason.
Third would be Nzambi, who still had followers on Earth, albeit ones who followed a corrupted version of Nzambi that they gave the NextName of Mpungu.
Once Mitclan had acquired the Triumvirate Of Souls, the Rites were to be initiated and followed to the Scriptures, and finally then Mitclan would take the greatest prize.
Syon. Who had no name amongst the mortals, only given base portrayals of the false legends in Baal and Lucifer.
The one that would allow Mitclan to walk amongst the flesh things as it once did. Then the green grass upon which the humans walked would dye red with new morning dew of Mitclan's making, the oceans upon which they sailed in bulky contraptions would whip back at the shores running crimson, and the sky...oh, the sky would drip it, simply pour grand fat raindrops of blood.
Their Scriptures were correct, if only in that one small detail.
It was all coming together.
Mitclan saw the plan and declared it Good.
And so it began.
Mitclan(if compliments were to be served to such a being, they would surely be followed by punishment, as all things spoken by humans were) was patient, and waited, thinking over the plan intensely with the Drujnur it had culled from the High Priests so long ago. It was Good. Patiently, Mitclan bided its time.
Three hundred and thirty six years later it begun.
The one Mitclan knew by a different name only able to be spoken by ones like them, now calling itself "Kensei", shuddered as it felt it all begin.
Through the cosmos a whisper in a language shared between Mitclan and Kensei sounded. To anyone or anything else, it would not make a noise. Yet they both spoke at once, acknowledging the other's return.
Acknowledging that it would end soon.
They spoke in synchronization. "Brother!"
The brothers were reunited.
It was so long…
Mitclan felt something take it over. Only one thing was strong enough to take over beings like Kensei and Mitclan.
The Great Spirit Of Many Names spoke with resounding words in the Old Language.
"It will end. One will rise. One will fall. The Chronos will be reborn out of the ashes. It has begun."
____
So now you've seen the Brothers, the Heads Of Janus, The Sides Of The Coin, Good and Evil, whatever one wants to term that dynamic. Yet as you can tell if you have ever read a sentence of my fic, I have…interesting ideas about morality and our typical conceptions of those words that will come into play. I've introduced the 5 primary Heroes characters who will have their stories told here, in the form of Hiro and The Four Great Beasts, who are representations of the 4 characters besides Hiro.