Subject: [OTL]: (Gust Arc; Aislinn Richards/Sanctity) Windweave (PG-13) Date: Tue, 25 Mar 2003 21:33:01 -0800 (PST) From: Phil Hartman will1@earthling.net Gust Arc: Windweave by Phil Hartman DISCLAIMER: The kids are mine. The rest are their creators'. No money is being made off of this. -------------------------------------------------------- 6/12/2021: -------------------------------------------------------- Whatever it was, wasn't helping her digestion. #There's something terrible happening in the timestream.# Aislinn Richards set down her bowl of ice cream - which she'd been barely able to even touch after dinner, thanks to the temporal disturbances going on - and stood in her bedroom at her family's summer home. The 11-year-old redefined the word "chronovariant." She was the most powerful CV of her Earth and her era, able to dissect the nuances of a given event and rattle off a host of possible affects upon the timestream. Time travel was second nature to her, although she'd never risked going too far back - not that she could've done anything to CHANGE the timestream, at least not according to her grandfather's theories. But Reed Richards' rulebook wasn't explaining what the girl was seeing now. The greenish haze which usually tinted Aislinn's perceptions of the timestream was flickering, shot through with red and purple lightning. And there was a terrible darkness in the past, coming forward - - up a path streaked with gold, crimson and violet, slicked with rage and fury. #Someone went BACK ? In our timeline ? But Grandpa's theories state that we can't change our own past,# Aislinn thought, fearful. #Unless someone from another timeline went back ...# Fresh fear blossomed in the girl's stomach, and she shook her red bangs back from her green eyes. #Dad and Mom haven't said anything. Which means that this's a future event. The change hasn't happened yet, but the time travel has. That means that maybe I can affect it,# Aislinn thought, hoping. She smoothed out the black skinsuit she was wearing, and stepped sideways onto the golden trail - -------------------------------------------------------- * - the clone chamber shattered, ending the proto-life within and breaking the temporal thread, reweaving - * * - the clone source grew darker, yet more determined, stronger than he had in the first timeline, eventually breaking free at the right time - * * - and the Dark Lord fell, fell, taking the scientist with him - * * - and the boots and the epaulets and the Academy faded, leaving - * -------------------------------------------------------- "AAAAAAAH !!!!" Aislinn grabbed her stomach, floating in a fetal position in the timestream. Which had gone mad. The usual green tunnel was lit with all the colors of the rainbow now, intersparsed with white bolts of energy. Chunks of timeline tried to knit themselves together, prompting occasional shrieks from the source of the colors. "You," Aislinn called, frowning at the figure before her. It was a young woman, in a red skinsuit with spikes - #A Hound suit ?# Aislinn thought, remembering the unsettling holos from the Shadow King file at the Xavier Memorial Academy. The interloper's hair was long and brown, however, not cropped like most Hounds', and her eyes were alert and intelligent. #Not sane, though,# Aislinn realized, fear gripping her again. "Her BRAT ! SHE REPRODUCED !?" the woman screamed, lunging and reaching out telekinetically - - and finding only empty timestream. "I all but grew up in 4-D space, lady. Now explain what you did to the timestream, or I'll leave you here," Aislinn demanded, stopping time around the attacker. Not that that was easy, considering the temporal chaos - "My name is Tanya Trask, or Madame Sanctity, as I'm also known. Your wretched mother tried to help me when my powers tossed me into the timestream from my Earth," the woman snarled. "But she was deluded by her dreams of what time SHOULD be. So, after I grew too weak to stop her, and lost my followers, I found myself cast into the timestream, seeking revenge." "On who !? I saw what you did - if you hurt my Uncle Nate - !" Aislinn yelled, sweating - the effort to restrain Sanctity AND stay in the timestream was getting worse - Sanctity smirked. "It's actually an improvement. The boy won't face his deranged clone, and so he won't lose his left arm and right eye," the woman hissed. "But neither will he escape Sinister as early as he did in your original timeline. Now, it'll be Nathan Summers who has to face Apocalypse, not Stryfe." "What does that - AAAH - MEAN !?" Aislinn cried, feeling the timestream start to buck - "You figure it out, dearie. If I'm lucky, I'll finally be able to have peace," Sanctity laughed - - and the timestream crashed around them - -------------------------------------------------------- - until a strong hand pulled Aislinn back into her bedroom. "Ace !? Are you all right ?" The girl blinked - she seemed unaltered, and her memories were of her past - before she sat up and looked into blue eyes. The right one bore no pattern of scars. "Uncle - Nate - you're -" Aislinn murmurred, letting Nathan Summers help her to stand. "I'm OK - you know me, tough Salem Center cop and all," Nathan chuckled. His expression grew serious, and he allowed his very pregnant sister to rush to Aislinn's side. "Mom ! You're OK - the baby - is he - ?" Aislinn asked, hugging Rachel Summers-Richards. "He's fine. The timestream was going wild - Ace, are you OK ? You were in the middle of it !" Rachel said, reaching out telepathically to her only daughter. ~I'm fine. Does the XSE exist ?~ Aislinn asked mentally. Rachel blanched, then looked at Nathan until Aislinn laughed. "It doesn't matter. You're OK - everyone else is OK - I'm home and Sanctity is gone," the girl laughed again. "SANCTITY !?" Rachel blurted, going ashen. She held Aislinn at arm's length and said, "Honey, did she hurt you ?" "N-no - but she changed our history - she prevented Stryfe from existing -" Aislinn said, confused and worried. "'Stryfe' ? Oh - the clone project Sinister was working when he had me prisoner in sixth grade," Nathan growled. "Yeah ... I remember now. The witch destroyed the cloning matrix. But how does my not having a clone -" "My instrospection," Rachel said, smiling wryly. She looked at Aislinn, then hugged the girl again and said, "I hunted for your Uncle Nate longer in this changed timeline, instead of finding him right after Stryfe would've escaped Sinister and maimed Nate. That's how I had more time to formulate the core philosophy." "Core - hey, you're wearing - I'M wearing -" Aislinn began, looking at herself. She and her mother were wearing cloaks, in addition to Rachel's maternity dress and Aislinn's skinsuit. And Rachel's hair was shorter - "Mom ... you're a child psychologist, right ?" Aislinn asked, nervously. "Well, yeah, but I'm mostly the Mother Askani, remember ?" Rachel said, trying to smile. Aislinn's jaw dropped when she saw the psimitar over her bed. "Oh boy ..." -------------------------------------------------------- tbc ... --------------------------------------------------------