Fortuna Verto

60-Wavering Hunter

In her own private room, Kori took a deep breath in preparation for what she was herself about to do. None of this was going to sit especially well with her, but it needed to be done regardless.

"Hello?" "Hey Nick." "Oh! Kori, thanks for calling, I..." "I'm not calling to speak with you, please don't make this any more difficult than it already is. The matter is strictly professional. I know you've been cruising around with a certain high ranking executive recently, and I'm hoping she's still there with you." "Oh, yeah.. I've still got Aerospace Command pressing upon me at every working hour. She's aboard here too, in the private room like most customers." "Great, then please let her know that I've got a message from a colleague of hers. The matter is of important business, so I will need to speak with her privately right away." "Alright then, please hold." Nick was more than a little disgruntled at Kori's seriousness, his hopes shattered by the persistence of reality. Velvet quickly fell for the same feint, herself in high hopes that Kori was actually calling about a sudden change of heart.. but Kori wasn't calling to give up there either. Instead, after Velvet had settled down in the private comfort of the shuttle's passenger room, Kori fulfilled Mheridz's request by repeating the same truth behind their unexpected advantage, brought about.. thanks to true chaos. After that, Kori also presented Mheridz's predictions about the impact such would present, even if there were a few ideas Kori has still been disputing.

"Well, I guess that's why everything had been screwing up. In honesty I had noticed the whole shady arm deal, but Rosa had made plenty of excuses about it.. so I had dismissed the idea. I guess that was foolish, considering things went strange starting there and the whole shady arm deal never stopped being shady. Mari is right though, we now have no idea when they will attack next. Having not had a confrontation in a while, it's pretty obvious the next rush will be intense. We've only ever been seeing scouting parties in this timeline, nothing half as major as the nightmares from my timeline." "That's not all, but we're suspecting that both planets may already be under attack.. at least the other side. Our enemy may have taken to a stealth advantage so that they could harness a better position. I'm wondering if our world here is being just as indirectly assaulted." "Wait, stealth? They.. they've never done stealth. Sheer power had been more than enough.. maybe some tactical use of it.. but.. everything was always an obvious in-your-face problem." "Your timeline did not have chaotic weapons designed to target chaos." "Mari is right about that too. Not knowing about such a serious distinction.. could have.. all sorts of trouble." Velvet sounded very flustered, a tone Kori recognized from the girl's mother as signs of panic.

"Calm down, there's no point in worrying about what has happened, we should instead focus upon where this leaves us." "Says the woman who can outright go back in time and change things for us. Why exactly are you so hesitant in doing so, anyway? Being able to go through time could only ever be a good thing." "Says the woman who wants to go back to ensure I never learn to control time. Slowing and stopping time is much more reasonable, but I'm still convinced that there remains an incredible responsibility in manipulating timelines. At one point, the whole timeline ordeal is certain to come back to bite us eventually, I would rather mitigate those sorts of problems. Think of it this way, how would you feel if I let you go back in time to fix things.. and then went back in time to make sure that didn't happen." "Wait, did you do that already?" "No, I haven't, but it's already bothering you. There is so much to worry about when it comes to timelines.. so I would rather work with variables I've adjusted to than go back and lose track of where I'm going." Kori had an assuming air to her in this statement, a clear recognition of her own responsibility and power, leaving even Velvet uncertain in a suitable retort.

"Let's think about it, you've even lost track of your sworn enemy because things have changed too much. Considering that, instead of letting more stuff change for us, let's just figure out what we have right now. Knowing that the enemy may have adopted a more stealth approach, what could you assume would be a viable direction of concern?" "Yeah.. the problem is still trying to figure out how they would even hide. Aerospace has eyes all over the place, and the singularities DMA generates stand out like a sore thumb. They wouldn't not do so, because their goal is to simply do that more, it's their fundamental design. Even the idea of stealth would involve trying to find a way to stealthily create more singularities. Things would be failing all over the place if they were just hiding among us, which in turn would have raised countless alarms." "What about a timebomb approach, then? Preparing singularities that were self contained, but ready to go off at a later time. You said they have numbers, and it would be far more in their advantage to have more distributed problems in a greater area than to have one significant problem in a single area." "How? That would require a chain-reaction approach, DMAs themselves aren't exactly prone to making their anomalies self-sufficient." Kori was starting to get frustrated at how much Velvet was just complaining and not actually being constructive. The woman wasn't even interested in trying, not so far, leaving Kori feeling like she was just wasting her time.