[Plot] Well, what if there is no tomorrow?

[Will Stanton]

"How many dead-uses? And are they all, erm, the size you would expect? Because if not, then the Pym Particles are being used for something else."

[Toshiro Narumi]

"All seem the right size. But there are at least a couple dozen bodies dashed against the walls so it's hard to tell."

[Samantha McManus]

"So we've all been butting our heads against this awhile..."

[Will Stanton]

"Pym Particles, Pym Particles," Will said, scrunching his brow.

"...Quantum Zone?"

[Toshiro Narumi]

"I wouldn't think Cerebra could access that. And I'm pretty sure none of us can."

[Will Stanton]

"No, but someone who can use Pym Particles could. And quantum could explain time being broken..."

[Toshiro Narumi]

"Assuming Ant-Man didn't break in and Ashlie hasn't been doing secret Pym Particle experiments in the Cerebra chamber, who could have caused this? Miriam, are you the new Wasp and didn't tell us?"

[Miriam Bell]

"What the bloody hell are you talking about?"

That's probably a no.

[Will Stanton]

"Pym Particles allow things to grow or shrink," Will explained. "And one place you can shrink into is called the quantum...something or other. And, through a complicated process I don't understand, that allows you to mess with time.

And the fact that your face is glazing over means this is the first time you've heard that, right?"

[Toshiro Narumi]

Good. That's something new at least."

"Unfortunately," he said as he directed the drone back, "We're going to have to risk opening the door to learn anything else."

[Samantha McManus]

"She doesn't remember going down the hallway at all, Will. So we're maybe still doing something we did before."

[Will Stanton]

"Ah, but she had deja vu earlier, and now we're getting the same kind of blank stare people get whenever I talk about the ethics of shifting for more than 45 seconds at a time, so maybe we are making progress.

But in case we're not, we shouldn't do the first thing that comes to mind. So now I'm trying to decide if me opening this door would be the kind of stupid thing I do, or the kind of thing I would specifically not do."

[Toshiro Narumi]

"Considering the lack of bodies in the hall, I'm assuming the danger comes from going in."

[Will Stanton]

"Well, yes; the higher proliferation of dead bodies would seem to indicate that. On the other hand, we won't find out what is going on in there without going in, so here goes nothing..." Will said, hitting the button to slide the door to Cerebro open.

[Narrator]

The 'X' on the door separates in the center and the four arms slide away as the door itself opens. The head of (a) Tosh falls back, empty eyes staring back at them from atop the small pile of corpses.

Past the disturbing accumulation of all their dead bodies they see the central structure of Cerebra, a ten foot pillar of steel, cables and tubes upon which sits the large elongated sphere of the main tank. Lights are flashing and the Cerebra tank is lit up dimly, filled with it's blueish translucent liquid within which the silhouette of a person floats. They only have a moment to recognize the unconscious face of Victor Freud before the room suddenly seems to contract in towards the middle of the room, the effect passing quickly except for Victor himself who almost violently shrinks down to next to nothing.

Above the tank itself floats something that could be mistaken for part of the high-tech machinery of the room if it wasn't something neither of them had seen before, neither here nor anywhere else in the Point. Like a strange mixture between an astrolabe, sundial and mechanical watch it hangs in the air, rotating parts moving within itself with short, jerky bursts of movements it constantly reconfigures itself on a steady rhythm like the ticking of a clock.

[Toshiro Narumi]

"Umm... what?" he asked eloquently.

[Will Stanton]

Will carefully stepped over a dead body (don't think about it don't think about it don't think about it), as he entered the room.

"Well, ain't you an eldritch looking son of a gun?"

[Toshiro Narumi]

"Here's hoping it doesn't summon Cthulu," he said, sending his drone up to the thing from the safety of the doorway. The robot circled the device, sending a line of red laser light over it as it took a 3D scan.

[Narrator]

The thing swivels towards Will when he enters the room. Or at least parts of it do. Nothing happens for a moment until Tosh's drone flies up close to it and starts scanning it. He gets some data pretty quickly, although it makes little sense. His drone keeps picking up structures that they can't see and that, as far as Tosh can tell, would overlap with what is there, both visually and on his scans. Even from just a cursory scan he can tell that this thing exists in at least four dimensions and what he's picking up is the parts of it that exist at different times than the rest of it. Or perhaps the same parts but arranged differently at other timepoints.

The image his scan is building comes together and shows a distinct spherical mass at it's center that is not currently visible or present in anyway. A core, like the one they saw on the two powers-without-a-mutant creatures they've fought before, but tucked away out of reach in a different time. And the moment his scan shows this the thing acts. It suddenly rearranges itself entirely, bringing different parts of itself into alignment, aimed at the drone. The floating machine comes apart but not like it's been hit by a destructive force but more that it erratically jumps through different stages of assembly and even design. It reverts to an earlier version of it Tosh had build, neatly disassembles into parts, bits of it turn back into raw material, skipping through random points of it's existence until it finds a state of some kind of experimental or operational failure it may have encountered during testing and one of it's anti-grav units violently ruptures.

If all four of them had stepped inside and the door automatically closed behind them they would have been slammed into door and walls. Fortunately, this time around they didn't and only Will takes the brunt of the blast and is flung through the open door where all four of them are knocked a good 20 feet down the hallway.

[Will Stanton]

Will smacked against the far wall, hard, splattering out against it and slowly dripping down to the floor.

He'd probably be OK in a little bit, but that hurt.

[Toshiro Narumi]

Tosh jumped when his drone exploded with unexpected violence. Blowing air through his teeth, he said, "Guess we know one way we all died. Me."

"Also, meet Titan number three."

[Will Stanton]

"R...right," Will said, beginning to pull himself together. "D...doesn't like b...being scanned. Noted."

[Narrator]

With everyone ejected from the room and the door the Titan seems content returning it's attention to whatever the hell it is doing inside the room.


Meanwhile, Victor becomes dimly aware of floating in a faintly but uniformly lit expanse. It seems massive for a moment until he realizes he's tiny, maybe a couple inches tall and is floating in a tank of breathable liquid. Above the tank an abstract shadow ticks and jerks. He has no idea how he got here or why his power seems to have acted up in his sleep. He gets at least part of an answer when he feels his power contract him from within, all on it's own, and he shrinks even further, down to less than an inch. Much less. Microscopic bubbles in the liquid become visible to him along with vague striations in the liquid that, if he paid attention in chemistry, are hints of the layers caused by molecular cohesion.

[Will Stanton]

"R...right. Let's try that again, but without the robot," Will said, pulling himself together - literally.

He jogged down the corridor again, heading for the room. His theory was that the drone itself triggered the reaction with it's scan, looking at the...whatever...with some sort of spectrum that reacted poorly.

[Samantha McManus]

"Will, wait!" She shouts, righting herself after having been knocked back by his sudden expulsion.

[Victor Freud]

Victor was... not in a good place mentally. He'd woken up with no memory of where he was or how he'd gotten there. And while the liquid was breathable, now that he was conscious again his body instinctively recoiled from trying to breathe it. It was such a strange sensation - he'd never been in Cerebra before, he didn't even know that was where he was. And at his size, the liquid obscured everything outside of the tank into blurry shapes and colours. As far as he could tell, he was in some alien dimension.

Eventually he was forced to breathe, and the panic subsided. And then came the compression again. His body pulled into itself, the familiar feeling of that deep-sea-diving compression made all the more unsettling by his watery surroundings. Had he not noticed the changes in his surroundings he might've believed himself pushed down a few hundred feet, where the hydrostatic pressure was even stronger. But his mind latched onto the truth; he wasn't in control of his powers. Almost every mutant has that fear, probably strongest when their abilities first manifest, but over time and with training it subsides as they learn to master their gift. But it never goes away. And Victor was confronted with the realization that his worst fear was a reality - he was going to shrink himself out of existence. Panic overtook him again as he thrashed in the fluid, trying to release the tightly-compressed spring that was his body.

And all of this was completely unseen, the froth he worked up barely even another bubble in the tank.

[Narrator]

Will runs back into the room and the Titan swivels to face him. And then Will has trouble keeping track of what exactly is happening in what order. He finds himself being rewound back and forth across his own personal timestream. There are more than a few unpleasant states he's found himself in over the years, even if some of that was billions of years ago, who's to say if this thing isn't capable of bridging eons. But before the terror of that possibility can fully set in he finds that he's not changing all that much. He does keep getting turned into splattered pancake batter and being reconstituted but that's about it as the Titan seems to find this particular Will's timeline to be rather short.

From the outside it looks like Will just stops halfway into the room and then begins moving rapidly and unnaturally, like he's a video being scrubbed through back and forth, occasionally hitting the moment where he got smooshed against the wall. He's trapped but it's far from the worst thing that could have happened.



In the tank Vic finds himself struggling not just against the tightly wound winch of his power but something beyond fighting back against him, trying to tighten and wind him down to not just nothing but somehow less than that. Particle physics get funky at a certain level but he can't shake the feeling of a hand reaching for him and somehow having snagged him by his power, refusing to let go.

[Toshiro Narumi]

"Sam, I know there's a risk but since there's no way to get physically close to this thing you and Miriam might be the only ones who can stop it."

[Samantha McManus]

"Well I'm not going to sit here while it does that to Will," she frowns, fixing the creature with a steely gaze as she reaches out with her mind.

[Narrator]

Tick. Tick. Tick. Tick.

Tick. Tick. Tick. Tick.

A swinging pendulum slicing time into distinct pieces that define the infinite. Everything ticks to one rhythm or another. Everything defined by the passage of time. The 'mind' of the Chrono Titan is even more alien than the previous ones. Too abstract. It doesn't even perceive things in an easily comprehensible way. It's grip on Will is as much observation as it is an attack. It only comprehends him in a full spectrum across time, a stream of suspended movement spread out like a film reel in a string of Will from stepping out of the mirror to now. 'Now' might be the only truly relatable concept as that is where the Titan's perception halts, not progressing into the future except at the steady pace of one second per second.

Past the pendulum of it's existence Sam can see the Spark that birthed this abstract thing, looping coils of moebius strips rolling in on themselves with the same steady tick tick tick. And that is all it is doing. Observing and looping. It has no higher functions (although it's control over time is beyond any human thought). It is buying time. The same time over and over but that's it's essential drive, nothing more. It's like a machine, given an almost simplistic task. A task she can almost feel forming the connection between Spark and reality. It's a little like what she'd tried to do when she found herself stranded in the Abyss but perhaps more practiced, more powerful. Enough to not even require an existing connection to a person, instead having formed this Titan as a crude extension of the Spark. Formed from a core of Spark-resonant material from which it's physical presence and power spills forth.

[Samantha McManus]

Sam circles the flock around, checking out the angles, and seeing if she can cut it off from whatever it's doing to the Cerebra tank.

[Narrator]

Oddly enough, it doesn't seem to be doing anything to the tank except watch over it. Fortunately that does mean she can catch a glimpse of it from the Titan's perspective, which includes countless loops that all seem to start with it placing Victor into the tank and end with various different states of the tank and it's occupant. Sometimes it explodes, sometimes it crumples up implosively, sometimes only it's contents seem to disappear, occasionally nothing at all seems to happen to the tank itself but possibly it's occupant? Either way, failure of whatever is happening in the tank seems to be what causes the Titan to reset the day so it can start over.

[Victor Freud]

Victor found himself unable return to his normal form, the pull on his power from some force he couldn't comprehend was just too great. But if he couldn't push against the stream, if he couldn't fight this vacuum, maybe he could redirect it. He focused on the fluids around him and concentrated; he was touching it, so he could control it as well. The question was; how much of "it" was he touching with his ability? If he could get out of this damn stuff, maybe he'd regain control of his abilities.

That decision was probably going to lead to one of the outcomes Sam's ravens were feeding to her.

[Will Stanton]

Will runs back into the room and the Titan swivels to face him. And then Will has trouble keeping track of what exactly is happening in what order. He finds himself being rewound back and forth across his own personal timestream. There are more than a few unpleasant states he's found himself in over the years, even if some of that was billions of years ago, who's to say if this thing isn't capable of bridging eons. But before the terror of that possibility can fully set in he finds that he's not changing all that much. He does keep getting turned into splattered pancake batter and being reconstituted but that's about it as the Titan seems to find this particular Will's timeline to be rather short.

'Terror' isn't quite the right way to phrase it; even 'concern' isn't quite right. Plenty of time to unpack that later. Right now, what was important was the Titan.

Will kept trying to push forward -- difficult when at any given moment he was at a different phase of his walk-up-and-splatter timeline. The thing might control the timestream, but Will knows a thing or two about patience and persistance.

And as he continued to try to shove forward anachronistically, he kept trying to talk.

"Work I here, but I'm this is friends. X-men peace name. Can we it talk? Whatever to Will of afraid is about my do. Help; stop looking; can you're find and be can please? It help I'm together; my we I Stanton. You you're one; come the for in with not hurting."

[Samantha McManus]

Since just trying to snuff these things out has turned out to be phenomenally dangerous, Sam tries an alternate approach. She has the flock feed a pure, exultant feeling of success into the creature. It doesn't have to do this anymore. Its task was done.

[Narrator]

Victor's power reaches pretty much the entire liquid. Perhaps not at first but as the portion around him shrinks down, more of it comes into range to be shrunk and so on. And as he pushes his power out into the liquid he finds it's graps on him slipping, letting him push out to a couple inches in height again while the liquid pools in a tiny puddle around him. He's teetering on the edge, relying on holding his grasp on the shrunken liquid while something beyond tries to scrabble for purchase again but at least for the moment he's fought his way back into the macroscopic world. And outside the tank he can see Sam standing in the doorway, eyes unfocused, Tosh and Miriam peering into the room from behind her with concerned expressions on their face. Closer to the tank he's in he can see Will, talking words out of order as he's skipping back and forth in time.

Will for his part can't be certain if the Titan understood him at first, the scrambling less of an issue as the concept of language. It certainly isn't letting him go but at least in keeping Will trapped in his personal time-loop it's not enacting the same fate on Sam. Perhaps it's only capable of leveraging it's power on one thing at a time. Then his jumping through his timeline changes and he finds himself uttering sentence fragments from throughout the day like a badly edited together soundboard.

"Let's try that again -- opening this door -- my -- friends -- c'mon -- and -- shrink -- the size -- through -- quantum -- door
But in case -- every time before -- going in -- pym particles -- stop
Quantum -- opens -- in -- Pym particles -- friends -- Pym particles --dead -- Let's try that again -- Pym particles dead -- Let's try that again -- Pym particles dead -- Let's try that again -- Pym particles dead -- Let's try that again -- Pym particles dead -- Let's try that again -- Pym particles -- dead -- Let's try that again -- Pym particles -- dead
Friends -- doesn't like -- Pym -- proliferation -- stop -- let's try that again
Friends -- talk -- quantum"


Finally, probably in response to Sam, it makes Will repeat. "Can it -- not -- stop. Get -- pym -- friend -- to the --quantum -- door. Let's try that again. Let's try that again. Let's try that again."

[Miriam Bell]

While Sam and Will try to talk to the monster that's clearly to blame for having trapped her and everyone else in this time loop, because of course they would, Miriam puts her hand on Tosh's shoulder and pulls him aside.

"How fast can you put together some kind of gun?" she asks with a glance back towards the door to Cerebra.

[Samantha McManus]

Since simple satisfaction doesn't seem to be making an impact, Sam instead presses on the thing with her mind, trying to use words it can't ignore.

"Let. My. Friends. Go. Or. You. End."

[Toshiro Narumi]

"A gun?" he asked thoughtfully, doing some quick tech-genius work in his head, "About five to adapt something I already have, but there's no guarantee it can damage the creature's core."

[Narrator]

"Dead -- let's try that again." the creature makes Will say. It's responding to the stimuli it's getting from Sam but there's not much of a mind or emotional landscape to manipulate. And what response it does have is poorly translated through the medium of 'things Will has said in the last hour or so' and even then Sam gets the impression it's using the words as representations of larger concepts, not expressing a consciousness but rather a collection of related (tangentially or otherwise) concepts. And in the process mangling poor Will back and forth through time.

"Can -- not -- stop. Quantum -- friends -- summon." At least Sam's beginning to get a vague idea of what it's saying. With quantum it seems to refer to space outside their normal reality and 'friends' seems to stand less for trusted companion and more for a much vaguer 'entity in contact with it'. Summon is more specific again, referring to being called on for a certain purpose. "Door -- door -- door." it repeats, trying to indicate passage from one space to another. "Get -- pym -- friend -- to the -- door -- Let's try that again."

"Door -- to -- like -- blank." it makes Will say and then pushes the poor shifter back and forth even more rapidly looking for individual sounds and syllables. "L--l--l--like -- bla--bla--bla--blank -- like -- blank -- li--b--an. Li. B--an."