#for some reason I just really love the idea of the green neuron following hunter around like arti’s drone

[noizepushr]

A little piece I made in Illustrator in honor of my first successful Hunter playthrough (if you’re on dark mode please click on the image, the spears can blend into black backgrounds cause my lazy ass did not make a background)

[gold-from-straw]

Backstage of the Universe - ch12

Sorry! I uploaded this on AO3 a couple of days ago and promptly forgot to put it on here! On the plus side, that means you’ll only have to worry about Charles’ wellbeing for one day because chapter 13 is coming tomorrow! (Happy ending guaranteed by the way...)

Read on Ao3 from the beginning if you prefer!

Charles rolled into Wakti’s hut, perfectly shaped for someone of their height. Erik, on the other hand, had to bend almost double as he followed them in, and curled onto the cushions Wakti gestured to on the floor.

The inside of the hut was warm and thick with incense smoke. A great pool of water at Charles’ seat-height took up almost half of the space, and he peered into the water.

“Not so fast, Professor,” Wakti said, wagging one finger. “You’ll get to that soon enough.”

He straightened up quickly and turned to her with an apologetic smile.

“Is there anything you can tell us about where they’ve taken Bart, Vogel and Martin?” Erik asked, and Charles could feel his impatience, almost completely masked from his voice, but humming through their mental link like shots of green thread.

“Did you know,” said Wakti, ignoring him. “That this world has existed for only twenty years?” She smiled and cupped a small bowl of powder in one of her strange pincer-hands. “And yet I feel sure I have lived for hundreds. How can that be?”

Charles glanced at Erik, sending soothing waves across their bond, although he, too, was feeling impatient.

“I can see them, you know,” she said, peering at Erik slyly. “I can even talk to those who know to listen.”

“Mona,” murmured Charles.

“Ah, the little shapeshifter, yes. But I’m not the only one.”

“What do you mean?” Erik said, leaning forwards.

“You know. Trust yourself, you know.”

“The Universe?” Erik asked, glancing at Charles.

Wakti smiled and blew the powder over the water, where it bubbled violently. Charles shifted backwards out of the way, wondering exactly what she’d added. If it had even been water at all.

“He watches them too. He didn’t used to. He didn’t used to have eyes. Now he has a body, he has a tongue and a voice, but he doesn’t speak to them. Just makes them do what he wants, tools to fix a broken universe.”

“People tend to look after their tools,” Charles said, teeth clenched.

“Indeed, indeed. So they should.” She gestured at her table, covered in shining knives, a solid mortar and pestle, and jars of herbs and roots all labelled meticulously.

“If you don’t approve of him, why haven’t you done anything about him?” Erik asked, the low hum of displeasure and injustice rising under his words.

Wakti just laughed. “I am only a dream in a small boy’s mind. A boy he made, as it happens. He made all of them, put them out into the world. Waited for them to grow, ripen like bazuki berries, until he can make use of them.”

“He’s not waiting at all!” Charles said. “He sent little Bart out to kill, she’s eight years old and he sent her to murder someone!”

“And what would you do about it, Professor? Magneto?”

Charles couldn’t help but look at Erik. “A child shouldn’t be made to kill.”

Wakti patted him on the arm. “You’d better go and tell him that, then.”

“What?”

She pushed both of them into the water.

Charles opened his eyes and gasped for air, pushing himself up into a sitting position. Beside him Erik coughed violently.

“I am just about sick of falling into different worlds!” Erik growled.

Charles burst into breathy laughs, patting him on the shoulder. “At least my chair didn’t hit a tree this time.”

Erik turned to grin at him, then did a double take. “What the hell--”

“Your eyes!” Charles gasped.

“Yours too!”

Charles turned his face this way and that, peering at Erik’s wide eyes, the strange circles across the iris, like his pupil had bubbled off and multiplied, reflecting the millions of stars that surrounded them on all sides. “Weird,” he murmured.

“You’re weird,” Erik smirked. “Now, come on, let’s find this personification of the universe.”

“No need,” said a voice behind them.

Erik leaped to his feet, his hand outstretched, every molecule of metal in Charles’ chair vibrating. “Who-- wait. You’re one of them! Charles, this bastard was in Blackwing when I first got the children out.”

“Oh, you mean Riggins? No, I’m not him.” The portly old man turned his hands this way and that, stroked his drooping moustache. “The body became available, though - thanks for that.”

Charles rolled forward as Erik gritted his teeth. “We’ve come to talk to you about the children.”

“The what?”

Charles frowned. “The children - Dirk, Mona, Bart, Vogel, you know… the children. From Blackwing.”

“Oh, the tools? Yeah, what about them?”

Charles glanced at Erik, the low-level disgust and disbelief echoing between them. “They’re not tools, they are children! Children you are forcing to commit murder, to go places they don’t want to.”

“No, no, you don’t get it. They aren’t children. I made them. I put them there so they could fix the mess this place has become, they’re not normal kids. They’re mine.”

Charles felt the anger rising up the back of his neck, the indignation - how dare he? How dare anyone treat a child this way?

“And were they fixing your broken universe well?” snarled Erik. His fingers were twitching, clenching and unclenching, and through him, Charles could feel the absence of any metal at all, apart from that which they’d brought with them. “Were they bringing the earth back together from their prison? From where they were being tortured? Is this how you treat the people who do your dirty work?”

The Universe waved his hand dismissively. “Blackwing was a good idea, sort of got away from me, though. The Hunter gathered them all together - Priest really loves his role, you know? Really got that one right. But the CIA…” He shook his head and twisted his lips up. “They keep thinking they know best, they think those tools are for them. That’s why I let you tear the place apart. But you wouldn’t let them do their job either, so--” He shrugged. “I sent Priest back for them. He’s going to need the rest again.”

“You let me?” Erik gaped. “You let me tear Blackwing apart?”

The Universe frowned and turned to face him head on for the first time. “I don’t think you get it. I am the Universe. I can do whatever I want. I let things happen.” He leaned over Charles, staring into his souls with dead eyes, speaking softly. “I can snap my fingers and have Priest kill your little blue friends, take back the other tools and keep them all in one place.”

Something inside Charles snapped at the threat. He had seen the cruelties Cain Marko dreamed of, and he’d stayed quiet and safe, hiding. He’d heard the hatred of tens of thousands, and kept his peace. He’d even seen Shaw’s mind, and he’d been able to control himself through excruciating pain and horror while Erik killed him. And faced with this, the callousness of this all-powerful being, Charles burned.

“You can do whatever you want, and yet you place children in harm’s way for no reason?” he said, his voice trembling with barely suppressed rage. “You can do... anything, you can fix all the cruelty in the world, why, why would you contribute to it? Why?”

The Universe just smiled at him, a sneering, pitying look. “Why not?”

Charles barely felt the power as it flooded out of him, rushing into the personification of the universe and holding his every mimicked muscle still, storming through every neurone, every pathway, every connection. He felt his body gasp as his eyes opened to the feeling of the entire universe at his fingertips.

“Charles! Charles, what are you doing?” Erik cried, and Charles saw him on his knees, he saw him from the back, saw him from out of his old eyes, saw him from the vantage of every star in the sky. Saw his own face, and the rage that lived there now, the rage that had always been so carefully kept in check. “Oh, God, Charles, please come back,” Erik begged.

“I’m here,” he said, and the Universe said as well.

“What have you done?” Erik asked, frantic.

“It’s like… it’s like Cerebro,” Charles breathed. “Only so much more.”

There was the tiniest spark of fight left in this body the Universe had claimed for his own and Charles ripped it out to hover at his shoulder, the rage burning through his very soul and crackling at his fingertips. “Watch,” he said, and whispered, and roared. “Watch what you could achieve with power like this. What you could have done, instead of being cruel.”

He reached out into the universe, across the earth. Took hold of every hungry child and brought them food, lifted every pain away, brought every terrified soul to safety.

“This is what you could have been doing,” he said, and his voice echoed over time and space. “You are your own tool, you lazy, sadistic bastard.”

He sought them out, every cruel thought, every twist of the knife, every backhand and cigarette burn, every whip strike and every cutting word, and he took them. He held the life of every tyrant in the palm of his hand, his fingers closing, ready to pull them away.

“Charles… Charles, no.”

Charles blinked, slow and heavy as planets turning. “Erik. You of all people should know this is the only way.”

Erik shook his head, his face contorted with some pain Charles couldn’t read. “No, Charles, it’s not, please.”

“I could make them be kind,” he said, and his voice ached. The words came slowly. “I could make all of them care for each other. No-one would ever live through the horrors you saw. Never again, Erik.”

Erik swallowed, and wiped his face, but it was starting to blur. Charles blinked and tried to hold the image, the power and the glory. Erik was shaking his head again. “You can’t, Charles. It’s not right.”

“Why isn’t it? Why? I could, Erik. I could make them all care. I could take all these cruelties away.”

“I just… I don’t know why, but I feel it.” He pressed his hand to his chest, and through blurred, double vision Charles saw his face was wet with tears. “It’s wrong. We need to choose to do good.”

Charles’ hands trembled, the souls slipping through his fingers like ice. He struggled to hold them, take them away. “And what if they don’t?”

Erik took a deep breath, stroking his face. Charles couldn’t feel it through the burning. “Then we’ll do what we always do. We’ll save those who need saving. We’ll stop those that need stopping.”

“There’s so many,” Charles said. Whispered. His throat was torn, he could taste blood. The power drained from him. The body of the Universe fell to the ground and didn’t move. “We can’t save all of them.”

“I know,” Erik said, his face contorted with tears. Charles tried to lift his hand, to take his pain away, but he felt so heavy. “I know, Charles. But there are others like you, there must be. Others who want to help. And you… you’re dying. Please stop. Please come back to me, my love. Please.”

Charles fell.

Tagging anyone who interacted with last chapter! Thank you so much! @kitty-mochi, @alliharkness, @tv-chan, @ikeracity, @random-fandoms-stuff, @threecheer, @fullmetalcarer, @slytherclaw134689, @akasanata

[jansegers]

Simple English Word List

SIMPLE1540 : a simple English wikipedia word list based on the XML export of all articles related to the nine major groups: Everyday life, Geography, History, Knowledge, Language, Literature, People, Religion, and Science and retaining all word forms appearing 7 times or more in this corpus. The total number of words in this corpus is well over the 100.000 words. a A.D. ability able about above absence abstinence abstract academic academy accent accept access accord account across act action active activity actual actually ad add addition adherent adjective adult advance advice affect after again against age agnostic agnosticism ago agree agreement agriculture air alcohol all allow ally almost alone along alphabet also although always amateur amendment among amount an analysis ancient and angel animal annals anonymous another answer anthropomorphism any anyone anything aphasia appear apple apply approach archaeology architecture area argue argument around arrange art article artificial artist ask aspect associate association astronomy at atheism atheist atomic attack attempt attribute audience author authority available average avoid award away B.C. baby back background backpack bad bah balance band baptism base basic basis battle BCE be bear beautiful beauty because become bed bee before begin behavior behind being belief believe believing belong below best better between beyond bias biblical bibliography big billion biological biology birth bit black blind blood blue body book born both bottom boundary box boy brain branch bring brown buffalo build building bull burn business but by c. ca. calendar call can cancer canon capital caption car carbon card carry case cassette cat category cathedral catholic cause cell center central century cerebral certain change chapel chapter character chemical chemistry child china China choice choir choose chronicle church circumcise circumcision cite citizen city civil civilian civilization claim clan class classical cleanup clear clergy click climate close closer clothes clothing coast coauthor code codex cognitive col cold collection college colonization colony color column com come commentary commission common commonly communicate communication communion communist community companion company compare competition complete complex compose composer computer concept conception concern condition confuse confusion congregational connect connection conquer conquest consciousness consider consistent constitution construct construction contain contemporary content context continent continue contrary control convention conversation conversion convert cook cooking copy core correct could council country course court cover covered create creation credit crime critical criticism crop cross crust cultural culture current currently daily damage dark data date day dead death debt decadence decadent decide declaration decline deconstruction deep define definition deity demonstrate denomination department depth describe description design detail determinism developed development device devil diagnosis dialect dictionary die difference different difficult difficulty diphthong dipstick direct directly dirt disagree disambiguation disbelief discipline discover discovery discussion disease disorder 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virgin visit vitamin vocabulary voice vol. volume vowel vs. wale wall want war warm warmer wash waste water wave way we weak wealth wear weather web website weight well what when where whether which while white who whole whom whose why wide widely wild wilderness will window wisdom wise witch witchcraft with within without witness woman word work worker world worship would write writer writing wrong yam year yellow you young your

China, March and May made this list because china, march and may are on it and I didn't want to decide in favor of the common noun or the proper noun; all other proper nouns have been omitted (even the ten other months that met the criterium of appearing more then 6 times). #SimpleWikipedia #SimpleEnglish #wordlist #English #words #level1540 #Inli #nimi #selo1540