Within the Apple Chapter 6B

*****

Xander idly sat on the superstructure of the old rusted out ship.

He’d made it sort of his home in the bay since being introduced to it after his race with Glory Girl. The days since then had been spent hopping around the planet, carefullyso as not to splinch himself or wind up otherwise… indisposed. For all that, though, he’d secured the materials he needed for the next jump toward home.

Now, however, he had to wait for Mixy to get back to him with information about the rather odd situation this particular dimensional branch was in. In the meantime, he’d opted to remain close to his arrival point just in case it turned out to be important.

It shouldn’t, really, but it was as good a place as any and he found the local cape culture fascinating and really was hoping for a bit of a dust up with the local New England Nazi party.

New England Nazis,Xander thought with a grin,  I hate New England Nazis. I wonder if I can get an old cop car and catch them on a bridge?

Making a mental note to try and set that up if he had a chance, Xander shifted his thoughts over to the world in general.

He’d had more time to research, and what he found wasn’t looking good in the least.

Whoever had barred off the local dimensional branch, they sure as hell weren’t operating under standard Pantheon rules or any even remotely recognizable variation of such. The Old Gods were assholes to the Nth degree, but they weren’t this level of evil. Cities being destroyed wholesale, or worse in the case of the Simurgh, appeared to actually just be the tip of the iceberg.

He had gotten Willow to run some analysis of the data he’d sent back, all public information pulled from the local library, and her findings were pretty grim.

Civilization didn’t have much more than a few decades, as best they could determine. The inexorable pressure of the Endbringers was just the most obvious push to extinction, but not even remotely close to the most powerful one. The general weight of Super Villains actually seemed to outweigh the Endbringers efforts, slowly driving humanity to desperation.

At some point, he knew, the human race would snap.

Collectively, people could only take so much before they threw out civilization and went for the throat of the perceived threat.

The problem here was that the perceived threat wasn’t really something that humans could deal with. The Endbringers and other so called ‘S’ Class threats were all but untouchable, or at least they were widely perceived to be. Xander himself was withholding any judgement there until he had a shot at a few of them himself.

No, the only target that humanity would be able to shift the blame over to would be, inevitably, the Parahumans themselves.

The rumblings of that were already starting, he’d easily found various anti-parahuman groups on the internet, making noises and generally trying to recruit. The only thing holding them back, for the moment, was that the usual places that they would get their recruits… were already Parahuman led gangs.

Locally, the E88 was a perfect example. Most of them would be perfect human-supremacist recruits, but the Parahumans leading them kept the rank and file from going over to that side of things.

For as long as it lasts, at least.

It actually made him reluctant to just straight up annihilate the local Nazi Supers, as much as that galled. Granted, one local gang wasn’t going to have any real significant effect, so Xander didn’t really think it would matter… but in the big picture?

Yeah, taking out the Parahuman gang leaders would probably hasten the end of the world.

This place is so fucked up.

He got to his feet, walking out of the old bridge of the Supertanker and onto the deck. It made a good place to setup his temporary home, all the comforts he’d come to expect… minus a good local internet connection for the moment, so he was still relying on the cheap phone, along with pretty solid security since no one came out that way even normally… let alone once he’d dropped some wards on the beast.

For now, though, he was feeling like stretching a bit.

So he lifted off the deck and headed in toward the city, glancing over to the massive Oil Rig that was sitting in the middle of the bay as he flew by. He’d come to learn that was the local Hall of Justice or whatever they wanted to call it.

It’s no Watchtower, but it does have a presence, I’ll give them that.

No one there seemed to notice him, which wasn’t a surprise. Xander knew that his detection profile was pretty low for most common and even uncommon tracking methods. If they were able to track him, well they didn’t seem inclined to bother him, so he ignored them as well and headed into the city.

It was a quiet night, as things went, and he wasn’t really looking for trouble anyway so he just flew and enjoyed the night air. A couple distant gunshots could be heard, but nothing that repeated so he left them to the cops.

School had just gotten back in, something Xander had learned from Glory Girl in DMs, which was keeping her and the other young heroes… and, he presumed, at least some of the younger villains as well… off the streets at night.

So he didn’t have anyone to share the airspace with as he flew out over the rougher part of town, heading toward the downtown core.

Over a particularly rundown section of the city, however, Xander felt a twinge in his core and pulled up to a stop.

What the hell was…

He turned slowly, looking for the source of the magical surge he’d just felt. It almost struck him like a surge of… accidental magic?

I think it was this way…

Xander eased forward again, flying through the air over the city until he recognized what looked like a school sliding under him.

This place has seen better…

Xander’s thoughts were cut off by an explosive surge of magic that hammered into his Occlumency shields and knocked him right from the sky. He crashed into the rooftop of the school, rolling more on instinct than consciously to absorb the impact, and came up to his knees as his mind was assault by imagery he could barely make out through the blinding pain.

Before he could focus on it, though, Xander felt another wash of power and the imagery vanished entirely.

Entirely.

Not just from his mind, but from his memory. He was only barely able to lock down his mind enough to remember that he’d seen something at all.

Then, it was over and he rested there on his hands and knees for a long moment before vomiting this supper all over the school roof and slumping over to the side to avoid the mess.

What the every loving fuckwas that?

*****