One Giant Flash

First step taken. Next, Lore thought, they needed to figure out a way to reposition the station. Juror had done it once before obviously but their next trip would be a little further than they had managed. The hole was made however so they were that much closer to the end. Exhausted, they retreated to an empty room to rest. An hour and a half later, the room was suitable for sleeping. Normally, when they were this tired, their lights would be out before their head hit the mattress but something was keeping them conscious. They lay in their bed, Char beside them, thinking. As they did so, their pulse began to race and with it, their mind. Thousands of possibilities, thousands of eventualities passed by before they could blink. Given their abilities as the Paragon of the Present, they could see all of reality but now, attempting to sleep under a hole in the fabric of the universe, they could see much more than that. Fifty two universes were the least of their worries; they were getting images from all two thousand, seven hundred and five universes. If not for the lack of their ability to focus or drown them out, this may have proven advantageous but, as it stood, all they saw was a jumbled mess of people and places overlapping one another. As they calmed from the sensory overload, the flashes of vision slowed. At this speed, they could make out finer details and places; they laid in their bed, eyes wide open, watching the universes around them.
“Look, we help them, then we’re free from dad’s clutches. He might even let us leave this hell hole of a universe.” A Cornerstone spoke to its siblings. Lore didn’t recognise any of them, nor the universe they were in but continued to focus on their conversation as they saw a glimpse of a familiar face.
“If you help us, you get to prove that our dads are not needed to keep the universes stable. Reality will be redundant.” Time spoke up.
“That sounds bad.” Space stepped back from the circle, creating an irregular quadrilateral.
“But what does Reality even do?” Time began. “The Realitys sit there and, every now and then, they destroy a universe or curse an unlucky mortal. We get rid of them, we make the rules.” The other Cornerstones were in full agreement with Time. Even Space was coming around. “And when we make the rules, we can make sure that never happens to anyone else again.” With a smile, Time had gotten Space back on side. “Now I need your help. Go to the other universes and recruit as many of us as you can. Anyone with one of these in their genome too. We need as many of us as we can gather if we’re going to stand a chance.” Time disappeared leaving Lore’s gaze on the four alien Cornerstones. They too split off to pass on Time’s message as quickly as possible. Only their Time knew how long they had left and it knew that wasn’t long.
Lore followed them for a while but as they did, they began to drift. Eventually, sleep enveloped them. It didn’t last long as before they could properly close their eyes, they were forced open. Piper stood at the end of their bed, blasting Nineties Earth pop through the station’s public address system. Begrudgingly, they rose and began their day.
“What’s the plan then?” Char was the first to speak. The others hovered, ready to carry out Lore’s orders.
They blinked, still trying to wake up as the music still blared. “I’ve got an idea which should work. Last time, you moved the Earth via quantum entangled singularities right?”
“Wormholes? Yeah.” Juror nodded.
“Well, this time, we’re going old school.” Lore took a breath as they nodded off for a moment. “We’re going to link our Breachers to the station and Breach it to its destination.”
“Through the four dimensions?” Juror stared at them as one would when suggesting successfully fitting a ten millimetre screw into a three millimetre hole. “How’s that even going to work?”
“With the addition of a little dark matter.” Lore gestured for Char’s Breacher. She obliged. “When I first broke the multiversal barrier, I learned that the fabric of the universe can be rather sharp if you throw rocks at it.” Understandably, Juror was confused. “We tossed a Cornerstone charged stone at the fabric of reality, causing it to shatter. As time had stopped, the resulting shards didn’t degrade as they normally do and the hole didn’t heal like the one above us is. The fragments that came from the hole we made merged with the stone we used and impaled me. That created a micro rift in my arm which allows me to travel the multiverse without…” They reached into Char’s Breacher. “One of these.” And pulled out a rift crystal. “All we need to do is find a massive source of Tempora then we can use the station’s existing dark matter reserves to Breach our way to the central universe.”
“That may be an issue…” Juror bit her lip. “In this universe, it seems, The Guild got a little over zealous and completely gwydrast Quatarr. I checked to see if we survived in this universe but the planet had been nuked beyond recognition. There’s nothing left.”
“Nuked?” Lore thought for a moment. “Tempora is resistant enough to withstand that sort of bombardment and the heat on the sand might have even made more. What colour was it?”
“It was a brown-grey why?”
“Perfect.” Lore’s eyes glowed a whitish purple before they vanished in a flash of light. They were gone long enough to say their married name and returned with a massive grin on their face. “I’ve secured us the largest Tempora crystal I’ve ever seen. It’s in the chamber, I’ll have to adjust the stabilisers to fit it and we’ll be good to go. You were right about there being nothing left though. There were a handful of massive Tempora shards but that was it. Like icebergs in the ocean of space.” Their eyes widened before they turned to the console and began furiously typing. An hour and a half passed in silence and they were ready. In the time it took them to sort themselves out, their exit hole had shrunk by a centimetre. Ninety nine would be cutting it close but Lore had faith as they stepped into the harness room. “Only needs one of us. Quick jump start then we’re off.” Lore smiled, Char didn’t. “I’ll be fine.” They kissed her but that didn’t make things any better. “Hold on.” Lore winked. The room closed around them. Char retreated with the others to the observation room and waited with baited breath. Time seemed to slow as the space around them illuminated. It started subtly at first but soon, it was almost blinding. The second Earth went from being perfectly visible to whitewashed from reality as Heimdall Station Breached. Their re-entry was much quicker, taking the usual instant. From dark space to the core of the multiverse. Countless Moving Parts.