Michael's gaze sharpened slightly. "If you touch their fate now, will it affect them?"
Jester was silent for a second before replying. "Based on the knowledge I currently possess, it should."
Michael's expression changed slightly.
Jester continued before he could misunderstand. "It should affect them, but not necessarily in a harmful way. At least not if the interference is minor. My current understanding suggests that light contact with a thread causes only subtle adjustnts. The danger increases only if the interference becos forceful, repeated, or directed toward a major outco."
Michael thought for a mont. So it wasn't harmless. But it also wasn't automatically dangerous. That made sense. In the end, fate was still fate. Anything related to it couldn't be treated casually.
Still, his curiosity was already fully awake.
"Then let's try it," Michael said. "But if it turns bad, we stop imdiately. I'm serious. We're not going to accidentally harm innocent people just because we're testing sothing."
Jester accepted it without question. "As Master wishes."
The faint golden runes across Jester's body pulsed once.
Below the building, the two Supers Association staff mbers continued speaking. In Jester's vision, which Michael could now see as clearly as if it were his own, sothing changed.
Around the two n, several faint golden bubbles began to appear. They floated quietly around them, so close, so slightly farther away, each one shimring with a vague instability that made them seem as though they might burst at any mont.
Michael narrowed his eyes. "...What are those?"
"Their fate," Jester replied calmly.
"That many?"
"It depends," Jester said. "If one were to count the totality of a person's fate across an entire lifeti, it would be beyond counting. The world is not fixed. It is unpredictable. Even the smallest change can give rise to new paths. These are only the imdiate outcos most strongly connected to their present state."
Michael understood partially. And at the sa ti, he didn't.
Before he could say more, Jester had already reached toward one of the bubbles. The mont his will touched it, Michael's vision blurred.
Then a scene appeared.
The two n were still standing beneath the building, still talking. For a few seconds nothing changed. Then the building above them groaned. A fracture spread. And in the next mont, the damaged structure gave way. Stone, steel, and broken concrete crashed downward. The two n didn't even have ti to react before they were buried beneath it.
They died.
Michael's pupils shrank. The vision disappeared. "What was that?"
"One of their imdiate fates," Jester answered at once.
Then he turned to another bubble.
Again a vision ford. This ti there were differences. The man on the left shifted first. The other laughed a little more. Their words were not exactly the sa. A bird flew overhead in this version. One of them looked up for half a second.
Then the building still collapsed.
Again they died.
Jester moved to another. One of the n tried to leave earlier. The other stopped him to say one last thing. The timing shifted. Their
positions shifted. The angle of the collapse changed slightly.
But the result was the sa.
They died.
Michael fell silent. Bubble after bubble revealed slight variations but ultimately the sa end. By the seventh one, Michael had already understood enough. His expression changed slowly as the aning settled in.
So this was fate.
Not so poetic concept. These bubbles were possible outcos already gathered around the present. And if nothing changed, those two n were going to die.
Michael stared at the golden bubbles with a weight that had not been there before. "...I see."
For the first ti, fate beca a little clearer in his mind. It wasn't a single fixed line. It was a cluster of likely paths born from the current
state of things.
His voice turned lower. "So if no one interferes, this is what happens."
"Yes, Master. At least from the imdiate futures currently gathered around them."
Michael's eyes remained on the bubbles. Then his gaze shifted toward the damaged building above the two n.
He disappeared from the living room and appeared in midair above
the city. Below him, the building in question sat directly beneath his position. He was just about to move when Jester's voice stopped him.
"Master. Wait."
Michael's body paused mid-motion, his gaze still fixed on the building below. "What?"
"I would like to try sothing first."
Michael frowned faintly. Under normal circumstances he would not
have entertained the idea. But at this distance with his current power, stopping the collapse at any mont was not difficult. Even if sothing went wrong, he could intervene before the two n died.
So after a brief pause he said, "Fine. But be quick."
"As Master wishes."
Jester's voice remained calm. "There are two ways to change fate. The first is direct. The second is indirect."
"The direct thod is what Master intended to do. Appear physically, interfere with the material sequence of events, and force the outco
to change."
Michael understood that imdiately. "And the indirect?"
"Interfering with fate itself."
The mont Jester said that, Michael's shared vision shifted again.
Around the two n, the golden bubbles changed. More of them began to appear, but unlike before, these new ones were blank. They erged rapidly one after another, surrounding the two n in far greater numbers than before. At first they contained nothing. Then scenes began flashing inside them.
One bubble ford a scene, then vanished. Another erged in its place. More appeared. More vanished. So flickered violently. So stayed a fraction longer before disappearing, as if rejected by
sothing unseen.
Michael watched in silence, feeling as though he were observing a
system rapidly recalculating itself.
Then gradually the number of bubbles began to shrink.
Ten. Seven. Four. Two.
And then only one remained.
But unlike the others, this final bubble did not simply fade. It burst
outward in a silent golden rupture.
Michael was still processing what had caused the change when he
noticed sothing different below.
The two Supers Association staff mbers were still talking. Then one
of them suddenly paused.
"...Why do I feel hungry all of a sudden?"
The other blinked. "...Now that you ntion it, sa."
The first let out a tired breath. "Let's go back to the branch and grab
sothing before I collapse for real."
The second gave a weak laugh.
Without delay, both of them stepped out from beneath the building.
The damaged structure above them groaned. And in the next instant, the building collapsed exactly as it had in every other bubble Michael had seen. Stone, steel, and broken concrete crashed down violently. But this ti, the two n were no longer beneath it.
They stumbled back in shock, staring as dust and debris exploded
across the street where they had been standing only monts before.
One of them went pale. The other cursed loudly. Neither of them knew it.
But this was the first ti they had survived.
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