Generator was in motion before I could speak again. It probably would have been a reset for me, but Evelyn moved faster than her sister, stepping in front of me, arm extended, "Stop! Damn it Elaine, don't do this! Stop and think for just a second before you fly off the handle again!"

I don't know why, but it worked. Elaine stopped. She looked at her sister, glaring, then raised an eyebrow, "Fine. I'm stopped. I'm thinking. I'm thinking I want to read the future in your boyfriend's liver."

"Really? Elaine, you thought astrology was bull even when we were kids. No way are you buying into vivimancy."

"That degree of yours sure bought you some big words." But then she laughed. Not a crazy villain laugh, just a throaty, sane one.

"Well, I was too pretty for print journalism, so I have to break out the fancy vocabulary when I get a chance. They make me dumb things down for TV."

I kept my mouth shut. Mama Wesley might have raised a dummy, but it wasn't me. I was also smart enough to step out of way when Generator took Ev by the hand and moved to the bench. They sat for a moment, both looking nervous. Which made me nervous, because Generator nervous seems like a very volatile situation. But Ev lit up with that ratings generating smile of hers and just placed her hand on her sister's. She sighed, "It took some digging you know. To find Charley."

"I thought he was gone. Lost forever."

"He almost was. The old storage shed was falling apart, and the bin he was in wasn't in great shape. He had some fuzzy bits on him that weren't supposed to be there, and was missing parts that were. But he didn't smell too bad, despite the horrible conditions. Don, Eternus, cleaned him up a little, then asked a favor from a lady that can control things on a molecular level to get rid of anything that would keep damaging him.

He was going to have repairs made, but we talked about it and wanted to ask you first. I didn't think you'd even remember him, much less think about him... when you were about to die. You did though, so we thought it would be a bad idea to go too far."

Generator looked at me, glaring, "Didn't want the crazy monster to bite your head off."

"I didn't, no. I also didn't want you to think it was a fake, or to change it enough that it wouldn't mean the same. Look, Generator, we've thrown down a handful of times that you remember, and a lot more that you don't because they haven't happened yet, or they got avoided. But you don't really know me any more than I know you beyond knowing you can kick my ass nine out of ten times. You may not believe it, but I didn't go through the trouble of all this without considering how it might effect you.

Yeah, if it saves the fucking human race, I'd put a bullet in your face right now. I'd lie, steal, damn near anything if it meant the world would be preserved and people I love would survive. But I'm not fucking with you. Charley? You brought it up after the two of us had fought as hard as we could. We were going to die, and you showed me enough of the person inside you that I found hope. Hope we might survive. Not then, we were beyond fucked then. But hope that maybe, maybe the human inside you, the real person might be worth talking to.

I had enough hope to keep dying, to keep fighting for this moment, this meeting right here. Thousands of years, Generator. Thousands of years of pain and fear and misery that Evelyn could barely make bearable, where she was the one fucking thing to keep me going enough to hold on to hope.

This little horse?", and here I pulled the stuffed animal out of my jacket pocket, a tiny, ragged horse, faded to an almost white purple, only one eye left, and stuffing coming out of a half dozen holes, "this horse, I would never fucking lie about. Because if I did, it would break any hope I could have of you believing me, of some day maybe even trusting me.

Please. Generator. Elaine. At least think about it. Help me save Evelyn. Help me save everyone."

Silence crashed across the woods. She gaped at me. I could see her eyes flicking while her brain churned, processing all of what I'd said. I could also see her emotions fluttering back and forth from rage to sorrow, to what looked a hell of a lot like hope from the outside.

She opened her mouth, then closed it. She tilted her head and watched whatever my own face was doing, behind the tears I felt crawling their way down.

She stood and crossed the few feet of earth between us. She took Charley from my hand, then reached up to pull a tear from my cheek. She licked her fingertip, "You can get this fixed? You can turn this back into Charley?"

"Absolutely."

"How long?"

"Two days, sooner if you say it has to be, I can pull a favor to jump the line."

"Three days. Be back here, with Charley. If he's right, we'll talk again, see what happens. If he isn't, I'll hunt down you and everyone you ever thought about loving and eat their faces."

She walked away, turning at the tree line to wave to Ev.

"Jesus fucking Christ, Don! Is she really the only way? She's fucking batshit."

"Yeah, she has what we need anyway. I don't know of anyone else that can amplify the way she can. Plus her other powers. We tried Kickstart, that kid from Compton twice. Even talked a bunch of doctors and healers into getting Dynamo out of the nursing home and dialing back the dementia so he could try. Nowhere near as close to just surviving as Generator going at it half-ass.

Mike, I swear I've tried every idea thrown at me. There was a point where I was looping the last six months before they show up just throwing the kitchen sink at the problem, every whacked out plan anyone could think up. We even tried mind controlling Nuke, stuffing him full of juice at a reactor and detonating him. Took a lot of them out, but not all of them, and it blew a crater big enough to reach the mantle. Then the fucking Kitain just tore into us again.

Your sorcerer buddy? He called up half of hell once and the Kitain just mowed them all down. They're individually powerful enough to be a problem, but their group mind, the connection they have and the numbers , it's like fighting an army of The Ragnarok juiced up on boost."

"How... how bad do I die?"

"Bad, Mike, real bad. Torn to pieces. Your fire hurts them, and anything that hurts them gets swarmed. Dynamo got you going hot enough they couldn't reach you without a lot of them blown to ash, but his radius wasn't enough. They figured out he was boosting you and took him out. We all got ripped up then. Only good thing is that they don't waste time. They kill fast, when they can."

"Generator it is then. I'd suck Del off if it keeps me in once piece."

"Like I'm lettin' you near my junk. Don, you got the thing fixed right, right?"

"Evelyn says so. It certainly matches old pictures. If it isn't right, I can probably manage to loop back precisely enough to not have to try to navigate the meeting again. But guys, she's chaos. It's taken a lot of repeats to get here. We have to be fucking careful. I can't risk having to go back and ending up before the meeting. It took too damn many microscopic adjustments to get her there and talking. No fucking crazy shit when we're in the field, no fucking speeding on the highway, no fucking jaywalking!"

"C'mon Don, it can't be that bad."

"The fuck it can't, Mandy. This whole fucking thing is like juggling razors that want my blood. Death by a million cuts, even if I get it right. I'm not joking, I can't risk the whole fucking world because one of us got sloppy in a fight with some schlub like Titan. I might have to leave someone mangled, crippled, dead even. The further we get from the meeting, the more cushion I'll have, but if she ever agrees to let Kerry help her sort out her mental shit, I'm not going to risk fucking that up either. And we've only got a few years to get there. And I still don't have any clue how Quake and Devastation are going to fit into things. And a dozen other little unknowns can come up because there's always a chance something new occurs because one minor choice we make."

"Okay. Okay Don, we're all on careful mode now, no problem."

"Thanks guys. I'm sorry I couldn't give you everything before this. I'm sorry for the other little things I can't let you know yet too. But this was the big one, the one that lets me at least brief you on the big picture, start getting you as ready for the Kitain as possible."

Okay. For anyone that has been following along, you have likely realized that this has not only gone well beyond the prompt that started it, or the ones that continued it; this thing has a life of its own in my head now. I have zero clue how many more "chapters" are going to show up along the way to the final scene that's burning a hole in my head, waiting to be set loose. But that ending is there, and I'm trying hard to get there without fucking it up, just like Eternus is. Unlike him, I'm not so confident I can manage to not fuck it up.

There's been flaws and dubious choices along the way so far. I know there's gonna be others. But holy shit, that final scene in my head? There's part of me that wants to get it out now lol.