Across the Multiverse (closed)

[StFornicate]

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Val Dorian took a deep breath, collecting his thoughts into a cohesive whole. A plan. He was breathing hard; the streets of Ravnica around him were quite literally shaking with overloaded magical energy, and it took a good deal of his willpower, and a well-timed counterspell, to save his assembled forces.

A pair of crazy little goblins huddled behind some rubble next to him; one of them was frantically banging on some kind of machine, a big crystsl ball encased in bronze fittings, glowing blue and red, while the other carried some sort of cannon; the two devices seemed to feed off each other in a way. Val put his hand on the crystal ball, feeling the mana course through his veins.

In front of him, another pair, these two elemental creatures, fully armed defenders, humanoid in their form, crafted of fire and water and held together by bonds of magic that were tenuous at best.

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Between them, a massive hound, every snort the beast made bellowing noxious sulfur.

At the other end of the rubble-strewn street stood Val's nemesis. Tezzeret, an artificer, surrounded by a collection of golems and animated constructs.

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"Last chance, Tezzeret!" Val called out. "Just give me the Mox, and I'll let you live!" Tezzeret sneered back at him.

"You'll have to take it from my cold dead hand, fool! Who are you that dares stand in the way of the forces of Bolas?"

Val's eyes narrowed. Of course. Tezzeret was in league with Nicol Bolas, the monstrous elder dragon planeswalker. There would be no negotiating with terrorists. Val roared, drawing more and more mana from the glowing orb, and in a desperate gambit, unleashed everything he could.

He started by probing Tezzeret's mind, a mental assault that left the other mage dazed for the moment. "Got ya," Val growled.

A fiery bolt streamed from his hand, flying forward to strike Tezzeret square in the chest. The artificer laughed, until another barrage from the goblin's machine accompanied it.

Val sent the two elementals and the hound forward after Tezzeret, their bodies seemingly fueled by the energy of the spells he had cast; he wasn't done yet. A wind whipped up around Tezzeret, knocking his golems and thopters askew, opening the path for his creatures to strike. Another blast from the goblin's cannon knocked him back, and the strength of Val's attacking beasts only increased, and they leapt upon Tezzeret, tearing and slashing at him in a flurry.

The artificer's forces reassembled quickly though, and drove back Val's creatures, for the moment. Surely that had been enough, Val thought, leaping over a boulder and approaching the battle.

Then he heard Tezzeret's laugh. That evil, sinister laugh as he struggled to pull himself up.

The roar of a dragon was heard a moment later. "Shit!" Val said, looking skyward just as the sun was blocked out by the massive form of a great red dragon.


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The dragon landed in the middle of the street, between Val and Tezzeret. "Fool! Using my forces without permission! Traitors to the Izzet League!" the dragon roared, fire spewing from his mouth, roasting Val's goblins and hound, melting the elementals. Val was barely able to shield himself from the blasts, a move that left him weakened.

"Kill him!" Tezzeret yelled, and Niv-Mizzet, Dracogenius, head of Ravnica's Izzet League of Mad Scientists, reared back his monstrous head and prepared to breath another blast of molten death upon Val. Val shut his eyes and reached out to the Blind Eternities; escape from this plane was his only option now. Fire erupted around him as he disappeared from the street...

*****

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Tommy awoke with a start, a thin sheen of sweat covering his skin. That had been close. "Fuck," he muttered, sitting up on his bed. He looked around his small apartment, and shook his head. He had been so close, but the artificer eluded his grasp again. He stretched and got up; made some coffee and toasted a bagel. He opened up a deck box of Magic: the Gathering cards and cycled through the cards.

Magic was more than just a card game. To Tommy, anyways. Most people just played it to have fun with their friends. Tommy played because his life, quite literally, depended on it. Tommy knew the secret. He lived the secret. The multiverse, the creatures, the magic... It was real. Frighteningly so. He lived it every night.

He was a planeswalker.

He was intimately connected to the game in ways no one would ever understand. Indeed, they'd call him crazy and have him locked up. All he really knew was that during the day, he was Tommy McCallister, thirty years old with a dead-end job; at night, when he went to sleep, he became Val Dorian, Planeswalker.

The Multiverse was real. His deck of cards were real spells. The monsters were real. All of it. He'd been a part of it all for fifteen years.

Well, that, or he really was crazy.

Today was his day to buy a box of booster packs. It was a monthly ritual for him. He went to his regular gaming shop, ponied up the hundred bucks and with a smile on his face, sat down at a table to start cracking packs...

 

[AnyOtherName]

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Natalie Silver was just learning what it was to be an adult. Eighteen years old, just months out of high school, the young woman had preemptively moved to the city of her college weeks after her graduation. She bid her friends and family goodbye, packed, and left without a single tear.

Sure, it was a little frightening. She knew no one where she was going. But that was the point. Get out of her old element, into the new. Find employment, save some money so she could work less during the fall semester. Or, at least, that is what she had said to those at home when they asked. Truth be told, she mostly wanted to get away. She wasn't necessarily in a rush to meet new people, or replace those that were close to her in even the slightest case, she just... Natalie had always been heavily involved in sports, theater, debate, and was the salutatorian of her class. Frankly, she simply had too much at home. Too many people expecting too many things. A summer to adjust, to have time to herself before being shuffled into a dorm and forced to play social and have an active status in student groups was a blessing.

She put on her friendliest face and waited tables at a decent enough restaurant. It was amazing to her to find that working her shifts and having no other obligations left her with an ample amount of free time. For the first month in her new locale, she simply spent her off time at home, reading, sketching, playing video games, and watching television. Which was all well and good, but eventually she became restless.

The redhead left her apartment that morning without any direct intent. An expedition in wanderlust, or an indulgence of her curiosity to explore downtown. Whatever the case, she took to foot, her emerald eyes soaking in the details of the blocks as she passed them.

After twenty minutes at a leisurely stroll, her sight settled on a poster in a storefront window. Her pace slowed. She squinted slightly, though doing so did not improve her visibility.

That face. It was so familiar. But...from where?

She waited for a lull in traffic to jog across the street. As she approached her gaze explored more the store, revealing it to be a comic shop. Her foot stepped over the curb and on to the sidewalk and she stopped, again studying the figure in the poster.

From your dreams, she suddenly realized. The flood of random memories came so quickly that she nearly felt stupid, as if she had misplaced something so simple as her own name.

Natalie wasted not another moment before going inside the shop. After she crossed the threshold, listening to the noise her entrance caused to ring out in the back, she walked forward slowly. She glanced around the entirety of the store, not even certain what it was she was looking for. After several moments and a few tentative steps later, her eyes found a dark haired man sitting at a table, his hands occupied with a freshly unwrapped booster pack of cards.

He must have felt her eyes on him because he looked up at her in the moment just before she began approaching him. "Hi, I'm Natalie. I wonder if you happen to know what that image is from?" She pointed at the poster, which thankfully enough was double-sided. It was not, however, labelled with any identifying text that would allow her to answer her own question.

 

[StFornicate]

Tommy was entranced for a moment as the redhead approached him, and he looked up at her as she asked him a question. It wasn't everyday a gorgeous, young and busty redhead walked in here and started talking to him, after all. It took him a second for the question to even register in his mind, before following her pointed finger to the poster on the window.

"Uhh, yeah, of course. That's Sorin Markov. He's a character in this game," he said, showing her some of the Magic cards in his hands. "Magic: the Gathering," he said. "Here, take a look," he said, offering her the cards he was holding from the pack he'd just opened up. On the table in front of him was a full box, he had only just started ripping through. A zipped-up binder sat beside him, and a long thin white box sat atop it, presumably full of cards.

"Ever heard of it?" he asked her, ripping open another pack and slowly looking through the cards in his hand. It was a mixed box, so it had packs from a few different expansion sets. What Natalie was holding was from Innistrad, and the art on the cards showcased the set's gothic horror theme. "I'm Tommy, by the way."

 

[AnyOtherName]

The man gave a name to the familiar face, which resounded in her mind like something she once knew. Sorin Markov... The continuation of the dark haired man's speaking identified Sorin as a character from a game, Magic: The Gathering. She tilted her head slightly as her emerald eyes fell upon the cards he offered as proof.

"Here, take a look."

Wordlessly, and perhaps looking a little uncertain, she took the offered cards into hand. She studied the first of the small stack intently before shifting her grip to look at the second.

He asked if she had ever heard of the game and introduced himself in what seemed to be a second thought. "I have. I've never played, though." Her eyes returned to the man from the stack of cards. "I can't claim to understand it in the least. I haven't watched it played... I'm only aware of it because of the nerds that would hijack a lunch table at high school to --" She paused, mortified. "Not to speak ill of nerds," she corrected quickly. "I've always just been too busy to indulge in that level of fandom for anything."

He had opened a new pack and started looking through his cards as Natalie fumbled with her response. She gave a sheepish smile and sat herself across from him, looking back down at her hand. "It looks kind of complex, for a card game."

 

[StFornicate]

Tommy raised an eyebrow at the way she talked about "nerds", and gave a little smirk as she sat down across from him. She was clearly curious but not sure where to start.

"Well, hope you don't mind us nerds, but we're all over this shop," he said, teasing her a bit. "And yes... It's a complex game. That's part of what makes it so amazing," he said. He set his booster packs aside and pulled open a box, producing two small deckboxes. He slid one across the table to her, and opened up his own.

"Would you like to learn how to play? It may seem overly complicated, at first glance, but at the core... It's really a simple little game."

He offered her a small smile. There was something about her. Such a pretty girl would normally seem a bit out of place in a comic book shop like this, but she seemed to fit right in, immediately. Like she belonged there, sitting across from him. He couldn't put his finger on it, though. Perhaps it was just something in her spirit. Her smile.

"Don't worry, these are my teaching decks," he said. "I won't overwhelm you with a lot of complicated stuff. We can get to that down the line. Uhh, if you like it."

 

[AnyOtherName]

Natalie's emerald eyes followed the deckbox as it was slid towards her. Tommy offered to teach her how to play, claiming that it wasn't as complicated as it seemed. Still, she felt nervous about looking like a total noob, and so she didn't agree immediately. A tentative hand reached out for the deckbox. She could at least look at some of the cards, even if she was uncertain of actually playing.

She glanced up at her company as she carefully lifted the flap. He gave her a soft smile, and she reflected it, somehow feeling more at ease from the simple gesture.

"Don't worry, these are my teaching decks. I won't overwhelm you with a lot of complicated stuff. We can get to that down the line. Uhh, if you like it."

She inverted the deckbox, pouring the cards into her awaiting hand. "Okay. Just don't wreck me. But...don't just let me win, either." Natalie smiled sweetly. "Or...I mean, if I do something totally stupid, feel free to tell me why and maybe give me my turn back? I don't want a huge advantage but...you know. I'm easy - err, I mean, as an opponent. Probably. Since I've never played."

Natalie tried not to look as flustered as she sounded. Nonchalantly she glanced at the cards in hand, studying them briefly. She still wasn't quite sure what she was looking at, or for, but it was better than staring at Tommy as she realized her natural attraction towards him.

 

[StFornicate]

Tommy chuckled softly as she asked him to take it kind of easy on her. He pulled out his own deck and started shuffling. The cards crisply slapping together under his practiced fingers.

"I'm not interested in making you feel dumb, or anything," he said. "The way I see it, I only win if you want to play again." He shuffled again, and again, watching her peruse the cards in her hands. He had to smirk a bit at her Freudian slip: "I'm easy" she'd said, but caught it real quick. She was damned cute. He couldn't be sure, but he had a feeling maybe she felt a bit of the same attraction to him.

Not that it mattered. He was a thirty-year-old man. What would a pretty young thing like her want with him, anyway? He just enjoyed teaching new players the game.

He started explaining the different cards to her. What lands were and how the mana worked. Creatures and enchantments, instants and sorceries and artifacts. "I know it's a lot. Why don't we shuffle up and just play? Hands up. We'll just walk through everything nice and easy."

 

[AnyOtherName]

"The way I see it, I only win if you want to play again."

Natalie smiled brightly. Tommy seemed like a nice guy and she found herself quite comfortable leaning over the table towards him as she studied the card types that he explained to her. She seemed to gain an understanding easily enough. When he finished his basic tutorial, she sat back in her seat and began to shuffle the loaned deck. Mostly, she split the deck and slid the cards back together, being careful not to bend or mangle any of Tommy's collection.

He suggested that they try out a match, hands up. A complete, simple walkthrough.

Natalie grinned. "Oh, come now, Tommy... I'm not going to show you my hand! I believe I get it well enough to at least stand a chance without you baby-stepping me through it." She continued to shuffle for several moments before placing the deck on the table, squarely between them. When Tommy placed his own, she'd cut it three quarters of the way down.

 

[StFornicate]

"That's fine by me," Tommy said, impressed with her confidence. Most new players were pretty overwhelmed by everything the game had to offer, so she was like a breath of fresh air. He smiled as he cut her deck, and then took his own and drew his cards. "You draw seven cards to start. Ideally, you want a hand with like three lands and spells you can play in the first few turns of the game," he said.

He looked at his own hand. Two swamps and two islands. A couple of three-cost creatures and an artifact that cost five to play. Not ideal, not even really playable in a real match, but keepable for a game like this.

"I'll keep it," he said. He picked up a couple of dice. "High roller gets to choose if they want to go first or not," he said, and rolled a pair of threes, and then looked across the table at Natalie and smiled.

There was just something about this young woman. Something gnawing in the back of his brain about her. Not necessarily deja-vu, per se, but something connecting them.

Could she be another...?

No. No way. He blinked. Could she? He'd met other planeswalkers only in his dreams, and most of them he had to battle. Would he even recognize one in this waking life? She didn't even know the game until now, how could she be one? She seemed like such a natural at it though...

 

[AnyOtherName]

Natalie held her deck, counting four cards off of the top before placing them in a fanned arrangement, face-down on the table. An additional three followed, placed neatly just over the already placed cards. She set the deck to her left before gathering her hand.

Emerald eyes studied as she shifted through her draw. Three lands (two plains, one swamp) - or wait, four. Godless Shrine. Okay, so it was like a guild gate; it entered the battlefield tapped, but unlike a guild gate, you could pay to 2 life if you really needed the mana that same turn. Tap for white or black mana... Natalie smiled. How useful!

She had a two cost creature and an enchantment, as well as a five cost creature.

"I'll keep my hand," she announced. The girl was fairly confident that things were off to a good start.

She rolled the dice. Natalie didn't seem too surprised when her result was low, a one and a two. The God of Dice hated her. She looked up at Tommy. "Are you going first, then?"

She felt oddly confident, considering that this was her first match. But from the looks of things, Tommy had loaned her a pretty badass deck.