Flashback, Part 2
When the lightning smashes through the window to reach Noriko, the Core's anti-duplication field falters. The interference lasts only a moment, but Kari can create duplicates in the blink of an eye.
A new Kari pops into existence right in front of the Core; she grabs the baseball-sized alien device and runs to the window, throwing herself off the building.
As shocking as watching a duplicate throw away its life so carelessly can be, Quantum knows there are more important things to do. With the Core away, he's free to use his powers.
The armed guards are disarmed with a simple blast of concentrated microwaves, which melts their weapons from the inside. A right hook takes care of one of the doctors, because you can't feel like a super-hero if you don't punch somebody in the face every once in a while.
In under a minute, all of Leiko's men have been taken down. The proud owner of Scion Corporation is on the floor, with a hand on her broken nose trying to stop the bleeding.
<-Security will be here in a minute and your alien friend can't stop the Core from coming back. You are not going to…> she threatens, stopping when she notices Noriko's stance.
She's zoned out, staring at her blankly with silver eyes filled with electricity. Staring her own hand soiled with blood, Leiko watches the electrical current still flowing from her own head.
Twenty-eight years ago
Leiko wasn't allowed in her mother's room. There were no pictures of her in the house and her father never talked about her; Leiko had to discover who she was by reading her books.
Wakahisa Noriko had been a respected professor of archeology and comparative mythology, so most of what she wrote went right above Leiko's head. She was smart enough to read them despite being only five years old, but even child prodigies have limits.
One night she sneaked into her room. She was laying on her bed, hooked up to a machine that recorded her vital signs; people said she had a stroke shortly after Leiko's birth, but there was nothing wrong with her body. She kept talking.
Leiko screamed: there was a metal ball floating above her mother's head. In the dark, with the moon's light coming through the blinds, it looked downright demonic.
Eighteen years and six months ago
Leiko found herself naked inside some sort of storage room. There were boxes everywhere; she was in front of a ten feet tall statue of a man in a toga. The head and arms had been cut off.
There was some kind of alarm. The room was filled with armed angry men shouting orders in a foreign language that she couldn't understand, pointing weapons at her.
They ran all kinds of tests on her for several days. She was treated fairly, giving her time to study her captors. She identified all races she knew among them, and a few skin colors she'd never seen before. They spoke softly and never looked each other in the eye.
After they'd exhausted every possible kind of physical test feasible on a human, they started to ask questions. Every person they sent spoke perfect Japanese.
They wanted to know about Earth. Which god did they worship? When was the last time they saw one? What did they know about the nearby stars? What were the other planets in its solar system like? How advanced were their weapons? How many warships did they have?
Leiko answered every question. It was enough to break any teenager, let alone someone who by now knew she was pregnant. Leiko never complained, not even once.
After weeks of captivity, they took her to a poorly lit room where she waited alone for four hours.
Finally her contact arrived. He was freakishly tall, at least eight feet, and his skin was extremely dark. Judging by how other people reacted to his presence, he was in charge of the place.
A woman with long blue hair followed him with, taking notes on a digital device. Leiko could've mistaken her for Native American.
The tall man and the woman with blue hair looked at each other. They seemed very worried.
Eighteen years ago
Leiko was sitting on a medical bed floating a few inches off the ground. The doctor placed the ultrasound sensor on her belly; she was in her eight month of pregnancy.
The tall man walked into the room, carrying a very heavy metal suitcase. He glanced at the monitor that was showing the heart rates of mother and child.
The tall man opened the suitcase. It contained a small device, no bigger than a fingernail, shaped like the symbol for infinity.
On Earth, such a procedure would've been fatal. However Leiko didn't even feel any discomfort when the needle went through her belly and straight into the child's brain, installing the Nexus.
But then Leiko's eyes turned silver, and all the medical monitors went crazy.
There was a bright flash of blue light. When it ceased Leiko had disappeared, leaving her clothes on the medical bed.
Today
Scion Corporation Headquarters, Tokyo
A slap in the face makes Noriko come back to the present. While she gets her bearings, Kari snaps her fingers in front of her.
Just then, security rammed through the door. They were pointing their weapons and shouting orders in Japanese. Leiko composed herself, still holding her bloody nose.
Null Tower, New York City
Vesta knocks on the window, stroking her right arm to warm it up. She can still feel the cold from Triton…even space didn't feel so cold.
Kari's original body, still wearing her pajama, opens the window to let her in.
Kari calmly walks towards the living room, followed by Vesta who is floating a few inches off the ground.
In the living room, six different copies of Kari gather in front of the television. Torn is also there, almost invisible among the collective excitement of the duplicates.
The TV is showing four people walking out of a building, escorted by the police: Noriko, Bob and two Kari. Then it shows amateur footage of a lightning bolt striking the Scion Corporation skyscraper, then images of a hole in the sidewalk with the same size of a baseball.
At this point, nobody is really surprised to see him show up all of a sudden without warning.