20: The Offer

Mirai, Mirai #20. Serial fiction: multiverse family drama.

Nov 17, 2025

Welcome to The Story Scrapbook, a fiction newsletter by E.B. Howard. If you’re new in town, check out my Fiction Directory for navigation.

Mirai, Mirai is a bite-sized speculative serial drama, posting weekly. This time, Lady Radiance and her friends must fend off the attacks of multiversal megalomaniac Mheksos the Mighty—with the help of their children from alternate futures far worse than their own.

Previously, Liam’s reflections on his reluctance to commit to villainy were interrupted by a very beautiful girl and a very powerful psychic. What do they want with him—and how on earth, or below it, is he going to explain this to his dark master?

“Now will you tell me what’s going on?” Liam said from his hard landing on the steel seat of a park bench. The girls had dragged Liam to the nearby public greenspace without stopping to introduce their friend or answer any of his questions, and though he was well aware that a proper villainous monstrosity would have immediately summoned a wave of fire to knock them into the street for their impertinence…well, Christabel wouldn’t stop glancing back and blushing, and it made him want to see how much longer he could successfully pretend to be a real boy. Besides, smiting Clare would presumably have brought the shrieking-of-the-damned in his head back to full volume. With apologies to the Master, it was a nice change to be able to hear himself think.

“Oh,” Christabel said as she sat next to him, clasping her hands in her lap. “Well—where to even start…”

“I just got here myself,” Clare said, raising her eyebrows as if to say don’t look at me. “And I’ve guessed a little bit from context and stray thoughts, but I know Marissa didn’t tell me everything yet.”

Come on, man, you can’t let a bunch of girls push you around. Liam was still workshopping his Lord Hades persona, but he tried to straighten up and deepen his voice, at least. “What is it that you want?” he demanded.

“We need your help,” the other blonde said. She’d leaned back against the tree trunk a few feet away and was telegraphing her glances between him and Christabel with a small tipping of her chin. A soft violet light was reflecting off the back of her sunglasses, hinting at some powers of her own. “You’re familiar with multiverse theory, aren’t you?”

Liam nodded. By now it’d become second nature, but folding four-dimensional spacetime to create a portal involved much more math than magic. “The theory, yes. I’ve never actually been through the fifth dimension.”

“I have. So has our enemy, Mheksos. He’s been traveling between timelines and burning a hole in the spacetime fabric here, or not too far from here, in every one.”

He hadn’t thought she could pivot quickly enough to keep her own alleged fifth-dimensional transit from being the weirdest thing in that statement. “Here? Why?”

“If we’d been in a position to find out, we wouldn’t have survived it,” she said. “The Matrix—that’s Clare’s son. He brought me, and my cousin, and his friend here from our own timelines to try to fight Mheksos off—I think he knows, but he doesn’t say much. You may have better luck with him.”

She was trying to trick him, playing on his natural curiosity and acting as if he’d already agreed to join them. Clever. “That’s quite a presumption,” Liam said. “I don’t know how you found me, or why you thought I would help you, but I’m not a hero. I’m an agent of the forces of darkness, and I have certain responsibilities. I can’t just run off and save the world anytime it’s in danger.”

He’d been half afraid they would laugh at him. Instead, Christabel’s posture straightened uncomfortably, and somehow that felt worse. “So you are Hades,” she murmured. “I hoped…”

“It was always the most likely possibility,” the other girl said, like she wanted to be comforting but didn’t at all know how. “That’s why The Matrix had us bring Clare.”

“And I’m very glad he did,” Clare said. “This does not feel like the simple psychic influence you described, Kari.”

“Oh.” Kari grimaced. “Yes, he said that might be the case, too. That changes things…I’ll have to go to Plan C. Could you drop the interference?”

“Sorry, why?” Liam said.

She pulled the glasses off and handed them to Christabel, revealing narrow eyes pulsing with violet light. “I’m going over your head.”

“You can’t be serious,” Clare said, taken aback. Liam just braced himself, not caring for the consequences if he argued.

“It’s fine. He won’t hurt us,” Kari said. “If it makes you feel better, I guess you can have Mother stand next to you.”

“You’re insane.” Clare stuck a hand out as if she expected the other girl to take it. “Come on, Christa. You and I and the psychic shielding are going to go stand at the other end of the park, like sensible people.”

“But—”

“Christa, come here now.” Christabel got up with an uncertain look at Liam, and Clare pulled her hand back sheepishly. “Oh my gosh, I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to pull out the mom voice on you. I have a toddler at home…”

The tortured wails returned while he was still watching Christabel walk away, shortly followed by a nervous shock crackling up his spine at the inner voice of his father. :Tell me the meaning of this at once, Hades.:

“I don’t know,” he muttered, swallowing the nausea. “Kari—is that your name?”

She took a shallow breath. “The you in my timeline preferred to call me Makaria,” she said. “But we can talk about that later. Please tell…him that The Matrix sent me to offer help, not only to ask it. We have a goal in common.”

“And what is that?”

“Christabel Jones, the woman you just met, is Lady Radiance. She’s going to be killed by Mheksos unless you step in to protect her.”

:Did you—:

:Yes. I heard.: