"Somethin' I been meanin' to ask for a while now." Nia held up her copy of the blueprints and pointed at the large ether core. "Who approved this bloody thing? Why is there just a big lot of ether sitting out in the middle o' nowhere? That's gotta be at least a safety hazard, right?"

Melia chuckled. Her opposite member's tongue was amusing in its own way. "Your assessment is somewhat short-sighted. The ether in this region is mostly inert. Only with an active occupant can it even connect with the remainder of the network."

"Occupant?" Nia shuffled through more blueprint pages. "I don't see anything in here about an occupant."

"Of course not. It is somewhat of a hidden feature."

"Why are there hidden features? That just screams all sorts of risky."

Melia paused for a moment. "What do you know of extra-universal interlopers?"

Nia stared out the window for a few seconds before snapping back to the camera. "Say what?"

"I am not surprised you do not know; I only know because Shulk was interested in the history of the Polygons and Subspace Army, and himself participated in a similar event."

"What are you on about?"

Melia considered what to say. "There may exist potential threats outside our universes, and thus outside our ability to predict them. Therefore, I have established an extra backup plan. In short, it is a bait."

The confusion on Nia's face increased. "Bait?"

"Indeed," Melia replied. "Just as you were fooled into believing it is a weak point, so will our enemies."

Melia thought about this exchange a lot. Sometimes she felt bad about not telling Nia the whole truth. But she always concluded that it was for the best. Nia tended to wear her thoughts on her sleeve, after all, and it was paramount that the Consuls and Moebius truly believed that Melia had been captured against her will.

With the enemy desiring full access to Origin, they required the services of one of its two mistresses. Nia was powerful, but her power was very specific and limited to a single element - Melia's more raw ether energy was more appealing to connect to the ether core that had already seemingly been designed to be interfaced with. The extra backup plan had worked perfectly: Z had the upper hand at the moment, but Melia was exactly where she wanted to be.

It was strange at first to be connected to the ark. She could browse her mind through its contents, using it much like a computer to process and store information, or she could shift her focus back into her suspended body if she wanted to disconnect from the reams of data for a bit. It quickly became clear she could also access the senses of a mechanical simulacrum of herself that the Consuls had constructed, wirelessly connected to Origin for the purpose of imitating her mannerisms more naturally. She couldn't physically control the body, but she could use it to transmit orders to the many Mechon-like devices maintaining the corrupted copy of New Alcamoth.

But for all this power, she could use none of it. Not by inability - being connected to the ether of the ark, she could probably manage frankly disgusting feats of power beyond any mortal. She was here by choice, after all; she could cast off the physical restraints with a thought and simply teleport wherever she wished to be. Yet she instead had to wait.

There were two main problems that precluded her from taking action. Firstly, she did not have any visibility of events within the cloaked Cloudkeep or the shielded City, so she did not know Nia's status, nor anything going on with the Lost Numbers. But more importantly, she was only one person with only one chance. If she overstepped her bounds the slightest amount, if the Consuls or Z suspected that she was not as helpless as they believed before she could accomplish her goals, there was no telling how much more difficult the situation could become.

Many times, Melia had put the supercomputing resources of Origin to the test calculating possible courses of action. It was tricky to do so without making it appear as if anything was going on within the great machine, but it was second nature to her by now. Overall, she had come up with four basic scenarios.

The first scenario was the worst case, and Melia sometimes thought back on it as a reassuring "at least I am not this foolish". In it, she would simply teleport into the Keves Castle, immediately get found out, and fight multiple Consuls at once. In the aftermath or even during, the propaganda machine would paint her as the usurper of the true queen, and Keves would likely fall into chaos before she could fully remove the Flame Clocks from its inhabitants. If she ended up unable to take control in the end, she would be forced to withdraw, and returning to Origin would likely be out of the question, as extra security measures would certainly be brought in. Thus, she would have to live in the wilderness as a fugitive until she could get another chance - and with her metabolism restarting, she would only have a few hundred years left. All in all, a complete failure of an attempt to save the worlds.

The second scenario was a more realistic take. Melia would successfully infiltrate the castle, secretly dispose of the false queen, and free Keves from the Flame Clocks, followed by sending a delegation to the City with an alliance proposal. In the meantime, the Consuls would likely show outright support for Agnus, while the Lost Numbers would likely be wary of such a drastic change in Keves' foreign policy. It would be better if she could remain hidden until after securing the City's help, but the false queen did not need to eat or sleep, which she would be unable to fake. The resulting war would be winnable, but not in their favour.

The third scenario was the best case. Melia would teleport directly to Nia, rescue her if need be, brief her, and set up a simultaneous overthrowing of the regime. With all Flame Clocks gone at once, the Consuls would suddenly be outflanked on all sides, and the City would be hard-pressed to ignore such a clear call to action. The obvious flaw of this situation was that it didn't start with the same action as the others, aside from how much luck would be needed to not only safely teleport into a cloaked structure, but locate Nia amidst whatever might be hidden inside and co-ordinate with her without either being discovered.

Thus, she judged that the fourth scenario was their best chance. Melia would simply wait until a promising group of individuals arose, aid them from afar if safe, and join them at an opportune moment. Even in a world of an endless cycle, eventually a group of people would appear that could break the cycle. By the law of truly large numbers, it was a certainty. It was lamentable that this would consign so many souls to many lifetimes of suffering, but when compared to saving multiple universes from the dominion of Z, the decision was easy.

Much like Zanza, she was pretending to be helpless until the right people found her at the right time so she could release her army. Much like Alvis, she was waiting for the right time to show herself and enable a new hero to save the world. The irony was not lost on her.

Oh?

The false queen of Keves was entering the throne room out of cycle again. More news must be forthcoming. Melia shifted her perspective there.

Ah, now this was promising. A party of eight, the group of four from Keves and four from Agnus that the Consuls had been generally upset with recently, had arrived in the throne room. And from the look of it, and the present arrival of Consul N, there was about to be a fight. The simulacrum rarely fought, and the few times she could remember were only against no more than four. This would be a stiff challenge for the regime.

Melia used to keep a close eye on whoever the current Ouroboros were, but over the years this had turned out to be less useful than it first seemed, as it was not at all uncommon for the chosen ones to waste their potential by being brash and overconfident. So while she had noted the creation of these six, she had not been watching them any closer than the rest of the world.

She dipped into the archives of Origin, connected to the military records of the two nations, for more information on the arrivals and their recent exploits. Eunie, thick-blooded High Entia, ranged supporter. Lanz, Accelerated Machina, frontline defender. Manana, Alrest Nopon, chef. Mio, half-blooded Flesh Eater (Gormotti) Blade, off-seer distraction defender. Noah, Homs, off-seer sword attacker. Riku, Bionis Nopon, mechanic. Sena, half-blooded Blade, blunt attacker. Taion, half-blooded Blade Eater Leftherian, ranged supporter.

Noah and Mio, again. At this point it was no surprise to see the two of them as part of the party of potential victors. It must be something with the unique circumstances involving the Consuls of their other selves, pushing them to step out of the cycle harder than the average person. Her guess was that the resonance of the Sword of Origin was a factor - and given she had full access to a supercomputer's worth of resources, as long as she could understand the results, her guesses tended to be accurate.

The party as a whole was very encouraging. They were evenly-distributed in several metrics, contained all six Ouroboros, and were equipped with Nopon. Despite being formed of late-termers from opposing countries who only met each other several weeks ago, there was minimal animosity between them. All the Consuls they had encountered thus far had either retreated or been defeated. And now they had penetrated very far into the enemy camp, far enough to soon discover a great secret. Very few previous attempts had even a portion of these feats to their credit.

It was finally time to act.

Melia settled her consciousness into the simulacrum as deep as its artificial nature allowed. She still had no physical control over the body, but this was fine - it was enough to focus ether on its side of the world.

She observed as her stand-in fought. It was fairly convincing to those that didn't know her personally, but its flaws were apparent. Its "elementals" were parlour tricks, indistinct blobs of ether simply lobbed at the opponent for direct damage, rather than ever attempting to hold them for the beneficial effects that a true elemental would provide. It tended to stand perfectly still, making minimal effort to avoid attacks. The mannerisms were perfect, but the machinery was weak, and the tactics were inexperienced.

The battle hit a lull as the false queen took shelter behind a barrier that had been raised from the throne. (A perfect example of its tactical deficiency, to not have done this in the first place.) Noah appeared to consider something. The false queen raised its staff again.

Melia pounced.

She latched onto the channel of fire ether energy being generated and held it open. The simulacrum attempted to close the flow once the "flare" had reached normal size, but Melia prevented this, forcing more and more ether into it. Soon, it was immense, far larger than a safe size for the average person to control.

The plan was less risky than it might have appeared. Had the false queen attempted to move the massive ball of fire, it would likely have detonated on the spot, rather than obey and soar towards the party. And it could not simply dispel it, with Melia holding the ether channel open, constantly funnelling more ether into it.

It did not take long for the robotic body to overload from the strain. The moment one conduit blew out, the ether dissipated and remaining functionality was drained. And as luck would have it, the faceplate was blown off, revealing its falseness to all.

Melia retreated her full consciousness out of the machine and returned to a more distant observance. Very few had ever seen the simulacrum fail, and fewer still had not been immediately executed. But from the data she saw on the Castle's perimeter defences, there was about to be enough of a distraction that this would not be the case.

The Lost Numbers attacked, and party indeed escaped in the ensuing chaos.

Melia carefully analysed the reactions of Consul N, both now and just earlier. He seemed to think the failure of the simulacrum was indeed directly caused by her, but that it would change nothing in the grand scheme of things. This was good - her action had not caused any suspicion towards her, while giving the party a significant piece of the puzzle.

So, what next?

The party would logically conclude that if one queen is false, it is likely that both are. From there they would assume that finding and "rescuing" one of the real ones would be a major help for their mission. They would eventually come upon someone who knew of the Cloudkeep, thus meeting Nia. Nia would relay the tale of Melia being "captured" and held within Origin, and provide them enough guidance and context to be able to enter. They would fight through Origin with the goal of saving the queen of Keves, and upon doing so would be perfectly-positioned to continue on to Z.

There could always be other possibilities, but she had enough time to investigate them later. She had faith that this first "draft" would play out. All she had to do was remain patient, accept the "rescue", and return to find two nations ready to be freed at once.

Speaking of which, Origin's weapons would certainly be mobilised against the colonies once they were freed. Or perhaps even before then, if Z were feeling threatened. Not much in this world would be capable of standing up to such power, especially if she were to have already left and thus not present to secretly regulate it.

Melia reached into the Keves Castle's current maintenance orders and added "level 1 diagnostics: gravplates and inertial dampeners" to the list. A bit ahead of schedule, but not suspiciously so, especially given the list was already filled with repair directives in the wake of the Lost Numbers' attack. It would not do for all the castle's occupants to be thrashed about the interiors should there be a systems failure upon her taking command of Danya. Hopefully Nia would think of doing the same for Fauna.

Everything was in place for whatever would next come to pass.