Plotbunny Headquarters hangs in deep space, a rhombohedron of dark reinforced glass and strips of blue light, just like so many interplanetary control systems across the galaxy. Small, swift scout ships dart from the mouth of a panel that opens up in one of the structure's faces, following a strip of lights out into the blackness, then winking from sight, off to some obscure area of the galaxy to perform checks on a system damaged during the Incident or reconnect somewhere with their communications still offline. Everyone in Headquarters has been busy since the Incident, forced to actually communicate with their Central Command on the Game Over Screen for once, to be held accountable for their actions in a facility whose importance is recognised, for better or worse. They have new blue lights to replace the flickering ones, vending machines that actually work, but they can't slip up for a moment with public focus on them. The only place that the stress is not allowed to reach is the medical wing, a facility with its own very specific types of constant chaos, only allowed where it benefits the patients. Many of the Plotbunnies suffered neural and even core data damage from narrative feedback during the Incident, and now the medics are forcing them to rest in bed, listening to carefully formulated background music to collect their thoughts and lead the pathways of their brain into patterns that will defragment them, clear away the chaotic snarls that the interference tied them in. No Plotbunny likes taking a day off work, lots of them smuggle their laptops into the facility and drink far too much coffee, but the truth is that they can't do their jobs when they're in that much of a state and they know it.

Some of them are more far gone than others, and some have always been like that, a little disconnected from the flow of destiny, their own stories not quite working, not reaching an end or maybe not even beginning. The recon ships bring in more every day. They can't afford to turn any of them down, so they treat every single one of them. The place is looking more like a fate damage hospital these days than a centre for interplanetary narrative maintenance but they can't afford to risk the possibility that the next patient might turn out to be another Xinae, and it's best to catch it as early as possible, no matter how minor the problem is - prevention is always better than cure.

There are some who were there before the Incident, before the paranoia, because their cases were more severe and it feels like they've always been there. Diggory is one of them. A lithe figure with unruly brown hair that stops at the nape of his neck but brushes into his eyes, he lounges on the bed, humming along enthusiastically with the music coming from his headphones, eyes closed and fingers of his right hand tapping out a beat on the bedside table. He has a cup of tea but it went cold when he forgot it existed. He wears his favourite travelling tunic and trousers, having refused any hospital garments and threatened to bite anyone who tried to put him in them. Like all destined main characters, even flawed main characters, he is picky about what he wears, although he has more than one outfit as he is aware that the Yule Cat still remembers that he exists. A book rests on the table as well, a travel guide to a world he has never been to. He has expressed a desire to tour the galaxy once he recovers, assuming his destiny allows this. For now, he devours the facility's extensive physical book collection, finding it much more satisfying than electronic, but also their game collection to keep his mind and reflexes sharp.

The door beeps and a medic, a Bunny in a white coat, walks in. The Bunnies are roughly his height and walk on two legs, have opposable thumbs, but they have fur and the heads of rabbits on other worlds he has been to. He finds their eyes creepy but he is rebuked for being impolite when he mentions it. The medic holds a clipboard under one arm, walks up to his bed. He senses others outside, probably security guards by the heavy tread of their boots, and he wonders why they haven't come in as well, as they sound purposeful and have definitely stopped. People assume he can't hear them when he wears his headphones but his ears are sensitive to sudden changes and, unless he is meditating, he has one headphone slightly off the ear to let in sound, doesn't have the volume turned up to drown out everything else.

"Mr. Doragor. How is today's music therapy going?" asks the medic.

"Nearly done for the day, thank you," he said, "I'm managing to keep up with the rhythm and the fog is clearing from my mind. I can start to see the patterns of light."

"Good, good. It matches our records of your brain activity, and, of course, your narrative timeline. You've recovered a lot in the last few years, Mr. Doragor. I realise such intensive narrative therapy can be tough."

"Better than letting things stay broken," he shrugged.

"Indeed. And now I can say for certain that we can release you within the next week."

There's a 'but' coming, Diggory realised, feeling the urge to reach for his twin swords. They were locked in a weapons cabinet. Even should he be allowed weapons again so soon after being very ill, it wouldn't be those ones. They weren't just twinned shortswords but also interplanetary tools capable of damaging things at core narrative level. They had been useful when fighting core narrative problems. Now they were a danger to be sealed away. He understood this but he missed the weapons he had trained with all his life, that felt the most comfortable to him. Especially right now, when everything felt so wrong somehow.

"Of course," the medic went on, noticing the man's unease with nervousness of his own, "We can't just kick you out without actually pointing you in the right direction to your newly repaired and revealed destiny. Especially as it is rather unique and maybe difficult to find on your own."

"When you're boss monster hunting,'Unique' and 'difficult to find' tend to mean 'unusually big and dangerous'," said Diggory.

"How very astute of you, Mr. Doragor, the situation is... unusual. And maybe not to your satisfaction at first. But we assure you that it is your ordained destiny nonetheless, and that you will feel a lot better for accepting it."

"And the four guards outside the door are to ensure that I accept my lot, I presume?" he motioned with an incline of his head.

"For my safety, mostly. Newly recovered patients can still be rather... confused. Not all revealed destinies are nice, after all, and some people take it out on the blameless. Not that your fate is necessarily bad," he added hastily, "At least, it's not a Bad Ending, if you see what I mean. It's just rather, shall we say, different."

"If you don't tell me what you mean right now, I'm not going anywhere," said Diggory, swinging his legs over the side of the bed, "I can tell it's not some kind of tragic and irreversible death. You wouldn't have made such a fuss about something like that, it would have just happened. So, whatever it is, you want me alive for it, probably intact, and while the guards can overpower me, I don't think they can do it without harming me if I don't want them to."

"You really don't trust our organisation, do you? And after we've been so friendly to you."

"Bunfire has been my actual friend. He's been my travelling companion before I came here. You've been nothing but clinical, institutional. If people like you intend to help me, why did you not do so earlier, before my friends and the pressure from your higher-ups forced you to do so?"

"And you still don't believe that we just weren't aware of the problem, having an entire galaxy to patrol, and you being a statue in the middle of a church on a planet full of underdeveloped civilisations?"

"Yeah, bring back the unpleasant memories, why don't you?" Diggory growled, aware that the stiffness was creeping back into his joints and wondering if it was phantom pain from the memories or if he just really needed a bath.

"Mr. Doragor, the reason why I brought such heavy guard is because this matter concerns some rather high security information, even within this organisation. I need to escort you to our Director in a private room, and I need to ensure that you won't immediately complain about it to everyone else in the facility."

"Does Bunfire know? I haven't seen much of him around."

"He's been volunteering for lots of deep space missions lately. We doubt he'd even be back in time for it to become relevant to him."

"Volunteering my ass, you just don't want anyone around who would be on my side if this turned nasty."

"Such scepticism," he sighed, "And after we've lovingly repaired your destiny... aren't you even curious? This is your raison d'etre we're talking about, the culmination of your life's efforts. I know you've been divorced from them for most of your life, what with you having to take different paths due to your fate constantly malfunctioning, but estranged friends and family can still come together, long-distance relationships can still..."

"I get the picture," he sighed, "I suppose I am rather curious. Especially if you're telling the truth about the security risks. The sort of thing you people talk about openly, it must be something pretty hot..."

"That's the spirit! Come forth and face your destiny!" the medic smiled and went over to clap him on the shoulder, but Diggory ducked under him, scowling until he back away, then strode out of the door, stretching and yawning. His headphones hung around his neck, the music still played.

---

The four guards were quite heavily armed for people who just expected to discharge someone from hospital. Their body armour was visible and had antimatter-reflecting plates, force shields and heavy pistols set to deletory hung at their belts as well as the usual force canes. Diggory wondered if that was normal protocol for protecting top secret information. While he didn't resist, he didn't speak to them either, soon putting his headphones back on and humming along to some gentle synth rock. Of course, he could hear perfectly well through the headphones, and was also looking around for possible escape routes, calculating whether he could make a break for it if he suddenly darted away, how close the guards were to restraining him and how quickly they could move. He saw few other staff members, none of the usual panicked administrators rushing from office to office, people hiding around corners to catch a tea break. He soon realised that he was being taken a different way to the usual route from the medical wing to the Director's office. A security procedure, he guessed, and it probably wouldn't be the same room anyway.

They came to a dark-glass door with a more complicated lock on it than usual, where he was told to wait while they completed the inordinately difficult procedure to open it. It seemed to involve a lot of swearing, swiping ID cards, keying in numbers, yelling into voice activation sensors and a particularly irritating noise every time an attempt failed. By the time they had gotten through the door, Diggory began to sympathise with his captors – he wanted to thump the door too.

He was escorted to the end of the corridor, then down a floor via a slightly hidden elevator. This next floor was only one short corridor with a wide double door at the end, which they eventually managed to get open. Inside, the chamber was huge, with a massive cooling system that chilled the air and made a constant loud whump-whump noise. Diggory shivered and wrapped his arms around himself.

"We apologise for the inconvenience," said a familiar voice, "Please bear with us for now."

The Director stepped forward from the large booth he was staring at the control panel of. It was roughly spherical but with overlapping plates that had the appearance of petals in a giant dark-glass rose, festooned with blinking blue lights like the morning dew. Himself, the Director was a black-furred Plotbunny, elderly, rather small, his hair growing long and wispy, but still obviously fit for duty, his bearing slightly military. He wore a long black greatcoat and carried a staff of office that looked like a finely-crafted walking stick. He tapped the stick on the ground and the doors slid shut behind Diggory. A series of beeps and several red crosses on a panel above the doors told him they were locked. The guards backed off to cover the doors anyway.

"Is this where you tell me what's going on?" demanded Diggory, folding his arms, trying his best to express how unimpressed he was with all the pompous ceremony and not at all scared or feeling ill from the cold.

"I should think so. Nobody can hear us now except the few people who have permission," said the Director. He gestured with his stick to one of the amphitheatre-like seats around the chamber, overlooking the booth and the panel. It reminded Diggory of a lecture theatre, as though he was an underachieving student staying behind to discuss an issue with the lecturer... or an unwilling assistant discussing their role in the coming experiment before the lecture starts up. The uncomfortable chill was coming from the booth, Diggory realised. Along with the relative lack of people and the odd mechanical noises coming from the booth's internal workings, somewhere among the pipes that disappeared under panels in the floor, he felt as though he had just stepped into a haunting. Trying to relieve the tension, he swung into one of the pews, leant back with his hands behind his head and put his feet up onto the bench in front of him.

"The reason for all of this secrecy, is that your destiny is very tangled up with the one thing I can't share with the rest of my organisation: the Universal Endgame Instance."