(Somewhere, in an undisclosed location both far beyond and remarkably close to the New World)

A group of people looked over a document placed before them that was also on one of the walls of their meeting place. The document listed every major event that had taken place in their Prison in the past few months, with one constant being the result of a vast majority of them. That constant being an entity referred to as The Variable. This meeting was to review the progress made by a person designated [X] and his team regarding the containment of a group of malevolent entities referred to as The Rogues and whether the newly introduced Variable was capable of maintaining the status quo, eliminating The Rogues or if the Variable was instead pushing The Rogues towards a third breakout attempt.

“I told you this was a terrible idea, [X]. The Rogues were bad enough after that catastrophe of a PR nightmare, but why did you think adding him to the equation would make things any better?” asked a female voice.

“[Y], remember that we are referring to ‘him’ as The Variable and that I told you the reasoning behind it. If we didn’t add The Variable in, The Rogues would have gone berserk long before this current point in time. In fact, the introduction of The Variable has actively prevented them from breaking out at the time it was feared that they would. Sure, things are progressing in an undesirable direction, but a bit of unpredictability is to be expected when putting that Variable into any scenario. But then again, what can you expect? The flapping of a butterfly’s wings, and all that.”

“The Butterfly Effect, [X]? Really?” sighed an elderly male voice. “And I have to admit, [X], it is astounding that you would make such an understatement. ‘A bit unpredictable’? We all know how difficult it was to make anything remotely similar, and by adding The Variable into the mix, we may have just made The Rogues more likely to realize that they are trapped. And we all know what happened the last time they realized that they had shackles on them.”

“[G], I can assure you, the current odds of The Rogues breaking out of The Prison again are only 3.58%. But, if it really concerns you that much, we can eliminate The Variable and have the odds skyrocket to a whopping 86.987% of the Rogues breaking out and doing even more damage than last time. Is that what you want?” [X] responded.

“Don’t threaten me, [X]. You are on thin ice, so I do hope you make sure that The Prison keeps its inmates away from everything else.”

“Oh, don’t worry, [G], I made perfectly sure to give that Variable a few vulnerabilities.”

“Like mortality?” asked a younger male voice.

“Precisely, [R].”

“But what about the time when he… when The Variable did die? By all rights, The Variable should not be around at this time.” inquired an older female voice.

“Well, [F], The Rogues were a bit more creative than I had thought. While none of The Rogues in the immediate area had access to the standard Resurrection ‘Spells’, they made up for it by simply forcing The Variable back to life with sheer willpower and a bit of mad science. Thankfully, it does not appear that The Variable is willing to stay with those Rogues in particular. The Variable seems to desire to be free, rather than exist solely as a studhorse. And who can blame it? Have you seen what those five Rogues look like?” [X] replied.

“Yes, we know. Those ones were… disturbing, to say the least. We should be grateful that they did not manage to fulfill the aims they sought to achieve during the ‘incident’. As if those things weren’t bad enough when inside that, we had to potentially deal with them outside of it too…”

“I will admit, we got a bit carried away when making them, but the fact that they changed so much was something due more to the holdovers from that than anything else. Let’s remember why we made The New World in the first place, and why we needed to put The Variable in when we did.” [X] said.

“And yet, you decided to drop it where it didn’t need to go, starting the whole series of events that we are reviewing. The Constants have already suffered two major losses, and now a third Constant is about to be destroyed. What do you think will happen when the last one falls? With no other foes, The Rogues will break free. You and yours need to destroy The Prison; collapse it with everything in it. That is the only way to-.” [A] said with growing anger but was cut off by [X].

“As much as we would like to, [A], we simply are unable to. The Prison is located in a place we cannot easily access, as the vestiges of the last time The Rogues broke free still haunt that place. We would love to destroy The Prison and everything in it, but the ghosts of the first breakout are still inside everything, civil and military alike. The last time we tried to destroy it, the machines went rampant and caused the destruction of District NA-57321-74. The military just barely managed to halt the launches and their corruption still has yet to be purged, but with that being said, you should understand why no one is willing to try and storm the site.”

The people in the board room sighed. [X] and his team had been barely able to stop the apocalypse by injecting The Variable into The Prison, and they had, in the process, lost their backdoor into the New World. Now, all they could do was watch and collect data, at least until a better way to alter The Prison could be made. All the could hope for was that The Wardens would do the work needed, when needed, to keep the status quo, which did not look to be happening nearly as often as was desired.

True, [X] and his team were, in a manner of speaking, responsible for what had happened, and therefore the [REDACTED] had forced them to try and limit any damage that another breakout (of which there had been two total thus far) along with the odds of such a thing happening a third and possibly final time.

The meeting continued, even as more data was pouring in, with [X] defending his choice to inject The Variable into The Prison using the now impossible to access backdoor. At the end, each member logged off one by one and the room was devoid of people, save for [X] himself. Little did anyone else know that [X] and his team were not at all interested in keeping The Rogues bound and chained, let alone destroying them. The Rogues had done a whole lot of damage during both times they broke free of their constraints, once at the end of that and once after they were put in and escaped The Prison.

But, even after the damage was cleaned up, the traces of the wars were still felt. [X] and not only were his crew were one of those who had welcomed their new masters, they were also among those who were very angry when their new overlords were imprisoned. [X], in his effort to obfuscate the gradual infection that was spreading from The Prison, had done something considered very illegal and added The Variable to The Prison. So far, the damage to The Prison was minimal, but once the ball started rolling it would only be a matter of time till the New Gods walked the world, this time with no force capable of standing against them.

The Omni-Worm was working perfectly, and no one had noticed it thus far. It would only be a matter of time until the New Gods that were trapped in The Prison had a fail-proof backdoor into everything and almost everyone. [X] smiled, and logged out, ready to work that little bit harder to bring a dream into reality.