She lay in her plaster white cot, staring up at the equally plaster white ceiling. A ceiling in which, in this concrete cube, was so discourteous as to not even bear cracks to count to space out the monotony one would imagine thrust upon them in said environment. Even so, it mattered not: the discomfort of this practical hospital gurney of a cot, or the stillness of her personal confinement, painted pale to look so much bigger than it was when really it was quite a tiny space, for she was quite entertained anyhow. While she had been staring upward, she wasn't per se actually looking at anything within the dull and lack-of-hued room; she was, in fact, lost within her own mind. What else was there to do than think?

Not much.

She'd been resorting to losing herself quite frequently lately. By lately, she would of course mean the past few years rather, though she didn't care to know specifically how long, she felt it better not to know.

You'll be here forever~…

She duly noted. She was a prisoner (though of specific sorts, that is). She hadn't committed any crime worthy of punishment, nay, she would be kept here "for her own good" they say. She wasn't a mental patient either, mind you, if it was to be believed that was the direction this was going. No, something so potentially dangerous should never be allowed to roam free, what if she befell herself into the wrong hands? Non-American hands? Terrorist hands especially!? These were the basic sentiments of the agents personally keeping a too tight watch on her; "For her own good", of course, but,… What was so dangerous about the girl who lay now, in her bunk, arms behind her head and staring carelessly upwards past the ceiling and sky and into her own thoughts, however? She, who wasn't even eighteen yet (but was close, she'd have you know.) What idea was so frightful, that should the wrong search it out and efforts be damned, they succeeded, the organization holding her would have collective and mass heart attacks?

The prospect of a being that could see into the future and know anything she wished about the past was a tricky one indeed. She was what, if Earth had not squashed any magical ability within their populations throughout their witch trials and other such barbaric things, and with proper education on the magical beings throughout their history, would be called A Seer, An Oracle, The Mother of The Nine. She had many titles, those of which, of course, being attributed simply to her abilities. She herself had yet to make a name for herself, and doubted she may ever, but seeing into the future, however, was not an accurate sentiment (and prepare for it to get complicated,). Just like the space within this universe we all reside, is infinite and ever expanding, such are the way of the universes separate our own, and within this infinite set of separate universes each and every possibility exists. These possibilities exist themselves an infinite amount of times, and something as simple as missing a bus can lead you down a sub sequentially different path in life than if you caught it. The thing is, in the ones more familiar to us, some universes haven't yet caught up to us, some are far beyond, in other words, some exist in the past and some, in the future. What the Seer does, or rather is, is the only being within our universe whom has a link to her separate selves outside of her existence within her own. She subconsciously communicates with these copies, and based on the circumstances set before her, she can read through the universes that occur in the future. Whichever has qualities that are looking to lead up to be the most resembling to our own is how she "sees into the future". So, per se, it isn't the future at all. In short, It's looking at which events are happening in her universe, and what happens in the most accurate other, waiting for the two to coalesce or crash into each other, becoming one reality (where one will eventually stem off into its own that makes it unique,). In essence, this ability in and of itself is only particularly useful to its beholder, and with the absolutely vast range of possibilities it's difficult to tell even what's for sure to happen five minutes before it will. So what makes this a dangerous possibility of her is that, again with the prospect of multiverses, for us to be in the reality we are, a certain line of events would have had to take place to lead up to where we are now. This means she will know anything she pleases about the past, through this process described, and through the eyes of her predecessors.

If an individual or an organization were to get their hands on her, the results could very well be catastrophic. The reason for this?

People like to believe lies. Why? So they can feel better within their own beliefs. So they can be more secure and at peace within their own minds. So they can be more or less convinced by their partners that, no, that hideous pair of jeans really doesn't, "make them look fat" as they keep reassuring. (She chuckled at her own analogy). However, back to topic; people… don't like to be taken out of their comfort zone. There's a reason it's called the comfort zone, if you were to step out of it you'd feel very exposed or self conscious, upset or angry even,… all in all very… well, uncomfortable, and people hate to be discomforted, in fact they'll do almost anything to avoid it.

With that in mind, imagine a fundamentally religious person. This person, like many others before him (and likely after,) will have been taught throughout their childhood, the molding years, that whether or not they follow a particular set of rules will determine whether or not they spend the eternity after their being, being rewarded or left to perish like trash. These people are taught that they must be flawless, and abide to the letter the rules of their gods lest they be tossed into the incinerator, abandoned. They are taught that a single hand, or hands, of the divine hold them over a fire like some sort of vermin, and these hands may drop them anytime they please, should the follower stray from their belief system.

This mentality, respectively, holds little wiggle room within its comfort zone. Now suppose a stranger comes along telling them that their god indeed is not right, or their god had actually different policies than illustrated previously. If this being can prove they've been going about things wrong for the centuries the people's religion has existed, there will be an imminent uproar. There will be the disbelievers, the loyalists. They will stick to their practiced manners. There would be those who were willing to embrace the changing ways. This will always be the way of things. As will always be the two imminently clashing with one another, and judging by the past clashing of the religious parties, it couldn't be a pretty occurrence.

Religion isn't the only complication that could come of her apprehension from some obscure organization unbeknownst. There would be political worries right along with it. Every country will have it's inevitable secrets. Every country will have plans for a potential attack on even the closest allies should they try to stab the other in the back, metaphorically… or perhaps literally, if you'd like to go the assassination route. Every country is just as nosy as the next, and if it could it would be spying on the other in less than a heartbeat, without a second thought.

But some countries would not be happy to know their neighbors had such plans to strike them down if need be, or such methods to keep an eye on them. Political moves, elections, strikes on another country, the reasons for previous war, lies, lies, lies. These secrets be known every nation would be ready to topple the other and the people ready and willing to topple their own. World wars would explode into blinding magnitudes of red; anarchies sprout around the globe like weeds.

It would be devastating.

These are the beliefs beholden of SHIELD, in regards to the one whom we call the Oracle. The Oracle, however; who is this being? Who is this one who deems themselves a seer? The Mother of the Nine? Is there anything special about this being outside of her little more than extraordinary ability?

Not overly.

Sayuri Chiyo Lin is within every right, a visually unique girl; a bold mix of Norwegian and Chinese, if you were to cast a glance as she walked down a street she'd be relatively hard to miss. White locks gleamed against the sun, akin to the snow of which country her mother originated. They seemed silken as they lengthened down to her mid-back, unless she would deem to fashion them into an array of braids she usually would. Her skin was pale as pale was imaginable. It was, however, a charming tone, no undesirable pastiness, or unwelcome lines of blue dramatically contrasting just from underneath. Her eyes were an icy azure that was only comparable to the most vibrant of icebergs that lined the northernmost shores, boldly contrasting her other features along with her rosy pink lips.

Her mother, from Norway originally, moved to the Americas at a young age. She'd coined the name for her daughter when one day, long before her own conception, she'd sat down to watch a movie called Memoirs of a Geisha; she decided from that point on, of her first watching, that should the not-yet mother have a girl one day, she would name her after Chiyo-Sayuri, from said movie of which she had fallen in love with. If there was a better name to who would be so, in her mind, so beautiful and graceful as mentioned protagonist (if not more so) then she would have gladly taken it, but to her, there would be nothing to beat it. Later then, her mother met her father; a man from China who'd recently himself immigrated in search of better opportunity here in the United States,… the rest would be history; the kind of which, Sayuri didn't plan on looking back on. It was funny in a way, Sayuri thought sometimes, to have names from both countries, China and Japan, but she accepted it anyhow. She was who she was and it was far from changeable now.

All of this in mind, even if you were to see her on your daily commute, chances were you'd never expect her to be much special beyond her looks. No one would suspect her of being the singular link between the nine realms and any other universe that has ever existed or may to come. Of course, this was with respective reasoning. Thanks to SHEILD, of course, no one had a thought in their mind that such a being may exist and so none would know of her existence until it was upon them. And, if Sayuri had her way, it would be upon them.

At the end of the day, the poor girl was still just a prisoner. She could think herself as far from the place that she was as she could, but in all truth, it'd do her no good. She'd be brought back to reality, usually harshly, with an agent stalking their way into her cell with a multitude of questions to ask, shaking her on the verge of violently from one of her few ways to escape the creeping hell that was incarceration. Other times, it would be doctors or scientists shortly followed by a troupe of elite guards to escort her to whatever test they'd have prepped for her, or procedures to run. Mercy to all who become the interest of a scientist when the laws of ethics aren't on your side.

The worst day of her life to date had been shortly after the doctors, (who were assigned to figure out just all what this was and why she could do the things she could; trying to give a logical explanation to what it was besides the ever elusive to the race of humans, subject of magic) had discovered a natural healing agent within her bloodstream. It had seemed, whatever force had created her had sensed the harm that may be done to these special individuals called oracles, and had prepared in advance for it; but times like those when they'd tried to demonstrate the limits of said property, and then to reverse engineer something that could be used for their own purposes, Sayuri couldn't have thought this being crueler to let her live through such tortures.

Trying to use it to their advantage wasn't, in all reality, such a bad thing, as it had mostly consisted of simple blood work done every now and again; the rest of the work was up to the scientists and medical experts. However, when it came time for them to demonstrate just how far they could push their boundaries with this agent, before she could no longer heal… this was where things started taking a turn for the worse.

They'd sat her down in her usual chair for when they'd usually do such horrible things to her. Meanwhile she'd been preparing for simple needles, doctors had begun bringing out surgical knives, respectively making Sayuri less comfortable with the aspect that these would no longer be simple jabs, but rather nice, neat little cuts. They had had the courtesy to numb her arm before they set to work, making quick and shallow cuts along the limb. She watched curiously, it was one of the first times she couldn't feel what they were doing; either she'd always been awake and completely lucid, or her operations were too drastic to do without the adding of anesthetic. Like one time, she'd woken up with a nice big bandage wrapping itself around her crania. Turns out they'd decided to pick her brain – quite literally. The thought of why they would have needed to, or the fact that they did, and what if something had happened; they could have killed her and it would've just been like that, made her almost sick to her stomach. She would have just been gone, no questions; never to wake again until she found herself in her next reincarnation.

Then they decided to move onto her other arm when the results weren't as quick as they as they deemed acceptable. They'd taken the scalpel, and repeated the lines they done across the opposite. Sayuri had to hold her breath in as they did to keep in her gasps at the cold metal slicing her epidermis apart, cut by cut. She was used to pain so she could bear this, she wouldn't let them win this time if she'd remained silent for so long before.

"Agent responds to pain." One of the doctors muttered amongst their peers, but mainly to themselves as she went to go write down the newly observed information on a notepad, another taking her place. As it turns out, pain is what prompts the agent into acting. If a Seer can't feel what is happening to them, even if they themselves can see what's happening, but they can't feel, then the agent doesn't rush to fix it. The agent is designed, as the doctors would later conclude, to keep the brain running and undistracted for as long as possible; keeps the Oracle's visions going, instead of them being worried about a wound. It was doing its job too, admittedly. Sayuri watched the tiny wounds closing back until they were merely little lines of white that would, in short time, themselves fade into her skin.

But it would only get worse with this discovery. The cuts became deeper and more drastic, and each time she healed, Sayuri would only wish it to cease so the medical team would stop with their treatment. It didn't stop however. Once she'd recovered from a cut deep to the bone, Sayuri thought herself done as they began to pack up. She'd been preparing to remove herself from the seat when she'd be stuck with a sedative, and soon after everything would go black.

She woke in what seemed an instant later with a blinding light shining into her eyes from above and what, rather whom, she'd realize to be a different team of medical professionals looking over her. It was the surgical team, she'd come to know them as, and usually whenever she woke up she'd realize she had some nasty looking stitched-up wound or something of the like. She went to sit herself up to see just what it was this time but found herself wishing she hadn't. Pain came rushing to her midriff, exploding all over her body; it was unlike anything she'd ever felt, and she began to panic. She looked down to notice that the pain had not been for nothing, in fact, it was very well deserved. A T-cut, straight down her stomach and opened to splay her insides for all to see; the room swirled, and suddenly she thought she might be sick. Her vision became no more than tunnels, filtering out everything that wasn't going to be her way to escape whatever had induced such a fight or flight reaction. Ultimately, the doctors would have to hold her down lest she – further – and/or fatally injure herself, explaining that they only wanted to see if she would be able to heal from some a grievous wound should she need to.

In the end she would cooperate, and cooperate well she would, for she had no choice. She wouldn't have liked to encourage such behavior on the doctors/scientists part, that this kind of treatment was okay because she could heal herself… or that they could maybe even go further with their actions, but it wasn't up to her whether or not she healed from this, despite all the pain it'd caused her; the action was as involuntary as her heart beating. Even then, if they went any further, Sayuri was certain she'd end up with a lost limb, or at least a finger. She may have been able to recover from it judging on how she did with their last trial, but she'd rather not have to know either way for now, and for now she wouldn't. They were done for that day. That day. They'd once tried to infect the wound to see if she could recover from this as well; but all of her wounds were now healing too quickly for any infection to take hold. It'd like it'd become faster, like they'd been conditioning it to be so. It probably was, admittedly.

Besides delving deep into her thoughts or a scalpel delving deep into her, there were actually some other things she could do at the compound. It wasn't very many things, realistically, but it was enough to keep her from beating her head on the wall out of misery and boredom.

She'd actually been set up with quite the artist's tools; pens, pencils, paper, canvasses of all sizes, paint and brushes. The assortment would make any artist salivate. She absolutely dreaded the paint, to be completely honest, however. Amazing things could be made with it, sure, and she heartily applauded those who could make those infernal brushes bend to their will, but it just wasn't for her. Try as she may, she knew not how to make the paint go where she pleased, so it was generally unused until a day when she's feeling adventurous, and has forgotten why she doesn't. She found a pencil was nice and precise, though, so drawing wasn't out of the question. Nay, drawing was one of her most favorite things to do.

Mostly, she liked to draw landscapes and kingdoms. The gentle and rolling hills, contrasted darkly by the fierce cliffs that overlook a stormy sea below… stone and mortar castles, reminding us of a time long since passed within the lands of the Celtic… it was one of her favorites. It could hardly compare, however, to the glorious and gold Asgard, where everything to behold was a wonder to an eye of a mere mortal. She found herself often admiring the place, and she had access to the whole of everything in existence and out of it too. The pre-cataclysmic Empire of Atlantis, she thought to herself, had an architectural charm that was fairly reminiscent to that of ancient Greece and Rome… but with their taste for such gaudy things she would have named them closer to Asgard, in all truth.

She could also roam the complex. When she says roam, however, she really means being followed around and have her every moved be watched by at least a triad of elite guards, tagging shortly behind her; they were armed to the teeth and ready to exterminate anything and everything that potentially posed a threat to her… or wrangle her back, should she try to make a run for it... which, she of course had before.

Despite having guards on her arm at all times, Sayuri most liked to visit the soldiers whenever she went out. They were nice to her and most of them had been in this situation right along with the girl since her arrival. They switched out every six months or so, and a second set would replace them, whilst the first either went home to their families or got deported into war. After another six months, the second would switch out and the first would return; it was very uncommon to see a new face. Not all of them always come back, however, being deported to battle… but then she can see them alive and well within another universe and she can smile once more. No one is ever truly gone.

She closed her eyes, allowing herself to dwell on such thoughts. If she could help it, she always aimed to end a day on a happier note than it'd likely begun, and it wasn't every day she had the luxury of doing so; occasional bandages littering her skin would remind her of this, and what would potentially be coming the next day. These days she found it hard to imagine an existence where simply this was her life…

BANG!

Her thoughts were interrupted when a loud and combustive sound somewhere in the far distance from her cell had forced her from them, sending her eyes flying open in an acknowledgement to the rude reality check. She sat up in her cot, looking confusedly at the door, eyes as big as dinner-plates when she heard the repetitive rattattat of machine guns in response to the disturbance. They were under attack. She was too afraid to look at her attackers… as much as SHIELD had mistreated her, they were familiar in a way, and whatever this was… she wasn't sure… it could be for the better?

'It's most certainly for the worst.' A nasty voice sneered at her from somewhere within her mind, and it effectively kept her from using her abilities to find out what exactly was in store for her should it get far enough. Meanwhile she could practically feel the nearby souls leaving this world. Her soldiers and guards were probably in a frenzy at this… whatever it was, fighting with all their might… but the sounds of war kept growing and growing… their attacker wasn't going down without a fight.

It was as if absolute chaos had erupted just outside of her door, and it went on for what seemed like hours. In reality, it was probably only about, say, ten minutes. Guns and various explosions sounded from seemingly everywhere and it was hard to pinpoint a source of exactly who was where, or what weapons were being used for what sides. Occasional shouting and sounds of the dying could be heard between fired shots and as much as Sayuri would have liked to have covered her ears, wither eyes screwed shut to block out the sounds,… she couldn't. She would acknowledge every death there was to be had, and while this situation was out of her hands, the fallen soldiers' efforts wouldn't be taken in vain; not in her eyes. Turn not a blind eye to tragedy, lest you be doomed to it once more.

Then, the noise ceased. It was deafeningly quiet compared to how loud and active everything had been just a moment before. Sayuri, if she hadn't had visions of them before, wouldn't have believed how loud guns were. Even with visions, she couldn't imagine being the one to wield such a noisy weapon unless you were partially deaf… and by the sounds of it, you probably would be if you kept the use up.

She snapped out of her thoughts when she heard boots on metal just in front of her door. She held her breath. Either it would be the leader of the complex, coming to tell her that the attacker had been killed, or it was her attacker. If it was the leader, then she lived a continued life of incarceration, with daily medical and scientific experiment done on her person, and assuredly her psyche as well. If it was the attacker; she faced a world of unknown. This unknown had the potential to be for the better, but it could also be much worse. So very, much worse. She knew not which she would prefer.