by Joker1 and The Time Trust
Internal data monologue, recorded just prior to the first meeting:
I am Sente. I have come from the future to rule the world.
This metahuman organization is a dangerous idea. I have perfectly laid-out plans to destroy this gathering of the world's metaheroes. I will infiltrate them from within their own ranks. I will forge friendships with them until they trust me with their most personal secrets, and I have the keys to destroy them as easily as the rest of the human race. My cyborg intellect makes me far greater than any pathetic human or even metahuman.
My creator ensured that I was superior to my enemies. It was he who programmed me with my task, and I will rule the world on his behalf. The last memories I have of my creator are already shadowed by time. It one of the varied effects of time travel. I was standing in a dark room, a spotlight on me. I could not see my creator's face -- he never let me see what he really looks like -- but he was very old, and I could see that he had an unruly shock of white hair. He looked just like the cliche of the mad scientist, but he was not mad. He was perfectly sane, and very determined.
"The MBL must be stopped before it is ever created," he told me with his rasping tongue. "They have been a thorn in my side for too many years. I've reprogrammed your mind, patterned it after mine, made it better. You must do what I have never been able to do. You must destroy the Meta Board League."
I have no earlier memories. Sometimes I have wondered who I was before I became a cyborg, and what my real name was, but whenever I delve too deep, my programming kicks in. My creator was a brilliant man. If anyone probes too deeply, I already have a false identity set up.
After being sent to this era, to this year of 1999, I easily replaced another "hero" who had been invited to attend this first gathering. It was very simple.
His name was Freebooter, and he was an unruly sort. He had several days' growth of beard when I met him, and he stank of booze and urine. His professional uniform in his so-called "career" as a metahero was patterned after a pirate, albeit modernized and made of leather that stank worse than he did. I am sure that, had I not replaced him, he would have been a thorn in the side of the MBL from the beginning.
I met him in a dark alley in Venice as he was leaving a bar. He was drunk, and, when he pulled out his invitation for the metahero gathering, he seemed to be struggling to read the address. He turned when I said hello, and said, "Who the fuck are you?" in a slow, alcohol-induced drawl, turning his ankle-length, shiny black leather boots in the dust of the alleyway.
"I am Sente," I replied. "I am your death."
His look of bewilderment at that moment seared into my mind. For it was then that I murdered him with my stare of death. It was a gift of my creator, this death-stare. People die at my very look, and all I must do is concentrate. I stepped over his fallen body and picked up the invitation.
Closely inspecting it, I could see that it was electronically coded and would allow only this Freebooter fellow to use it. Very advanced technology for this time, but absolutely no challenge for my future cyborg mind. I altered the electronic codes and replaced Freebooter's codes with my own. Now it was Sente who possessed this invitation, and I would easily infiltrate the meeting.
Taking down this group will be a simple task.