Rifts Crisis

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The “Rifts Crisis” was an interdimensional crisis which threatened the multiverse. 
It was characterised by an epidemic of Rifts rippling throughout Time and Space in many dimensions, but principally affecting the early 21st century in the as well as in the . The origin of the Rifts Crisis was ambiguous, with several possible origins all feeding the pandimensional issue, which was knowingly accelerated by an unknown party.
== Description ==
=== Origins in St. Canard ===
In the , the Board of Directors of the Fiendish Organization for World Larceny gave corrupt St. Canard-based McDuck Enterprises scientist Taurus Bulba the plans of the Solego Circuit, telling him to investigate its viability. With the help of Doctor Waddlemeyer, Bulba was able to construct the Ram Rod, a device which could suck in items (or individuals) from other dimensions on the basis of simple descriptive input.
Waddlemeyer quickly discovered the Ram Rod was unstable: every time it was used, it opened a Rift between its universe and the target one. This process damaged the fabric of reality, with the Rifts multiplying and becoming harder to close with every new use of the device. Bulba, however, refused to stop using his machine, deeming that even if he ended up destroying the current reality, he would be able to use the Ram Rod to create “a better one”. This got to the point where the unstable ur-Rift became impossible to close, emanating strong winds and sending rubble flying out.
After a climactic face-off with Bulba and a group of supervillains he'd pulled from another world through the Rift, Gosalyn Mallard destroyed the Ram Rod by hitting one of its weak spots with an arrow from her crossbow. After one final discharge of Rift-energy which injured Bulba and sent his supervillain helpers back where they belonged, the ur-Rift dissipated from the 2017 Continuum.Let's Get Dangerous! (2020). Jenny Everywhere and Pythagoras-858's later investigation into the origins of the Rifts Crisis identified “that bull-guy” and his “Rift-making ray” as a potential starting-point of the Crisis.The Grand Multiverse Hotel (2020).
=== Other possible starting points ===
Jenny Everywhere and Pythagoras-858 identified several other possible geneses for the Rifts threatening the multiverse. One was that, in a parallel universe, a young Space Behemoth by the name of Dread Lord Fyargathaaark865blububurgh$1gkzo had played recklessly with xir father's “chemistry set”, something which xir mother apparently considered worth a mild scolding at best.
Jenny and Pythe also identified a universe inhabited by a time-traveller with a bowtie as a potential origin for the Rifts. Jenny and Pythe believed the time-traveller had himself created the Rifts; this was also the belief of a coalition of his enemies but was actually incorrect. In fact, it was another faction opposed to the Doctor, the Church of the Silence, who had rigged the TARDIS to explode. The explosion of the advanced timeship reached everywhere in Time and Space, including into “all [other] universes”, which the Cybermen predicted would all be “deleted” unless something could be done.Series 5 of Doctor Who (2010). The time-traveller was able to close the Rifts in his universe by rebooting it using some of the Rifts themselves, transmitting a restoration field to every place and time the Cracks had touched by broadcasting it from the very heart of the original explosion.
After Pythe and Jenny checked in on that same universe a second time, they found that the same time-traveller appeared to have reopened the same Rifts by causing a paradox when he attempted to "kill Death". Indeed, a foolhardy attempt by another version of the Doctor to wipe out the Kotturuh, Bringers of Death in the early days of his universe led to “fractures in Time” once more threatening the integrity of that universe, with Anke Von Grisel being able to collect various items which had fallen into her world from parallel or aborted timelines.Time Lord Victorious (2020).
Ultimately, Jenny and Pythe agreed that the root cause of the Rifts Crisis was not relevant to stopping it, as all the potential causes they could find had been taken care of within their home universe; instead, true guilt for the Rifts Crisis lay with whoever had accelerated the spread of the Rifts throughout the rest of the multiverse.
=== The Consistency Imperium ===
At some point, an organisation known as the Consistency Imperium was founded in reaction to the Crisis by Vertolin and the other surviving Vormerschuiving of Subcinctus, who had travelled back in Time following their dimension's destruction by a Rift at a later point in the Crisis.The Fall of the Consistency Palatium (2020). Seeking to neutralize anything they saw as a dimensional anomaly or paradox as a way to resolve the Crisis, they were originally led by a High Council headed by Vertolin. A mad alchemist was recruited by Vertolin as his personal advisor; although he proved himself useful, he had a tendency to advocate destructive solutions and strategies.
However, the High Council went into seclusion, leaving the arrogant and hot-headed Imperial Imperator functionally in charge of the Imperium and its resources. The Imperator supervised the building of a Palace of Continuity and led campaigns across the multiverse, looking for sources of Rifts and ruthlessly destroying them, as well as “infected” dimensions more often than not.Stranded at Memory's End (2020). In many dimensions, they had run-ins with Jenny Everywhere, obviously reacting poorly to the living anomaly she represented. Jenny came to believe the Imperium might have been “hiding something”, perhaps actually being responsible for the spreading of the Rifts epidemic.
On several occasions during the Imperator's leadership, Madame Tarsa crossed paths with agents of the Imperium, usually causing their more destructive plans to fail. She realised the Imperium, having existed for many decades, were actually, in a self-fulfilling time loop, the main driving force behind the Rifts, much as Jenny suspected — albeit unintentionally. As she put it, “their rampant meddling – trying to undo any and all time travelling, sending dimensional travelers back to their home dimensions, outright erasing people from existence — only serve[d] to rend the fabric of the Multiverse further”, weakening said fabric to the point that Rifts formed more easily than they should.The Penultimate Pursuit, or: Chased! (2020).
In fact, Vertolin's Advisor was none other than Mandragora-257, an insane criminal and former member of the Crew of the Copper-Colored Cupids. After losing his body, he had made a deal with the Lords of the Spirit Realm for a resurrection, promising them the souls of the dimensions whose destruction he would bring about through the Imperium. His true plan was grander still, however; Mandragora was knowingly accelerating the Rifts Crisis, hoping to ascend to godhood by standing at the eye of the storm when the multiverse finally collapsed.
=== The Crew gets involved ===
On April the 29th, 2019, an unstable Rift appeared in the in the middle of the abandoned warehouse used by the Faction of the Fooling Fish. The Fish stepped through and found themselves in the Cupid Homeworld, allowing them to prank the baffled Crew of the Copper-Colored Cupids for a while before returning whence they came. The Blue Feather were sent through the Rift to investigate, and, if possible, to recover a pie the Faction had stolen. After they got back (albeit having accidentally gotten the wrong pie), the Department of Rifts was able to temporarily close the Rift, although they tried to warn their superiors that it might reopen later.Cupid Fact File No. 444 — The Faction of the Fooling Fish (2019).
Some time later, Tracker-764, a somewhat “rogue” Cupid who had been away from the Homeworld for decades, followed Doki Dick into a large ravine-lie Rift leading out of the Euclidean Plane. He found himself in a “hub dimension” that was being slowly eaten away by the countless Rifts hovering around the very small remaining area of land. He and an Old Man who had become stranded in that dying world were able to create Dimensional Prisms to contain or stabilise all the Rifts in that hub-world, thus halting the “wave”. 
Indeed, the Old Man believed the Crisis had been an ultimately minor event, centred around this hub-world; that it had only ever threatened a portion of the multiverse; and that, thanks to his and Tracker's efforts, it was over. Stepping through one of the stabilised Rifts, however, the Old Man came out on the other side through the very same Rift in the Homeworld that the Fish had used, proving that it was indeed still active. The Department of Rifts were once more dispatched to disable it.The Mad Cupid of the Euclidean Plane (2019).
On Halloween 2019, the Cupid Frankenstein-818's malfunctioning Spirit Realm Gateway device exploded due to his mishandling of it, creating a new Rift, this time linking the Cupid Homeworld to the Spirit Realm. Although the Rift was closed quickly enough by the Department of Rifts, it had remained open long enough to enable the Ghost invasion of the Cupid Homeworld.The Ghosts and the Machine (2019). Yet another freak Rift opened in the Homeworld November of the same year, allowing three SavageMan Warrior Robots into the office of Judicator-337 long enough for them to work out a licensing agreement with the Cupids for use of their likeness in the Cupids' animated series The Rainbow Adventures.Incident Report C248A – “Plagiarism of the SavageMen” (2019). Marksmanship-522 later recalled that the Scarlet Wings would run into Rifts “from time to time”.Planet of the Shapeshifters (2020).
The Faction of the Fooling Fish's Rift, located at what was now a guarded area dubbed Site 4-A-1, opened a third time at some point. It would then open a fourth time, shortly before April the 1st, 2020, once more allowing the Faction of the Fooling Fish passage into the Homeworld.Aprils Fools' Day Vignettes (2020). The Crew also informed Joe Torcivia, via a comment on his blog, of their belief that a Rift had opened in 1969 between the and a world where the tale of the Bird-Bothered Hero was fiction being documented by the artist Kay Wright. It caused the hypnotised seagulls from the story to spill out into Wright's studio, hindering his ability to create viable artwork.Joe Torcivia's The Issue At Hand, Link (2020).
=== Travels of Marksmanship, Bibliophile and Tracker ===
One day in early 2020, Tracker-764, seeing Bibliophile-962 about to depart in a Fog Ship, insisted on climbing in as well to use his experience to protect him, as did Marksmanship-522. With Bibliophile protesting, a minor argument broke out, during which an irate Tracker punched the control console of the Ship. This resulted in a brutal, abnormal take-off, the Ship “twisting itself out of existence”. This put sufficient strain on the fabric of the Cupid Homeworld to mar it with a huge Rift, powerful enough to prevent normal dematerialisation into, or out of, the Homeworld.
The three ended up in the home dimension of the shape-shifting Vormerschuivings, befriending Vertolin. They helped the shapeshifters defeat an invading fleet of the cybernetic conquerors known as the Detraxxi. However, they achieved this by forcibly dematerialising the entire fleet, which left behind another Rift. This attracted the attention of an agent of the Consistency Imperium, who interrogated Vertolin and ascertained that the Cupids had been responsible for the creation of this new Rift, small as it was. 
Meanwhile, discovering they were barred from returning to their Homeworld, the three Cupids resolved to seek out Madame Tarsa, surmising that she should be powerful enough to close a Rift for them. However, with the control panel still damaged, they found themselves travelling back in Time as well as forwards through the Void, and their Fog Ship collided with that of a young Sharpshooter-024 out on a mission in 1974, creating yet a new Rift. In their ensuing adventure, where they faced earlier versions of the Detraxxi, they observed physical fighting between the Detraxxi and some members of the Gang of the Green Gorilla creating more small Rifts.The Arena of the Detraxxi (2020).
The Imperial Imperator himself, aboard his flagship, caught up to the trio and their Fog Ship in the Void after they left 1974. Determined to stop them creating any more paradoxes, he ordered the firing of the experimental Unexistalizer ray (whose design he had overseen) on the Cupids, causing them to stop ever having existed. However, thanks to the joint help of Lethe-548 and of Doctor Sigma's Re-Existalizer, the three were able to escape the Oblivion through a newly-formed Rift. While the three were deposited at the Interdimensional Tavern, the Imperator, learning that they had created yet another Rift, resolved to find them and destroy them personally.
=== The Crisis in full swing ===
Director Darius, who had been banished to a largely-empty dimension, was able to escape his exile through a Rift, ending up in the Discordia Homeland. Reluctantly teaming up with D123-Blackheart of the Drove of the Demesmaekerite-Dyed Discordias, Darius attempted to make his way to the Cupid Homeworld to exact revenge upon them, only to find out about the Rift blocking entry. Not understanding the finer points of Rift theory, they attempted to travel back in time to an earlier point in the Homeworld's history to cheat their way in. This drew the attention of the Consistency Imperium, who prepared to erase the two rogues' time-travel through more time-travel. To evade their sinister manipulations, Blackheart brutally jump-started her Smog Ship, landing Darius and herself back on the Prime Earth but creating a new Rift behind them.Darius and the Discordias (2020).
Meanwhile, in the Cupid Homeworld, Pythagoras-858 explored Lord Thymon's Infinite Closet and, in its furthest depths, discovered a ghost in hiding and a large Rift that seemed to lead to an inhabitable dimension. After shooing the ghost out of the Homeworld through the Rift, Pythe, intent on continuing his manhunt for Mandragora-257, decided to drive his Fog Ship into the Rift, thus managing to evade the Homeworld's forced lockdown.Pythagoras-858 and the Quest for the Stovepipe (2020). 
After travelling for some time, he encountered an incarnation of Jenny Everywhere, whose “shifting” abilities were beginning to fail her as the structure of the multiverse broke down. They shared what they knew about the Crisis and about the Consistency Imperium, and decided to travel together to find some way to halt the catastrophe.Jenny Everywhere Meets The Crew Of The Copper-Colored Cupids (2020). The two spent some time investigating potential root causes for the Crisis before dismissing the question as ultimately irrelevant.
Marksmanship-522, Tracker-764 and Bibliophile-962 borrowed the Interdimensional Tavern's decaying official Void Ship from Volensholagoz and landed at Madame Tarsa's Workshop at long last. They convinced Tarsa to help them. Just as she was in the process of dematerialising herself from her Workshop and teleporting to the Homeworld, however, the Imperium managed to hit her and the Cupids with a blast from their experimental Isolated Space-Time Pocket Generator, trapping her and the Cupids in a sealed pocket dimension. With the Imperator having stolen her cane, thus preventing her from simply shifting out again, Tarsa opted to summon the Council. 
With their help, Tarsa and the Cupids travelled in quick succession through several worlds, including ones as different as the Interdimensional Black Market and the Land of Oz — closing Rifts wherever they went. However, as they lingered at the Interdimensional Tavern to close a Rift which had appeared there as the Crisis increased in magnitude even further, the three Cupids were separated from the Council when they were abducted by the revengeful Detraxxis fleet.
In the meantime, Pythagoras and Jenny had ended up at Hilbert's, the Interdimensional Hotel, where they became separated due to Jenny running into old enemy Sylvester Shoebill. Pythe helped Wendy Severn revive the Queen of the Black Market, who, newly-freed from the Rift at the Market, had decided to give herself a vacation only to be poisoned by a Wellsian, Forga sog-Forgos. Pythagoras was unable to stop the Wellsian's schemes beyond this, however, as, due to the Rift disrupting the time-synchronicity of the Hotel, he was meeting Wellsians from a far earlier point in Time, preventing him from interfering with what he knew to be the established course of events.
=== Conclusion ===
As the imprisoned Marksmanship-522, Tracker-764 and Bibliophile-962 were being carried to the Realm of the Detraxxi aboard a Detraxxis ship, the vessel was boarded by a sextet of Consistency Imperium agents. They quickly overpowered the Detraxxi and found the Cupids, revealing to them the Detraxxi's true identity as a future evolution of the Gang of the Green Gorillas. With the help of the Hound, however, the Cupids were able to evade destruction. They stole a Copper-Powered Void Vessel from the Detraxxi's Innovations Room and departed for the Void once again. However, before they could get to the Interdimensional Tavern, the Imperium once more locked onto their coordinates and took remote control of the primitive Void Vessel. However, the Lord of the High Council, having learned that the three robots whom the Imperial Imperator sought to destroy where in fact Cupids, ordered them brought to him unharmed rather than destroyed, countermanding the Imperator's orders. After arriving in the Palatium, the three Cupids evaded their guardians and began to explore the strange citadel.
Meanwhile, Madame Tarsa and the Council were finally able to get the location of the Consistency Palatium thanks to Tarsa's own Mechanical Fortune Teller: although it could not quite detect the Palatium itself, it did sense that the pocket dimension was connected to another, non-cloaked world, Subcinctus. From there, they slipped into the local Spirit Realm, and, from there, into the pocket of it connected directly to the Palatium, planning to cast themselves into the Palatium as ghosts before using Tarsa's Spirit Realm Hoop to reincorporate themselves.
With Vertolin having summoned him as an expert on Rifts and how to get rid of them, the Old Man who had previously fought the Rifts with Tracker was ushered into the Palatium to meet with the Lord of the High Council. Now in possession of the schematics for Dimensional Prisms, Vertolin turned the Imperium's on-site resources to the creation of a device based on the same principles and which would definitively solve the current effects of the Crisis, although this would only be effective in saving the multiverse if the source of the disturbance could be found. Recaptured, the Cupids were then taken to meet with the Lord of the High Council, who revealed to them his true identity as their old friend Vertolin. 
They told him what they had learned about the Imperium actually being responsible for the damage to reality and the Palatium being the epicenter of the disturbance. The Imperial Imperator then burst in and denounced Vertolin as a traitor to the Imperium. The Imperator's long-suffering assistant Victor Smith, however, refused to harm them, instead placing himself under Vertolin's orders. He was told to use his Void Ship's time-travel capability to simultaneously reach every currently-active Imperium agent in the Multiverse and tell them to stop immediately — growing into a legend in an instant, that of the ubiquitous Century Smith.
Although the Imperator was able to rally a large number of Imperium agents to his leadership, his coup was curtailed by the long-awaited materialisation of the Council. Happening upon the Prism-based device Vertolin had created based on the Old Man's directions, Madame Tarsa revealed herself as the inventor of the Prisms and writer of the books the Old Man had found in his original exile. The Faction of the Fooling Fish then appeared as well, having stepped through from the thanks to a new Rift. An extremely confusing multi-sided skirmish inside Vertolin's quarters ensued; although the Imperator eventually landed a hit on the three Cupids with his reality-erasing cannon, they were once again helped by Lethe-548 to escape back into reality. 
With the Rift of Subcinctus breaking through into the sky of the Consistency Palatium, Mandragora lost patience with the fight and pointed the Imperator towards a device which he claimed would take care of the Cupids permanently. It was in truth Mandragora's Rift Machine, which would complete the detonation of the multiverse and “create a stable focus field” to make their present surroundings “the epicenter of the dimensional maelstrom”. It was at this moment that Pythagoras-858, who had succeeded in finding the Palatium and a way into it after many other adventures, materialised his Fog Ship in the chamber. Pythe immediately recognised the Advisor as a new reincarnation of Mandragora, and got him to reveal how he had got here and quite was his plan was.
Before the countdown on the Rift Machine ran out, however, Mandragora was distracted by the appearance of Emperor Sebastian Steer, Dark Lord of Shenanig, who had fought off various other entities (including “several unrelated versions of the enchanter Merlin, a number of so-called legions of so-called superheroes, two different Void Armadas, and the Old God Nyarlathotep”) on the way to the Palatium and wanted to highjack Mandragora's plan to ascend to multiversal godhood in his place. The two malevolent occultists soon began wrestling for ownership of the Rift Machine in a mix of childish fisticuffs and magical dueling. 
Mandragora ultimately emerged the victor, with Steer teleporting out after his defeat. However, while the alchemist had been distracted, the now-four Cupids, Vertolin and the Imperator had all made their way to the Consistency Palatium's self-destruct system at Pythagoras's suggestion, seeing it as the only safe way to put an end to Mandragora's plot. They successfully activated the system with the reluctant cooperation of the Imperator, and were then served in the nick of time from the explosion by the Faction of the Fooling Fish, who had stolen a tachyonic-sail-propelled Void Ship from the hangars of the Palatium. 
While most of the Imperium had evacuated, Mandragora was unable to run out of the complex in time due to slipping on a banana peel left there by the Fish, and was subsequently annihilated in the blast.
===Aftermath===
Immediately after the Fall of the Consistency Palatium, the spot where it had stood remained a smoking crater. However, most of its population had been able to make it out in time. Although the Imperium's status as a major power in the multiverse had ended, the Imperial Imperator refused to admit defeat and rallied those of the Imperium agents who still supported him to his cause, vowing to continue eliminating paradoxes. Vertolin, meanwhile, decided to help those survivors who did not run off with the Imperator to rebuild Subcinctus and the Vormerschuiving civilisation. 
The Faction of the Fooling Fish retained the tachyonic ship they'd thieved, meaning one annoying side-effect of the Rifts Crisis was the ascension of the fish-costumed pranksters to the status of interdimensionally-active pests. In the Cupid Homeworld, Tracker-764 was promoted to membership of the Scarlet Wings elite taskforce, with the Hound also being recommended for a honorary rank in the organisation. The Scarlet Wings were tasked by the Crew of the Copper-Colored Cupids with taking care of any “residual Rifts” they might happen to come across.Cupid Courier No. 1236 (2020).
== Behind the scenes ==
The “Rifts Saga” storyline, which became central to The Crew of the Copper-Colored Cupids with 2020's Planet of the Shapeshifters and also incorporated continuity introduced in the DuckTales 2017 episode Let's Get Dangerous!, was first hinted at in 2019's Cupid Fact File No. 444 — The Faction of the Fooling Fish. 
In addition, The Grand Multiverse Hotel (2020) recontextualised elements of two story arcs of the non-Disney franchise Doctor Who as possibly having been tied into the Crisis (albeit in a winking, non-copyright-infringing way). Folding that arc into the loose construct of “the Rifts Crisis” would suggest the first in-universe mention of events related to the Crisis actually came in 2005 with the introduction of the Cardiff Rift to the mythos of the TV series.
===Notes & References===
Category:Events
Category:$crooge McDuck Wiki Milestones