The End is nigh. It’s not just for preachers to shout anymore.
The Grau gave us as much time as possible, more even. We had to rush a lot of diplomatic shit with my old world, and take in as many refugees as possible from the portal in Empyreal City. In the end, it was time to turn it off.
The Grau had a device for that. Teneceroni actually got the order himself when we were all gathered up at my house. They were still using it as a meeting spot, even after the unfortunate events getting rid of The Perception.
“Ding dong, the bitch is dead!” Captain Lightning celebrated.
Miss Tycism took the beer he’d grabbed out of his hand.
“You’re not happy?” He asked her.
“You’re not twenty-one,” she responded.
I decided against letting them know that Morgan had channeled me into their body. Instead, I decided to play at being Morgan still. I already let the family know. They’re all used to so much weirdness from me already, except Alexander. He’ll learn. And since this body’s not producing milk like mine was, I was feeding the newbie with a bottle instead of a boobie. Morgan preferred it that way, too. So one good thing about losing these portals, no one will be watching this kind of stuff going on.
Anyway, as far as the world’s concerned, Psychopomp Gecko bravely sacrificed herself to trap the Perception. So yeah, I’m hiding the unicorn horn and hooves right now and appear to be nothing but Morgan.
Teneceroni put his communication device down onto his belt. “They’re going to cut the portals now. We’ve given you as long as possible.” And I took steps beforehand. I went to my interdimensional base shortly after reabsorbing my godly powers. I’d used wormholes to meld different places all over the multiverse together for different reason and had to instead use them to quickly excavate a sub-basement and fill it with various equipment, including a lake of medical nanomachines. Then I shut it down.
“Let’s fuckin’ gooooooo!” Max Muscles yelled.
With the power of my returned godly power flowing through my body, I could feel it when the shutdown hit. Knowing what I did about the situation, I checked on the dark stuff: matter and energy. The flow had stopped.
I closed my eyes and reached out. I was going to clear as much of this shit out as possible.
“What are you doing?” Teneceroni asked.
“I can sense the phantom energy. The End may not be an entity in a recognizable sense. It may simply be the influx of phantom energy that causes a Big Rip effect locally, meant to spread outward,” I explained.
“You’re different. What happened to you?” Captain Lightning said.
“Some upgrades from the late, great Gecko,” I explained, truthfully. “She explained what she’d been able to scan for. Dark energy and phantom energy, specifically. They don’t play well with physics and can have some interesting effects, but too much phantom energy is dangerous. While the Ancient Horrors were present, they were able to be trapped because coming here still weakens them. They have to play by our universe’s rules, like the Perverse was talking about. They use loopholes and bend them, but enough dark energy and the rules change, because the universe flips toward their advantage.”
Teneceroni raised an eyebrow. “There are theories, but we haven’t been able to test.”
“Yeah, let’s not experiment on that. I was going to absorb the energy.”
Teneceroni got defensive about that. “It would still be a present and threatening the collapse of the universe.”
He had a point. It would make me amazingly powerful. Phenomenal cosmic power… at the risk of an itty-bitty tiny living space like the Ancient Horrors. And being a Psychopmomp, I suppose that would make me another End.
“Hmm…” I thought it over. Earth had an excess of dark energy. I supposed I could part with some and still be feared. A smile spread over my face.
“That’s a scary smile,” Max Muscles noted. He rolled up his sleeves to show off some runic tattoos in case he needed to magically wrestle me into submission.
“Don’t worry. This is bad news for someone else,” I said.
The objects containing the Ancient Horrors appeared in front of me, floating through the air. The only one not present was the Perverse who, true to my orders, was still lost. And seeing as that was an impossible task for him, he must be really fucking lost.
“This isn’t good,” Teneceroni said. He was right. The close proximity of the contained Horrors, formed of dark matter and the gathered phantom energy were distorting reality. They couldn’t control it in general, but they had just a little bit of an opening. A literal opening. The flash of light was more because of light running away from the tear in reality that appeared. “You need to stop this. Keep them separated.”
“Opportunity,” I said. “They want us to play by their rules. Let’s return the favor. Conventional matter and energy cannot be created or destroyed, only change forms. Of course, dark matter and energy don’t play by the same rules necessarily, with things like negative energy values and negative mass. So, why don’t we use these properties of dark matter and dark energy, and create some positive energy and baryonic matter.”
Floating in front of the portal, I gathered as much of the matter and energy together as I could, including the objects containing the captured Horrors.
A wave of pure blackness swept out at me and wrapped around me. After a moment, it settled into a bunch of arms all grasping, clawing, and punching me. “My house, my rules,” I muttered to it. One arm reached out and plunged into Teneceroni’s chest without disturbing the flesh or clothing he wore. The awestruck alien fell to the floor. I stopped him telekinetically and raised him back up, restarting his life processes. He and everyone else with some sense retreated. Even Captain Lightning, with his teenage hotheatedness, used some of that magically-endowed wisdom and backed off. I suppose after this show of power, I’ll need to gentle massage some memories into not making the connection between Morgan and the Unicorn Goddess persona I used.
The arms grabbed the edges of the portal that hung in midair as an impossible gap in reality and pulled. The darkness that emerged coalesced into a pale form in a black robe with the fabric wrapped around its face except to show where a pair of eyes looked out. “Now I get it,” I told the thing. “You’re not the End like the inevitability of death. You’re just hungry for the life force of the living.”
“You cannot contain them and myself,” the End growled.
“I don’t have to,” I said. “You want life, right?”
“Why is there music?” Miss Tycism asked. She was hiding behind my turned-over dining room table, chugging the beer she took off Captain Lightning. No time like the present.
“Big Bang Attack!” I yelled, shooting the collected ball of transforming energy through the End and into the portal. The End bent double, then stood up and felt himself.
“I’m…” he started.
“Mortal. Let there be light, motherfucker,” I finished for him. Then I walked up and kicked him through his portal. It was shifting now as things on the other side changed. Anyone able to observe the dark matter and energy would have noticed a shift as the flow of any of that from the portal completely stopped. We were actually a little lower on the ambient stuff, but not enough to cause actual issues. I just wanted a little extra oomph for this particular thing I did. And speaking of oomph, I forced that portal closed.
“What was that?” Teneceroni approached.
“The magic was shifting the nature of the energy you gathered,” Captain Lighting said.
“Yes. Shifting dark matter to conventional, what we call baryonic matter. Same for energy. Massive amounts of matter that breaks the rules of conventional physics, suddenly converted into an even larger amount, packed into the smallest possible space. It’s making quit a big bang over there.”
So yeah, when they say, “In the beginning, there was the Word,” the Word was “motherfucker.”
“You’re converting where they live into a space more like the universe,” Teneceroni observed.
“Yes. At the very least, I’m trapping those entities that threatened us in it. Except for the Perverse, I guess. So now, we have to pass through a universe to get to another universe in our multiversal cluster, if we reopen the portals. Which we actually could do safely now if we so choose.”
“No. Not yet,” Teneceroni declared. “Not until we study what’s going on. What you just did is unprecedented.”
I nodded. “To put it mildly, yeah,” I laughed. “I don’t know if it fully ended the threat from these things. I think it’s a shift in existence they’re going to spend a lot of time getting used to, but change is inevitable. And the truth is, even as many differences as well had here,” I looked especially at Captain Lightning and Miss Tycism, who I think figured out what had happened and who was now occupying this body. “This wouldn’t have been possible without all of us. Even without Gecko, the world still managed. It doesn’t need any of us, as individuals. But maybe it just needs people altogether fighting for their world. And maybe a little luck, no offense to our alien friends.”
It was awkward. That was like a speech out of nowhere, and one that didn’t make sense unless they knew, I think. I followed it up. “So that got weird. I just think I’m going to take some time off now. Anything else we need to do here?”
“No,” Teneceroni said.
I headed out to the backyard.
“So, that’s it then?” Sam asked, following after me while carrying little Alexander. My girlfriend wrapped me in a one-armed hug. “Or were you just lying?”
I shrugged. “Maybe this is a good place to end my supervillain career. I’m on top, we’re safe from oblivion, and I got a couple kids need raising. Maybe the world needs a healer, instead of a DPS or tank. You still going to love me when I stop punching people? I mean, folks like Captain Lightning have pretty good reasons to hate on me.”
Sam rolled her eyes and brushed some stray, teal hair out of her eyes. “I’ve yet to meet anyone who isn’t a fucked up person. I’m fucked up, my parents were fucked up, and my best friend is fucked up. You got all the power in the world and instead of sitting on your hands, you fixed things. And when you get wrong, you try to be right. You’ll even apologize and admit you’re wrong. You are a rare, fucked up gemstone.”
“You’re a gemstone,” I told her, getting some warm fuzzies.
Her watch’s alarm went off. “Come on. Let’s go pick our daughter up from school.”
“Our daughter?” I asked, eyebrow raised.
Sam smiled. “That girl’s going to rule the world some day and she’s going to call me mom.”
When we were leaving the house, the whole gang of mystic heroes had finally vacated from farting on my furniture and eating my food. They were standing out on the front lawn, staring at a magical projection of a large robot in rusty red armor, dripping lava, with a pair of bony girder bat-wings on the back. All around it, demonic figures streamed out of the hole it had clawed its way out of, all in the middle of L.A.’s Melrose Avenue.
“Aw shit,” I said. “Here they go again.”
“Are you coming, Axinomancer?” Teneceroni asked. I doubt he was oblivious to the fact situation.
I shook my head. “No, y’all have fun. Have a nice life.”
There were some lingering looks, but they vanished out of there after a spell from the alien mystic.
Sam and I walked on to go get our daughter, trying to have a normal day. We passed a house where one guy was receiving a package. “What, my eccentric recluse of an uncle? And all he left me was a weird glowing ring?” asked the man at the door from a delivery guy who was just doing his job. At the Burrito Bell up the street, a woman and a dinosaur appeared in a staticy burst of electricity, right in front of a pair of plumbers I recognized as former heroes. She threw one a heavy ion rifle and they started grabbing their tools to go with her. Passing a basketball court, I watched as a couple guys played nonchalantly while some teenagers wandered over toward a reflective orb hanging in midair.
I gotta say, it was a good day.
And so there was one last, tiny portal to open for the purposes of giving people some closure. It’s maybe not a good ending, but at least for now, it’s where this ends for now. I mean, a person’s story isn’t over until they die, and even then they can leave a legacy. Sometimes a complex one.
“Oh, I should fix manicotti. You think the others would like manicotti?” I asked Sam.
See you, space cowboy.
Beginning 6
While they were all here, the liaison, who also came to help deal with updating the trans-dimensional technology, has been telling me about all the changes I need to make to my lifestyle. Which happened while we sat around eating grilled pork chops, baked beans, salad, and grilled asparagus. I had called up some super plumbers in town to go about installing extra toilets for the occasion. To my knowledge, neither of them could change sizes or throw fireballs.
“If you want to communicate interdimensionally, we can try to get you set up with a method that won’t damage the fabric of reality,” Mystic Teneceroni told me.
“Who would want to read something you wrote anyway?” Miss Tycism asked.
I shrugged. “They’re probably getting tired of me.”
“I read it,” Sam added. “It started off a lot darker, like Garth Ennis. Cruel dark humor.”
“I once got compared to The Boys,” I said.
“Wonder if it’s because you fucking killed me,” Miss Tycism added.
I shrugged. “Safe to say I’ve had some very negative thoughts about the usefulness of superheroes. But you probably didn’t deserve it as much as I thought.”
“Do we really need to keep her alive?” Miss Tycism asked Teneceroni.
“I’m with her,” Captain Lightning II said.
“I don’t know how your system of justice works,” Mystic Teneceroni explained. “But if you fail, your world will be consumed by some manor of conceptual horror and risk the rest of the solar system, galaxy, and universe unless we cauterize the wound your world used to belong to. Since I’m on this water-covered rock with you, I advise you to suck it up until after this is over. There aren’t many left.”
“Wait, there’s a finite number? And you know how many there are?” I asked.
“Three more,” Teneceroni said. “We’ve never found a way to outright stop the last one. No matter what, no matter what problems it might cause, we have to seal the rifts before the End arrives.”
“Tell me about this End,” I said. Sam came up and put her arms around me. Morgan, the magic hero called Axinomancer, adjusted her lawn chair to be closer to mine. Meanwhile, Max Muscles was trying to impress everyone by putting up a temporary fabric awning.
“Technically, its process has already begun, but it accelerates when the others have come through already. I suppose in their own way, they all are part of the process,” Teneceroni explained. “It involves dark energy, specifically something your people call phantom energy.”
Before we could get too far into a conversation designed to melt my brain out of my ears, I noticed the awning Max put up seemed quite a bit taller than it should have been. And not like someone made a mistake, more like why would anyone create a small, two-story awning for the backyard. Looking back down, I had to shake my head because everything looked off.
Distantly, I saw Captain Lightning throw his food away and ask indignantly, “What did you put in the food? Did you drug us?”
I tried to answer, but he was moving away. Everything was moving away. My backyard stretched on for miles at least. I now sat in a vast never-ending grassland with no shade, no cover, and no clouds. I pulled out my phone. And no bars.
A change in the light drew my attention back to the sky, that little trapped bit of atmosphere that eventually faded into the void of space. The moon now hung high in it, pulling closer. I watched ad it went from a distant celestial object to filling the entire sky, giving the naked eye a detailed view of craters pockmarking its surface. I could even see various moonbases, some left behind by countries, others by supers. I swear I could even make up the abandoned cheese factory where they used to make moon cheese. The shipping and handling was bullshit.
A darkness spread over the surface of the moon. In the darkness were glittering lights from stars and distant galaxies. The mass split into three long bands around the moon, like fingers. The moon was moved out of the way and there was a face made of the same void, with dark empty impressions where the eyes would be.
“I take it-” I started, then stood up and cupped my hands around my mouth. “I take it you’re here to surrender?!”
This big thing opened its mouth to reveal teeth of blazing light as it laughed, the Earth trembling. When it spoke, I didn’t so much hear it as feel it. “”I. Am. The. Vast.”
“Say it, don’t spray it, you vastard,” I remarked.
“You unleashed more than you ever could have comprehended, childish thing,” the Vast retorted.
“Why don’t you come down here to my level and say that, big guy?” I pointed at the grass right in front of me. Then I pulled out my phone and opened a remote wormhole link to my interdimensional base. It’s held together by wormholes, which isn’t helping things overall. But now, it could be the key to beating this asshole.
Sure, the whole gang of mages could probably just suck this guy into a rock or something, but the Vast put a wrench into that. None of the group are around. Even Sam and Morgan went from invading my personal space to being out of sight. And even if I had my powers, I could have implemented this pretty easily. I was worried he’d just splat me flat but I guess he was drawing time apart as well.
Power-wise, there were no restrictions for me to make more wormholes: I’ve been harnessing direct star power. And while it would be environmentally friendly to have Tom Cruise use an exercise bike to make my equipment work, I meant wormholes that open directly into the hearts of stars. Which is great for power, but I have to do it elsewhere due to the gravity issues.
I also activated the redundant wormhole devices. All of them. I keep plenty of them around because shit can go wrong. So without power being an issue, I just had to make as many wormholes as possible: wormholes in stars, wormholes in gravitational singularities, wormholes in black holes. Most importantly, I opened wormholes in The Vast, which I was able to do thanks to the advances space-time targeting system of the wormholes made possible by the very technology that allows them to punch holes in the universe.
Sometimes, I’m really glad I broke into alien computers and occasionally used my omniscience, limited or not, to spy on distant galaxies in space. I was hoping to see some star wars, or perhaps some ship on a long star trek.
The Vast swung a fist at me, but it was taking forever. Perhaps I could have theoretically evaded it since it was taking minutes to land, but this is the same fist where the fingers were large enough to wrap around the moon. That’s a punch so big, it could wipe out the dinosaurs. It was taking long enough to get here, though. Meanwhile, I filled it up with every damn source of gravity I could find, all concentrating in the middle of that damn head. A shrinking head. A head that, along with its own gravity, collapsed in on itself.
The Vast being whatever the fuck it is, it didn’t die. But it sucked that whole thing into itself with what I feel was probably a tormented wail.
“What was that?” I called out. “Couldn’t quite hear that!” Meanwhile, grass moved around me, pulling in toward me. I looked and it was like the landscape was getting sucked into my feet. And thanks to the power of advanced technobabble behind the reckoning of mortal man, I brought the Vast to myself, using the wormholes to keep the gravity from leaking out and affecting me. By the time he got to me, he was marble-sized.
“Not so vast now,” I said. “Now to figure out-”
Sam’s hands wrapped around me. And Morgan’s. “Hey, watch it, y’all, I got an Ancient Horror here.”
“Where?” Captain Lightning stomped up to me. Miss Tycism and Mystic Teneceroni joined me as well, examining the little floating lattice of compressed wormholes. I was able to close most of them and shut down the redundant systems. Meanwhile, Sam grabbed my face and stole a kiss. I even let Morgan do the same, which prompted a competitive Sam to grab me and go for it again. And then Morgan again. I let Sam get one more in before I had to raise my hands.
“Stop it, please, we need to figure out how to contain this thing, especially if wer’re turning off the wormholes.” I explained what I’d experienced and done to the Vast. Captain Lightning sulked, but Miss Tycism and Teneceroni went to work immediately trying to work out a way to create the same effect without the portals. They had to call in the rest of the mages, who were already on their way from the nearby motels and AirBnBs. By the time they arrived, I was just finishing sticking the Vast inside a snowglobe I had laying around from a recent trip I took to Disney World.
“Here,” I said, tossing it over to Teneceroni. “It’s a small world, after all.”
After that whole ordeal, I could have used a break. Instead, I ran to go check on the kids. Alexander was upset, and I don’t blame him. Poor kid hasn’t known anything but the Ancient Horrors since before he was even born.
So it wasn’t until the next morning when I had time to look into the information Teneceroni gave me. Negative energy and phantom energy. I had some knowledge of all that from my time with omniscience. This solar system had elevated levels, I remember, but I never looked into it more. I knew enough to modify some of my trans-dimensional tech. I had made spares of the devices that open wormholes in case anything happened to the main ones I used.
The targeting equipment was less precise without my direct neural interface, but the point was it had an amazing ability to scan space-time, which was just what I needed. Even space was warped by a gargantuan Ancient Horror, it was able to map it to precisely target With some modifications and a little lingering goddess know-how, I fixed it to detect energy and matter that otherwise isn’t observable to beings of conventional matter and energy.
The monitor I hooked up didn’t so much show dark matter and energy around Earth as it showed Earth drenched in dark energy. The physicists are going to kick themselves when they realize it. But that’s also the issue, because this is more than I think I remember, and it’s growing. I think that’s what Teneceroni meant about the process having begun and accelerating. I don’t know if The End that he spoke of is an actual being or not, but this amount of phantom energy flooding the area so quickly is going to fuck with space-time and could cause a Big Rip with a bunch of smaller ones first. The End is coming through every wormhole on Earth, flooding it with energy that’ll tear the bonds between atoms apart. Not just between atoms, but the bonds between the parts that make up atoms.
It’s one of the ways the universe could end. It could definitely take out Earth. So I’m going to have to close the portals and cut myself off from all of y’all. So I guess this useless little blog is going to have to end.
Beginning 5
That’s another one down. But now I’ve got another problem. I’ve got a baby, and a little kid, and too many people visiting my house.
Medusa tattled on me. She warned me real quick, too. She called me up, “Hey hon. I wouldn’t do this if it wasn’t important. You know how you keep playing a role in stopping these things that keep attacking?”
“Last I heard, they’re being called Ancient Horrors. Not exactly horrors in the conventional sense after the Perverse, though,” I told her.
She cut me off before I could go off on a tangent. As if I’d just do that. “I talked to that Liaison. She knew other people were fighting back. She still has the Dark with her, and she knew someone had to have trapped the others. I wouldn’t have done it if I didn’t think this was important, but you made it sound like they’re gunning for you.”
“None have used guns so far, but I may have wedgied my fair share of Ancient Horror dorks. Maybe gave one a swirly.” This is called bravado. It looks real funny to people if you have it and then can’t back it up.
“We’re on our way to meet you. We’re going to be there in a couple of hours.”
“Are you cleaning up the living room?” I asked. I looked out at a floor scattered with some clothes from everyone but Venus and Medusa. I had Alexander with me, ready for a diaper change. Little stinker’s got a lot to learn, but he picked up shitting early.
“I don’t think they’re gong to worry about the house being clean. I’m sorry, I know you’re supposed to rest, but this is important.”
“Well, I guess I don’t have a choice,” I told her. “Just make sure we’re not going to do the whole thing where someone threatens me or tries to fight me, will you? I don’t have time for that shit. I had to deal with Alexander’s.
I was a bit down, so things weren’t that bad. Sam and Holly woke up and helped out. They’ve been adjusting as well, with thick ear muffs. I’ve been letting Qiang stay with friends more. She’s happy to see the cute little baby, but her other senses don’t care for it. Senses like smell and hearing. And Sam’s been great. She even watched Alex while I took a shower and washed my hair and cried about what my life’s come to and how I wanted this but I hate it and what kind of a person am I really?
I needed that shower. Left it feeling refreshed and put on some disposable clothes. It’s easy to go out looking nice when you don’t have to risk getting puke all over yourself on a regular basis. But the family’s helping. I knocked them for not doing so, but they’re helping a lot with cooking and cleaning until I can get in tune with the automatons again. Which reminded me, I rushed downstairs to the basement to shut down the automated defenses on the house. Would be a shame if these aliens who were bothering me got shot down by a lawn gnome packing a bajillia-watt laser and a flamingo with atomic-bladed talons.
When they arrived, I was at least nice enough to have some snacks ready. I opted for an outfit that would allow me to subtly intimidate the newcomers, too. But, I mean, I just dropped a baby out from between my legs. It’s still sweatpants and a loose shirt, but the shirt says, “Bad Mother.”
I made quite a sight sitting on the porch, sipping tea and eating a dill pickle spear, bouncing a flip flop-clad foot on the porch. They hovered overhead in an alien shuttle. I grabbed a remote and activated the landing strip on the driveway that I never really use. Usually, people just parallel park next to the yard without daring cross the picket fence. It can open to let someone in or out of the driveway, but I think only I know that.
I think I killed the vibe they were going for when they all stepped out in costume. There was Miss Tycism, the resurrected magical heroine I once killed, in kind of an indigo robe number. Captain Lightning II was wearing his usual getup. I briefly wondered if he needed to stop and pee in that or if his superpowers just did something with it. Medusa was there as well, along with a blue-skinned Grau with feathers on his head and a jumpsuit on. There were others with them in various costumes or even just regular clothing, but there were two others who stood out to me. One was Axinomancer, a young but legal non-binary mage who used axinomancy, with an ax as a focus of their magic. And the other was a meaty, muscular guy in a muscle shirt with slicked-back hair.
“Max Muscles?” I asked.
“Yo yo yo, who that is?” he asked.
“We met before, but you wouldn’t remember me,” I told him.
Medusa, in a casual Exemplar outfit, hopped out past them. “Hey babe.”
“Hey boopsie,” I told her. After a second, I stood up. “Welcome to the Gecko Household everyone. Y’all are the ones trying to fight the Ancient Horrors?”
“Is that what they settled on?” the Grau asked. He stepped forward. “I’m Mystic Teneceroni.”
“Bonjourno,” I said.
He approached and offered the standard human handshake, which I accepted. Meanwhile, the rest of this field trip of magic superheroes and Max Muscles approached. I nodded toward the house. “There are drinks and snacks inside. Pizza.”
“I’m glad to talk to you,” Mysic Teneceroni said. “I’ve heard you played an important role in dealing with Earth’s problem.”
“Seems that way.” Despite the look of clear suspicion from Captain Lightning, and the way Axinomancer eyed me, everyone else shuffled into the house. “Whoa, pizza!” Max Muscles called out.
So, in the tradition of many of Earth’s peoples, we broke bread together. It was the beginning of them attempting to woo me into an alliance, I thought. But Medusa pulled me aside at one point to tell me, “They’re here to protect you.”
“Really? You told Captain Lightning about that?” I was skeptical.
“I think he’s hoping they fail, but he’s well aware how much is at stake. Guess it’s about time for another generation to be infuriated at you.” She put her arms around my neck and kissed me. “Now, I’m going to get more of that pizza. What is that black stuff?”
“Tuscan herbs. It coated the outside of this cheese I sliced up and put on there.” She left me there.
As for me, I needed a little break from all the people for the moment, except I turned and saw yet another one. I didn’t remember ever meeting this guy in my life. It was like the black of his pupils glowed just a little, or like a strong light reflected off them right in the center. White guy, pretty generic looking, brown suit, glasses, comb over, mustache. Geeky-looking fellow, which would fit for some of the mages.
“Hey,” I said, nodding toward him.
“Hi there,” he said. “Nice place.”
“Thanks, I guess.”
“You’re one of the biggest and baddest villains ever. Is this,” he gestured to the home around us. “really what you wanted out of life?”
“Bold question,” I said. I thought about it a bit. Good food, good shelter, a loving family, and the ability to destroy the world with a wave of my hand. I nodded. “Yeah, I guess so.”
“Really? You don’t need, I don’t know, money?”
I shook my head. “Psssh. Just don’t ask about my revenue stream. Money’s fine. There’s always more of it out there.”
“Don’t you ever miss being Empress?” he asked.
These questions felt a bit weird at this point. “It was nice, but I don’t need it.”
“You were a goddess!” he said.
“I mean, some of the kinky shit was nice,” I said. I shook my head. “I guess, once the trauma’s gone, I’m just not that complicated. I don’t want to, like, be an Olympic gymnast or star in movies. I just want a good life. Right now, the only real threat to that are these Horrors. You got a way to get rid of them?”
A hand spun me around and pushed me against the wall. Axinomancer’s mouth found mine. I enjoyed myself for a second, then pushed her away. “Right here and now?” I asked. I looked over to the guy, but he was gone.
“I want you,” Axinomancer said. Morgan, I should call them. They’re a bit young for me and I didn’t see anything in the relationship. We had some enjoyable times with me possessing their body as a goddess, but I didn’t want to make it an ongoing, long-term thing. They’ve got her whole life ahead of them, too.
Morgan turned my face back toward them. “I want you in me.”
“I don’t have those powers,” I told her.
“I know a way. Your brains, my body. We’d be perfect,” they said.
“What’s gotten into you?” I asked. I’d pretty clearly ended it and thought I made it fine with her. There were some nice perks to being a goddess.
“You, I hope,” Morgan said.
I looked around for a little delicate diplomatic help. Max Muscles was scarfing down pizza like it was nobody’s business. Mystic Teneceroni was discussing something with Miss Tycism, both of them creating little magical lightshows as they shows off to each other. I didn’t see where Medusa was at, but Captain Lightning was chatting with the geeky guy. Then Lightning turned to look at me and started over. The dork disappeared quickly when Lighting’s stride hid him briefly from view.
Oooooh. Yeah, I gotcha. Dorky guy’s doing this.
“Hey, Pepperoni!” I called out. Max looked up, but so did Miss Tycism and Mystic Teneceroni. “Is there one of these things that offers you whatever you want?”
“Enough talk and enough lies. The world doesn’t need you!” Captain Lightning II said. He reached for me.
Axinomancer turned, summoning an ax into their hands. “Yeah it does.”
Medusa came out of nowhere to stand in front of me. “Damn right.”
“You asked a great question,” Teneceroni said, oblivious. He created more of a light show, this one more of a turquoise laced with violet. “One of the Ancient Horrors is the Desire. It finds what people want most and amplifies their desire, feeding on the chaos and death.”
Captain Lightning grabbed Medusa and pushed her into a wall. She grunted in pain. And Desire got to me a bit. I wanted my family to be safe. My mind did its calculation. I stood up to Captain Lightning. I looked him right in his angry eye and said, “Margaret Thatcher naked on a cold day!”
He winced and held up his hands. “It’s in my mind’s eye. It burns!”
I pulled out the phone I’ve got to use while my powers aren’t working and pulled up an image. I showed it to Morgan, which backed them off, too. Soon, the image of that evil woman had shaken everyone out of their desire. As for me, I then found the dorky guy chatting up Sam, dragged him into the restroom, and started giving him a swirly. He disappeared on me before I could drown him on it, but it gave me enough time to think on how we were going to catch this walking armadillo turd.
“Computer,” I called down to the basement. “One small talking statue of Thatcher.”
“We can catch Desire and bind it,” Mystic Teneceroni informed me.
Morgan shrugged. “It’s kind of what I had in mind for you.”
“I mean, what you said is what I was going to go with,” I told my admirer. “But I want to make sure nobody goes searching for the Desire.”
Luckily, this whole ritual didn’t take long with such trained mages around. I mean, sure, the world was going to hell while we did this, but that’s common now. Just weeks now of everything going bad out of nowhere in a world where people superpowers and guns. Perfectly fine for someone to whisper in your ear and go, “Hey, live out your secret desires.”
Meanwhile, we were all crowded around in my basement, me in black robes like this was the Neighborhood Watch Alliance, chanting. They did most of the work, which was a mixture of various languages’ magical chants to the effect of ‘Come on if you think you’re hard enough.”
Axinomancer had regained their memory some time back and, eventually, found a broader way to channel other beings. I was no longer a goddess, so I couldn’t be called upon the standard way, but this other method, while dangerous if it wasn’t specific enough, was still possible. And with this many skilled practitioners and Max Muscles, it worked. They drew the Desire out and to store it in the last place anyone would go looking for Desire: a statuette of Margaret Thatcher that plays “Ding Dong The Witch Is Dead” whenever anyone pressed the button.
A bit dated, I suppose.
I found out Max’s role in all this when the dorky guy appeared in the circle and Max flexed. Mystic runes glowed on his arms and chest as he ran into the circle, grabbed Desire, and threw him into the Thatcher statuette. “Boom! That’s how Max and his Magic Mind Muscle crew do it!”
“So, is that it then?” I asked when Desire seemed to be safely tucked away.
“We’ll put it somewhere safe,” Mystic Teneceroni said. “Thank you for allowing us to stay here. We would like to stay longer, if we can.”
“I mean, at least one of you wants me dead,” I said.
“Yes,” the alien mystic said. “However, while these Ancients are attacking everyone, they’ve focused on you specifically. Allowing them to manifest against you and then catching them gives us a way to prevent this crisis while my people work to repair the dimensional barrier. Do you have room for all of us?”
Oh boy. I sighed. “I’ll see what I can do. Unless anyone wants to stay in a house with a screaming newborn?”
Of course Axinomancer volunteered. Too bad for them that after the trauma my fun parts just went through, I’ve gone temporarily celibate. And, ya know, the news certainly got interesting when people leaked that basically every country with nuclear weapons had a guy guarding them who really, really, really wanted to fire the things.
And as smoothly as Desire went down, unlike the others, his effects seemed to be permanent. People recovered from the Dark and the Unwelcome. The Fate’s and the Perverse’s changes reverted once they were sealed away. But it was humans who shot places up or rioted this time. Which means that dork has the highest bodycount of any of these guys so far.
Beginning 1
I feel terrible. Absolutely shitty. How dare biology make humans do shit like this for nine months? More than just moral upgrades, humanity needs more biological upgrades. When I’m done with genomes and cybernetics, babies will slip n’ slide out of there. This is a highly inconvenient process! No wonder pregnancy’s the leading cause of mortality for women. It would be for trans men and non-binary folks, but transphobes are number one there.
I’ve been down ever since I lost my powers. My nanites are keeping me healthy, but I think they missed handling the effects of the hormones on me. They were specifically ordered to let hormonal changes happen. That’s important for the kid. Blocking them would have hurt Alexander’s development, but I was trying to avoid all the crying and shit. I guess I should have had the OB-GYN help out with that, because I did a shit job.
I’m really lucky I didn’t fuck over the world more, because the truth is I’ve gotten super lucky. Or I’ve been able to recover. Or people covered for me. Somehow, amazingly, the world survived me and my arrogance.
Yeah, so I’ve been in a bad mood. I know Holly and Sam are losing patience. Qiang wore her armor in once when she came in to bring me a tray of food. It wasn’t enough food, either, but I had to pee first. I had to pee while eating. I had to carry in the last of the food to finish it off while sitting my bloated body on the toilet to pee some more. Please, I just want to stop peeing. I need a cork, but they won’t let me into the basement to design one.
I figured this would be a lot of boring stuff to write down and then never send, like so much other crap. Hell, probably a lot of what I sent is deserving of just never being talked about. The change happened when the lights went out.
I was in the garden, humming to myself while checking on my peppers. I had some gorgeous golden cayennes growing this year, but a section of Boston pickling cucumbers wasn’t doing shit. They had a few flowers, but nothing was turning into a cucumber. So when I got to the cucumbers, I dropped the happy humming, leaned in real close, and yelled, “Why aren’t you growing, you little cuke?!”
“Stop stressing!” Sam called from the back porch. My girlfriend was sipping a bottled water and keeping an eye on me. “It’s not good for your health!”
“You hear that, plant?” I asked the cucumber vine. “You’re hurting my health. You want to put me in the hospital?”
“Holy shit, you’ve gone full mom,” Sam said. “This is awakening strange new feelings in me, babe.”
I groaned as I stood back up, having noticed the shade fall on me but then realizing it wasn’t from clouds. The sun was just dimmer. So was everything else. “What’s going on?”
Sam shook her head. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I don’t know if I ever know. I think you’re just with me because you want to be and you don’t actually care about me and my life. I’m interchangeable to you, just like I was interchangeable to Mix N’ Max.”
I fucked up and upset her. I’ve done that a lot. With my fucked up life, I’m shit at romance or letting people know how much they mean to me. “It’s not your fault, babe. It’s mine.”
While things got darker metaphorically, they got darker photonically as well. The lights went out. I tried moving to low light mode with my cybernetic eyes. Sam pulled out her phone and turned on the flashlight. Her light went out, and my eyes just couldn’t penetrate the growing darkness. At 1:13 in the afternoon, it was darker than the darkest midnight. “Sam?” I called out.
I didn’t hear anything. I couldn’t even hear the wind through the plants. I reached out and felt the planter, but then it was like it pulled away. There was nothing. A nothing surrounded by nothing. I put my hands over my belly protectively. No wonder everyone from the future acts like I’m not around. I probably die before Alexander gets to know me. That’s been a constant. Or I’m in prison, where I deserve to be. Or maybe I’m as much of a deadbeat to him as I am to the Buzzkills.
My thoughts weren’t pleasant. And on top of that, I had a growing headache. I thought I heard a scream in the distance, but then I got a transmission through my internal radio. “This is a repeat of the psychic message I just sent, in case anyone couldn’t hear me. People of Earth, you’re under attack. The dimensional barrier failed and an entity has entered our reality at Earth. It’s- just think of it as the Dark. It is darkness, the end of all light. Everything good and everything you can see. It consumes all light and all positive thought. Before long, it isolates everyone it comes into contact with, but you’re not alone. You must rage and hope and love. You must stand, now, or Earth will disappear. Maybe more than Earth. Use whatever you can. Think of those you love. Spite it. Think of your hopes and dreams. Try everything you can and fight it while we try to stop it.”
I laughed. Look at that, I fucked up physics so bad that some “thing” that just exists to be contrary to the functioning of the universe decided to pop in and eat us. I never would see my family again after all. I’d never see the new Thor, or see if I could get my girlfriends and wives to dress up in harem girl outfits. Or dress myself up in a harem girl outfit for them.
And it was funny because I deserved this shit, but a lot of people didn’t. Alexander, who at this point had been baking in my lovin’ oven for like 9 months, didn’t deserve this. Qiang is a good girl. Sam, Holly, Venus, Medusa. Leah. My half-brother Davilo. Hell, people I’d actually helped and saved. It wasn’t fair, and that’s life, but it was more than that. It wasn’t right.
I began to get pissed when I realized how unjust this was. And I began to mutter to myself, because I talk to myself plenty. “Death comes for everyone and life isn’t fair, but some of us can make the world just.”
I didn’t even realize I’d sunk down to the ground, which didn’t feel like much of anything. But I stood up. I could do that. This bastard didn’t deserve to have me make it easy for them. My powers might not have been working right, but I tried everything. I tried to create a light on the end of my unicorn horn. I tried to shine floodlights from my cybernetic eyes. And with enough pushing, the darkness began to brighten.
At the risk of seeming all “Old Man Yells At Cloud,” I raised a fist to the sky. I didn’t even have anything really coherent to say that would sound good. I felt like a Karen thinking about how it didn’t have the right to do this, but it wasn’t right. It wasn’t right for me, it wasn’t right for Alexander, it wasn’t right for everyone. And yes, I realized it wasn’t right to me. I deserved worst, but not from this thing. I didn’t even wrong it. Yet. Give me an opportunity, though…
I stomped off toward the house, able to see a short distance ahead of me. It was like I was a light in the darkness, just not a very good one. Which, I had to concede, makes sense. Through the door and onto the porch stood Sam, who recognized me as I got close. She grabbed me and kissed me, hard. After she decided to come up for air, she told me, “I love you.”
“I love you, too, and I don’t deserve you. I don’t deserve the life I have, but I love you. You’re amazing. I choose you, understand?”
She nodded and kissed me again. Together, we lit up the entire porch. I grabbed her hand and entered the house. I glanced over my shoulder to see my path from the garden and through the porch was still lit up. The whole kitchen joined us in the light. And nearby, I heard Qiang screaming from her room. She came running at us, all lit up on her own.
“I have an idea!” I said. I hugged Qiang and the three of us made our way to the storage closet for a lightbulb.
“You don’t have powers dear,” Sam said.
“But I have knowledge and knowledge is power. I know how to summon the darkness.” We headed downstairs to the basement, Sam and Qiang helping me gently down the stairs. I had to run a cable from my armor and the house’s hidden power supply to the lightbulb, which I quickly programmed the nanites to reinforce. I have to use a computer for something like that now, but I needed to make sure it wouldn’t burn out. I also wired in some replacement energy sheath pieces from my armor’s gauntlets It took awhile. Meanwhile, Sam was calling Holly.
“Do you want me to call the other mommies?” Qiang asked.
I kissed her on the top of her head. “No, dear, they’re probably working on stuff right now. If they text you, let them know you’re fine and that I’m working on something. But if I’m right, they’ll figure that out soon. Everyone, close your eyes!”
I finished tightening one last plastic screw. The room became as bright white as was possible. It was incredibly light, incredibly bright and focused in a lightbulb.
Sam yelled because the light was so loud. And I guess there was a noticeable hum to the bulb, but not enough to justify yelling. “How does this work? You light a big light and that gets rid of it?”
I shook my head, then remembered the whole blinding light thing. “No. Now, we get its attention further.” I started chanting. I still remembered some stuff from my omnipotence days,. It was a tiny bit of a gamble considering powers went haywire for me now. As a goddess, I could access magic just fine. As a homo machina, that was always an issue. My body now doesn’t quite count the same way, but apparently it’s close enough. The chant was the magical equivalent of “Hey dipshit, come on if you think you’re hard enough!” And I believe it heard me.
I was no longer connected to the rest of the world, so I don’t know what resistance the Darkness faced, but I knew that it wasn’t just us three in my place. For all their faults, humanity can fight back like nobody’s business. Like with that chant and me using magic; in the heat of the moment, I couldn’t even feel a strain.
The lightbulb went from brightest light to darkest black. It was a complete void, the darkness fuzzy at the edges. “Got you,” I told it.
“I am the darkness that makes the world. I am back to judge, to consume all,” a whispery voice vocalized.
“You have no right to judge me,” I told it.
A portal opened, occult in nature. I looked through to see a circle of people in a cave. Miss Tycism and Captain Lightning II stood out to me, along with a Grau in a tight suit. A ghostly astral projection of Captain Lightning flew toward the portal and grabbed the lightbulb. “So this is where our spell forced it. We’ll take this from here, amateur” he said, then he looked closer at me. I guess my chanting didn’t have anything to do with catching the Darkness. Lightning’s eyes narrowed. “You.”
The portal snapped close, leaving the lightbulb and the Darkness in the care of a whole team of mystics. I relaxed. Sam caught me. “Well, that was easy-” I stopped because my crotch was wet. And as I looked down, the growing wet spot on my stretchy sweatpants was replaced by more liquid just flowing freely from me.
“Mom, did you just pee yourself?” Qiang asked.
“Nope, your little brother’s on the way,” I answered.
Godwar 2
The Trobogorians have been resorting to bombardment from low-orbit while they try to handle the machine assault on their fleet. From what I can gather. When I say the machines are tearing them apart, I mean they’re ripping their way through bulkheads and defenses. They’re pretty methodical about recycling. The Trobogorians had a relief fleet arrive that moved toward the Machine colony, forcing most of our extraterrestrial automaton allies to back off and focus on their own defense. That also means the fleet in orbit didn’t get any reinforcements of their own.
Anyway, that’s just an update. Setting the scene.
The Trobogorians had been bombarding the planet from orbit at random, but in between my recruiting efforts, I would catch them. Now, instead of going after the real location of the little ornament they’re after, the United States Bullion Depository, they went off on Louisville. The lasers they were using would have given Louisville a slugging, but something flew through the air and chowed down on them.
I landed, the glorious Unicorn goddess with the multi-color hair, the shining horn, and the glowing wings. Like a gay icon. It’d be nice, but I’m hardly icon material. I landed next to the others I brought with me. There was Pestilentia, the recently-freed woman with basically godlike powers focused on disease and fungi. She brought Mix N’Max with her, a friend of mine she’s banging and a master of turning just about any material into whatever potion or poison you can think of. Baron Samedi was along, the Loa claiming he isn’t involved and just providing a lift for Tom Waits. Tom is… well, we haven’t pried, but he agreed to help. What good he’ll be, I don’t know, but he’s a got a gravely singing voice and he’s almost certainly no god. But he brings snacks. Seems to be something of a supernatural thing that we all like people who bring us alcohol or food, like Baron Samedi sticking with us after I brought a cask of wine that originally sank in 1503.
We all looked out over the city from the top of some place called 400 West Market. Tallest building in the city. In a flash, a force of Trobogorians and their conscripted minions, the Mindarians. The Trobogorians averaged more like 50 feet tall, so they would have to climb slightly to reach us. The Mindarians were more like 9 to 10 feet, all decked out in pretty drab fatigues. They don’t really break out the armor for us little beings.
I held a hand up. “For my next trick, I will make this army disappear!”
It was like an explosion went off in my stomach that would not stop. It wanted to tear me apart. With Alexander on the way, I went into panic mood a little bit before fully concentrating to protect myself.
“What’s wrong?” Max asked.
“They spiked those lasers,” I said.
The sky lit up again. A being towered over us the same way the Trobogorians towered over their minions and humans, but it was ghostly and see-through. A truly humongous Trobogorian deity.
“Are you this planet’s puny gods?” it asked.
Baron Samedi stepped forward. “Actually, I’m a Loa. It is not the same, thing, and I’m not really-”
The alien deity fired a red beam from its mouth right at the Baron. I caught it before it hit and managed to smile. “I, on the other hand, am a god.” I didn’t devour this bit of energy. That’s how they got me. They saw what I did with the first time they tried to bombard me and hid a bit of their own godlike essence in those lasers to fight me from the inside. I had to spend some energy fending off the unexpected assault from inside, but I had enough to catch that thing. And to throw it right back at the giant thing.
Samedi put his hand on my shoulder. “You are ill.”
“They pulled a nifty trick. See, this is why I wanted some Superfriends along.”
The Trobogorian got himself stuck with arrows by Pestilentia, treating it as no consequence. And I just saw the futility of having done any of this. With me busy, that pretty much just left Pestilentia. Max would be easy for them to kill with his powers. Tom Waits was merely a man. Baron Samedi has no heart for the fight. By resisting the invasion, I’d doomed myself and my family. All because I couldn’t just sit back, say a few words about how horrible war was, and let people die. Any escalation, any attempt to help simply helps the world end. Even expressing hope at the determination of the humans is nothing but ignoring the suffering created. The light does not stand against the dark. I should submit.
Ah. Now, I’ve had some suicide ideation before. It doesn’t go like that. I disappeared and reappeared as a giant equal in size to the Trobogorian deity. It was slow, moreso than it expected with Pestilentia’s beasties roaming its body. It punches me, but that didn’t stop me thrusting my hands into its wide mouth and pulling it open. I vomited up the traitorous energy down the throat of the alien, burning through its gnashing inner jaws. It teleported away, but not before I’d already expelled the entire attack into it.
I shrunk down and returned to the rest of this bunch. I felt it return to a temple ship in the fleet. The ship broke apart, then was vaporized. One down, five to go. It was easy to keep track because the remaining ones showed up at first. Five on two. At least these wore more than just fatigues. The one in the lead seemed male, but scantily clad with metal undies and headdress. “You forget your place as underlings to true gods!” I felt the pressure around us from the barrier they created. All five fired their annihilation beams at once. I pushed back on it with my own power, reaching out and slowing it down. I was worth at least two of these guys, but there were five. Pestilentia turning her arms into weird growths that climbed through my power, reinforcing it, helping to slow down the assault.
“Breaking the barrier would help more,” I suggested to her telepathically.
Hands on my shoulder. Baron Samedi, speaking to himself, but I heard it only as faint whispers from all over. I felt the Five grow weaker. He was sapping their energy. I started to make out something in the whispers, “I will not fill your grave. You will not yet die.”
The odds were nearly even, but they’d gained so much ground and were only advancing.
Tom Waits spoke into his phone, “Is this getting out? I don’t ordinarily believe in livestreaming bullshit, but under the circumstances…”
With a roar, a blue and orange man, the size of a Mindarian, slammed into the head of one of the Five. Another found himself swarmed by twisted monsters made of warped Trobogorians and undead Mindarians. Lighting struck the barrier around us, again and again. It finally shattered, the sky thundering at the command of the man hanging in the sky among the storm clouds. Or a teenager empowered with magical power to protect the world. On the ground, a man in skeletal armor rode a worm of bones. A blue and orange titan hung in the air.
The alien gods backed off. A barrier surrounded them and prevented their escape now while I gathered the power they had unleashed. I compressed it.
“What now?” Samedi asked.
“Now, we put an end to this,” I declared.
“We could kill them,” Pestilentia said. “Kill them, wipe out the things they brought to us.” She was speaking my language. It was only right. They brought the fight here. If not for literal divine intervention, our cities would be wrecked and our people killed. Regardless of the physical damage and wounds, the fear and trauma isn’t over.
But.
I encased the energy they threw at me into a gemstone and set it in an amulet I wrapped around my horn.
The Titan, Captain Lightning, and Spinetingler all met up at me. Lightning, the successor to the Captain I’d killed so recently, glared at me, but something was staying his hand. “I knew you had to be lying.”
I nodded to him. “How’d you decide to show up here, anyway? All of you, separately?”
Captain Lightning, Spinetingler, and Titan all looked to Tom Waits, who answered, “I put in a word with some friends. They got hold of everyone, and then I livestreamed our location when we came here.”
In their barrier, the alien gods were destroying Spinetingler’s mangled mutations of their underlings. Titan kept an eye on them, shifting his wings so he could see over his shoulder. “What are we thinking?”
I let out a deep breath, despite not needing to breathe. “As much as it feels right to punish them, it’s not about us and our grudges. Now we force them to agree to peace and a withdrawal. One moment.” I conjured up a holographic connection to the alien Machines who had been helping us. There was a little pile of spheres that formed into a body. That as the automaton they’d sent to speak with me when I requested information before. “The Unicorn Goddess of Earth here. We are about to open talks for peace. We thought you would like to sit in on this.”
“We understand,” it responded. “Please provide transportation to Earth of a delegate from these coordinates on the stellar body known to Earth as Themisto.”
When I snapped my fingers, what looked like a mass of junk appeared in the sky. It looked like someone had beheaded a massive statue, then attached antigravity engines and other pieces. The thing was a spaceship in its own right, but also doubled as a diplomat for the Machines for dealing with particularly-threatening species.
“Ok, let’s go have us a few stern words,” I told the assembled group.
**
We didn’t end up letting the Trobogorian gods go until they agreed to get the fuck off. They were allowed to retrieve prisoners, dead bodies, and equipment they’d brought. That last provision suddenly struck me as maybe a good idea. There were groups out there eager to get their hands on alien salvage and it ran counter to my ideas on how to guide and grow humanity. This will slow down the copycats from perfecting their own devices meant for nothing but creating pain in people.
The Machines requested compensation for their part in the defense of Earth, which we extracted from the Trobogorians. First, the Trobogorians weren’t getting back any salvage or captured ships that had already been claimed by the Machines. Second, the Machines won the liberation of an automated asteroid mine.
The Trobogorian gods didn’t seem fond of that, but ultimately acquiesced because it saved their lives and they could just make the Trobogorians do it anyway. One day, there was an interstellar invasion on. The next, the fleets were just gone, and there was a new asteroid in the solar system.
And somebody had gotten a photo of the bunch of us gathered there, preparing to talk to the captured gods. They put a big black border around it like a motivational poster, with us captioned, “Pantheon.” Not sure how I feel about that. Somehow, with Spinetingler in the photo, Tom Waits was still the creepiest-looking of the bunch.
Sickeningly Sweet 7, Epilogue
“Psycho Gecko killed Captain Lightning,” Lightning’s successor announced to onlookers. The video was all over Youtube. Amazingly, that was all there was to the video. Somehow, the part where he told everyone I am the Unicorn Goddess didn’t record, didn’t upload, and was instantly forgotten by everyone, including the new Captain Lightning.
“Looks like he’s got a lot to learn still,” Sam said, leaning on my shoulder on the couch. Holly had me move my arms so she could slide onto my lap.
“That’s your fault, though,” Holly added.
Sam patted her friend’s head. “She’s right, you know.”
I rolled my eyes. “I know. Just like I know he’s got a good reason to hate me, even though I had a good reason to kill him.”
We were at this martial arts tournament being held at the local high school. The town of Radium had settled on integrating the super and non-super schools together, and one of many events they were trying to build a community spirit was stuff like this. With the rise of the show Cobra Kai, it was pretty popular, and Qiang had some competition out there. We were all trying to avoid this stage mom yelling for her son. They segregated the competition by sex, so Qiang wasn’t going to get a chance to whoop her kid’s ass. Instead, we tried to ignore her.
“You ever find out where the non-binary kids are competing?” Holly asked.
“Ugh. They’re making them play pretend,” I explained. “Don’t even see why they have to segregate this stuff anyway. When someone comes at you in a dark alley, are you going to be able to ask to segregate that fight? No, you kick ’em upside the spleen.”
“Cut their dick off,” Sam said.
“Poke their eyes out with your nails!” Holly added. We made for an intimidating cheering section. Qiang waved, all smiles, while she waited for her next fight. She raised up a box of popcorn. “Anyone want some?”
I reached out with a prehensile tongue to grab a couple pieces off the top.
“Pass one here,” Sam requested. I slipped one to her using the tongue before chowing down on the other piece. Holly giggled and waved at an older guy who’d been staring. The staring didn’t stop when two more women joined our little crowd. Medusa brought the wings, and Venus brought tacos.
“Boopsies,” I acknowledged them.
“Isabella,” Venus said.
“Maia, at least when we’re dressed like regular people,” Medusa said.
Sam laughed. “So you split up your names?”
Medusa smiled at her. “I let her have the first name, because I’m going to be a good big sis.”
Sam shook her head. “How do you get used to that? She’s you!”
I raised a hand. “Ooh!”
“No!” the whole quartet said at once. I hadn’t even made the suggestion.
I turned my nose up. “Fine. It was just an idea of an offer.”
“Don’t you have a big enough harem?” Venus asked.
“I don’t know. Last time I checked, my alleged fiances were having second thoughts,” I noted. Now, omniscience doesn’t mean omniwisdom, and I could tell I’d hit a sore spot. “I’m sorry. We’ll talk about that later. We’re here now and let’s enjoy watching Qiang rearrange some faces.”
“Up next, Kim Hart versus Qiang Lamb,” the announcer announced. We all started cheering. Venus started a wave that Holly continued, dropping popcorn on me. Through odd chance, all of the popcorn fell into my mouth.
I noticed Medusa watching and gave a little, “Ta da! And for my next act of god…”
“Shh, our kid’s beating people up,” Sam said.
“Our daughter,” Holly said. Medusa and Venus repeated it. I shook my head, thinking about how we are most definitely not a normal family. Qiang and Alexander are going to have some interesting lives, but I hope they have it only as interesting as they want.
Meanwhile on the mat, this Kim girl showed a lot of acrobatic skill dodging Qiang, and the confusion Qiang had about it left her open to get a point scored against her. Qiang came back the next go-round and blocked a kick before giving the girl a punch to the chest.
An older woman with a red dye job she hoped looked natural leaned down and tapped me on the shoulder aggressively, “Excuse me. Do you have to do that?”
I turned toward her. “Do what?”
“That!” she waved her hands at my little lesbian cuddle fest, with Sam on one side of me, Holly in my lap, my arm having slipped around Venus, and Medusa holding my hand that ended up on the other side of Venus’s shoulders.
“We’re just here existing,” I said.
“What’s your problem?” Sam asked.
“She doesn’t like lesbians existing,” Holly answered.
“No, you can exist, just don’t do that here,” the woman said.
“Do what?” Medusa asked, giving her a glare.
“You know, touch each other,” the woman said. She had her fingers entwined with her husband’s next to her.
“We can touch in public same as you,” Medusa said, nodding toward the woman’s hand.
“She thinks we’re unnatural though,” I pointed out.
“I didn’t say that,” she said. I snapped my fingers. “You are unnatural! It’s not right that children can see you exist. Little girls are too impressionable and should be thinking about having sex with men!” She held her hand up to her mouth. “I didn’t say that!”
“Sounded like you did, ma’am,” Holly pitched in.
Venus cleared her throat. “Talking about little girls having sex at this sort of event might count as public obscenity or whatever this state has.”
Medusa took the layup. “Maybe I should get my friend the sheriff in here.”
“Hey, you have no right,” the husband chimed in, pointing his finger at us. “We paid good money to come here and think about sex while staring at little girls!”
“Funny how that keeps slipping out,” I said.
Red-faced the couple ended up leaving, muttering to themselves. The wife said something about the doctor giving her the wrong pills.
We finally got to concentrate on my girl’s match. While we’d been chatting with that annoying couple, Qiang and Kim had themselves a longer bout where Kim used her acrobatics skill to dodge, mostly jumping or throwing herself out of the way. Qiang stayed on her and Kim never had time to full regain her feet, so my daughter was able to get her eventually. Qiang wasn’t nearly as winded as Kim was from all that jumping going into the fourth round, and started off feinting a sweep. Kim jumped, but was slower dodging and realizing the feint, so she caught a food to the chest about the time she landed, giving my daughter the win.
We had a little break then before the finals.
“So, we’ve been thinking,” Medusa said. “It’s not legal for you to marry two people in this country.”
I snapped my fingers. “Drat. Guess the wedding’s off, especially because I’m already married to someone else technically.” One of them is even roaming around somewhere. She came from a Bronze Age-level society on a lost continent that came back. We were married for political reasons. As soon as the ceremony was over, I drugged her to keep her in a coma while I stayed with this other woman I was seeing for political reasons. To make it up for her, I eventually brought her out of it with various enhancements, and let her lead the life of an adventurer.
“Delilah Lamb is not legally married to anyone,” Medusa said. “And neither is Psychopomp Gecko, who exists as a legal entity who has been pardoned before. The Unicorn Goddess is in even weirder legal space. You don’t have to pay taxes since you’re the head of your own religion.”
I shrugged. “After everything, y’all still want to marry me? Attaching your name to mine?”
“We’ve done a lot of thinking about it. It was a big consideration, to add to it. That’s why I’m going to sully my bad reputation with it,” Medusa said. “How’d you like my last name? Psychopomp Gecko-”
“And Delilah can take mine or we can hyphenate. Either way, we decided not to do two weddings in one day, so we’re splitting it up and I’m going first,” Venus added.
“She’s become a real brat now that she’s a younger sister,” Sam said.
Holly gave her a playful swat on the shoulder. “Either be nice or marry our girlfriend yourself.”
“By the way,” Venus said, “I appreciate you keeping the omniscience off right now.”
I shrugged. “It’s not as interesting if I spoil the competition.”
Venus just smiled at me. Someone else tapped me on the shoulder. I turned to see a Catholic priest. “Excuse me, Delilah Lamb?” He opened a Bible he had with him that had a cheat sheet tucked within it.
I went to turn to Venus, who was right next to me, and ask her what she did, but I noticed Medusa revealed a veil she put on Venus. Sam was pulling on a tuxedo sweatshirt and a clip-on tie. Holly got off my lap and pulled a small bouquet of flowers out of the bottom of the trick popcorn box. She whipped her phone out and started playing the wedding march at a subdued tone.
“Elaborate deception,” I noted as Sam put a veil on my head.
Qiang came running up, stopping to grab a pillow with a couple rings on it from her backpack.
We left the gym with Holly jumping around tossing popcorn at us. Sam stuck a sticker to my back reading “Just Married.” I refused to let Qiang be outdone. She skipped along with her trophy and a sign behind her reading, “Just kicked ass.”
Of course, that’s when alarms sounded. Worldwide news alerts went up as gigantic spaceships blotted out the sky. “People of Earth,” they announced on all channels and frequencies “Fear not. The Trobogorian Directorate promises not to kill anyone.”
“Which ones are these?” Sam asked.
Venus raised my hand and kissed it while Medusa answered. “They’re the pacifists, technically. They prefer weapons that keep people alive in excruciating pain.”
“Yay, kicking aliens to the dark side of the honeymoon,” I said, smiling over at Venus. I don’t know why I couldn’t stop smiling. It shouldn’t have meant so much, but it did. And I knew it’d be fun to go beat up some invading aliens, too. The last time a Trobogorian expedition hit Earth, it didn’t go their way. Now, they’ve got me to deal with, and about a bajillion angry alien machines mobilizing around the outer planets to help protect the people who gave them a home.
Heck, I bet this’ll all be cleared up before Outlaw X gets done entertaining y’all instead. Cut me some slack, I’m on my honeymoon.
Sickeningly Sweet 4
Baron Samedi was surprised when I arrived for game night. Argu, the aliens six-pointed starfish god, was there as well, along with Reed, the ancient agriculture god. “Hey, guys,” I greeted the room as I walked in.
We were meeting in a special back room of the Back Room Voodoo Bar, a magical villain bar normally only accessible from Memphis, Tennessee. I’d missed some sessions, and tonight it looked like there were a few games ready to pick from. “Hey guys, been a little.”
There was a round of hellos, with Argu throwing in, “We thought you weren’t coming!”
“Oh yeah?” I asked, settling down. I eyed Betrayal at House on the Hill.
“Samedi said you were trapped,” Argu said.
The Baron shrugged. I gave him some sideeye, but just said, “Really? Didn’t realize y’all knew about that.”
“I believed you would get out,” Samedi explained.
A door opened and a man walked in with a rolling cart of snacks on it. “Hey guys, I brought some chow,” he said in a distinctive gravelly voice. Tom Waits turned around and took another seat that had been left at the table.
I glanced at Reed, Baron Samedi, and Argu, and decided to do a telepathic conference call. “Uh, is Tom Waits a god?”
“I don’t know,” Argu answered.
“Not that I’m aware of,” Reed said.
Baron Samedi responded, “He wandered in earlier, and I don’t know if he knows who or what we are.”
As one, we all shrugged and dropped the call to concentrate on our game.
“What’s it like being trapped?” Argu asked, a ring of eyes surrounding a mouth of pointed teeth.
“Trapped?” Tom Waits looked between Argu and myself. “Who’s trapped?”
I gestured to myself. “I’ve become trapped by the Madstone, which tries to hold me in it. I know enough about the technology used to hop dimensions that I keep getting out, but it still has a hold on me. It’s like my sense of gravity or balance is off and I’m constantly pulled toward it, with a feeling of being wrapped in chains and a constant bout of anxiety over being away from it. On the plus side, I can nab lovers for conjugal visits, or even create them myself in there if I so choose. I’ve created a few minions to go out and help me, actually.”
Silence followed my answer.
“I think I’d like to play Sushi Go,” Reed said.
“I’m up for whatever, guys. Whatever and one of these boiled eggs,” Tom Waits cut in.
I nodded toward some cheese sticks, “I’ll take the fried mozzarella.” Tom handed a basket of them over. Cheap bar food, but it’s hard to make fried cheese that actually tastes bad. It’s a testament to the cleverness of humans that they figured out a way at all. With the food fresh on our minds, we went for Sushi Go first, with Reed ordering some carryout and Baron Samedi magically conjuring it. Seafood isn’t my thing, but I figured I might as well try it. It’s still not my thing, but I’m hardly going to die of sushi eating nowadays.
After that, we nearly considered Munchkin before Tom decided that’d be too risky. “Cheating’s allowed in the rules if you don’t get caught,” he warned.
So it was on to Star Trek: Five Year Mission instead. The Baron’s curiosity got the best of him then. “So what are you doing about everything?”
Aside from going to game night, I was keeping a close eye on the situation with Max and Clara, who I like to call Pestilentia. They hadn’t yet discovered that the Madstone could tap into my powers. I wasn’t so much worried about Max there as I was almost everyone else on Earth. I didn’t mention the thing about tapping into my power to the group of gods and Tom Waits, whose status as a deity was still unknown.
Max might be more attached to the booty than he is to me. That’s why I planned to just kill her off and not bring him in on the whole thing. Friends don’t let friends fuck goddesses of disease. With her gone, I’d deal with the Madstone at my convenience.
It wasn’t tough to find her, either. The pair were still in Empyreal City, beating the crap out of the Greens. The gang had been an environmentally-conscious street gang that dealt a lot of pot back before they got into some chemicals that mutated some of them into a beastlier appearance. Oh, and it’s been spreading plant growth over the city. Trees and vines and bushes all over the place. Abundant, verdant life.
Finding Pestilentia was easy. She’d left a trail of rotting vegetation into Green territory, setting up shop in an old building with a bunch of melty, gooey plant debris outside. The sidewalk was splattered with brown goop, too, but that might have just been Empyreal City.
I walked right down the street, hopping easily out of the way of cars passing by. I was invisible this time, as opposed to just the drivers being assholes. Some of them wouldn’t give a damn, except I would dent the car. The Greens were keeping lookouts watching the house as well. I saw some of the low level members of the gang hanging out. They were on edge, as much because of the danger as for having to stay sober for lookout duty while some of their enhancement was in the car, waiting to give them strength.
Most of the animals that had started to live in the Green Zone were avoiding it, even as the gang itself made their territory a haven for them. The exceptions included a brown bear with a beer cap on feeding him strawfuls of honey out of the honey bears in the cupholders, and a cyborg deer with laser cannons and serrated steal antlers. I offered Winnie some upgrades, but he Poohed all over the idea. Grateful for the hat, though.
“Whatever else, get the Madstone. Capture it,” I ordered them. Bambi nodded and clip-clopped off. Winnie was slower to loaf off. Once they were mostly out of sight, I went visible. A car screeched to a halt right near me.
“Hey, you stupid My Little Pony bitch, get outta the road!” the driver called out.
“Hit it!” I pointed to the car without looking. The radio went haywire under my control and started playing Bad Guy. A pair of drumsticks appeared in my hands and I began to bang the car’s hood in to the beat. The guy tried to put it in reverse, but a particularly hard hit wrecked the engine. He got out and ran instead. I just stared at the building, mouthing along to the words and shaking my ass with an angry expression on my face. Inside, water sprayed down on everything. I didn’t have to know where she is to dump water on her. She appeared at a window, staring down at me with hate in her eyes and a bow in her hand.
Pestilentia notched and fired a poisoned arrow at superspeed. I saw it coming, of course. Instead of dodging or blocking it, I turned the asphalt into a humanoid creation that took the shot square in the chest and scoffed at it. All around me, things changed. Some bricks became a brick monster. A motorcycle transformed into a robot riding a unicycle. Most of what I got out of it were asphalt creatures. And I gave Pestilentia a smile.
She launched herself out of the window, her clothes became partially shredded as she jumped through the glass. It was more magic’s doing than glass when I watched the ribbons appear waving behind her in the air. She had more arrows of her own, missing me entirely but hitting the muck around her house.
Mushroom people, slime molds, and rotting humanoid compost creatures all rose up to face my armor of inorganic minions.
“Hon?” Max said at the window, walking over. He was wet as well, but drying himself off by spreading some goo onto his face and hands that soaked up the water immediately. “Oh, hey Gecko!”
“Hey Max.”
“Holy shit, a bear!” he called out, turning toward a roar.
“Talk to you later, Max,” I said, turning back to Pestilentia as she sped up and tried to jab me with an arrow. I bonked her with drumsticks and sent her flying through a building, flying after her. I caught up and punched her through another building before flying around to the side to catch her by the legs and swing her down through a bodega and into the sewers below the city.
Behind us, more of her rotty minions and my inorganic ones sprouted up to fight. One of my favorites was seeing a vending machine turn into a robot with an arm that could rapid-fire drink cans into things, but the computers turning into wiry octopi were fun, too. People didn’t fair well in the crossfire. Pestilentia generated a deadly cloud of microbes everywhere she went and people were rapidly feeling the effects. I healed as many as possible, but I couldn’t play cleric the whole damn fight.
The clouds went dark and the word “Enough!” was punctuated by lightning and thunder. Two men floated in the sky: one fair skinned, balding, with a long grey beard that stood out incongruously against a torso covered in red and gold tights that revealed every bit of the muscles beneath, white and gold cape fluttering in the air. The other darker skinned, hair pulled back into a ponytail, with gold tights, a red cape, and red accent marks, including the red sideways lightning bolt on his chest.
Captain Lightnings I and II, here to do me a disservice.
“For the good of everyone you claim to protect, you must stop!” Captain Lightning declared. He conjured his staff to his hand and raised it as if it gave him some sort of authority over me.
“I respect you, Captain. Don’t mistake that for authority over me,” I warned him.
Pestilentia erupted out of the sewers in a geyser of what could only be called water in the same sense that a Bichon Frise is a wolf. And joining this conversation on animals came a congregation of undead alligators climbing out of the sewer crater to fight my minions and anything else they saw around. Pestilentia grabbed three arrows from her quiver and raised them to the bow, only this time the weapon and its ammunition shifted into that of a trident. A cloud of spores erupted from her, obscuring her from my vision and her presence. It’s like every piece of the cloud was her.
Captain Lighting II dove at me, which was worth ignoring. The old gods who empowered them didn’t give them enough power to overtake them, and I could take any of those deadbeat deities nowadays. Instead, his mentor said something and Pestilentia appeared from where she’d shrunk. I stopped before I could doubleteam her and looked around for the main Captain Lightning.
He was flying off in the direction we’d come from, blasting the warring minions with lightning. It was taking a lot out of him. I decided to check in with my other minions, the henchanimals. Telepathic conference call time.
“Bambi, Winnie, report,” I said. In the middle of the fight between Pestilentia and Private Lightning, one of them flung the trident at me. I ducked to the side and grabbed it. Increasing its size and mass, I then tossed it back at the pair, causing both to separate momentarily while it blew up a gas station being swarmed with undead gators.
“Your friend tried to melt me,” Bambi said. “I don’t think I hit him, but we are each hunting the other.”
“Cool. Now remember the non-vital parts we talked about if it comes down to it. A missing foot won’t kill him, but it’ll slow him down.” Max can grow those back. “Winnie?”
“Igh ot it! Igh ot it!”
“Why are you thinking like your mouth is full?” Bambi asked.
“Bambi, rendezvous with Winnie. Both of you get out of there.”
“Ugh oh,” Winnie said. “That nice old man I gave honey to is here.”
I teleported there and smacked into an invisible magical barrier. I shattered it and speed to the spot, hitting more and more barriers that slowed me momentarily. Finally, I came to the neighborhood this all started in which had been wrecked. Pestilentia’s minions and my own were still fighting, now with the Greens joining in and the police starting to arrive. The apartment lacked a couple of floors at the top, and a bear was now hanging onto the fire escape. Captain Lightning I floated nearby, the Madstone floating in a purple lattice of magical runs as he did something to it.
I stopped near him. “What are you doing, Captain?”
The old man sighed, his shoulders slumped. “It’s the best path forward, for peace.”
He was strengthening it. The grip the Madstone had on me increased, tugging harder on me. The same moment I made up my mind to kill, he turned and raised a hand. Lighting arced out toward me. I floated forward, horn lighting up with a ray of light that pushed back on the lightning. More struck him from the sky, empowering him further, but that did nothing to hold me back. If anything, his beam grew weaker.
But being a god is no time for hubris. My omniscience told me he was putting almost everything he had into the enchantment, shoring it up, reprogramming it you might say. His plan was a permanent trap, not only refusing to ever let me leave in any way, but to trap me in a fantasy. As far as I’d know the Madstone would be the real world. And I’d never see my loved ones again.
I lunged forward, my hand in his chest, pulling all of the power out of him and leaving him a wrinkled, frail old man with a torn out heart. I’d stopped him.
I appeared back in the Madstone despite that. There was something more firm about the place, but I knew it wasn’t real. It was more fake than ever. The sunlight was too bright and too yellow. The sky was a whirling mass of purple that began to settle down and fade away into a blue that was overly vibrant.
I looked down at the heart of Captain Lighting, a man I had respected. Tossed it away.
“Goddess, the other lightning man took the Madstone,” Bambi informed me. “There are alarms everywhere. Your rock men are falling apart.”
The portals worked just fine to bring them home. They let me back out. I thought I’d done it. Floating in the sky above the trashed neighborhood below, I tried to reach my mind out and find Pestilentia. It took awhile. The tug of the Madstone distracted me, tickling at the edge of my perception. My omniscience also alerted me to a threat. I was being drained of power, slowly becoming less powerful. A hasty precaution taken by the late Captain Lightning, whose frail old body was cradled below by his successor.
I didn’t let the other gods know that part either, at game night. The distraction of it all helped me lose pretty badly.
“Better luck next time,” Baron Samedi said.
“Yeah, don’t worry about it man. You’ll win one of these days,” Tom Waits reassured me. “I better go. I got this thing I gotta do.” He stood up, shaking everyone’s hand.
“We’d love to have you back,” the Baron said. Reed and I nodded. Argu tried his best as a symmetrical alien sea creature.
“I better go too,” I said. I’d been out too long and I needed to get back in my Madstone. And yes, I stewed over that compulsion that gripped me when I returned to it. If only Captain Lightning hadn’t made me kill him.
Great Power 9
Sam and I went out to celebrate my new godhood one night after getting Qiang to sleep. I pretty much am by the power requirements. Vivec and Almalexia are amateurs next to me. I mean, I’m not omniscient. I have to put in an effort to examine stuff, but I can learn things. Dancing in the club there, in my little red dress, I could reach out and feel the minds of people around me. Know what they were thinking, nudge it if I wanted. Heh, I could full on control it. Learn all their secrets and desires… one guy creeping around the bar just up and disappeared. I dumped him and the stuff he was slipping into glasses off in the desert.
I was dancing all by myself while Sam lounged nearby, eyes fixed on me. Hers weren’t the only ones, but hers are the ones that I walked toward before straddling her lap. Even more people watched us after that.
I stroked her ears. “You wanted to be an elf, right?”
“Took you long enough,” she said around a smile. I lengthened her ears and ended them in points. “Thinking of picking up a third?”
I shrugged. “There’s plenty to pick from.”
“Oh yeah? I have an idea if you’re into it,” she leaned in and whispered to me. She’d been listening to a podcast about witches. “I can’t make heads or tails of the timeline, but it wouldn’t disturb it any if we brought someone forward right before they died.”
Thinking about time got my mind to wandering about all the historical wrongs I could right, though at least one issue to wonder about was the possibility of changing the past so much it undoes me gaining this power. Sam squeezed my face in her hand and shook it. “Come back to me.”
The next morning, I was interrupted from my rest by a call. I’ve used my power to recreate all of my normal connections to the world, including my internal telephone system. I didn’t have to sleep, but I can put myself into something like it to give myself a break from consciousness. Also, my arms don’t go numb now no matter how long someone sleeps on one of them.
The call was from Medusa. “Did you blow up a ship last night?”
“Yeah. I spent a little spare time over in Egypt.” My mind wandered before my rest.
“Can I ask why?” she asked, exasperated. At least she was still letting me hear the exasperation. Technolutionary’s been on eggshells after everything. Lots of fake smiles and transparent excuses for ending our partnership.
“I heard prayers to me coming from a cargo container.”
“Prayers. You’re saying someone prayed to you.” Medusa’s Catholic for some damn reason. Limited omniscience means one thing I can’t wrap my head around is her still wanting to be a part of that bunch.
“Someone prayed,” I explained. “If anyone else was listening, they didn’t do anything about it. I did. Saved some people, sent them to better places, bypassed some bureaucracies along the way. Saved you a lot of time and money. As far as those privateers are concerned, it’s a bizarre act of god.”
“You’re not God,” she said. Ah yes, the blasphemy angle.
“And you’re pretty sensitive to me having this level of power. I guess I get that you don’t trust me. I thought I was doing better.” Godlike power doesn’t mean I’m instantly better at sharing my feelings. It actually hurt me a little to see her distrust in me now.
“You have incredible power now, and you’re seeing a therapist. I have to be concerned. If something happens and you lose control, it’s going to be a lot worse for everyone. The only way to stop you might kill you and a lot of people.” She was also deeply uncomfortable with the amount of power and the god thing. I could feel that much. And unlike people who claim to have mysterious powers of empathy, I’m a damn god, goddammit.
I didn’t even change her mind. I could have and I wanted to. She could worship me instead. And I didn’t. She’d trust me even less if I told her of that internal debate, so I didn’t. “Anything else you want to ask me about?”
“No,” she sighed. “You can’t go doing this to the whole world. You aren’t a god.”
“I have the power, and I can find out everything about a situation. I’m doing more for people than yours or any other god people believe in. But you don’t like that it’s me. I’m the one fixing soils and oceans and air. In seconds, I fixed every broken bone and cured every disease. I thought you were beyond supporting the status quo just because.”
“I guess I don’t trust you with this power,” she admitted.
“Ok. And is there anything that would make you trust me with it?”
After a few seconds, she said, “Restraint.”
“Well, I guess we don’t have much else to talk about here, so bye.”
“Gecko-!” I cut her off.
She took the hint and didn’t call back. What, we’re going to talk about the weather after all that? Am I just her villain fetish? Was all of this just a lying appeasement of the crazy person? I stopped and took a deep breath before I blew something up. After all, I could just check.
I saw regret, guilt, some doubt, and some resolve. And some other complicated feelings, some of which scare me. I don’t want to talk about that everything I found there. Things about being raised in such a controlled environment, and me as the intersection of controlled and uncontrolled, but also a bunch of back and forth. But maybe I was harsh on her.
And maybe that was all making me think of all the many ways I can use my powers to do freaky sex stuff, so it was time to skip out and do something unsexy. Like manifest in various places to save assholes about to get into accidents. Nothing throws cold water over a sexual mood quite like saving someone from going off a cliff in India twice in the same day, or saving someone from getting hit by a drunk driver and hearing you’re a “godsend.” At least with the guy in India, he had a pretty hot wife in the car with him. She could have a goddess instead of a bad driver.
I decided to head back to my body and handle all of this invisibly. My intervention was still quite obvious. Didn’t want the wrong gods taking credit for my hard work. I just didn’t want to hear the two-faced praise from people who hate and fear me. And I didn’t want to keep thinking my thoughts.
This time, it wasn’t so much about destruction. Sure, I couldn’t help but look at politics going on and think it’d be better with a bit of my control or destruction involved. Why not end Congressional gridlock the old-fashioned way? Maybe don’t make it obvious. I don’t need to be empress again. A heart attack here, an overdose on cocaine there. You can hardly rely on outing a sex scandal nowadays.
And there’s the Supreme Court to think of. No reason to stop at just this country. This place could use an overhaul.
Sam rolled over and kissed me with pleasant and bad-smelling breath. “Come back to me.”
“Hey,” I said, smiling at her.
“What’s wrong?” she asked, running a hand over my face.
I grabbed and kissed it. “You don’t want to hear all that.”
“If not me, who?” she asked. “Tell me, or I’m ripping one and holding your head under the covers.”
I laughed at that one. Such poise. Such grace. I shook off the laughter and told her, “Fine.” I sighed. “They might be right. I might want to go too far. Thinking of abusing my power violently. Other things. Mind control, going into dreams, life swaps, exploring possibilities…”
“Mmm, sounds fun. Maybe you should go too far on me.” I raised an eyebrow at her statement. Sam licked her lips. “Take your evil out on me. I’m open to it.”
She and I got around to working the shop, eventually. Just a nice, boring day with the power of a god at my fingertip, occasionally letting my mind wander to save someone’s kid from tripping onto the utensil section of an open dishwasher.
And just to make things even better, that’s when an old man in his 90s walked in, supported by his cane and and a Black teenager. Magic dripped off the pair of them, and I recognized the old man at least. I nodded to them both. “Lightning and Lightning, striking twice at my shop. What brings you here?”
“I came to get your measure, Gecko,” the aged, civilian form of Captain Lightning said. “I wanted to see how you were handling your ascendancy and self-defined godhood.”
I shrugged. “I have the power. I can sure use it better than others.”
The apprentice scoffed, but Captain Lightning approached. “I have been there. Do you think you’re up to it?”
“What?” the apprentice asked.
Lightning chuckled and glanced at him. “Fighting Nazis was something I could have left up to mankind. I had great powers, those of a god on Earth, and I intended to use them to interfere in mortal affairs. The sorcerer who had gifted them to me warned me about it. He tried to mentor me that my goal was to protect the Earth from the threats of the supernatural and magical. Demons and beasts from outside the world who would seek to consume our world. The Nazis were a lot of things, but they weren’t wizards. I understand the desire, even the need, to use overwhelming power to make the world what you see as a better place.”
That wasn’t the way I expected this. I didn’t pry into his mind and history when he walked in here, though. If I wanted, I could find out what his next words were. In fact, he was going to tell me to cut that out.”
“Stop that. I do not mean to trick you. I come with sympathy and a warning. I understand where you are coming from, but I am still Captain Lightning. I still protect this Earth. With our powers, we are beyond the accountability of mere man. We are beyond controlling them as well. I have fought my share of beings who claim to be gods, some with the power to back their claim. I will put you down as well.”
After a pause, he nodded to me and Sam, saying, “Good Day.” His apprentice eyed Sam on his way out, too.
I glanced over at her. She was adjusting her leather jacket on her smaller torso. “Maybe it’s time to get my body back. I bet this woman’s wondering why she’s white and has a bunch of new piercings.”
“I made everyone oblivious to it. See?” I waved my hand and created an image in the air, letting us both watch Sam Hain walking around a house in Indian clothing, bossing around some kids in Hindi. No one seemed to think it was anything out of the ordinary.
Sam, meanwhile, fished around and pulled out a driver’s license. “That explains why this says Fatima.” She looked down at herself. “I’m a milf.” She snorted, then glanced at me. “Let’s get my body back before it ends up with a baby bump.”
I was going to do that, but things got even more interesting. A wall of flames erupted around me and I found myself in a land twisting rocks like a forest reaching up from broken chunks of pumice floating on lava. And before me stood a giant, scaled being with a crown of bone and horn and burning eyes.
“You, god-pretender,” he addressed me. My enhanced senses allowed me to detect the hyphen. “You are the one who thwarted my attempts on your plane and took my rightfully-stolen property.”
“Yeah,” I responded. I glanced down. I stood in a summoning circle. The demons had summoned me. I tried reaching out of the circle, but it resisted me. I could break it.
“Just yeah? You face a demon prince of the Legion of the Damned and Defiler of the Forsaken, and all you say is ‘yeah’?”
“What do you want? You make this quick and I promise not to hurt you yet.”
“Yet,” he growled.
“I assume you also plan to come after me.”
“I have an offer for you, an offer you should not spurn. Become my right hand. Do my bidding and pave the way for my conquest of the world, and I will leave you in place to govern it on my behalf. Do so and I shall not need to dispose of you and consume your soul.”
I pushed. The binding magic of the summoning circle strained. Just before it broke, the massive demon in front of me spoke in a hurried tone. “Think about it and get back to me. I’ll be in contact. My people will call your people, buh bye!” He waved a hand in a hurry and the wall of flames appeared again. I was back in the shop, standing in front of Sam again.
“What was that?” she asked.
I rolled my eyes. “Demons won’t get off my dick now. I’d wonder about Cthulhu, but I already got rid of that one.”
“Sounds stressful. Now, about my body? I’d rather get it back before we do any more freaky goddess sexing.”
Great Power 2
I’ve got my base, hidden under my shop. Technolutionary has his own, hidden somewhere else. We agreed to compromise on a shared space, which we’re working on. He wants something flying. Too many bells and whistles, too many moving parts for me. But not the worst idea. And it helped me come up with an interesting idea myself that I’m going to work on. Why not modify the dimensional bomb technology to hold a breach open? Maybe meld multiple places together. Not the sort of thing you really need if you’re a small business owning retired villain mom.
My girlfriend’s not happy. I told Sam what I was doing, trying to be more open to a romantic partner. She told me straight up, “This is probably a bad idea. That guy’s creepy and he never has good intentions.”
So for now, I’ve got a body up in a flying lab of Technolutionary’s powered by a stolen alien generator. Seeing as I keep spares, of some of my tech, I’ve got a nanite pool, armor auto repair, and the auto-foundry. I’ve also got some computers back in my own personal base running on traps and other ways to apply various stolen sciences to keep what we take safe from Technolutionary and others.
But first, we had to get it. Technolutionary has a few locations mapped out. Some people who get these Omega Pearls aren’t shy about letting folks know they have them. But first, we have a time sensitive matter in the hell dimensions.
As I understand it, there isn’t a literal Biblical Hell. There are a lot of places people think up where they go when they die to be tortured, usually meant to be the worst places imaginable and inhabited by demonic beings that plague humanity. And the various beings lumped together under the label “demon” seem real enough, but being real doesn’t mean every story about them is real. I’ve read about a French cavalry officer who was so strong, others at the military academy claimed he could do a pull up and bring his horse with him. Doesn’t make him fake, but also doesn’t mean he could really do that pull-up. For one thing, he’d couldn’t skip leg day.
Anyway, I figure the hell dimensions might be one inhuman planet with a variety of biomes that gave humans different ideas of Hell. Otherwise, they might just be a bunch of different dimensions each matching a different Hell. No matter the interpretation, I had a bug telling me the box containing an Omega Pearl was somewhere. I armored up and activated the armor’s chameleon protocols, then made a dimensional breach to land about 200 feet away.
It was daytime, lit by an orange star. The ground was rocky, with veins of rust running through it. Near me lapped water, clear but brown. I took a good look around, noticing both a the large, dark blue egg of a structure, and a crowd where the bug’s signal came from. The crowd stared my way. They were humans, two of them being Captain Lightning and his apprentice, Captain Lightning II. Those two were looking at me despite my armor projecting a holographic cloak of invisibility over me. Miss Tycism stood nearby, wearing purple robes and hood. She looked my way, but not at me. The others, I couldn’t make out who they were.
Well, I think I was busted. Not nearly as busted as the bodies on the ground near the bunch. I dropped the cloak and took a long leap to land near them. “Hey there Captain, Captain,” I said, offering a hand out for Captain Lightning to shake. Despite the magic giving him a buff body, he looked like age was catching up to him. He showed a lot more wrinkles and grey hair than I remembered. Then again, the guy was old enough to have fought the Nazis in World War II. I think he’s tired.
He smiled a thin smile and clasped my forearm in that sort of shake. “Gecko.”
Lightning II didn’t offer one of his own. He and Miss Tycism both glared at me. The others in the bunch looked well out of their depth. There was a fellow in a trench coat, another done up like a stage magician, and a woman in a gothic Lolita-style dress and a half-dozen belts wrapped around her waist. The magician carried the case I’d been tracking, the one the Omega Pearl had been sent off inside.
“What are you doing here?” Miss Tycism asked.
I shrugged. “Was going to steal back that Omega Pearl from these folks.” I nodded toward the case that the magician was carrying. “I guess y’all got it first?” The magician opened the case to show it was empty.
Captain Lightning let go of my arm. “We’re all late to intercept it.”
The man in the trenchcoat held up his hand where he held a coin. He flipped it and opened his palm to catch it. It bounced once, then started spinning on its edge. It was slower at first, then sped up when he pointed it to the big dark egg-thing. It slowed as he moved it past the structure, then sped up again when he brought it back.
“So it’s in that big-ass thing?” I looked to the rest of the bunch. “Room for one- look out!”
I pointed up toward the egg thing and the large ball of fire coming at us from it.
The Apprentice Lightning and Miss Tycism acted before the rest of them. Miss Tycism raised a wall of ice that curved overhead, throwing off a little mist from its sudden appearance in a land that my suit said was at what y’all would call 93 Fahrenheit. The second Lightning added his own barrier to it, a half-sphere that crackled with electricity. The fireball hit the ice wall and flash boiled it, throwing steam into the air with a piercing hiss that my ears filtered out. The twin shields held. I even got to see one of the bodies left outside the shield, a pale, horned thing with out of proportion limbs and odd numbers of clawed digits, burn to a crisp. Curious, I glimpsed at some of them around inside the shield and sent my nanites down to do an examination.
“I had it,” Miss Tycism said.
“Extra doesn’t hurt,” Lightning II said.
Captain Lightning floated up off the ground six inches. “Speaking of which, I suppose it couldn’t hurt to have someone along who can help distract them. Gecko?”
“Mind if I bring some of these along for study?” I asked. I raised a hand and a couple of the dead humanoids stood up. Looked like one was masculine and the other feminine, with mouths full of fangs and long, thin tongues.
“If you want to, I suppose. They’re dead, right?” he asked.
“Ew,” noted the woman with the belts.
“Their bodies have ceased life function. The nanites have restored enough to keep bioelectricity flowing and are piloting the bodies for me,” I explained via the one that might have been a female.
“That’s fucking creepy,” Apprentice Lightning said.
“Language,” Captain Lightning admonished. “Fine, bring them. Those are little more than half-feral guard dogs anyways.”
I threw down a holodisc. Yes, I have some of these again. Little portable hologram generators with a link to my armor. I’ve spent years of disposing of stuff almost as soon as I build it up, and I now have more of these. I plan on my vault for the Omega Pearl being a mindfuck, and that prompted me to order up my machines to produce a bunch of these. My armor cloaked us as Captain Lightning raised a clear, circular plane for us to stand on and zipped toward the Egg. The holodisc stayed behind and projected our group continuing out discussion. We were well clear when the next fireball was launched from the fortress ahead of us. Our doubles looked up, made whatever gestures I thought looked magical enough, and then disappeared while running in different directions.
Captain Lightning’s flying disc got us there in a hurry, before they could get a good lock on us again. And up close, the egg wasn’t as big as it looked from afar. I think it loomed because the landscape was so flat, mostly that rusty ground with little pools of water around. “What’s this hell called?” I asked.
“The Blasted Place,” Captain Lightning answered. “The races of demons like to test weapons here. It is the perfect spot to lay a trap, and the place to assemble a dangerous new weapon.” That would also explain the floating islands of jagged rock at various levels in the sky.
“No offense to your companions,” the Magician said.
“They’re dead puppet bodies,” the Belted Woman told him. “I think that one’s bleeding again. I don’t know how it’s standing.”
“I don’t know much about demon bodies, or whatever gets called a demon. Hoping to learn more about these by bringing them along. Believe it or not, I don’t do much business with the Hell Dimensions.”
“Neither do I, this is crazy. Now we’ve got a supervillain along?” the Magician freaked out a bit.
“Hey, here, look at me,” Trenchcoat said. These are just nicknames since I’m clueless who these people actually are, I hope y’all know. Magician turned to Trenchcoat, who put a hand on the side of the Magician’s face tenderly and stared into his eyes. “You’re going to be calm now, do you know why?”
“Why?” the Magician asked, voice shaky. Trenchcoat got a little reared back before slapping the Magician’s face with the open palm not holding a spinning coin in it.
“Or else I’ll have to slap you again,” said Trenchcoat. I like Trenchcoat.
“We need a way in,” Captain Lightning said. “Three, two…”
Miss Tycism held her hand up. Apprentice Lightning started chanting. The gothic lolita woman with all the belts pulled a couple of small glass vials out from her belts.
“One,” Captain Lightning finished. Miss Tycism unleashed a blue beam that she held on the side of the egg, slowly unfolding the material like it had been cut and was being tugged apart layer by layer. The Second Lightning shot electricity that I don’t think did anything before switching to gouts of intense flame that might have sped up the process of cracking this egg. The woman with the belt threw her bottles that exploded violently and unleashed a dark haze. Trenchcoat waved his hand and a wind pushed the smoke away, then pulled out a small wooden wand from his coat. It unleashed a spray of black bolts that flew into the widened gap until.
With their forces combined, the egg cracked. I am Captain Trans! What seems to be the problem, Transeteers?
But seriously, I and my humanoid demon puppets jumped the gap and landed in a nice little forge. Nearby was a what looked like a horned human without the twisted features, his skin a mess of scars. He turned to me and raised a forge hammer overhead. I impaled him with an arm and held his body up, letting my nanomachines crawl in. “Interesting.”
Behind us, the “feral dog” demons clawed and bit at another. I’m not the best at controlling three different bodies at once, but I was able to tear another of these demons apart. Then they were blasted into pieces by another one who held the Omega Pearl in tongs. The tool he used on them appeared to be an ornate hammer, the flat edge perpetually engulfed in flames. I threw the body I’d picked up at him; it held him down while he caught it alight. While he did that, I walked over and looked for the tongs. It was now holding a rubber ball with a star on it.
“Presto!” I heard over at the opening. The Magician held the Omega Pearl in his white-gloved hands, then palmed it.
“I’d really like to have that,” I said.
“I’m sorry,” Captain Lightning apologized. “I’ll make sure you get out.”
A blue, shimmery portal appeared overhead and swooped down, encompassing the whole bunch before disappearing, and taking that Omega Pearl with it. Behind me, the forgemaster tossed his burning underling aside and stood up.
I disappeared. I could take him easily, but what’s the point now? Instead, I decided to head around, see if I could find a good place to cause some last minute destruction with my exit. I found out we were merely in the outer layer of the egg.
Deeper inside was the core. There floated an oblate sphereoid made of pewter or a metal very much like it, carved to a scale model of Earth. Around that floated dozens of these Omega Pearls, all held in a weave of flames that traced through the air between each one. There were many gaps; this grid was nowhere near complete. Even this one wouldn’t have done it. But the Hell Dimensions are planning something.
I programmed the second dimension bomb I was going to use to escape to have a wider area of effect on this end. It would bring more along with me, in case I wanted more of these lovely samples. I found a spot where two of these were close enough to let me nab them and wreck part of that model of Earth they wanted to do something with. Perhaps I could take some samples before that?
I looked around. There was some sort of being in a white robe speaking into an orb on a desk nearby. I couldn’t understand the language, but my translator program was working on it. I stepped closer, unseen, to get a better look. She was yellow-skinned, a couple of holes on the side of her head where ears would be. A half dozen thick, fleshy tendrils sprouted from her back, measuring maybe a foot each. In place of hair were much finer tendrils. She had five fingers, with nails that curved over the fingertips. I let my nanites swarm over her. She screamed while they found their way into her. I’d have knocked her out first, but I didn’t know just how close she was anatomically to human. Surprisingly close for the exterior details, it turned out. Everything was a little off inside, too, further so than that one I scanned in the forge.
Unlike that one, I left this one alive and withdrew my nanites once someone burst through the door. These were larger, more muscular, and biceps bulging with scales next to bulging breastplates.
They couldn’t see a thing, of course, and I decided to get out of there before they would. I checked the Earth model, finding it had rotated slightly in those minutes, and got myself lined up. Then bam!
I reappeared in the floating lab with a chunk of pewter depicting part of South America, and a couple of Omega Pearls.
They tried to reorient themselves, but whatever magic was at play went wonky. The two Pearls went flying off, smashing into things. Technolutionary, thinking quick, raised a gauntlet on his suit and emitting a pulse that stopped one in midair. The other crashed into a bunch of stuff before getting stopped by a wall. The thing was bending it like Jason Voorhees pushing a college girl’s face through the side of an RV.
As I got closer to grab it, I felt weird again. That intense heat. And ideas resurfaced. Going back and abducting exotic demons. Dissolving the other dimensions until there were none left. Making most of the world forget my existence. It bothered me. Yeah, I have the thoughts, but I still know when I’m doing something wrong. I’ve always known.
I opted to grab some breach sealant nearby. Technolutionary had sprayers all over the place in case we accidentally put a hole in the outside of the lab. I sprayed the Pearl down in a yellow goo that quickly solidified.
“Our first success!” Technolutionary exclaimed while we each set ours into the safe meant to be temporary housing.
“Yes, but also no,” I told him.
Despite that, my conscience’s problems with some of the ideas I was having, it felt good to be back. To taste mad creativity again. Only this time, I’m helping the world along with helping myself. Just not helping myself to everything I can think of.
Sam let me have it, too. When she heard what all happened, she decided she’s going to be a part of this and she wants to hide the Pearls. It’s not a bad idea, with what I’m feeling about them.
Gecko: Omega 16
With a cry of Machine Man’s machine voice, Mr. Omega appeared. He floated in all his glory, but in my body and my armor. He looked over the sight before him: one Medusa bound and gagged on her knees, another standing free behind her in a street packed with cars, the odd planted tree, and even a person watching from behind a stoop with their dog on a leash next to them. Oh, and a hog-tied Qiang laying next to the bound Medusa.
“Behold,” said the free Medusa, who was clearly Machine Man and nobody else. “I have succeeded.”
“Where are the others?” Omega asked.
“They went their own way,” Machine Man responded.
Mr. Omega stared at Medusa, Medusa, and Qiang. He raised a hand that exerted a cone of red light, because red is really this guy’s jam. The Medusa that had presumably been Machine Man, surprise surprise, was shown to be standing in the same place as an invisible Dudebot. Who could have predicted this turn of events?
Omega frowned and squeezed his fist. The Dudebot crushed in on itself. “A childish gambit,” Omega said. “Did you think you could fool me?”
My voice echoed out of somewhere. “What, you’ve never played a game of Three Card Monte?”
“Three…” Mr. Omega muttered. He gestured toward the Medusa tied up on the ground. Another scan revealed another Dudebot that was quickly blown to smithereens. “You, then?” He turned toward the Qiang. She began to cry and squirm, which stopped around the time she was also exposed as a hologram covering up a Dudebot.
“What is this, Gecko?” Omega asked of me. “How can you do this?”
“You talked about me not being able to use your powers as well as you. Turns out, you can’t use mine as well as I can, either.” The Qiang Dudebot stood up. As she did, a car disappeared and a Dudebot appeared in its place. The tree in the planter did likewise. More Dudebots revealed themselves, including the huddled onlooker and his dog.
I felt Mr. Omega’s anger as he zapped robotic doppelganger after robotic doppelganger, causing a shitload of damage to a neighborhood the Reds had cleared out for me ahead of time.
“Where is Machine Man?” Omega asked.
The Dudebot that had pretended to be Qiang pulled out the head of Machine Man out from behind it, dropped it on the ground, and crushed it. Omega didn’t seem angry about that. He didn’t seem much phased at all. Then he tried to blow up that one and missed, and that got him mad. He began to fire furiously at the multitude of Dudebots that appeared all over the place. When one bonked him on the face, his fury came from the fact that he’d been so overwhelmed. It sure didn’t hurt him.
While he did all that, a Dudebot in Ricca kept close eye on the group who infiltrated the island. They’d arrived via the Cape Diem relief camp. Mix N’Max had tossed several canisters of a smoke that was making the patrols they came across fall asleep. Medusa led the group, having assured me when we last spoke that she hid my daughter somewhere safe. With her was both of the Captain Lightnings and the bravest few of the Extradimensional Studies team.
They had ideas, you see. They figured, with me having joined forces with Omega, it was only a matter of time before the Telechamber got built, so they figured out a plan that used it. I’ve been assured it’s much better than the one I came up with using it, which is the reason I didn’t stop the Telechamber from being built. Yep, the nanites kept working and it’s ready. Mr. Omega just didn’t realize it because he’s tech-illiterate.
The heroes, and Mix N’Max, had the scientists they snuck out of the country work on a device to help them out. They didn’t tell me what it does, but they believe it’ll work so long as Omega doesn’t show up and blow up.
I was more than happy to distract him. I’m great at it! Besides, nobody else needs to take the risk. I’m stuck with this guy. And I should probably be more sympathetic to him. He reminds me way too much of myself a few years back. And maybe this didn’t have to go this way, if I’d been better. Nothing doing now, though, than to stick a dumpster on his head.
Indeed, that’s what I had a Dudebot do, which made it even harder for him to keep up with what was happening. He tossed it off and let out a blast that spread out in a circle tossing cars, melting the road, and trashing the four Dudebots actually around. That a bunch of others seemed to be around and unscathed alerted Mr. Omega to the con. He closed his eyes and did something with a gesture of his fingers, then opened them. “These are illusions, created by your mechanical eyes.”
The flashing 12:00 in our shared view adjusted to read “Fuck You” o’clock as the fake Dudebots disappeared.
Back in Ricca, Shockley came by to visit the Telechamber site. The old Dusk Priest-turned young Dusk Priest had picked out some new robes to match his new loyalties. With the city now under Omega’s martial law, few were inclined to outwardly oppose him. He used that to have himself a fun little holiday, so long as he didn’t think about any extras added to his food or drink too hard, but I guess he felt a big enough twinge of duty to show up and check on the Telechamber.
I had Dudebots on automated patrols, too, but I only spotted him once he sent up a magic flare. The Dudebot landed just in front of him. His fingers flew as he did whatever things he does with them to make the magic happen. The Dudebot punched, knocking the breath, and back, out of him just as his reverberating voice called out “Omega!”
I heard it in stereo. All the way over in Empyreal City, it jumped out at Omega. Suddenly, we were there, in the air over Ricca. Omega traced the flare down to the dying Dusk Priest. He crashed to the ground, smashing my robot double under my own boots. He pulled the arm free of Shockley’s body and pressed a hand there to close the wound.
When Shockley could speak again, the Dusk Priest told him, “Something is wrong. They are at the chamber.”
I could feel the anger bubbling up in him from the back of the mind where I’d been exiled. Despite that, Omega didn’t tear the place apart indiscriminately. At least, the roof he tore off was meant to be retractable for larger portals. I don’t know if he knew that.
The assembled heroes and scientists gaped up at him, everything seeming really quiet. Then he tossed down the Dudebot’s gauntlet. “The fool has failed. Know that your plan will fail. I will- agh!”
Mr. Omega clutched at his eyes. That did nothing to clear the image of the goatse.
“Go, go, go!” I heard Medusa call as she realized they had an opening. “Chu, where are we?”
“Buh, I don’t know! I needed five minutes to test!” the scientist called.
The older Captain Lightning spoke up. “Test time is over. Put your pencil down and do it for real.” Wow, he’s really getting into his role as a teacher.
I didn’t know how much time I could give them, but I knew I could try. Omega used his magic to clear away the goatse, only to find a bigger ass there waiting. Rick Astley began dancing, singing about his desire to never give Mr. Omega up, to never let him down, to never run around and desert him.”What trickery is this?!” Mr. Omega cried out.
I heard sounds from around, like the thunder of lightning and the whoosh of fireballs, but they didn’t seem to be aimed at Omega. Instead, Mr. Omega was concentrating on getting rid of Rick Astley, then a looping video of three guys in a car listening to “What Is Love?” What that disappeared, he got to see Carl Weathers and Arnold Schwarzenegger clasping hands set to Guile’s Theme from the Street Fighter series. Next was a stripper named Ricardo Milos, but he eventually figured out how to turn off my wifi connection.
I had to resort to the music player, which didn’t do anything to obstruct his view beyond a brief notice that we were listening to the song “What’s Up Danger” by Blackway & Black Caviar.
“I got you now,” Mr. Omega said, aiming for Medusa, who rested against a piece of wall she’d dragged between Shockley and the scientists modifying the Telechamber.
“No,” I thought coldly, swinging that arm up into the air. He yanked it down, I pulled it up. Not her.
“She betrayed you,” he said.
“I love her,” I responded.
He growled as he spoke aloud, “You side with those who betrayed you to fight someone just like you!”
“I said I loved her. I didn’t say it made sense. And you’re not hurting my family ever again.”
He tried the other arms. Somehow, I managed to force them to aim away.
“Hey Gecko, catch!” called a voice. Omega and I both looked down to see where Max had hurled a closed beaker with a handle at me. I caught it. Omega crushed it.
“Did I just ruin your plot?” Omega asked, ignoring the sizzling from the substance dripping out of my fist. It spread over us, catching purple flame. Then came the screaming.
Forget popping out Medusa’s baby. It felt like I was squeezing an entire person out of every pore of my body. Even with my eyes squeezed shut, my armor showed what looked like me splitting in two, except the second half of this mitosis was a humanoid flame with eyes of brilliant white, and I was myself in my red Omega armor.
As soon as we separated, I fell to the ground. Everything Omega had deferred in my body hit me at once. A week of hunger, a week without sleep, even a week without shitting. That last part got… messy. I didn’t want to get up. I only hoped he felt as bad.
Mr. Omega howled. “Shockley, the device!”
Shockley was pinned against the wall by the younger Captain Lightning II. Still, the Dusk Priest managed to a telekinetic flip of the switch on the main control board. The lights dimmed as it drew enough from the power core to create the first portals, tapping directly into the energy reserves of stars. Lighting II zapped Shockley and left him a convulsing mess against the wall. He rushed to try and cut Omega off as the entity rushed to guard the controls personally, some of the fire burning off and leaving him just a tiny bit smaller.
Medusa rushed over to check on me, though, so that was nice. “Gecko, are you alright?”
“It only hurts from the hair down,” I reassured her. Max joined us, as did Chu and the other scientists.
“It’s done,” Chu said.
“Ow,” I commented.
“Good,” Medusa said. She looked to Max and smiled. “It worked. She’s back.”
“I didn’t know those muscles could hurt,” I added, about my kegels. I don’t think I want to know what all Omega was up to while I was remote controlling robots.
Max reached over and patted my arm. “It’s good to have you back.”
Overhead, the sky turned red, except for the growing portal that opened up and showed the same burning red fire that made up Omega’s corporeal form. The flames reached the edge of the portal and formed into fingers that held it open as Mr. Omega’s smaller form regained the size it lost after separating from me. “It is too late for all of you now,” he said, stepping closer to this group. He spared a glance to the Captains Lightning who were instead forming a magic barrier around the device Chu had connected to the Telechamber.
Omega stepped close to us and knocked one of our brainiacs out of the way who stood up to confront him. He ignored all of them and looked at my helmet, trying to lock eyes with me. Max held up a syringe gun but was thrown against a wall and held there by a red band of energy. Medusa tried to stand, but sank into the floor up to her waist as it transformed into quick sand. The rest of the eggheads scampered off to avoid being killed. “A deal is a deal.” Mr. Omega addressed me, “For your role, you will be rewarded with life eternal. For turning on me, you will spend immortality watching everyone you love die.”
He held one arm out toward Medusa. I got there in time enough to grab his arm with my lower left and divert the blast to miss her, though it did turn a fleeing scientist into pink mist. Mr. Omega grabbed that lower arm and ripped it off. Armor, flesh, bone, all of it. My legs wobbled, and I was distinctly aware of both the immense pain and my suit having to compensate to keep me from hearing my scream. Omega slapped me lightly and I tumbled to the ground. Then he aimed for Medusa again.
I jumped up and blocked his view, trying to embed my lower right fist in his junk. He still fired a magical bolt at Medusa, but she had managed to duck down enough that it missed her head and fried another scientist. And I lost another arm. So that was wonderful. Instead of falling immediately like I wanted to, Omega grabbed me by the helmet. When my lungs reminded me I needed oxygen to scream so much, he told me, “I think I won’t let you live.”
He tore my helmet off. I dropped the pair of fangs I keep hidden in my mouth and tried to bite his flaming hand. He pulled the hand back, holding my fangs, and let me drop, bleeding from the mouth. I stopped at my knee, crying and spitting up blood, and forced myself back to my feet.
“Why keep at this when you can find only failure?” he asked.
I pulled myself together long enough to laugh at him and answered, “Sisyphus smiles.”
Omega frowned, and raised his hand to my head. I grabbed his arm and tried to push that arm upward. This time, he concentrated and stopped me. And then, I was flying through the air as that form was yanked up into the sky. I let go and dropped as that part of his form turned and tried to fight the pull of whatever was going on.
The portal in the sky revealed not just the crimson Omega and the absolute void of nothingness between universes. It also showed something strange. Like a glowing planetoid, floating orange and blue in the perpetual darkness of that void. And Omega was being drawn into it. The hands gripping the portal to hold it open now tried to hold themselves onto it. They got a burst of strength as the smaller Omega disintegrated and joined the rest of it. That’s about when I passed out from blood loss.
I awoke with a jump and banged my face on a clear tube I was in. I didn’t feel it, or any pain. I couldn’t feel the arms I had, or the holes where I used to have arms down below that. I couldn’t even feel my face, in part because it was really cramped in that tube. I didn’t even know what the hell they’d stuffed in my mouth, as I couldn’t feel much of that either. Fuck, dentists could learn a thing or two from this shit.
Whatever device the tube was a part of was seemed to be padded where I couldn’t connect to anything. Or my nerves were so numbed by the solution I floated in that I didn’t realize it. I tried my wireless connection before remembering Mr. Omega had turned it off, and that gave me some hint as to my predicament. I couldn’t find myself on GPS, because I was apparently not the G. The only thing around me were vastly different networks, some of which were the wreckage of Fluidic ships whose logs showed they were the ones to try invading Earth when I tossed them out of my universe.
This was not something I enjoyed learning until I managed to download a scan of the area based on some barely-functional sensors on the nearby wreckage. Based on the position of the stars, I was nowhere near Earth. Based on the nearby ship and smaller drones it was using to carve off pieces of the Fluidic fleet and bring it back, I appear to have been rescued by scavengers.
And based on the thing who walked in to stand outside my tube wearing a mask that looks like a fly’s compound eyes, with a tool in hand that has a lot of sharp points, I may be in line for a probin’.
Out of the frying pan, one into the stink.
World Domination in Retrospect 