Where do we stand today? Well, over the past couple of months, I worked with a sometime-ally, sometime-enemy to gather shards of a past godlike being that had been left behind after he had been kicked out of the multiverse. Rather unintentionally, I absorbed a bunch of them and ended up a godlike being myself. Most people didn’t know that the new multi-colored Unicorn Goddess was me, except for Parietal, the self-proclaimed “World’s Fastest Thinker”. I killed him, but at some point he copied his mind into a computer that is focused on killing or depowering me. That computer traded with an alien race of machines for the technology to contact and warn these powerful killers and hunters who specialized in killing things like me.
So that’s what I’ve got to look forward to: a visit from Godeater, Godhunter, and Godkiller. Different languages, different titles, but all pretty close when translated into English.
As for Parietal, he’s got a hidden satellite network doing his bidding that exposed my identity to the world, making it seem like he’d ease up if I didn’t reverse what he did. Instead, he called those three guys to kill me. I was willing to let it ride with the exposed identity thing, maybe see if people calmed down after the initial shock. Plus, those satellites are made of a material I can’t detect and can start broadcasting as soon as I undo everything.
Unfortunately, the initial loss of shit was followed by more people losing their shit. The world knows me as an infamous murderer and terrorist. Now, to many, it means something that I basically solved pollution, disease, and several assholes in power. They aren’t sure about that last one. Still, murder is a hard thing for lots of folks to overlook. I wasn’t worried. I could still undo it.
I’ve been aided lately by a team of young heroes mentored by Troubleshooter, a hero I clashed with in the past. “We’re getting old. Not you, now, but we mere mortals,” she told me as we sat around. I was drinking one of every type of alcoholic beverage on Earth, and she was joining in. “Aren’t you a little young to be drinking, Gecko?”
I was about to play puzzled, but I had enough omniscience as part of my powers to realize she was referencing the body I wore. Axinomancer was one of her young heroes, a mage channeling their power through a staff. And one of those people who liked worshiping me. I possessed them to meet with Troubleshooter the other day and never got around to fully leaving. Axinomancer doesn’t mind in the least, though there’s a clash between my sense of self and theirs. They’re non-binary, I’m a woman. There’s a lot I’m willing to do to manipulate people’s minds, but not theirs.
“I’m not getting drunk,” I pointed out. I could. It was within my power to create a drink so powerful even I would get intoxicated.
“And them?” Troubleshooter raised an eyebrow.
“They’re happy.” I left it there. They are, that’s no issue. It’s just when you’re possessing someone who is not only aware of it but wouldn’t mind a permanent arrangement, that’s not always something to bring up. Especially with Bridget moving out to see the world and Holly deciding she wants to follow after her boss, and my friend, Mix N’Max. Not that I’m trying to build a harem, but Sam and I have worked out that we’re doing something all open and polyamorous. I’m just not sure I want to bring some 19 year old into that as anything but short-term.
But enough soap opera.
Troubleshooter set down one of the glasses, a cup of the same sake drunk by Oda Nobunaga from the night he died, brought through time to my dimension-straddling base. “I hope you’ll sober me up when we’re done. Diode’s getting everything into position, but I want to doublecheck everything before we do this. Nothing ever goes that smoothly when supervillains are involved.”
She’s got a point. That’s coming directly from someone who tried and failed to take me down. “Troubleshooter! Morgan!” Diode called out from the main room.
“That’s us,” I said. Morgan is Axinomancer.
Being a cheeky little ass, she bumped me and muttered, “Morgan.” Then giggled.
“Careful, or I’ll jump into you.” I told her.
“Mmm, maybe I’m curious,” Troubleshooter said. Oh, right, the alcohol. I snapped my fingers and cleared Troubleshooter of all the intoxication as we got up. She shook her head. “Thanks. Can we just forget that? And have you checked to make sure you’re not doing some subconscious thing to make people like you?”
Could be. Like my feelings of attraction or desire to be liked or seen as hot are influencing everyone around me.
In the other room, Diode and Grimalkin took center stage. More of the crew, most of whom I haven’t interacted with so closely, were steering clear and leaving the chemical engineering and astrophysics to these two heroes. Troubleshooter and I took a few minutes to check it over. I noticed her disapproval at some of the workmanship of some of these satellite-killer robots Diode had built. “A problem?”
“No, it’ll do. Just personal taste, I guess.” She didn’t approve of the exposed hoses, but chances were astronomical that it would matter. For good measure, I added a little extra strength to those materials. Astronomical chances have a tendency to occur near me, for good or bad. Plus, it’s space. We’re sending these things into “astronomical.”
Grimalkin’s contribution was a delivery system for the reducing agent and superheated acid. The plan was for me to protect the mundane satellites in forcefields that protect them from the chemicals and block them off from Parietal’s broadcasting. We’re not going to leave it to chance; Grimalkin’s going to dose Earth’s orbit and expose any of those satellites Diode hasn’t already mapped out. Diode’s little satellite-killers are going be in place, protected against the chemical attack. They’ll take down Parietal’s satellites that they know about and converge on any we don’t know about.
Simple. I wonder how it’ll all go wrong? After all, I asked Troubleshooter why I couldn’t just do a good godly chemical attack on everything at once, and she warned that Parietal might have some way of detecting my powers’ usage. But mainly, she wants to give these young’uns the experience.
The first stage of the attack was opening a bunch of portals for Grimalkin to pump everything out of. First, the reducing agent to de-passivate the chromium in Parietal’s protective alloy. Some acids help Chromium form a barrier that protects it from corrosion by other materials, including other acids. That’s called “passivating” it. This stuff fucks up that barrier. The next stuff he sprayed through all of Earth orbit was one of those nice little chemicals, which also eats away at regular satellites. That’s why I stepped in to protect the rest. The whole thing was less dangerous than what I had planned.
I had planned an actual Kessler situation, causing enough destruction that shards of satellites would spread out and damage other ones, knocking loose more debris that would strike even more. It would effectively deny space to humanity for a generation, but would almost certainly have wiped out Parietal’s toys. The team took the nicer way out.
“There’s some activity,” Troubleshooter noticed on the monitors.
Diode walked over and typed away, neckbolts flashing with a little electricity as he deployed the satellite-killers everywhere they already figured stuff out. “We found a way to track some of these signals. So far there’s nothing new in the sky. There’s about to be even less.”
“No,” I reached out, using these powers to watch everything on my own power. These satellites were exposed, and Diode seemed to have found all but one. The last was a large platform, maneuvering under its own power, shedding the alloy plating that protected it from us.
I teleported out into space. The view was distracting. Dear reader, have you ever seen the Earth from space? Even just through the feed of some space station? It’s mesmerizing. Axinomancer… Morgan didn’t want to look away either. I did, and looked to the capsule floating through space. I reached out with my mind to connect to the computer system inside. “What are you?”
“You found me,” the voice was as devoid of emotion as the writing in Empyreal City.
I doubted it, but then Parietal’s mind pushed at mind. It had been formatted to fit onto hard drives, and was using this connection with me to download and overwrite mine. “Naughty, naughty,” I chided. He even tried to download into Morgan here. Nope. We’re not taking roommates.
Nothing fancy. I blocked him off easily. I’ve fought with my mind before, and I was stronger. I ripped out a chunk of knowledge. This was him, as near as Parietal seemed to know. He could’ve created a copy and then deleted the knowledge, but that’s what I needed, along with confirmation that he did indeed contact the God Murderer Three. I needed a quick name to use for them. I cut him off and disconnected from him, then melted this thing down into scrap that I hurled off toward the moon.
“That’s Parietal down, as far as anyone knows,” I said as I appeared back next to Troubleshooter.
“What was that?” She and Diode both asked.
“A secret server Parietal was operating off of. His brain, basically. And like the brain, helpless without a body. Thank you, everyone. I know you haven’t had much reason to trust me, let alone help me deal with a threat specifically targeting me once you found out who I was. Going forward, I’m sure things will be better.”
Like how Parietal’s broadcast was wiped from the face of the Earth and all history, even the signals that escaped into space, the final frontier. And from the minds of everyone.
Fuck accountability. Fuck Parietal’s extortion, which was really a call for my death. Fuck them knowing who I am. I saw confusion flicker across some of the faces around me as the knowledge fell out of mind for them as well.
“Thank you for your help, everyone. Though there is another threat to me now, you have no obligations toward me.” I turned and hugged Troubleshooter. I let her keep the knowledge. I let all my followers keep it.
This world and its people are mine. Mine to safeguard. Mine to guide.
Though I had a little visitor who disagreed when I returned home to a dark house. Sam and Qiang were just asleep, so they weren’t kidnapped due to some contingency or anything. Instead, I found a white-haired man in a fuzzy red coat sat upon my couch.
“Greetings, Santa. Thought I wouldn’t hear from you this year. In fact… yes, you knew this would happen to me when you negotiated my help in return for not calling on me this year.”
The spirit of winter personified in the form of a jolly old fat man puffed at his pipe a couple of times, then set it aside. “I came because I’m worried. You have attracted trouble to Earth little girl.”
“I’m a little more than a little girl, now aren’t I?” Granted, I looked like a nineteen year old with short, two-tone hair and a horn growing out of my head, but it’s what’s inside that counts.
“Now, I’m sorry. Most everyone is young to me,” Santa said. “The fight you’re bringing to Earth is a threat to all of us. It would be difficult to describe how I know, but these beings summoned to Earth don’t care about balance or the people who need us. We fear when they are done with you, they will come for us. Therefore, on behalf of the beings who represent the seasons of Earth, I offer our aid.”
Unleashed 5
Sam and Holly have been a low-scale nuisance around town, playing around in their power armor. They got all ready for a fight and never got to follow through. In the end, they realized the high school’s set up to let them do sparring with each other and some of the super kids. Mix N’Max’s last update to Holly said something about fighting abominations I don’t know if that’s him being rude about hillbillies or some other sort of hiccup on his quest for the Madstone. Which doesn’t even sound like that big of a think. All the stuff online just makes it out to be some folk medicine cure for rabies. As for the other member of my little polyamorous lesbian coven, Bridget’s started a youtube show teaching people 19th century crafts and cooking. A couple others who do that sort of thing are thinking of having her on for crossovers.
That leaves me to my own devices. Or at least, to devices that Sam and Bridget don’t feel the need to bother me about. Like working with Troubleshooter. Once I explained what I’d learned from Troubleshooter, Sam thought it was a great idea for me to work with a bunch of superheroes. Or at least an amusing one. She laughed a lot. She still promised to back me up if I needed it.
I didn’t need it. I had my own backup. Sometimes, I’m my own best friend. That’s going a bit far in this case, but I’m a lot more at peace with my own self since before contracting werereindeerism. The full moon came a bit early this month, but it came nevertheless. With it, my time to split from Reindeer again. Rather than turning into a ravening beast that attacks innocents, I would normally be turning into a hero who protects them. She’s got my knowledge, but none of my cybernetics or abilities as homo machina. I don’t know if Reindeer would have my god-like abilities. The last time it came up, I used my powers to temporarily expel Reindeer from my body when it was time. I did so again this time, constituting an entirely new body for Reindeer.
Reindeer shook herself off, her body taller and more muscular than mine would be on its own. She checked herself over. “A bit early, aren’t we?”
“It certainly proves an idea that’s been tumbling around in my brain. You’re not just limited to the full moon, not like that,” I pointed out.
Reindeer looked down to her belly.
“I kept the zygote,” I told her.
“Good. You better let her know. Before you start showing, at least,” Reindeer advised. “It’s going to be a shock for her to find out you’re going to have her child, considering the circumstances and body parts involved.”
“Yeah, yeah,” I agreed. “Listen, I called you here because I’m going to be busy in a little bit with everything.”
“I know. And you were also wondering if I might be interested in a separation, to live my own life. You keep the house, the money, people we love, and instead I go off and live my own life.”
“I get the feeling you don’t approve.” I laughed just once, sadly. Wasn’t Reindeer’s fault or mine that we ended up in this situation, split like this. She only gets to live one day a month, and is treated as a different person by people who are, to her mind, family. “Maybe we oughta try something out. You living with everyone. Having Qiang treat you as a mom, too.”
“Is it weird I’m scared about that? Because I look different and appear once a month, that I’ll be differne to them. They won’t fully reject me, but, ya know.”
Times like these, I hate talking to myself.
I reached out awkwardly to try and comfort Reindeer with a hand on the shoulder. “I get it. That’s a hell of a scary change and rejection to go by. And it involves hoping our girlfriends are furries.”
“You dress up as a unicorn with wings. I think they’re furries,” Reindeer noted.
I cracked up and she followed, which helped a little of the tension. There was still plenty to worry about once the laughter died. “I really haven’t been living my life like I’m two people.”
“Well, you’re kind of not,” Reindeer countered. “I was like your dirty secret. When you transformed, you could do what you wanted to do secretly, but with an excuse. It wasn’t really you, it was the therionthropy. Now, you’ve been actively been choosing to try and be a heroine. You just keep finding excuses to justify it. You’re even considering going mad with power intentionally so you can force someone to take it all away from you and justify being all mean and pouty.”
I opened my mouth to object, but Reindeer’s antlers lit up with glaring white light for a second and she insisted, “Don’t try to deny it. I’m you, remember? Maybe I’m also the part of you that puts on that horn and goes around saving the world.”
“You know what, maybe you just go on and do your own thing tonight,” I told her. “Stay home, try out being your own person, make sure Qiang calls you ‘mommy’. And maybe see if Sam wants to call you that, too.”
“I think I’d like that. But if you need me, I’m there.”
With my psychological problems laid bare, it was a doozy of a fucking time to invite Troubleshooter’s team up to the base.
Troubleshooter doesn’t really have a permanent base of their own. That makes her group flexible, operating out of a group of taco trucks. But Troubleshooter needed some place to bring down a satellite in private and then autopsy it. And here I am with a base that can access anywhere I want it to. The main question I had was what personal Troubleshooter wanted me in. I can either explain or brainwash why the goddess is working with them, which is a touchy subject morally. The alternative is working with them as Gecko with all the distrust that entails. It’d actually be nice to be trusted and liked for once. Even if it is by a bunch of hero noobs.
I can rationalize a lot as being a product of self-interest or arrogant exercise of power. It’s a handy ability for avoiding cognitive dissonance. It just gets difficult sometimes.
In the end, I decided to use my amazing powers of pessimism to examine the situation and realized that if the satellite in question is one that messes with my perception of it, it’s probably going to fit better if I’m present as the Goddess.
And so it was. I went for a robe type of setup, with my wings folded behind me and my horn sticking up proudly. Then it was off to the Multi-Base, the hidden base located across multiple dimensions, where each room might be in an entirely different universe. With a wave of my hand, I added a persistent illusion, or glamour, to a few choice items. I hid away the nanite and armor machinery, then made the monitor appear to be a magic mirror. I kept plenty of tools around in the lab for Troubleshooter. Then it was time to get Troubleshooter up there.
I opened a portal, then sighed and expanded it. They brought a taco truck and an RV through. “Close it!” someone yelled from the RV window. I snapped it shut in time to catch a furry arm. A quick peek revealed the group had stumbled into a nest of the Greens, a gang that’s usually in Empyreal City. They’re starting to expand further South using algae to gain footholds and begin transforming the landscape.
“Hmm,” I mused. Checking the arm, I saw a few little green sprouts on it. “Let’s just clean that up.” Poof. Nonexistent. Turned to energy that I absorbed. In fact, it’s given me an idea for repowering myself that I don’t want to share with heroes.
The heroes and what seemed like support staff were piling out, gushing over me, and checking out the new place.
“Where are we?” I heard someone ask, a woman in a tattered white dress. Apparitia, the ghost girl, in human form.
“We are currently in an inaccessible cavern, deep beneath the Earth. It has no opening to the surface, normally. However, other rooms here branch off into different places, in different universes, providing oxygen, water, and power.”
“The magic alone must be amazing,” another person said. My omnipotence put them as non-binary, and known as Axinomancer, with their magic power focused through the long-handled ax in their hands.
“It’s self-sustaining right now, feeding off the power of a star,” I told them. I didn’t want to deal with all of their names, or the way some of them were looking at me. I know what to do with fear, anger, distrust, arrogance, and even lust. I should keep my empathy turned off, like British people. “Where’s this satellite?”
“Hold your horses,” Troubleshooter said, pushing through some of the heroes setting up chairs and tables.
I looked over to a horse standing next to me. The horses looked at me. I shrugged, and reached over to rest a hand on its neck. “Holding.”
“Where did that horse come from?” someone asked.
“Not what I meant,” Troubleshooter said. I patted the horse and sent it walking to another room where it could disappear. It was a construct made just for comedic purposes, and it would return to me. Troubleshooter raised her laptop. “You have anything to connect to?”
I waved my hand, turning my magic mirror into a big monitor for Troubleshooter to connect to. Or just undoing the glamour I put into place earlier. Standing there surrounding by heroes as the Unicorn Goddess, my powers of nigh-omniscience had given me an epiphany about myself. Luckily, I had the god-like ability to stand around looking pretty instead of letting stuff show. Axinomancer edged closer and I faked a smile that impressed even myself. My powers even let me get the eye crinkle down.
It was all being nice and conjuring up food to go with their meals so I didn’t get so many questions in the fifteen minutes or so it took Troubleshooter to get set up, pull up the coordinates, and connect with the systems necessary to find the satellite she’d been tracking again. Fifteen minutes of me wanting to abuse my godly powers for everything from petty dickery to just making everyone want to serve me. I was glad when Troubleshooter said, “Got it! Think you can open a portal and our team snatch it?”
“Right there or off to the side a little?” I asked, pointing to the monitor. I was sitting on Axinomancer’s lap, feet resting on Apparittia, holding a leash that connected to a collar around Grimalkin’s throat.
Troubleshooter turned and didn’t see anything wrong with the sight. “Yeah, my arms should be able to snatch it.” The mechanical arms attached to a vest she wore whirled. Parts folded out of the vest and attached, expanding them. Finally, the arms joined together into one limb bigger than the rest of Troubleshooter’s body.
I got up off my little throne and set the young heroes back to normal, mostly. They weren’t any more abnormal when I was done with them than when they started. It was an easy thing to open the portal with a seal that kept this side from being affected by the vacuum of space. I saw the satellite through it just fine, just like I’d had no problem seeing Parietal. It’s just that when I tried to sense it with anything outside the conventional human senses, it wasn’t there. I could have dragged it in myself, but Troubleshooter did all that for me, plopping the device on the floor of my base, me closing the portal behind it.
The satellite was cylindrical, about the size of an arcade cabinet, and a single light glowed on the side of it. The light blinked three times, then stayed back on. A light issued forth from it. “You found me, Gecko.”
I made it so everyone there heard it address me as Goddess, not Gecko. Then I shrugged a bit and just reconciled the two. They had those positive feelings about the Unicorn Goddess, who is Gecko, who they feel the exact same way about. Why put up with an inconvenient mind when I can just change it?
“Who did I find?” I asked. With monotone voice giving nothing away and not being able to just read into it, I actually didn’t know. People talk about how great that is, but I don’t see the attraction. Oh, right, added a little someone onto people’s attractions. Troubleshooter started eyeing me appreciatively, but that wasn’t brainwashing. I just added an option she didn’t have before. Nevermind, I got rid of it. Then I put it back when I changed my mind again. It’s not like liking women is a bad option to have… eh, I flip-flopped again. No new attractions for anyone.
“I said I am the fastest thinker on Earth and I meant it, one step ahead of a goddess. I have to be. For you see, any god will abuse its power. You can not do otherwise once you have power. Even the most noble fall to that temptation. You are not the most noble.”
This person was claiming to be Parietal, a smart speedster who created a material that could block my senses. The reason I didn’t suspect his involvement before now is because I killed him weeks ago. The more Parietal talked through that machine, the less I cared what he had to say. “Troubleshooter, can you disable this thing?”
She morphed the mechanical arms back into two, one of which shifted into a drill and the other into a sawblade. “I believe so.”
“As one being who has surpassed mortality to another, I will save your friends so much trouble,” Parietal said through the speaker.
I put up a shield around the satellite, containing it as it detonated and unleashed Omega energy. It’s the same energy I absorbed to gain my power, and it can have a pretty nasty effect when used against itself. I’ve found the secret is absorbing it. That’s it. For all his bluster, he made me more powerful. I’m still not back to the level of pulling a copy of Earth out of another dimension, but it felt good to have the power coursing through me. The satellite had been powered by another Omega pearl, a piece of the fractured being who had once possessed me, and whos powers I now possess.
“That could have gone better,” Troubleshooter’s limbs powered down back into more functional hands.
“I’d say it went pretty well,” I told her.
“I guess we better pack up and get going.” One of those extra arms moved to tug some hair out of her face. When it finished, it and the other arm moved back and transformed again, forming a pair of metal wings with a reflective coating. A single horn grew out of Troubleshooter’s forehead, eyes glowing.
“Never mind,” I said through her mouth. My mouth, now. I looked to my team of impressionable young heroes and heroines. “I insist we stay.”
Why not? Why shouldn’t I? Troubleshooter said she’s thankful. Here’s a way she can show it.
And then even that satisfying bit of evil was undone when I remembered I needed her because she can see this stuff and I can’t. I had to jump right back out again. A competent evil goddess sticks around a lot longer than an incompetent one, that’s for sure.
Great Power 10
I like to think I had power before, but this is a whole new experience. And I don’t just mean all the freaky sex stuff, though I enjoy that. Not going to share all of it, but I enjoy it. No, I’m referencing the fact that it’s like some sort of spiritual telemarketing thing going on. That demon who tried to threaten me into serving him wasn’t the only one to end up asking. I’ve been getting solicitors at my door all the time. First thing in the morning, I zap myself back to my house after hanging out in someone’s dreams all night, and get a knock on the door.
Who is it? It’s an eye. Just a yellow eye with a black pupil and black sclera, hanging in a tear in reality with a cane poking out so it can knock on the door. “Greetings, living being. I am the Watcher Who Sees All Under Existence And Laughs At Your Futility, but you can call me Bob for short. I am here to talk to you about an exciting business opportunity exclusively for you. I promise you would be one of the first on this plane of existence to take part and rise higher than any other being in corporeal existence.”
I crossed my arms and leaned against the door frame. “You know, I just got rid of all the plastic in the ocean the other day. Broke them all down into their base components and return to sender. Back into the ground or whatever.”
“Er, yes. Admirable of you. We aren’t planning to destroy the world, but the management of it has been left to these petulant younger races for too long. We want to bring in dynamic new leadership, beings that cannot die and thus have an interest in the long-term well-being of the planet. It might be unpleasant for most of the inhabitants who are unused to such control over their movements and minds, but we’re willing to let you in on the ground floor and reward you with a domain of your own with select followers to join you.”
I lifted a finger. “Hold on, I think I left the oven on. Let me just go get it.” I closed the door in his eye and went back to get Qiang up and start getting her around for school. It’s easier now that I can snap my fingers and erase her tiredness. I like to send it to people I don’t like. She gets to have any breakfast she wants as long as it’s not something like chocolate cake. Then I just teleport her right to school. Naturally, Sam was too sleeping for all this. I never liked getting up that early and it’s really only convenient for me now because of my ascendancy. The only one up at that time was our new houseguest, who I heard humming in the tub.
I sighed to myself and went back to the door, where Bob the Eye waited. “Shoo,” I told it.
“I haven’t even shown you my charts. Ma’am, please, many of us lack a proper face, but you can still have a heart!”
It was a good line. It’d probably been waiting eons to use it. But if it needed my help, that meant me working against it would go pretty well. And it didn’t show me the charts, but I didn’t trust it. “Tell you what, if you really want to go over it, we’ll do lunch tomorrow. You like Italian?”
“They’re a delicious people,” he responded. I could see the happiness in his eye, like a glow. Which is weird, because I’d always thought you saw happiness in someone’s gaze by the way the skin and muscles around the eye looked. I get a meal out of it and he gets to feel good and tell his bosses he tried. Whatever counts as a boss for something like that.
Then it’s off to the bathroom to cuddle with my abductee, Bridget. She smiled up at me and splashed a little water my way. “Good day, darling fae.”
Oh she’s a charmer. “Good morning, Bridget. Getting acquainted with the wonders of indoor plumbing?”
“I thought I knew when you put the knowledge into my mind,” the smiling woman said. She had a good figure on her, with a square jaw. I’d heard she was beautiful, and the standards were a little different then, but there was a certain fire and attractive outgoing nature to her. It as different than Sam’s Fuck The World attitude. “This is a cottage of wonders.”
“Wait until you see things outside,” I told her.
“They’ll wonder who’s living in sin with you now,” she said. She waved me over. “Come on. Let me see more of the fairy who stole me from my husband.”
Depending on your definition, she’s either a widower or she’s still technically married to a guy who was just about to burn her to death. He claimed she’d been stolen by the fae and replaced with a changeling. And here I am, a goddess with the power to pluck people out of the past. I restored her to health, gave her the tools to survive here, and was even working on an idea in case she wasn’t into Sam and I. And even though it worked out this time, I’ve got plans for that other Earth. There are plenty of wrongfully killed people I could save without causing problems for the timeline if that’s even a thing. And I used my powers to find out time is a chain of donuts in an infinite loop, so that naturally means I can pull it off easily.
Cut to lunch the next day. I was sitting with Bob at a little place in Sicily, finishing up some carbonara. Bob floated a glass of wine to his pupil, where a set of sideways teeth and a group of five tongues welcomed it. As a courtesy, he’d closed his mouth while he chewed. He could still communicate with me telepathically, telling me stories. “So Yjorgo’ph’laz didn’t realize he was completely naked until we were already there! He had to go through the whole invasion wearing nothing.”
“Wow, Bob is that you?!” We glanced over to see another eldritch monster in a business suit “casually” walking by. I emphasize “casually” because this was clearly some sort of play. The thing appeared to be a lump of flesh that filled up the suit, with featureless fleshy nubs coming out of the suit sleeves.
Bob’s eye narrowed. “Sdeeeeevxxxxv, what black hole coughed you up here?”
“Is that any way to speak to your old pal? Come on, give us a hug.”
Bob floated closer and Sdeeeeevxxxxv wrapped its flesh nubs around it. Stuck to the end of one by like moisture and skin oil was a card with its name on it. “ Sdeeeeevxxxxv Ycksn, Freelance Agent for Freelance Entities.”
I took the card, at least so I could “accidentally” leave it in my napkin. A small part of Sdeeeeevxxxxv’s head-lump folded in on itself in a wink before I excused myself to go to the bathroom. Walked right out the door of the restaurant and onto the moon. I bounced around a bit, knowing I should get back to my daughter, my girlfriend, and Bridget. I sighed because I was having some weird angst that I guess is normal whenever someone gets power beyond comprehension. Just needed the perspective on that and I sent the angst away. Eliminated. Power, remember? This isn’t comparable to some politician’s or businessman’s story.
Maybe a few of them picked that moment to have heart attacks or strokes. No need for a genocide to put things on a better path. Like a dictator slipping and breaking his neck. Leave the subtle stuff for that. His barrel bombs exploding in their bombers was a more visible sign of my intervention. Visibly saving people looks so nice. Saving people by killing the person killing them just doesn’t sound as nice to most folks who aren’t under the gun. The same as messing with the timeline doesn’t sound so good when you’re starving to death.
There’s an idea. I reached out with my powers through time and space. I found an untouched Earth. A lot of familiar animals and a few unfamiliar.ones in familiar niches. Even some that are extinct over here. I pulled that entire planet and its moon into this dimension. Took more out of me than I thought. I put it on the opposite side of the moon while I made a few changes, the first of which being a field to keep the gravity of the extra stellar bodies from affecting the moon and Earth. Adding habitation here and there, with some basic infrastructure. At the same time, I reached into the past.
And of course I get a call. Can’t do anything without complaining. “Hey Medusa.”
“Gecko, what’s going on?” She sounded worried.
“Relax, the gravity’s not affecting anything right now, and I know where to put it.”
“That doesn’t answer my question.”
“I know you worry, and I know you feel guilty about it. I’ve felt how you feel about me. Maybe you’re right. This is a lot of power to leave at my whims. But I’m going to try and use it right.”
“Talk to me. Tell me what you’re doing,” she said. “We haven’t talked in awhile.”
“The evolutionary line leading to humans died out early in the timeline of this Earth. I can’t just pull millions of people out of the past and set them on our Earth. It would be too much of a mess. But this way, there’s a whole ‘nother world. A world of genocide victims and executed witches. They get a second chance.”
“That’s… amazing,” she said. Oh, right. I created a replica of the West Coast branch of the Master Academy and grabbed the same supers I killed the last time I had this level of power.
It was going pretty well until Bob and Sdeeeeevxxxxv appeared with the mad genius speedster with them, Parietal. One of Parietal’s arms was encased in a device with five tendrils coming from it. “Gotta let you go. Going to have a super fight on the moon.”
The flesh creature raised its arms at me while I was busy building a fucking world, encasing me in its gross sausage-looking meat arms. Bob’s tongues shot out as he grew bigger, fanged sideways mouth at the ready. I took a moment to disintegrate them. Parietal sped up and started to strafe me. I blasted a chunk of the moon off under him and sent him flying off into space. His gadget reached out but didn’t have the range to catch me.
Then I finished with Earth 2. It’s the hottest new sequel around. If you liked Earth, you’re gonna love Earth 2. Oh, right, Native Americans killed in pandemics and massacres. Gotta get them in there, too.
As I was working on all that, I became aware of another little issue. Holes in reality. More of them. Some of them held countless eyes. Others opened to walls of groping flesh. They resisted my closing the holes that attempted to fill up the space around both Earths. I forced them closed, inspecting the fabric of reality and found it worn. Torn, actually, with a big fat fucking Earth-sized hole. So on top of everything, I had to use my energy to fix that. The only time something was actually a challenge for me since getting these new powers, and it felt like running a marathon on a belly of rotten chicken.
At the end of it all, I sent Earth 2 to its new home, on the same orbit as Earth, half a year behind. And then I nearly collapsed, suddenly aware of the need to breath and eat. I wasn’t out of power, but I was burnt out. Almost. I looked to the flailing Parietal.
I created a sphere of force around him and contracted it until he squished like a bug. It then formed spikes that stabbed inward, hooked, and tore him and his outfit that blocked my perception and powers. Free of him, I drew the four Omega pearls he had with him into myself. It provided a nice boost to keep me going until I’ve recovered my strength. And when the portal opened behind me and the massive demon who once threatened me peeked out, I stared into the abyss with glowing eyes.
The abyss coughed. “Just checking. Lovely weather we’re having. Nice day to you!” His claws reached out and pulled that portal closed behind him.
I reappeared at home. Woke up some time the next day to Medusa fussing all over me. “Hello beautiful,” I said with a smile. “It hurt when I fell from the heavens.”
Medusa rolled her eyes and grinned. She turned away when I reached up and guided her face back toward mine with a finger. She stopped me from kissing her and instead gave my forehead a smooch before calling out, “Medusa! Sam! Qiang! What’s-Your-Name! She’s awake!”
Great Power 8
Ok, so maybe this power is tempting me. Upon the monthly reminder that I’m a werereindeer, I considered, merely considered, only considered… blowing up the moon. Now, dear readers, before y’all get upset at this, I was going to replace it with something else about as dense. I had some ideas for certain people I could use instead. They wouldn’t shine as bright because these are some pretty dull, dense people. But they’d be there and we could hopefully still have tides. Those are important, right?
Other ideas that occurred involved sending it to another dimension and all that, blocking the light from it for a night, or spending the night on the backside of the big cheese itself. I didn’t want to waste a lot of time on the weredeer stuff when I had these disappeared Omega pearls to deal with. For all I knew, someone else figured out how to merge with them. I even thought of not even doing it this time. I had a lot of control over my own body, and that included the ability to snuff out this magic condition I’d been stuck with.
I’ve gone a little soft. Usually I mean with the belly I’ve added. Makes it even more fun now, being a chubby gal flying around with my superpowers. But on top of that, I like Reindeer. If someone told me when I started all this that I’d like some aspect of myself, especially a part that wants to be heroic, I’d probably have torn off that person’s ass and made them it eat. I’m reluctant to say this, but maybe all these people fucking around in my brain fixed things by accident. Or maybe I fixed it somehow when I had infinite cosmic power. Like how when I thought about it, I checked and found I was no longer infected by the disease engineered to shut down any powers above the human baseline when in contact with certain collars.
I went ahead and made that permanent for myself before hearing the alarm letting me know it was almost full moon time. Then I split off a body just for Reindeer to manifest through. We were in my base, not the Skylab. Sam was with us, using a large computer system and some of the recon drones I’d built to check a few areas I remember pearls being in. One of those areas was Technolutionary’s portion of the SkyLab.
I wanted to handle it myself, but I wanted to be sure I wasn’t going to revert to Reindeer in the middle of all this. And I didn’t. Though Sam did comment on all the screaming and snapping and stretching. “That’s gross to hear.”
“I’m glad I don’t have to feel it,” I told her.
Reindeer stood up. Whereas most people who turn into some sort of were-thing find themselves consumed by instincts and evil desires to tear other people apart or what-have-you, my alter-ego decided to become a hero. My therapist says it has to do with buried desires to be a hero that fueled my villainous rampage and desire to save the world in my own twisted way at times. But weredeerism isn’t treatable with pills and techniques, at least none I’m aware of.
“You get used to it,” Reindeer said, shaking herself off and grabbing her costume. “You’ve got a problem. Things going missing. You know this is probably Technolutionary, right?”
“Or the demons,” I said.
“Or the Exemplars,” Sam contributed.
“Yeah, and we have to remember there are a lot of unknown unknowns,” Reindeer warned. “But we already know one untrustworthy supervillain who has the ability to track down every single pearl on the planet. We’ve been expecting him to betray us.”
“True,” I said. “And he was experimenting on materials to resist the effects of Omega energy.”
Sam joined in. “And he already told you he wants to weaponize the pearls instead of hiding them. And his section of the lab is emptied out.” The monitor showed us both that his part was missing. There goes the longshot that it had something to do with that one guy in the chair powered by a pearl that time. I lost track of him pretty quick.
I shrugged. “I thought he’d be able to keep it together longer than this. Ok, Sam. We’ve confirmed he’s gone. How about some of those other pearls?”
“Gone,” Sam said, switching to a bank of views. The views didn’t show anything, which was the point. If they’d showed pearls, we’d know the pearls were where we left them.
“Ok, let’s activate the trackers,” I said.
“We planted enough of them,” Reindeer muttered.
Sam pulled up the global view and activated the numerous bugs I planted all over Technolutionary’s gear. Never on his armor itself, because I figured he’d find those. Instead, my nanobots got them all in the guts of his machines. I left a few really obvious ones on some of the equipment for him to find and disarm, figuring he’d let his guard down if he thought he’d already gotten all of them.
They all lit up in the same location: Empyreal City. The place had seen plenty of problems from the last time the pearls were in action there. “Let’s go,” Reindeer said. She grabbed some of her gear, like the grenades that looked like Christmas ornaments.
“You don’t want to take the night off?” I asked. “This is my problem. You got your own life.”
“Right now, we got a pile of shit to clean up. You could use all the shovels you can get if she’s figured out how to use these things.”
We both kissed Sam goodbye before leaving. Here I’d been worried Reindeer would have my body dating someone else, turns out she’s got at least some of the same taste as me. And I don’t mind Sam being a bit of a furry.
But before we went, I access the vaults. There were a lot of pearls out there. I had my own misgivings. I can tell because Reindeer, who is also me, voiced them. “You know you shouldn’t do this. It’s risky.”
I know,” I said. I grabbed pearl after pearl, absorbing their power. Not all of them. Just enough that to make me feel like we’d still have an edge over Technotutionary. And from there, I took us right to our partner.
This base had been built into the sewers, inside a half dome of metal. It was a pretty wide open space, widened and torn apart to make enough room. All of Technolutionary’s equipment was there. Technolutionary, I found, was inside a metal cage hanging from the ceiling, his armor on the floor below him.
“Gecko,” Reindeer called, looking at an armored throne with mechanical legs. The man seated in it had his own armor. More than that, he had a chair powered by Omega energy, and a mess of tendrils all with their own. Even just looking at him, I couldn’t feel the pearls.
“Gecko? The Psycho Gecko? Welcome. As you can see, I’ve beaten you to the rest of your prizes, but we can leave this where it is, yes?” the man said. His face was covered in a smooth white plastic mask, or some other material that looked like plastic. Some people have a lot of fun creating stuff that looks like plastic. It’s an aesthetics thing. People are like that.
“Who do I have the displeasure?” I asked.
“I am Parietal, the fastest brain alive,” he introduced himself. “I became interested in the potential of the Omega pearls. You ended my most promising experiment, providing their power to others and watching the chaos that ensues. I planted a tracker on your friend, Technolutionary. From there, it wasn’t difficult to-”
Parietal was interrupted by a crunch. Reindeer raised a hoot off some sort of bug-like device that had been sneaking up on me while he drew my attention. “Sorry, did I ruin that plan?” Reindeer asked.
“Who are you and why are you here?” Parietal asked.
I made a show of turning to look at Reindeer, then disappeared and reappeared behind Parietal’s chair. I punched my hand through it, feeling more resistance than I had since gaining this level of power. Fast brain over there must have figured out some nifty materials. The tendrils whipped around and tried to fire on me but I absorbed the energy. I didn’t need to sense the pearls to drain them. I cracked that throne like an egg and pulled out the ones it used as an energy source of its own. I absorbed that one, too. All mine. The machine burst open with a crimson explosion.
The man in the throne stood there. His jumpsuit had neon red lines running along the arms and legs, but he seemingly knew when he was beat. Reindeer kept an arm pointed at Parietal, sonic weapons armed, but was busy tearing the lock open. Technolutionary practically jumped into her arms, I guess a bit of a furry himself. I don’t know if he knows about that curse of mine.
“It’s fascinating, but I wonder what will become of you as you gain more power,” Parietal mused, turning around to face me.
“A means to an end,” I said.
“What a glorious end,” he said. Guy was kind of creepy.
“Behind you!” Reindeer and Technolutionary both cried out.
Spheres rolled over the inside of the dome, spreading out in a semicircle. They didn’t fire at me. They fired near me, all of their beams converging. I caught the expanding blast, draining it before it expanded and blew the hell out of me, Reindeer, the city, and that other guy we were working with.
Technolutionary and Reindeer dropped down, Technolutionary’s armor standing up and sliding onto him. “Turn it off!” the other villain ordered, raising an open hand to Parietal. He had lasers built into each finger.
“I don’t think I will. I need to run,” Parietal said. The red lights intensified and sprinted out of the way of both the lasers and Reindeer’s sonic blast. The lasers nicked him, damaging the suit enough for me to feel the power from another pearl beneath. The others tracked him, trying to blast the super smart speedster, but they ended up blasting off a part of the metal dome instead. Parietal raced toward that section, leaving a hole in the wall behind him. So a super tough super smart speedster. Or at least smart speedster. Let’s not give the guy too much credit here.
Reindeer flew after Parietal, but Technolutionary lagged behind, keeping his lasers trained on me while I drained the energy from this weapon system. That’s what it was, a nifty means of defense and a way to blow the whole base up if Parietal lost. It also meant I had a fuckton of pearls we hadn’t already collected feeding me energy all at once.
“Gecko. Can you handle it?” Technolutionary asked.
I nodded, realizing then that I’d become a glowing person and once again burnt through my clothes. And I had an idea, then. I didn’t just contain the power, though that’s what I was doing. I had held almost all of it at one point. I used it. Might as well, and it would take some of the strain off me. I wiped that power-controlling disease off the face of this and every other Earth planet infected with it by us. I cured… everything. AIDS and HIV? Gone. Cancer? Wiped out. Diabetes? Eliminated. All injury, all disability. The only thing stopping me from all transitions was not wanting to delve into every individual mind and find out the level of transition they wanted to go to, but I’d have time for that. I didn’t wipe out the homo machina mutation, either, nor the others inflicted with the unique condition that gave me Reindeer.
“What’s going on?” Technolutionary said. “I’m connecting to my satellites, what are you doing?”
“What a god should,” I answered, head snapping around to stare him down.
“You’re not a god,” he said.
“I might as well be. Isn’t this what you wanted? A weapon to scare off everyone who would come after our home?” Ok, I was a bit intimidating there. But this guy wanted to use this power. I use it to fix something and suddenly he’s scared of me?
Enough jerking off. I reached right back up those converging beams and yanked all of those remaining pearls I couldn’t feel right out and into me. The residual blast was weak, really just blowing the lights out. I had enough light on my own. I sent Technolutionary to his lab and followed after Reindeer.
I appeared near her, up on the surface. “Where did he go?” I asked.
Reindeer shook her head. “I don’t know. Got away. Still can’t track him?”
I hated it, but… “Nope.” I tried expanding outward, even looking for wind disturbances, things moving at high speed. Either his shielding was that good, or the fastest thinker on Earth put some distance between us and is laying low. “But I’ll find him again. People don’t lose obsessions that easily.”
“Are you ok?” Reindeer asked. “Something’s different.”
“I had to absorb a lot more energy,” I said. “It’s no big deal.”
“Really? Because you’re flashing everyone.”
Oh yeah. Nude. I created a costume real quick. Didn’t mean to create an omega symbol on it, but fixed that real quick. “I’m great. Never better. And so long as I have the power, I think a lot of people are going to feel better than ever.”
“That sounded kind of ominous, girl,” Reindeer commented.
“Ugh, I prefer it when the doubting voices stay in my head,” I whined. Then, on a whim, I teleported some beer cheddar cheese to me to enjoy with my whine. This “ultimate power” shit is handy when I’m not completely homicidal.
World Domination in Retrospect 