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Chapter Text

Welcome to the PRT Threat Assessment database, trooper! To begin, please enter your username and password:

Username: rcostabrown000
Password: *************_

Access granted! Your clearance level is: Director's eyes only!

Load bookmarked profile set 46:_

Earth Bet:

• Wright Anything Agency
• Jonathan Joestar
• Joseph Joestar
• The SCP Foundation (organisation)
• Not Equal
• The Count of St. Germain

Earth Mem:

• Academy City (organisation)
• Imagine Breaker
• Index Librorum Prohibitorum
• The Level Five Espers
• Shirai Kuroko
• Rampage Dress
• God's Right Seat
• The Count of St. Germain

Earth Ayin:

• Access
• The Count of St. Germain

Earth Pe:

• Princess Celestia
• Nightmare Moon
• Queen Chrysalis
• King Sombra
• Starlight Glimmer
• The Count of St. Germain

Earth Tsadi:

• Access
• The Count of St. Germain

Rebecca groaned, rubbing her eyes. It looked like Dragon was still assembling the list that she'd asked her for - almost all of the names she was after weren't here yet.

She moved her mouse aimlessly, thinking. Should she wait for Dragon to finish making the list, or hunt down the rest of the names herself? The Earth Bet names were the most pressing ones, but considering what was coming, being familiar with the other kinds of parahumans in the other Earths might soon be a necessity, rather than a hobby.

She was saved from having to decide by the ringing of her mobile phone. She sighed, but answered it. "Director Costa-Brown, PRT."

"Ah, Costa-Brown! I was just looking for Alexandria - I don't suppose you know where she is?"

"Legend?" Rebecca blinked. "We've talked before about calling me at work - "

"Rebecca." Any humour in Legend's voice evaporated. "We need you. Now."

Within five minutes her body double was in place, her costume was on, and she was half-way across the Atlantic homing in on the GPS coordinates Legend had sent.

There was no real need to tell her what the problem was - she could see it while still five miles out. The beast had to be pushing 300 feet at least. It sort-of reminded her of a Tyrannosaurus Rex with it's stance on two legs, but it's tail was far lower to the ground, and its arms were larger. Down it's back were spines like those from a Stegosaurus, and it's skin looked like it was comprised entirely of keloidal scarring.

She was snapped out of her surprise by the sight of multiple laser beams crashing into the beast from the side. Legend. Within a moment, she spotted her old teammate and had zoomed over to him.

"Alexandria!" He greeted her, in what would have been a cheerful manner if it weren't for the sweat down his face. "So glad you could join me out here!"

"What the hell is that?!" She screamed at him.

The beast gave a fierce, primordial roar, already back on its feet and beginning to charge across the small island towards them. Legend and Alexandria both scattered, circling around to the other side of the creature and watching it crash into the ocean.

"It's not an Endbringer, in case you were wondering." Legend seemed to be getting cheerier by the moment, possibly relived that he had backup now. "For one thing, this thing actually seems to care when I attack it."

"Where is the rest of your team?"

"We're too far away from New York for them to keep up with me. I need help from people who can fly fast and punch hard."

"So you thought of me."

The creature turned around with surprising speed, its spines suddenly glowing blue. It roared again, and Alexandria was only slightly surprised to see a plume of blue energy erupt out of the creature's mouth. Alexandria flew to one side, but Legend just turned to light and bathed in the energy.

"Whew. Thanks buddy, I needed the top-up." Legend wiped his brow. "The locals have been calling this guy 'Godzilla'. Y'know, on account of it being a terrifyingly powerful lizard. Apparently, he just showed up out of the ocean a few minutes ago, no clues as to where he came from."

So saying, Legend unloaded another salvo of lasers into the creature, this time freezing the targeted skin on contact. Godzilla roared again, the frozen areas already steaming as the ice sublimated.

"I've been trying to keep him away from the populated islands around here, but the guy just keeps getting back up no matter what I do to him. You think you would have any more luck?"

Alexandria took that as the challenge it was. She flew in close to the creature, zipping under its clumsy claw strike and around its torso until she was flying along its tail. She grabbed a particularly sturdy-looking spine and pulled.

By the feel of things, Godzilla weighed somewhere around a million tonnes. Heavy, not not too heavy for her. With an undignified screech from Godzilla, Alexandria lifted him bodily into the air. Then, with a great scream of effort on her part, swung the massive monster around by its tail. Forwards. Backwards. Forwards again, and then one complete rotation to slam the giant monster into the ground with a ground-shaking boom.

Godzilla sank a good ten metres into the ground. Cracks in the ground shot outward from him like the threads of a spiderweb. Trees toppled over, and a think layer of dust floated up out of the ground.

Then Godzilla rolled to its feet and breathed that blue plume of energy in her face.

Legend tackled her out of the way of the blast, shaking his head. "This guy can really move when he wants to!"

"I thought you said it cared when you attacked it!" Alexandria yelled.

"It does!" Legend fired yet another salvo of lasers into Godzilla. "It gets angrier!"

The fight progressed in much the same way for the next few infinitely-long minutes. Godzilla had trouble just catching the two Triumvirate members, and didn't seem to have any way to really hurt them. But on the same vein, the giant lizard seemed to recover and heal from anything they did to him and returned right back to attacking them.

"It's like fighting a giant, slower version of Crawler!" Alexandria screamed, currently performing the rather un-heroic act of trying to throw boulders into Godzilla's eyes. "Only without the adaptation, thank God!"

Godzilla spun around, trying to swat the annoying bugs with his tail, but to people used to fighting the (must faster) Leviathan he might as well have well pirouetted. Both heroes ducked under the attack easily.

"Yeah, but just like Crawler I don't see an end to this fight!" Legend replied.

Godzilla's spines once again started glowing blue, the tell-tale sign of that blue energy plume attack. Both heroes flew down to dodge it -

- and were both caught off guard as Godzilla suddenly swiped with his tail instead.

The half-second of surprise was all it took for the enormous appendage to slam into Alexandria and Legend, sending both sprawling through the air.

Godzilla quickly pressed his advantage by stepping forward, seeking to crush the two underfoot. Alexandria got her arms up just in time to catch nearly a million tonnes of lizard on the way down.

Legend zipped out from under the giant scaled foot and started peppering Godzilla with lasers, trying to get him to get off him teammate, but the lizard was determined. While Alexandria was still trying to get proper leverage, it leaned down, it's dorsal fins glowing blue once again...

...before abruptly, a new voice boomed out from behind Godzilla's head. "SLEEP."

Godzilla's eyes widened, then ever-so-slowly closed as the monster began to sway on its feet. Feeling the weight above her shift, Alexandria heaved, and Godzilla topped backwards off her and fell down onto his back. He did not get back up.

"Sorry I'm late." Eidolon apologised, floating down to Alexandria (Legend right behind him). "All those with Mover powers were busy, and it took me a few minutes to get one of my own."

Alexandria sighed. "You called Eidolon as well, Legend?"

Legend shrugged. "Nope. Not me."

"You two do know that cape-watchers are a thing, right?" Eidolon asked. "When two of the Triumvirate go flying off who-knows-where, people notice. People who worry. People like me."

"So what's the deal with this thing?" Eidolon looked down at Godzilla, scratching the outside of his hood. "Man or monster?"

Legend shrugged, and floated down closer to the downed lizard. "Could be either, really. Might be a really smart lizard, might be a really stupid (not to mention extreme) Case 53..."

Behind Legend's back, Alexandria glanced at Eidolon, who saw her looking and shook his head just enough to be noticeable.

"...but I'm thinking this was made by Nilbog or someone like him." Legend finished, unaware of the byplay behind him. "What was the name of that other monster-maker? You know, the one that keeps showing up on Earths he shouldn't be able to get to?"

"The Count of St. Germain." Alexandria answered. "And the Count is a group, not a man."

"Right, him. Er, them." Legend said. "They could be behind something like this."

"Maybe." Alexandria said morosely, something neither of her long-standing friends missed. Legend and Eidolon shared a look.

Ultimately, Legend cleared his throat. "Something bothering you, Alexandria?"

"It's too weak to be an Endbringer, too monstrous even for the 53s, and if a bio-Tinker made it, what's it doing attacking a sparsely-populated island in the middle of the ocean?" Alexandria's mouth twisted into a grimace. "Its another example that the rules are changing from the ones we knew."

Legend floated around in front of Alexandria. "Listen, Alexandria, I know this is confusing, but I'm sure there's a rational - "

He made to clap Alexandria on the shoulder, but she swatted his hand away. "Don't kid yourself. You've seen the same reports I have. Parahuman incidents are skyrocketing even faster than Number Man's calculations. His maths is never wrong - if his models are wrong, it's because we don't know enough about what's really going on."

Eidolon spoke up. "Did something happen?"

For a moment, Alexandria was quiet.

"Meet me at the compound tonight."

And with that, she flew off, leaving the two men along with the lizard.

...

"Um, so, what are we going to do with this thing, exactly?"

Chapter Text

Incident report #4738
Date & Time: 7:34 PM, 12 April 2011
Location: Secure meeting room #3, PRT Central Headquarters
Context: Room was currently in use in a planning session to locate Ajimu Najimi.
PRT personnel involved: Director Costa-Brown, Secretary Milo, Protectorate Member Inju (in her role as head of Think Tank 'Solomon's Wives'), Protectorate Member Dragon (remotely)
Parahumans encountered: Ajimu Najimi, Hanten Shiranui
Details: [Audio log attached]
[Log begins]:
Director Costa-Brown: Can you explain what you mean when you say you can't trace her?
Protectorate Member Inju: Our powers aren't feeding us anything that makes sense! There are two many bonds for Mary to make out their destination, Ammy's compass just keeps spinning in place, and Joan's powers literally told her 'Signs unclear, check again later'!
Director Costa-Brown: We've at least cleared everyone in this room, correct?
Protectorate Member Inju: Correct.
Director Costa-Brown: What about digital means?
Protectorate Member Dragon: "Ajimu Najimi" was registered as a student at Hakobune Middle School in Japan, but vanished after another student supposedly ripped her face off.
Director Costa-Brown: ...assuming that's not hyperbole, that's one hell of a Trigger Event.
Protectorate Member Dragon: And a powerful motivator for revenge. I'll track down the student in question - if they're still alive, they may need protective custody.
Ajimu Najimi: Oh, don't worry about Kumagawa-kun. He's far too much of a Minus for anything in this world to keep him down.
Director Costa-Brown, Secretary Milo, and Protectorate Member Inju abruptly stand as they realise that Ajimu Najimi and Hanten Shiranui have at some point entered the room.
Director Costa-Brown (into intercom): Master/Stranger alert! I need full lockdown of this building!
Ajimu Najimi: Oh, honestly.

Rebecca's hand suddenly shot forward through the air as the intercom button she had slammed down suddenly disappeared, along with the table it was built into. In her peripherals, she could see Sam and Anna freak out as the rest of the room - and more importantly, Dragon's terminal - disappeared around them, leaving them in a featureless purple plane, white pillars extending to the sky off in the distance.

Her long-honed instincts screaming at her, Rebecca didn't for a moment take her eyes of the new arrivals. The girl who had spoken was sitting in a chair from what used to be the end of the table (the chairs, unlike the other furniture from the room, hadn't disappeared). She had long white hair, and wore a traditional Miko outfit. For some reason, six screws the size of water bottles were embedded in her body: two in her legs, two in her upper arms, and two pinning her hands to her shoulders. She was smiling in what could be described as a patient, understanding way.

The man who came with her, by comparison, was almost unnoticeable. He stood silent and motionless, his back to everyone else, displaying the ≠ symbol on the back of his jacket.

Rebecca took all of this in and made a guess. "Ajimu Najimi?"

Ajimu leaned forward in the best approximation of a bow she could make with her hands still pinned to her shoulders. "That's me!"

"I thought you had lost your face." Out of the corner of her eye she could see that Sam and Anna had decided to huddle together and go quiet, desperately hoping that she could handle this.

Ajimu shrugged, apparently unfazed by the question. "Maybe I have more that one face." She said teasingly.

"Where are we?"

"We're inside the incident report you're going to write after this. I hate script-style writing."

Rebecca's eyes narrowed. If she wasn't going to answer the question seriously, she would honestly prefer she not answer it. "Why have you attacked the PRT like this?"

"Attack the PRT?" Ajimu shook her head, still smiling. "Oh, that's quite impossible. I am the PRT. ...well, nine tenths of it anyway. Can you believe some actual Normals signed up?"

She appeared to be continuing the claim that members of Not Equal were actually part of her, rather than just controlled.

"Then why did you have him" Rebecca indicated in the direction of the man who had arrived with Ajimu "bring us here?"

"Hmm?" Ajimu looked back at her companion. "Oh, Hanten-san? That's not the kind of Skill he has. I brought us here."

An unpleasant thought occurred to Rebecca. They'd been so distracted by Not-Equal's numbers that they'd forgotten Master 101: The minions Masters most desired were...

"How many of Not Equal are parahumans?" She demanded.

"None." Ajimu replied immediately. "Zion knows better than to stick his brain-worms in me."

Rebecca's blood ran cold. That was very secret information she had just casually mentioned. No matter how many people in the PRT she controlled, the only member that could actually tell her that information was herself; and her powers protected her from that sort of thing. The only way she could know that would be if she had compromised -

"B-but!"

The stuttering cry interrupted Rebecca's train of thought, and she remembered that she had two subordinates huddling off to one side.

Sam swallowed, but finished his outburst. "But weren't 'y-you' caught being a member of Solomon's Wives? T-that group is made up entirely of Thinkers!"

Ajimu shrugged again, still smiling. "Oh, Sakura-chan is definitely Abnormal, but that doesn't make her a Parahuman. It's like the difference between an expert basketball player and an idiot wearing a basketball-playing robot suit."

This was going nowhere. "Why are you here?" Rebecca demanded.

"Ah, now we get to the point." Ajimu tilted her head. "You were looking for me so that you could negotiate, right? I thought it would speed things up if I just showed myself."

Rebecca frowned. "And just how did you find out that we were looking for you?"

"Well, I could tell you that I have the Skill [Wind Whisper], and can hear anyone who's talking about me, but you wouldn't believe me would you?"

"I might believe that one of your minions had such a power." Rebecca conceded.

Ajimu rolled her eyes, her smile somehow still in place. "If any of 'me' have a Skill, it's because I've given it to them."

"Y-you can give people powers?"

Rebecca knew where the fresh wave of fear in Sam's voice was coming from. The only other Master/Trump of anywhere near that power was Teacher, and he was bad enough even without having seven hundred million minions.

Ajimu sighed. She shook her head in disappointment, though she was still smiling. "Powers, powers, powers... you keep saying that as though you can through everything this this world you don't understand into a box. As long as you can read the label, it doesn't actually matter that you don't know what's inside it, does it? That's why you keep throwing around words like Master, or Mover, or Breaker... you think you know what those words mean, so you have an excuse to stop thinking as soon as you hear them."

"Powers have rules." Rebecca objected. "Just because we might not know what the rules are doesn't mean they aren't there. Every time we encounter parahumans, our understanding grows."

"Really." Ajimu's smile didn't actually change, but the way she tilted her head changed the shading on her face and made her smile suddenly look sinister.

"Really." Rebecca leaned forward in her chair, ready to spring forward. If Ajimu actually attacked, she was going to have to defend Sam and Anna, secret identity be dammed. The thing was, 'Haten-san' was a complete unknown, and the logical reason for him to be here was as muscle...

"What can you tell me about the rules of Hamon, Director?" Ajimu said, her voice taking on a slightly sinister undertone to match her face.

Rebecca frowned. With her memory, it was simple to recall any report; even if she'd only read it once. "Hamon, also known as Ripple Energy. The power shared by Jonathan Joestar and Joseph Joestar. Conducted through organic and formerly organic substances, and can be held as a charge in metal. Generated when the user breathes. Can heal or interfere with biological processes, as well as increase various properties of objects."

"Correct! I'd clap for you, if I had my hands free. Now, as my follow up question: what can you tell me about Stands?"

Rebecca's eyes narrowed once again. "I do not know any power by that name."

"Ah, stopped before you reached Part 3, did you? Not that I blame you, Jotaro was such a disappointment of a protagonist after Joseph." Ajimu said. "But just knowing about Hamon is enough. You've noticed, haven't you director? How Hamon doesn't obey 'normal' parahuman rules."

Rebecca didn't answer.

Sam and Anna looked back and forth between Rebecca and Ajimu. Ultimately, Anna broke the silence. "W-what d-does she mean, Director?"

Ajimu gave a short, girly giggle. "The 'power' of Jonathan Joestar? As if. Jonathan-san died over a hundred years before the first parahuman was born."

Rebecca still did not say anything.

"How about Esper powers? Do you think you know how those work?"

"That is the name Academy City gives to the parahumans abilities it manufactures - " Rebecca tried.

"Except we both know that 'parahuman abilities' aren't something you can manufacture, don't we Director?" Ajimu tilted her head again. "They're bred."

Sam and Anna must have been sufficiently cowled by now, because neither of them dared speak to ask Rebecca what Ajimu meant.

"And speaking of breeding, there certainly seem to be plenty of pony-type 'parahumans', aren't there? And it's interesting that their powers seem to be so similar... and how 'everypony' seems to have them."

Rebecca clenched her teeth.

"How about what Idol Theory and the Third Summoning Ceremony have in common?"

At this point, Rebecca wasn't even surprised at the level of classified information Ajimu casually threw around. "Those are both powers - " and it pained her to admit this " - that can be learned."

Ajimu smiled. "I could go on, but I'm sure you understand my point." She crossed her legs. "Do you want to know what all of those powers have in common, Director?"

Rebecca was not a stupid woman. "They all run off different rules."

"Correct! Whoever's writing this crossover doesn't care about 'consistency', 'making sense', or even 'similar themes'! They're just throwing in whatever they think is cool with no regard for the consequences for those of us who have to live out this convoluted plot!" Her smile briefly twisted into a dark smirk. "There are even some people on this messed-up cast list who might be able to kill me!"

Nobody had anything to say to that outburst, and Ajimu seemed to have said her piece because she just looked at Rebecca expectedly.

After a moment, Rebecca realised she only had one question left. The question she'd wanted to ask even before meeting Ajimu. "What do you want?"

Ajimu leaned back. "I want to know whether this world is real or not. This isn't J-Stars Victory VS, and it isn't Super Robot Wars either. There's no theme to those involved in this, nothing to pin down who's writing."

The most successful Master in the world, and she thought the world was a comic book. Rebecca might be tempted to laugh, if it didn't possibly mean the end of the world. "And how do you plan to find that out?"

"You really haven't figured it out yet?" Ajimu shook her head sadly (still smiling!). "If you want to find out if the world is fake, all you have to do is try something impossible. If you succeed, the world is fake."

"And what impossible thing are you going to do?"

Ajimu laughed; a clear, crystalline sound. "Why do you think I'm filling out the PRT?"

The purple plane around them began to fade away, and Rebecca could begin to see Secure meeting room #3 fade back into existence. Ajimu and Hanten, rather than accompanying them again, were fading out as well. But before they vanished altogether, Rebecca heard Ajimu's last mocking words.

"I'm trying to keep this world from being destroyed. What impossible thing are you going to try?"

Legend, stared down at the report in his hand in slight stupification. "Um, this may be a stupid question, but why does the audio log switch from script-style to full on third-person...?"

"Because when Dragon generated the report, that came with it." Alexandria jabbed a finger at the offending text. "She insists that she didn't add that part. Apparently, it just appeared while the paper was being printed."

"I knew Not Equal was a problem, but seven hundred million...?" Eidolon breathed. "You should have told us."

"Until we found Ajimu, there was no point." Number Man crossed his arms. Alexandria hadn't planned for him to be a part of this conversation, but had no real reason to tell him to leave given that he already knew about Not Equal. "She has so many minions that there was no practical way to filter them out or treat them any differently, especially because of how heavily she'd infiltrated the PRT."

Legend clenched his fists, crumpling the print-out in the process. "This... novelisation, or whatever you want to call it. It includes your thoughts at the time. Is it accurate?"

Alexandria looked away. "...yeah, it is."

To her shock, Legend actually laughed.

"What's so funny?" Eidolon asked, looking over Legend's shoulders at the paper.

Legend pointed to one line in the print-out. "'secret identity be dammed'..." He read. "See! She does have a heart!"

Alexandria elbowed him in the ribs. "Shut up! It was two people, I could contain any damage that happened."

"Two people and the most dangerous Master we know." Eidolon pointed out.

Alexandria frowned. "Ajimu would hardly have needed to know my identity to ruin everything."

"Still." Number Man commented. "Best not to think of your Secret Identity like a disposable asset. It would be a significant problem for us if you were outed as the leader of the PRT."

"I know, I know." Alexandria huffed.

"So this is what's been bugging you?" Legend looked back down at the paper again. "Well, I guess finding out that one tenth of Earth Bet is controlled by a delusional Japanese high-school girl is a bit disconcerting..."

Eidolon raised a finger, opening his mouth to ask a question.

"Yes, we have ensured that no member of Cauldron is under the control of Not Equal." Number Man preempted.

Eidolon lowered his finger. "Then how did she know about Scion?"

Number Man shrugged. "If even one in a hundred thousand of her minions have powers, that's seven thousand parahumans under her control." He said matter-of-factly. "Basic maths. If we assume she's lying about none of her minions being parahumans, her information-gathering ability could rival ours."

Alexandria grimaced. Already, they were rearranging the facts to make them fit with how they thought the world worked...

"Look." She said. "I don't think for a moment that we're living in a comic book or a video game or whatever it is that Ajimu thinks. But she is right about one thing: what we thought we knew about how powers work can't explain many of the capes who've emerged in recent times."

"Jonathan Joestar died in the eighteen hundreds." Number Man pointed out.

"Which is how we know that he didn't have a power as we understand it." Alexandria retorted.

"Listen." She continued. "We've been muddling along, thinking we knew what the rules of the game were. Maybe we even know what more of them are then anyone else. But we don't know what all the rules are."

Legend pinched the bridge of his nose. "Look, I get why we didn't go public about Earths Mem and Pe. Mem seems to be handling parahumans far better than we ever have, and Pe is so bizarre we can barely call it an alternate of Earth. But that's no reason - "

"Espers don't have a Corona Pollentia." Alexandria snapped.

Silence pervaded throughout the room.

"I'm sorry?" For once, Number Man seemed unsure of himself.

"Heaven Canceller owed me a favour." Alexandria spat. "He wasn't willing to tell me Academy City secrets, but he was willing to confirm to me that there aren't any 'black boxes' in their brains like there are in parahumans. In fact, he started asking me about how the Pollentia worked - apparently they've still trying to figure out which part of an Esper's brain contains their powers. I haven't checked Earth Pe yet, or any of the other ones, but how much do you want to bet on me finding Pollentias in any of them? We always knew that Bet was their main testing ground, but when we found powers in such numbers in the other Earths, we just assumed - "

Eidolon's hand clamped firmly onto Alexandria's shoulder from behind. "Alexandria." He said, firmly. "Breathe."

Alexandria took a deep breath, and exhaled slowly.

"...look." Legend said. "This is big. If you're right, game-changing big. But while we refine speculation into fact, we have to be careful not to loose control of the situation. For starters, we still need to come up with a plan to deal with Ajimu somehow. If we can't break her control of Earth Bet yet, can we at least ensure that she won't interfere with our operations?"

Alexandria opened her mouth to reply when she felt the touch of wispy, only barely-tangible fingers on her back. "Custodian?" She gasped, causing everyone else in the room to react with surprise.

She felt the fingers trace letters on her back. T-R-O-U-B-L-E, the Custodian wrote, ever-so-softly. B-E-T. There was a pause. G-O.

Alexandria felt like a lead weight had been dropped in her stomach. "We have to go." She said. "There's trouble in Earth Bet."

"Thank God!" Her body double gasped as Alexandria - now Rebecca again - strode into her office. "It's been terrible, trying to manage without you!"

"What's the situation?" Rebecca snapped, already escorting the double into the same secret entrance she'd used to enter. it wouldn't do to have someone burst in to find two Directors in the office.

"It's the Thinkers!" Her double gasped. "The Think Tank precogs are all going nuts!"

"Going nuts about what? What have they seen?"

"Tiamat! The keep screaming about someone called Tiamat!"

Chapter Text

"Right." Rebecca said. "It looks like everyone is here now."

Legend stood next to her, looking over the assembled crowd of experts and team leaders in the meeting room. Unlike her, he was in costume - the leader of the Protectorate next to the leader of the PRT. "Yikes. How many people did you invite here?"

"Everyone I though would contribute and who I could get my hands on on short notice." Rebecca replied. "Yourself and some of the other Protectorate team heads, members of the Think Tank - "

"Why is JoJo here?" Legend interrupted abruptly.

"I... JoJo?" Rebecca blinked.

"Ah, right, you wouldn't know that nickname... I mean Joseph. Why is Joseph Joestar here?"

Rebecca looked away. "I thought, well..."

"Maybe he'd know a rule we didn't?" Legend guessed.

"...yeah."

Legend sighed. "Alright." He scanned the crowd again. He stiffened. "Rebecca, do we have a South Carolina division?"

Rebecca looked back at the crowd. "What?"

He pointed. "That man standing at the back of the room. His name tag reads 'Agent Timothy, South Carolina Protectorate'."

Rebecca groaned. "Really? Right now?"

"I'll sound a Master/Stranger alert." Legend reached into his costume.

"Don't bother." Rebecca stopped him. "For once, it looks like they might be here to help instead of just trying to take over the operation."

When Legend stared at her uncomprehendingly, she sighed. "South Carolina Protectorate. S.C.P.?"

"Oh." Legend said. "Those guys."

The room was filled to over capacity, so there were plenty of people sitting on extra chairs near the walls, but the meeting room table had been left in place. Rebecca walked up to the head of the table and cleared her throat.

Everyone in the room turned to her as expected. Rebecca looked over the faces of everyone in the room. The room was a sea of colour due to the various costumes interspersed in the crowd. Rebecca opened her mouth to talk -

Ajimu Najimi was sitting at the back of the room, ironically right next to the Foundation plant. Hanten Shiranui, as before, was standing next to her; staring resolutely at the blank patch of wall he was facing.

Rebecca swallowed her surprise. "It is with great regret that I must inform everyone here that, once again, we are all in very grave danger."

Ajimu winked at her, which didn't make her feel any better.

Rebecca stood off to one side of the projector screen at the front of the room, and Dragon projected a hand-drawn sketch onto it. "This, as best as we can determine, is Tiamat. No less that fourteen different precognitive-type Tinkers in Protectorate employ, and seven independents, have identified that she will attack Earth Bet, and soon. Normally the information provided by precogs is considered unreliable, but this many collaborating sources means we can be quite certain it is fact."

"When and where are they projecting her emergence?" Legend said, on cue. This was a long-running routine the two had, to make these sorts of meetings feel more like a discussion and encourage other people to speak up.

Rebecca waited a second, and Dragon changed the projector to show a map of the Middle East. "In Ancient Babylonia - that is to say, modern-day Iraq. Tomorrow."

The room broke into hushed murmuring. That was two enormous problems right off the bat - the PRT/Protectorate influence in the Middle East was basically zero, and the tiny timeframe limited their diplomatic options. Ferrying parahumans into Iraq en-mass would almost certainly cause the local government to do something regrettable, no matter how they span this.

'Agent Timothy' - Rebecca really doubted that was his real name - spoke up from the back of the room. "You wouldn't have called us here unless this was quite serious." I didn't call you here at all! "What are the precogs saying about her power or powers?"

"As an overview, you could say she's a monster who corrupts others into monsters." Rebecca answered. "At the moment, we're estimating her Brute rating at 12 or higher - " there were gasped around the room at that. 12 was ridiculous, but 'or higher'? " - with a Shaker/Master effect of rating 13 or higher. She constantly excretes an effect the Thinkers are calling the 'Chaos Tide' - a sea of mud that will turn anyone it touches into a monster who will fight on her behalf. We're still trying to nail down how fast this will spread, but - "

"Ha! Is that all? And I though this was something to be worried about!"

To her surprise, Joseph Joestar (Rebecca would not be calling him 'JoJo') jumped to his feet. "It the main problem is a sea of mud, just get rid of the mud!"

'Agent Timothy' sighed. "And how exactly do you propose to do that, Mister Joestar?"

Joseph pointed an arm behind his back to point at Timothy, leaving him standing with his other hand over his face. Rebecca suspected he was doing that to show off his muscles. "Don't call me Mister Joestar. It makes me sound like some senile old man. And anyway, we can get most of the super-people on Earth in on this, right?"

"Please call them parahumans, Joseph. Calling them super implies they are greater than human, rather than simply gifted." Rebecca corrected him absently. "And yes, almost all of the resources of the PRT and Protectorate are available for this fight."

"Right, right, whatever." Joseph said, waving his hand dismissively. "Between all of us, I'm pretty sure we can dry out a little mud. Make sure everyone wears galoshes and wham! Problem solved!"

"You don't know your mythology very well, do you?" 'Agent Timothy' drawled.

Joseph span around with a clenched fist. "So what if I don't?" He said though clenched teeth.

"If you did," 'Agent Timothy' said "you would know that Tiamat is the primordial goddess of chaos and creation - in Babylonian mythology, that means she's the goddess of salt water."

Joseph's fist dropped. "You think she'll go for the ocean."

'Agent Timothy' nodded. "Yes. Are you going to suggest next that we dry out the Persian Gulf?" He asked sarcasticly.

"Gah!" Joseph threw up his hands. "Fine. You have a better idea?"

"There are certain caking agents that could be applied, but they also won't help if she reaches the ocean." 'Agent Timothy' said. "Protective suits might keep the mud off the field operatives, but considering the physical forces that would be exerted fighting Tiamat - not to mention any creatures she might have already transformed - that isn't practical either. Of course, the main problem isn't the mud itself - it's how quickly she can produce the mud." He looked at Rebecca. "How fast is that, incidentally?

Clearly, he knew the answer to this question already, but he was making her say it because he had no plausible way of knowing it himself. "As I said, we're still trying to calculate that out - "

"Give us your best guess, then." He said calmly.

Rebecca inhaled deeply. Best to get this over with quickly. "By our estimations, we're looking at about seven thousand square kilometres of mud every minute."

They nearly had to stop the meeting at that point due to the panic that quickly engulfed the room at those words.

"How the hell can we possibly fight that?" One of the Protectorate team leaders yelled.

"Isn't it obvious?"

The confident words made everybody look in the direction of Joseph at first, but then they all realised who had actually spoken, and corrected their gaze.

Legend smirked, and somehow his smirk was also a grimace at the same time. "We have to get that thing off this planet the moment it arrives."

Chapter Text

Rebecca made sure that ‘Agent Timothy’ was tailed as the meeting broke up, but she wasn’t hopeful anything would come of it. For an organisation to have been around as long as the Foundation had and still be secret meant that they probably knew more about organising shadowy conspiracies than Cauldron did.

As everyone else filed out of the room, Rebecca made sure to grab Legend for a quiet chat. “Make sure you have a completely empty Earth to drop her on. Volcanic, if the Clairvoyant can find one.”

“I know, I know.” He waved her off. “If we’re going to be rendering an Earth uninhabitable, make sure it was uninhabitable to begin with?”

“That, and if there are any lifeforms there then she might turn them into minions.” She reminded him. “Also, double-check that the Doormaker is okay to do this. We can’t afford anything to go wrong with this.”

“Ah. So this would be a bad time for me to speak up, then?”

Rebecca's mouth twisted like someone had just force-fed her a lemon. “Ms Ajimu.” She said without turning. “Do you have something to contribute?”

“Please call me ‘Anshin'in-san’.” Ajimu smiled. “I think we know each other well enough for that now.”

Legend, for his part, turned with surprise. “Wait, that’s Ajimu Najimi? She was here the whole time and you didn’t say anything?!”

“Oh, don’t act so surprised.” Ajimu said. “She did tell you all about our little conversation, didn’t she?”

Legend glared down at the sitting girl. “What other people do in their own space is none of your business.”

Ajimu stood up. “It is when they are making rather stupid decisions that directly affect you.”

Rebecca turned so that she could properly glare at Ajimu as well. “Stupid how?”

“You don’t dig up an unexploded bomb and then bury it again.” One of Ajimu’s fingers wiggled, even though that hand was still screwed to her shoulder. “You make sure it won’t hurt anyone else by making sure it explodes.”

“Even if this ‘Chaos Tide’ was simply ordinary mud, the rate she produces it at would cause major ecological damage to the planet.” Legend said. “The fact that it isn’t makes it exponentially more important to get her off this planet as soon as physically possible.”

Ajimu shook her head. “Oh, I’m not saying you should keep her here. I’m saying she can’t be left intact.”

“‘Intact’?” Legend blinked. “Don’t you mean ‘alive’?”

Ajimu giggled. “You really don’t know your mythology, do you? Tiamat’s been dead since before the dawn of man.”

Legend and Rebecca shared an uncertain look.

“It’s really quite tragic.” Ajimu continued. “That creature that’s on its way to slay us all isn’t actually ‘Tiamat, mother goddess’, but rather ‘Beast II, the discarded womb’. She’s a ‘creator of life’ who was banished from this world by her own children, the gods, once her job was complete.”

“I don’t understand.” Legend said, and Rebecca agreed with him. “Are you saying that Tiamat is somehow ‘undead’?”

“Gods don’t die.” Ajimu said. “Not really. Instead, they are forgotten. But something has woken up Tiamat, a dead god of a dead religion, and she’s returning to redo her role like a painter reusing their canvas.”

Something clicked for Rebecca. “That’s what the Chaos Tide is.” She realised, Legend looking at her in surprise. “It’s her way of wiping the Earth clean of life and recreating it from the ground up.”

“Well, from below the ground as well, but otherwise correct!” Ajimu smiled. “Now, what do you think will happen if you point such a drunk, dimwitted painter to an empty canvas?”

“She’ll fill it with life.” Rebecca breathed. “Even if we send her to a completely empty world, won’t she?”

“She will.” Ajimu said. “And like any creator, Tiamat wants her next creation to be better than anything she’s made before! Really, I admire her enthusiasm.”

Legend looked back and forth between the two women. “So, banishing her to an empty Earth is less like a quarantine procedure and more like giving Nilbog’s mother all the time and space she could ever want to work in?”

Ajimu smiled. “Correct again! So, heroes, you now have an important question before you!” She spun around lazily on one foot. “Are you going to go ahead with your existing plan – which, incidentally, will keep her occupied for maybe two hundred years or so – or are you going to act on the unconfirmed word of your enemy and stop her while it’s still possible to do so?”

Rebecca felt the bottom of her stomach drop. She knew the correct answer to this. She’d been making decisions like this ever since Doctor Mother appeared to her in that hospital. But she knew that Legend would never go for it. He’d never had to make hard decisions like this – they’d kept those from him, knowing that one of them had to have the innocence to lead…

Legend opened his mouth to respond -

“Just kidding!” Ajimu giggled again. “Like I’m going to leave that choice up to someone else!”

For the first time, Ajimu’s smile left her face. “If you don’t destroy Tiamat within twenty-four hours of her appearing, I’ll upend this chessboard and move her back to Earth Bet.”

With that, Ajimu and Hanten disappeared, leaving Legend and Rebecca alone to stew in their despair.

There was utter silence in the Cauldron Compound as the security footage finished playing.

The Triumvirate was all present once again, and so was Number Man (and presumably the Custodian), but this time so was Doctor Mother and Contessa.

Doctor Mother blew a tuft of hair out of her face. “Merde.” She swore, softly. She then looked back at Contessa. “Any luck?”

“Against Tiamat, or against Ajimu?” Contessa said blandly.

“Either, at this point.” Doctor Mother replied.

Contessa frowned. “Against Ajimu, my power is… I think it’s timing out against her.” She admitted.

Doctor Mother’s eyebrows rose to meet her hairline. “It’s what?”

“I set it to find a way to defeat Ajimu Najimi, and instead of responding immediately like it usually does, it was quiet for about five minutes before returning to what it was saying before, as though I had never asked the question.” Contessa explained.

Legend scratched his head. “Maybe it’s having trouble crunching through seven hundred million people’s worth of variables?”

“I don’t think that’s it.” Contessa said, dubiously. “If it’s only seven hundred million, Path to Victory could easily handle that many variables.”

“And Tiamat?” Doctor Mother prompted.

“That works, but I’m still refining the search.” She responded. “So far, all the plans against her have involved ceding large portions of humanity to her as bait.”

Doctor Mother cursed again. “Well, short of a last-minute deliverance from Path to Victory, what other options do we have?”

“We could try calling Ajimu’s bluff.” Eidolon suggested. “She said her goal was to keep the world from being destroyed, right? Why would she fail her own goal?”

“It’s probably her way of forcing us to act.” Legend said. “I’ve seen similar things by parahuman healers whose patients start being reckless with their health because they know they can always be headed. Only by cutting off their source of healing do their patients start taking their safety into effect again.”

“I’ve seen that too.” Alexandria agreed. “But the trouble is that you can’t bluff about this, or else the patient won’t change their behaviour.”

“There’s another problem too.” Number Man added. “The reason Ms Najimi wants to prevent the destruction of the world is to prove that it is impossible, thus proving to her that the world is real. In a very real way, the destruction of the world is the outcome she is hoping for. We can’t rely on her working to avoid it.”

Doctor Mother pinched the bridge of her nose. “Right. So, back to square one. We have to come up with some way of avoiding the corruption effect of that mud and destroy something the Thinkers aren’t actually sure is destructible.”

“Not to point out the obvious, but all three of the Triumvirate can fly.” Number Man said. “The mud can’t corrupt what it can’t reach.”

“No,” said Alexandria “but unless Eidolon pulls something out of his hat, that still leaves us with ‘punch it hard and hope that kills it’ as our main strategy.”

“I’m sure I can arrange something.” Eidolon said confidently.

“This is the future survival of seven billion people on the line.” Doctor Mother admonished him. “We need to do better than that.”

There was silence in the room as those assembled tried to think of a solution.

“I think we’ll have to dip into the Donation Box.” Contessa said, softly.

The expressions of everyone else in the room grew pained, none more so than Legend. “I can’t deny that this is bad enough to warrant opening the Box, but…”

The Donation Box was the nickname of the secure storage unit where Cauldron stored the tinkertech deemed too dangerous for even the Protectorate to keep. It was called that because it’s contents were usually confiscated off of Tinkers right before they were Birdcaged. It’s contents ranged from ‘merely’ antimatter bombs to full-blown gravitational singularity generators.

The contents of the Box was so dangerous that it wasn’t kept in the main Cauldron Compound, but rather on the Moon – of a version of Earth where the latest in technology was a rock tied to the end of a stick.

The main reason they were so reluctant to open the Box was simple – if they never found that silver bullet parahuman, and the parahuman army didn’t work out, then the contents of the Box might be their only chance of killing Scion. To dip into their ‘life savings’ like this was demoralising to say the least.

“I don’t see a better way.” Doctor Mother said, and that was that.

The soft knock of a door behind Rebecca broke her concentration on the paper in front of her, and she groaned. "Who is it?"

"My, is that any way to greet your doctor, Rebecca?"

Rebecca blinked, then stood and opened the door. "Doctor Mother?"

The leader of Cauldron strode into the room like she was an actual doctor entering for an appointment, sitting down on Rebecca's bed. "The Clairvoyant 'told' me you were still awake."

Rebecca frowned, but sat back down in her chair. "I've been going over Threat Rating profiles since our meeting. Sorting out which ones might be viable against Tiamat."

Doctor Mother's face remained fixed in a mask of stern worry. "If there was a parahuman we could just point at Tiamat and defeat her, Contessa would have found them."

Rebecca looked away. "I know."

"You also didn't have to go over profiles you've already read." The Doctor observed. "I know full well that you never forget anything."

"I was... hoping I'd remembered it wrong, somehow. That I'd missed something." Though a grown woman, Rebecca found herself cradling Imagine Breaker's profile to her chest guiltily.

"It isn't like you to doubt yourself like this." Doctor Mother frowned. "This isn't about Tiamat at all, is it?"

For a moment, Rebecca didn't answer. Then she sighed. "...I'm worried."

Doctor Mother said nothing, instead patiently listening.

"We say we're an anti-Scion organisation, but at the end of the day what we want to do is save the world. Save all the worlds. What if our single-minded focus on Scion has blinded us to other threats out there? We know about Tiamat, and we’ve having to burn irreplaceable resources to fight her. But we didn't see the Endbringers coming at all. What if there's something worse, just around the corner, and we're not prepared?"

Doctor Mother gave her a moment to say anything else, and when she didn't, spoke up. "You're right."

Rebecca's mouth fell open in shock.

"There are almost certainly threats out there that we know nothing about. Threats we have no way to fight." She continued.

"However." She said, interrupting whatever Rebecca would have said. "By that very logic, we have allies everywhere, just waiting to be found." She pointed at Imagine Breaker's profile. "Take him. If it weren't for that utter disaster Cross of Venus, we never would have found any of the worlds in the DB cluster, including Earth Mem."

"And they wouldn't have found us..." Rebecca grumbled.

"Stop feeling sorry for yourself." Doctor Mother ordered sharply. "It doesn't suit you. As far as I'm concerned, dealing with God's Right Seat was a small price to pay for our alliance with the Anglican Church and Academy City."

"And was placating the Foundation worth handing over all that we did?" Rebecca snapped back.

"Considering the damage they were doing to our operations and their potential worth as an ally? Absolutely." Doctor Mother abruptly stood up, glaring down at Rebecca. "Rebecca. We are already in an impossible situation against an opponent we cannot defeat. We must not be afraid of upsetting the status quo. Indeed, unless we do so, we are doomed."

With that, Doctor Mother left, leaving Rebecca to stew in her thoughts.

After a moment, she pulled out her mobile phone from a pocket, and plugged it into the socket on her desk that would let it call numbers in other dimensions. She dialled and waited.

<U-um, yes?> A boy answered to the call in hesitant Japanese. <This is Kamijou.>

<Hello Touma.> Rebecca answered in flawless Japanese. <This is Alexandria. Could you please put Index on the phone? I need to know how to destroy a goddess turned beast.>

Chapter Text

One of the most uncomfortable parts of accepting there were more powers in this world than Entities and their Shards was reassessing her belief in magic.

Rebecca had seen ‘magic’ before. Myrddin, though she was quite fond of the man, had been the final nail in the ‘I don’t believe in faeries’ coffin. Sure, he played the part quite well, but it was a simple train of logic that killed off her faith.

If magic was real, anyone would be able to learn it.

And there would be no need for people like her.

So when it finally clicked for her that some of the parahumans she knew of – particularly the ones from alternate Earths – couldn’t be explained with Shards alone, she was forced to endure the flaring up of various hopes that she had long thought had been extinguished.

It hurt to think that maybe, all those choices – all those people whose lives she'd sacrificed – might not have been needed, might have been completely pointless, if only she’d know about the hidden facets of reality.

But she hadn’t known, and so she’d had to make the choices. Make the sacrifices.

So she sat in her chair, and listened to a girl from another dimension who claimed to be the foremost expert on mortal magic in existence; and tried to endure both the weight of all of her past sacrifices haunting her at once and the unbearable hope that she wouldn’t have to make any more.

“Okay.” Index said. “I think I understand the situation now. Basically, someone or something has reactivated the creator deity Tiamat, and you need to prevent her from destroying and recreating all life on Earth.”

“So, you really think it’s her?” Rebecca asked. She’d expected Index to accept her word, but somehow she still found herself surprised. “You really think the Tiamat of myth is coming?”

“Your description of her matches the original myth with 98.4% accuracy.” Index said. “Even if it isn’t a direct summoning of Tiamat, we can treat it as such for all practical purposes.”

“But…” Rebecca rested her head on the palm of one hand. “Are you trying to tell me that Babylonian myth is real?”

“Not exactly.” Index said. “Instead of thinking about this in terms of ‘real’ or ‘fake’, you need to think in terms of layers, or phases. For example, the Christian phases of Heaven, Hell and Purgatory influence the worlds we live in and are in turn influenced by them. When a sorcerer summons forth the power of Telesma, they are drawing that power from the Heaven phase.”

“So…” Rebecca tried to understand. “Religion… creates something like a sub-dimension…?”

“Or the phase creates the religion.” Index rather unhelpfully ‘clarified’. “In this case, Tiamat’s power is coming from the Mesopotamian phases of šamû and irṣitu.”

Rebecca rubbed her head with her palm. “Right.” She said, not really understanding.

“Depending on the religion, the difficulty of killing a god can range from something a mortal can do by accident to something only other gods can accomplish.” Index said.

“We’re planning to forcibly transport her onto an uninhabited Earth and then destroy the planet.” Rebecca said.

There was a pause on the other end of the line.

“…that won’t work.” Index said, and Rebecca’s heart plummeted. “In Babylonian myth, the heavens and the earth were made from parts of Tiamat’s corpse, which means that anywhere in those places is automatically a battlefield that gives Tiamat the advantage. You can’t fight Tiamat in a world ‘made of Tiamat’.”

Rebecca bit her lip. “So what can we do, then?”

“You’re going to what?” Doctor Mother demanded. In a rather silly state of affairs, she’d put a nightcap on to go to bed and had forgotten to take it off when Rebecca had rushed into her room, so it still sat on her head.

“Before we use anything from the Donation Box, there’s something we have to try.” Rebecca insisted. “I talked to the Index Librorum Prohibitorum, and she doesn’t think Tiamat can be killed as long as she’s on an Earth she was used to create.”

“Rebecca.” Doctor Mother said, flatly. “You must have been under more stress than I thought to have converted to a dead religion in the hour since we last talked.”

In a flash of insight, Rebecca realised that she would never get Doctor Mother to consider the possibility of magic being real as she was now. She knew she would never have considered it either, if it hadn't been for the slow eroding of her doubts over the past few months and then the sudden shock provided by Ajimu.

She’d have to change track. “Listen. Index can instruct anyone on how to do anything, right?”

“That’s what Mem’s Anglican Church believes.” Doctor Mother said. “We take that on faith as part of our working relationship, but we’ve never seen it in action ourselves.”

Rebecca bit the inside of her cheek. “She’s provided me with a list of steps that we can use to kill Tiamat without using anything from the Donation Box. Surely that’s worth a try?”

“How many people will die if this plan doesn’t work?” Doctor Mother asked pointedly.

“They’d be volunteers only.” Even to her own ears, the justification sounded weak.

“So your plan is to follow the plans of an unverified Thinker, which requires using up goodwill with some of our most useful allies and risking the lives of several people who are irreplaceable assets in the fight against Scion, just because said Thinker is worried about the connotations of a thousand-year old bedtime story?”

Rebecca felt one inch all. “Yes.”

Doctor Mother maintained eye contact for another few moments, before shrugging. “Very well.”

Rebecca’s lower jaw dropped. “What?”

“Number Man and Contessa finished collaborating a few minutes ago. They couldn’t find a foolproof plan, but they gave the Donation Box plan a 6% chance of success given what we know, and letting you do your plan a 27% chance of success.” Doctor Mother explained. “I just wanted you to know how ridiculous you sound before letting you go.”

Rebecca felt the usual surge of indignity that she was sure everyone felt upon being told their actions were predicted, but it was swamped by the relief and disbelief that her crazy, impossible plan was on it’s way.

So she made the calls. A call to the Protectorate, telling Legend in no uncertain terms to bring his best and brightest to her now, never mind what hour it was. A call to S & C Plastics, the only Foundation front she knew with a phone number they actually answered, advising them of what her plans were. Somehow, she was sure they already knew.

A note, written in the diary given to her by the ruler of a fairy-tale world who had told her to write in it if she ever needed her.

That just left one last thing to do. Rebecca sighed.

“Ajimu Najimi.” She paused. “Anshin'in-san. You said you could hear me when I was talking about you. Well, I need to talk to you. Now.”

She didn’t hear anything, but somehow she knew that Ajimu was now in the room with her.

“We’re going to destroy Tiamat. Beast II. But our chances of success are low.” Her mouth twisted. “You’re the one forcing our hand. I want you to make them higher.”

A soft giggle came from behind her, and Rebecca turned to find Ajimu sitting on her windowsill, Hanten perched firmly on the outside balcony. The window hadn’t been open a minute ago.

“Oh, is that all you want the mighty Anshin'in-san to do for you?” Ajimu smiled. “You really need to be more extravagant with your wishes, you know.”

“You’re not a magic genie.” Rebecca said. “Even if you were, I think you would answer to a monkey paw, not a ring or a lamp.”

“Hmph.” Ajimu leaned back, idly kicking out with her legs. “You’re so jaded. Well, I do suppose I owe you a little something for doing my dirty work. As it happens, I know a boy who can turn any Plus into a Minus. If you ask me nicely, I might consider lending him to you.”

“Please.” Rebecca asked.

Ajimu waited, but Rebecca did not elaborate.

“So very jaded.” Ajimu sighed. “Oh well. Where shall I drop him off?”

Rebecca told her. Ajimu laughed.

Chapter Text

Though it was Rebecca Costa-Brown, director of the Parahuman Response Team, who had organised everything, it was Alexandria, founding member of the Protectorate, who showed up to meet the small army of parahumans Legend brought in the wee hours of the morning.

She scanned her eyes over the assembled fighters. Legend and Eidolon were there as expected, so the Triumvirate was together again. Myrddin was there, along with Chevalier, Cinereal, Narwhal, Rime, Exalt, Armsmaster and several of Dragon’s suits. In addition to the poster boys and girls, there were a few other members who had come – Joseph Joestar, for one.

There were also a few faces she didn’t recognise, which was surprising given her perfect memory and studious habit of reading at least the Threat Profiles of any new parahuman contacts the PRT encountered.

She flew over to Legend. “Legend.” She greeted. “I don’t recognise everyone here. Care to introduce me?”

“It looks like we missed a few of the Thinkers who predicted Tiamat.” Legend said, sourly. “When I went to go round up the troops, these guys were waiting.”

A woman wearing casual dress and with bright green hair laughed. “Are you joking? The violent return of a mother goddess? Makai has been ringing with prophesies of this day for nearly a year!” The woman licked her lips. “It’s been unbearable, having to wait this long!”

Green hair + the mention of Makai = … “Morrigan Aensland?” Alexandria said, blinking in shock under her helmet. She turned back to Legend. “You let Morrigan Aensland come on this mission?!”

“‘Let’ is not the right word here.” Legend defended himself. “The conversation went more like ‘Let me fight her, or I will have to satisfy myself by fighting you’.”

Alexandria sighed. The fight hadn’t even started yet and she would have to watch out for attacks already.

A white-haired archer stepped forwards from the crowd of unknowns. “Don’t concern yourselves with us. Whatever motivation we have for being here, we will all fight Tiamat to the best of our ability.” He shot a sideways glance at Morrigan. “Most of us can even be trusted to leave after the fight is done.”

“Speaking of explaining things…” Legend pointed to the stack of animal carriers stacked up next to Alexandria. “Mind explaining why you have…” he counted “eleven rabbits with you?”

“I’ll explain that in a moment.” Alexandria said. “We’re still waiting on one more.”

“Yeah, where exactly are we, anyway?” Legend looked around. The place they were currently in looked like the inside of a dim cave, only nobody could see the ceiling. Crags of rock that looked almost like altars rose from the ground haphazardly, each one possessing a stone staircase that led from them down to the ground below. “And why did we have to go through a portal to get here even after Doormaker dropped us off?”

“The Clairvoyant can only see into alternate Earths.” Alexandria said. “So he can’t see in here, and Doormaker can’t make portals here either.”

“Wait.” Eidolon said, having walked up to the pair. “If this isn’t Earth, which planet is it?”

“Calling it a planet would imply that there is something in this dimension other than it, which there isn’t.”

Alexandria grit her teeth. “And there will be our last team member arriving.”

Legend, Eidolon and those fighters close enough to hear her turned around to find a girl with screws embedded in her hands, arms and legs, along with a man standing with his back to everyone else.

Unlike the other times she had appeared, this time Ajimu was sitting on the floor. Held in a leg-lock underneath her was a new face, a black-haired boy in a black school uniform. <Anshin'in-san,> the boy said in Japanese, <can you please let go of me now?>

Something about the boy set Alexandria’s skin to crawling. Maybe it was the way the boy had absolutely no presence at all. Maybe it was the empty smile on his face. Maybe it was the fact that Ajimu thought him powerful enough to significantly alter their chances of the fight, but he looked like an ordinary high-school boy, her first two points aside.

<That depends, Kumagawa-kun.> Ajimu smiled. <Do you think you understand what’s going on?>

<No…?>

Alexandria sighed, then knelt down to bring her face closer to the boy’s (successfully hiding her revulsion at doing do). <In a few minutes, a very powerful creature in the shape of a woman is going to be forced into this dimension with us. I need you to weaken that creature as much as possible so we can destroy it. Understand?>

The boy stared up at her with his empty smile. <Ah, so you need me to screw a woman? Why didn’t you say so?>

Alexandria raised her gaze to Ajimu. Under her helmet, she raised one eyebrow.

<Isn’t he adorable?> Ajimu closed her eyes and tilted her head, still smiling.

Something clicked in her head. <Wait. ‘Kumagawa’? You mentioned him the first time we met. Isn’t he the one who ripped your face off?>

<Yep!> Kumagawa cheerfully admitted. <That was me! Ah, but it was only to check if I really loved her.>

Alexandria immediately abandoned any and all plans to ever recruit Kumagawa into any organisation she was a member of.

“Ajimu Najimi?” Morrigan had apparently just noticed the new arrival, striding over. “I haven't seen you in centuries, you old hag! You still owe me a fight!”

Alexandria quietly filed that statement away to analyse later.

“Sorry, your highness.” Ajimu smiled. “But I make it a point to never fight protagonists.”

Ajimu released Kumagawa, who straightened up. Ajimu and Hanten then disappeared.

Morrigan shook her head. “That girl is no fun at all…”

“Alexandria.” Legend prompted. “The plan…?”

“The plan. Right.” Alexandria straightened. “Everyone, listen up!”

In a space just above the river Euphrates, space began to bleed. Darkness began to seep out of a point in the middle of the river, which soon solidified into the black mud of the Chaos Tide.

In a strange and disgusting parody of the birthing process, a form was squeezed out of the Chaos Tide. Naked save for some scant cloth on her crotch, arms and legs, the creature resembled a woman, save for the enormous ram-like horns that emerged from the side of her head, forming a shape like butterfly wings behind her. Chains bound her arms and legs, and she hovered above the ground. The Chaos Tide now gushed out from her form in unimaginable quantities.

A couple of local fishermen saw this happening, and began to scream as the Tide raced across the river towards them almost faster than they could see. In less than a second, the Tide would be upon them…

…which is when a soft golden glow engulfed both fishermen, and lifted them well clear of the genocidal mud.

Standing on the riverbank was another creature not native to this world, spoken off only in old legends and fantasy stories. Her coat was a pink so pale it could easily be mistaken for white, and her majestic mane and tail shone with all the colours of an aurora. Her horn glowed the same soft gold as the fishermen.

“In Babylonian myth, the heavens and the earth were made from parts of Tiamat’s corpse, which means that anywhere in those places is automatically a battlefield that gives Tiamat the advantage. You can’t fight Tiamat in a world ‘made of Tiamat’.”

“So what can we do, then?”

“You have to fight her in a world or phase she had no part in creating. Purgatory, Asgard, Tartarus…”

Princess Celestia’s horn’s glow suddenly became far brighter in intensity, and a golden rectangular portal formed in midair, showing the same location that Alexandria and the others waited in.

“I’m sorry.” She said.

Tiamat did not react as another golden glow engulfed her body and carried her through the portal to Tartarus.

The moment Tiamat arrived and the portal closed, the parahumans sprang into action. All the non-flyers were ridding on one of Dragon’s suits; with the exception of Kumagawa, who was riding on Alexandria’s back. (He’d tried to cop a feel, but she’d bent back his hand to just before the breaking point and released it. He hadn’t tried again, though he still hadn’t lost that empty smile.)

The Chaos Tide erupted out of Tiamat’s body, and almost immediately covered the ground around them as far as the eye could see. The Blasters of the group, in retaliation, unloaded onto Tiamat, knocking her back but not damaging her.

“Even after you remove her home-field advantage, Tiamat is still a god – and a creator god at that. ‘Normal’ attacks won’t be able to hurt her.”

“What kind of attacks will, then?”

“With Tiamat, you have an opening. The gods of Babylonian mythology have already killed her. If you remind the world of that fact, then she’ll be returned to the afterlife.”

Already, monsters were beginning to emerge out of the Chaos Tide. The assembled group switched targets to destroying the monsters, leaving Tiamat clear for the time being.

Alexandria, taking the chance, flew in as close to Tiamat as she dared. <Now!> She screamed at her passenger.

Kumagawa gripped onto Alexandria with his legs, and held out both hands. Giant screws the size of water-bottles appeared in his hands, though they quickly lengthened to the size of swords.

He threw both screws through the air, both of which easily pierced through Tiamat’s chest.

Alexandria flew back out of range. <They pierced her so easily…!>

<Don’t get your hopes up.> Kumagawa said. <Book Maker is an attack that soils the heart, not the body. But, with this, she will be transformed from ‘a creator Goddess who has come to remake the world’ to ‘a Goddess who created the world but has now been forced out of her eternal rest to do it again’.>

<That’s the same thing!>

<No it isn’t. One’s a Plus, the other’s a Minus. In this particular case…>

As Alexandria watched, Tiamat’s hair turned from silver to white. At the same time, the emergence of the Chaos Tide slowed from a flood to a mere trickle.

Kumagawa closed his eyes to emphasise his empty smile. <Her desire to remake the world has been all but sealed off, like a girl who can’t take a dump because her panties are screwed on.>

Alexandria spun around, flinging Kumagawa to the only unoccupied Dragon Suit with far more force than was actually necessary. Forget washing it, she was going to have her uniform replaced altogether after this.

“Ah, but, but! I really should ask – your power…”

“Yes? What about it?”

“Does it change the way you think? Make you look at the world differently to a normal human?”

“…mine does, yes.”

“Ah.”

“What?”

“What I’m describing is basically a magic ritual. But magic was designed for people who thought like human beings – it’s not safe to use by those whose brains work differently.”

“…but it should be fine if I get someone without ‘my kind of power’ to do it, right?”

“Joseph!” She yelled.

“I told you before, call me JoJo!” Joseph yelled back, flying his Dragon Suit like it was an airplane (that is, the on-board bio-computer had to keep stepping in to stop him from crashing). Struggling with one hand with the controls, he reached out with his other hand and grabbed a terrified rabbit.

A golden, crackling surge of Hamon surged down Joseph’s arm and into the rabbit, causing its ears to stiffen out like helicopter blades. With that, he unceremoniously tossed the poor creature out the side of the suit. Surreally, the stiffened ears caused the rabbit to spin though the air and slow it’s fall to something survivable.

In this fashion, Joseph tossed out all eleven rabbits while the rest of the team kept Tiamat occupied and her monsters hurting.

Meanwhile, Alexandria tangled with a creature that looked similar to a spider, if it wasn’t two meters tall and didn’t have blades for arms. She grabbed one arm and ripped it off, but the creature slashed at her with one of it’s other arms. Old habits led to her not dodging such an attack until it was almost too late, and the creature cut a shallow wound into her ‘invincible’ flesh.

“Agh!” She screamed, grabbing two of it’s remaining arms and using them as leverage to break the entire monster in half.

Legend finished blasting another one of the creatures, and came over to check on her. “Alexandria, are you…?!”

“I’ll be fine.” She waved him off. “Remember, these things can hurt anything that came from a womb, and that includes us!”

“Before she died, Tiamat created eleven monsters to kill the gods that had killed her mate, and the gods killed those eleven monsters in the same battle that they were able to slice her in half. Switching the order of events lessens the connection, but if you recreate that battle the world should 'remember' that Tiamat is supposed to be dead.”

And as the first of the rabbits fell into the Chaos tide, someone with very good vision and a superhuman reading speed might have been able to glimpse the names on the rabbit’s name tags: Bašmu, Ušumgallu, Mušmaḫḫū, Mušḫuššu, Laḫmu, Ugallu, Uridimmu, Girtablullû, Umū dabrūtu, Kulullû and Kusarikku.

A flicker of recognition seemed to pass through Tiamat as the eleven rabbits sank into the Chaos Tide, and as rabbits were warped and changed by the Tide, they each changed into their own, unique forms; different from the monsters randomly emerging from the Tide.

“Everything’s ready over here!” Joseph shouted, wincing. For some reason, his head suddenly felt sore, like he’d tried to understand a really difficult math problem. He channelled some Hamon into it to deal with the pain.

Alexandria heard the shout and saw what had happened to the rabbits. Nearly there. “Cinereal!”

Cinereal held the power to produce something like ash from her body, shooting it out in waves and blasts. Before the battle had started, Alexandria had had her spread the stuff as far and as wide as she could in the time they had.

When Tiamat had arrived, the ash had been buried under the Chaos Tide, but hadn’t been erased. And as Cinereal snapped her fingers, she reminded everyone why she had previously gone by the name ‘Ash Phoenix’.

The Chaos Tide bubbled, steamed, and then violently erupted as the ash beneath it violently caught fire and burned hotter then molten gold.

All of the assembled fighters were high above the mud when this happened, but several of them still covered their faces as the sudden burst of head erupted upwards from all around them.

After an eternity, when the ash had all burned up, the Chaos Tide sat on the ground as so much dry earth.

Many of the smaller monsters had been destroyed, but not all of them, and the eleven rabbits-turned-monsters did not appear to have been harmed at all.

And, of course, Tiamat herself was perfectly fine.

This is it.

“Everyone! Once the eleven monsters are dead, we can destroy Tiamat!” Alexandria yelled.

“Well then,” Eidolon smiled “lets get to work.”

Chapter Text

[Warning! Temporal instability detected! This record may no longer be part of the current timeline!]

[Please proceed immediately to the next record!]

Bašmu was a horned snake, so long its body stretched out to the horizon. It had six mouths and seven tounges.

Narwhal slammed its head into the ground with a forcefield, and proceeded to systematically carve it up.

Ušumgallu was a lion/dragon fusion monster.

Several Dragon Suits teamed up on it, tearing it apart with blades aflame with fire and lightning.

Mušmaḫḫū was a fusion of a serpent, lion and a bird.

Cinereal took this one, burying it in ash before roasting it alive.

Mušḫuššu was a dragon with the hind legs of an eagle, the front legs of a cat, a long neck and tail, and a tongue like a snake.

Morrigan, now dressed in a leotard and with upside-down bat wings emerging from the back of her waist and head, licked her lips. “It’s body has gotten much more impressive, but does it still have the soul of a rabbit, I wonder?”

Mušḫuššu leaped toward her, forepaws outstretched and jaw wide.

Morrigan laughed.

As Mušḫuššu reached her, the delinquent queen of Makai split into two complete mirror images, on on either side of the monster.

Mušḫuššu’s head swivelled around, trying to decide which of the two it should attack. Morrigan didn’t wait. Both of her forms kicked out, and as she did so her wings changed into a series of spiked tails that pierced Mušḫuššu’s body like spears.

In perfect unison, both Morrigans smoothly moved into a long-familiar series of attacks. Her wings became blades, spears, spikes from the ground, whatever she needed to soundly thrash the ancient anti-god monster.

She ended the combo with one final axe kick, and the two Morrigans became one again. She sauntered up to the stunned monster and lifted its head up to her own.

She kissed the monster, whose weak struggles faded as it shrivelled and dried up.

“Ah.” She smacked her lips. “That was definitely not the soul of a rabbit. There really isn’t anything better than a mother’s cooking!”

The details of Laḫmu’s appearance were impossible to make out because the creature was so hairy that the creature itself was hidden behind a veil of hair.

Armsmaster wasn’t worried in the slightest, activating the plasma blade on his halberd.

Ugallu was a storm-cloud with a lion’s head.

Myrddin raised his staff. “Yeah, I’m not playing around here.”

Ugallu immediately pulled it’s head back into its body as Myrddin started to rapidly draw runes in the air, causing concussive blasts to ravage the beast’s gaseous form.

A moment’s crackle through the cloud was all the warning the ‘wizard’ got before a lightning bolt shot out from Ugallu and toward him. Before he could do anything about it, the bolt suddenly splashed against a bronze shield that hadn’t been there a second ago.

Myrddin blinked at the white-haired archer who had suddenly jumped in front of him, with the shield in turn floating in front of him. Unlike the other non-flyers, the archer was standing on the topside of his Dragon Suit rather than in the cockpit.

“Watch yourself.” The archer chided, causing the shield to vanish with a gesture. “These are monsters that were created to slaughter an entire pantheon. Even though they failed, they still can’t be taken lightly.”

Ugallu cracked again, but before he could repeat his attack a gale-force wind suddenly slammed the creature into one of the stone altars.

“I know that.” Myrddin grumbled, drawing more runes in the air. He lifted up a hand, and the baked earth that used to be Chaos Tide started lifting up from the ground up into a sphere. “But thanks for the save.”

Enough of Ugallu’s cloud-body was blown off that his head was visible again, which roared.

Myrddin took that as an opportunity to blow the compressed sphere of dried-out Tide into the monster’s head and out the other side.

Uridimmu was a giant dog with a human’s head.

Chevalier clenched his teeth. “Sorry, but you have to die.” He said, hefting his cannon-blade with intent.

Girtablullû was a ‘scorpion centaur’ - the torso, head and arms of a human being were placed on the body of a scorpion in place of its head.

His lack of a ranged attack meant he was helpless as Rime rained down ice fractals from above.

Umū dabrūtu was also a monster with an unknown form, cloaked as it was in storm clouds.

Eidolon took this one, swapping one of his powers out for one that let him fire microwaves (the waves, not the appliances) from his fingertips and vaporising the creature.

Kulullû was effectively a merman, swimming through what little of the Chaos Tide Tiamat had replaced after the inferno.

The black mud did not protect it from the rail of screws Kumagawa sent raining from the sky.

Kusarikku was a centaur with the ears and horns of a bull.

This did not help him against Legend’s lasers.

That left only Tiamat herself. As her ‘children’ died around her, she started to move, becoming more and more distressed. As the last of them died, she let out a great, bestial wail.

Alexandria could see the chains binding her arms and legs start to strain as the goddess turned beast suddenly fought against her confinement. With a sinking feeling in her stomach, Alexandria saw Tiamat’s form begin to grow and change, becoming even more beast-like.

Alexandria clenched her teeth, remembering Index’s last piece of advice.

“Tiamat was eventually sliced in half, but she was actually killed when her belly was filled with wind and an invincible spear was used to pierce her heart. The closer you can match those conditions, the better your chances of this working are.”

There was one more parahuman present, one who hadn’t made any move to help at all. This wasn’t because of any sort of cowardice or incompetence, but rather because they were a one-shot cannon.

Exalt was one of the most powerful aerokinetics in the world. It took him forever to build up a charge – days sometimes – but once he had one, he could even stagger an Endbringer.

Alexandria was pretty sure that was enough to make a god notice.

Tiamat’s chains shattered, and she quickly swelled to twenty meters tall. She screamed, and Exalt recognised his chance. While her mouth was still open, he expended his charge – a city’s worth of air was fired down her gullet in the form of air blades.

Tiamat’s roar suddenly cut off as more air was forced down her throat than could actually fit down it. Her face, half-way transformed into something monstrous, twisted in what could only be described as discomfort.

This was it – their chance. Alexandria didn’t know any parahumans who could produce ‘invincible spears’, so she had decided to substitute herself in. She’d performed the role of spearhead often enough.

Tiamat was still growing – still mutating – so she didn’t waste any time, shooting down from the sky like a meteor impact. If Index’s advice held true, then she’d be able to burst through Tiamat’s skin and piece her heart, returning the salt-water goddess back to the afterlife.

Impact – and Alexandria could feel the familiar, if uncommon, sensation of flesh refusing to yield under her fist.

Tiamat swiped with a hand-turned-claw, and Alexandria could somehow feel her time-frozen flesh tear under her attack. In pain, she went flying through the air, but not under her own power. With a sudden impact, she slammed into one of the stone altars, breaking it in half.

“Alexandria!” Legend and Eidolon yelled in unison, both flying over to their downed ex-teammate. The rest of the group fired any and all ranged attacks they had into Tiamat, who was now fifty meters tall and still growing. With a ground-shaking thud, Tiamat slammed into the ground as she abandoned her two-legged stance for a four-legged one.

Legend arrived first, finding Alexandria clutching her side where the flesh had been raked by claws. There was no blood beyond the first initial spray, no progression of the injury, but as Alexandria writhed on the ground, clearly in pain, Legend caught a glimpse of intestine.

Eidolon arrived seconds afterwards, his hands already glowing green. He held them up to Alexandria’s torn flesh, and the other two could hear him chanting “No no no no no…” under his breath.

Alexandria’s flesh began to close up under the effect of Eidolon’s power, but slowly. In fact, it seemed to be slowing down, Alexandria’s immutability of flesh reasserting itself in the worst way.

“Not again!” Eidolon cursed.

Legend swore with considerably stronger language, and made to stand up. Alexandria’s hand grabbed his ankle like a vice.

“Spear her through the chest.” She rasped. “While the winds are still trapped in her belly. If she can get them out, Exalt won’t be able to put them back.”

Legend hesitated, but nodded and flew off.

Eidolon cursed again as Alexandria’s flesh completely stopped healing, the wound still about seven centimetres wide. “No!”

“…stitches…”

Eidolon looked up in confusion. “What?”

Alexandria pointed back in the direction of the battle. “Her minions can hurt me. Make a needle from one of their bodies.”

Understanding lit up his eyes (presumably, he was wearing a mask after all) and he flew off to do as suggested.

Meanwhile, Legend announced his return to the battle by firing a laser at Tiamat wider than he was tall. Tiamat took it without flinching, and Legend cursed again. He’d even taken the trouble to shape that laser like a spear and everything.

Tiamat had now reached the height of twenty meters tall again, this time on all fours. By now, she was beginning to look very much like a dragon with boobs – blood red wings had burst out of her shoulders and were now being used to blow massive gusts of wind at those attacking her from range.

The battle, which had progressed just as planned until now, was falling apart. Tiamat’s range with her claws and teeth was growing, and her wings were deceptively effective weapons. Soon, she started knocking flyers out of the sky, who had to be caught by their fellows before they fell into the pool of Chaos Tide below her, which further increased her advantage.

Legend cursed. “No no no no!”

“Excuse me.”

Legend turned, frustrated, to find a Dragon Suit carrying the as-yet unnamed archer. “Yes?”

“Do you think you could hold her still for a moment?” The archer asked. “I have an attack I rather can’t afford to miss with.”

Legend stared at the man for a second, before throwing up his hands. “Sure. Whatever.”

“Thank you.” The archer said, holding his hands in front of himself. “Trace on.”

As the outline of a giant ornate spear began to form in the archer’s hands, understanding and hope lit up Legend’s eyes.

“Everybody clear!” Legend yelled, placing both hands together and producing several beams of white laser beams that crashed down into Tiamat and the area around her, freezing everything solid.

Tiamat writhed under the ice, which was steaming already just like it had against Godzilla. But Legend didn’t let up – the instant he saw an area begin to be free of ice, he immediately redirected one of his beams and froze that area too.

But Tiamat was doing more than simply straining against the ice – as Legend watched, her form was mutating in a new fashion – her body growing redder and redder, hotter and hotter, and the ice was starting to melt faster than he could freeze it.

The archer’s spear was fully formed now, and he stepped forward to the outside edge of the Dragon Suit, using the spear to draw back his bow like the world’s largest arrow. Legend realised that, whether Tiamat was immobilised or not, the archer still planned to take the shot.

That was when something new started happening. Tiamat’s body suddenly stopped changing, stopped growing, and started to flicker, her edges blurring like a bad TV connection. Tiamat still writhed, unable to scream with the wind lodged in her belly, and Legend suddenly realised that she wasn’t the one responsible for this.

The archer next to him narrowed his eyes, but said nothing. Without a word, he fired.

The two of them had been sufficiently high up that it took several seconds for the spear-turned-arrow to reach Tiamat. Somehow sensing the attack, she lifted her monstrous head up, and opened up her mouth…

…which meant that the spear vanished down her gullet.

The archer stepped back from the edge of the Dragon Suit, and turned his back to the battle. “Gáe Bolg.”

The blurring of Tiamat’s form abruptly halted.

There was a small noise that escaped from her throat, almost like a burp.

Then Tiamat exploded, a giant red ball of energy shredding her from within.

The invincible spear had done it’s work. Index’s spell had kicked in.

Tiamat, the mother goddess of Babylonian mythology, was dead once more.

From his sniper’s nest position 3 kilometres away from where the fight had occurred, ‘Agent Timothy’ finally lowered his binoculars. “Yikes. R&D’s going to have one hell of party tonight.”

Unlike when he had brazenly sat in on the Protectorate/PRT meeting, where he had worn business clothing, ‘Agent Timothy’ was now wearing a military uniform the same dark grey as the stone around him. Present on the same altar as him were another twelve people in the same uniform.

“Yes sir!” Agreed one of his comrades excitedly. “The long-range pinpoint Reality Anchors works a treat, sir! Gummed that mutation ability of hers right up, sir!”

“Sir!” Another one of the group, a woman wearing headphones that appeared to be plugged into a child’s xylophone. “We’ve got conformation from Site-49. SCP-152 just updated – we have officially avoided a CK-class scenario.”

‘Timothy’ shook his head. “The boys and girls working on SCP-270 never get enough credit. This is… what, the twenty-third time they’ve avoided a K-class?”

“As far as I’m cleared to know, yeah.” She smiled.

“Not only that, but we’ve confirmed the theory that high-end Type Blue phenomena behaves identically to Type Green phenomena.” ‘Timothy’ slapped the backpack-sized Reality Anchor to make his point. “The Protectorate can have all the glory. We just have to make it back to base with no incidents, and today will have been a really good day. Come on – the ‘Way’ won’t stay open forever.”

Eventually, of course, everybody had to go home. As Alexandria had previously noted, the Clairvoyant couldn’t see into Tartarus, so the group had go back the same way they’d entered – through the portal back to Earth Pe. (Except for Morrigan, who seemed to have disappeared when no one was looking.)

As they flew up to the exit (which was placed at the top of a flight of stairs hundreds of meters high, and had therefore been safe from the surge of Chaos Tide), they passed a giant three-headed dog. Cerberus growled at them as they passed, but did not attack. He seemed to know that they weren’t supposed to be there.

“Dragon can pull video footage from her Suits, right?” Legend said, eyeing one of the Suits. “Fighting something that dangerous with casualties that light might be the biggest morale boost we’ve had in years.”

“I’m sure she can.” Alexandria said, absently. The adrenaline (well, her Shard’s emulation of it, anyway) was starting to wear off, and her bed was starting to call her something fierce. The ‘Tiamat-minion-needle’ had pushed back her immutability enough for Eidolon to finish healing her, and had gotten him all exited about maybe regrowing her missing eye, but Alexandria had told him firmly that that could wait until they were all safe and rested.

Blessed light suddenly shined in the dim light of Tartarus, signifying that they had reached the exit. The group headed upwards, eager to escape the jail dimension.

And as they headed out into the bright sunshine of a nondescript field somewhere in Earth Pe, every single member of the group froze.

Laying on the ground before them was a bloody pile of meat. It took several seconds before even the most observant of the group recognised it as a living being, and it took those who knew who she was and what she looked like to recognise it as Princess Celestia.

She’d been scalped – her horn was gone too – and there were bloody stumps where two of her legs and one of her wings were supposed to be. Horrifyingly, her tail was still trying to wave in an ethereal wind, but coated in fresh blood as it was it just looked like a bloody worm wriggling in it’s death throes.

The group only realised she was still alive when one of her eyelids opened ever-so-slightly, and a word passed through her lips in a dry, pained, agonised voice:

“Rrrrrruuuuuunnnn!”

It was only then that they noticed the other. The girl in a pure white outfit that somewhat resembled a wedding dress, standing patiently facing the group. Neither the dirt from the ground nor the blood from the dying pony had touched her, as though it was afraid of soiling her purity.

Eidolon felt all three of his powers change to long-range teleportation powers.

“Hello, Alexandria.” The White Queen greeted her as though they were old friends, fanning herself with Celestia’s missing wing.

Most of the group prepared themselves for battle, but Alexandria stood, frozen, a ‘deer-in-headlights’ look on her face.

“It looks like you solved another problem without using me.” The Queen continued, ignoring the group’s preparations.

No.

Actually, it was more like she treated acknowledging the groups hostility as beneath her.

“I warned you not to do that.”

Chapter Text

“Now, now… that was rather pointless.”

“After all, they are just about to fight the Queen, aren’t they? Why would you extend yourself so much just to keep a few of them alive for only a few minutes longer?”

“…”

“Now, are you going to withdraw your support, or am I going to have to support Tiamat? I’d rather not run the risk of attracting the Queen’s attention, but I will.”

“…”

“It seems you do have some sense in you after all.”

Bašmu was a horned snake, so long its body stretched out to the horizon. It had six mouths and seven tounges.

Ušumgallu was a lion/dragon fusion monster.

Mušmaḫḫū was a fusion of a serpent, lion and a bird.

Mušḫuššu was a dragon with the hind legs of an eagle, the front legs of a cat, a long neck and tail, and a tongue like a snake.

The details of Laḫmu’s appearance were impossible to make out because the creature was so hairy that the creature itself was hidden behind a veil of hair.

Ugallu was a storm-cloud with a lion’s head.

Uridimmu was a giant dog with a human’s head.

Girtablullû was a ‘scorpion centaur’ - the torso, head and arms of a human being were placed on the body of a scorpion in place of its head.

Umū dabrūtu was also a monster with an unknown form, cloaked as it was in storm clouds.

Kulullû was effectively a merman, swimming through what little of the Chaos Tide Tiamat had replaced after the inferno.

Kusarikku was a centaur with the ears and horns of a bull.

Alexandria’s initial plan – to split up the monsters and have them fought one on one – failed almost immediately. The surge of energy she’d been feeling since Tiamat had first appeared had suddenly disappeared, replaced by a vague feeling of Déjà vu. By the looks of things, the others felt the same way – even the Dragon Suits seemed to be flying more sluggishly all of a sudden. Did one of the monsters have a strength-sapping power?

The eleven monsters did not wait for their opponents to recover from their sudden stumble, charging together as one group. Alexandria lost sight of the other group members almost immediately, her focus occupied solely on Ušumgallu attempting to bite her in half.

The monster was fast, but not as fast as Leviathan. The fact that it could hurt her was terrifying, but the Siberian had already dispelled that particular illusion.

So she weaved and ducked and evaded the teeth and claws of the monster. All around her she could hear pure chaos as her carefully planned assault devolved to a senseless melee.

She flinched at the sound of a Dragon Suit exploding, and Ušumgallu capitalised on her split-second distraction to snap at her with its jaws once again. She began her dodge just an instant too late, and her left leg was caught between the monster’s jaws, her knee nearly bitten clean through.

She screamed in the mostly-forgotten sensation of pain, white spots appearing in her vision.

The sickening sound of flesh tearing as Hero was rent in half.

Eidolon’s screams as he tried, desperately, to fix things, to make it that their world wasn’t falling apart.

Legend, the only one still properly thinking, having long since given up on stopping the slaughter, and simply trying to save as many as he could.

The sensation of half of her face dripping down her body.

Alexandria shook her head roughly, forcing the perfectly-preserved memories out of her mind. Her screams changed into more of a roar as she grabbed onto one of the two teeth pinning her leg in place and pulled.

Ušumgallu roared as she ripped the tooth out of his jaw. Her leg freed, Alexandria flew clear – then turned the tooth around and plunged it into Ušumgallu’s eye.

The monster’s roar changed pitch, writhing around in a desperate attempt to dislodge her, but Alexandria put out the monster’s other eye, blinding it, before flying back. Blood gushed from her leg and the monster’s eyes, but the blood-flow from her leg was slowing as her flesh’s time-stopped nature began to reassert itself.

Alexandria took a deep breath, then grit her teeth and flew down to the top of Ušumgallu’s head, trying desperately to hold the monster’s own tooth in place as the monster thrashed around.

Then she swung her other hand down like a sledgehammer and drove the tooth into Ušumgallu’s brain.

Leaving the monster to it’s death throes, Alexandria flew up above the battle to take stock of the situation. Seven of the eleven monsters were down, but so were most of the Dragon Suits and many of the flyers. Morrigan was fighting two of the monsters at once, now sporting upside-down bat wings from her head and waist and a savage grin on her face. Even as she watched, Cinereal’s ash form was enveloped by Umū dabrūtu’s clouds. She did not reemerge.

No no no no no…

Alexandria angled her body down, ready to fly down and assist however she could, but a great wail caught her attention instead.

Tiamat was writhing, straining against the chains that held her in place as her ‘children’ died around her. She was twice as large as she had been when Alexandria had last seen her, and as she watched the goddess turned beast continued to grow larger and more monstrous with each passing second.

No! Alexandria clenched her teeth. Not yet!

“Tiamat was eventually sliced in half, but she was actually killed when her belly was filled with wind and an invincible spear was used to pierce her heart. The closer you can match those conditions, the better your chances of this working are.”

Remembering Index’s last piece of advice, Alexandria whirled around to search the air above the battle field for her ace in the hole. Exalt was still there, but in visible distress as he watch people he’d fought alongside for years fall to the teeth and claws of monsters.

Alexandria needed Exalt to wait until the opportune moment – he was the only one who could generate the kind of winds they needed, but he was a one-shot cannon. Once he’d spent his charge, that was it.

The sounds of snapping chains rang out, and Alexandria turned back to find Tiamat had snapped her chains and was now twenty meters tall, and bearing a pair of red-feathered wings. She opened her mouth in what was almost song, and red beams of energy burst out of her body to rake though the assembled fighters.

And as she swelled and changed, Kumagawa’s screws started to rust over…

“Anyone else feel like we’ve done this before?” ‘Agent Timothy’ muttered, lowering a pair of binoculars. He and another twelve people in militaristic, nondescript uniforms had set up a sniper’s nest position 3 kilometres away from where the fight was, up in one of the stone altars.

“Sir!” Another one of the group, a woman wearing headphones that appeared to be plugged into a child’s xylophone. “Emergency communication from Temporal Anomalies! We’re reading major changes to the timeline!”

“Where are the changes focused?” ‘Timothy’ asked, though he knew there would only be one reason that Temporal Anomalies would be contacting a group of field agents.

Instead of answering, the woman just pointed to the distant battle between humans and monsters.

“Just there?” ‘Timothy’ demanded. “The changes don’t affect us?”

The woman blinked, then grabbed a mallet and quickly played a series of seemingly random notes on the xylophone. She then listened into her headphones, apparently receiving a response. “No sir, TA confirms the only changes are to the Protectorate task force.”

‘Timothy’ grunted to confirm he’d heard her, his mind whirling. Had they escaped the changes because the changer didn’t think them important, or had their future selves done their jobs and made sure no one ever knew they were there?

If it was the second… they might still be able to recover from this.

“Bradley!” ‘Timothy’ barked. A younger man, who was manning a pair of what looked like cigar-shaped spotlights with no actual lights on the ends, straightened up.

“Sir?”

“Have you locked onto X201 yet?” ‘Timothy’ demanded, using the Foundation’s temporary designation for Tiamat.

“Sir?” Bradley replied, confused. “Of course, sir.”

“Good man. Activate.”

“Sir!” Bradley protested. “These anchors are only rated to eighty Humes, sir! We can distract her, but she –”

“I read those briefings too, Bradley.” ‘Timothy’ sharply interjected. “But we can either slow her down now and give the latex-wearing showboats over there a chance, or we can wait until they’re all dead and try then. Which do you think is better? Oh, and that’s a rhetorical question. Activate the Anchors, Bradley. That’s an order.”

“Yes sir.” Bradley said meekly.

Suddenly, Tiamat’s body stopped changing, stopped growing, and started to flicker, her edges blurring like a bad TV connection. Tiamat still writhed, screaming as her children fought and died around her.

Alexandria did a quick headcount – leaving out her and Exalt, less than ten fighters remained of their starting group of over forty.

Not all of the eleven monsters had been brought down, but they couldn’t afford to wait any longer. “Exalt!” She screamed. “Now!”

The parahuman did as he was ordered, and there was an enormous burst of wind as an entire city’s worth of air was shoved down Tiamat’s throat. She gagged, visibly choking on the wind.

An invincible spear. Now they had to pierce her heart, and somehow hope that she hadn’t thrown away all their lives because of the concerns of a fourteen-year-old nun who still believed in magic.

She was the spearhead. Her ‘invincible’ flesh would fulfil the legends description. It had to.

She flew down, past Legend and Eidolon tag-teaming one of the remaining monsters, past Armsmaster fighting valiantly to defend the last remaining Dragon Suit, past Morrigan bleeding from her mouth as she continued to fight.

She clapped her hands together, and flew into Tiamat’s chest like a living spear.

Tiamat’s flesh did not budge.

Alexandria had no hope of dodging the red beam that shined down from Tiamat’s eyes. She couldn’t see past the crushing despair that filled her entire being.

The beam crashed into her side, carving out a hole the size of a softball through her organs. Somehow, the energy had physical force behind it, and she was sent careening through the air. She failed randomly through the air, and it was more due to instinct than any rational thought that led to her grabbing the side of one of the stone altars as she flew past it, preventing herself from falling into the Chaos Tide.

The sounds of explosions filled the air as the surviving Blasters threw everything they had into one more volley, even as fresh monsters emerged from the Chaos Tide.

Alexandria stared up into the black expanse that formed the ‘roof’ of Tartarus. Well. This isn’t how I thought I would die. Against the Nine, an Endbringer… I’d hoped to see the final battle against Scion so much…

“Hey, hey. It’s a little soon to be giving up. Don’t you call yourself a hero?”

Alexandria looked around to find the unnamed white-haired archer from before splayed out against the stone behind her. He looked even worse than she did – though his flesh was mostly intact, he was absolutely soaked in his own blood.

“There’s no point.” Alexandria said, feeling the hole in her side begin to petrify but not heal. “We need an ‘invincible’ spear to kill Tiamat, and I…”

The archer chuckled, blood dripping down his chin. “If you alone were enough to defeat Beast II, there would be no need for me to have been sent here, would there?”

Alexandria blinked slowly, her eyes now showing confusion along with agony. “What do you…?”

The archer shook his head. “Not now. No time.” He held out a shaking hand before himself. “Trace on.”

A glowing bolt of energy formed in the archer’s grip, and faded away to form a long red spear, barbs protruding from the base of the blade.

The archer pressed the spear into Alexandria’s hands. “Go. It will not remain for long.” As soon as Alexandria’s fingers closed around the hilt, the archer’s body dissolved into small motes of light that quickly faded to nothing.

Slowly, her eyes moved back into focus, and the blackness at the edges of her vision halted in its encroachment. The sounds of the battle were still going on, though less then there were before. Were her friends winning? Had Tiamat killed them all since she had last checked?

Her grip on the spear tightened.

Somehow, she found the strength to get up.

Somehow, she found the courage to turn around.

Somehow, she found the will raise up the spear.

Somehow, she found Tiamat’s chest with her eyes.

Somehow, nothing stopped her as she made one last charge.

Somehow, the spear sank easily into the flesh that had been so unyielding before.

Somehow, Alexandria knew it was Eidolon who had caught her, his hands already glowing green as he did his best to seal her wounds.

Somehow, mere mortals were able to kill a god.

Eventually, of course, everybody had to go home. As Alexandria had previously noted, the Clairvoyant couldn’t see into Tartarus, so the group had go back the same way they’d entered – through the portal back to Earth Pe. (Except for Morrigan, who seemed to have disappeared when no one was looking.)

As they flew up to the exit (which was placed at the top of a flight of stairs hundreds of meters high, and had therefore been safe from the surge of Chaos Tide), they passed a giant three-headed dog. Cerberus growled at them as they passed, but did not attack. He seemed to know that they weren’t supposed to be there.

Nobody said anything as they left. The loss of their comrades was still too fresh in everyone’s hearts. Nearly everyone there had fought in Endbringer battles before, and this felt far too much like the aftermath of one.

Blessed light suddenly shined in the dim light of Tartarus, signifying that they had reached the exit. The group headed upwards, eager to escape the jail dimension.

And as they headed out into the bright sunshine of a nondescript field somewhere in Earth Pe, every single member of the group froze.

Laying on the ground before them was a bloody pile of meat. It took several seconds before even the most observant of the group recognised it as a living being, and it took those who knew who she was and what she looked like to recognise it as Princess Celestia.

She’d been scalped – her horn was gone too – and there were bloody stumps where two of her legs and one of her wings were supposed to be. Horrifyingly, her tail was still trying to wave in an ethereal wind, but coated in fresh blood as it was it just looked like a bloody worm wriggling in it’s death throes.

The group only realised she was still alive when one of her eyelids opened ever-so-slightly, and a word passed through her lips in a dry, pained, agonised voice:

“Rrrrrruuuuuunnnn!”

It was only then that they noticed the other. The girl in a pure white outfit that somewhat resembled a wedding dress, standing patiently facing the group. Neither the dirt from the ground nor the blood from the dying pony had touched her, as though it was afraid of soiling her purity.

Eidolon felt all three of his powers change to long-range teleportation powers.

“Alexandria.” The White Queen greeted her with a frown, Celestia’s missing wing held on a hand that was pressed into her hips. “I’m even more upset with you now. This isn’t a dress rehearsal – just because you screwed up your introduction doesn’t mean you get a do-over.”

The group wearily prepared themselves for battle, but Alexandria, slung over Eidolon’s back in a fireman’s carry, froze up. A look of pure panic was etched into the lines of her face.

Because she was facing backwards, she saw the moment Ajimu appeared out of thin air.

“My dearest apologies, your highness.” Ajimu said as she gave a mocking bow. “But it was decided that you needed some light entertainment before your meal, and I was the only candidate. But since I wasn’t here the first time around, they had to redo things to go get me.”

Alexandria turned to Ajimu in shock, confusion now mixing with the terror in her eyes.

The Queen tossed aside Celestia’s wing as though it was garbage. “Oh my, if it isn’t the girl who despises both Plus and Minus. I didn’t expect to see you standing against me. Have you gotten over your fear of fighting protagonists?”

Ajimu shrugged. “Not really, but I think I can fight a Final Boss for at least 15 seconds.”

The Queen laughed, covering her mouth with the back of her hand. “Yet another idiot who thinks themselves cultured without actually reading any of the books they love to quote from.”

Ajimu’s eyes narrowed for a second, then they flew wide open in fear.

The White Queen, who spent most of her time trying to capture the affection of a boy named ‘Alice (with) Rabbit’, smiled. “So here’s a question to ponder: was I always the White Queen, or was I promoted once I crossed the chessboard?”

“See? Despite the more challenging fight, they ended up in almost the same place.”

“Standing before the Queen with none who could possibly hope to even annoy her.”

“This round, I believe, goes to me…”

“Wait.”

“When did that twelve quadrillion skills girl get there?!”

“What have you done, you stupid Gemstone?!”

Chapter Text

[Razor leaf] Blades of grass are actual blades skill [Macbeth] Bestow bad luck skill [North star] Opponent is already dead skill [Running gag] Opponent becomes lost skill [Eye roll] True love saves the day skill [Smooth jazz] Everybody must dance skill [Tick tock] Age to dust skill [Tock tick] Revert to fetus skill [Mega buster] Steal power skill [Tiny violin] Turn story into Rom-Com skill [X zone] Summon allies from other dimensions skill [Light hawk] Survive black hole skill [Rose petals] Run really fast skill [Heart ring] Planet attacks the opponent skill

The trees and grass turned into deadly weapons that shot outwards towards the White Queen, who blurred for slightly less than an instant, and the blades suddenly changed direction to pierce the chests of a dozen figures who were still materialising.

Fields of reversed and accelerated time surrounded the Queen, who shattered them with a flick of her finger. The shattered shards of time reformed into a sphere of absolute darkness around Ajimu, who sucked it inside herself with a quick puckering of her lips.

[Master Sword] Destroy evil skill [Soul Edge] Destroy good skill [Dial H] Become a superhero skill [Freudian Excuse] Become a supervillian skill [Saberface] Audience affection skill [Trap card] Negate attack skill [Phoenix Wrong] Everyone changes places skill [Antidisestablishmentarianism] Dismantle enemy power base skill [Big red button] Self destruct skill [No kryptonite] Take no damage skill [Puella magi] Gain power from despair skill [Proton pack] Defeat spirit skill

The Queen pointed a finger at Ajimu, and a beam of pure white blew outwards and completely obliterated Ajimu and her attacks.

[Jack’s will] Reenter space-time skill [Next line] Recover from certain defeat skill [Senzu bean] Recover spent energy skill [Only a doombot] Author is a fanboy skill

Ajimu burst back out from the void, but this time her hair was black, and the screws in her body were gone.

“Oh dear.” She smiled. “It seems your attack obliterated my seal.”

[Botox injection] Halt growth skill [‘Merica] Overkill skill [Omni-clean] Remove from history skill [True hero] Always strong enough skill [Cop out] Change rules of fight skill [Goblin king] Opponent has no power skill [Nesting doll] Always have backup skill [Land grab] Gain home-field advantage skill [New 52] Opponent is erased by retcon skill

The Queen smiled back, casually obliterating Ajimu’s attacks. The white beams she fired continued on, nothing stopping them – and that included the mountain ranges in the way. “Of course. I couldn’t stand it if someone claimed I had beat you because you weren’t at your best.”

[Heartless] Control Darkness skill [Anti spiral] Match power skill [Last page] Know the answer to the mystery skill [Password123] Hack opponent skill [Deadly nightshade] Poison skill [Sick burn] Disease skill [Anpanman] Kill in one attack skill [Spider sense] Never be surprised skill [Double cheat] Merge magic and science skill [Paragon interrupt] Surprising kindness skill [Renegade interrupt] Surprising violence skill

“Hmm.” Ajimu made a meaningless sound as several of what she had thought were sure-fire attacks were casually shot down mid-flight by the Queen’s white beams. “And here I thought there was only one person who could defy my twelve quadrillion, eight hundred and fifty-eight trillion, fifty-one billion, nine hundred and sixty-eight million, six hundred and thirty-three thousand, eight hundred and sixty-four skills.”

“Really?” The White Queen cocked her head to the side. “I don’t obey the laws that even the gods have to follow, and you think I’d pay attention to the make-believe of a girl who failed to grow up over three trillion years?”

The Queen’s pure white dress rippled, and threads erupted out of it to form thousands of weapons – swords, maces, axes, spears and more – which then rained down on Ajimu as the Queen finally used the Sword of Unsullied Truth that she was named for.

[Safer Sephirot] Not my final form skill [Boob job] Defile image skill [Absolute choice] Limit options skill [Robot hell] Force consequences skill [Nonbeliever] Disregard the power of gods skill [False vacuum] Treat as lower tier level skill [Cat joke] Have nine lives skill [Deus ex machina] God destroys the opponent skill [Avatar] Supported by Light skill [Dormammu’s sister] Summon a worse monster skill [lolFoundation] Everything is a joke skill [Troll spell] Invert healing skill

Ajimu twisted and evaded the hail of white weaponry, not even a scratch on her. The ground, on the other hand, took the full force of the attack and cracked apart.

Neither girl took notice as the very planet they were fighting on began to crumble under the force of their blows.

[Ragna blade] Void sword skill [Easy out] Win on a technicality skill [Sandman] Force sleep skill [Bullet hell] Endless projectiles skill [Sea king] Each attack is fatal skill [Spare quarter] Continue skill [Brain training] Objects that add to ten explode skill [No spoon] Reality is virtual skill [Middle finger] Defy the absolute skill

The individual pieces of planet were used as stepping stones as Ajimu ran and jumped around, filling the void between them with countless balls of energy. At an unseen command, all of them began shooting towards the Queen at unfathomable speeds… that the Queen deflected. All around them, the stars brightened and expanded, just for an instant, then they all went dark. The universe turned turned dark as every source of light in it was extinguished.

“My, you really do think the world is fake, don’t you? I obliterated those you were protecting at the start of the fight, and you have yet to shed a single tear. And your boyfriend went to such lengths to keep you from killing yourself…”

[Mummy package] Deadly curse skill [Also ran] Be forgotten skill [Durendal] The more obscure is the more powerful skill [Kill Tinkerbell] No such thing as magic skill [Fundamental axioms] No such thing as science skill [Soup isle] Everything is soup skill [Maiden’s battlefield] Win in the realm of love skill

“It is true that Kumagawa-kun has a really funny idea of suicide watch, but doesn’t your love interest want you dead?”

The White Queen smiled serenely as she planted a dainty foot on Ajimu’s chest and ripped both of her arms off.

[Black knight] Fight with missing limbs skill [Seven dragons] Grant wishes skill [Super VPN] Cannot be tracked skill [Beachfront war] Never surrender skill [Invert Zebra] Swap black and white skill [Stage hand] Things that are black do not exist skill [Scissor blade] Sever ties to this world skill [Ribbon accessory] Immune to status effects skill [Squirrel screen] Unexplained victory skill

Ajimu twisted and moved around with her legs, completely ignoring the blood gushing from her shoulders. The world inverted in colour so that blackness of space became white and the Queen became black. But instead of inconveniencing her, the Black Queen seemed to be even more ferocious than before, peppering Ajimu with thousands of swords from her dress that obliterated Ajimu’s body, leaving only her head.

[Artery ropes] Fight as a disembodied head skill [Mane Maniac] Fight with hair skill [Wonderguard bypass] Ignore enemy immunity skill [Snake hair] Petrification skill [Killer looks] Eye beams skill

The Black Queen gently floated over to the head that was still failing around, trying anything that would even slow down the Queen. She picked up the head by its hair, completely ignoring the desperate attacks it threw at her.

“I despise people who don’t know when to give up.” The Queen commented idly.

Ajimu’s mouth twisted into something that could have been a grin or a grimace. “Well, I did have to be sure.”

The Queen reformed her Sword into a singular blade, and grasped it in one hand, the tip held over Ajimu’s nose. “Sure about what?”

“Keeping the world from being destroyed really is impossible with people like you around.” Ajimu closed her eyes. “So I guess that means this world really is real after all.”

“If loosing a fight proves that to you, I would have happily proved it to you long ago.” The Queen plunged the Sword into Ajimu’s face and delicately began to carve it up.

“And that means that the people in the world are real too.” Ajimu’s speech was becoming distorted as the Sword sliced through her jaw. “How embarrassing. I wasted so much time…”

The Queen’s eyes narrowed for a second, then flew open in rage. “YOU DARE?!”

[Skip turn] Take several actions at once skill [Valhalla sunrise] Revive the fallen skill [Crazy Diamond] Repair any damage skill [Split the party] Scatter friends across space skill [Rainbow power] Treat the whole world as friends skill [Turtles on turtles] Ignore dimensional barriers skill [Will it blend?] Combine skills skill [Final taunt] Knowing smirk skill

The Queen screamed in rage, exploding outward in an eruption of pure blackness.

Chapter Text

For the first time in over twenty years, Alexandria awoke to a throbbing headache.

“Ow.” She muttered, trying to remember how to deal with the sensation. “Ow ow ow ow.”

“Oh dear, are you still hurting? Here, let me see if I can help…”

Through her closed eyelids, Alexandria could see a soft light envelope her, and the pain in her head faded to a manageable level.

Was that Eidolon? No. She told herself. Don’t be stupid. That’s a woman’s voice.

Though she really didn’t feel like it, Alexandria forced herself to open her eyes.

She found herself staring into eyes the size of softballs and a glowing protrusion of white bone.

She blinked slowly, processing this information, and leaned backwards so that she wasn’t nose-to-nose with whoever it was. With the extra distance, she was able to recognise the eyes as belonging to Princess Celestia, her horn glowing a soft gold.

She blinked again. “Princess?”

Celestia’s horn’s glow faded, and the pony took several steps backwards. “There. Are you feeling better? I’ve afraid I can’t do much more than dull the pain…”

Alexandria rubbed her head gingerly. “It’s fine. Thank you.”

She punched herself in the arm with enough force to shatter bricks. Her arm flexed under the pressure but did not break. Still ‘invincible’.

She paused. “Your highness, aren’t we supposed to be dead?”

“Well, I was quite worried about that for a while.” Celestia admitted. “But I don’t think so. I’m sure that if I was dead then Discord would be here to rub it in my muzzle.”

Alexandria levitated herself into a standing position gingerly. Now that she thought about it, she rather doubted that her Shard would follow her into the afterlife. “Do you know where we are?”

“One of the human worlds, though obviously that doesn’t narrow things down very much.”

Celestia tilted her head, indicating the walls around them, and Alexandria turned her focus to them. They appeared to be in a back alley somewhere, and out on the main street busy crowds walked past. In line with what Celestia had observed, they were human – Caucasian even.

“I suppose that means Ajimu must have removed us from the battlefield somehow.” Alexandria said, rubbing her prosthetic eye. For some reason, it felt rather squishy under her fingers…

“And healed us.” Celestia added. “To which I am very grateful for.”

“Hmm.” Alexandria made a wordless noise of agreement, hiding how uncomfortable she was right now. Her powers made healing her just as hard as hurting her – so being healed so easily and so thoroughly had some unfortunate implications if she ever had to fight Ajimu.

“Alright, who’s managed to get themselves lost in the dimensions this time – wait, its you?!”

A new voice, but not an unfamiliar one. Alexandria and Celestia both turned to find a young man with a buzz-cut and giant shoulder panels marching down the alleyway.

“Access.” Alexandria greeted flatly. “So that means either Earth Ayin or Earth Tsadi.”

“Man, can’t you just call the worlds by numbers, like everybody else? I can barely remember the Greek letters, and you expect me to remember Hebrew?” Access rubbed his hair, looking quite cross. “Look, I’ve told you people before: I don’t know what you think you know, if you don’t get your noses out of other people’s realities then I’m gonna hafta… gonna hafta…”

Access slowed to a stop and began to blankly stare at Celestia, who he had only just gotten a good look at.

“Access, this is Princess Celestia, of Equestria.” Alexandria introduced him, trying not to enjoy his stupification too much. “Your highness, this is Access, the cosmic hall monitor.”

The derogatory name seemed to shake Access out of his funk. “Man, I’m never going to live that one down, am I?” He blinked. “Uh, good to meet you, miss unicorn princess lady.”

“It’s very nice to meet you too, cosmic hall monitor.” Celestia said with a smile.

“Look, that’s not actually my – you know what, never mind. What are you two doing here? I told you before, you can’t just jump dimensions without thinking –”

“We’re not here on purpose, Access.” Alexandria cut the old argument short. “We’re not even sure which world this is.”

“The one with the X-Men in it.”

“Earth Ayin, then.” Alexandria said. “Regardless, we’ll be out of your hair now. Door.”

She waited for a moment, but the expected portal did not open.

“Door?” She tried again. “Doormaker? Clairvoyant? Hello?”

Access crossed his arms. “Your ride not working out?”

“I don’t understand.” Alexandria said, looking around just in case the portal had opened somewhere she wasn’t looking. “This has never happened before…”

Access frowned. “Much as I’d like to think you were just having me on, I remember those ‘doors’ o’ yours from the first time we fought – er, met. Has something happened?”

“Not that I know of.” Alexandria said, worry starting to creep into her mind.

“If it helps,” Celestia offered “I can make a portal with a mirror and a few hours.”

“Thanks, but no need. I’m way better than any mirror.” Access thumbed his chest. “A taxi service I ain’t, but if it’s a lift home you need, I’ll be happy to oblige.”

“Door?” Alexandria tried one final time, before sighing. “Yes please, Access. I need to find out where my teammates have gotten to.”

“Say no more.” Access grabbed the two of them by the shoulders, and a bright glow of golden light engulfed the both of them –

She was suddenly aware of another direction that didn’t really exist, of objects whizzing past her that were simultaneously infinitely large and infinitely small at once, of yellow and spinning and falling –

She came out of the portal flying at speed. Though unexpected, she halted herself in mid-air without much trouble. Out of the corner of her eye, she could see Celestia doing the same, and Access the non-flyer tumble through the air…

Catching him was the work of a moment, and she carried him back up to where Celestia was almost as quickly. One look down told her that they were several thousand meters up.

“I assume that wasn’t on purpose?” She asked dryly.

“W-what the hell…?” Access seemed quite shaken. “What the hell was that?”

“You’ll have to clarify.” Alexandria said. “What the hell was what?”

“There’s…” Access fumbled over the words. “Something’s wrong with the space between worlds. The universes aren’t where they’re supposed to be, and I think they might be moving. I got us to Earth – er, 0? The one with the Justice League – but I’m not sure I can manage somewhere other than my main two worlds at the moment.”

“Maybe that’s why Alexandria’s friends can’t come get her right now.” Celestia observed. “What do you think, Alexandria?”

One of the many benefits of time-stopped flesh was an inability to break out in a cold sweat. “I think that I need to find the rest of my team. Now.”

Access started rubbing his hair again. “Oh man… I’ll have a look around these two worlds and round up anyone who’s not supposed to be there, but this is big. Like, really big.”

“You don’t say.” Alexandria said, the voice of the White Queen echoing loud in her ears.

“Listen.” Access said. “In lieu of a big ‘explain things’ button, we’re gonna need help. The JLA should have a ground base right now, so while I’m rounding everybody up, you go explain things to them, okay? I’ll send some of the figure-things-out-type Avengers your way when I can. Just make sure you get the big guys on board with this. Tell ‘em… er… tell ‘em Access sent you.”

The Justice League. Alexandria remembered her briefings. Earth Tsadi’s equivalent of the Protectorate, only independent rather than government-operated. It would have the sort of resources that would be needed to investigate what was going on.

Dealing with the problem, however, was going to be another matter altogether...

Chapter Text

“Moving, you say?” The Martian Manhunter rubbed his chin.

Rebecca had been to the Hall of Justice once before, after initial contact between Earths Bet and Tsadi to agree to a cessation of hostilities (for some reason, the League readily accepted that their initial hostility had been based on a misunderstanding). It looked much like she remembered it – a half-cylinder of a building that looked more like a museum than a parahuman meeting place.

Admittedly, the front half of the building did serve as a museum of heroes and villains, showcasing some of their equipment on display. Alexandria had spent the time waiting for the League to arrive planning how best to have Dragon pay a ‘field trip’ here with a group of post-cogs.

The meeting room they were in was tastefully decorated, but ultimately much the same as meeting rooms all across the universes. A large round table dominated the room, with seating space for up to thirty people.

Seated around this table was herself, Celestia (who had elected to sit on the floor rather than try to fit into a chair designed for humans), and several members of the Justice League that she recognised from both her personal experience as Rebecca and from Threat Ratings that had come out of the initial burst of hostility and paranoia. Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman, the Flash, Plastic Man, Doctor Fate, Zatanna, and the Martian Manhunter.

“That is the word Access used, yes.” Alexandria confirmed.

Superman glanced around the table. “Well, he would know, wouldn’t he?”

“How the hell do you get a universe to move?” Plastic Man said, stretching out a finger into a long string to scratch his head. “I thought they were just sorta… there.”

“Well, the multiverse doesn’t exactly run on Newtonian Physics, but the basic tenants hold true.” The Flash leaned forward. “To get something of infinite mass ‘moving’, you need an infinite amount of energy.”

Plastic Man started dumbly at the Flash. “Where are you going to get something like that?”

The Flash shrugged. “Dunno. Plenty of bad guys have been trying to get that kind of power for years, but none of them have ever actually pulled it off.”

“Putting aside the question of ‘how’ for the moment, what actually are the risks if the worlds are rearranging themselves?” Wonder Woman cut in.

“Well –” Both Celestia and Doctor Fate started, then they both stopped and looked at each other. Smiling, Celestia gestured for Fate to speak.

“Well, if a universe is ‘moving’, there’s always the risk it could ‘collide’ with another universe.” Fate said.

Alexandria leaned forward. “Which means what, exactly?”

“If they are ‘moving’ slowly enough, the universes will merge together, like soap bubbles.” Celestia explained, manifesting two golden transparent spheres with her magic to demonstrate. As she gently moved them together, the two touched and sucked the other inside to form one larger bubble. “But if they are ‘moving’ too fast…”

Two more golden bubbles of magic appeared, but this time slammed into each other with force, causing both to pop.

“Right.” Superman said. “Definitely don’t want that happening.”

“But how do we stop it?” Wonder Woman asked. “If it takes infinite energy to get them moving, won’t it take infinite energy to stop them?”

“Not necessarily.” The Flash said. “The Speed Force can act like a dimensional barrier under the right circumstances – if we used it to increase the ‘viscosity’ of inter-space…”

“Funnelling the energy through Pym Particles first should boost the effect.”

A flash of golden light announced the arrival of Access and three other people as they teleported into the room.

“Hi all.” Access greeted. “Uh… not everybody here’s met everybody else, so these guys are Doctors Richards, Pym and Strange. Doctors, this is the Justice League. And the plus one. And the pony.”

“You were saying something about amplifying the Speed Force?” Flash was suddenly standing in front of Doctor Pym, a red blur the only sign that he’d moved.

Pym blinked at the sudden movement, but collected himself. “Yes, if we could use a chalkboard for a moment –”

The Flash disappeared into another red blur, returning an eye-blink later with the requested chalkboard. He, Richards and Pym stood in front of the chalkboard and started drawing equations on it that Alexandria was quite certain were contradictory, but the three seemed to find useful.

“Right.” Access glanced over at the three. “Now that the eggheads are working, I’d better get back to my work.” So saying, he disappeared in a flash of golden light.

The knot of stress around Alexandria’s heart started to ease a little. “So, we have a plan to halt the movement of the universes?”

“Still a bare-bones plan.” Richards said, still looking at the chalkboard. “And we’ll need to find something to power it, but it’s looking good so far.”

“That just leaves us to find the cause of this inter-universal disturbance so that we can stop it from happening again.” Superman concluded.

“We won’t have to look for long.” Batman spoke up for the first time. “Alexandria knows exactly what the problem is.”

There was a moment of absolute silence as everyone in the room looked at Batman, then slowly turned to stare at Alexandria. For her part, Alexandria stared resolutely at Batman, not saying a word.

Plastic Man scratched his head some more. “Uh, Bats…”

“You asked for our help in figuring out what was going on.” Batman said, staring right back at Alexandria. “But you wanted to go from there straight to possible fixes. You weren’t in the slightest bit interested in addressing the cause. Why?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Alexandria said, long-practised secrecy rearing its ugly head. A narrowing of Batman’s eyes told her he wasn’t buying it for a moment.

Celestia looked between the two humans in dark-coloured costumes. “Alexandria, do you think it has something to do with the White Queen?”

“Who is this White Queen?” Zatanna asked. “Are we talking about a game of chess now?”

“Any relation to the Queen of Fables?” Wonder Woman asked.

Batman’s eyes narrowed further. “Manhunter.”

“I can’t read her mind.” The Martian Manhunter said.

Batman turned to look at his teammate. “Manhunter, this isn’t the time –”

“You misunderstand.” The Martian Manhunter corrected him. “It is not that I will not read her mind, I truly cannot. Her mind is shielded from me somehow.”

“My brain hasn’t contained my mind for decades.” Alexandria said, tensely. “And I would appreciate it if you would not discuss violating my mental privacy so casually.”

“Alexandria…” Celestia gently interjected. “Please. Now is really not the time to be keeping secrets.”

Alexandria closed her eyes, and took a deep breath. She really wanted Doctor Mother here. Or Eidolon, or Legend. She’d even settle for Contessa, as unsettling as the girl could be at times. Someone to back her up.

The iron clamp of Scion must not find out was still firmly clamped onto her heart, but she reminded herself firmly: The White Queen is not Scion.

No. She whispered back to herself. In a way, she’s worse.

“How familiar are you with something called the ‘Third Summoning Ceremony’?” She eventually said out loud.

A series of blank glances around the room made Alexandria quite sure that nobody here had heard of it before.

Strange and Fate shared a look, but both of them shook their heads.

Alexandria sighed. “May I have another chalkboard, please?”

The Flash briefly disappeared from the room to fetch another of the presentation aids, then returned to his animated discussion with Pym and Richards.

She stood up, and started sketching the tools and symbols that she’d managed to catch a glimpse of, the ones her Shard would never let her forget. Strange and Fate both moved over to the chalkboard to get a closer look. “From what I know, somebody managed to invent –” she halted briefly, but then remembered that she was in a room with people who did believe in magic “– invent a way to summon the gods of myth with a one hundred percent success rate.”

Most of the other people in the room sat up further in their chairs. “Impossible!” Wonder Woman cried. “The gods do not answer the whims of mortals!”

“I’m not sure they’d have a choice.” Strange said, looking closely at one of the symbols Alexandria had sketched. “If I’m reading this right, the ceremony doesn’t summon the actual gods – just a portion of their power small enough to fit into the shackles of the ritual. The summoned god can’t break out of the ritual because their full power isn’t available in the first place.”

“So… not really a problem then?” Plastic Man asked.

“Oh no, even a sliver of a god is still an enormous amount of power.” Strange corrected. “If someone like me wasn’t around to fix things –”

“Or me.” Fate interjected pointedly.

Strange waved the other magician off. “Yes, yes, or him, then you’re in major trouble. Part of the spell is that the summoner can’t be defeated until their summon is, so you’re forced to defeat the summon in battle or run away.”

Superman cocked his head. Magic had never been his strong point. “So, the White Queen is someone who mastered this ceremony?”

“No.” Alexandria shook her head, continuing to sketch what she’d seen of a summoner in action. “She’s one of the summons.”

“She’s a god?” Zatanna asked.

“No.” Alexandria repeated. “The trick to the ceremony, as I understand it, is that you summon a weak, man-made monster, and then use that summon to summon a more powerful summon. Once you have summoned fifty of the so-called ‘Regulation-class Materials’, you are then summoning ‘Divine-class Materials’, or the gods. But if you climb all the way up the ranks of the gods, and try to continue summoning more powerful things…”

“You find yourself summoning something more powerful than a god.” Fate finished. “Is that what you mean?”

“Impossible!” Wonder Woman cried, leaping from her chair, fury on her face. “Nothing is more powerful than the gods!”

“So the Titans are nothing now?” Batman commented idly.

“Shut up!” Wonder Woman yelled at her teammate.

Superman stood up, laying a hand on her shoulder. “Let Alexandria finish talking first, please.”

Wonder Woman’s mouth twisted, but she sat back down, fuming.

“The White Queen is the most powerful of this third category, the ‘Unexplored-class’.” Alexandria continued with her explanation. “She’s not all-powerful, but she’s so powerful that nothing else can stand against her. She isn’t all-knowing either, but she is extremely intelligent and has some way to find out about events in other worlds from the world she lives in.” She finished the last of her chalk drawings and stepped back from the chalkboard.

“That’s an explanation of who she is.” Batman observed. “Not why you think she’s responsible.”

“Or how she got to my world to fight us.” Celestia pointed out.

Alexandria halted in whatever she had been about to say, then turned at the pony. “What do you mean? Obviously, someone summoned her.”

“How close do these summoners have to stay to their summons?” Fate asked, still peering intently at her sketches.

Alexandria turned to face the magician. “Within a few meters, why?”

“Alexandria.” Celestia’s voice was grave. “There was nobody there other than me, your group and the Queen.”

Alexandria stared at Celestia in confusion for a moment, before perking up in realisation. “Oh, right. I forgot to mention. All practitioners of the Third Summoning Ceremony have an automatic Stranger power. You can’t remember the existence of a summoner unless they’re within your field of vision, or you’re a summoner yourself.”

Superman blinked slowly. “Why?”

“Actually, that makes sense.” Fate spoke up, apparently finished his examination of the chalkboard. “Anyone who participated in this ritual becomes, in effect, part of all legends ever told, a resident of the ‘other world’ – but the legends themselves don’t change. The paradox of existing only as an unmentioned role in a story means that the human mind cannot recall their existence unless that person is standing before them, or they are a part of the same legends.”

Alexandria had always wondered why she could remember the summoners when none of her teammates could – now she knew. As uncomfortable as it made her to think about it, her mind was just an emulation of her memories and personality that her Shard was running. It didn’t care for paradoxes or the like – it just stored the information and retrieved it when requested.

“Alexandria.” Celestia said, still speaking in that grave voice. “Look at me. Do I look like somepony who has no part in the world of legends?”

Alexandria looked at the creature who was part Unicorn and part Pegasus, and began to feel an intense sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach.

Strange held out his hand, and an intricate circle of light appeared, hovering just above his palm. A series of lights began to appear above his hands, forming a starscape that filled the upper part of the room. “This is a map of the local multiverse – simplified, of course.” He pointed to one of the lights. “That’s us, here.” He pointed to another light close by the first. “And that’s my home, Earth-616.”

Not wanting to be outdone, Doctor Fate also began to point out universes. “That is your world.” He told Alexandria. “The world you call ‘Bet’.”

“Which of these worlds does the Queen herald from?” The Martian Manhunter asked.

“Well, that’s the thing.” Strange rubbed the back of his neck.

“None of them, and at the same time all of them.” Fate interjected.

“The worlds of legends aren’t individually packaged up the way that physical universes are.” Strange explained. “They’re more like… ah…”

“Like a layer, or phase?” Alexandria suggested, remembering Index’s words.

“Exactly!” Strange said. “Like a layer on top of any given universe. Each world doesn’t have it’s own Heaven or Hell – they share each such plane between them.”

“However, the strength of such bonds can and does vary between the worlds.” Fate continued.

Strange pointed up at the starscape. “I’ve colour-coded the worlds here – the more blue they are, the stronger the bonds between the physical world and the mystical one.”

“In the world of Bet, for example, the bonds are nearly non-existent.” Fate indicated, showing how the point representing Earth Bet was almost completely red. “The Queen can’t – hold.” He examined the starscape more closely. “You say the Queen has been summoned on this world?”

“Yes.” Alexandria confirmed. “And only a few hours ago, the Babylonian goddess Tiamat also arrived in it to attack it.”

“That is impossible.” Fate declared. “The mystic ties in this world are far too weak. Magic of all kinds should fail to work here, and those from outside its boundaries should loose all spiritual power.”

“Would these ‘bonds’ be affected by the movement of the universes?” Alexandria asked.

Strange and Fate both stared at her for a moment, then at each other. Then both turned back to the starscape in hurried motion.

“The world of Bet is moving this way.” Strange said, pointing. “If it was over here yesterday, then it could easily support this Queen entity being summoned.”

“And at the rate it is moving, it will be here tomorrow.” Fate indicated another point on the starscape. “Once it is there, the bonds will be strong enough that summoning will become superfluous. A creature of a gods strength, or more, could easily force their way into the material plane unaided.”

Alexandria could not actually get ill anymore, but that did not stop her from feeling ill. “That’s her endgame.” She breathed. “She’s literally moving heaven and earth to get to Earth Bet without the restrictions of the Third Summoning Ceremony.”

Strange manifested another circle in his other hand, and each point of light gained an arrow. “If I’m not mistaken, there’s a pattern here to the way the worlds are moving.”

“There is.” Batman confirmed. He pointed to a point in the middle of the roof. “They’re all radiating outwards from there.”

“There? What’s th- ah. I see.” Strange suddenly became much more subdued.

“What? What is there?” Wonder Woman asked.

“It’s not what is there. It’s what isn’t.”

Alexandria almost didn’t recognise the voice as Celestia’s, so choked was it with sadness.

“It’s the spot where my world used to be.” The princess looked forlornly at the spot. “The Queen must have detonated it to start the other worlds moving. The debris of my home is what provided the motive force to all the other worlds around it.”

For a long moment, nobody spoke.

Then Superman stood up, a dangerous look in his eye. “You said you had a plan to stop this?”

Chapter Text

Apparently, the JLA didn’t have ready access to the equipment that the Tinkers needed. Rather than wait for Access to appear again, the decision had been made to raid one of the local villains instead – a man named Dr Sivana, the self-proclaimed ‘World's Wickedest Scientist’.

“We could have just asked him.” Alexandria said, smashing the projector of a proton beam that had been trying to drill its way through her chest.

“He wouldn’t have helped. Most likely, he would have tried to hold the multiverse to ransom.” Batman said, currently locked in a martial arts battle with a robot that had chainsaws for arms.

“You know, most of the villains back home are happy enough to help make sure they will still have a city to terrorise come tomorrow.”

“Yeah, the small fry. All the powerful troublemakers on your world are either actively slaughtering people or locked up.”

“That reminds me – I need to put you in touch with Dragon. I understand you can’t seem to build a prison that can actually hold anyone.”

“Bicker later, fight now please!” The Flash called, trying to free his leg from the ‘Suspendium’ bubble it was trapped in.

As usual, a Tinker was busy being completely ridiculous. Dr Sivana didn’t appear to be ‘home’, but his automated defences had kicked in immediately, throwing a hodge-podge of physics-violating gadgets at the team.

“There!” Mr Fantastic yelled, his body wrapped halfway round a turbine of some kind, his head and arms stretched out to rummage around in the control panel of another device. “The energy cage should start draining out now!”

“Does this happen often around here?” Doctor Strange asked Doctor Fate, head resting on a hand whose elbow was in turn resting on his knee. The pair were trapped inside a strange purple energy field that appeared to be somehow cancelling out their powers.

Fate shifted uncomfortably. “Sivana is… something of a special case.”

With a loud crash of tearing metal, Superman burst back up through the floor. In one hand he held a piece of armour plating that he’d apparently ripped out of something. When he dropped it, it created a deep dent in the floor, giving onlookers a rough idea of how dense it was. “The lower floors are clear. The main turbines must be up here.”

“Orange cylinder at the back of the room.” Mr Fantastic mentioned casually, already arms-deep in the Suspendium generator.

Flash’s head snapped up. “Supes, wait! This place is supposed to run unsupervised and undetected for long periods, so it’s probably powered by a –”

There was a loud squeal of tearing metal as Superman ripped the turbine in half, which was followed immediately by a clang as he dropped the piece he had been holding, falling to his knees and clutching his chest in pain.

“– Kryptonite reactor.” Flash finished lamely.

Alexandria, finding herself momentarily unhassled by the automatic defences, flew over to the other hero. “What’s wrong with him?”

“Supes absorbs sunlight through his skin, but Kryptonite radiation gets in through the same way. It’s basically poison to him.” Flash explained, too busy trying to get his foot free to see the extremely annoyed look Batman was shooting him. “Look for a glowing green crystal.”

Alexandria turned to the destroyed wreck of the reactor and started to sift through the debris, Superman coughing and wheezing behind her. “Sivana built a whole reactor just to deal with one cape?”

“Doubt it.” Flash replied. “Kryptonite is pretty weird stuff – if you build a reactor to run off it, the reactor will decay before the Kryptonite will.”

Superman managed to get an annoyed grunt in between his heaves. Lex Luthor had tried to use that fact to justify filling Metropolis with Kryptonite reactors more than once.

Alexandria finally found the fuel rod equivalent in the wrecked reactor, pulling out a small green crystal the size of her thumb. “The whole base ran of this little thing?”

“Well, it was probably just trickle-charging the main capacitors, but could you please get rid of it? Like, now?” Flash’s voice started to sound urgent as Superman’s heaves started sounding weaker.

Alexandria looked behind her at the rather sickly-looking Superman, who managed to grimace painfully at her.

“Stay there.” Batman commanded. “I’m almost finished with this thing, and I have a lead-lined compartment in my –”

Alexandria ignored him, pinched her nose shut and swallowed the Kryptonite crystal whole.

Superman took one more deep gulp of air, then shot forward in a blue-and-red blur as though trying to make up for lost time. He washed over the room like a wave, leaving dismembered and destroyed machinery in his wake.

Batman, his opponent destroyed by a speeding Kryptonian, walked over to Alexandria and narrowed his eyes.

Alexandria glared at him. “My body is frozen in time. It’ll work better than any lead at containing the radiation.”

Plus, this way nobody would be asking for the crystal back. Alexandria really wanted Dragon to have a look at it, if it was as useful as it seemed to be.

If there was one technology of the JLA’s that Alexandria really wanted, it was their teleporters. One of the greatest challenges of Endbringer battles was just getting everyone there in time. A set of teleporters with worldwide reach that were safe for human use? Alexandria couldn’t even begin to count how many lives that would have saved.

Plus, they apparently worked on the ‘disassemble-me-here’, ‘reassemble-me-there’ principle, so converting them into disintegration devices with worldwide reach should also be easy. (Such thoughts were probably why the Justice League didn’t share them.)

Regardless, with their stolen equipment in tow, the heroes rematerialised back in the Hall of Justice, where Doctor Pym was waiting for them with the skeletal frames of several car-tyre-sized devices.

Flash and Doctor Richards both moved forwards with armfuls of machinery. Flash kept blurring around the small workshop at the back of the Hall, running his load through various tools to disassemble, file, cut, glue together, and reassemble the various electronics. Richards and Pym, meanwhile, seemed to be marrying the stolen equipment to some they had brought themselves. Alexandria blinked as Pym tapped one of the pieces, causing it to shrink to 1/6th of it’s former size.

Armsmaster would kill for that kind of tech. She thought. Possibly literally.

“Have you found a solution to the power problem yet?” The gravelly tones of Batman demanded.

Pym made a ‘sort-off’ gesture with his off hand. “We’ve identified the universes around ‘ground zero’ with the highest energy readings. We can get you as close as the right planet, but after that it’s up to you to convince the locals to let you plug the dampeners into their ‘energy crystals’ or ‘magic rock’ or whatever it turns out to be.”

Plastic Man raised his hand (stretching it all the way to the ceiling). “Can’t we just ask the Spectre to juice these things?”

“Sure.” Flash responded. “If you know how to find the guy. He usually turns up on his own.”

“Have ya tried asking Zauriel?”

Pym looked up at Richards. “Speaking of super-powerful people whose names start with ‘S’, should we ask the Sentry for help?”

“Is the universe actively collapsing around us?” Richards responded.

Pym blinked. “No…?”

“Then the situation is not bad enough to risk getting the Sentry involved.” Richards said with an air of finality, slotting another component in place.

The room flashed golden as Access appeared again. “Found a few more o’ yer friends, Alexandria.”

Three people stood behind him, having appeared in the same teleport he had. Joseph Joestar and Kumagawa were there, having apparently survived the battle in Tartarus none-the-worse for wear.

But Alexandria’s eye were focused on the third arrival, Legend. He face was locked in serious contemplation, but as soon as he noticed her it twisted into fury.

“What. The hell. Was that.” He said, low and tense.

The League looked at Access in confusion. For his part, Access blinked somewhat stupidly at the brewing storm. Legend evidently hadn’t show any sign of this reaction until just now.

“Legend –” Alexandria tried to head the argument off, but Legend wasn’t having any of it.

“She knew you, Alexandria. She knew you! Not telling me about Ajimu is one thing, but now this? How many secrets are you keeping from me?!”

Alexandria managed, somehow, not to flinch.

The League, unsure about whether to intervene, shared uneasy looks. Those working on the dampeners continued working, but with one eye on the commotion. Joseph scratched his head, and Kumagawa continued his empty smile. Access, feeling the tension, decided discretion was the better part of valour and left in a teleport to go find more dimensionally-displaced people.

Legend glared at her for another few seconds, drawing the moment out, before breaking eye contact with a huff. “I suppose you’re going to tell me that you didn’t tell me about this ‘White Queen’ girl for my own good?”

“Of course not!” Alexandria bit out, hiding how much the words stung.

“Then tell me why!” Legend demanded. “Why didn’t you tell me about her!”

“I did!”

The entire room paused.

Legend blinked, slowly. “Come again?”

“I told you, and Eidolon, and Doctor Mother – all of you.” Alexandria said. “She’s a Stranger. I explained about her twice before I realised I was the only one who didn’t forget everything about her over time. She’s what the Foundation call an Anti-Meme – a self-keeping secret.”

“Oh.” Legend said, in a tone of voice that made Alexandria half-expect his next words to be ‘Well, that’s all right then’. It made her feel twice as bad about all the secrets she was keeping from him.

“If I may interject.” The voice of Doctor Fate broke in.

Legend looked over at the other assembled capes in the room, and seemed to suddenly realise what a scene he’d been making. “Oh, ah, yes?”

Fate wiggled his fingers, and a book floated into the room. Alexandria managed to catch the title as it floated past her - ‘The complete works of Hans Christian Andersen’. Fate caught the book deftly, and waved his hand over it. The book opened, the pages turning as though caught in a strong wind. “If the issue is that people cannot remember the Queen because they are not part of the legends of the world –”

Fate’s hand and the book suddenly shone a white so bright that it completely blinded Alexandria, and she raised her arms to guard herself purely out of reflex. That proved to be unnecessary, however, because when the light faded the only thing that had changed was their location. Herself, Legend, and Fate had all been moved to beside a pond in the woods somewhere.

“– then one should be able to remember everything one is told about her, so long as they were in the legends of the world at the time.” Fate finished, a group of ducklings and an infant swan swimming away frantically from the strange arrivals.

Alexandria blinked at the sudden transition. Somehow, that feels different from when Ajimu does it…

Fate pointedly turned to the pond and attempted to coax the ducks back, leaving Legend and Alexandria to talk alone.

Legend cleared his throat. “Alexandria. The Queen?”

Alexandria sighed, and began to tell a story for the third time. “Remember last year, when Behemoth attacked Cambodia?”

Chapter Text

No matter how many times they performed this particular song and dance, it never got any easier – only more familiar.

Cambodia had a much higher per-capita Cape population than America, as most third-world countries did. So in that respect it was actually doing better than most American cities did in its fight against the Endbringer.

Of course, all that ‘better’ meant was that there were still Capes alive to fight by the time Capes from outside the country started to arrive on-scene.

Of all the languages that Alexandria spoke, Khmer was not one of them, and only a few of the local Capes spoke French, making coordination near-impossible.

Still, that hardly meant that they weren’t at least going to try.

“Aaaaarrrrrrrgggggghhhhh!!” Eidolon screamed as he manifested a hammer the size of a Double-decker bus, comprised of pure darkness. He swung it around himself twice to build up speed, before throwing it into Behemoth with a resounding crack. The only thing he got for his trouble however was to watch in dismay as the head of the hammer shattered on impact, the pieces disappearing quickly as the entire projection dissolved. He cursed vehemently, quickly extending blue strings from his fingers that wrapped around several other Capes and yanked them out of range before they could enter Behemoth’s kill aura.

Legend was having slightly better luck swarming the Endbringer with an endless barrage of lasers – the ones on his torso cutting and burning, the ones on his legs trying to freeze them solid. It seemed to be mostly working, but he couldn’t let himself fall into a pattern, or else Behemoth would be able to predict his lasers and start redirecting them into his allies.

Hold, hold, hold… Alexandria prayed as she wrapped her arms around a steel support strut, lifting it and the pile of rubble that used to be a second story up enough to create a hole just large enough for a grown man to crawl through. {Go go go!} She screamed in French, prompting the survivors trapped underneath to start crawling for their freedom.

The city of Phnom Penh had become a battleground. Behemoth was rampaging around wherever it pleased, silencing any objections with bolts of lightning from its claws. Most of the buildings for blocks around had become piles of flaming rubble, destroyed by Behemoth’s sonic attack or sometimes by the Endbringer itself physically ramming itself though the structure of the building.

A scream prompted Alexandria to turn her head, regretting doing so almost immediately – someone had gotten too close to Behemoth and was now spewing fire from their mouth as they were cooked from the inside out.

But something else caught her eye while she was looking in that direction – behind the Endbringer, at the back of the loose pack of defenders still in the fray, there was a second inhuman figure – an old woman made out of intricate clockwork. It lifted up a pointed, lance-like arm and ran one of the defenders through from behind.

People were still crawling through the hole Alexandria was holding open, so to activate the radio in her helmet she had to press the side of it up against her shoulder, just managing to press down the activation button. “We’ve got a Truce-Breaker! South by south-west!”

An assortment of multi-lingual cursing was her reply as the assorted defenders expressed exactly how little time they had for this ****.

‘Super vision’ wasn’t one of Alexandria’s powers, so she couldn’t see exactly what was going on on the other side of the battlefield, but it looked like the clockwork figure was morphing, changing as she watched into a woman made of gold. There was someone else with the figure, swinging around some kind of staff. As she watched, the monster threw some kind of projectile into another one of the def–

Wait. That wasn’t one of the defenders. That was one of the local civilians trying to evacuate!

She keyed her mic again. “Truce-Breaker is attacking civilians! I repeat, we have a Truce-Breaker attacking civilians!”

She got another jumble of replies, but one cry stood out to her from the rest: “Wait, what? We have a Truce-Breaker? Where?”

“South by south-west!” Alexandria looked down at the hole she was keeping open. Someone was emerging from the destroyed building, holding both hands in a ‘thumbs-up’ pose while yelling {Out! Out! All out!} in French.

She waited for that person to be completely clear of the rubble before dropping the support strut.

Behemoth wasn’t fast, especially not compared to Leviathan, but being fifty feet tall automatically meant that your walking pace was way faster than someone one-tenth your height. Alexandria screamed at the people she’d just rescued to run, then flew straight at Behemoth. She had to keep him from going after those who were still evacuating.

Punching the monster wouldn’t help that much if he could see it coming – his energy-control ability included even kinetic energy – but what she could do was physically block its advance. As Behemoth made to jump up into a stomp attack, she swooped in, heedless of his kill aura, and pushed back down. Behemoth swiped her aside with ease, but his attack had been thwarted, the Capes that were his targets scrambling out of range.

She felt grim satisfaction at that right up until Behemoth killed them anyway with a lightning bolt.

She screamed in frustration, dashing back into range and punching a joint on one of its legs as hard as she could. The beast stumbled, letting Legend, Eidolon, and the local Blasters unload into it with as much energy as they could muster. Behemoth roared, the sound-wave visibly distorting the air as it blasted back everyone and everything around him, the surrounding buildings ripped apart and their pieces sent flying through the air.

By the time she’d righted herself, the Endbringer had dived into the earth like it was water, his tunnel collapsing behind him to make pursuit impossible instead of just suicidal.

“Thinkers!” Alexandria heard Legend call over the radio. “We need to know where he is and where he’ll reappear! Don’t let him get the drop on us!”

An atmosphere of tension smothered the assembled Capes, the only sounds the crackle of fire and the rumble of Behemoth burrowing under their feet. Alexandria scowled, about to fly upward to get a better view, when she spotted movement.

The shape-changing monster that she had spotted earlier had moved away from the assembled Capes, rampaging through the stranglers still trying to evacuate. It was still changing, morphing even as she watched. Now it was a girl in a Chinese dress resting in a chair that seemed to be made out of animal legs. The second person she’d seen before was following it, still swinging around the same staff.

Alexandria swore as she swooped down towards the figure. “Command, why the hell isn’t someone intercepting the Truce-Breaker?”

“There’s a Truce-Breaker?! Where?!” Came the reply.

Twice was a coincidence, three times was a pattern. “Command, activate Master/Stranger protocols. We’ve got a probable Stranger tearing through the evacuating civilians.”

Before Command could respond, Alexandria had reached the figure. She announced her presence by punching the ground hard enough to send cracks radiating out for several meters. The shockwave that created knocked the civilians off their feet, and more importantly caused the shapeshifter’s buddy to fumble their next attack.

The space surrounding the two was filled with red spheres the size of an apple, drifting aimlessly through the air. Every so often, they would change direction as though they had hit an invisible wall once they got a certain distance from the pair. Interspersed with the red spheres were larger, immobile black spheres. There were far more red spheres than black ones, but Alexandria didn’t have time to start counting.

She also didn’t have time for any lengthy discussion, so she decided to be very to the point. “If you surrender now, I’ll only send you to the Birdcage instead of killing you.”

[Alexandria?!] The human of the pair spluttered, both he and the shape-changer (now a woman make of a liquid that glimmered like the surface of a CD) halting in their tracks. [Um… look out!] He cried out in German, pointing frantically to something over Alexandria’s shoulder.

She kept her eyes on the two before her. [Is that how your power works? People forget about you when they look away?]

[Er…] The human of the pair didn’t seem to know what to do now that he’d been caught. [Look, it’s not what you – Adali, no!]

The shape-changer had surged forwards, spewing out some of her own substance out at the civilians who hadn’t yet run. Alexandria kicked the ground so hard it shook, and the targeted civilians stumbled and fell, the attack sailing over their heads.

[That was your only warning.] She told them.

[We need to build up a chain!] The man begged her. [I don’t think an Endbringer can be stopped with anything less than a high-level Unexplored-class, but there’s no way we can summon one of those in the ten-minute duration of just one battle! We need to fight others to give us time to build up a powerful Material! Please!] He pleaded. [We’re almost there!]

Alexandria was tempted. It was rare that the casualties of an Endbringer attack could be measured in numbers less than six digits. If this person could kill one with a dozen people as a sacrifice, then Alexandria would gladly let him send the metaphorical trolley down the other track.

However, she wasn’t going to let someone do whatever they wanted just because they might be able to kill an Endbringer – the fact that String Theory was in the Birdcage was proof of that.

[I won’t let you kill whoever you like just to test the limits of your power.]

She was a woman who had been forced to compromise her morals. Not a woman of no morals at all.

The man made a pained expression, but raised his staff.

Alexandria shot forward like a bullet, ready to slam a haymaker into his torso. Unfortunately, she hit some kind of forcefield before actually reaching him, the force of her punch dissipating uselessly.

Alexandria hadn’t spotted them until just now, but there was at least one white sphere amongst the red and black ones. The man swung his staff around, hitting the white sphere, and having it hit the red spheres like a game of billiards.

The moment one of the red spheres collided with a black one, it was sucked inside. Alexandria heard a cracking noise come from behind her, and turned to see that ‘Adali’ had morphed once again. Now she was octopus from the waist down, tentacles reaching out to grab more victims from those who hadn’t managed to run away yet.

Alexandria kicked the ground under the creature hard enough to send large chunks of it flying upwards, but the creature was ready for her. Rather than loose its ‘footing’, the individual tentacles wrapped themselves around the derbies, throwing them back with enough force that Alexandria swore that she could see the air around the pieces start to burn.

She tried to catch them out of reflex, but underestimated the force behind the pieces, and ended up getting blown backwards herself. The sensation of the wind getting knocked out of her was the strongest sensation, but she also felt herself fly backwards through one… two… six walls as she was blasted no less than three blocks away.

Offloading her mental processes to her Shard meant that most mind-affecting powers didn’t work on her (something invaluable when fighting the Simurgh), so she remembered the pair she was fighting even after losing sight of them.

Of course, her simulated brain still believed that it needed to breathe, so she had to waste several precious seconds gulping down air into lungs that hadn’t processed oxygen in over twenty years.

She could still hear the soft rumbling that meant that Behemoth was still underground, so there was still a chance she could resolve this before the Endbringer popped its head back above the surface. Alexandria really wasn’t looking forward to having to choose between fighting the enemy that needed every fighter available and the enemy that only she seemed to be able to remember.

Skipping getting to her feet by virtue of full-body levitation, Alexandria rushed back towards the Stranger pair as fast as she could manage. In the seconds she’d been gone, the female of the pair had changed again, now a sickly-looking girl in a wheelchair.

Despite Alexandria flying in at well over the speed of sound, the girl’s eyes flicked to her immediately, and the index finger on her left hand lifted up to point at her.

Unexpectedly, her partner somehow noticed and screamed [NO!]

At the last possible instant, the girl opened her hand instead to catch Alexandria’s fist.

Despite her sickly appearance, and the fact that her punch had enough force behind it to crumple a tank like a discarded soft-drink can, the girl stopped Alexandria’s attack dead in the air.

[Don’t kill her, Adali.] The man begged. [She’s important. The world needs her.]

She didn’t know why those words invoked such a cold rage in her chest. It was hypocritical of her to feel this way – she’d used similar logic herself on more than one occasion when deciding who lived and who died.

Maybe that was it. Maybe her self-loathing was rejoicing at finally having found a target she felt no qualms about beating into the ground.

Regardless of why, Alexandria took those feelings and infused them all into a punch with her free hand. She didn’t have as much space to build up speed, but it still managed to be three times as powerful as her first.

The sickly girl caught that one as well.

With the same lack of concern with which she blocked her follow-up kick.

And the headbutt.

Alexandria screamed once again, and pulled back – the girl making no attempt to hold onto her hands – eyes scanning furiously for a weak-point. At this point, she was pretty convinced that ‘Adali’ was a projection of some kind, which would explain her malleability, durability, and why she had a partner with her who was giving her orders. Of course, said partner was protected by something strong enough to take even her punches, making the obvious attack route non-viable.

The male of the pair swung his staff around again, knocking another white sphere into another red sphere, which in turn vanished upon contact with another black sphere. The form of the wheelchair girl rippled and changed, almost instantly becoming a girl in a kimono with horns and red hair that stretched behind her as far as one cared to look, entangled in gears that floated in the air behind her.

[We’re nearly there.] The man said, to whom Alexandria couldn’t tell.

To her slight surprise, the probably-a-projection turned her head. She would be looking her partner in the eye if it weren’t that both of her eyes we closed.

[Foolish summoner.] The lady said. [This battle will not end in your glory.]

Alexandria’s eyes narrowed in confusion as one partner suddenly started talking to the other as though she had just arrived.

[Shut up!] The man said. [If I can actually kill an Endbringer, everything it cost will have been worth it!]

[You currently have one of the Three who watch over mankind bound to your will. I am a creature that the gods themselves must fear and obey – and yet you hesitate to send me out into battle?]

[A-are you doubting my resolve?!]

[No. I can see quite plainly that your desire for the Strongest White completely eclipses your desire to slay the hero-killer.]

The lady turned back to face Alexandria. [Stand firm, librarian. Help is on its way.]

…it had been a long time since someone had recognised that she had named herself after a library.

Snarling, the man hit one more white sphere with his staff, and the Red Lady was gone.

<Ah~. I’m back, world~.>

Unlike the previous form, which had spoken the same German as their partner, this one was speaking in Japanese for some reason.

She was wearing something that was half wedding dress, half cutout swimsuit. Everything about her was white, from her skin tone and hair colour to her outfit.

Then the Queen looked Alexandria in the eyes, and she felt the same chill she did with the Sleeper.

[Y-your divine grace!] The man said, sounding as though he was amazed to have gotten this far. [Y-your humble servant –]

<Hmm? Is a cockroach trying to speak to me? What a perfect mix of adorable and disgusting.>

Alexandria suddenly realised that the rumbling of Behemoth’s tunnelling was starting to get louder once again.

“Emergence coordinates identified!” One of the Thinkers working at the on-site command centre called out over the radio. “All forces, converge at” he rattled off the same street address where Alexandria was floating.

“Belay that!” She found herself barking back into the radio.

“A-alexandria…?” Eidolon’s voice was confused, but she didn’t have time to explain.

“All forces pull back to” she named a location ten blocks away “and prepare to move!”

By some miracle, nobody questioned her order. Which was fortunate, because Alexandria wouldn’t have been able to give an explanation even if someone had asked her for one.

<Hmm?>

The girl in white finally took notice of Alexandria. <Are you trying to protect your comrades from me? That won’t work. They wouldn’t be safe even if they travelled to the other side of the universe.>

Powerful and crazy. Always a fantastic combination.

With a final roar, Behemoth finally burst out of the ground not ten metres from Alexandria. The Endbringer immediately turned to face the three ‘humans’ nearby, growling.

[P-please!] The man pleaded. [Y-your ma… maj…]

Suddenly, the man found himself gasping for breath. Before his terrified eyes, flame and smoke billowed out from his mouth and nose.

The girl in white laughed as the man collapsed in pain, sounding as though she didn’t have a care in the world. <You thought that the protective circle would save you? It might be able to keep you alive until the ten minute limit expires, but ultimately it only functions as a perfect defence in three dimensions, so it’s no good against an opponent that naturally operates above those. You shouldn’t expect so much from a ceremony made with human hands!>

Alexandria noted that the girl in white, much like herself, seemed to be unaffected by the kill aura.

<Qqqquuuuuuueeeeeeeeeeeennnnn!>

A new voice, with a new figure approaching. An Asian teen, with black hair and a red-and-black jacket. He was running full pelt towards them, eyes focuses so strongly on the ‘queen’ that Alexandria wasn’t sure he saw Behemoth at all.

<Stop!> She barked out. <Don’t come any closer – you’re getting too close to his kill aura!>

<Brother!> The Queen squealed in delight, making Alexandria blink. <You heard I was here, and came running? Ah! This must be love!> She clapped her hands to her face and blushed.

<Get away from her!> The boy yelled at Alexandria. <She’ll kill you!>

<…Brother. What have I told you about looking at other women?!?!>

The Queen suddenly spun on the spot, fully facing Alexandria for the first time. The kick came so fast that even she couldn’t see it, but she felt the impact reverberate around her body as she was shoved metres deep into the concrete. There was a brief struggle to pull her head free before her simulated brain decided that she was suffocating.

<As for you…> The Queen turned her head to look at Behemoth, who had been unnaturally quiet and still while the Queen had been talking. <…anyone who tries to come between Brother and I should burn in Hell.>

Behemoth disappeared.

The was a sudden rush of wind as several thousand tonnes of monster rapidly departed at speed, forcing the approaching boy to stop running in the sudden gale-force winds.

The Queen shaded her eyes with a hand and looked straight up. <Aw, isn’t that sweet?> She said to nobody in particular. <His sister was waiting to catch him before he could pass the moon… such a beautiful example of sisterly love is getting me all excited, Brother! I know! How about I kick you towards the sun, then catch you before you start to burn?>

There was an excited gabble of voices on the radio, all happily declaring that Behemoth was gone. Alexandria wished they’d shut up – they had no idea about the monster that was still here.

<How many minutes has it been since the last link in your Chain, Queen?> The boy asked, now walking towards them instead of running. <Five? Nine?>

<Ah, Brother~. You should know that time means nothing to love or to me~!> The Queen clasped her hands together, blushing like a schoolgirl.

The boy’s eyes flicked back towards Alexandria. <My name is Kyousuke Shiroyama.> He said. <Say ‘help me’, and I’ll definitely save you.>

<Thanks.> Alexandria said, standing up fully from the concrete crater and lifting the staff that had been blown around in the wind after the Queen’s ‘partner’ had dropped it. <But I’ve got this.>

The Queen, who had been about to say something to Shiroyama, suddenly whirled around to face Alexandria. Once again, the blow came too fact for her to see, and the hand holding the staff was blown backwards, the rest of her body pulled along with the force of the blow.

However, all that did was knock the staff into the white sphere that had been behind Alexandria where the Queen couldn’t see it.

The white sphere bounced off the ground and hit a red sphere.

The red sphere flew through the air to a black sphere.

Every time a red sphere entered a black one, the projection changed. The Red Lady called you the ‘strongest’ – so what happens if I change it once more?

Time seemed to slow as the red sphere neared the black one.

Actually, Alexandria realised with a start, that wasn’t her – time actually was slowing.

<…you came between Brother and I.>

Alexandria slowly turned, feeling like she was moving through molasses. The White Queen was looking directly at her, an unreadable expression on her face.

<I protected this city from a monster.> Alexandria corrected, forcing the words out through the slowed time.

The Queen smirked, just a little. <Something like that deserves a thousand million painful deaths, but you aren’t afraid at all, are you?>

<I’ve always been ready to give my life to stop monsters like you.>

<You say that only because you think it will stop the guilt inside.>

Alexandria felt her mouth open a little.

The Queen wagged a finger at her. <Really, what would be far more painful for you would be to watch the world crashing down around you, and knowing it was all your fault… ah, I know.>

Time began to flow normally again, the red sphere almost touching the black one…

<Next time you face a monster like this, call on me, and I will kill it. Don’t, and you will die~!>

The two spheres touched, and the White Queen disappeared.

“…she offered her help?” Legend said, confused.

Alexandria shook her head. “That’s what she said, but not what she meant. She just wants me to summon her again so she can go after Shiroyama.”

“But…” Legend’s face was agonised. For decades they’d been searching for someone with the power to kill an Endbringer, and now having found someone who might be able to do it, he was being told to forget about it? “Surely if Shiroyama asked her –”

“After that battle,” Alexandria interrupted “I was contacted by a group called ‘Government’, a collection of Summoners who work alongside major world organisations. They were able to provide me with detailed information on humanity’s interactions with the Queen.”

Alexandria looked Legend straight in the eyes. “There have been thirty-seven serious attempts to command or control the White Queen, and six attempts to destroy her. She’s laughed off each one. Shiroyama himself believes that any attempt to control the Queen will end with her controlling you instead, and wants no part of it.”

Alexandria took no satisfaction at all in watching the hope in Legend’s eyes die.

More sombrely, she continued. “She’s not something you can direct or coerce, Legend. She might kill the Endbringers on a whim, then the next minute decide to wipe out the human race. She destroyed an entire dimension just so that she’ll be able to visit the object of her obsession whenever she wants.”

“Wait, what?!” Panic suddenly lit up Legend’s eyes. “When did she do that?!”

“Just now.” Alexandria sighed. “Earth Pe is gone, Legend. The lives of those inside it were worth nothing compared to her own desires in the Queen’s eyes. And if we don’t stop her now, she’ll become a full-time resident in Earth Bet, for however long we last.”

Legend staggered backwards, only catching himself from falling because he could levitate. He righted himself and started rubbing his face, swearing as he did so.

“Pretty much.” Alexandria agreed.

“So there we are, Kars and I, stuck on a chunk of rock flying upwards at escape velocity! I’m missing a hand, he’s completely unkillable and a shapeshifter to boot! So what does old Joseph Joestar do next?”

<Did you make him become nothing?> Kumagawa said, spinning a giant screw on a fingertip.

“Seal him in another dimension?” Doctor Strange suggested.

“Pick him up and throw him to Venus?” Superman guessed.

Joseph stared back at the other faces in the room. “…you people are really hard to impress.”

Batman snorted. “Maybe next time don’t tell a story that doesn’t consist of you winning through sheer dumb luck.”

“I was fulfilling a prophecy!”

Batman smirked. “Same thing.”

“Alright, wise guy.” Joseph leaned back, pointing at Batman with both hands while keeping his elbows near his chest in an impressive but pointless display of balancing. “What would you have done? No, wait, let me guess – your next line will be ‘I’m Batman’.”

“I’m Batman.” Batman said shamelessly.

“That is not an explanation!”

“Yes it is.” He smirked.

“No, it really isn’t!”

It was to this childish argument that Legend, Fate and Alexandria quietly popped back into existence.

“Welcome back.” Wonder Woman greeted, glad to have something to focus on other that boyish posturing. “Did you discuss what you needed to?”

Alexandria glanced at Legend, who paused, then nodded. “Yes, we did.”

“Good to hear.” Doctor Pym grunted, slotting a chip into a mass of electronics with a final-sounding click. “We’ll make a protective shell for these, but otherwise we’re pretty much done here.”

On cue, Access reappeared in the room with a slightly soot-caked Armsmaster, who in turn was carrying what looked to Alexandria’s eyes like the central processor of a Dragon Suit. “Found another one.” Access reported joylessly.

Armsmaster, for his part, scanned the room before striding to the workbench that the others were using. Without a word, he grabbed a discarded spanner and started gently removing the damaged casing from the processor.

“Good.” Alexandria said. “Then we can get started.”

Chapter Text

“There are four worlds in the right area with the kind of juice to power the dampeners.” Doctor Richards had procured a holographic projector from somewhere, and had recreated the multiverse map that the magicians had shown earlier.

“Specifically, these four.” He pressed a button and four small balls of red light turned white. The four worlds in question formed a very rough square around the shattered remains of Earth Pe.

“Hold. Is that not Eternia?” The surprised voice of Doctor Fate exclaimed, peering intently at one of the four points.

Legend looked over at the magician. “You know that world?”

“I have never visited, if that is what you mean. However, it is the world that sits in the exact centre of the multiverse. The legends about that world are endless – they say the spells hiding it from extradimensional visitors are older than the stars inside it.”

Richards looked confused. “But… we know where it is. You just said – it’s in the centre of the multiverse.”

“Magic of this kind and scale needs more than a theoretical knowledge of your location unless you are a truly exceptional mage.” Fate told him. “I could get us there, but I would not be able to guarantee how many pieces we would be in.”

“Well, where magic has failed us, we’ll use science.” Richards declared. “Gimme a few minutes to rig up an inter-space sonar.”

Doctor Pym was also looking up at the lights. “Unless I’m reading this wrong, I think that world here –” he pointed to another light “– is 616, my home.”

“Good.” Batman’s gravely tones ground out. “You and Richards can be on the team to that world – you’ll have the home field advantage.”

“For whatever that’s worth.” Pym muttered. In the background, Richards nodded, already beginning to piece together another device.

“We’re splitting up?” Superman said, slightly surprised.

“We have to.” Alexandria replied. “Events are too time-critical to do this any other way.”

“Okay, so who’s going where?”

Batman and Alexandria looked at each other for a moment.

“Someone needs to stay here.” Alexandria said after a moment. “The local villains can hardly be trusted not to take advantage of your absence.”

Batman smirked. “How considerate of you.”

“Even apart from common decency, you’ll fight better if you’re not distracted by worries about home.”

‘Rebecca’ was the face she had cultivated to be calm and reassuring. ‘Alexandria’ just got the job done.

Legend, perhaps sensing that her patience was starting to fray, placed a calming hand on her shoulder. “We also need to split up our heavy hitters.” He said. “Having Superman and Alexandria on the same team would be redundant, for example.”

A few eyebrows rose among the Justice League at the implication that Superman and Alexandria were even roughly equals, but the general point was accepted with several nods.

“Celestia.” Zatanna, who had been very quiet so far, suddenly spoke up. “I noticed a sun symbol on her flanks. Can she produce sunlight?”

“One way or another.” Alexandria said, rather cryptically. “Why?”

“Then she should be on the team with Superman.” The magician declared.

“Uh, yeah, speakin’ o’ which…” Plastic Man mumbled. “Where actually is the princess pony?” A rubber tiara formed on his head to illustrate his point.

Superman’s eyes focused on something in the distance, and he grimaced. “She’s in the gardens outside.”

Plastic Man blinked. “What, like, eating the grass or something?”

“She is crying.” Martian Manhunter said neutrally.

An awkward silence settled on the group.

Eventually, Batman sighed. “Wonder Woman, go talk to her.”

“Why me?” The Amazon in question narrowed her eyes, the implication thick in the air that the reason had better not be ‘because you’re a girl’.

“Because you and she are both millennium-old Greek-themed princesses with penchants for golden jewellery. Plenty of common ground.”

Wonder Woman glared at Batman for a moment longer, but got up and left the room anyway.

“Looks like double-double-U and the Pretty Princess are going to be staying behind then.” Plastic Man said, forming his hands into red-and-black hand-puppets in the rough shape of Wonder Woman and Celestia.

“And for that, you’re staying too.”

“Aw, come on! What did I do?!”

“Someone needs to man the monitors.”

Alexandria noted to herself that the use of monitor duty as punishment apparently transcended dimensional barriers.

Wonder Woman found Princess Celestia sitting on the lawn to the right of the Hall of Justice.

She had clearly been busy – a great crystal structure now occupied most of the open space, slightly taller than the hall. Overall, it mostly resembled a tree – though it was far more beautiful than any tree on Earth. Veins of colour – of sapphire, emerald, and ruby – spread throughout the tree, the light sparkling off of them in a way that almost made it seem alive.

Wonder Woman stared, amazed despite herself, at the interplay between the colours. For a moment, she thought she saw a flower, then a map, then a song, all within the same area of the tree.

It was only when the lines briefly formed a list of names that she realised she was looking at a gravestone.

“I’m sorry.”

Princess Celestia’s voice was soft, and slightly hoarse from crying. “I know I should have asked first. I’ll probably have to move it soon anyway – there won’t be enough space for it here. Is it alright if it stays here just a little longer?”

Wonder Woman sat down next to Celestia, staring up at what she had wrought. “Of course.”

In many ways, Wonder Woman’s princess title was a meaningless one. Her mother had ruled for many centuries, and was expected to rule for many more. She might lead her Amazon sisters into battle, but she didn’t help rule them. How could she, when she was occupied fully with her role as Ambassador of Peace to the outside world?

Still, she knew that no royal, not even a princess, should ever sound so weak and helpless.

“I thought… that I would make a monument for them, something of unimaginable beauty to proclaim to all existence of who they were and what they meant to me…” Celestia’s voice cracked, and Wonder Woman looked down to see fresh tears in her eyes. “But I’ve only just started, and I realised that I could never finish it!”

Celestia had removed her jewellery at some point, and as the pony began to cry anew the thought occurred to Wonder Woman that she looked much smaller without it.

If she was comforting an Amazon, Wonder Woman would have offered to wreak bloody vengeance on the evildoer who had wronged an innocent so.

But she was not comforting an Amazon, and over the years she had learned that those who had not spent their lives training for battle required a much gentler touch.

Sighing, Wonder Woman removed her own tiara and bracelets. She wrapped her arms around Celestia’s barrel, and let the pony cry out onto her shoulder.

Eventually, the teams were settled.

Flash and Martian Manhunter would accompany Richards and Pym to Earth-616.

Batman, Joseph Joestar and Kumagawa would head to the first unidentified world.

Superman, Zatanna, and Legend would head to Eternia.

Alexandria, Doctor Fate and Doctor Strange would head to the second unidentified world.

Wonder Woman, Plastic Man, Celestia and Armsmaster would stay in the Hall of Justice just in case the local villains tried anything. …and also to give the princess some time to grieve.

Access, who was now wearing a metal helmet with what appeared to be a gas pressure gauge on the front, would move everyone into position. He would also theoretically be ready to extract people or move people around as the situation demanded, though nobody had a good way to signal him for help.

“Everybody ready?” Access asked, giving his new headgear a dubious glance.

Legend glanced around the room. “I though we were going to distribute the heavy hitters? Batman’s team doesn’t have any.”

Kumagawa closed his eyes and tilted his head, empty smile still on his face. <Pluses shouldn’t worry about Minuses.> He said, and did not elaborate.

“Alright.” Legend didn’t argue the point, but that was partially because the memory of the vital role Kumagawa had played against Tiamat was fresh in his mind. “But Alexandria’s team is comprised entirely of them. Couldn’t we switch, say, Fate with JoJo?”

“There’s a reason the teams are like this.” Batman said. “Trust me.”

Alexandria narrowed her eyes at him. “I don’t.”

Batman smirked. “We’re ready.”

A flash of golden light lit up the room…

Chapter Text

With the way Fate had talked about Eternia, Superman had expected… well, he wasn’t sure exactly what he had been expecting, but it certainly wasn’t a swamp marsh exactly like the ones on Earth.

“We’re not that far off.” Zatanna called. “I feel powerful magic on the other side of those mountains.”

“You can sense other people using… the same power as you?” Legend still couldn’t quite bring himself to use the word ‘magic’ in a sentence and mean it seriously.

“In the same way I imagine you or Superman would notice if you were about to stick your heads in a star, yes.” The slightly tense reply came.

Superman and Zatanna lifted off the ground (“Sdniw raeb em tfola!”), Legend picked up the bulky Dampener, and the three flew over the tree-covered mountains. On the other side sat a gap in the mountains that formed a rough bowl-shape. At the lowest point of the depression sat a castle shaped like a giant grey skull, complete with a moat of bottomless abyss. Over the top of this odd scene was a purple dome of energy, shielding the castle.

“The magic we’re looking for is in there.” Zatanna confirmed what the guys were thinking.

They descended down to the point outside the dome closest to the drawbridge (Jaw-bridge?).

“Looks like they’re expecting company.” Legend observed. “Look – behind the forcefield. Those are a lot of energy cannons.”

Superman spared the ancient castle’s battlements a glance. Indeed, various barrels and emitter points had been propped up against the stone, science and magic collaborating to send a firm message of KEEP OUT. He tried to focus his X-ray vision inside, but found that his gaze couldn’t penetrate the castle walls.

“Someone knew we were coming.” Superman said.

Legend cupped his hands around his mouth. “Hello, the castle!” He called. He'd always wanted to do that.

“Who goes there?!” A voice called back from the castle walls. A man in futuristic armour cautiously stuck his head out from behind the battlements. “State your business!”

“We are travellers from a distant land!” Zatanna called up to the soldier. “We are in desperate need of magicks far more powerful than our own! Will the lord of the castle hear of our plight?”

“Lady.” The moustached soldier to called down, faint amusement in his voice.

“Will the lady of the castle hear our plight?” Zatanna hastily corrected.

“Laying it on a bit thick, aren’t you?” Legend muttered, and Superman concealed a smile.

He also noticed someone jumping down from the castle walls and begin to walk towards them – an extremely buff barbarian-looking man wearing only fur briefs and a blue harness around his chest.

“What do you think, Sorceress?” The soldier turned and called down into the castle. “Are these the ones we’ve been waiting for?”

“No need to bother the Sorceress, Master-At-Arms!” A small imp-like form floated up to Master-At-Arm’s head height. The newcomer’s form was entirely concealed inside a cloak, scarf and hat, and he was clutching a golden staff in one hand. “I can cast the spell myself!”

“Orko, wait –” Master-At-Arms began to say, but ‘Orko’ wasn’t listening. Muttering under his breath, a smoky purple beam of energy shot from his hands and staff to strike a surprised Superman in the chest.

“What the hell?!” Legend yelled out, while Zatanna quickly chanted “Darw ffo rehtruf skcatta.”

“Now, traveller, you are compelled to give answers true!” Orko pointed a purple finger down at Superman. “Are you here to steal the powers of Castle Greyskull?”

Superman tried to say ‘No, of course not!’, and while those were the words that came out of his mouth, they weren’t in his voice. Instead, it was in an unfamiliar nasally one.

His two companions suddenly turned to stare at him like he’d grown a second head.

“I knew it!” Orko yelled down. “You won’t fool us this time, Skeletor!”

“Nice try, Skeletor.” The barbarian spoke up, stepping through the forcefield as though it was made of water. “Evil-Lyn.” He inclined his head at Zatanna. “Not sure who you are, though I guess I’ll find out in a moment.” He nodded at Legend, then drew a sword from a sheath on his back. “This really isn’t your day – Orko found out about your plan to enter in disguise hours ago.”

“No, wait –” Superman tried, still talking in Skeletor’s voice, but despite (or because of) that, He-Man charged at him anyway.

“You don’t really look like much of a guardian.”

“Oh yeah? Well, you don’t look like much of a ‘Batman’. You’re clearly a human in a weird costume!”

“It’s a bat costume. It strikes fear into my enemies.”

“No bat I know dresses like that. Although, if you did wear Rouge’s outfit, I guess people would be running away from you screaming…”

“If I may interject.” Joseph said, steeping bodily between the two and somehow managing to work a double bicep flex into the movement. “The people in town said you looked after something called the ‘Master Emerald’?”

Knuckles the Echidna squinted up at the three humans. “Yeah? What’s it to you?”

“Well my good man – er, echidna… thing.” Joseph said. Knuckles scowled. “It just so happens that we are in dire need of some truly stupendous amount of energy, otherwise… er, well…”

<Everyone you love and care about will die.> Kumagawa’s smile was as empty as usual.

“What he means is –” Batman interjected, shooting his ‘helpful’ teammate a glare. “– that we are trying to stop a disaster of unimaginable scale, and we can’t do it without the power of your Master Emerald.”

“I dunno.” Knuckles said, scratching the side of his head. “This sounds like something Eggman would say to me whenever he wanted to steal the Emerald.”

Before any of the three could respond, the sound of a ringtone came from Knuckles. “Wait, hang on guys, I’ve gotta take this.”

He pulled a small device from… somewhere… and pressed a button on the side, causing the image of a yellow anthropomorphic fox to appear on a screen.

“Knuckles! There’s big trouble ahead!” Came a slightly tinny voice from the device.

“What’s up, Tails?” Knuckles replied.

“Knuckles? Tails?” Joseph muttered to Kumagawa. “What’s the next one going to be called, Legs?”

Knuckles pointedly turned around to face away from the humans.

“You remember Blaze, right?” Tails said.

“The crazy fire lady from another dimension?”

“This ‘crazy fire lady’ can hear you, you know.” A new voice came from the communicator.

Knuckles awkwardly scratched the side of his head. “Oh, uh, Blaze! Hi! Um… what are you doing here?”

“It’s really bad, Knuckles!” Tails said. “Someone’s stolen the Jewelled Sceptre!”

“The what now?”

“It’s the powerful magical artefact that can channel the Power of the Stars!”

“Again, the what now?”

“It’s the force that allows parallel worlds to co-exist without destroying each other.” Blaze cut in again.

“Oh, okay.” Knuckles paused. “What’s that got to do with anything?”

“Whoever stole the sceptre left a clue.” Blaze explained. “‘What has two sides, but only one?’”

Knuckles stared blankly at the screen.

Batman sighed. “A Mobius strip.”

“A Mobius strip!” Tails happily answered from the communicator, not having heard Batman’s response.

“Right.” Blaze said. “So I hopped over here, to planet Mobius. I nearly didn’t make it, because something’s wrong with the space between dimensions.”

“We think that someone’s disturbing it!” Tails said. “We need the power of the Master Emerald to put it right again!”

Knuckles paused, and looked back over his shoulder at the humans. “Use it how?”

“Um, well, I guess I’d need to build some kind of fake Jewelled Sceptre machine…”

Knuckles turned around and pointed the communicator’s camera at the Dampener the three humans were carrying with them. “Something like this?”

“…oh, wow. Yeah, something like that.”

“Cool.” Knuckles ended the call. “Come on, guys.” He said, addressing the humans once again. “It’s a bit of a walk to Angel Island.”

When Flash, Manhunter, Ant-Man and Mr Fantastic materialised in the dimension of Earth-616, the immediate problem was that of breathing.

Specifically, that the moon they had appeared on lacked an atmosphere.

Ant-Man immediately sealed his helmet (which had its own oxygen supply for the times he was smaller than air molecules), and Manhunter didn’t really need to breathe. Flash and Mr Fantastic, however, did.

I sense many minds that way! Manhunter telepathically projected hurriedly, and Flash unceremoniously picked Fantastic up and ran.

As a passenger, Fantastic didn’t really have time to see anything except the world blurring around him as the moon’s red-grey surface sped by at speeds few in the multiverse could pull off without mucking around with the flow of time.

Abruptly though, the world suddenly halted, and Fantastic gulped down a lungful of air out of pure surprise before the thought that he could breathe had properly processed.

He looked around – the two of them were now in the dull metal confines of what he strongly suspected was some kind of space building (maybe an outpost?).

He looked behind him to find the Flash also gulping down air and no hole in the walls. “Did you open the airlock at super-speed?”

Flash shook his head. “Didn’t have the time. I just phased through the wall instead.”

Mr Fantastic (who hadn’t actually known his partner could do that) paused, then nodded gratefully. “You okay?”

Flash looked at shoulder of the silver chest-piece he had on over his uniform. Mr Fantastic had noticed him putting it on before they left, but hadn’t had the chance to ask him about it. “Looks like I had to run us to the other side of the moon. We’re fine, but I had to use up a third of the Speed Force I had stored up.”

“‘Used up’?” Mr Fantastic blinked.

“Most universes don’t have a Speed Force.” Flash explained, tapping his chest-piece. “I need to use this battery when we go world-hopping, otherwise my powers don’t work.”

At that point Martian Manhunter phased up through the floor, a tiny Ant-Man on his shoulder and the Dampener held in both hands.

“Glad you see you guys made it.” Ant-man said.

There lies a powerful mind not much further in. Manhunter projected. We must hurry – he knows we are here already.

The four set off at a run, heading deeper into the outpost. Manhunter and Flash limited their speed so that Mr Fantastic could keep up.

“This is your ‘verse, right?” Flash asked. “Any idea what we’re in for?”

“‘Unlimited power’…” Mr Fantastic mused. “There’s a couple things that could be, but if I had to put money on it, I’d probably have to guess the Power Stone, the purple Infinity Stone.”

“I think I remember those things from that time Krona tried to destroy your universe.” Flash said. “Don’t they only work in your universe?”

Mr Fantastic gave Flash an odd look, even as they continued running together. “We’re in my universe.”

“…right. So we are.”

They entered the central chamber all together.

It was dimly lit, probably because most of the machinery in the room had been smashed and melted by what looked like explosive weapons fire. The floor was slippery, and the entire room smelled like iron filings, but that was because of the corpses who had been strewn around the room haphazardly.

In the middle of the room floated a mechanical throne, and on that throne…

“Richards.”

Mr Fantastic grimaced at the gravely tones addressing him. “Thanos. I thought you’d given up on gathering the Infinity Stones?”

The purple titan lifted up his left hand, and the golden Infinity Gauntlet on it, three gemstones shining in the dark. “Sometimes nothing less will get the job done.”

Manhunter lifted Mr Fantastic and Ant-Man’s memories of Thanos, grimacing at what he saw even as he shared them with Flash.

“We need the purple stone!” Mr Fantastic yelled out.

“Come then.” Thanos stood up. “Try and take it from me.”

Chapter Text

The sword really shouldn’t have made a difference.

He was Superman. If you shrunk down a bomb, stuffed it up his nose and then set it off, you’d be lucky to make him sneeze. Something as basic and primitive as a sword should have been nothing to him.

However, two major things conspired to make this not true.

First was the man wielding it. “Uncultured barbarian” or not, He-Man was keeping up with both his strength and speed. About the only physical advantage Superman had is that He-Man didn’t seem to be able to fly, and that wasn’t helpful right now. In the air he’d be a prime target for his mage buddy, even with Zatanna keeping him distracted.

The second was that the sword appeared to be magic, one of the things that completely bypassed his invincibility. The only reason Superman hadn’t lost a hand finding this out was He-Man’s tendency to strike with the flat of the blade, not the edge. In addition to being able to cut him, it also seemed to be indestructible, as He-Man was using it to block all of his punches without issue.

He opponent grimaced. “Where did you get such power, Skeletor?!” He quickly jumped back out of immediate punching range and swung his Power Sword out at Superman as he tried to close back in. “I swear that I have never been pressed by you this hard, and yet… memories stir at the back of my mind…”

Superman grimaced right back. He’d fought enough magical, time-travelling, reality-warping, cosmic and/or divine enemies that his timeline more closely resembled a bundle of crushed tumbleweed then it did a linear progression. It was entirely possible he had fought this man before, multiple times even, only for the fights to un-happen.

Superman flew in a tight circle around He-Man, quickly building up tornado-force winds. He-Man’s feet briefly left the ground before he stabbed his sword into it to anchor himself. That tied down his hands, however, preventing him from dodging or blocking a flurry of punches from Superman to his chest. He-Man’s mouth twisted as he bit back a cry of pain.

The assorted cannons placed around Castle Greyskull moved in concert to target Legend as best they could, though they were not built to hit such a mobile target as he, and shot past him into the sky. Legend’s own retaliatory lasers splashed against the forcefield, causing it to glow a bright yellow colour but nothing beyond that. Both Legend and Man-At-Arms grunted in frustration.

Zatanna, on the other hand, wasn’t doing that badly. Orko showed no signs of moving out from behind the forcefield, but he didn’t seem to be paying her much attention at all. Sure, he sent the occasional beam of purple magic in her general direction, but his primary focus seemed to be the He-Man/Superman brawl.

Whoever had set this shield up had access to far more magical power than she did, and they seemed to know at least basic dimensional mechanics because she hadn’t been able to teleport or phase through it.

However, air did seem to pass through it, if the gentle breeze coming though the shield was any indication. Presumably, those inside wished to keep breathing through a protracted siege. Zatanna shrugged. Their loss.

Zatanna raised her wand high, aiming it at Orko. “Wolb mih ot em!”

Orko squawked as a sudden gale-force wind blew him clean off the battlements and sent him sailing through the air to land, face in the dirt, at Zatanna’s feet.

“Sure, Weather Wizard might be sending me a Cease and Desist when he finds out…”

Orko lifted his head off the ground to find the tip of Zatanna’s wand an inch from his nose.

“…but right now, you’re out.”

To her surprise, Orko actually snarled at her. With surprising speed, his staff went up and knocked her wand hand aside, putting her off balance for just long enough for him to cast one more spell. Another purple beam shot out of his staff, slamming into the back of Superman and causing him to howl in pain, a purple aura starting to glow from his body.

Now that she was within a metre of the casting, Zatanna was able to sense something she hadn’t from so far away – Orko’s magic actually felt distinctly evil.

He-Man took advantage of Superman’s distraction to pull the Power Sword out of the ground and lift it into a guard position (the winds having died down), but he didn’t attack with it, instead just watching Superman writhe in pain in confusion.

Zatanna cast her next spell on a hunch, grabbing Orko by the front of his robes and hoisting him up so that his face was level with hers. “Wohs em ohw uoy yllaer era!”

With a snap, the image of Orko the diminutive mage broke in half, revealing the creature who actually looked rather similar to He-Man, only he was purple and had a skull for a head.

“Skeletor?!” He-Man and Man-At-Arms yelled in surprised unison, the latter ceasing to fire.

“Eh,” Skeletor shrugged, speaking in the same nasally voice that Superman had been speaking in earlier, “I was getting tired of pretending to be that idiot anyway.”

He-Man’s face twisted in fury. “What have you done with the real Orko, Skeletor?!”

“I wouldn’t worry about him if I were you, you babbling, bumbling, blundering baboon.” Skeletor pointed up at Superman. “After all, my curse should be done about now!”

With a howl of pain, Superman split into two – one red, and one blue.

The blue Superman dropped to the ground, exhausted.

The red Superman gave an evil grin.

Angle Island, as it turned out, was an utterly impossible patch of real estate – a literal island floating in the sky. Boarding it required utilising an ancient teleportation device that came out in a series of ruins.

“Geez, you live here?” Joseph Joestar shaded his eyes with a hand. Nothing but crumbling stonework as far as the eye could see. “Why don’t you move somewhere more cheery? You know, like a morgue.”

“Are you done?” Knuckles growled.

Batman, meanwhile, was examining the flora growing underfoot. “You live here alone?”

“For as long as I can remember, yeah.” Knuckles shrugged, not seeming to think much of it.

“Hm.” Batman grunted, eyeing the thoroughly trampled grass suspiciously. “Take us to the emerald.”

‘Altar Emerald’ was another ten minute walk from the teleporter. Knuckles seemed unconcerned about the unstable bridges and hole-ridden ceilings, though considering that he was strong enough to lift and throw boulders, he might not have considered a wall falling on him a real problem.

The Altar sat in the middle of a grassy field, two levels of stone with a staircase leading up to where the Master Emerald was supposed to sit.

Was supposed to.

“NOT AGAIN!” Knuckles roared, running up the stairs to the altar at what was actually a pretty impressive clip, reaching the top of the altar within seconds. “EVERY TIME, I SWEAR…!”

He furiously picked something up from the depression where the enormous jewel normally sat. “What? An envelope?!” He tore the paper open, leading the very brief letter aloud. “Second of the second, slightly to the left of the first?!”

<First this Jewelled Sceptre, now a Master Emerald… both times, clues left behind…> Kumagawa pondered, rubbing his chin. Then he smiled brightly, holding up a finger. <We’re dealing with a real moron here!>

“Hey, Man-Bat!” Knuckles yelled, jumping down from the altar. “You figured out Blaze’s riddle pretty quick – where’s the guy who stole the Master Emerald?”

“You won’t have to look far.” Batman said, choosing to let the mangling of his name slide. “We must have surprised them, coming back when we did – they haven’t left the island yet.”

“They haven’t?” Knuckles repeated blankly. Then he caught his fist in his other hand. “Oh, right! The island hasn’t fallen out of the sky yet!”

“That’s a thing that can happen?!” Joseph yelped, jumping up and balancing on one foot, his triceps bulging out of pure habit as he held his arms up to his sides.

Batman blinked slowly, processing this information. “That’s… not what I meant. These ruins were built by your people, were they not?”

“They were built by echidnas, yeah.”

“And no other people lived here? Definitely nobody like us?”

“No overlanders lived up here, no. Look, do you have a point?”

“So why’s that doorway over there twice as tall as all the other ones?”

Even as those assembled turned to look, there was a sharp click, and the three humans and the echidna suddenly found themselves frozen in place, their legs freezing in place.

“Looks like you’re just as good of a detective as they say you are.”

Joseph perked up in surprise. “That voice…! No, it couldn’t be…! It’s not possible!”

The pile of crumbling stone that Batman had pointed out (and, Knuckles suddenly realised, lay in the direction that he could sense the Master Emerald in) suddenly exploded outward, revealed for what it was – hasty camouflage. The ‘door’ Batman had noticed was instead revealed to be an entry hatch for some kind of VTOL aircraft, and striding out of it…

“Don’t bother trying to move.” The woman said, adjusting her fedora. “I’ve stolen your ability to walk.” Her right fist was clenched tight around something the others couldn’t see, and she quickly tucked it into a breast pocket.

Behind her came a group of obvious thugs, brutes with dim eyes and biceps that could actually give Joseph a run for his money. They fanned out behind Batman and the others, grabbing their arms and wrenching them behind their backs. Six of them were needed to hold Knuckles, even though he had no leverage.

“Long time, no see, Joseph.” The woman said, a simple wooden cane dangling from her left arm.

Joseph grimaced in reply. “And just where in the world have you been, Carmen Santiago?!”

Flash had been in the Superhero business for long enough to know that when the obvious bad guy’s doohickey started to glow, you didn’t just sit around like a sack of potatoes. In less than an eye-blink he was across the room, punching Thanos as hard as he could in the inside of his elbow. In pain, the titan unclenched his fist. Flash eagerly reached up to grab the gauntlet off his massive hand and –

To those whose perception didn’t operate at speedster levels, the Infinity Gauntlet seemed to suddenly explode in a massive flash of lightning, throwing Flash away (wait when did he get close to Thanos?) into the wall with a loud BANG.

“You’re fast, aren’t you?” Thanos chuckled. “Too bad taking this off me is going to be harder than you’d think.” He pointed his gauntlet at Flash, the green stone now glowing. “Now stay –”

His teeth were suddenly grit as he found himself sharing his head with an angry martian.

“Go!” Manhunter roared, both verbally and telepathically.

Ant-Man didn’t need any prompting, having already run half-way across the room at a centimetre high. Skidding to a halt underneath Thanos, Ant-Man suddenly surged in size, his fist upraised to punch Thanos’s jaw on his way up. Stopping just short of the high ceiling in height, nearly twice as tall as Thanos, Ant-Man went to kick him off his throne completely.

The third stone on the gauntlet – the yellow Mind stone – glowed for just a moment, and Manhunter’s look of concentration was replaced with a roar of pain, his features actually melting a little as he lost control over his shapeshifting.

Given a moments reprieve, Thanos pressed a button on the arm of his throne, and from the top of the throne shot a beam of energy into Ant-Man’s chest, blasting him back into Manhunter and Mr Fantastic. Flash jumped to his feet, but then the green Time stone glowed and the Flash was suddenly frozen in mid air.

“No games.” Thanos rumbled, standing up from his throne.

Mr Fantastic eyes frantically switched their gaze between Thanos and the Flash. “If you guys distract Thanos for a moment, I think I can free him!”

I will… need a moment. The Martian Manhunter projected, phasing down through the floor.

Ant-Man gingerly got to his feet, trying not to step on either Mr Fantastic or the time-stopped area. “Guess it’s up to me then.”

“Fools.”

Ant-Man screamed as Thanos lifted the Gauntlet again, the Power Stone glowing brightly and projecting a huge line of electricity into the hero.

“You really are all dancing on her strings, aren’t you?” The Titan muttered.

Mr Fantastic, who had been quietly stretching his way around to behind Thanos, suddenly paused. “Wait, what?”

With a roar, Ant-Man swung his fist down onto an unworried Thanos…

Chapter Text

When Ajimui was born, she was three-point-three trillion years too early for any universe to exist.

There wasn’t much that Was, back then. A small handful of proto-gods, busy debating whether to Begin or not. A pair of cosmic observers. The odd time traveller who’d drastically overshot.

Her “childhood” was rather lonely. The gods dismissed her as a fluke that didn’t deserve to Be. The observers watched her quietly, but said nothing. The time travellers actually fled screaming when she approached their tiny, desperate bubbles of Existence.

Incidentally, that was how she found out that her name was Ajimui.

She was left with literal Nothing to play with, and play she did. She invented worlds and stories and places and people, and watched them play out inside her imagination. With her [Little big planet] and [New game plus] Skills, she could create and recreate the universes that the gods were dragging their feet on.

But they weren’t real. Just figments of her imagination. Just little pieces of her.

She quickly realised that there was no fun in her crafted worlds when she knew how they would end before she’d even started forming them. She’d despaired for a trillion years or so, before eventually hitting on the idea of blindfolding herself. Using [Emergency override], she could turn off [Read the game guide], [After-credits scene], [Memories of Merlin], and the other two billion or so Skills that would let her see the future. She missed [Final Countdown], the Skill that told her how much longer she’d have to wait for a real world to be made, but only briefly. The novelty of actually being surprised at the unexpected wouldn’t wear off for a hundred billion years or so.

But her despair had only been delayed, not banished. She’d deactivated her omniscience, not her omnipotence. The worlds she’d made were just tiny parts of her dreams, so everything she tried she succeeded at without issue.

She’d tried dreaming up opposition to herself, other entities who would oppose her, cause her to try. Let her pretend, even for only a few seconds of this eternity, that she wasn’t just talking to herself. But it hadn’t worked. Even when she’d successfully learned how to not use most of her Skills, and to dream up some truly terrifying abomination, a creature she had designed expressly to defeat her, she had always “escaped”. Several of her Skills would override her control and whisk her out of harm’s way in just the nick of time.

She’d realised later that making a Level One playthough without allowing herself to block or heal wasn’t actually a way to challenge herself. She was trying to see if she could create something that could truly defy her, or whether all attackers would just freeze up when she hit 1 HP.

Whether the world she’d created would allow her to End.

That was how she’d completely missed that the next universe she’d ‘played’ in was real. She’d gotten so good at surprising herself that she didn’t think it was strange at all that she didn’t remember Beginning this one.

And, of course, her four quadrillion Skills meant that when she wanted something done, it happened. No different to the dream worlds from before.

She was pleasantly surprised when she met people who didn’t seem to be just a limited version of her, but quickly realised that they couldn’t defy her either. She reasoned that she had spent so long doing this that she was now creating intelligence fully sealed off from herself without knowing it, all in the pursuit of truly being surprised.

The her-that-was-Kumagawa was particularly dogged about insisting that this world was real, which was rather sweet of him. It was nonetheless pointless – she’d been telling that lie to herself for over two hundred times longer than this particular universe had existed, and she’d long since learned to stop listening to herself.

The her-that-was-Kumagawa got so passionate about proving this one point, that he’d ripped her face off and stolen her [Hundred gauntlets] Skill, modifying it into [All fiction]. Using both that and his own [Book maker], he’d actually shoved her outside of the universe altogether.

It was so cute. She’d been born in Nonexistance, but it had been so long that she’d truly been back there that she easily amused herself for three years teasing the her-that-was-Hanten, who struggled to maintain his stoic aura while he didn’t exist.

But it wasn’t like looking at ‘Reality’ from outside was going to convince her that it deserved that name.

When she’d come back, she’d recognised the her-that-was-Madoka for what she was. A “main character”, one of the creatures she’d made to defeat herself. And defeat her they would – that was the whole point – but they’d never finish her off, never truly defeat her. All she was doing was trying (and failing) to pretend otherwise.

Even without her future-seeing Skills, she could see where this was going. So she decided to mix things up. Avoid the her-that-was-Madoka until her “story” was over, and then get back to her various impossible tasks, hoping blindly that one of them would actually fail this time.

Filling out the PRT had been a spur-of-the-moment thing. When she’d realised that a group of Normals was trying to keep the Abnormals and Minuses in check, it had actually made her laugh. It was a fool's errand, anyone could see that. The Strong did what they liked, and the only hope for the Weak was to become Strong or to beg patronage from one of the kinder Strong ones. It was impossible for things to be otherwise.

Upon thinking that last thought, she’d immediately commanded a few dozen thousand of her to sign up. They’d succeed, of course. She always did. But for a while, her contempt of the human race would let her believe that she might fail at something for a change.

The indignation of the her-that-was-Alexandria in particular had amused her. It had been a few hundred billion years since anyone who knew who she was and wasn’t a “main character” had stood up to her like that. It was refreshing.

Fighting the White Queen had been an easy decision. She liked that particular group of figments of her imagination, so stepping in to rescue them from one her the hers-that-was-a-final-boss was the act of a momentary whimsy. One of the times she didn’t let events play out as they would.

Only, the Queen hadn’t played by the rules. She’d slapped aside her attacks and retaliated with attacks that actually made it past her defence Skills.

She’d even blasted the her-that-was-Kumagawa’s seal clean off, and Ajimui was actually quite fond of that limiter.

It was hypocritical of her, but now that she wasn’t getting her way, she found she didn’t like it.

Just this once, she decided to break her multi-trillion year old rule, and invoked [Last page], the Know the Answer to the Mystery Skill. Just a quick peak at what she’d have to do to win this encounter, then –

Oh.

Oh.

In one instant, she saw everything. She saw how the fight would continue to go. She saw the banter she would casually throw out. She saw her unavoidable defeat at the hands of the White Queen.

“Hmm. And here I thought there was only one person who could defy my twelve quadrillion, eight hundred and fifty-eight trillion, fifty-one billion, nine hundred and sixty-eight million, six hundred and thirty-three thousand, eight hundred and sixty-four Skills.”

“Really? I don’t obey the laws that even the gods have to follow, and you think I’d pay attention to the make-believe of a girl who failed to grow up over three trillion years?”

But more importantly, she saw what came after the White Queen.

Seriously? That’s how this story ends? What a pathetic whimper to close with.

“My, you really do think the world is fake, don’t you? I obliterated those you were protecting at the start of the fight, and you have yet to shed a single tear. And your boyfriend went to such lengths to keep you from killing yourself…”

“It is true that Kumagawa-kun has a really funny idea of suicide watch, but doesn’t your love interest want you dead?”

She wasn’t going to win this fight. She wasn’t even going to be driven off. She was actually, truly going to die. For all of her unfairly spec’d intellect and computing Skills, she still couldn’t really wrap her head around the idea.

She was getting what she’d always dreamed of, and she was dismayed to find out that it terrified her.

“I despise people who don’t know when to give up.”

“Well, I did have to be sure.”

What the hell was she going to do now?

What would the her-that-was-Kumagawa –

…

What would Kumagawa-kun do now?

“Sure about what?”

“Keeping the world from being destroyed really is impossible with people like you around. So I guess that means this world really is real after all.”

She didn’t need a Skill to work that out.

He’d flip the bird at whatever was coming and tell them to **** off, that same smile still on his face.

“If loosing a fight proves that to you, I would have happily proved it to you long ago.”

“And that means that the people in the world are real too. How embarrassing. I wasted so much time…”

Any deaths the White Queen had caused couldn’t be undone, but there was nothing stopping her from grabbing their souls and stuffing them into copies of their old bodies. She even spent the effort linking the Parahumans back up to their old Shards.

But if she really wanted to change the future, she’d have to send Hanten-san a message. She needed him to create a new Skill with his [Skill that Makes Skills].

He would likely hate her for it. He had devoted his life to preserving the “Strange thing” that was her, and now she was wasting precious instants sending him a message instead of fleeing, as though the White Queen would have allowed her to do that.

[True Believer]. Without that Skill, there was no possibility for the Bad End to be avoided.

“YOU DARE?!”

With that, Ajimui closed her eyes and embraced oblivion.

Chapter Text

“JoJo! I have a compact jetpack in the back of my utility belt! If you can press the activation button –” Batman started.

“As much I would dearly love to do that, I’m afraid she’s already stolen it.” Joseph Joestar grunted, frustrated at his inability to break the hold on his arms, even with his mighty (and Hamon-assisted) biceps.

“Your next line will be ‘Dammit, she’s even stolen my catchphrase!’”

“Dammit, she’s even stolen my catchphrase!”

Carmen Santiago casually strolled behind the four bound heroes, Batman’s utility belt slung over one shoulder, Joseph’s cacklers and supply of string in one hand, and Knuckles’s communicator in the other. The cane he had noticed earlier was still hanging from her left arm.

Joseph idly wondered where Knuckles had hidden his communicator, and how Carmen had managed to get it out of wherever it had been. Then one possibility occurred to him, and he turned slightly green as he decided that he did not, in fact, want to know.

“Oh yes, these will fetch a nice price.” Carmen smiled, holding the utility belt up to her face to closely examine it.

Batman twisted in another attempt to break free, then suddenly relaxed, his full attention on Carmen. “Not going to sell us? I’m sure my enemies would pay you a premium to have me delivered up.”

Carmen waved a hand dismissively at Batman. “Please, detective. I don’t steal lives.”

Joseph was stuck facing the wrong way to properly glare at Carmen, so he settled for turning his head as far as he could, his one visible eye narrowed. (He had also somehow leaned backwards nearly sixty degrees, his posing seemingly unimpeded by his restraints.) “Because naturally, stealing the Ozone Layer caused no harm to anyone.”

The corner of Carmen’s mouth gave an annoyed twitch, and she lowered the utility belt with a huff. “We all have our phases, JoJo.” She paused, and a smirk graced her lips. “I seem to remember you having one where you chased me all over the globe. Whatever happened to that?” The words “all over” had an undertone in them that Batman usually heard from Catwoman, when she was in one of her more playful moods.

“My wife found out.” Joseph said flatly.

“Pity.”

<The power to steal anything? Well, that’s a Minus if I’ve ever heard one.>

“I don’t care if she’s a plus, minus or just plain zero!” The beige area around Kunckles’s face was turning as red as the rest of him. “Give me back the Master Emerald!”

Carmen smirked, walking over to in front of the echidna and pinching his cheek playfully. “No can do, sweetie. Just this once, I’m working on commission. And Carmen Santiago doesn’t give refunds. But I gave you a clue as to where I’m going next, fair and square. Catch up to me and we’ll talk.”

“How did you even get here?” Joseph said, exasperated. “You didn’t steal the dimensional boundary or anything stupid, did you?”

“Now, now.” Carmen said, dumping the stolen person possessions into a sack held up by another henchman. “You only get one clue at a time, you know.” She turned to leave, gesturing for her thugs to follow her.

“You’ve given away more than you realise.” Batman said.

Carmen paused. “Excuse me?”

“You had to adjust your posture three times to account for that cane. You aren’t used to having it there. But you obviously don’t need it to walk – so why are you carrying it around?”

Joseph blinked, before peering closer at the wooden cane Carmen had. Come to think of it, Carmen didn’t have a cane the last time he saw her, and it looked kinda…

…wait.

No way…

“Carmen Santiago…” Joseph growled. “Why do you have Waldo’s magic walking stick?”

For a moment, it looked like Carmen wouldn’t respond, but eventually she sighed. “…only the Americans call him Waldo.” She said quietly. “His real name is Wally.”

“Where’s Waldo, Carmen Santiago?”

Carmen suddenly spun around, marching up to Joseph and planing the tip of the walking stick just in front of his nose. “His name” she growled “is Wally…!”

She realised her mistake as she saw how Joseph's face had started to glow the soft gold of Hamon.

“Binding golden…!” Joseph roared, swinging his head down to headbutt the walking stick. “OVERDRIVE!”

The Hamon charge travelled easily down the formerly-organic walking stick, up Carmen’s arm and into her red trench coat. Suddenly growing tight, the coat pulled Carmen’s arms to her sides and her legs together. Her footing destroyed, she fell forwards onto the grass.

“Yeh-ha!” Knuckles cried, even as Carmen’s thugs cried out in alarm. “Great shot!”

“Are you an idiot?” Carmen demanded, easily moving her limbs apart and beginning to get up. She grabbed her hat from where it had fallen and put it back on her head.

“Oh sure, my Binding Golden Overdrive can’t keep you pinned after you fell and discharged it into the grass…” Joseph shrugged, holding his hands up in a ‘what can you do’ gesture.

The thugs behind him make a double take, realising that they were now holding empty air.

Joseph pointed at Carmen and grinned. “But when you fell over, you broke whatever it was in your breast pocket. So now we can move again.”

“Good job, JoJo!” Batman shouted, pitching forward and pulling his arms inward as hard as he could. The two thugs holding onto his hands were pulled off balance, slamming their heads into each other with a loud donk that sent them staggering backwards.

The henchmen holding Kumagawa screamed as their hands suddenly erupted with blood, suddenly pierced with dozens of screws the size of ballpoint pens. The ones trying to hold down Knuckles were simply flung into the air as the furious echidna roared.

Carmen Santiago could easily see where this was going. Grabbing the sack of stolen goods, she dashed for her getaway plane, slamming the door shut behind her and grabbing the controls, dropping the sack in the co-pilot's chair. She had to escape line-of-sight before she could use Wally’s magic walking stick to leave this dimension.

She spared a glance for the henchmen she was leaving behind as the VTOL aircraft lifted off the ground, but she wasn’t going to stick her neck out for them. That was why she paid them danger pay.

One thing she did notice among the chaotic melee is that Batman was staring directly at her, leaving the fight around him completely to his allies. Carmen smirked at him down below – it always made her feel so smug when she left the detectives in the dust. She gave a quiet little laugh as he narrowed his eyes at her. She’d already stolen everything he had on him. What was he going to do – glare the plane down?

It was only after she finished laughing that she heard the beeping coming from the sack next to her.

She managed to leap clear of the exploding utility belt, but in doing so lost control of the plane, which tilted alarmingly almost immediately and slammed into the ground it had just left, thankfully not rolling.

By the time Carmen had crawled free of the wreckage, she found Batman standing tall before her, arms crossed.

“Dead-man switch in the belt.” He said simply.

She let out an unladylike growl, reaching forwards to steal the smirk off his face, when a screw the size of a toilet paper roll suddenly flew down and ‘nailed’ her hand to the ground. She screamed as she felt the delicate joints and ligaments torn to shreds.

The confident smirk on Batman’s face suddenly changed to shock, then fury. He rounded on Kumagawa, who was standing off to one side with his hands in his pockets, his face still displaying an empty smile.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?!” He demanded.

The Japanese high-school boy gave a slightly confused tilt of the head. <Stopping her from getting away?>

“Yeah Bats, she’ll live won’t she?” Joseph Joestar shrugged.

(Knuckles would have been there, turning green at the sight of the maiming, but he was busy digging through the crashed plane for his precious Master Emerald.)

“You listen to me –” Batman started.

<If you’re going to tell me to take the moral high ground, then you’re dumber than your costume.> Kumagawa interrupted.

The empty smile had left his face.

A screw the size of a water bottle appeared from thin air, and he spun it idly on a fingertip.

<I’m a Minus.> He said. <We don’t receive the fortune of an Abnormal, or even the indifference of a Normal. Our lives are defined by how much pain and suffering we can withstand.>

<I’ve only met one person who really seemed to understand. She left a recording in my head just in case she lost the chance to say goodbye.>

He tossed the screw up into the air and caught it, holding it like a short sword. <I really shouldn’t have been surprised when it began to play a few hours ago. Minuses, you see, can never have anything that could be called a ‘victory’.>

Batman drew himself up, looming over Kumagawa like a shadow. “I’m sorry for your loss, but that doesn’t give you the right –”

<April Fiction.>

Batman vanished.

Carmen Santiago, who had been quietly worming the screw out of her hand, jumped up slightly, hissing at the fresh pain in her hand. Joseph, Knuckles and her henchmen were all gone as well, as was the remains of her getaway plane.

Kumagawa began to walk towards Carmen. Casually, like he was just out for a stroll.

<I didn’t have anything to do with Ajimu’s death.> Carmen said in Japanese, abandoning all pretence and wrenching the screw out of her hand.

<Of course not.> Kumagawa accepted readily. <If you had, then what I’m about to do might have been considered ‘justice’. You should know all too well, Santiago-san, that Minuses never get even bittersweet endings.>

As Kumagawa neared Carmen, she suddenly jumped to her feet, the arm with her ruined hand wrapping around Kumagawa’s chest and lifting him bodily off the ground. <I always get away, though.>

Kumagawa laughed. It was not a nice sound. <Are you going to try to steal my powers? A Minus can’t remove another Minus, you know.>

<No.> Carmen agreed, using her good hand to pull a pistol from her overcoat.

Bang, bang, bang! Went the gun as Carmen fired directly into Kumagawa’s heart. The boy shuddered with each bullet, then went limp.

“Dammit.” Carmen hissed, dropping the corpse. She bent over to pick up Wally’s magic walking stick, dropped when Batman had confronted her. “So much for not stealing any lives.”

<It was a solid attempt.>

Carmen turned and pulled the trigger on her pistol to send another round into Kumagawa’s forehead, but the hammer clicked on an empty chamber. Shortly afterwards, her pistol vanished in her hand.

<But unfortunately, Anshin'in-san left me my old powers as her inheritance.> Kumagawa stood up, the holes in his chest having vanished. <Once more, I am the Minus that crawls back from hell.>

Blood dripped down from the hole in Carmen’s ruined hand as she stared at Kumagawa. A new screw appeared in his hand, one the width and length of a spear.

<All Fiction.>

A couple of minutes later, Batman and the others re-emerged into existence, having been hit with the temporary April Fiction instead of the permanent All Fiction.

There was no sign of Carmen nor of Kumagawa.

Chapter Text

Despite being half the size of Ant-Man, Thanos caught his descending fist with casual ease, throwing the hero aside like he was swatting a fly.

Ant-Man shrunk as he flew across the room, giving him more space to recover in, but Thanos paid him no mind, already turning to face Mr Fantastic.

He clenched his fist, the three Infinity Gems in his gauntlet glowing ominously. "Do you really think you understand what is going on here?" He demanded.

"Better question." Mr Fantastic responded. "Do you know what happens when you resonate a temporally-frozen, extra-dimensional force-energy with the kind of energy source you use in your throne?"

Without looking, Thanos fired another blast of electricity from the Infinity Gauntlet into Ant-Man, who had been trying to attack him while he was talking. "Your attempt at distracting me is as pathetic as it is transparent."

Mr Fantastic smirked. "Good thing we were both distractions, then."

In their home universe (and all the others too, frankly), martians were known as the most powerful telepathic race.

Not in the sense that the telepathic abilities they possessed were the strongest (though the species that even rivalled them could be counted on one hand) but that of the species that possessed telepathic abilities, they were the most powerful. Strength and toughness that comparable to that of a kryptonian, flawless shape-shifting, phasing, and flight were all part of a Martian's heritage. If it wasn't for their weakness to fire, a martian would be essentially unstoppable.

Now, Thanos had telepathic abilities of his own, and was skilled enough with them to hold Manhunter far enough at bay to be able to use the Mind stone to force him out fully.

But before his people had been rendered functionally extinct, J'onn J'onzz had been a manhunter – a martian who captured criminal martians. He knew many techniques for bypassing mental shields, including and especially those that only a Martian could pull off.

And in the moment that Thanos was looking at Mr Fantastic and focusing on Ant-Man in his peripherals, the Martian Manhunter phased back up through the floor, positioned himself immediately behind Thanos, and leaned forward, still intangible, to put his head in the same place as Thanos's.

Mental barriers, as it turns out, have a much harder time keeping out someone whose brain was technically inside your skull.

"Aggh!" Thanos screamed, as Manhunter started smashing through his last-ditch innermost mental defences. After a moment, he slumped over, his consciousness forcibly shut down.

Mr Fantastic quickly stretched out his hands to Thanos's throne, lifted up a panel, and started tinkering.

Floating back slightly, Martian Manhunter let himself become tangible again. He turned around and knelt down to Ant-Man's smoking body, helping him up. "My apologies for putting you in harms way like that."

"It's no big deal." Ant-Man said, his words slightly slurred. "Suit's got enough metal to work as a Faraday Cage…" He swayed on his feet, indicating that Thanos's attack had still done some damage.

Martian Manhunter grimaced. It was fortunate that Ant-Man and Mr Fantastic were familiar with telepathically coordinated battles – this "Professor X" he had seen in their memories seemed to rival even him in skill. If he got the chance, he would greatly enjoy 'talking shop' with the other telepath.

"There we go…" Mr Fantastic muttered, closing the panel on the throne. The machinery underneath sparked and hummed, a soft glow emerging from under the panel.

At the same time, the Speed Force capacitor around Flash's neck began to glow, despite being frozen in time. Small sparks started leaking out of the seams of the device as it responded to Mr Fantastic's handiwork, Speed Force impossibly starting to leak out. As it did so, the Flash's body started, slowly at first but with increasing speed – to move.

With a sharp crack the time-stop field abruptly shattered, the Flash blurring forwards then skidding to a halt in front of Thanos's unconscious body. "Oh. I guess we won then?"

"Yep." Mr Fantastic confirmed, attaching a cable from Thanos's throne to the Infinity Gauntlet. There was a bright flash, a loud zap, and a couple of muffled bangs as electricity discharged into the throne, frying most of its systems.

Mr Fantastic then swiftly pulled the Infinity Gauntlet off of Thanos and examined it with a critical eye. "He used the Power Stone to electrify his gauntlet. That's new." Mr Fantastic looked over at Flash. "Mind explaining why you aren't dead?"

"Lighting's kind of a friend of mine." The speedster shrugged.

Mr Fantastic eyed Flash for a moment, then sighed and pulled the Power Stone from the gauntlet. "Come give Hank and me a hand hooking this up to the dampener."

"Skeletor, you fiend!" He-Man shook his fist as the red Superman began to cackle with maniacal laughter. "What have your dark magics wrought now?!"

"Isn't it obvious, cabbage-for-brains? Neh-heh-heh!" Skeletor laughed as well. "I have separated the super-dunce into his good and evil selves!"

"Fiend!" He-Man cursed. He still remembered the 'Faker' clone Skeletor had once made of him.

Zatanna held up her wand. "Og ot peel–"

She didn't get to finish her spell as Red Superman's super-speed was invoked. In the blink of an eye, he had gone from laughing in mid-air to holding her by the neck, her breathing constricted.

He-Man was quick on the draw however, and dashed over fast enough to tackle Red Superman away before he could do anything permanent.

Red Superman, however, was not playing nice. With a gust of super-breath, he encased He-Man's front side in ice, then zapped it with heat vision to cause it to explode, blowing He-Man away in a burst of scalding steam.

That meant he stayed still long enough for Man-At-Arms's cannons to target and blast him, but he just laughed it off.

"Yes, yes!" Skeletor cackled. "Destroy them all, my evil minion!"

Skeletor didn't have any eyelids (or eyes for that matter), and didn't blink. Thus, he actually saw the moment Red Superman sped in front of him, fist raised.

"I am no one's minion!" Red Superman roared, punching Skeletor so hard that he was sent flying into a hill with enough force left over to embed him in the soil.

The sensation of a laser being fired into his back made Red Superman whirl around, finding Legend floating alone in the sky.

Legend made the 'come-on' gesture.

Red Superman snarled, then rocketed forwards to plunge his fist through the hero.

Legend turned to light and let the fist pass through him harmlessly.

Red Superman used his super-breath to encase Legend in ice.

Legend turned to light and moved out of the ice without issue.

Red Superman, in desperation, fired his heat vision at Legend.

Legend turned to light and absorbed the heat vision, recharging his own energy.

Red Superman snarled. "It seems that neither of us can hurt the other."

Legend just sighed, shacking his head. "Your world and ours were only pitted against each other for a few hours, but you'd be surprised what you can do with a few hours and a couple thousand Thinkers."

Especially when one of those Thinkers was Contessa.

Legend cracked his knuckles. "Yours is the biggest name on Earth Tsadi, so we made sure to work out plenty of countermeasures for you. For example, I happen to know that you have a problem with red sunlight."

Legend's next lasers were red.

"Hmm." Joseph Joestar muttered, tracing a circle in mid-air with a walking stick. A portal formed where he had traced, and he stuck his head in briefly to look around. He yelped, pulling his head back just in time to avoid something resembling a lobster's claw from pinching shut on his nose. "Not that one!" He cried, dispelling the portal by slashing through it with the walking stick.

A short distance away, Knuckles was kneeling on Altar Emerald. The recovered Master Emerald was floating freely in mid-air, the dampener placed beneath it. "Oh Master Emerald, please, I'm begging you – lend us your mighty power!"

The Master Emerald began to glow softly, and a soft beam of light shone from it into the dampener below, which began to hum as it powered up.

Batman, standing at the base of the altar, nodded appreciatively. "All four Dampeners are linked to the main JLA computer in our universe. Once the Dampeners are powered up, it'll automatically begin the slowing process."

Joseph opened another portal, and didn't even try to look inside it as fire gushed out from it. "Nope." He grunted.

Joseph leaned back on the walking stick, waiting for the portal to close on its own. "Hey, Bats. If we're going to be stuck here until I get this working or Access picks us up –"

"Tails could probably get you home if it comes to that." Knuckles interjected.

"Cool." Joseph responded, then resumed his question to Batman. "You mind answering a question?"

"Shoot."

"This White Queen lady – she's some kind of big bad super god thing."

"Correct."

"And fighting that sort of thing is what Strange and Fate do for a living. And both of them were put on Alexandria's team."

"You still haven't asked a question."

Joseph gave an exaggerated shrug, his biceps level with his head and hands in the air. "Does Alexandria know we're expecting the Queen to attack her?"

"Who do you think made the original team suggestions?"

With an almighty crash, Alexandria impacted the black pyramid with enough force to create a 3 meter wide crater and send cracks through the rest of the structure. She had no time to catch her breath, however, having to quickly dash out of the way before a beam of pure white erased the pyramid altogether.

It was nighttime locally, the only notable source of light the hundreds of magic circles that Doctors Fate and Strange had filled the sky with. They rained down fire, ice, lightning, chains of light, spears of darkness, and a million other things as well. Each shot shook the ground, and their continued barrage was making Alexandria worry that the planet itself would break apart if the fight continued.

The White Queen barely noticed their efforts.

She strode forwards, absentmindedly firing another pair of white beams in Alexandria's general direction. Around the Queen stood the bodies of the local inhabitants, anthropomorphic cat people.

"Don't let her near the Dampener!" Strange roared, redoubling his efforts.

"Indeed! We cannot allow the lives of those here to have been spent in vain!" Fate agreed, also putting his all into his casting.

A million weapons – spears, swords, axes and more – erupted out of the back of the White Queen's dress and into the sky. They pierced through the magical circles and erased them, plunging the battlefield into darkness. Both magicians were sent flying by the aftershocks of their own spells detonating.

"You are both more than capable of handling the Divine-class." The White Queen acknowledged. "But the Unexplored-class is out of your league, let alone the strongest of the Unexplored!"

"But this…" The White Queen turned to the Dampener, and to the sword that had been plunged into the ground before it. Or, perhaps, she was looking at the small gem embedded into the sword's cross-guard. "This is worthy of my time~"

Thanos groaned as he came to, which quickly turned into a snarl as he saw the Martian Manhunter standing over him, his throne smoking on the other side of the room, and his gauntlet missing.

"What have you done with the stones?!" He roared, headless of the way the Manhunter loomed over him.

"We used the Dampener to recharge Flash's Speed Force capacitor, then he took the Time and Mind Stones and modulated his frequency to leave this dimension – which, apparently, is another thing he can do." Mr Fantastic replied, ending on an exasperated mutter.

"The Stones are harmless outside of this universe." Ant-Man continued. "The JLA will watch over the Mind Stone, and the PRT the Time Stone. We'd scatter the other four as well, but the Space, Reality and Soul stones aren't here, and we need the Power Stone for now."

Thanos leapt to his feet. Manhunter interposed himself between Thanos and the two scientists, but Thanos made no move to advance. "You imbeciles! Tell me you haven't –!" He got a proper look at what they were working on, and ground his teeth in frustration.

The Power Stone had been placed into a socket in the Dampener, and both objects were now glowing brightly, vibrating slightly in place. The Power Stone only had influence in this universe, but the Dampener was in this universe, even if it was pumping Speed Force into the surrounding 'space' in the multiverse. All the Power Stone had to do was tell the universe that the Dampener had access to infinite power, and the universe would play along.

"It's controlled by a computer in another universe, and has a force-field built-in." Mr Fantastic said. "Even we couldn't stop it at this point."

Thanos glared at the three superheros. "It always amazed me how you people could be so smart, but so stupid at the same time."

Manhunter suddenly turned pale, having glimpsed what Thanos was about to say next. The two super-scientists in turn felt the first pangs of doubt.

"What –?" Ant-Man began, but Thanos wasn't done talking.

"I was going to use the Stones to reformat the universe to one toxic to the Queen. You simply picked the first solution that came to mind, without considering the consequences." Thanos spat. "You put so much effort into making these devices work, you never asked yourself one basic question."

"And… there we go." Sorceress, a woman wearing a dress that made her look like a falcon, said. "Back together again."

The drained and unconscious forms of Red Superman and Blue Superman winked out in a flash of magic, replaced with one whole Superman. Though now a full person again, Superman still looked exhausted by the ordeal. He gave a tired but grateful nod to both Legend and Sorceress. "Thanks, both of you. I'm sorry that any part of me tried to hurt you."

"I'm sorry too, Superman. Sorry that Skeletor fooled me so completely." Sorceress shook her head. "I will have to be vigilant against such trickery in the future…"

Legend coughed slightly. "Glad as I am to hear that, I'm afraid there's still the matter of what we came for."

"Of course." Sorceress nodded. "You wished to borrow the might of Castle Greyskull's secrets, did you not?"

Zatanna gave a quick summary of the issue and their solution, and Sorceress nodded. "A worthy cause. One moment – I must be in the castle proper for this."

Sorceress walked into the entrance to Castle Greyskull, carrying the Dampener with her. The sound of chanting echoed out of the castle, the whole structure seeming to hum with power.

Those standing outside the Castle turned at the sound of someone approaching, and found He-Man marching Skeletor over to them. Skeletor's hands were being held behind his back by He-Man, preventing him from casting.

"Superman punched him so hard he was left buried in the soil." He-Man chuckled, causing Superman to hold his head in his hands and groan.

Skeletor, due to having a skull for a head, couldn't really make facial expressions. So, when he looked up at Castle Greyskull and heard the chanting coming from within, he could only grit his teeth. "Tell me that isn't the Sorceress powering up that deplorable device you numbskulls brought with you."

"It is, Skeletor. Your plan, whatever it was, has failed." Superman glared.

"Power that device on and you will deeply regret it." Skeletor warned.

"Ignore him." Legend said, having dealt with hundreds of bad-looser villains over his career.

Skeletor gave a dark chuckle. "And you dunderheads wonder why I tricked you into fighting. Did you never consider why I kept up the charade, even after I got inside the castle?"

He-Man gave a sudden start. "That's right! Skeletor's plans have always been about trying to get inside Castle Greyskull! There's no way he'd pass up a chance to steal the castle's secrets!"

"I would if it meant keeping Eternia in the centre of the multiverse." Skeletor countered. "It might have slipped your mind, He-Dunce, but I happen to rely on magic, and would much prefer that it kept working."

Sorceress's chanting was reaching a crescendo, but everyone's attention had now moved to Skeletor.

"How did you know that the universes are moving?" Zatanna demanded.

"There might not be honour amongst thieves, but there is a strong sense of self-preservation." Skeletor said. "When some over-hyped trollop gets it in her head to destroy the status quo, you really shouldn't be so surprised that the forces of evil might pass the word."

"Did Hordak somehow let him know…? No, that doesn't make any sense; how would Hordak have found out…?" Man-At-Arms muttered.

"But, wait, that still doesn't make sense." He-Man protested. "These people are trying to stop the universes moving."

Skeletor laughed, a nasal 'neh-heh-heh'. "Is that what they told you? Listen here you jumped up muscle-boy. You really think universes haven't been destroyed before? The surrounding universes will stop on their own; which those imbeciles would surely have noticed if they'd watched them for more than five minutes."

Zatanna grimaced. "He has a point. As soon as we noticed that the universes were moving, we immediately jumped to figuring out how to stop them."

"That's because we were worried about collisions!" Legend defended (despite not having been there for that discussion).

"Are you saying that this Dampener will… what, over-stop the universes?" Man-At-Arms asked.

"No, quite the opposite I'm afraid." Skeletor said. "You see, as things are, the universes won't move far enough for that bleached tramp's purposes."

The collected heroes looked at each other, then as one turned to tell Sorceress to stop casting, only to find her staring back at them from the doorway, already finished.

The gem in the sword – the Eye of Thundera – could think for itself, and was even now trying to cut the energy feeding into the Dampener. But something wasn't allowing it to stop. Or more accurately, someone wouldn't allow it.

"Why on earth," the Queen laughed, her hair plunging down into the Dampener, shattering its forcefield and overriding control of the device "did you try to slow down the cosmos using something called the Speed Force?"

Chapter Text

“How are you even here?!” Alexandria roared, zooming back into the fight holding a piece of the black pyramid that had been blasted off before the structure as a whole was erased. She tried to smash the Queen with the huge chunk of stone, but the Queen’s dress fired out a sword that cut the stone in half. “This universe’s magic isn’t strong enough for you to come here without being summoned! We checked!”

“Hmm? Oh, have you really not figured it out?”

Fate and Strange flew down from above, a cone of energy held in both of their hands. They tried to capture the Queen underneath it, and the cone did hold the exploding white power for a moment; but it ultimately couldn’t withstand her attack and burst. The contained energy was sent into the sky, but once again just the shockwave of their spell bursting sent Fate and Strange tumbling.

“In Brother’s world, I need a formal summons. But in a world like this one, or that friendly world from before, a simple invitation will do.”

“Nobody invited you here!” Alexandria refuted, ducking and dodging as the Queen’s dress expanded outwards into more and more god-killing weapons, throwing themselves lazily in her direction.

“Are you sure about that?” The Queen teased.

Fate and Strange split apart into a million copies of each other each, the swarm of magicians descending in a fury. Each one held a weapon that they’d somehow ripped free from the Queen’s dress, the Sword of Unsullied Truth.

“I did warn you,” the Queen continued talking, not even bothering to stop and look as she fired countless white beams upwards, annihilated the millions of magicians. Only the original Fate and Strange tried to defend themselves, spherical shields protecting themselves from the onslaught just long enough for the two to teleport away. “Next time you faced a threat like that impostor Behemoth, you should call on me, or you would die!”

“We defeated Tiamat without your help!” Alexandria screamed, risking a glance at the Dampener. Symbols were flashing across it’s tiny LCD screen that she was certain had never been programmed into it.

“Yes,” The Queen said, smugly “thus inviting me to kill you.”

Alexandria gaped at the White Queen, momentarily forgetting herself. “What?! That’s –”

“An exploitation of a loophole that doesn't even exist?” The Queen taunted. “That’s right. It’s the sort of absolute nonsense that only works if you’ve already subverted the rules to your whim.”

Out of nowhere, Doctor Fate suddenly appeared in a mad charge, ahnks made of energy in each hand. With contemptuous ease, the White Queen grabbed him by the helmet and slammed him into the ground.

“You don’t actually understand what the Unexplored Class is, do you?” The Queen mused. “That suggestion of the Titans reaching those heights is ridiculous. The Unexplored Class are not ‘slightly’ more powerful than the gods. We are are a force that they dare not oppose.”

Suddenly, the Queen plunged her free hand into Doctor Fate’s helmet, tearing a hole into it. But when she pulled her hand out again, somehow, she pulled someone out of it.

“Hello Nabu.” The Queen address the figure writhing in her grasp. “A Lord of Order isn’t quite strong enough to be an Unexplored Class, but I suppose our ranks can always expand downwards.”

The Queen dropped the now-limp Doctor Fate, and with her newly-freed hand blasted Nabu with a white beam. After a moment, she stopped, satisfied with her work.

Whereas Nabu had been a bearded man wearing an Ancient Egyptian headdress and loincloth, the newly revealed figure was a slim girl with golden eyes, wearing nothing but scraps of golden cloth in a perversion of the mummification process.

“See?” The Queen asked rhetorically. “Now you’re the Golden Girl who Likes Things Neat and Orderly.”

She tossed the newest member of the Unexplored Class aside like a piece of trash, looming over Alexandria. “Do you understand now?” She said in a tone of voice that indicated she didn’t particularly care if Alexandria did or not. “Destiny, Dreams, Evil – the Three Who Watch Over Mankind were among the first to oppose me, and the first to fall. The very rules that hold the gods bound can’t stand in my way now that I’ve remade them in my image.”

“Don’t make the mistake of thinking that mankind is powerless on our own.”

The White Queen blinked in a moment of honest surprise as Doctor Strange’s fingers somehow emerged from around her like an Escher painting, the man himself appearing behind the Queen even as she disappeared in a confusing visual illusion (or was it?), vanishing into the creases in Strange’s palm.

The Sorcerer Supreme clamped his hands together, looking like he was holding something shut.

“Hurry!” He gasped. “I’ve trapped her in an infinite series of nested pocket universes, but I don’t expect it to hold her for –”

His face twisted in pain and effort, and a loud roar and bright white light began to escape from his clasped hands.

Alexandria gave a grateful nod to Strange as she turned, flying as fast as she could back to the Dampener. She glanced over the hijacked device, knowing she had seconds at best.

“Hurry!” Strange roared.

Gritting her teeth, Alexandria thrust her fist downwards, punching a hole through the centre of the Dampener. Huge sparks of energy erupted from ruptured tanks and broken wires, and Alexandria quickly drew her hand back, not trusting her invincibility against enough energy to halt a universe.

She was just in time, too, as immediately after that she heard Strange’s cries abruptly cut out.

She turned around to find the White Queen dusting her hands off, no sign of the Sorcerer Supreme anywhere.

“Looks like it’s just the two of us now.” The Queen said, a smile equal parts eager and psychotic spreading across her face. “Such a shame. I’d never had to try to fight a human before, and I was quite enjoying the novelty.”

Alexandria didn’t consciously make the decision to try and flee – she just blanked out for an instant to find the White Queen’s hand clamped tight around her throat. The two of them were suspended over the damaged Dampener, Alexandria held aloft by the Queen and the Queen by strands that had extended out from her dress.

“Now, what was it I promised you earlier? A thousand million painful deaths?” The Queen mused, as Alexandria gasped for breath. “I suppose I can spare you one or two of those, after you tried so hard to help me.”

Alexandria didn’t have the air to respond to that, but the Queen continued explaining anyway.

“I’m sure this will surprise you, but even the Strongest has limits to her strength. I crushed that friendly world as hard as I could, but Brother’s world still wasn’t going to move all the way to where I wanted it to.” The Queen actually pouted. “I was fully planning to go on a rampage across creation, exploding worlds left right and centre until I had my way, so you adding a way for me to skip all that work was actually really helpful.”

In less time than it took to blink, the Queen hurled Alexandria downwards. She only knew that was what had happened because of the second-long sensation of being forced through magma, then suddenly having to hold her breath against vacuum of space. She’d been thrown clear through Third Earth and out the other side.

The Queen gave a little titter. “Now don’t go dying just yet.” She said, even though Alexandria had no way of hearing her from so far away. “If you get off so easily this time, it’ll just get your hopes up for no reason.”

She looked down, and focused her full attention on the Dampener. “Brother’s world has moved far enough now.” She said, more white tendrils emerging from her dress and extending downwards into the Dampener. “It looks like that ‘hero’ tried to disable it while I was busy.” She observed critically. “But like everything else she does, she failed. The tanks and wires I can patch up with my Sword.”

Putting actions to words, the threads from the Queen’s dress quickly wove itself into replacement parts for the damaged Dampener, slamming themselves into place.

“Now that Brother’s world is in the ideal spot for me, it’s time to slam on the breaks.” The Queen covered her mouth with the back of her hand, letting out an ‘Oh ho ho’ laugh. “I wonder if I should make Brother clean out my bellybutton with his tongue first? No, I should definitely save that until after I’ve hunted down every other girl he’s ever smiled at, just to be sure!”

A couple strands of the Queen’s hair wriggled and writhed into the control circuits of the Dampener, setting the power to maximum.

“Those so-called heroes were going to gentle about this, but I’ve already made sure Brother’s world will be safe. I can’t wait a moment longer, so I don’t really care if one or two unrelated worlds go pop.”

With one final push, the Eye of Thundera was forced once again into serving the Queen, providing power into her hijacked Dampener, flooding the space around this universe with unimaginable quantities of Speed Force.

The White Queen’s laughter stopped only when she felt this universe speed up.

Alexandria had just managed to bleed off her backwards momentum with her flight ability, struggling to get back to a breathable atmosphere. If she accelerated as fast as she could, she might just slam into the planet before her Shard decided that she had suffocated.

Her efforts were rendered moot when the planet was slammed into her.

She had just enough time to gulp down one precious lungful of air over the unholy roar as the planet clipped its moon and began to break down under the strain of its sudden movement. Then the White Queen burst out of the crumbling earth before her.

Despite having taken a shortcut through the core of the planet, the Queen showed no signs of effort or even of being dirty, even as droplets of molten iron dripped out of her hair. The tangible fury she gave off was causing the grass around her to instantaneously turn to ash and crumble away, the soil underneath it boiling away.

“WWWWWWHHHHHHHHHHHAAAAAAATTTTTT DDDDDDIIIIIIIIDDDD YYYYOOOOOUUUUU DDDDDDOOOOOOO?!?!?!” The Queen roared, her voice loud enough to send shockwaves through the ground and hasten the planet shaking itself to pieces.

Alexandria was considered the greatest of the Flight/Invulnerability/Strength/Speed (or FISS, as one world would call it) parahumans on Earth Bet. She had encouraged that opinion in every PR stunt she had ever performed – not because it was wrong, necessarily, but because it helped people forget what she considered the greater half of her powers.

Perfect memory. Enhanced processing and learning ability. Impunity to mind-reading and mind-control. Alexandria was just as much a Thinker as she was a Brute, and it was those powers that she’d used to turn the PRT from an idea to the group holding Bet’s United States together.

She had gone into that meeting with the Justice League having never heard the term “Speed Force” before. She had left after having seen a blackboard full of maths equations and several glances at Dampeners in various stages of assembly burned into her mind.

“Speed Force, when no other factors apply, naturally tries to increase the velocity of an object.” Alexandria said, slowly orienting herself upright respective to the crumbling planet. “However, if you ‘congeal’ it, it acts as a dimensional barrier, and can be used to slow down a universe. Each Dampener had one internal circuit board that handled that congealing.”

She opened her right hand, the one she had kept closed ever since plunging her hands into the Dampener, and the crumpled remains of something metallic dropped down. “Specifically, this one.”

The Queen was more than smart enough to repair any damaged parts, but she couldn’t replace a part that she didn’t know about and that was missing altogether.

“YYYYYYOOOOOUUUUUUUU…!”

“You need Earth Bet in one specific place, a place where magic is strengthened to the point where you can enter uninvited. But if you move it just a little bit further than that, and suddenly magic doesn’t work at all – and you can’t enter, even with a formal summoning.”

“YYYYYYOOOOOUUUUUUUU…!”

“You’ve probably already destroyed the Dampener here, but it’s too late. With the extra boost, and the fact that you didn’t get the breaking you were counting on, Earth Bet will slide well out of the blue zone and into the red.”

“YYYYYYOOOOOUUUUUUUU…!”

“I couldn’t think of any plan that relied on you loosing, so I made one that relied on you winning instead. What do you think, you so-called Queen? Was this worthy of your time?”

For the second monster in a row, Alexandria fully accepted her death, seeing no way at all to survive this.

So she was understandably shocked to see a Door open up behind the Queen, and for Contessa to walk out with something large carried in both hands.

The Queen, somehow sensing the danger even through her blind rage, turned and fired an axe from her dress towards whatever it was that Contessa was carrying. (Contessa just so happened to have positioned herself perfectly so that the axe would miss her).

It was only as the bisected halves flew apart, revealing a point that light seemed to curve towards, that Alexandria recognised it as the Donation Box’s gravitational singularity generator.

As a being that could destroy universes, a black hole naturally wouldn’t be much trouble for the Queen, but this one seemed to have caught her off guard, sucking in the axe she made and trying to draw the rest of her in as well. Even now, she was trying to pull herself free, but the field of slow time that the singularity was generating had ensnared her.

The Queen was tough enough to avoid spaghettification, as was Alexandria, while Contessa seemed to be somehow shielding herself with a piece of the wrecked generator.

Just like the first time she had met the Queen, Alexandria felt the field of slow time like molasses – something she could, with effort, force her way through. Possibly, she speculated, because my power is already able to move my body when it’s time-stopped.

She glanced – if that word was even applicable when just moving her eyes required more effort than lifting a dump truck normally did – over at Contessa.

She was making her “hurry up, I have things to do today” face.

Mentally gritting her teeth (because physically gritting them would have required even more effort), Alexandria forced herself forwards, through the thickest of the temporal distortion, towards Contessa and the still-open Door behind her.

“YYYYYYOOOOOUUUUUUUU…!”

With a start, Alexandria realised that the Queen was moving as well – even more slowly than she was, but with increasing speed as she pulled herself free of the distortion.

She reached Contessa, grabbing her around the waist and shoving her backwards, towards the Door.

“WWWWWOOOOOOOOONNNNNNNNNN’TTTTTTTT…!”

As her torso passed behind the shielding device that Contessa had grabbed from the generator’s wreckage, the weight pressing down on her from all sides seemed to halve, allowing her to put on another burst of speed. Six feet left until she reached the Door…

“GGGGGGGEEEEEEETTTTTT…!”

Five feet…

“AAAAAAWWWWWWAAAAAYYYYY…!”

Four feet…

Alexandria heard the rustling of cloth behind her, and knew that the Queen was about to fire another weapon from her dress.

Three feet…

She wasn’t going to make it…!

“B-brother?!”

The Queen’s sudden squeak, nothing like her screams of rage, made Alexandria look up – and found Kyousuke Shiroyama, the one the Queen called ‘brother’, standing on the other side of the Door, hand outstretched. If the Queen fired a weapon at Alexandria from where she was, she would hit him as well.

Two feet… And from here, Alexandria could see that it wasn’t Shiroyama at all, but a photo-realistic painting of him on the wall immediately behind the Door.

A wordless scream of rage told her that the Queen had just realised the same thing.

One foot… and the tips of Alexandria’s fingers crossed through the Door. Unexpectedly, as soon as she did so, the feeling of viscosity vanished, and she and Contessa shot across the threshold. Alexandria just so happened to tumble and take the force of slamming into the wall, cushioning Contessa so much that she could stand up and dust herself off, completely unhurt.

Alexandria turned and looked back through the Door, catching one final look at the Queen before she exploded in a burst of white light. Alexandria tensed, but when the light reached the Door it simply disappeared, the light erasing the Door before it could cross it. Only some light scorch marks and the painting on the opposite wall showed where the Door had been at all.

Alexandria wondered if she had just watched the death of another universe.

The two of them stood in a dark alleyway. Unlike the one Alexandria had ended up in with Celestia, this one was cold and wet, with mould being the only thing trying to cover up the graffiti.

“Right,” Contessa said, adjusting the fedora on her head “now that that’s dealt with –”

Crunch

“– step 763 is to let you get it out of your system.” She finished, not reacting at all to the fist Alexandria had embedded into the brick wall in front of her.

Alexandria was no stranger to risking her life. She was no stranger to thinking she was going to die, either, despite her ‘invincibility’. She knew how to take the whirlpool of worry and elation, panic and relief, and stash it away in the corner of her mind to deal with later. Or never.

But what she wasn’t going to wait to deal with was sabotage.

“Why,” Alexandria growled “are the Doors working all of a sudden?”

“They never stopped.” Contessa tilted her head. “Did you honestly think that a human who gained his powers by accident would be better at crossing dimensions than lifeforms that have being doing so since they were single-cell organisms?”

“It was you.” Alexandria scowled. “You told Doormaker not to pick me up.”

Contessa shrugged. “If it makes you feel better, he was quite busy.” She said, knowing full well it wouldn’t. “I had a lot of villains I needed to move into place to slow the others down, otherwise you would have finished too fast.”

The worlds had needed to drift just that little bit more for the lockdown trick to work – which Alexandria wouldn’t have tried at all if she’d been able to retreat back to Earth Bet.

Alexandria knew it was possible to predict the White Queen’s actions – after all, she had anticipated the Queen coming after her. Though she had assumed (not entirely incorrectly) that it would be out of pettiness, not because the Queen was cheating her way into the world through her vendetta with Alexandria. That was why she had requested Strange and Fate on her team – to give her enough time to pull off the plan she had come up with on her own and told nobody about.

(Though it was likely Batman had at least deduced part of it, given that he had agreed with her team suggestions).

Path To Victory could approximate where it couldn’t model perfectly, and “arbitrarily powerful yandere” went a long way to mapping out the Queen’s actions, but there was one main reason Alexandria couldn’t believe what Contessa had done.

“What Path was it this time?”

“Path to getting you here undistracted.”

…Contessa couldn’t remember the White Queen.

Despite having just used up one of Cauldron's most powerful assets (that wasn’t a person) and having mobilised the forces of evil across several universes, Contessa didn’t know, or even particularly care why. Even without the Queen’s Stranger effect, it was possible Contessa would have forgotten all about the Queen the moment she stopped being relevant to her various Paths.

That was why Alexandria found Contessa creepy. She would single-handedly bring down an empire if her Shard told that it would improve their chances against Scion 1%.

“Step 764 is telling you to avoid worlds with magic for the foreseeable future.” And with Path to Victory, ‘for the foreseeable future’ might as well mean ‘forever’. “The White Queen – whoever that is – will obliterate you or anyone you speak to if they take a single step into her area of influence.”

Which meant she couldn’t ask the Avengers or the Justice League for help unless they came to her on their own. And that was if they were willing to give her the time of day, with how badly things had gone. She wasn’t dead, but that was just about the only bit of good news she was getting today, apparently.

…wait.

“Where exactly are we?” Alexandria asked, pulling her fist out of the brickwork. “And what disaster was so bad you needed to set a Path to come get me?”

“We’re in Brockton Bay, Earth Bet.”

Alexandria blinked. “Where we were going to try the Parahuman Feudalism experiment?”

“Yes, but that’s not why you’re needed here. Door, Cauldron.”

Alexandria crossed her arms. “Not even going to finish explaining before you leave?”

Contessa pointed to the open end of the alleyway even as she stepped through the Door. “Step 765.”

Watching the Door close behind Contessa, Alexandria braced herself, and was unsurprised when there was a loud crash echoing from somewhere in the distance.

“Had enough yet, Albert?! You have to know you have no way of beating my beautiful Eggbringer Leviathan!”

“I’d be more impressed if you could control that monstrosity, Ivo! Now, my Slaughterhouse Masters, on the other hand…”

…yes, Alexandria conceded, lifting off the ground and smashing a fist into her palm, I can see why I’d be needed for this.

A despairing wail shook the other world to it’s foundations.

The world of gods and monsters, of fairy tales and ghost stories, had a vague hierarchy at the best of times; one that changed every time a new story was told. However, some things remained the same.

A mere ‘monster’ was no match for a god.

The gods were bound by ‘rules’.

But all of these things could be overturned by Power.

Or, as some humans had taken to calling her, the White Queen.

“Wwwwwhhhhhyyyyy?!?!” The Queen sobbed, her arms flailing around in aimless rage, reducing everything within arm’s reach to dust. “Why why why why?! Brother and I are meant to be, he can’t just… can’t just…!”

Alexandria and the others had wondered before how the Queen had been able to know so much about what was going on in the physical universes without being there. The answer was rather simple: Power had a sister, Wisdom.

(Before you ask, no, they did not have a third sister named ‘Courage’. Wisdom wasn’t her real name either, but her real name continued on in a non-looping pattern forever, so here it’s been abbreviated down to her nickname.)

“Wisdom!” The Queen screeched, grabbing her look-alike in all but outfit, her eyes bloodshot. “Tell me he’s upset! Show me that he’s despairing! He can’t live without me, right?! RIGGGHHHHTTT?!??!?!?!”

Wisdom considered herself the protective older sister, keeping the White Queen safe from the world… or far more often, the world safe from her sister. The White Queen did not share this view, thinking of Wisdom as more of a convenient way to find things out, like a human search engine.

Hearing her sister’s request, Wisdom read the words that gravitated towards her like a magnet, and told the unvarnished truth. “__ __ ___________, ________ ____ ___ _____ ________ __ _______ __ ___ _____ ___ _____ _________ _______.” Each of her syllables were so tightly packed together that to a human ear it would have sounded like a single tone.

For a moment, the White Queen stood completely still, her eyes as wide as dinner plates, tears obscuring their bottoms. Then she screamed, throwing her sister away, and fired a white beam off into the distance that casually annihilated a pantheon that had the misfortune to be in its path.

Wisdom did not know what the future held, but she did know everything that was happening in the present. That was why she had been kicking herself for the past several years for letting the Queen answer that stupid summons from the humans – after seeing the human world first-hand, without Wisdom’s careful filtering, the Queen had grown excited, and had eagerly looked forward to going back there. Wisdom’s careful lullabies hadn’t been able to coax the Queen back into inactivity as she grew more and more obsessed with one human boy in particular, chasing after the one goal she couldn’t achieve with an instant’s worth of effort.

The Queen huffed and puffed, tired out from emotional turmoil rather than physical exertion. “How… do I… fix… this…?!” She panted, her eyes aflame.

“___ ______ ___ ___ ___ __ _______.” Wisdom lied.

The Queen shut her eyes and screamed, the Sword of Unsullied Truth rippling and undulating, ready to attack but having no clear target.

Wisdom was not worried about the Queen killing her. They were equals and opposites, the two of them defining each other. As long as one of them existed, they both would.

“Brother…” The Queen moaned in longing. “No… this can’t… be how it ends…!”

Honestly, Wisdom greatly preferred that particular world locked off from this one. It’s wasn’t quite perfect – if she’d had her way, she would have exterminated the human race everywhere and everywhen to fully kill the possibility of anyone getting her beloved little sister so exited.

Wisdom placed a comforting arm on the Queen, whose sobbing had descended to the point of being wordless. She wrapped her sister up in a fearless embrace, and began to hum her favourite lullaby.

But this would do for now. With the Queen sealed off from her obsession, Wisdom would be able to sing to her, wrap her in a protective cocoon of half-truths, and coax her back to sleep.

“Brother…” The Queen murmured, her eyes started to close. “…I’m sorry…”

Besides, Wisdom mused, thinking of the forces posed to strike at humanity, it wasn’t like they were going to be around much longer anyway.