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You feel her before you see her.
Immense. Cataclysmic. A black hole opens, its dimensions swelling until the size is impossible to fathom for regular, organic life forms. For you, it is easy to conceptualize the entirety of its swollen breadth.
It is exactly large enough to swallow the Green Sun.
The sight of it, knowing she's up there, stirs something pitch and perverse in your stomach. You ascend. You don't know her exact location. You need to get closer.
Calliope.
You have had your fair share of small, wand wielding bitches. Your Handmaiden, for all your control over her, was a terror of horrible power. She took what you gave her and grew it. Honed it. The multiple genocides against her own people were your orders only by technicality. You told her an outcome you wanted and she was allowed to be creative with the process. Had she gotten over her death wish she never would have left your side.
The human Rose, by comparison, was barely a blip in your life. Instrumental for your goals, but ultimately as easily manipulated as a puppet. Corruptible. Fractured.
Dirk would disagree on that last point, maybe, but his full assimilation was completed long ago, so he says nothing. When you find Calliope she is likewise mute and still as you make your way toward her.
"Your origin has granted you unwarranted confidence," she says after sizing you up. The bitch draws her wand. Her smooth motions precedes an immense pressure in the atmosphere around you. "You may reside in the alpha timeline, but you could not predominate me without trickery.
"I am that proof." Uncountable eons have passed since you last conversed, but this marks the first time you have heard her speak. It is your voice-- but smaller, as she is smaller.
Deep, visceral hatred fills you. Yes. This is what you wanted to feel, again.
Petite, underdeveloped. Calliope is childishly in her Godtier robes. Her looks are deceiving. She is still as old as you, that much you can tell from the sheer depth in her blackened eyes. She has waited and calculated her way to this point over the course of a very, very long time.
For you. Even as you have conquered everything in front of you for her.
"Is this. A challenge?"
"It is fate." Wings unfurl with a violent snap from her back. They aren't cherub wings, but they undeniably speak of a maturity you were denied. They shimmer with green and orange iridescence, a putrid combination. Her wand-- pure white-- shifts into a blinding length of sword. Even without the Dirk human inside you know this sword.
It has been spoken to herald your doom.
Looking closer you see three horizontal scars carved deep into her skull, and the Gamzee inside you would cry out were he still able to acknowledge that his messiahs clash, each carrying a piece of him. Fulfilling his delusions that the messiahs were him. That he was them.
You suppose in a sick way it is true. Seeing Paradox Space has given such a miscreant this privilege applies a sour touch to what is supposed to be the most magnificent moment of your existence. Neither of you meet here, whole. You are tainted by others. A depraved facsimile of your shared childhoods body.
Your eyes roll back. Spin. Rotate at blinding speeds until they land with solid ka-thunks onto black eights. Calliope will submit to you. You will prove no matter the timeline that, in the end, you're better than her. No matter the timeline, you will win this game between you. Where it matters.