278 Monster of the Multiverse
[POV: Nick/Old Nick]
At so point, we created the SRC. The strongest capes, the ones who had endured the longest, the ones who still had enough left in them to try. They were my closest friends, or at least the closest thing to it that remained. Together, we started to make sense of the chaos. Patterns erged where before there had only been noise. We began to understand that this wasn’t just war.
It was sothing designed to never end.
That realization broke sothing in that hadn’t already been broken.
In the end, I gave up.
I tried to kill myself, but my own power resisted . My body refused to fail, my abilities compensating, correcting, preserving against my will. It took ti, effort, and a kind of persistence I didn’t know I still had, but eventually, I succeeded.
Death wasn’t what I expected.
I found myself in a place that felt empty yet heavy, a dark world that lacked shape but carried presence. It wasn’t nothing. It was sothing vast and quiet.
And she was there.
Amy stood before , unchanged in the ways that mattered, her expression filled with sothing that cut deeper than anything else.
“I’m sorry, Nick,” she said softly, her voice carrying a sorrow that felt older than the world itself.
I stepped toward her, the weight of everything pressing down on all at once. “Can you forgive ?”
I needed to hear it. I needed sothing, anything, to settle the storm inside .
But before she could answer, before the mont could resolve into sothing final, I was pulled away.
I was alive again.
So I did it again.
And again.
Each death brought back to her, each return to life tearing away before I could hold onto anything real. It beca a cycle, one I controlled and yet couldn’t escape. My existence began to warp under the strain, sothing fundantal shifting with every crossing.
I spoke to her countless tis. I saw her, heard her, felt closer to her than I had in years.
It made feel alive.
Sowhere along that endless repetition, I started to notice sothing else. Small inconsistencies at first, fractures in the fabric of what I experienced. There were seams, subtle but present, threads connecting things that shouldn’t have been connected.
I began to investigate.
What I found was worse than anything the wars had revealed.
Behind everything, beneath every world and every tiline, there was sothing else. A presence, a foundation, a force that everything else seed to stem from.
The Source.
It had been referenced before, in fragnted theories, in half-understood taphysics. So described it as the afterlife itself, others as a shared soul that all beings were part of. Dr. Ti provided the scientific frawork that turned those abstract ideas into sothing tangible.
The Source was real.
And it was the root of everything.
Our powers, the worlds, the fractures, the endless war, all of it traced back to that singular origin. It wasn’t just the foundation of existence.
It was the cause of our suffering.
We studied it, carefully at first, then with growing intensity as we realized what it ant. If the Source was the origin, then changing it ant changing everything. Fixing it ant fixing all of this.
With a target finally in sight, I threw myself into it completely.
There was a condition, though.
In order to fix everything, we had to complete the Source.
Sowhere along the way, I changed.
Among everyone in the SRC, I was the only one who could directly interact with it. My abilities, already warped by countless deaths and resurrections, allowed to reach into sothing that wasn’t ant to be touched.
Exposure did sothing to .
At first, it was subtle, small shifts in thought, in perception. Then it deepened, spreading through in ways I couldn’t fully understand or control. My soul, if that was what it still was, had been worn down too many tis, stretched across too many realities.
I started losing my sanity.
There were monts, brief and rare, where clarity returned. In those monts, I could see what I had beco, the destruction left in my wake, the scale of what I was doing.
And every ti, it filled with despair.
But those monts never lasted.
In my madness, I continued.
I destroyed worlds, consud them, tore through realities as if they were nothing more than fragile constructs. Each one fed into the Source, adding to sothing that felt infinite and incomplete at the sa ti.
I devoured fragnts of existence itself, chasing an end that never ca.
And I kept going, throwing myself into a task that was never ant to end, becoming sothing that no longer resembled the man who once stood in a small Detroit church, promising a woman that she was his world.
But was that really my life?
The thought didn’t arrive all at once. It crept in, subtle and invasive, like a splinter I couldn’t quite reach. Everything unfolded exactly as I rembered it, every mont aligning too perfectly, every emotion arriving on cue as if it had been rehearsed.
No.
Not rembered.
That wasn’t the right word anymore.
I was led to believe that I rembered.
The distinction hollowed sothing out inside . I wasn’t living these monts, I wasn’t even recalling them. I was watching them, trapped behind my own eyes as the version of inside the mory moved forward without hesitation, without deviation, without .
I had no control.
I watched as ‘I’ relived everything from beginning to end, over and over again, each cycle indistinguishable from the last. There was no variation, no fracture, no mistake. Just repetition so perfect it felt artificial.
At so point, near a distant horizon where the edges of my sanity began to peel back, I noticed sothing else.
There was more.
Beyond the sequence I was forced to observe, beyond the mories I was allowed to witness, there were layers still hidden, still out of reach. I could feel them, vast and suffocating, pressing against the boundaries of whatever this prison was.
I tried to push through.
I really did.
But sothing pushed back.
It wasn’t resistance in the physical sense. It was sothing deeper, sothing that threatened to unravel entirely. If I forced my way further, if I reached into whatever lay beyond, I knew I wouldn’t co back as myself.
My individuality hung in the balance.
And for the first ti in a long ti, I hesitated.
I needed sothing to hold onto, sothing real, sothing that belonged to and not whatever this construct was trying to feed .
So I spoke, even if it was only to myself.
“I can’t stop here. There’s soone waiting for . Her na’s Nicole… she’s…” I let out a breath that felt heavier than it should have. “She’s a three-in-one deal knockout. Silver and Onyx… they co with her. And I chose that. I chose all of them.”
The words steadied , anchored against the pull.
“And Ron. My Little King… my son. I have sowhere else to be.”
The weight of that truth pushed back against everything else.
“This isn’t where I end. This prison of mories… it doesn’t get to keep .”
For the first ti, the loop stuttered.
…
..
.
[POV: Old Nick]
Mars had always looked lifeless from afar, but standing on its surface, surrounded by the aftermath of war, it felt anything but empty.
It was a graveyard.
I stood over the unconscious body of Griffin, her enormous form sprawled across the terrain like a fallen island, her wings torn and unmoving. Dust settled slowly around her, disturbed only by the echoes of what had just transpired.
In my hand, I held Dragoness by the throat.
Diane.
Her human form was frail compared to the monstrous presence she carried when transford, but even now, there was defiance in her eyes, buried beneath pain and exhaustion. She was one of the capes Nick had recruited from another world, one of many pulled into a war that was never truly theirs.
Around , the battlefield told its own story.
Broken machinery littered the ground, humanoid constructs torn apart as if they had never been more than toys. The remains of Huston’s creations, those mass-produced tree entities, lay scattered in splintered heaps. Among them were bodies of elite capes, their strength proven insufficient against what had unfolded here.
They hadn’t held back.
It hadn’t mattered.
I flexed my fingers slightly, feeling the strength of the vessel I had taken. It was familiar in a way nothing else ever could be, yet distinct enough to remind that this wasn’t truly mine.
I wasn’t fond of possessing another version of myself.
It ca with complications.
mories bled through too easily, weaknesses exposed themselves without effort, and the line between identities blurred in ways that could beco… inconvenient. Since we were the sa at our core, he could fight back, assert himself, attempt a counter-possession if given the chance.
I couldn’t allow that.
So I had to finish this quickly.
Most of the ti, I didn’t bother with this thod. It was easier to consu a world entirely, strip it down to nothing, and move on. Clean. Efficient.
This version of Nick made that… less appealing.
He had willpower.
Grit.
He had been shaped, deliberately or otherwise, into sothing that could oppose . Dr. Ti’s influence was evident in the structure of his being, in the way his existence resisted collapse.
I saw fragnts of his life as I occupied him.
He was my opposite in ways that almost felt deliberate.
His principles were crooked, twisted by circumstance and choice, yet he followed them without fail. There was no hesitation in him when it ca to action, no second-guessing once a decision had been made.
Conviction.
That was the word.
It was how he justified the blood on his hands, how he carried the weight of the lives he had taken despite his youth, despite the short span of ti he had been active.
A murderous demon.
The irony wasn’t lost on .
I tightened my grip slightly on Dragoness, forcing her to remain in her human form. It was safer this way. More manageable.
At my feet lay what remained of Qilin, his serpentine draconic body severed and scattered. Nearby, Keegan’s head rested apart from his body, the gladiator reduced to a silent relic of resistance.
Exactly two minutes and four seconds.
That was all it had taken.
Huston’s presence had been erased entirely, his massive tree-like form reduced to nothing at the molecular level. The battlefield bore no trace of him beyond the destruction he had left behind.
“This is my victory,” I declared, my voice carrying across the ruined expanse.
I could feel him stirring beneath the surface.
Nick.
Trying to assert himself.
I addressed him directly, allowing a fraction of my awareness to turn inward. “It’s futile. I’m the End and I am also the Beginning. You should know. Accept .”
Through this vessel, I could exert power closer to my true form. It was inefficient compared to fully consuming the Source, but it would suffice for now.
A voice broke through the silence, raw and desperate.
“Please… don’t kill her,” Shadow—Jacob—fell to his knees, his hands trembling, his entire being collapsing into that single plea. “You’ve already won. Just… let her go. Please.”
I looked at him, at the desperation etched into every movent, every breath.
Then I acted.
My grip warped, space folding inward as I crushed Dragoness’ throat with a precise, irreversible motion. There was no ti for last words, no mont granted for farewell. Her body went limp instantly, the life leaving her before sound could follow.
Behind , the scream tore through the air.
“No! You bastard! I’ll kill you! I’ll—!”
Hatred.
Pure and unfiltered.
It didn’t change anything.
The ground beneath erupted.
Roots burst upward, coiling around my legs, binding in place with surprising force. The impact that followed ca from below, rock shattering as a massive figure surged upward.
The Fuhrer.
His grip locked onto , power coursing through his hold as nullification took effect, pressing against the abilities I wielded through this vessel.
I felt sothing close to surprise.
Huston was still alive, if this plant life were any indication.
Shadow moved first, desperation overriding whatever restraint he had left. His arms twisted and split into razor-sharp barbs, each one glinting with an edge ant to tear through anything in its path. He lunged, driving them forward with the intent to impale, to pin down, to end this in one decisive motion. The barbs found their mark, forcing into my body, aiming for any vulnerability he could exploit.
I was no longer there.
Space folded, and I slipped through it without resistance, reappearing several ters away as his attack carved through nothing but the afterimage I left behind, hitting the Fuhrer instead. The battlefield did not remain still for long. Around , the broken remains of machinery and the scattered corpses of tree constructs shuddered, then rose again.
So there was a necromancer among them, or perhaps an animakinetic with enough finesse to repurpose the dead.
Annoying.
The multiverse was vast, and I had encountered enough variations of power to recognize the signature imdiately. What I had dismissed as cannon fodder surged back into motion, their forms jerking unnaturally as they converged on in a relentless tide. Limbs that had been severed reattached themselves, fractured fras forced into crude functionality, all of it directed at with singular intent.
I t them head-on.
Each punch I threw carried more than force. I dismantled them at a molecular level, breaking them down beyond recovery, ensuring there would be nothing left to reanimate. tal unraveled into particulate dust, organic matter collapsed into unrecognizable fragnts, and anything that tried to reform was reduced again before it could complete the process.
Within , Nick resisted with a violence that matched the battlefield around us. He pushed against my control, clawing for dominance, his will pressing against mine with increasing intensity. If he succeeded, he would turn that control inward, destroy his own body, and force out.
It would not kill .
But it would cost the Source anchored within him.
He was surpassing expectations.
The last version of myself I had been forced to possess had not lasted nearly as long. I rembered him in fragnts, an older man, worn by ti but stubborn in ways that mirrored my own. He had an adopted daughter, an animakinetic of considerable skill. That mory lingered longer than it should have, threading itself into my awareness as I moved.
I phased forward, slipping through the debris that had been arranged as camouflage, tearing through it without slowing. My quarry revealed itself in the distortion that followed.
Tony stood there, the constructed ‘son’ Dr. Ti had made for , his presence flickering at the edges of perception. Beside him was a woman I recognized, though the details ca into focus only as I drew closer.
Cordelia.
The child I rembered was gone.
What stood before now was sothing else entirely.
“Well, look at you,” I said, my voice steady despite the chaos surrounding us. “Cordelia. The little girl grew up. Your animakinesis… refined to the point you can manipulate souls so freely now.”
There was no admiration in the statent, only acknowledgnt.
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