274 Thrilling New Experience
274 Thrilling New Experience
[POV: The Devil]
I remembered the feeling of becoming less than a body and more than a presence, as if gravity itself had loosened its claim on me and drifted away in quiet surrender. There had been no ground, no sky, no direction, only the slow, endless pull toward the Source, a vast and patient hunger that welcomed me like an old companion. Each soul I consumed dissolved into something finer, something purer, threading into my being until the boundary between “I” and “everything else” blurred into irrelevance. I had been expanding, stretching across unseen layers of existence, every moment sharpening me into something closer to completion. Closer to omnipotence. Closer to inevitability.
I had felt it then, that near-perfect edge, that final threshold waiting just ahead. Just a few more worlds. Just a few more civilizations ground into silence and folded into my will. The distance between me and that final state had been measurable, tangible, almost graspable. And in that narrowing gap, there had been a thought that refused to dissolve with the rest.
Amy.
Her name had lingered like a fracture in an otherwise seamless ascent, a memory that refused assimilation. I had carried it with me as I devoured stars and shattered timelines, as though it were the only fragment of my former self that still held weight. Just a bit closer, I had told myself. Just a little more, and I would see her again. Not as a man, perhaps, but as something greater, something that could reach back across everything and reclaim what had been taken.
Then something tore.
It was abrupt, violent in a way I had not felt in ages, as if an unseen hand had plunged into my being and ripped away a vital thread. The flow of souls ceased instantly, cut off mid-current, leaving behind a hollow silence where there had once been an endless stream. The absence was louder than any scream. My ascent halted, my expansion recoiled, and for the first time in what felt like eternity, I felt… diminished.
I rose from the abyss in response, drawn back into form, into something resembling shape and presence. The familiar anchor of identity returned as I emerged, and the first thing I noticed was the absence.
The Devil’s Triangle was gone.
In its place, suspended unnaturally against the horizon, hung a triangular rift in space and time, its edges flickering with unstable distortions. It pulsed like a wound in reality, barely contained, barely understood. I recognized the texture of this place immediately, the subtle resistance in the air, the faint echo of past collisions.
Mars.
The red planet stretched beneath me, barren and scarred, its surface carrying the quiet memory of ancient violence. I had fought here before, in other moments, in other iterations. The dust, the silence, the faint hum of a world long past its prime? It was unmistakable.
And then I saw him.
He stood before me, solid and real, yet undeniably wrong in the most precise way. It was me, but not me. Younger, sharper in some places, duller in others. His posture carried a different history, his eyes a different set of experiences. We shared a face, a structure, a core identity, yet everything else diverged like two timelines forced into the same space.
Despite being the same person, we were clearly two different people.
The realization settled quickly. This had Dr. Time written all over it. He had always been fond of exploiting fractures, of taking the smallest ripple and stretching it into something catastrophic. The butterfly effects I had left behind and the distortions I had caused across timelines? He had gathered them, shaped them, weaponized them.
This version of me was not an accident.
He was a product.
“A fitting stage,” I said, my voice steady as I glanced across the red expanse. “Mars. The red planet. Named for the Roman god of war, an equivalent of Ares in Greek mythology.”
The other me blinked, his expression flattening slightly as he stared back at me.
“None of that passed through my head,” he replied, almost dismissively.
I studied him for a moment longer, noting the gaps, the absences where knowledge should have been. Education, refinement, perspective? They were stripped away or never given. It was obvious. Simpler minds were easier to guide, easier to shape into something useful. Dr. Time had not just created a weapon; he had ensured it would be pliable.
I wondered, briefly, how deeply he had interfered in this version’s life. What strings had been pulled, what tragedies had been engineered, what pieces had been removed or replaced. The same careful, invasive touch he had used on my wife lingered in the back of my thoughts, unwelcome yet unavoidable.
I adjusted my tie, smoothing the fabric with a habitual precision that had survived even my transformation.
Then I moved.
In less than a blink, I stood before him, the distance erased without effort. My leg swung upward in a heavy arc, phasing into motion at the last possible instant. The kick connected with a force that bent space around it, launching him backward across the red terrain.
He reacted just in time, arms rising to block, but the impact carried through regardless. I heard it faintly, the brittle crack of bones giving way under pressure. It was subtle, almost insignificant, but it was there.
He would recover. Rated-30s always did.
The ground beneath my feet shifted suddenly, the solid surface liquefying into thick, clinging mud that pulled at my stance. The change was immediate, unnatural, either geokinesis or something adjacent. Before I could fully assess it, a portal tore open in front of me, its edges jagged and unstable.
A massive figure surged through.
He was easily twice my height, his build exaggerated to the point of absurdity, muscle layered over muscle in a way that defied natural proportion. His uniform marked him clearly enough, even without insignia that I cared to recognize. A relic of a failed ideology, dragged forward into a fight far beyond its original context.
He did have a notable mullet, though.
His fist came at me with enough force to shatter reinforced structures, but it passed through me as if I were nothing more than a projection. There was no resistance, no impact, only the faint sensation of displacement.
And then I felt it.
A soul within me snapped.
It died instantly, severed without resistance, consumed not by me but erased outright. My gaze sharpened as I reassessed him. His null was potent, far beyond the average manifestation. It extended beyond his body, forming an external barrier that actively rejected the fundamental rules governing motion and interaction. He wasn’t just resisting forces; he was negating them.
Rare.
Dangerous.
He had potential, enough to climb higher, perhaps even to Rated-30, though something held him back. An internal limiter, likely artificial or inherent, restricting his growth. That limiter was the only reason he wasn’t already more of a problem.
Still, under stress, limits had a tendency to crack.
I stepped forward and phased through him, my form slipping past his barrier with calculated intent. My hand moved to tear through his flesh from within, to bypass his defenses entirely.
Instead, I rebounded.
The resistance was immediate, elastic in nature, as if another layer had been wrapped around him at the last second. I pulled back, narrowing my focus as I observed the distortion more carefully.
It wasn’t his power.
It was something else.
A secondary influence, subtle but precise, bending reality just enough to reinforce him, to elevate his null beyond its natural threshold. The pattern became clear as I traced its origin, the faint signature of manipulation threading through the air.
Reality warping.
Not his, but applied to him.
It intrigued me more than it should have, that subtle distortion woven into the brute’s defenses. Empowering a null was not simply rare; it bordered on contradiction. Nulls erased, rejected, denied. To strengthen one required precision that flirted with paradox. Whoever wielded that power was not careless.
I followed the thread.
The signature lingered faintly, like heat trailing behind a vanished flame, but it was enough. I reached, bent space with casual authority, and stepped across the distance in less than a thought. The battlefield vanished, replaced by a quieter fragment of Mars where the air itself seemed to hesitate.
There were two of them.
One stood slightly behind, composed, deliberate, his presence wrapped in the careful stillness of someone who understood exactly what he was doing. The other?
Recognition came instantly, cutting through everything else.
“Oh, little Tony.”
He looked at me, and I saw it then, not just resemblance, but origin. A living consequence. A remnant of experiments I had not sanctioned, carried out in secrecy, buried beneath layers of manipulation.
My son.
A byproduct of Dr. Time’s interference, stitched together through events that had led, inevitably, to my wife’s death. The realization did not strike like a revelation; it settled like something long suspected finally stepping into clarity.
“You always astound me, doctor,” I said, my gaze shifting briefly as if the man might reveal himself through absence alone. “I thought I’ve already killed this scum.”
My attention returned to the boy.
“Kid, do you remember me?”
Tony trembled.
It wasn’t subtle. His entire frame shook, his breath uneven, his eyes wide with something between recognition and fear. Memory lingered in him, fragmented but present.
“Let’s go, kid,” the other reality warper said, his tone sharp and immediate. He seized Tony’s arm, and with a simple snap of his fingers, space folded.
They vanished.
I moved to follow, reaching for their displacement, locking onto the distortion they left behind. The transition had barely begun when something intervened.
A shape formed in front of me, coalescing from nothing into something solid and deliberate.
A golem.
No, more refined than that.
It bore a feminine silhouette, armored in a knightly design that merged elegance with density. In its hand rested a sword that hummed faintly, not with energy, but with something deeper. Something older.
It struck.
I allowed the blade to pass through me, my body phasing instinctively, but the moment it intersected my form, I felt it again and that internal fracture. Not my body, but the souls within me. Several flickered, destabilized, wounded by contact alone.
My gaze sharpened.
Animakinesis.
Not crude manipulation, but something closer to magic than structured ability. It interacted with the soul directly, bypassing conventional defenses. The construct itself… it wasn’t empty. It possessed a soul, bound and sustained, granting it motion, purpose, presence.
A living doll.
I studied it as it pressed forward, its movements precise, relentless. Its body was composed of something beyond simple stone. Compressed matter, layered and hardened to an extreme density. At its core, I could sense a minute stellar reaction, a tiny star forged under impossible pressure, feeding its structure with silent, contained violence.
I shifted aside as it kept me engaged, its blade tracing arcs meant to disrupt rather than destroy.
Then the sky answered.
Lightning descended in a violent cascade, tearing through the thin Martian atmosphere and crashing into the ground with overwhelming force. The impact swallowed everything in white and gold, heat and pressure folding over themselves in a sustained assault.
I endured.
When the storm ceased, the world had changed. The land around me lay scorched, blackened into glass and ash. The air shimmered with residual heat.
I looked down.
The doll stood before me, its sword embedded deep into my abdomen. Blood spilled freely, darker than it should have been, carrying fragments of something far less human within it.
I did not react immediately.
Instead, I lifted my gaze.
Above, coiling through the sky with effortless dominance, an oriental dragon traced wide arcs through the atmosphere. Its body shimmered with power, its presence ancient yet evolving.
Sea Serpent.
I had crossed paths with versions of him before. Each iteration refined, each encounter pushing him further beyond his previous limits. He had surpassed Rated-20 not through sudden growth, but through persistence. Eternal youth, or something close to it, had granted him time to improve, to adapt, to ascend.
Young Nick suddenly reappeared.
He moved differently than before, phasing not just for defense, but for motion. Intangibility layered with speed, allowing him to bypass resistance entirely. He emerged mid-strike, his leg extended, aimed directly at my skull.
I responded without hesitation.
Space obeyed.
I switched our positions instantly, rewriting proximity with absolute authority. The wound in my abdomen vanished as our states adjusted, replaced by his vulnerability. My leg mirrored his motion, now directed at his skull with lethal precision.
It would have connected.
He would have died.
Reality bent.
I felt it before I saw it, that same subtle interference reshaping outcomes. The world flickered, and in that instant, positions shifted again.
The lady knight stood where he had been.
My foot collided with her.
The impact reverberated through her form like striking a mountain, unyielding and absolute. The force dispersed, redirected into the ground beneath us.
Young Nick escaped, phasing downward into the planet itself, vanishing into its depths.
The construct before me faltered.
Its movements stuttered, then ceased entirely. The soul within it dimmed, flickered, and went out. The body followed, collapsing into itself, lifeless once more.
A portal tore open nearby.
The massive null-user returned, charging through with renewed aggression. The faint hum of technology accompanied him this time, subtle devices integrated into his gear. Portal tech. External assistance compensating for limitations.
His fist came again.
I flattened.
My form thinned into two dimensions, slipping along the plane of existence itself as his attack passed harmlessly above. In that state, I reached, seized the device responsible for his mobility, and crushed it effortlessly.
It shattered in my grasp.
“Good luck running.”
The words had barely left me when something seized my leg.
A hand.
Below.
Young Nick emerged from beneath, his body partially phased into the ground itself. His grip tightened, and then he pulled.
The surface vanished.
We plunged beneath Mars, into darkness where sight lost meaning. The world above became distant, irrelevant. Down here, there was no light, no horizon, no clear form, only shifting density and muted sensation.
We fought anyway.
Intangibility blurred everything, our bodies phasing in and out of solidity in rapid succession. We could not see each other properly, only sense disturbances, faint impressions of presence. Each strike was timed between states, landing in the brief moments where contact became possible.
Punches collided, slipped, reformed.
Momentum carried through phases, turning every exchange into a fragmented sequence of impact and absence.
Around us, Mars trembled.
The planet itself responded to the violence, its crust shuddering as we tore through it without direction, without restraint.
I burst from beneath the Martian crust and skidded into a halt, momentum dragging a shallow trench behind me as I rose upright. The surface greeted me with stillness for half a second too long, and then I noticed the wetness beneath my shoes, dark and reflective against the red dust.
A puddle of blood.
I glanced down at it, unimpressed, the realization settling without resistance. Of course. The SRC had access to Mr. Known. Logistics, preparation, battlefield conditioning. This was his domain. He would orchestrate something like this, laying groundwork in advance, shaping the terrain into a weapon before I even arrived. Though, knowing the other me, I doubted he would have approved of such meticulous interference. He lacked the patience for it.
The blood moved.
It didn’t ripple or flow naturally. It sharpened.
Spears erupted upward without warning, their formation instantaneous, their trajectory precise. They struck before I fully shifted, piercing through me in multiple points. I felt the intrusion, the disruption.
Null.
Not ordinary null, but something refined to its highest rating, infused directly into the medium. It bypassed the usual thresholds, embedding itself into the attack with surgical intent.
I spat blood, the taste thick and familiar, staining the inside of my mask.
Caught off guard.
And yet, the sensation only sharpened my focus. Surprise had become rare in my existence, dulled by repetition and inevitability. This deviation carried a certain appeal. I thinned myself, phasing into a single dimension, slipping free from the constraints of their positioning. The world flattened, simplified, and in that narrowed state, I traced the origin.
I found her.
Ms. Life.
She stood not far from me, her presence stark against the barren landscape. Mars was an unexpected stage for her, far removed from the environments she typically thrived in. And yet, here she was, composed and deliberate, her gaze locked onto mine.
I closed the distance instantly.
My hand wrapped around her face, fingers pressing into her skin with intent, reality bending slightly under the pressure I exerted. I did not hesitate. I aimed to unmake her entirely, to tear her down to the smallest indivisible components.
Her response was immediate.
Blood surged over her form, coating her in a dense, shifting armor that pulsed with contained vitality. It resisted me, not passively, but actively, pushing back against my influence.
I understood her.
I always had.
Her power was not foreign to me. I had dissected it, replicated fragments of it, twisted it into something else entirely. War, one of my Four Horsemen, existed because I had once used her own DNA as a template, reshaping its essence into something aligned with my will.
There were no surprises here.
So I adapted.
I separated my arm.
Intangibility allowed for precision beyond conventional limits. I phased the limb apart from my body cleanly, severing it without resistance. The moment it detached, her blood surged toward it, invading the exposed structure, corroding, consuming.
Exactly as expected.
I released her.
The blood slid off her form, abandoning the armored state as it drained back into her control. For a brief moment, she appeared diminished, her complexion paling as the expenditure took its toll.
She bared her fangs, her intent clear.
Consumption.
She lunged.
I moved faster.
With my remaining hand, I struck, the motion clean and absolute. Her head separated from her body in a single, precise action. It did not slow her.
Even severed, she lived.
“It’s your only chance now!” she shouted, her voice raw, urgent. “Get him!”
The warning reached its target.
I felt it before I saw it.
A sharp intrusion from behind, perfectly timed, perfectly placed. The sensation bloomed through my torso as something solid pierced through me, disrupting layers that had remained untouched for far too long.
Young Nick.
He had positioned himself well.
He had waited.
And he had struck.
I looked down slightly, acknowledging the wound, then let out a quiet breath that turned into something else entirely. A grin spread beneath my mask, unseen but unmistakable in the tension of my expression.
Blood slipped from my lips.
In the long stretch of my existence, surprise had become an endangered experience. Patterns repeated, outcomes converged, inevitability dominated. But this? This disruption, this precise alignment of interference and timing?
It delighted me.
Reality closed in around me. A layer of warping settled over my form, locking me in place. It wasn’t force; it was denial. Movement itself was rejected, frozen within a confined state.
I was trapped in a stasis.
The ground answered next.
Beneath me, the Martian surface reshaped, rising in crude, humanoid forms. Animakinesis again, but broader this time, less refined than the knight, more numerous. They grasped onto me, reinforcing the hold, layering physical restraint over conceptual imprisonment.
And then he pulled.
Young Nick’s grip tightened, not on my body, but on something deeper. I felt it being grasped, identified, isolated.
The Source.
Not fully assimilated, not yet fully integrated into my being. A fragment, a growing core, still distinct enough to be targeted.
He tore it out.
The sensation was unlike the earlier disruption. This was subtraction on a fundamental level. A piece of me was forcibly removed, leaving behind an absence that immediately weakened everything else.
He didn’t linger.
He teleported, his efficiency uncharacteristic but effective. He seized Lifeblood’s severed head as he moved, and then both of them were gone, removed from the battlefield in a single, decisive exit.
Above, the sky shifted.
Sea Serpent descended slightly, coiling through the atmosphere as energy gathered within him. Then he exhaled.
Lightning.
Not a single strike, but a continuous breath, a torrent of electrical force pouring down onto me. It enveloped my form, the heat and voltage overwhelming even my current state. My lungs resisted the act of breathing under the assault, the air itself destabilized by the sheer intensity.
Pain followed.
And I laughed.
The sound broke through the storm, uneven at first, then fuller, deeper, echoing against the scorched landscape. It wasn’t controlled. It wasn’t measured. It rose naturally, pulled from a place that had remained dormant for far too long.
I laughed as the lightning consumed me.
I laughed as my strength faltered.
I laughed at the possibility forming at the edge of it all.
I might die like this.