278 Monster of the Multiverse
278 Monster of the Multiverse
[POV: Nick/Old Nick]
At some 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 emerged where before there had only been noise. We began to understand that this wasn’t just war.
It was something designed to never end.
That realization broke something in me that hadn’t already been broken.
In the end, I gave up.
I tried to kill myself, but my own power resisted me. My body refused to fail, my abilities compensating, correcting, preserving me against my will. It took time, 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 something vast and quiet.
And she was there.
Amy stood before me, unchanged in the ways that mattered, her expression filled with something 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 me all at once. “Can you forgive me?”
I needed to hear it. I needed something, anything, to settle the storm inside me.
But before she could answer, before the moment could resolve into something final, I was pulled away.
I was alive again.
So I did it again.
And again.
Each death brought me back to her, each return to life tearing me away before I could hold onto anything real. It became a cycle, one I controlled and yet couldn’t escape. My existence began to warp under the strain, something fundamental shifting with every crossing.
I spoke to her countless times. I saw her, heard her, felt closer to her than I had in years.
It made me feel alive.
Somewhere along that endless repetition, I started to notice something 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 timeline, there was something else. A presence, a foundation, a force that everything else seemed to stem from.
The Source.
It had been referenced before, in fragmented theories, in half-understood metaphysics. Some described it as the afterlife itself, others as a shared soul that all beings were part of. Dr. Time provided the scientific framework that turned those abstract ideas into something 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 meant. If the Source was the origin, then changing it meant changing everything. Fixing it meant 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.
Somewhere 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 me to reach into something that wasn’t meant to be touched.
Exposure did something to me.
At first, it was subtle, small shifts in thought, in perception. Then it deepened, spreading through me in ways I couldn’t fully understand or control. My soul, if that was what it still was, had been worn down too many times, stretched across too many realities.
I started losing my sanity.
There were moments, brief and rare, where clarity returned. In those moments, I could see what I had become, the destruction left in my wake, the scale of what I was doing.
And every time, it filled me with despair.
But those moments never lasted.
In my madness, I continued.
I destroyed worlds, consumed them, tore through realities as if they were nothing more than fragile constructs. Each one fed into the Source, adding to something that felt infinite and incomplete at the same time.
I devoured fragments of existence itself, chasing an end that never came.
And I kept going, throwing myself into a task that was never meant to end, becoming something 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 remembered it, every moment aligning too perfectly, every emotion arriving on cue as if it had been rehearsed.
No.
Not remembered.
That wasn’t the right word anymore.
I was led to believe that I remembered.
The distinction hollowed something out inside me. I wasn’t living these moments, I wasn’t even recalling them. I was watching them, trapped behind my own eyes as the version of me inside the memory moved forward without hesitation, without deviation, without me.
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 some point, near a distant horizon where the edges of my sanity began to peel back, I noticed something else.
There was more.
Beyond the sequence I was forced to observe, beyond the memories 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 something pushed back.
It wasn’t resistance in the physical sense. It was something deeper, something that threatened to unravel me entirely. If I forced my way further, if I reached into whatever lay beyond, I knew I wouldn’t come back as myself.
My individuality hung in the balance.
And for the first time in a long time, I hesitated.
I needed something to hold onto, something real, something that belonged to me and not whatever this construct was trying to feed me.
So I spoke, even if it was only to myself.
“I can’t stop here. There’s someone waiting for me. Her name’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 come with her. And I chose that. I chose all of them.”
The words steadied me, anchored me against the pull.
“And Ron. My Little King… my son. I have somewhere else to be.”
The weight of that truth pushed back against everything else.
“This isn’t where I end. This prison of memories… it doesn’t get to keep me.”
For the first time, 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 transformed, 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 me, 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 me that this wasn’t truly mine.
I wasn’t fond of possessing another version of myself.
It came with complications.
Memories bled through too easily, weaknesses exposed themselves without effort, and the line between identities blurred in ways that could become… inconvenient. Since we were the same 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 time, I didn’t bother with this method. It was easier to consume 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 something that could oppose me. Dr. Time’s influence was evident in the structure of his being, in the way his existence resisted collapse.
I saw fragments 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 came 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 time he had been active.
A murderous demon.
The irony wasn’t lost on me.
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 me.”
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 movement, every breath.
Then I acted.
My grip warped, space folding inward as I crushed Dragoness’ throat with a precise, irreversible motion. There was no time for last words, no moment granted for farewell. Her body went limp instantly, the life leaving her before sound could follow.
Behind me, 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 me erupted.
Roots burst upward, coiling around my legs, binding me in place with surprising force. The impact that followed came from below, rock shattering as a massive figure surged upward.
The Fuhrer.
His grip locked onto me, power coursing through his hold as nullification took effect, pressing against the abilities I wielded through this vessel.
I felt something 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 meant to tear through anything in its path. He lunged, driving them forward with the intent to impale, to pin me 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 meters 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 me, 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 immediately. What I had dismissed as cannon fodder surged back into motion, their forms jerking unnaturally as they converged on me in a relentless tide. Limbs that had been severed reattached themselves, fractured frames forced into crude functionality, all of it directed at me with singular intent.
I met 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. Metal unraveled into particulate dust, organic matter collapsed into unrecognizable fragments, and anything that tried to reform was reduced again before it could complete the process.
Within me, 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 me out.
It would not kill me.
But it would cost me 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 remembered him in fragments, an older man, worn by time but stubborn in ways that mirrored my own. He had an adopted daughter, an animakinetic of considerable skill. That memory 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. Time had made for me, his presence flickering at the edges of perception. Beside him was a woman I recognized, though the details came into focus only as I drew closer.
Cordelia.
The child I remembered was gone.
What stood before me now was something 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 statement, only acknowledgment.