A Systematic Tale: The Hero! 49 (Patreon)

Chapter 49:

– Silas –

The battle of monsters in the middle of the ocean was violence incarnate!

I couldn't see more than a few feet in any direction—just churning black water turned opaque by clouds of sediment, displaced currents, and the dark ichor bleeding from both our bodies. My dragon form moved on pure instinct, every motion driven by predatory focus honed over millions of years of evolutionary memory I shouldn't possess but somehow did.

Leviathan thrashed beneath me, its tail whipping through the water with enough force to liquify a human body. The blow caught me across the ribs—again—and I felt scales crack, felt the impact rattle through my chest cavity hard enough to make my vision blur.

Dark blood—my blood—poured into the water from a dozen wounds. Deep gouges where Leviathan's claws had torn through my hide. Missing scales where its teeth had found purchase. A gash along my neck that burned with salt water.

I didn't care. Pain was distant. My dragon soul howled with feral joy, drunk on violence, on the challenge, on the hunt. This was what my soul was built for. This creature had drowned cities, killed millions, and now it was bleeding, dying, beneath my claws.

I was winning!

My jaws snapped forward, aiming for its throat again, but Leviathan twisted with that impossible aquatic grace. Its tail came around—I saw it coming this time—and I brought my own tail up to intercept. The collision sent shockwaves rippling through the water, a thunderclap of muscle and bone meeting in the depths.

We separated for half a second. Leviathan's multiple eyes glowed in the murk, fixed on me with what I could've sworn was shock. Fear, maybe. The Endbringer was used to being the apex predator in any environment. Used to heroes fleeing, dying, drowning in its domain.

It wasn't used to something that could match it here.

I grinned with a mouth full of fangs longer than swords and lunged. My claws raked across its chest again, tearing through the dense false-flesh in ragged furrows. More of that strange blood sprayed into the water, glowing faintly with bioluminescence. 

The Leviathan retaliated with a viciousness born of desperation. Its claws found my shoulder, sinking deep, tearing away a chunk of muscle and scale. Agony lanced through me, white-hot and immediate. I roared, the sound becoming bubbles and pressure waves, and bit down on the arm that had wounded me.

My jaws closed with hydraulic force, teeth punching through armor-like hide, crushing bone—or whatever passed for bone in its alien physiology. I tasted metal. Tasted something acrid and wrong. Tasted victory.

Leviathan jerked backward, trying to pull free, but I held on with my teeth clamped down hard. My neck muscles strained, my entire body coiling with effort as I pulled, twisting my head violently to the side.

The arm tore free. It ripped away in a spray of gore and shredded tissue, the limb separating at the shoulder with a wet, organic sound that shouldn't exist underwater but somehow did. Leviathan's scream intensified, the pitch climbing into frequencies that made my teeth ache.

I spat the severed limb into the darkness and dove after the retreating Endbringer.

It was trying to escape now. Trying to flee deeper into the Atlantic, to put distance between us, maybe even to regenerate. But its fake body was hurt so badly that I was now faster. My tail propelled me through the water like a torpedo, my wings tucked tight against my body to reduce drag, every muscle in my draconic form working in perfect synchronization.

I slammed into Leviathan from behind with the force of a megalodon.

We tumbled together through the depths, end over end, my claws locked around its torso, my jaws snapping at its neck. It fought back—God, it fought back—raking its remaining claws across my face, tearing gouges through the scales along my muzzle. One claw caught my eye, and I felt the organ rupture.

It didn't matter!

I had another eye. And even half-blind, even bleeding from a dozen wounds, even with my ribs cracked and my muscles screaming, I was still stronger.

My claws found purchase at the base of its tail—the thick, muscular section where the appendage met the main body. I dug in, sinking my talons as deep as they would go, feeling them punch through layers of that impossibly dense flesh until they scraped against something hard. Something metallic.

The core. I could feel it through the tissue, pulsing with energy, the silver sphere that housed whatever passed for Leviathan's consciousness. The thing wasn't technically alive—it was a war machine, an alien construct designed to stress-test humanity. But it could still die.

And I was about to prove it.

I pulled Leviathan closer, dragging it toward me despite its thrashing, despite the way its tail lashed my sides hard enough to break ribs. My jaws opened wide, fangs dripping with my own blood and its ichor, and I lunged for the center of its chest.

My teeth closed around the core's housing.

For one frozen moment, everything went still. Leviathan stopped thrashing. The water stopped churning. Even the distant rumble of surface waves seemed to fade into silence.

And then I bit down.

The core resisted for half a second, some kind of energy field, maybe, or just the sheer density of the materials, but my jaws were designed to crush stone, to crack mountains, to devour other dragons. The silver sphere cracked with a sound like breaking glass amplified a thousand times. Light erupted from the fractures. Energy discharged in violent pulses, searing the inside of my mouth, burning my tongue and throat, but I didn't let go.

I bit harder.

The core shattered!

Leviathan's death shriek was like nothing I'd ever heard—a sound that transcended biology, that resonated on a level beyond mere vibration. It was the scream of a machine dying, of alien code fragmenting, of an Endbringer realizing it had been terminated.

The light intensified, turning the ocean around us into a sphere of pure white radiance. Leviathan's body went limp in my grip, its movements ceasing instantly as whatever animating force had driven it simply... stopped.

I released the corpse, watching it sink slowly into the depths, already beginning to break apart, chunks of false-flesh sloughing off to reveal the mechanical infrastructure beneath.

I'd done it.

I'd killed an Endbringer. Solo. In its own fucking domain.

My dragon soul roared in triumph, the sound echoing through my chest, through the water, through my very bones. I wanted to surface, to fly into the sky and announce my victory to the world, to claim my hoard and my mates and bask in the glory of—

[Congratulations on killing the Leviathan—]

The blue screen materialized in front of my slitted eyes, text scrolling across my vision even underwater. My System, always punctual with its rewards.

A golden wave suddenly swept over me. I didn't see it coming. One moment I was reading my victory notification, adrenaline and triumph flooding my veins, and the next—

My vision blurred. Vaguely aware that something—someone—had just done this to me.

Scion…

That golden bastard. 

The one that hadn't been ruptured. I found myself losing consciousness as I floated back towards the surface. The last thing I saw before my good eye closed was the leviathans corpse sinking to the depths.

– Victoria Dallon –

Vicky couldn't stay still. It was physically impossible.

She bounced on the balls of her feet, her hands gripping Amy's shoulders from behind as she vibrated with manic energy. The briefing room monitors displayed grainy underwater footage from Dragon's drones. But it was hard to see at nighttime, mostly murky darkness punctuated by flashes of blue-white lightning and the occasional glimpse of something massive and black tearing through the depths.

Her boyfriend. Her dragon boyfriend. Fighting a fucking Endbringer in kaiju style combat and winning!

"Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God—" Vicky chanted under her breath, squeezing Amy's shoulders hard enough that her sister yelped and tried to squirm away.

"Vicky, you're crushing me—"

"AMY LOOK!" Vicky shrieked, pointing at the center monitor with one hand while the other kept her sister pinned in place. "LOOK AT HIM!"

The drone's camera had finally captured a clear shot. Silas's dragon form—forty feet of obsidian scales, massive wings, and claws the size of swords—erupted from the churning water in a spray of displaced ocean. His jaws were clamped around something that thrashed and screamed, something with too many limbs and glowing eyes.

Leviathan, the Endbringer, looked small in Silas's grip. Pathetic. Like a dog's chew toy being shaken to death.

Vicky released Amy and threw her arms up, screaming, "THAT'S OUR FUCKING MAN RIGHT THERE!"

Half the room turned to stare at her. Armsmaster's helmet swiveled in her direction with obvious disapproval. Dauntless looked like he was trying not to laugh. Velocity just shook his head.

Vicky didn't care. She spun toward Amy, grabbed her sister by the waist, and lifted her clear off the ground in a spinning hug that made the healer squeak in protest.

"Vicky—put me down—people are watching—"

"Let them watch!" Vicky crowed, setting Amy down but keeping her hands on her sister's hips, grinning so wide her face hurt. "That's our boyfriend out there! Ours! We're dating a dragon who kills Endbringers for fun!"

Amy's face turned the color of a fire hydrant. She buried her face in her hands, groaning. "Oh my God, Vicky, Dean is literally ten feet away—"

"I know!" Vicky glanced over her shoulder at Gallant, who stood rigid in his gleaming armor near the back wall, his helmet's visor fixed very deliberately on the monitors and absolutely nowhere near the Dallon sisters. His posture screamed discomfort. Vicky waved cheerfully at him. "Hey, Dean! You seeing this? My new boyfriend is way cooler than you!"

Gallant said nothing. His fists clenched at his sides.

Amy made a strangled sound of mortification. "Vicky, oh my God, you can't just—"

"What? It's true!" Vicky turned back to the screens, her grin never faltering. "I mean, you're a good guy, Dean, but did you ever turn into a giant dragon and rip an Endbringer's arm off? No? Didn't think so!"

Someone in the Wards section—probably Clockblocker—snorted loudly and tried to cover it with a cough.

On the monitors, Silas's dragon form dove back beneath the surface, dragging Leviathan with him. The water churned violently, great plumes of displaced ocean shooting skyward as the two titans collided again and again in the depths.

Assault whistled low. "Okay, I'll admit it. That's the most freaking metal thing I've ever seen."

"Language," Battery murmured automatically, though she didn't take her eyes off the screen.

"What? I didn't even swear!"

The room fell into tense silence as they watched the underwater battle unfold in flashes and bursts of movement. Dragon's drones struggled to keep up, the cameras shaking from the sheer turbulence of the fight.

Then one of the feeds caught it—a close-up of Silas's dragon face. And then Leviathan's claw raked across that eye. Dark blood clouded the water. Silas's roar shook the camera so hard the feed pixelated for a second.

Vicky's stomach dropped. "Oh shit—"

Amy sucked in a sharp breath beside her, her hands flying to her mouth.

"He's fine," Vicky said immediately, though her voice came out tighter than she intended. "He's fine, right? Amy, tell me he's fine—"

"I can fix that," Amy said quickly, her healer instincts overriding her embarrassment. Her fingers twitched at her sides, already cataloging the injury in her mind. "Eyes are easy. I've regrown retinas before. And Silas has that Twilight Healing ability now too—he mentioned it during the debrief. He'll regenerate it himself if I don't get to him first."

Sophia Hess spoke up from where she'd been leaning against the wall near the Wards, her arms crossed and her expression dark. "You better fix him," she muttered, glaring at the screen. "Because I don't want my boyfriend looking like a fucking pirate."

The room went silent.

Vicky turned slowly, her eyebrows climbing toward her hairline. "Your boyfriend?"

Sophia's jaw tightened. She didn't look at Vicky. "Yeah. Mine. I found him first. Way before anyone else if you remember!"

"Oh, honey," Vicky drawled, her grin turning wicked. "Finders keepers doesn't apply to boyfriends. Especially not when Amy and I already—"

"VICKY!" Amy grabbed her sister's arm, yanking hard. "Do not finish that sentence!"

Taylor Hebert—Weaver—stood a few feet away in her black insect-themed costume, her masked face angled toward the screens but her shoulders visibly tense. Her fingers drummed against her thigh in a nervous rhythm that Vicky recognized instantly. Oh, the bug girl had it bad too. This was getting complicated. And Vicky loved complicated.

Before she could say anything else, Dragon's voice crackled through the speakers, high-pitched and jubilant in a way Vicky had never heard from the composed Tinker before.

"The Leviathan is dead! Repeat—the Leviathan has been destroyed! Dragonborn has won!"

The room erupted. Cheers exploded from every corner—Wards, Protectorate, even Director Piggot's muffled voice shouting something triumphant from her office down the hall. Assault punched the air. Battery actually smiled. Clockblocker ripped off his mask and whooped.

Vicky grabbed Amy again and spun her in another circle, laughing hysterically. "HE FUCKING DID IT!”

Amy was laughing too now, her earlier embarrassment forgotten in the wave of sheer, overwhelming relief. "We're going to live! Oh my God, we're actually going to live—"

And then the screens went dark. Just... black. All of them. Simultaneously.

The cheering cut off like someone had severed a vocal cord.

Vicky froze mid-spin, still holding Amy. Her smile faltered. "Uh... what just happened?"

Armsmaster was already moving, his gauntlet lighting up as his fingers flew across the haptic interface. "Dragon?" he called, his voice sharp. "Dragon, respond. What's your status?"

Silence. No answer. No crackle of static. Nothing.

Armsmaster's helmet tilted as he cycled through communication channels, his movements growing more frantic. "I'm not getting a response from any of Dragon's systems. The connection just... severed."

"That's not possible," Velocity said, stepping forward. "Dragon has redundancies on top of redundancies. Even if one connection drops, she has backups across dozens of satellites—"

"I know that!" Armsmaster snapped, still typing. His frustration bled through his normally controlled tone. "Which is why this doesn't make sense. It's not just Dragon. I'm not getting anything. No satellite uplink. No cell towers. No internet. It’s like all the signals are getting interfered with by something else and cancelling each other out…"

Vicky pulled out her phone from the small pouch she kept tucked under her skirt. The screen lit up, showing her wallpaper—a photo of her and Amy grinning at the camera, Silas between them with his arms around both their shoulders.

No signal. Zero bars.

"What the hell?" she muttered, shaking the phone like that would somehow fix it.

Amy checked hers too. Same result. She looked up at Vicky, her brown eyes wide with confusion. "Nothing. Not even emergency services."

Around the room, others were pulling out their devices, checking their screens, murmuring in growing alarm.

Assault broke the tension with his usual irreverence. "Did that bitch Simurgh knock out all communications?" 

Sophia pushed off the wall, her expression dark and dangerous. She stalked toward Vicky and Amy, jabbing a finger at Vicky's chest. "Get off your ass, Barbie, and go fly out into the ocean to make sure our man is okay." Her gaze flicked to Amy. "Take your sister too. He's going to need healing after that fight and he might be too tired to do it himself."

Vicky bristled at being ordered around by Shadow Stalker of all people, but she couldn't argue with the logic. 

"I'll go check on Tiamat," Alexandria said suddenly, her voice cutting through the rising chatter. The heroine stood near the monitors, her arms still crossed, her posture rigid. Her helmet turned toward the blank screens for a long moment, and Vicky thought she saw the woman's jaw tighten behind the dark lenses.

Was Alexandria... worried?

Vicky's brain made a connection she probably should've made earlier. Alexandria had been spending a lot of time in Brockton Bay recently. Right around the time Silas started going active. In fact, Alexandria had called him to her office numerous times from what Vicky was aware of from all the gossip the PRT failed to clamp down on.

Oh? Ooooooooh—her boyfriend was definitely fucking Alexandria, wasn’t he? 

Vicky filed that revelation away for later. Right now, she had more pressing concerns—like making sure said boyfriend wasn't drowning in the Atlantic with a ruptured eye and a dead Endbringer.

"Amy, we're going." Vicky grabbed her sister's wrist and started pulling her toward the door.

Amy stumbled after her, nearly tripping over her own feet. "Alright, just don’t fly so fast you give me whiplash! I can heal myself now too, but magic tires me out faster than my parahuman powers.

Vicky glanced over her shoulder at the room full of increasingly panicked capes. "Someone tell Miss Militia we're doing a rescue op! I'm sure it will probably be fine."

Famous last words…

– Rebecca –

Rebecca launched herself from the Rig's reinforced platform, her body cutting through the night air like a missile. The wind howled past her helmet, the dark waters of the bay rushing by beneath her as she accelerated toward Mach 2 without conscious thought. 

Tiamat should have finished Behemoth by now. The dragon had been toying with the Endbringer when Rebecca had last seen the satellite feeds. Massive sapphire jaws clamped around the creature's throat, claws tearing through its armored hide with casual brutality. It should have been over in minutes.

So why did Rebecca's gut twist with unease? Even as a Viltrumite now, she felt like something was wrong.

She cleared the city limits in seconds, the urban sprawl of Brockton Bay falling away beneath her. What she saw made her slow her flight involuntarily, hovering for a moment as she processed the scene below.

The city was alive.

It was well past two in the morning. The streets should have been empty, the shelters still locked down, civilians huddled in terror waiting for the all-clear sirens. Instead, Brockton Bay looked like New Year's Eve and the Fourth of July had a baby and that baby was on crack.

People flooded the streets in massive crowds. They weren't fleeing. They were celebrating. Dancing on cars. Hanging out of windows. Waving makeshift flags and banners. Someone had erected a massive projector screen in the middle of the Boardwalk, and even from this altitude, Rebecca could see the paused image displayed on it. 

Silas in his full dragon form, jaws clamped around something that thrashed and bled.

Dragon must have been broadcasting the fight before communications cut out.

Rebecca's jaw clenched behind her helmet. Idiots. Celebrating morons who didn't understand that one Endbringer dying didn't mean the threat was over. Behemoth was still out there—or had been, minutes ago—and these people were throwing a street party like the danger had passed.

She resumed her flight, pushing harder now, her body a dark blur against the night sky as she crossed the remaining distance to the battlefield in heartbeats.

The devastation registered before she'd fully arrived.

Miles of terrain—formerly rolling hills and sparse forest outside the city limits—had been reduced to scorched, cratered wasteland. The ground looked like the surface of an alien planet, pockmarked with massive impact sites where two titans had collided again and again. Trees were gone, vaporized or reduced to charred splinters. The earth itself had been melted in places, forming pools of cooling glass that reflected the starlight.

Rebecca's internal sensors—built into the suit Dragon had upgraded for her years ago—pinged immediately. Radiation levels were minimal. Barely above background. Her eyebrows climbed behind her visor. 

That was... that was good, actually. Shockingly good.

Behemoth's primary weapon was its kill-aura, the radiation field that turned everything within range into a cancer-riddled corpse. The fact that the background radiation here was so low meant Tiamat had hit the Endbringer too hard and too fast for it to retaliate properly. She'd overwhelmed it before it could cook the landscape.

Rebecca allowed herself a small smile. Tiamat was terrifyingly effective when properly motivated. And the dragon had been very motivated—pissed off about interrupted mating time, eager to prove herself, ready to obliterate anything that stood between her and—

Rebecca's thoughts cut off as her gaze swept the battlefield.

Empty. The cratered wasteland stretched in every direction, lit by the faint glow of cooling magma and the stars overhead. There was no massive sapphire dragon. No corpse of a defeated Endbringer. No Tiamat standing victorious over her kill, waiting to be praised.

Nothing.

"Tiamat?" Rebecca called out, her voice amplified by the suit's external speakers. It echoed across the empty terrain, bouncing off crater walls and dissipating into silence.

No response.

Rebecca's unease crystallized into something sharper. She flew in a slow circle over the battlefield, eyes scanning for any sign of the dragon. Tiamat was huge. She wasn't exactly easy to miss.

So where the hell was she?

Rebecca descended, her boots touching down on scorched earth that was still warm beneath her feet. She walked forward slowly, her senses on high alert, scanning for thermal signatures, movement, anything that would explain—

Her gaze snagged on something.

A hole.

It was massive—easily thirty feet in diameter—carved into the ground at a sharp angle. The edges were smooth, almost polished, like something incredibly hot had bored through solid rock and dirt without effort. Rebecca's stomach dropped as she approached it, staring down into the darkness.

She knew this hole. She'd seen holes exactly like it dozens of times before, across a dozen different continents, in the aftermath of a dozen different Endbringer attacks.

"Fuck," Rebecca whispered.

This was how Behemoth escaped. Every single time. When the Endbringer was done rampaging, when the heroes had been ground down to exhausted remnants and the city was nothing but rubble and radiation, Behemoth would burrow. It would sink into the earth's crust, deep into the mantle where no human could follow, and vanish. Seismic tracking would lose it within minutes. Satellites were useless. The creature would remain dormant for months, rebuilding itself in the crushing heat and pressure of the planet's interior, and then it would emerge somewhere else to start the cycle again.

They'd never stopped it. Never even come close. The best humanity had ever managed was driving it off before it killed everyone.

But this time should have been different. This time, they had Tiamat—a Dragon King who could carve chunks out of the moon with a single breath, who had pinned Behemoth like an insect and torn through its armored hide like tissue paper.

How the fuck had it escaped from her?

Rebecca spun in place, her eyes scanning the battlefield again with renewed urgency. "TIAMAT!" she shouted, her voice cracking with frustration and worry. "Where are you?!"

Silence. Just the wind whistling across the devastated landscape and the distant sounds of celebration from the city miles away.

Rebecca's mind raced. Tiamat wouldn't have just left. Not willingly. The dragon had been obsessed with Silas, possessive to the point of violence toward anyone who got too close to "her mate." She wouldn't abandon him. She wouldn't fly off without finishing the fight.

Which meant something had happened to her. Something that removed her from the battlefield entirely, something powerful enough to—

A sound cut through her thoughts. High-pitched. Mechanical. The whine of repulsors firing at high output. She never had super hearing before becoming a Viltrumite.

Rebecca's head snapped up, her body tensing instinctively as she scanned the sky.

A figure was approaching from the east, flying toward her at speeds that would make most Movers jealous. It was humanoid—roughly man-sized—encased in what looked like armor. But not the bulky, jury-rigged power armor she'd seen Tinkers cobble together. This was sleek. Aerodynamic. The suit's plating was red and gold, gleaming even in the starlight, with glowing repulsor nodes in the palms and boots that left trails of blue-white energy in the air.

It was beautiful, in a way. Elegant engineering that made Dragon's best work look clunky by comparison.

And Rebecca had absolutely no idea who the fuck this was.

The armored figure decelerated smoothly, coming to a hover about twenty feet away from her. This close, she could make out more details—the arc reactor glowing in the center of the chest piece, the faceplate's sleek design, the way the armor seemed to move with the fluidity of liquid metal rather than rigid plating.

Definitely Tinker-tech. But whose?

The faceplate tilted slightly, as if the person inside was studying her. Then a voice emerged from external speakers—male, confident to the point of arrogance, with an undertone of genuine curiosity.

"Hey there," the armored figure said, hovering casually with his arms crossed like they were meeting at a cocktail party instead of a devastated battlefield. "I don't recognize you from any of Fury's dossiers." He paused, and Rebecca could almost hear the smirk in his voice. "Are you some kind of new superhero? Because I gotta say, the whole 'dark and mysterious' aesthetic? Very on-brand. Cape, helmet, sexy bodysuit, the works. I approve."

Rebecca stared at him, her mind stuttering over his words like a record skip. Fury? What the hell was a Fury? And dossiers? Was this person implying he had access to classified hero files? That was either incredibly bold or incredibly stupid, and Rebecca was leaning toward the latter.

She crossed her arms beneath her chest, her posture radiating the kind of cold authority that made seasoned Protectorate heroes flinch. "So who the hell are you?" she demanded, her voice flat and hard. "Hero or villain?"

The armored figure's hands dropped to his sides, repulsors dimming slightly. "Uh... hero? Obviously?" He gestured vaguely at his suit. "I mean, I'm literally flying around in red and gold. If I were a villain, I'd go with something darker. Black. Maybe some spikes. Villains love spikes."

Rebecca's eye twitched behind her helmet. Was this guy serious? "You're a little late to show up to the Endbringer battle," she said coldly, her tone sharp enough to cut. "Not to mention the PRT told everyone to stay away because we had it handled."

There was a pause. A long, uncomfortable pause where the armored figure just... hovered there, his faceplate angled toward her like he was waiting for the punchline.

"What's the PRT?" he finally asked.

Rebecca felt her brain grind to a halt. "What?"

"What's the PRT?" he repeated, slower this time, like he thought maybe she hadn't heard him the first time. "Is that, like, a new agency? Because I keep pretty good tabs on the alphabet soup, and I've never heard of—"

"What?" Rebecca interrupted, her voice climbing despite her best efforts to maintain composure.

The armored figure spread his hands in a gesture of confusion. "What?"

They stared at each other, just floating there in the air, twenty feet above scorched earth, two people having a conversation that made absolutely no sense to either of them.

His armored head then gazed into the distance, and he tilted it like he was confused about something. “Hey? Was there a large bay city like that located right there? Last time I checked this area was supposed to be empty beaches for miles?"

– Silas –

I woke up with a groan. I sat up slowly, wincing as my abs protested the movement. The world swam for a second, my vision blurring at the edges before snapping back into focus. Except it didn't snap back completely. Something was wrong with my depth perception. Everything looked... flat. Off-center.

That's when I registered the halved field of view.

I raised my hand to my face, fingers finding the crater where my right eye should have been. The socket was empty, just a mess of torn tissue and clotted blood. Leviathan's claw had caught me clean across the face during the fight, and apparently my dragon body's injuries had carried over when I'd transformed back.

"That's annoying," I muttered, my voice coming out rough and cracked.

I glanced down at the rest of myself and immediately wished I hadn't. I was completely naked, sprawled out on some kind of smooth, cold floor that definitely wasn't the ocean. My body was a roadmap of cuts and bruises—deep gouges across my chest where Leviathan's claws had raked through scales and flesh, purple-black contusions blooming across my ribs, smaller lacerations scattered everywhere else.

"Okay," I said to the empty air, trying to get my bearings. "So that happened."

The last thing I remembered was victory. I'd shattered Leviathan's core, felt the Endbringer's death scream resonate through the water, watched its corpse sink into the Atlantic depths. My System had started to display a congratulations message, and then—

Then everything had gone gold.

A wave of golden light, sudden and overwhelming, crashing over me before I could react. I'd barely registered it before consciousness had been yanked away like someone pulling the plug on a computer.

"Scion," I growled, the name tasting bitter on my tongue. "That sucker-punching piece of shit!"

The golden bastard had waited until I was exhausted, wounded, and distracted by my victory notification before hitting me with... what? Some kind of knockout beam? 

I needed to heal. 

I focused inward, reaching for the wellspring of magic that had become second nature since my adventures in the DxD universe. The Twilight Healing responded to my will with the eager warmth of divine energy. A green ring materialized around my right hand. I could feel the healing magic spreading through my fingers.

I placed my glowing hand against the worst of the cuts on my chest, watching with satisfaction as the torn flesh began to knit itself back together. It didn't hurt, exactly, but there was a strange pulling sensation, like my body was being gently tugged into its proper configuration.

The green light intensified, and I moved my hand slowly across my torso, methodically healing each injury. Deep gouges sealed themselves into angry red lines, then faded to pink, then disappeared entirely as if they'd never existed. Bruises evaporated like morning fog. Smaller cuts vanished without a trace.

By the time I reached my face, I'd developed a rhythm. I cupped my hand over the ruined eye socket and felt the Twilight Healing kick into overdrive.

The sensation was deeply weird. I felt pressure building in the empty socket, felt new tissue bubbling up like someone was inflating a balloon inside my skull. The optic nerve reconnected first, sending phantom signals to my brain that made my vision fritz with static and false colors. 

My vision doubled for a second—two overlapping images that made my brain stutter—before my neural pathways remembered how binocular sight worked and merged them into proper depth perception.

I blinked both eyes experimentally. Everything looked sharp. Clear. Normal.

"Much better," I said, flexing my fingers and watching the green ring fade from my hand.

That's when I actually looked around and registered my surroundings for the first time.

I was in some kind of cylindrical glass cage.

Not glass, actually—the walls had that faint shimmer of high-tech polymers, probably reinforced with something ridiculously strong. The cylinder was maybe fifteen feet in diameter, the ceiling a solid twenty feet above my head. The floor beneath me was smooth metal with subtle hexagonal patterns etched into the surface. No visible door. No obvious weaknesses.

Everything about it screamed "designed to hold dangerous parahumans."

The walls were clear enough that I could see beyond the cage into a larger room—sterile white surfaces, harsh LED lighting, and banks of monitors displaying data I couldn't read from this angle. It looked like a cross between a high-security prison and a research lab.

"Fuck me," I muttered, standing up fully. I steadied myself against the curved wall. "I didn't get picked up by Earth Bet's crazy-ass Chinese government, did I?" The Chinese Union-Imperial had a reputation for going after any and all Parahumans regardless of consequences.

But this didn't feel Chinese. The aesthetic was wrong. Too Western. Too clean. The monitors displayed English text, not Mandarin. And if the CUI had captured me, I doubted I'd have woken up without someone trying to mind control or dissect me. 

So where the hell was I?

As if summoned by my confusion, a door on the far side of the room hissed open with the kind of pneumatic sound that meant serious security protocols.

I straightened up. First impressions mattered, and I wasn't about to look weak in front of whoever was about to walk through that door and thought they could capture me without any consequences.

Breaking this cage wouldn’t be too difficult. 

Two figures entered.

The first was a black man who radiated authority. He was tall—maybe six-two—with broad shoulders and a build that suggested a military background. He wore a long black leather coat that billowed slightly as he walked, dark tactical gear underneath, and an eyepatch covering his left eye that somehow made him look more intimidating rather than less. His remaining eye locked onto me with the kind of cold assessment I'd only seen in people who'd killed before and wouldn't hesitate to do it again.

The second figure was a woman who moved sensually yet dangerously at the same time.

She was stunning—shoulder-length red hair and a black leather bodysuit that really worked on her body. Her green eyes were calculating as they swept over me, and I caught the moment they lingered on my face for a fraction of a second before dropping down to my abs.

Her lips curved into a small, appreciative smile.

"Rude," I said flatly, crossing my arms over my bare chest.

The woman's smile widened slightly, but she didn't look away. If anything, she seemed amused by my reaction.

I snapped my fingers.

My inventory interface flashed across my vision for a microsecond, and then fabric materialized directly onto my body—a pair of dark jeans, a comfortable black t-shirt. Made me feel less like a specimen in a lab and more like a person having a conversation.

The woman blinked, her confident smile faltering into genuine surprise. The man's eye widened fractionally, his hand moving toward something concealed under his coat before he forced himself to stop.

"How the hell did you do that?" the woman asked, her accent placing her as... Russian? Maybe? It was subtle, but definitely Eastern European.

"Magic," I said with a shrug. "Why the hell am I in a cage?"

The man with the eyepatch stepped closer to the glass cage, his hands clasped behind his back in a posture that screamed "military officer." When he spoke, his voice was deep, authoritative, and carried the weight of someone used to being obeyed without question. "You're in a cage," he said evenly, "because a few hours ago, you were a giant fucking black dragon that was splashing around half the ocean with so much force you caused multiple worldwide tsunamis!"

I paused and processed that statement.

Worldwide tsunamis?

Okay, yeah, that... that tracked, actually. I'd been going all-out against Leviathan, throwing around lightning and dragon strength without any regard for collateral damage because the alternative was letting the Endbringer drown the East Coast. The shockwaves from our underwater battle had probably displaced enough water to send tidal waves halfway around the planet.

"Sorry about that?" I offered, and I meant it. Genuinely. The last thing I'd wanted was to hurt innocent people while saving Brockton Bay. "But killing the Leviathan required me not to hold back. If I'd pulled my punches, it would've escaped and come back to drown more cities."

The woman moved closer now, her high-heeled boots clicking softly against the metal floor as she approached the glass. Her eyes remained fixed on my face for a moment—studying my expression, maybe checking if I was lying—before they dropped down again, tracing the lines of muscle visible through my t-shirt. She grinned, and there was something predatory in it. Something that suggested she liked what she saw and had zero shame about appreciating it.

"I don't want to toot my own horn or anything like that," I said, keeping my tone casual despite the growing tension in the room, "but no government on Earth besides the crazy-ass Chinese would try to hold me after I killed an Endbringer." I gestured vaguely at the glass cage surrounding me. "So I'll ask again: why the hell am I in a cage?"

The man with the eyepatch tilted his head slightly, and for the first time, I saw something flicker across his expression. Not fear. Not even concern. Just... confusion.

"What the hell," he said slowly, his single eye boring into me with uncomfortable intensity, "is an Endbringer?"

I stared at him.

He stared back.

The redhead glanced between us, her expression shifting from amused to genuinely puzzled.

"What?" I finally said, because my brain couldn't process any other response.

“Hold on,” The man with the eyepatch received some kind of alert through what must have been a hidden earpiece. His remaining eye flickered with annoyance before his expression went carefully neutral. "We'll continue this conversation later," he said. He turned on his heel and strode toward the door with the purposeful gait of someone who'd just been told there was a fire that needed putting out. The door hissed shut behind him, leaving me alone with the redhead.

Who was now smiling at me like a cat who'd just cornered a particularly interesting mouse. "So," she purred, sauntering closer to the polymer barrier with the kind of walk that was absolutely deliberate. Hip sway. Shoulder roll. Every movement calculated to draw the eye. "What's your story, handsome?"

I stayed where I was, arms crossed, keeping my expression neutral even as I catalogued every detail about her. The way her fingers trailed along the glass as she circled slowly around the cage. The slight uptick at the corner of her mouth that suggested she knew exactly what effect she was having. The complete lack of fear in her posture despite the fact that I'd just regenerated an eye and conjured clothing out of thin air.

Either she was incredibly brave, incredibly stupid, or incredibly confident in whatever backup systems this facility had in place.

My money was on option three.

"Are you a mutant?" she asked, stopping directly in front of me, close enough that only the barrier separated us. Her eyes swept over my face with open curiosity. "Maybe an alien?" She tilted her head, red hair cascading over one shoulder in a way that was definitely practiced. "Maybe a mutant alien?"

I didn't bother answering. Just met her gaze steadily, waiting to see what game she was actually playing here. 

She didn’t like me playing quiet on her. She pouted. Actually pouted, her full lips pushing out in an expression that was so blatantly manufactured I almost laughed. Except the pout was also extremely distracting because she was objectively gorgeous and my dragon hindbrain was very loudly noting that fact despite my conscious mind's protests.

"Come on," she coaxed, her accent thickening slightly as she leaned closer to the glass. "You can tell me all your secrets. I'm very trustworthy."

Her fingers found the zipper at the top of her bodysuit. She tugged it down—slowly, deliberately—exposing the curve of her collarbones, and just enough of her pale breasts to make it very clear she wasn't wearing anything underneath the black leather.

My brain stuttered for exactly half a second. Then my conscious mind reasserted control and I felt annoyance flood through me like cold water.

"Lady," I said flatly, my voice coming out rougher than I intended, "you're hot as fuck. I'm not going to pretend otherwise because we both know it's true." I gestured vaguely at her with one hand, indicating the whole package—the red hair, the green eyes, the body that looked like it had been designed by someone with a very specific idea of lethal feminine beauty. "But I have a literal harem of superpowered girlfriends. Beautiful, deadly women who would absolutely kick your ass if they knew you were trying this right now. So whatever seduction routine you've got planned? It's not going to work."

Her eyes widened fractionally—genuine surprise breaking through her professional mask for just a moment. Then she laughed, soft and low, like I'd said something unexpectedly charming. "A harem?" She tilted her head, studying me with renewed interest. "You're either incredibly arrogant or incredibly lucky."

"Both," I said without hesitation.

That earned me another laugh, this one sounding more real. She zipped her suit back up with a theatrical sigh. "Well, it was worth a try." The pout returned, deeper this time, and I had to actively force myself not to track the way her lower lip jutted out. "You're no fun," she said, though there was amusement threading through her tone rather than actual disappointment. Like she'd expected the rejection but was entertained by the attempt anyway. She straightened up, abandoning the seduction angle with the smooth efficiency of someone shifting tactics mid-operation. Her fingers left the zipper where it was though. "Two of those harem girls wouldn't happen to be a blonde and redhead pair of sisters, would they?" she asked, her voice taking on a sharper edge beneath the casual tone. "About eighteen or nineteen years old? Both of them wearing costumes—the blonde's making her look like a slutty princess cheerleader, and the redhead's some kind of sexy nun-nurse hybrid?"

My hands clenched into fists at my sides, electricity crackling between my knuckles in little blue-white sparks that grounded out against the air with sharp snaps.

I found myself growling. "Where are they?"

The redhead's smile widened. Something that said she'd found the lever she'd been looking for and was already calculating how to use it. "Maybe you'll get to see them," she said, her tone light and conversational despite the threat implicit in the words, "if you behave and tell us what we want to know."

Wrong answer.

I summoned my Nightingale Blade. The enchanted sword materialized in my right hand with a whisper of displaced air, its enchanted black metal gleaming dully in the harsh LED lighting. 

The redhead's eyes went wide as I raised the blade and drove it forward in one smooth motion. The point struck the polymer barrier with a sound like breaking crystal, and the "reinforced, designed-to-hold-dangerous-parahumans" material parted like tissue paper.

I twisted the blade while channeling lightning through the metal, and the electrical discharge followed the fracture lines spreading through the glass like a spiderweb. Blue-white arcs raced outward from the point of impact.

The entire cage shattered.

Alarms immediately started blaring. Loud, obnoxious. Red warning lights began strobing in the corners of the room.

The redhead stumbled backward, her hand flying toward the gun holstered at her hip before she visibly reconsidered. Her eyes tracked the blade in my hand, then flicked up to my face, and I saw the moment genuine nervousness replaced her earlier confidence. "Okay," she said, her voice remarkably steady despite the sudden shift in power dynamics. "Wow. We didn't think the Hulk could even escape that cage..."

I dismissed the Nightingale Blade with a thought, and it vanished back into my inventory. The redhead's shoulders relaxed fractionally, though her hand remained hovering near her weapon, ready to draw if I made any sudden moves.

"I'll tell you one thing about me," I said, taking a step forward. She held her ground, but I saw her weight shift onto the balls of her feet. "I'm a hero. And right now, you're looking like some villain who's way out of your league." I met her eyes directly, letting her see the predatory focus in my gaze. The dragon looking out through human eyes. "So I'll ask you again, and I suggest you answer honestly this time." My voice dropped into something low and dangerous. "Where are Glory Girl and Panacea?"

– Nick Fury –

Nick Fury stood on the command deck of the SHIELD Helicarrier, one hand braced against the tactical console, his single eye fixed on the wall of monitors displaying a world that had fundamentally stopped making sense.

The deck thrummed with agents moving with crisp efficiency between stations, fingers flying across haptic keyboards, voices maintaining professional calm despite the fact that every piece of incoming data was screaming that reality itself had just broken. 

"Run it by me again," Fury said, his voice cutting through the chatter without him having to raise it. That was a skill he'd perfected over decades. Command that didn't need volume. "Slowly. Because I want to make sure I'm hearing this right."

Agent Phil Coulson stepped up to Fury's left, tablet in hand, his expression as unflappable as ever. The man could be briefing the Director on a coffee spill or the end of the world and his tone wouldn't change. It was one of the reasons Fury kept him close.

"At approximately oh-three-hundred hours," Coulson began, his voice steady and precise, "every satellite in our network simultaneously registered an... anomaly." He paused, and Fury caught the slight tightening around his eyes that meant even Coulson was struggling with what he was about to say. "Director, the planet's circumference doubled. Instantly. In the span of what our sensors registered as point-four seconds. Thankfully the gravity did not change…" he added.

Fury's jaw tightened, but he said nothing. He gestured for Coulson to continue.

"Cities expanded," Coulson went on, swiping through data on his tablet. "New York, Los Angeles, London, Moscow—every major population center effectively merged with... copies of themselves. Duplicate infrastructure. Duplicate populations." He looked up, meeting Fury's eye. "We're still trying to get accurate counts, but preliminary estimates suggest the global population has doubled as well. Seven billion became fourteen billion in less than a second."

Fury processed that. Fourteen billion people. Twice the strain on resources. Twice the potential for things to go catastrophically wrong.

Deputy Director Maria Hill approached from Fury's right, her dark hair pulled back in a severe bun, her expression carved from granite. She carried herself with the rigid posture of someone who'd come up through military ranks and never quite left that world behind. "It gets worse, sir," she said, which was exactly what Fury wanted to hear right now.

"Of course it does," Fury muttered.

Hill didn't miss a beat. "Governments are in free-fall. The United States now has two sitting presidents—both claiming legitimacy, both demanding the other step down. Congress is split down the middle between representatives who remember the world as it was and those who come from this other world called Earth Bet." She pulled up a holographic display between them, showing a map of North America with red warning indicators clustered around Washington D.C. "We've already had three separate incidents of violence between Secret Service details who don't recognize each other's authority."

"Fantastic," Fury said flatly. "What about internationally?"

Hill's expression darkened further, which Fury hadn't thought was possible. "Russia's unstable—two Kremlins, two versions of their government trying to consolidate power. The EU is a mess. Half their member states are dealing with duplicate parliaments." She zoomed the map out to show the full globe, and Fury's eye tracked the clusters of red indicators spreading like a infection. "But the immediate flashpoint is China."

Coulson picked up the thread. "A second Chinese government materialized. They're calling themselves the Chinese Union-Imperial—the CUI. And they're not interested in negotiation."

Fury's fingers drummed against the console. "Define 'not interested.'"

"They've issued an ultimatum to the existing Chinese government," Hill said, her tone clipped. "Unconditional surrender within seventy-two hours, or they're declaring total war." She pulled up intercepted communications, strings of Mandarin text scrolling across the holographic display with English translations running parallel. "Intelligence suggests the CUI is... fundamentally different from the government we know. More authoritarian. More militant. They have mutants embedded in their military structure and they're not shy about using them. Except they call their mutants parahumans…"

"Parahumans," Fury repeated, tasting the unfamiliar word. "That's what the duplicate populations are calling people with powers?"

"Apparently," Coulson confirmed. "We're seeing a lot of unfamiliar terminology in the chatter we're intercepting. Endbringers. The Protectorate. None of it matches our existing databases."

Fury filed that away. "What about the exceptions? You said some regions didn't get duplicates?"

Hill nodded. "Smaller nations, mostly. Sub-Saharan Africa saw minimal duplication—Wakanda, for instance, appears completely unchanged." She paused, and something shifted in her expression. Not quite fear, but close. "However, there are... new elements that didn't exist before."

"Such as?"

"A creature," Hill said carefully. "Eyewitness reports describe it as a humanoid figure composed entirely of fire. It appeared in the Serengeti approximately four hours ago and has been moving southeast at a steady pace. Satellite thermal imaging confirms surface temperatures exceeding three thousand degrees Fahrenheit. Everything in its path is burning."

Fury's eye narrowed. "Are we talking another Banner situation?"

"Unknown, sir," Coulson interjected. "But the energy signatures don't match gamma radiation. This is something else entirely." He swiped to a new screen showing thermal satellite imagery—a bright white-yellow humanoid shape leaving a trail of scorched earth behind it. "We've designated it as a Class-S threat until we know more."

"Put a pin in that," Fury ordered. "We'll deal with the walking bonfire after we handle the immediate crises. What's our communications status?"

Hill's jaw tightened. "That's been the biggest problem. When the event occurred, it knocked out every internet backbone, every cellular network, every satellite uplink globally. We've been flying deaf and blind for hours."

"We're not blind now," Fury pointed out, gesturing at the operational monitors surrounding them.

"No sir," Hill agreed. "Because something has been repairing the infrastructure. Autonomously."

Fury turned his full attention to her. "Explain."

"Best we can tell," Coulson said, stepping in, "some kind of artificial intelligence has been systematically restoring global communications. It's working faster than any human team could possibly manage—rebuilding network protocols, rerouting data, integrating the duplicate systems with the originals." He pulled up a visualization of the process: green lines spreading across a global network map like veins regrowing. 

"An AI," Fury said slowly. "A sentient AI. Operating on a global scale. Fixing our infrastructure without asking permission."

"Yes sir."

"And we have no idea who controls it, what its limitations are, or whether it's friendly."

"Correct, sir." Fury felt a migraine building behind his eyepatch. He pinched the bridge of his nose, forcing himself to think through the implications systematically. An unknown AI with global reach. Two versions of every major government trying to assert dominance. A CUI that sounded like it made North Korea look reasonable. A fire creature wandering Africa. And all of this had happened in the span of hours, with no warning, no precedent, and no clear explanation. Except there was a connection. Fury knew there was. Because in his experience, coincidences on this scale didn't exist.

"The blond guy we have locked up that used to be a dragon," Fury said, dropping his hand from his face and straightening up to his full height. "When did we recover him?"

Hill checked her tablet. "Oh-three-fifteen hours, sir. Fifteen minutes after the spatial event."

"That's not a coincidence," Fury said flatly.

"No sir," Hill agreed. "We don't believe it is."

"Do we have any idea what he was doing out there?"

Coulson pulled up new footage—grainy, taken from a distance, but clear enough to make out shapes. "This was pulled from the SECOND internet that is currently merging with our own…"

The video played. Fury watched as two massive shapes thrashed in the ocean, displacing water in violent plumes that shot hundreds of feet into the air. One was clearly the black dragon. The other was something else. Something with too many limbs and glowing eyes.

"They were fighting each other like something straight out of Godzilla," Fury observed.

"For approximately eighteen minutes," Coulson confirmed. 

Fury leaned closer to the screen, studying the freeze-frame of the unknown creature. "What the hell was that thing?"

"Something called the Leviathan. An 'Endbringer.' One of three—" Hill explained they were still downloading as much data as they could off this second internet.

Every alarm on the bridge started screaming at once! Red lights strobed across the command deck. Fury's hand went to the sidearm at his hip on pure instinct, his body shifting into a combat stance even as his mind raced to process what the hell had just gone wrong.

"REPORT!" he barked over the noise.

Hill was already at her station, her fingers flying across the haptic interface. Her face had gone pale, which was not a reaction Fury was accustomed to seeing from his Deputy Director.

"Sir," she said, and her voice was tight with barely controlled alarm, "the prisoner just broke out of his containment cell."

Fury felt something cold settle in his gut. "The dragon-mutant?"

"Yes sir. He—" She stopped, reading incoming data, her expression shifting from alarm to disbelief. "He shattered the reinforced polymer barrier. With a sword. That he apparently just... materialized out of nowhere."

"That cage was rated to hold the Hulk," Fury said, his voice dangerously quiet.

"I'm aware, sir."

"And he just walked through it?"

"Broke through it, technically, but yes sir."

"Where is he now?" Fury demanded.

Hill pulled up a schematic of the Helicarrier, a 3D wireframe rotating on the holographic display. A red dot was moving through the corridors at a pace that was faster than human, but not impossibly so. "Deck Seven, Section B. He's heading..." She trailed off, and Fury watched her expression shift into something that looked uncomfortably like dread. "Sir, he's heading directly toward the holding cells where we're keeping the two costumed women we picked up last night..."

The blonde and the redhead. The ones who'd been flying over the ocean near where they'd found the dragon, both of them wearing strange costumes and were obviously enhanced. 

SHIELD agents had immediately arrested both of them for questioning. He was realizing now that might have been a mistake…

Hopefully they could talk this out before the guy turned back into a giant dragon and wrecked Fury’s Helicarrier. The world had way too much going on right now for SHIELD to get in a fight right in the middle of their mobile command center. 

– Silas –

I followed the redhead through the winding corridors of what was clearly a military vessel. The walls were gunmetal gray, lined with reinforced panels and dotted with cameras that tracked my movement. The floor hummed with the vibration of massive engines, this thing was airborne, which meant either a truly massive aircraft or something more exotic.

My money was on exotic.

The redhead moved in front, her hips swaying in that black bodysuit in a way that was definitely calculated. She kept glancing back at me every few steps, checking if I was still following. We passed agents in tactical gear who tensed the moment they spotted me. Hands drifted toward holstered weapons. Shoulders squared. But the redhead would shoot them a look—sharp and authoritative—and they'd stand down reluctantly, watching us pass with obvious suspicion.

"We're not the bad guys here," she said for the third time as she threw the words over her shoulder. "You understand that, yes? We picked you up because you were unconscious and naked in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean after causing multiple tsunamis."

"You locked me in a cage," I pointed out flatly.

"A very nice cage," she countered. "Climate controlled. We even left the lights on."

"How considerate."

She smiled at that. "I try."

I didn't trust her. But she was also leading me toward Amy and Vicky, so I'd play along. For now. We turned a corner into a wider corridor, and I caught sight of a massive window on my right. I stopped walking.

The view beyond the reinforced glass made my brain stutter.

We were flying. Not in a plane—we were flying a ship that was suspended thousands of feet above the ocean, held aloft by... what? 

Tinkertech?

"Impressive, isn't it?" the redhead said, following my gaze. "The Helicarrier. One of SHIELD's crown jewels."

"SHIELD," I repeated slowly, testing the word. It meant nothing to me.

She tilted her head, studying my expression. "You really don't know who we are, do you?"

Before I could answer, pain exploded through my skull. I gasped, stumbling backward until my shoulders hit the corridor wall. My hands flew to my head, fingers digging into my temples as if I could physically squeeze out the agony radiating through my brain. It felt like someone had driven a red-hot spike directly into my frontal lobe and was twisting it slowly, methodically, with surgical precision.

"Shit—" The redhead's voice cut through the haze, suddenly sharp with concern rather than calculation. "What's wrong? What's happening?"

I tried to answer but couldn't form words. My vision swam, doubling and tripling at the edges. The corridor lights became streaks of white fire. The vibration of the engines turned into a roar that shook my teeth.

And then, cutting through everything, came a presence.

[MENTAL INTRUSION DETECTED]

[ANALYZING... SOURCE: COSMIC-LEVEL ENTITY]

[CLASSIFICATION: HOSTILE]

[RESPONSE INITIATED]

[INTRUSION EXPELLED]

[HOST MENTAL INTEGRITY: RESTORED]

[NOTE: AN ENTITY IN THIS UNIVERSE ATTEMPTED TO SUPPRESS HOST'S MULTIVERSAL KNOWLEDGE. ATTEMPT UNSUCCESSFUL. HOST'S HEROIC SYSTEM SUPERSEDES ALL EXTERNAL INFLUENCE!]

The pain vanished. Just... gone, like someone had flipped a switch. My heart was hammering in my chest as I processed what had just happened. Something cosmic had tried to memory-wipe me?

And my System had told it to fuck off… Way to go System!

The blue screen remained floating in the air.

"What the fuck is that?" she said as she stared at my System screen before I dismissed it. "What does it mean, 'knowledge of our universe'?"

And that's when it all clicked into place. Holy shit, we’re in Marvel...

WHAT THE FUCK DID THAT BASTARD, SCION, DO!? 

XXX