"So let me get this straight," Kai said, pacing in a slow, deliberate circle around the two identical Joshes "Magic just randomly vanished in your little copy-paste universe without any explanation, because a certain cosmic plumber dude appeared and physically shut off the tap to the good stuff. And then, somehow, the Beast or what did you call him, Mothra? realized he still had his private reserve of magic because of a key, went on an absolute, unhinged rampage, and brutally slaughtered literally everyone. And now, you want our help to kill him."
Kai stopped, looking back and forth between his timeline's Josh and Timeline 23 Josh. Both of them were currently standing side-by-side, nodding and smiling in a bizarre, synchronized appreciation of the fact that Kai had somehow perfectly condensed the entire convoluted, apocalyptic history into a single, breathless paragraph… and that he called the beast Mothra.
Timeline 23 Josh sighed, rubbing the back of his neck. "Yeah. Honestly, when you say it out loud like that, it sounds incredibly dumb, but that about sums it up, yeah."
Kai let out a loud, theatrical bark of laughter, throwing his hands up in the air. "Oh, it's beautiful! It's a masterpiece! A world without magic where the only guy left with a loaded gun is a theater being with twenty extra hands and a moth fetish. Truly, the multiverse has a spectacular sense of humor. I give your timeline a solid two stars, mostly for the dramatic irony."
Suddenly, a sharp beeping sound began to echo through the chamber. Timeline 23 Josh's face drained of what little color it had left. "Oh, shit. Shit, shit, shit." He scrambled toward a glowing, runic console that was rapidly fading. "The refraction spell is collapsing. The tether can't hold across the dimensional drift for much longer."
He snapped his head up, staring desperately at Julia. "Listen to me! Julia, you are our only hope. In our timeline, you were the best of us. The absolute strongest magician we had... until you were brutally slaughtered ofcourse."
Kai winced dramatically, placing a hand over his heart. "Oof. Brutally slaughtered. How wonderful. Really great for morale, Josh. Thanks for that lovely bit of imagery."
"Time is up!" Timeline 23 Josh said over the rapid blare of the console. The blue lattice of electricity around his waist began to violently snap and dissolve. "The projection is breaking! Please, whatever you do, find a way to build a portal and get here! We need—"
"Oh, please. There's absolutely no need for a dramatic cliffhanger," Kai interrupted smoothly.
Before the final thread of the spell could snap, Kai's eyes flared a sudden, blinding celestial blue. He moved with absolute supernatural speed, crossing the chamber in a fraction of a millisecond and clamping his hand directly onto Timeline 23 Josh's shoulder.
Instead of fighting the collapse, Kai violently unleashed a massive, bottomless torrent of his own siphoned heretic reservoir straight into the dying spell. The air in the room roared with raw, golden-violet pressure as Kai forced the unstable, fading projection to permanently anchor itself to his own physical position.
Instantly, the frantic electronic beeping choked and died.
Timeline 23 Josh blinked, looking down at his own hands, then at the perfectly stable room around him. "Holy shit... you guys are still here." He slowly turned his head, staring at Kai with a look of absolute, profound bewilderment. "How... How the hell did you just do that? You just manually overrode a multi-dimensional spatial collapse with your magic?"
Normal Josh crossed his arms, with a dry, knowing smirk. "Uh, yeah... I wouldn't bother trying to understand it if I were you, man. The guy is a walking, breathing cheat code who feeds on cosmic logic. Just accept it and move on."
Julia walked straight past the two Joshes, her boots clicking softly against the floor as she kept her eyes scanning where they were. "It's just Kai being Kai," she muttered casually, entirely desensitized to his reality-warping stunts. "If it doesn't involve an excessive amount of property damage and a massive display of narcissism, he doesn't feel alive."
Kai offered her a dazzling, dimpled grin, bowing slightly. "Guilty as charged, Jules! Honestly, though, a little appreciation wouldn't kill you. I just saved us a couple of minutes of confusion and none consensual transportation via a key."
He turned in a slow circle, examining the grim, tattered state of the apocalyptic room with a deeply amused expression. "But wow. The absolute, depressing state of this place is so incredibly familiar. It's like total déjà vu to the world I found Alicia. Seriously, why is it that every alternate universe I visit looks like a moody teenager's Tumblr blog? Did the apocalypse completely wipe out the concept of interior decorating along with the population? Because the aesthetic here is a real tragedy."
"It gets worse before it gets better, sweetheart," a sharp, icy voice called out from the darkness of the nearby stacks.
Stepping into view was a woman draped in a dark leather coat. It was Marina or rather, the Marina of the 23rd timeline. Her posture was fierce as usual, her eyes hardened by years of surviving a wasteland, and running cleanly across her right cheek was a red scar that only added to her aura.
Kai stopped dead in his tracks, his eyes locking onto her. A slow, wicked, and entirely inappropriate smirk spread across his face as he tilted his head with a smooth, predatory grace.
"Well, hello there, sexy," Kai purred as his eyes flashed with a chaotic, playful warmth. "I see the multiverse decided to spice things up a bit. Love the scar, by the way. It really screams 'I can and will murder you in your sleep,' which is exactly my type."
Marina slowed her stride, as she stared at the newcomer. She looked back and forth between Julia and Kai, her brow furrowing in deep, guarded confusion.
"Okay..." Marina muttered, her sharp eyes narrowing as she locked onto Kai. "I know we were planning on bringing those two over, but who the actual fuck are you?"
Kai didn't flinch at the expected question. Instead, a light, deceptively breezy smile spread across his face. "Oh, me? My, my, what a direct question," Kai said, waving his hand in a dismissive, airy gesture as he tilted his head with a playful grin. "You can just think of me as a little anomaly from the fortieth timeline, drifting through the cosmic currents. I'm Kai Parker. Just a humble, ordinary traveler passing through, completely harmless, I assure you. Though, between you and me, my humility is probably my most dazzling feature. Truly, it's a burden being this modest."
Marina stared at him for a beat, completely unamused by the theatrical routine, before giving a slow, tight nod. "Right. Okay. Whatever you say, crazy."
She shifted her gaze entirely away from him, landing her eyes squarely on Julia. A pleased smile touched her lips. "Well, well, well. Look at that. It's good to see our little trans-dimensional fishing line actually caught something useful. It's good to see we succeeded."
Julia stepped forward, her arms crossed as she absorbed the bleak, dark energy of the tattered room. "Marina... What exactly is going on here? Why does this whole place feel like an open grave?"
"The Beast happened," Marina said flatly, her voice hardening as she gestured around the ruined room. "That's what's going on. The bastard has completely decimated everything and everyone with even a drop of magic in their veins. He's running a systematic monopoly on the entire world's supply. And seeing as the rest of us down here don't have a single spark of magic left to fight back with, we can't stop him. We're essentially target practice."
She took a slow breath, the scar on her cheek tightening as she looked at them desperately. "We thought... Well, we thought that maybe if we could pull some heavy-duty backup from another timeline, we might actually stand a chance at cleaning up this entire horrific mess. It all began the exact moment magic went away."
"Yeah," Timeline 23 Josh chimed in heavily, his shoulders slouching. "The second the tap was shut off, the Beast materialized right here in the school. He just... he slaughtered absolutely everyone in the main hall. There wasn't even a fight."
Kai let out a soft, thoughtful hum, tapping his chin with a finger as he leaned against a stack of tattered books. "You know... why exactly do they always do that, I wonder? It's a very consistent character flaw."
Marina snapped her head back toward him, her eyes flashing with confusion. "What?"
"Oh, it's just a localized critique of the multiverse," Kai said casually, a sarcastic, deeply amused smirk playing on his lips. "It's just that I fell into an alternate timeline once before, a totally different vacation spot and over there, good old Dean Fogg was the one wearing the moth-suit and running around as the Beast. And guess what? He did exactly the same thing. First day on the job, immediate mass slaughter of the student body, total monopoly on the local juice. Honestly, do the villains in the 20-series timelines have a shared group chat where they copy each other's homework? Because the complete lack of creative variety is just disappointing."
Timeline 23 Josh blinked, looking completely stunned. "Damn... Fogg was the Beast over there? That's... intensely terrifying to visualize."
He looked nervously toward the high, shattered windows of the room as he cleared his throat, adjusting his coat. "Look, as fascinating as the multiversal theatrical review is, the ambient security wards out there are practically nonexistent. We should probably take this conversation somewhere else.
————
They had moved into the skeletal ruins of what had once been the Physical Kids' cottage. The walls were crawling with vegetations, the roof was partially caved in, and the iconic vintage furniture was now nothing but charred wood and rotting velvet.
Normal Josh looked around the devastated structure, turning to his alternate self with his arms raised in utter confusion. "Okay, wait a second. Let me get this straight. If the entire Brakebills campus is so incredibly unsafe and crawling with cosmic moth-murderers... Why the hell are we still standing here? Isn't this like camping out in a dynamic firing range?"
Marina let out a cold, sharp chuckle, brushing a strand of dark hair away from her red scar. "Because, idiot, this was the very first place the Beast came when the lights went out. He slaughtered the students here within the first ten minutes, got his trophies, and walked away. He hasn't been back ever since. It's the classic serial killer rule: they rarely revisit the graves they've already emptied. It's the safest blind spot we have."
Meanwhile, Kai had been idly pacing the perimeter of the wrecked room, kicking a piece of broken porcelain out of his way. He suddenly stopped, spinning on his heel to look at the two survivalists.
"So, uhhhhh..." Kai droned, drawing out the syllable with an incredibly bored, unserious expression. "What exactly is the play here, my leather-clad friends?"
Marina blinked, her hand resting on her hip. "I'm sorry?"
"Apology accepted," Kai shot back instantly, offering her a dazzling, dimpled smile completely loaded with dry sarcasm. He stepped closer, his hazel eyes locking onto her with a dangerous, playful intensity. "Look, how exactly are you two planning to pull this off? I mean, you obviously know I have an absolute boatload of premium magic because of the little trans-dimensional stunt I just pulled to keep us connected. So, what's the mechanical breakdown? How are you both going to wrap the three of us up like a gorgeous, sparkling little gift and hand us over to the Beast so he finally stops bothering you?"
The casual, nonchalant way he said it made the words sound entirely ridiculous until, for a fraction of a millisecond, his eyes flared a blinding celestial blue that turned the temperature in the room freezing cold.
Julia's posture immediately stiffened, her eyes darting between Kai and the alternate duo. "Kai... what exactly do you mean by that?"
"Oh, come on, Jules, keep up," Kai scoffed, rolling his eyes dramatically as his features settled back into a relaxed, mocking smirk. "Our lovely alternative versions of Marina and Josh aren't looking for a heroic alliance. They're looking for bait. They brought us here specifically you Julia to serve us up as the spectacular main dish to calm a very hungry, very angry Beast, hoping he'll give them a lifetime pass to scurry around his wasteland. Honestly, it's a classic corporate restructuring move. Sacrifice the new hires to save the upper management."
He didn't even wait for them to defend themselves. He turned away, his nose wrinkling as he sniffed the dusty air. "Right. Now... where did those two hide that bloody bottle before the apocalypse hit? Priorities, people."
Kai strolled over to a collapsed section of the brick fireplace, shoving a ruined floorboard aside with his boot. "Ah-ha! Yes! The universe provides." He reached down and pulled out a remarkably intact, dusty bottle of dark rum. He casually snapped the cork off with his teeth, spit it across the room, and took a long, deep swig, letting out a satisfied groan.
"Magnificent," Kai purred, cradling the bottle. He turned back to the group, throwing his arms out in a grand, theatrical bow. "I've completely figured it out now. If you'll excuse me... I'll excuse you. Talk it out amongst yourselves. Try not to murder each other before I finish my drink."
With a dramatic flourish, Kai sauntered out of the ruined cottage doorway and into the world outside entirely unbothered by the betrayal.
The room fell into a suffocating, ringing silence.
Julia stood frozen, her hands slowly balling into fists as her eyes locked onto Timeline 23 Josh. Beside her, normal Josh looked completely shattered, his jaw dropping as he stared at his own alternate self.
"What the actual, living fuck?" normal Josh muttered, his voice trembling with a mix of disbelief and raw anger. He took a step toward his doppelgänger. "Are you fucking kidding me right now? You're... you're trying to sell us out to the guy who literally skinned my friends alive our timeline?!"
Marina stood in the center of the ruined parlor, her expression slowly shifting from defensive confusion into a cold, hard, unbothered mask. She let out a long, slow breath and crossed her arms over her tactical vest.
"Well," Marina said flatly with a cynical smirk touching her lips as she looked at Julia. "I guess the jig is up."
———