Chapter 74 - APOTHEOSIS II

As each Michael progressively got weaker, their numbers steadily increased and both the variety and mundaness of their deaths rose to match it, causing Jessica to begin to understand just why Michael had been so hellbent on improving himself to the point he was bordering on the insane.

The truly heartbreaking part came when Michael's age had reversed enough now mere teenagers and even children were beginning to show up, unsettling in their sheer number. To her horror and disgust, many of them showed obvious signs of torture, as most of them were starved and covered in scars with a pained look in their eyes.

Briefly Jessica wondered if Michael had had an abusive childhood that he had never told her about, but it was Trish tugging on her hand and mutely pointing towards some of the teenager's forearms that clued Jessica in on what had gotten to these alternate Michaels so early in his quest.

Numbers were brutally tattooed on his taut skin and Jessica felt rage chase away the earlier horror.

"Hydra." She hissed through her teeth, resolving to figure out if any of the Nazi fuckers survived the various purges Michael had instigated and if so, to personally wring their heads off their necks with her bare hands.

"Not just them." Sam said in a dark tone, having moved closer to the visibly distraught Jessica, jutting his chin towards some of the new arrivals and she saw to her surprise and disgust that some of them were wearing what was clearly a SHIELD training uniform.

Whether they had attempted to execute those Michaels, trained them to the point of death or simply sent them into situations way beyond their capability to survive didn't matter to her: the spy agency had outstayed its welcome on her planet, she decided.

She didn't know exactly what Michael had done during his youth to catch the attention of various shady organizations (as Hydra's tattoos and SHIELD's uniforms were hardly the only logos she saw on the doomed youths) but it certainly explained why he had been so distrustful of the government and its various agencies in the time she had known him and why he had put so much stock in what any sane person would dismiss as a crackpot conspiracy theory.

As the stream of Michaels from different periods and suffering from different wounds kept trickling in, the onlookers began to notice a subtle change, that rapidly began to build. It started with the Genesis Chamber shining with its own immense glow, almost outshining the beam from Nidavellir itself.

The second one however had everyone exclaim in shock as they pointed to beyond the aperture to the void between the rings of Nidavellir and its neutron star. It was barely visible at first, but with every Michael that gave the remaining vestiges of its life to the Genesis Chamber, it gathered in strength, becoming clearer to see as its form became more and more corporeal.

It was a gigantic humanoid form, seemingly made solely from the purest white light that Jessica had ever seen in her life. As the spirit slowly approached the open aperture, Jessica squinted her eyes, attempting to read the features on the shining face.

She thought she saw it… wink at her?

As her mouth fell open in shock, Jessica saw the immense figure incline its head towards her, indicating something behind her, and feeling a presence at her back, Jessica whirled around, only to come to a stupefied halt.

Standing around her, slightly translucent and out of focus, were three figures, shades of pure white as the apparition outside, if on a human scale. Due to being figures composed of bright light, it was impossible to get a good look at their faces and yet familiarity filled Jessica's senses as she looked from one figure to the next and back.

Seeing the tallest one in the middle, its white glow warm on her face, swing its arms around the shoulders of the other two, its massive grin still visible even through the light, as the one of the left gave a happy wave while the one on the right gave a more subdued, respectful nod, Jessica's eyes widened as a suspicion began to grow.

Stepping closer to the tallest figure, she slowly, tentatively, raised her hand, reaching out towards its face. Seeing it give a confirming nod, she placed her palm on its check, not quite touching it but… something was definitely there and the sensations she felt only reinforced her suspicions.

"Helios?" she asked in a small tone of voice, her stomach doing backflips when the tall figure gave out a noiseless laugh, throwing back its head in unbridled glee before giving her a vigorous nod and an enthusiastic thumbs up, incidentally jostling the figure on its (or his) left, not that she seemed to mind.

"Eos?" Jessica whispered, seeing the feminine figure give a happy nod as well, once again waving a dainty hand.

"And that leaves… Selene." She concluded, looking to the last figure, whose glow, while matching her siblings in colour, was slightly more subdued, giving off a wispy, silvery look instead.

Still, the figure gave a nod and its smile (easier to read with the lesser intensity of the shine) was genuine as the three beings stood around their mother.

"Of course… if he can reach back through his own Worldline… then it stands to reason that a future version of him which survived the process can do the same… thus ensuring its own existence." Sam breathed excitedly next to her, looking at his godchildren with a massive grin fixed on his face.

Turning from her (future) children to look at said future form of her husband, Jessica gazed up at the gargantuan figure that was now looming over the eye of the forge, peering inside. Despite the immense glow it was giving off, Jessica could tell that it was looking at her, and once again, the godlike figure winked at her, one enormous arm coming up as it put a finger to its lips in a conspiratory gesture.

Then it pointed that same finger at the Genesis Chamber, which was now shaking and overflowing with energy, surrounded by the gruesome monument of hundreds of kneeling, petrified Michaels linked together by outstretched arms. The apparition of future Michael unleashed a bright beam of energy straight towards the towering sarcophagus and as it impacted the structure, it unleashed a blinging flash of light that caused everyone there to close their eyes with cries of surprise.

As Jessica blinked the spots from her vision as she tried to look around, she noted to her surprise and disappointment that the apparitions of her children had disappeared, as had the massive figure of their father, throwing the forges of the Dwarves back into shadows as the aperture had apparently been closed at some point.

No more Michaels were appearing from the shadows and all the glows on the Genesis Chamber and Michael's slab had died, leaving cool stone and metal in its wake, smoke lifting off them and steadily filling the air. Not even the body of Michael on the slab had remained, crumpled to ash with only a blackened shadowy outline on the surface of the slab an indication that it had ever been there in the first place. The silence was thick enough it could be cut with a knife as everyone held their breath, a single question on every single person's mind.

Did it work?

Slowly working herself back to her feet, Jessica warily approached the smoking Genesis Chamber, gently rising up into the air and floating above the kneeling petrified variants of her husband that had given their lives (or rather, their deaths) for him.

Finally closing in on the towering structure, with her heart heavy, Jessica laid her palm flat on the still smoking surface, its immense heat noticeable even to her. The entire thing seemed dead, causing a pit of worry to settle in her stomach as she looked up at the thick slate of fogged up glass.

"Come on Michael. Come back to us… to me." She softly whispered.

Nothing.

The entire thing remained completely silent, not even one single light on the entire machine blinking or glowing, everything apparently having shorted out due to the massive overload of different energies.

Turning away from the Genesis Chamber, she looked at the Ancient One and Sterns with a pleading look on her face, only to feel her heart sink when both looked back at her with helpless, defeated expressions on their faces.

"I… I'm sorry, Jess…" Sam began, but Jessica couldn't hear whatever else he wanted to say over the ringing in her ears as she looked back at the entombed new body of Michael.

As bubbling, hissing tears slowly trickled down her cheeks, Jessica flew up until she was on eye level with the shadowed figure, gently resting her forehead against the glass as she closed her eyes, trying to fight down the sobs that were about to overtake her body.

Placing one hand flat on the glass, Jessica tried to find the right words to say, though none came to her as she was lost in the sense of cold despair tightening like a vice around her lungs and the heat rising underneath her palm…-

-wait, what?

Her eyes flew open as she flew back a little, looking at the figure within the chamber in shock. For a long moment frozen in time, she held her breath…

And then two orbs of light suddenly blazed forth and the man inside began to move. A rising heat, a sense of pressure and then he twisted and the front of the Genesis Chamber simply disintegrated, blown outwards in a spectacular shower of metal and glass as it was shredded and propelled by an explosion of sheer force.

Yet not a single scrap so much as touched her as every individual piece immediately slowed down, moving through the air in slow motion, tumbling end over end and glinting in the glow steadily building in the smoking wreckage of the Genesis Chamber as they hung suspended in mid-air.

First, one large hand rose up, grasping the edge of the remains of the sarcophagus, crushing the thick metal plating under its palm with ease. As it pulled the figure upwards, one massive leg followed, standing on the torn-up base of the machine, its sharp and twisted edges flattening underneath its heel without leaving so much as a scratch.

And then up from the smoke rose the 14-meter-tall form of Michael McCole, whole and hale again in his new body.

It blurred the edge between organic and metallic, its muscles just a tad too sharply defined and angular to be entirely natural, despite clearly being made of flesh and blood. Several additional grooves lined his entire form, mostly running along the crooks of his body and limbs, with several joining together at the base of his neck into a single, thicker one which ran across the centre of his whole scalp.

As Michael fully rose to his new height, the pure white light that formed his eyes pulsed once and then opened completely, as Hyperion fully awakened. The grooves lit up with a deep molten orange glow, while a mane of ethereal flame burst out from the groove on his head, a mohawk of fire proudly blazing outwards.

The giant stood with unnatural stillness, seemingly staring off into the distance, looking at nothing, and nobody dared to speak up at first, until Jessica hesitantly flew closer to this new form of her favourite powerhungry idiot.

"Michael?" she asked, her voice just slightly unsure.

Given how different he looked and how he seemed just slightly out of it, a nagging doubt was beginning to worm its way into the back of her mind as she considered the possibility that this giant of a man might not actually be her husband.

Said doubt died an immediate death when the immense figure turned its blazing head in her direction… and gave her a wink and a smirk, exactly as the blazing apparition of before had done and Jessica felt relief flood her chest, her tears now born of happiness instead of fear.

Michael's smile lessened as he looked past her again, looking far further than what mere eyes could see, his brow furrowing somewhat at whatever he observed, giving him a serious look.

"We are needed on the battlefield." He said, his voice deep and heavy as it rang out across the whole of Nidavellir with ease, a sense of power clearly felt in each thundering word.

Glancing back and down, Michael's glowing orbs settled on the awed looking Sterns and Jessica knew for sure she had gotten her man back when he spoke up with a mischievous grin on his semi-mechanical looking face.

"Sterns. Cue the music."

"You've got it Michael!" Sterns immediately responded, a grin of relief on his face as he wiped his teary eyes.

"Also… can someone get me a pair of pants?"

(POV shift)

"I can't believe we forgot to have some spare clothes made for your new form, Michael, sorry about that. Guess in the excitement of it all… ahem, anyways, we do have one of your suits, so maybe it's best if you just shrink down instead? You should have full control over your size due to infusion with Pym Particles-"

"It's fine, Sam." I rumble, my voice sending out vibrations through the air and metal flooring underneath my feet as I stared down at the tiny scientist who now didn't even make it to my knee.

For the sake of my decency, I had ripped off one of the larger metal plates of the now useless Genesis Chamber, holding it protectively in front of me as if it were the sci-fi equivalent of Adam's and Eve's fig leaves. Jessica had rolled her eyes at the sight, amused at my antics before she took a portal back to our children on Othrys, though I had caught the long, appreciative look of interest she had sent over her shoulder as she glanced at my… ahem, new toolkit (although it wasn't as if she had exactly bothered to hide said glance either). Not that the toolkit in question had seemed to overly matter to any of the others, considering just about everyone present here had had a hand in building all the parts of the new me in the first place and many of them were still huddled around me as they tried to examine me.

Not that their diagnostic tools could ever truly convey the sheer well of power that I could now feel raging within me.

I felt heavy, more solid than anything around me. As if I moved not just around an area, but through it, matter and even space-time parting before my strides. Time slowed down the moment I swung my eyes to an object to examine it, and information freely flowed into my mind unabated, yet never overwhelming. I could see microscopic imperfections, infer even the most loosely collected data, nothing remained hidden or unseen if I wished it.

And my strength… I had considered myself on the levels of gods before, considering I had scrapped with the likes of Hela and had come out (relatively) on top. It was only now that I realized how truly arrogant that statement had been.

Then, I had defined my strength by measuring myself to other warriors or even other objects. The strength of a demigod, the pull of a black hole.

Now, the very concept of their strength was instead measured to me.

The sense of balance and one-ness that consuming a bushel of Heart-Shaped Herbs had given me so long ago paled in comparison to the sheer sense of wholeness I now felt, my body singing to me down from the smallest cell to my largest organs.

Whole… yet incomplete. I could feel it. Two slots, at the back of my mind, or perhaps rather the core of my soul. Two open spots, waiting, yearning to be filled.

I glanced down, beyond the frozen Sterns, my field of vision shifting away and zooming in on one of the kneeling, petrified Michaels faster than a mortal being could comprehend. I could see the texture of the marble-like substance, see the weight it had upon the metal flooring, even see how heat and light reflected on it and how gravity pulled down on it.

Instead, my vision zoomed in on his frozen features, pausing for a long moment, even though to the rest of the universe not a heartbeat had passed.

I looked at the visage of a me I had never known, his timeline ended before my own, his face a reflection of the one I used to have. His expression, even now, suffering from the pain of his injuries (a meter-long slab of darkened steel sticking out from the middle of his chest being the most prominent one) and yet filled with a blazing determination.

That same expression that could be found on any of the other kneeling Michaels, no matter their age or injury.

All of them giving up their deaths so that I could live. I could feel their life force even now, an addition to my soul, a barrier surrounding it, acting as the breakers in the surf for my very sense of self against the ocean of powers that coursed throughout my veins at raging speeds.

I was the Prime Michael. Or I had become him during my ascension, or I had been bestowed that title by the future Prime Michael. In the end, it didn't matter. I was here, every other Michael wasn't. I was here, because they weren't.

And I would be damned if I let their sacrifice go to waste.

My vision returns to Sterns as I allow myself to sync back up again with his flow of Time while he finishes raising up a suit to me. I don't bend down to pick it up. I don't need to. With but a thought, the Amber-treated cloth shoots into my awaiting hands. I look within me, to that raging cosmology of building powers and energies, focusing on a particular one.

With a staccato series of flashes, the charcoal black pants and silvery white shirt enlarge themselves to comfortably fit my new frame, while I allow the shoes and jacket to fall to the floor. What use have I, who can walk on the surface of stars and breathe in the cold nothingness of space, for protective gear?

The pants I will use, because even though I am steadily grasping just how far above these mortals around me, even the Dwarves and Asgardians, I have truly risen, I'm not in the same mindspace as Dr. Manhattan, nor do I think I will ever be. So no, I'm not going to streak my way across the universe.

The shirt I will take, because I make that shit look good.

I let go of the metallic plate I had been holding in front of me, and before it even has had the chance to hit the ground, I've slipped into my outfit, making sure to leave a suitable amount of buttons on the shirt opened, really emphasising my beach-ready look.

Sterns blinks a couple of times at my sudden speed, which to him appeared as nothing more than an odd blurring which had disappeared as suddenly as it had started, before shaking his head, refocusing back on what matters.

"So, what happens now?"

"Now?" I rumble back, my voice unworried and tinged with humour.

A deep blue mist spreads out around my feet, similar in appearance to the portals Thanos would've used in the original timeline.

"Now I go save the universe." I chuckle, taking a single Step which crosses a distance spanning stars and galaxies.

In (quite literally) no time at all, I've emerged far above Svartalfheim, the dark planet nothing more than a mere marble far underneath me, the black hole functioning as its sun a roaring power at my back, though I easily dismiss its immense pull.

Light and power begin to pool inside me, the grooves along my body lighting up with a burning, molten glow as I gather my strength. Even from this immense distance, I can see the individual fighters locked in a desperate struggle around the remaining Dark Elf ships and I smirk as I begin to 'fall' forwards.

"Dynamic… Entry." I chuckle to myself, before my entire body blurs, appearing to the mortal eye as nothing more but a pillar of pure light.

The incomprehensible distance between me and the planet is crossed in a second. As I slam through the lairs of atmosphere like one would part a gossamer curtain, I pick up on the unshielded minds below me, seeing myself from their perspective. To them, I appear like a star that has fallen from the heavens, a beam of starlight descending upon the battlefield.

And descend I do, slamming into the front lines of the Dark Elves and remaining Chitauri, Outriders and whatever other dredge threw its lot in with Thanos, impacting the loose black sands with all the fury of angry god.

Which was exactly what I had become.

The impact is horrendous, large enough mountains shudder, oceans quake and tremors shake the earth even on the other side of the planet. A wall of compressed air is blasted outwards, sand and stone shot into the sky hundreds of meters high, while the gravel directly underneath and around me is either vaporized or turned to glass.

Yet not a single speck of dust has so much as touched my own forces, who stand completely unaffected, if frozen in utter shock.

I rise to my full height, towering over every other creature there and Thanos' forces (those that didn't get pulped from my arrival at least) rapidly back pedal away from me in instinctive fear when my burning gaze rakes across them. Seeing them cowed for now, I turn to face the dishevelled state of my own troops, who by contrast to their opponents, merely feel a warm sensation of safety and contention wash over them as they look upon me, many loosening their grips on their weapons and giving out relieved sighs.

At their front stand Beta-Ray Bill, Thor and Hulk shoulder to shoulder, their forms still tall and unbroken despite the many visible signs of battle damage each one is sporting, the war having caused each to grow into their own. Bill and Thor look like the battle brothers they became in the Comics, thanks to the Korbinite champion being clad and armed with Dwarven armour and axe, his red cape mirroring the one Thor is wearing, though the Prince's cloak is rather tattered. On the other side of the Asgardian stands the Hulk, his expression serious and his once uncontrollable rage tempered and cooled as he glares at his enemies, one of Kursed's tusk clenched tightly in one of his meaty fists as a make-shift dagger.

Thor himself truly appears Kinglike for the first time I've seen him, Gungnir held firmly at his side, his cloak fluttering in the winds kicked up by my arrival as he stands at the head of the army that has been desperately fighting for the sake of the universe for close to two weeks straight.

"Thank you, all of you, for the sacrifices you have made here. The universe will not forget it. I won't forget it. Well done. Allow me to take it from here." I say, and though my tone of voice is soft and gentle, the words still ring out across the battlefield as if spoken through a thousand speakers, vibrating the black sands surrounding my patch of still glowing obsidian glass.

Motion from above catches my attention, and glancing upwards I spot a large contingent of Chitauri motherships slowly gathering together high up in the outer reaches of Svartalfheim's atmosphere, an army of Leviathans and Chitauri ships disgorging from their gargantuan hulls.

"Beta-Ray Bill. Step forwards." I state, not taking my eyes off the Chitauri forces and utterly dismissing the still cowering foot soldiers as the cyborg tentatively makes his way over to me, striding over the molten glass without a hint of discomfort.

As he comes to a halt besides me, I glance down at the tiny humanoid, before smiling gently at him.

"It is time for you to break the hold Thanos has on the Chitauri and free your people." I state, and while Bill straightens at my words, I can see his doubts.

"But.. how? I… I can't-"

"You will be aided by a dear friend of mine. He too, has an interest in freeing his people from Thanos' enslavement. Like me, he has… gone through some changes."

Before Bill can give voice to his confusion, I can feel a new presence growing in my mind and I look to the sky with a genuine smile on my face, spreading my arms wide in a welcoming gesture.

"Ah, here he comes now."

There's a blur in the air, before the now familiar rainbow-colours of my Iris Ways illuminate the sky, a portal slamming into existence far larger than any seen before. And through it comes a creature that can rival even the motherships of the Chitauri in sheer size. 600 meters of corded muscle undulates through the sky as a victorious battle cry rings out across the shattered plains.

Python has returned to my side.

Gone are the cruel plates the Chitauri had welded to his flesh, gone are the holes they burrowed into his body. He has been entirely healed by the backlash of my ascension, and gone through some additional changes to boot. It seems he has inherited many of my powers, the most obvious being the ability to alter his size. But Python doesn't just look like a healthy, enlarged version of his brethren far above us. Like me, glowing grooves of molten orange run along his body, many of them concentrated around his throat and I know that he can now breathe torrential flame alike to Susan at her best. But my connection to the Light Dimension seems to have carried over to him as well, judging by the pure white glow coming out of his eyes and trailing off in thin streams off his body… including his four wings.

They're shaped much like the ones the sea-dwelling dinosaurs on Earth used to have, waving gently in the air as they propel him forwards, streams of white energy trailing through the air from each wing-tip.

My snake has finally completed his transformation into a dragon, if an unconventional one.

My draconic friend sings a greeting in my mind as he opens his cavernous maw, letting out a triumphant call as he sails through the sky, and I can tell his psychic powers have risen in a response to my own, our link (and my own mental prowess) grown to the point I can seamlessly hitch a ride in his consciousness, seeing the world through his eyes while I remain aware and in control of my own body.

Python makes a lazy turn in the air, which takes a few moments due to his gargantuan size, coming back around towards us again. As he flies over the assortment of Dark Elf Tomb Ships and other spacecraft however, his bows his head, opens his maw and a rain of liquid fire comes pouring down towards the ground in a torrential downpour of mystically tinged flame. The entire assembled fleet on the ground, including part of the backline of Thanos' gathered forces, simply disintegrate underneath the onslaught of fire, explosions bursting out from where Python's attack damaged something critical.

Leaving the sea of fire and destruction behind him, Python approaches my position, circling lazily overhead.

I glance down at Bill, giving him a wink.

"Looks like your ride has arrived."

Before Bill can answer, or even blink for that matter, he suddenly finds himself standing at the base of Python's enormous head, teleported in flash by yours truly. Thanks to my innate connection to the newly awakened dragon, I can feel how he drops to his knees and desperate grabs a hold of the nearest outcropping of chitin he can cling to.

The moment his hold is secure, I give Python the command and with a challenging call of fury and confidence, the dragon rises up into the air on a beeline with the Chitauri motherships. There was a reason why destroying them had caused all groundforces to suddenly drop dead during the Invasion, and that was because of the way Thanos had enslaved the Korbinites, by using their own experiments regarding souls during the creation of Beta-Ray Bill against them.

To make a long (and very depressing) story short, Thanos had found the scuttled and scattered Korbinite fleet drifting into his Sanctuary, slaved their will to his own through the powers of the Mind Stone and then had them undergo the very same process that Bill had volunteered for. Except, instead of having a new, tailor-made cybernetic body as the new receptable for their disembodied souls, Thanos had them all relocate to the massive motherships instead, where they were all collectively stored and forced to obey the mental commands Thanos had implanted in the massive machine's programming. The ground troops, the aliens actually fighting in the battles, were mere clones of the original Korbinite bodies, remote controlled much like the fleet of the Sovereign was, just with a lot more organics and wet work involved.

Destroying a mothership had killed the controllers for said bodies, which was why the entire army of Chitauri dropped like flies once the massive ship had been destroyed. Now, however, I was sending Bill with Python and a part of my mental focus, not to destroy those ships, but to infiltrate them instead, find the lynchpin that Thanos had installed to subsume their will with his own, and shatter it, thus finally freeing the Korbinite people from his control.

It wouldn't give them back their bodies, but it was a start at least.

Seeing Python rapidly breach through the upper-atmosphere, either dodging or simply utterly ignoring the Leviathans that tried to intercept him, shouldering past his far smaller brethren with sheer brute force, I leave that operation to my friends and the mental partition of me that's hitching a ride in Python's consciousness.

Instead, I focus back on the remains of Thanos' forces, who still number well above a million bodies all told. Python's attack had caused panic to rise among them as they tried to run from the sea of flames, shaking them from the stupor they had been stuck in ever since my own explosive arrival.

Even so, as they hesitantly approached me, it was clear that not a single one of them was actually keen on trying to fight me, huddling together as they raised their little guns at my towering form.

Despite my casual stance and outfit (barefoot, hands in pockets, shirt untucked and barely buttoned with a relaxed smile on my face), their collective fear was a visible miasma to me that wafted out of their grouped together forms and I couldn't help but let out a dark chuckle.

At the deep sound, their bedraggled front line faltered as their entire army ground to a halt, until at the very back there was a surprising development. Some of the burning wreckage that remained of the fleet that had landed on Svartalfheim's surface began to shift around, before with a sudden lurch, part of the frontmost ship was blown apart, a dark clad figure leaping outwards, completely unbothered by the towering flames.

Still smoking, the small figure made several more, impressive leaps and bounds, charging towards the no-man's land in which I stood unmoved, crashing down in front of Thanos' huddled forces.

Raising to her full height (which was simply laughable compared to my own), Hela Odinsdottir glanced at me with an expression of pure, unadulterated hatred fixed on her one-eyed face.

She looked… like shit. Even more so than when she had first shown up to the battle. She was missing half her horns, deep burn marks ran in forked patterns all across her body and there was a hole in the middle of her sternum, evidently made by a large blade.

A quick look into her mind (I don't even notice her innate defences), reveals that Thor had put up a much better fight than he did during Ragnarok, now that his body had nearly doubled in strength and power, with his mind honed by over a millennium of training with Odin. If it weren't for Hela's immortal status thanks to the Soul Stone, then Asgard's Crown Prince would've won multiple times over. As it stood however, Hela had managed to get in a cheap shot when Thor had managed to pin her down by spearing her straight through the chest with Gungnir, throwing a handful of black sand in his eyes before summoning a bunch of smaller swords straight from the ground to sink deeply into his calves and the hollows of his knees, pinning him in place.

By the time Thor had managed to free himself (which had involved a lot of swearing and blood), Hela had managed to tear the spear from her chest and hurry back to the backlines in order to get stitched up once again in preparation for her next clash with her younger brother.

That is, until Python exploded the recovery room she had been hiding in of course.

Which leads us back to the here and now, with her staring at me with a hatred-filled snarl on her mangled face and me grinning back at her.

"You… you did this… you are responsible for all of this! I… I am going to make you bleed for DENYING ME MY DESTINY!" she screams at me, two long blades appearing in her hands in a flash, before she charges at my towering form.

A few dozen meters away, she leaps into the air, both arms raised in order to deliver a terrible blow straight to my jugular. I watch her sail slowly in the air, Time slowing down to a mere crawl at a simple mental command from me. I lazily observe the deranged woman, idly glancing at each ripple in her long, tattered cloak and wondering at the slight, normally invisible turbulences her form creates as she moves through the particles that make up the atmosphere.

I blink lazily as her swords (probably whistling with the speed they have back in real Time) inch ever closer towards my gleaming skin. Closer… closer… yet closer still. Until, finally, the blackened blades are mere millimetres, no, atoms away from touching my skin. Then… I don't move, as I allow my perception of Time to sync back up with reality again.

Hela's hatred-fuelled blow solidly impacts my skin… and doesn't even so much as slightly bend it. It utterly fails at even affecting me in the slightest sense as the blades themselves snap in half from the force Hela brought to bear. Stunned at her sudden failure, Hela cannot control her course and smacks straight into my chest, knocking the wind right out of her lungs as she tumbles to the ground.

Right before she can hit the smoking glass however, she once again slows to a complete standstill, not even the ripples in her outfit managing to travel further. Yet, I move as if completely unaffected, my form seemingly moving as if in normal Time as I leisurely pull back one leg, before lazily sending the bare foot forwards, catching the falling woman square in the entire torso in a move that would put a professional footballer to shame.

Time spins up again as the woman folds around my foot, before she's blasted through the air, slamming into the first few rows of the frontlines of Thanos' troops, coming to a stumbling halt, mouth opening and closing on nothing as her lungs scream in desperation for air.

My hands remain in my pockets, but still Hela is suddenly yanked back towards me, an invisible force inexorably pulling at her kneeling form. To her credit, the Odinsdottir manages to push through her pain (or perhaps the Soul Stone gives her the unnatural strength needed), stabbing two new swords deeply into the loose sands underneath her.

She doesn't even so much as slow down.

Her remaining eye widens in shock as she suddenly flies into the air, tumbling end over end as she shoots towards me. A few meters in front of me, she comes to a sudden enough stop most other mortals would've died on the spot from the sheer amount of whiplash. Her entire body is straightened to the point her form begins to tremble underneath the strain, her arms splayed out straight as if she's being crucified on an invisible cross.

She tries to say something, but the unseen field of power pressing in on her is so vast she can't even force her jaw open.

"You know, I still owe you for all those swords you stuck into me during our fight on Asgard." I muse out loud, and though my tone remains unhurried and slightly mocking, the vengeful undertone in it is clearly audible to all.

My stance remains unchanged, but without warning, as if I was Gilgamesh himself, dozens upon dozens of pure white portals slam into being behind me, spread haphazardly across the dusky sky of Svartalfheim. Slowly emerging from each and every single one is a construct of pure Light Dimension energy, but whereas Dagger could only create crystalline looking… well, daggers, what slides halfway out of each portal is undeniably a spear, fully sized to match my own immense form.

"Allow me to repay that debt." I say, my grin definitely bloodthirsty now and still Hela cannot even so much as scream at the sight of her looming death.

Every spear pulls back slightly, as if building up momentum, poised to fly forwards, their aim true and unwavering, the tension on the entire battlefield spiking… before I dismiss my connection to the Light Dimension, the portals winking out immediately and taking the spears with them as my expression becomes marred by a deep frown.

Because right in front of me, Hela is crumpling into ash. The particles are merely held together by my will and the moment I release my mental hold of them, they float away, spread by the winds across the black battlefield of Svartalfheim.

From behind me, I can hear Thor speak up in a tired, sober voice.

"And thus comes an end to Hela Odinsdottir at the hands of Hyperion of Midgard." He gravely intones as he bows his head.

It shoots back up in surprise however when I speak up in a grim tone.

"That wasn't me."

"Then who-?"

"Who else?" I immediately reply, looking from the floating particles of Hela's ashes to the now very worried looking collection of Dark Elves, Chitauri, Outriders and varied scum of the universe.

At first, seemingly nothing happens, but then I can see several who gain a brief look of shock and surprise, their eyes opening as wide as they'll go. Then, faster than most mortals can catch but playing out in slow-motion for me, their flesh seems to sink in on itself, the years of their lifespan gliding across their face in but a single moment, their skin desiccating and turning grey and lifeless, before their entire form falls apart into motes of dust.

The process is halting at first, only a couple at a time, but it rapidly begins to expand, the deaths of those that came before seemingly fuelling the process that seeks to take the life of the others. Soon they're turning to dust by the dozens and not long afterwards by the hundreds. They begin running around in a blind panic, raising their varied weapons, but there's no enemy for them to aim towards as people keep turning into lifeless ash all around them, often mid-run or cry for help.

In less than fifteen seconds, a force that had numbered well in the millions had been turned into nothing but dust, the remains of the army joining the loose black sands on which they had stood mere moments ago. My entire army is staring in mute shock, too horrified to really make a sound as the entire (former) battlefield is shrouded in a thick veil of anticipatory silence.

"Thanos." I conclude, and as if summoned, a few hundred meters off to my right, the ground seems to collapse into a massive sinkhole, its depths unfathomable to most.

I peer through the darkness, seeing how the hardened stone of the underlying rockbed flows away from the hole like water, while parts of it flow up instead, forming an ascending series of rough looking rectangles, the rock itself being moulded into a set of stairs by an invisible will.

The sounds of boots striking stone is clearly audible to all in the silence reigning over the surface and with steady steps, the orchestrator of the decimation we just witnessed reveals himself. Like me clad in casual clothing, Thanos sets foot upon the sands of Svartalfheim, the Soul Stone blazing brightly from the middle of his forehead, while red flickers of ethereal light flicker over the grooves in his flesh. In one of his massive hands, held in a rough grip by his neck, is the rapidly deteriorating form of Malekith.

The ancient Dark Elf remains alive just long enough to view the dusted remains of his people, the look of dismayed betrayal and sheer horror on his face unsettling in its intensity, before he too disintegrates, falling apart into motes of ash that float down to join the sands of his desolate homeworld.

Thanos looks down at his now empty palm, slightly tilting it so that the last vestiges of Malekith slide off his rough skin, his expression contemplative. He keeps staring at his hand for a few moments before glancing up towards where my towering form is clearly visible, even hundreds of meters away.

"So much… sacrificed. Wasted. How much of that could have been avoided, I wonder, if you had just taken my offer back in the Soul World? Ah, but I forget. You think these deaths were worth it, so long as you can stop me, ignoring that in doing so, you condemn all other life as well."

Thanos' voice is steady as he begins to approach me and despite the distance between us, I can hear each word clearly.

As he walks towards me, I glance over my shoulder towards my forces, a frown on my face.

"This planet is no longer safe for you."

I can see several of the warriors there preparing themselves to protest being sent away as if they were mere children, but I simply wave my hand over the gathered army. In a rapid series of flashes, each one is swallowed whole by the same crackling blue field that I had used to teleport across the universe in but a single Step, sending the forces towards one of the vast, uninhabited steppes of Mongolia back on Earth, as it's the first place that pops into my mind that I know can easily house so many people in relative comfort.

All in all, it's the work of mere moments and then only Thanos and I remain the only living beings on all of Svartalfheim, considering I allowed the many drones of Phineas, Stark and the Sovereign to remain.

No sense in saving the universe if nobody's there to see it, right?

Finally, Thanos has closed the distance to a mere few dozen meters, the two of us merely staring the other down, our stances loose as we're both confident in the power of our new forms.

"I will give you one final chance, Hyperion. Surrender your Infinity Stones to me. End all of this pain and suffering our struggle has led to. Let me bring peace, a true, lasting peace to all peoples of our universe." He eventually starts after a tense silence, and I feel my eyebrows rise in surprise.

"You must already know that I have not changed my mind, Thanos. Your reasoning is flawed. If you cannot see that, even now with all that power you are given, then there is no hope for you."

A grimace passes over his face as he clenches his fists.

"And what would you know of this? What could an outsider possibly have to say about the hope that's left for us? To you, our struggles, all of the pain and death we face, it must seem like a fanciful story to one such as you. What claim do you then have when you say you are fighting for their sake?! You know nothing of what we have went through, what we have been forced to endure, merely for your entertainment! No more! Even if to you, we are not real, that does not diminish our pain, nor does it invalidate our struggles! Even if by your judgement, we are not real… then I will make us so!" Thanos roars out, the red flickers of light dancing along the grooves of his skin suddenly blazing in intensity.

To our unseen audience, looking on through the myriad of drones flying overhead, it must seem as if the air around him has begun to waver as he shifted suddenly, somehow and without warning or visible change, roughly equalling me in size, but my eyes manage to peer deeper and see the effect for what it truly is: reality itself is beginning to warp around him.

The very constants of our universe, the fundamental laws so ingrained into our very existence that we don't even consider them, are changing to a state of flux in a haze around him. The bonds between matter, the pull all mass both sends out and experiences in turn, even the speed of light, it all began to break down when it reached a certain distance from his skin.

I raised an eyebrow in curiosity, as I wondered what the intention behind this effect was and Thanos quickly obliged, taking an assured stride forward. Yet, when his booted feet landed in the loose sands and ash underneath us, an immense area was flattened upon impact, as if something far larger and incomprehensively heavy strode across the battered surface instead.

"Ah, copying what you saw in the Soul World, are we now?" I muse aloud, and judging by the severe frown on Thanos' face, I've hit the nail right on the head.

Instead of waiting for the burning Titan to come to me, I go on the offensive instead. I don't cross the distance between us, as that would imply I actually had to move from my spot, through space, toward him. Instead, the space in between us simply disappears for me and I literally appear right in front of him, one fist already pulled back. Impressively, Thanos' eyes widen in shock, meaning he was able to follow along to the way I had Stepped through space-time courtesy of their respective Infinity Stones implanted in my legs, though it's not enough for him to actually act against me, and one purple haze-clad fist strikes him square in his grooved chin.

For a moment, we both seem to remain motionless, before his entire body turns into a blur that streaks backwards at immense speeds, cutting a groove through the landscape as if it were a mere suggestion instead of a solid thing, the Mad Titan crashing into the still burning wreckage of his fleet in a massive explosion, a column of flame rising dozens of meters into the air.

I look with a frown from the smooth groove in the ground to my fist, Time slowing down as my mental alacrity reaches immense speeds as I play back the last couple of moments in my mindscape. Despite my overwhelming force and speed, when I had entered the layer of distorted air that surrounded Thanos, I felt how those very concepts got twisted. My strength got redefined, my speed got toned down the moment my skin past the crackling field of reddish glows, Thanos rewriting reality itself to a state where I had to pass far more distance at a lower top speed to deliver a punch to something that was more solid and heavy than I was. It would also explain the oddly smooth groove his body had carved through the earth, the solid material literally giving way to something that was more real in every sense of the word, being crushed and disintegrated underneath the physically impossible weight of the Titan's body.

A powerful trick, though clearly even when diminished I still could bring an overwhelming amount of force to bear. But worrying nonetheless, considering the damage he could do in the unlikely event that he managed to get his hands on me.

Less than a second has passed in the real world as I allow my mind to refocus on the outside world once again, time speeding up to normal as I look towards the sea of flames Thanos got launched into. Said fire roared to life… literally. It condensed and whirled as it pulled itself together in a single blazing structure, abandoning the fuel that were the wrecked ships as it pulled itself free from their carcasses.

A towering behemoth of flame and fire, though of course it paled to the dragon that Python had become. Nonetheless, it was easily twice my size and made of a non-corporeal body that was quickly blazing towards me, looking like a beefed-up version of a balrog or something, all claws and teeth made of fire.

I frown a bit, before taking a boxer's stance, one arm pulled back close to my torso. It was the same arm which had the Power Stone implanted within it, the one in which I first activated my Meteor Fist and which had been redubbed by Daisy to my new Hand of Destruction. As the monster rapidly closed in on me, I let fly a sharp jab, snapping it out fast enough almost any being would've missed the motion. Yet the effect of the punch couldn't be more noticeable, the purple crackling field that sprung up around my knuckles snapping forwards, and from my outstretched fist came a veritable gale storm of sheer power blasting out across the landscape.

It was strong enough to the point the winds ripped away the thick black sands of Svartalfheim to expose the bedrock underneath and send a decent chunk of the drones flying far above spinning wildly out of control. The wave of hurricane-level winds slammed into the fire being that Thanos had created using the Reality and Soul Stones, halting it dead in its tracks, each gale of screaming air stripping away the cursed flame in long streaks of burning orange, until nothing more was left and the entire creature petered out into nothing.

Not wanting to give my opponent any chances to come up with something that might actually harm me, I Step towards the now extinguished wreckage, coming to a halt at the base of the largest standing structure, the sands underneath my bare feet not even in the slightest disturbed despite my sudden appearance.

I glance around me, but to my surprise, I don't catch any sight of the Mad Titan, which takes me slightly off guard. No doubt he's using the properties of the Reality Stone to hide himself, or maybe he has found a way to interact with Time as well…-

A shifting shadow at my back catches my attention and I turn to face the towering skeleton of the Dark Elf Tomb Ship I'm standing underneath, glancing upwards as I see its blackened hull shifting oddly. Then, before my very eyes, what was once smooth, engraved plates of ancient metal turns out to be the shifting, falling bodies of millions upon millions of black scarab-like beetles, the entire structure falling over me in a tidal wave of dark, chittering chitin.

I disappear underneath the literal mountain of insect like creatures as they try to bury me alive, their claws and teeth scrabbling against my smooth skin, yet finding no purchase. Overcoming my surprise and firmly pushing down some bad memories from my time in the Dark Dimension, I allow the well of power I feel coursing through my veins to come to the fore, the grooves in my body lighting up with such intensity they're visible through my clothes. The air begins to waver around me from the stupefying heat I'm giving off and even with the Amber Solution strengthening my clothes they would've burnt to mere cinders already if I weren't mentally reinforcing them.

The bugs covering me in a mountain of blackened chitin, all in all weighing a couple metric tons with ease, aren't so fortunate, and with a roar of anger and a wave of heat, force explodes out of me akin to a small nuke going off, a corona of fire blooming outwards from my form and turning the beetles to ash as the sand underneath my feet is fused into a single, smooth obsidian plate.

Yet there's an anomaly in the shuddering air as it rushes away from me and my eyes widen as I see Thanos decloak himself, having used the Reality Stone to alter the way waves behaved at a certain distance surrounding him, hiding him from any possible view or even sense of smell.

I once again increase my perception to the point the rest of the world seemingly stands still and I prepare to Step away when I'm taking off guard by the fact that Thanos, like myself, moves seemingly unabated through this slow-mo world.

Considering he was already less than arms-lengths away from me when I noticed him, he almost manages to put his hands on my chest if it weren't for my own hands coming up to catch his wrists. Time resumes its normal flow as we stand there, locked in a literally titanic struggle, pitting limitless power against otherworldly strength.

Immediately, I can sense how he attempts to recreate his devastating attack on Asgard, which had almost destroyed my very essence if it hadn't been for the interference of the Ancient One and Frigga and what had led to Python falling into a coma from the feedback, when Thanos kidnapped my spiritual being to the Soul World.

I can see a ghostly, burning orange facsimile of his arms reach towards my chest, moving independently from his flesh and blood body, energy of the Soul Stone both fuelling and consuming him in equal measure as he tries to take hold of my very being.

Only for there to be a sudden flash of bright, explosive light as he makes contact, his ghostly arms blasted away from me and disintegrating under the force as the Mad Titan screams in agony at the backlash against his own soul.

The attack might have worked before, with my weird soul ill-fitted to my failing body making an easy target to grab onto despite how its immense weight and impossible dimensions had placed an immense strain on Thanos' life force itself. Now however, it was residing in one of the most powerful bodies in existence and both fuelled and guarded by many layers of my own life force, the remaining embers of the dying Michaels forming a burning protective barrier that the weakened Thanos couldn't hope to breach, not when I was contesting his strength in the real world as well.

I glance at his desperate eyes and determined expression, somewhat surprised I have to look down in order to do so. He may have doubled his size by altering himself, but he's still shorter than myself, noticeably so now that we're so close to one another.

"I do view you and the people of this universe as real, Thanos. Just as real as I am. I have done so for a long time now. It's why I couldn't accept your offer. Not anymore. I stand to lose too much now, not just my own life." I rumble at the smaller Titan, who bares his teeth at me.

"All of this power… all of this knowledge you must have… and still you are so selfish! You stand to lose too much!? What of the worlds you are condemning to poverty, what of the uncountable beings you are dooming to a slow death of starvation, what of the unending wars you are allowing to happen as people slaughter their neighbours in the streets for mere scraps!? Even this, this new body of yours… you think you show strength in this form? All I see is cowardice." The Titan says in a rumbling voice, his eyes filled with pain but his form is unwavering as he tries to contest my own strength.

"Cowardice? It is preservation, Thanos. Preservation of who I am, what I am. So that I can survive the might of the Stones we now possess. So that, at the end of the day, when all is said and done, I can return to my loved ones. Live out a peaceful life amongst the family I have built here. That is why we differ. You can only destroy, even when you attempt to save. It's why Titan failed, it's why your family has fallen apart, it's why you are falling apart. Whatever happened to your dream, Thanos? Whatever happened to the garden you wished to tend to once your work was done? The humble homestead for your twilight years, should they ever come? You cannot even build that now." I respond and for just the briefest of seconds, I can see the Mad Titan falter.

"Others… have sacrificed so much. Those that I couldn't save… they lost their lives, their families, their very planets. Those that I could… they had to pay a price only those with the strongest wills could hope to see through to the end. To sacrifice myself… my dream… I can do no less than that, after what I have demanded of others." He says in a subdued tone, before determination returns to his eyes as he clenches his fists even tighter.

"Which is why I will not… cannot lose here! All of it… all of those losses… I refuse to let them have been in vain!"

With a roar of power, he pulls his wrists in closer to himself, before wildly slamming them to the side… shattering my own forearms into smithereens. I look on in shock as I see the bloody giblets fall to the ground, only to realize they aren't bloody at all: they're large pieces of clear glass shimmering in Svartalfheim's eternal dusk and glancing at my now broken off stumps, I realize that Thanos used the Reality Stone during our speech to overwrite the existence of my arms with his own will, transforming them into glass sculptures instead of flesh, metal and blood.

I reel back, my stance unbalanced, and Thanos lunges forwards, hands covered in a crackling field of ominous red aimed at my face… until his forwards momentum is suddenly halted, then brutally reversed as I punch him straight in the sternum with my Hand of Destruction. The air around us shudders so violently at the impact it almost seems to implode before it blasts outwards fast and hard enough many of the nearby wreckages are sent tumbling over as the obsidian plate underneath my feet is cracked and shattered into a million pieces.

Briefly, Thanos hangs on my fist, the odd interaction between his Soul Stone powered, Reality Stone altered and covered body and my own limitless strength holding a brief battle of will that doesn't exactly follow the laws of nature in regular space-time, before my power overcomes his and he's sent clean through half a dozen ships and into a mountain side.

Rock sprays up in an explosion of stone sped to supersonic speeds as its blasted outwards from the site of impact, a dark hole several dozens of meters wide in diameter forming where the Mad Titan impacted the soil. As I Step forwards into the darkened pit, I'm barely surprised at this point when, in a move that rather reminds me of the Cave of Wonders scene in Aladdin (the good one, not that remake crap), the jagged rocks surrounding it suddenly shift into gargantuan teeth as the entire mountain side buckles and heaves, the gaping maw of a worm-like creature straight out of a Dune novel closing around me as it sinks back into the now ruined landscape of Svartalfheim.

Or at least, the creature tries to, before it and the entire landmass surrounding it gets wildly ripped apart, a ravine dozens of kilometres long and several hundreds of meters wide rending itself across the entire landscape as I strain the full might of my telekinetic powers.

Yes, I just mentally ripped a continent in half, take a seat Hercules.

Peering further down into what to anyone else should have been absolute darkness, I Step once again, my Hand of Destruction already fully mid-swing despite me seemingly not having wound it up before I disappeared from sight. I let loose with a Power Stone enhanced punch, showcasing to the universe (or at least the onlookers on Earth and Nidavellir) why it was used in the ancient past by the Celestials to cull entire civilizations with but a single blow.

Another tremor wracks the entirety of the planet as I let loose with my power, the rock underneath and around me simply vaporizing as the earlier ravine of before gets blasted even further apart to the point you could fit a city between each side, a gaping wound in Svartalfheim visible from space itself.

Which isn't a hyperbole or exaggeration, as the mental part of me that was still hitching a ride within Python's consciousness happened to glance back at the planet through his eyes when my dragon noticed the massive destruction even in the middle of his fight with his kin as he forged a path towards the largest Chitauri mothership.

My destruction hadn't been merely to utterly wreck the homeworld of the Dark Elves (not that any remained alive to complain about it now), but to expose Thanos, who had tried to use the literally unrealistic properties of the Reality Stone to 'swim' through the tonnes of rock, trying to raise more golems in his wake in an attempt to slow me down.

They were now all disintegrated however, with the rock surrounding him being blasted apart and wasting no time, I Step forward so I'm standing above him, grasping him by the throat, before Stepping once again so that we're hovering in mid-air, tens of kilometres above the now gaping surface of where we had first clashed mere moments ago.

He struggles, but isn't gasping for air, either because the Reality Stone makes it so he's still able to breath, or the Soul Stone making it so he doesn't need to breath. While a somewhat interesting question, the end result is basically the same and so I put it out of my mind, instead refocusing on the Mad Titan as his own hands are desperately clasped around my outstretched arm.

I can see the fear and confusion in his eyes at the fact I suddenly even have arms to begin with, but as his clear attempts to affect my arm in some way steadily keep failing to produce any result whatsoever, I can see the recognition bloom within him as he looks at the damage he cannot inflict upon me.

Or rather, the permanent damage he cannot inflict upon me.

Right underneath his arms, my smooth, slightly metallic-looking skin seems to rapidly disintegrate underneath his touch. But before it can reach further than a few centimetres, my entire arm blurs in place and the damage is gone before our very eyes. It was the same method I had used to restore my arms and I can see Thanos cottoning on as he looks up at me in shock.

Even the best regeneration factor in the universe cannot stack up to the ability to simply rewind your body to the state it was in before it was injured in the first place, basically making it so your enemy never even got to attack you at all.

It was cheating of the highest order and I took some savage pleasure from seeing Thanos visibly wreck his mind as he attempted to turn my arm into dust over and over again.

"Just give it up Thanos. It is literally impossible for you to win here. Even if I lose, I can make it so that I won all along and even if there is no possible way for me to overcome you, any future version of me that has beaten you can simply reach back into time and change the outcome, thus ensuring its own existence." I rumble with malicious amusement, bringing the struggling Titan somewhat closer to me as a wicked grin grows on my face.

"That's simply the discrepancy in power between you and me now, Thanos. Even with the Stones that you possess being of a high calibre, they cannot stand against the four that I now control, with a body specifically built to contain their might and control their power." I gloat, though my victorious expression turns to a frown of suspicion when I see Thanos suddenly still in my grip, determination blazing from his eyes as he glances towards me.

As the Mad Titan speaks up and I realize what his plan is, I privately contemplate to myself within my mind that, despite my great power (or perhaps, because of it) I have still fallen victim to that oldest and most insidious of mortal follies: overconfidence.

"You are absolutely correct… so allow me to even the playing field." Thanos grunts out and I attempt to stop him by simply tearing out his throat, but he was clever enough to enact his plan before warning me about it as the crimson field dancing over his skin spikes in intensity as the words cross his lips.

My hand tightens around his flesh as I attempt to forcibly remove his windpipe, but all I succeed in is merely crushing it instead before the field of red suddenly explodes outwards, growing large enough to encompass the both of us. As my view of the world is shockingly turned into Escher-like spaghetti I can suddenly feel a dampening cloak settle around the ocean of power within me, a dulling of the senses coming from the stars of energy contained within my body. Taken off-guard by the chilling sensation and weakened by the loss of the strongest weapons in my arsenal, I'm wide open as Thanos shifts in mid-air so that he's perpendicular to me, his feet pulled in against his chest and aimed at my own.

Or rather, the rest of the world turned so that I moved in relation to him, reality twisting as it was commanded by his will.

Then his boots impact me with the weight of a planet, the very definition by which an impact is even measured in the first place altered so that mass and acceleration and all that stuff becomes irrelevant. He kicked me with all of his might: therefore, I am blasted back towards the surface of Svartalfheim as if I was hit with the power of an exploding sun.

These were the rules his surroundings (which briefly included me) were subjected to and as a result I crash into and through a large mountain chain on the furthest edge of the flatlands we had begun fighting in, much of it now swallowed whole by the ravine I created. My impact is massive enough and my body durable enough that I barely slow down and instead crash deep into the hinterlands behind the mountain chain, which had now been reduced to but a collapsed mound of rubble. My landing is nothing less but apocalyptic, the entire surrounding landscape torn apart as entire landmasses rise up from the impact, all of Svartalfheim shuddering underneath the levels of energy released.

Honestly, the whole scene eerily mirrored the destruction of Jedha in the Rogue One movie, such was the destructive might of the Infinity Stones when wielded by those capable of directing their frightening power.

The entire landscape is still quaking and roiling with the aftershocks of my impact when I burst from the collapsed rubble that had buried me dozens of meters deep, the rock evaporating underneath my might as I began to rise in the air.

To my surprise, Thanos is already standing on the surface of the battered planet, not even a hundred meters away from my impact zone, seemingly unbothered by the apocalyptic ground tremors that would've broken the Richter scale back on Earth, his throat restored to a healthy state.

I glance down at myself, idly removing the bootprints on my white shirt, returning it and my black suit pants to their pristine condition before looking up at the Mad Titan with a raised eyebrow, studying him intently. Touching down upon the cool rock of Svartalheim, feeling the stone shaking underneath the soles of my feet, I idly rub my hand across my chest in contemplation.

The earlier feeling of before, where I had felt… disconnected somehow from the Infinity Stones within me had been very disconcerting, but was now completely gone, meaning that it was only something that could happen when I was within the field of altered Reality that Thanos emitted from his body.

"What did you do?" I rumble in a low, dangerous voice, but Thanos merely spreads his arms, a small smirk on his weathered face.

"Following your advice. You must know, as well as I, that the Infinity Stones only work in their home universe. Our universe. So, I have decided to fight in mine instead." He replies easily, and as he speaks I can see a thick, roiling orange mist waft off his form and rise up from the many cracks and cervices that scar the ground underneath us. What I at first had thought to be merely a trick of the light from Svartalfheim's eternal dusk reveals itself to be a blazing orange sky and I grimace as I realize what I'm looking at.

By utilizing the Reality Stone, instead of teleporting the both of us to the Soul World now that his attempt had backfired spectacularly, he instead brought the Soul World into our reality instead.

I frown as Thanos' personal domain begins to expand around him, charging the air and taking control of the earth, wary to cross that border into his realm of power. Instead, I point a single finger towards him as my entire hand begins to light up with an immense glow, rivalling stars in its sheer intensity. With nothing more than a simple mental command, I release a laser that easily dwarfed the pillar of sunlight I had called down on Belathauzer and Captain Marvel, the bream of energy screaming across the torn-up landscape at the literal speed of light.

Yet despite that, I watch as the thick bundle of power impossibly begins the slow down when it comes within ten meters of Thanos, before it begins to bend and warp, twisting around the unmoving form of the Mad Titan, before exciting his field of influence and blasting onwards, impacting the ruined remains of the mountain chain I had destroyed with my crash-landing. From the outside, it almost looked as if the Titan himself was the centre of a black hole, my impressive attack appearing like a half-formed accretion disk before being slung away from its intended target.

My frown deepens as I release the attack, locking eyes with a confident looking Thanos. Seeing no other course of action, I Step towards him, the distance between me and him gone from existence at my will as I move to punch him straight in his stupid chin… when I suddenly stumble.

Right on the edge of his domain, Time and Space give a sudden lurch and suddenly the distance between me and him seems incomprehensibly vast, the earlier forces of gravity seemingly increased a thousandfold as my stride falters. I blink in surprise when I suddenly see Thanos standing right in front of me, fist pulled back in a massive haymaker. Instinctively, I attempt to speed up my perception to immense levels, just like before, but it feels like there's a thick blanket wrapped around my skull and the Mind Stone doesn't leap to my command.

The crash of Thanos' fist impacting my cheek is nothing short of monumental as my head is whipped to the side.

"I am Thanos!"

Another haymaker, this one from the other side, sends my head spinning to the opposite side.

"I am the son of Alars!"

A nasty blow straight to my solar plexus nearly doubles me over as I sink to a knee.

Thanos raises both of his meaty arms far above his head in the clear set-up for a brutal double-fisted hammerblow, his lips pulled back as he grits his teeth, his entire form shaking with the effort of keeping this piece of the Soul World in our reality.

"I… am INEVITABLE!" he roars out, his arms descending down upon me fast enough that they appear as mere blurs.

Which is why they almost snap in half when they're suddenly halted in their tracks by my own hands once again catching his wrists in a punishing grip. Slowly, I rise to my full height as Thanos lets out a surprised grunt of pain, the bones in his forearms audibly creaking under the impossible stress they're subjected to.

"And I… am Michael McCole." I rumble back at him, my eyes snapping open to showcase two orbs made of the purest white shining light.

And then I knee him hard enough in the stomach that he coughs up blood as his entire form slackens, held up mostly by my own hold of him before I drop him to the floor.

"And that is enough." I finish as Thanos desperately gasps for air.

"H-how…" the attempts to ask as he looks up at my towering form, but I don't let him finish, turning him over onto his back with a callous kick.

"Simple." I begin, before I raise my hand high above my head.

Energy pools within my splayed open palm, before there's a burst of pure white that elongates in a flash, until a fully sized spear of Light Dimension energy rests comfortably within it.

"Like this." I say to him, as I look from my lance to the downed Titan with a dangerous gleam in my burning white eyes.

Thanos only has the chance to briefly widen his eyes before with a savage snarl of rage, I plummet my new weapon deep into the centre of his broad chest, pinning him to the orange mist-covered stones underneath us. His mouth gapes wide open in a silent scream of agony, but he doesn't have the strength (or the lung capacity) left to give voice to his pain as I push the spear a few inches further for good measure.

His trembling hands weakly come up as they try to grasp the shaft made of pure Light, the red flickering over his skin blazing up in errant pattern as his thick fingers close around it.

"It is as you said: the Stones only work on their home dimension. You brought in yours…" I rumble as I give the spear a twist, causing Thanos to arc his back in pain as he can feel maddeningly hot energy spread through his body like liquid, freezing pain from the point where my weapon pierces his flesh.

He twitches and shakes as I keep feeding more Light Dimension power into his battered body and damaged soul, and as I do so, the earlier haze or reddish light from the Aether behave increasingly antagonized, shooting up in long peaks and wild sparks. Like an image overlapping itself, a character that glitches in your game or your tv, a red silhouette made of pure energy sloughs off Thanos struggling form.

Taking one hand off my spear, I focus intently on the Aether that's desperately trying to escape its increasingly inhospitable host body.

"… I merely brought in my own as well." I conclude, before my left hand shoots out, straight into the centre of the densest concentration of the crackling red energy, grabbing a 'hold' of it despite it having no mass.

I give a monstrous heave on it, my strength, even without the addition of the Power Stone, quite simply off the charts as it begins to literally drag and tear the Aether out of Thanos. I can feel him struggle underneath my Light Dimension spear, but between the gruesome wound of the weapon, my own innate greater strength and the wish of the Aether itself to flee the well of antagonizing energy flooding its host, there simply is no contest.

There's a tearing noise, oddly dry, as if every book in existence was laid in a long unending row and torn in half simultaneously as the last tendrils of reddish light leave Thanos' screaming form. The field of energy swirls around my left fist, clenched tightly around the 'core' of the cloud of light, much in the shape of a whirlpool. The tendrils of light coalesce and thicken as they seemingly get sucked through the miniscule gaps between my curled fingers and with a sudden shudder, the entire thing is gone completely.

As I open my hand, square in the centre of my left palm, a mirror to the purple gem sitting in the palm of my right hand, sits embedded a deep crimson stone, gleaming with an inner light. Occasionally, brief flickers of red light pulse from it into my flesh, colouring the grooves in my skin along my left arm in a crimson hue, before it ebbs away again, an odd counter cadence to my own heartbeat.

Even though my other Infinity Stones remain dull and lifeless to my senses now that we're inside another realm, the Reality Stone remains vibrant and alive, possibly due to its own innate connection to dimensions and their barriers, or perhaps simply because of its role in bringing this particular dimension into our world. In the end, it doesn't truly matter I decide, as I give a lazy wave of my left hand and at my command, air and stone dance and flow as if made from wet clay, eagerly springing up to do my bidding as they swirl and rise up, until within moments, a rough, stone throne sits looming across from the still pinned Thanos, who's looking at me with an expression of utter despair and hopelessness.

I ignore the downed Titan for now as I ascend the few smooth steps to my new throne, turning my left hand over and around a couple of times as I examine my latest acquisition.

It seems my Hand of Destruction has now found its twin in my new Hand of Creation.

"Please…" I hear Thanos gasp in agony, and I look down towards him in surprise.

"Please? Of all things, 'please' is not something I thought I would ever hear from the likes of you, Thanos." I muse, dismissing the enormous spear still pinning the Mad Titan to the floor of this piece of the Soul World.

As the construct of pure Light Dimension energy fades from existence, Thanos lets out a deep, shuddering sigh as the waves of pain finally recede. Despite the fact that I can literally look through his torso thanks to the neat circular hole placed immaculately in the dead centre of his sternum, the Mad Titan steadily works himself to his feet. His body being fuelled by the Soul Stone has blurred the lines between life and death, even as I can tell he cannot keep this field up much longer.

Where before the mists of this piece of Soul World had reached dozens of meters across, they were now shrinking rapidly to just a few tens of meters instead. Thanos' form itself also showed the gruesome toll wielding the Soul Stone required, his edges blurring and becoming slightly fuzzy and translucent, as particles of his skin and flesh begin to turn into motes of orange light, streaming off his body in an unseen world, taken back into the world which had sustained them with unnatural life.

Thanos knows this as well, as he doesn't go in on my barb, instead taking a trembling step towards me.

"Please… save them. I cannot beat you. Not now. Not anymore. No one can. That means that you are their only hope! Whatever feelings you have for us… whatever we may be to you and yours… I ask… I beg of you to hear their plight. See their pain and resolve to end it! You are now the only one that can! The Infinity Stones are the only way, every other method is too flawed, too costly! Please!" His final word is a shout that echoes out over the abandoned planet as he falls to his knees onto the dry stones of the Soul World, exhaustion bowing his form.

I remain silent and motionless as I stare intently at the defeated Thanos, who looks up to match my gaze from underneath heavy-set brows.

"Promise to save them… and I will surrender the Soul Stone to you freely." He whispers, pinning his final strength and hopes on this last-ditch plan, now that he can feel his death looming close enough he can feel her ice cold breath on his neck.

"There is a flaw in your logic, Son of Alars." I eventually rumble, and I can see Thanos' eyes widen at my response.

"For you cannot bestow upon me freely… that which I can simply take by force!"

I move faster than a speeding bullet as I dash from my throne of bare rock and stone and descend upon the shocked looking Thanos. He doesn't even have a chance to defend himself, or even rise up from his kneeling position, and as if he were Ozai and I were Aang, I loom over him, one hand pressing down on his shoulder to pin him in place, the other grasping the deep orange coloured gem embedded deep in his forehead.

He screams in agony as I roar in effort and with a burst of orange light that illuminates the sky of Svartalfheim, I tear the Soul Stone from Thanos' brow. As the spectacle of light and power begins to die down, I raise to my full height as I release my hold on Thanos, who drops to the floor, utterly spent and exhausted, his forehead a bleeding mess.

I peer intently at the Soul Stone held within my thumb and index finger as around us, the Soul World collapses in on itself with a reversed whooshing sound, dragging the cracked flagstones and coiling mists back in on itself into a singularity, like a game of Jumanji that has just been finished. As the last of that dreadful realm disappears, I can't help but let out a small sigh of release as I feel my other Infinity Stones roar back to life as their shine is restored to their rightful brilliance.

Glanced at the last of the set, I flex my power and the entire thing is consumed by a superheated ball of flame, hot enough it appears like a miniature sun in the palm of my hand, sterilizing the game as it disintegrates the viscera that had clung to it.

With the Gem restored to its pristine condition, and in front of the disbelieving eyes of both Thanos and the audiences on Earth and Nidavellir, I open my jaw as wide as it'll go and place the Soul Stone in my mouth. I move it so that it rests underneath my tongue and I can feel it settle into place.

The moment it does, my entire form lights up in a tracing pattern of multi-coloured lights, just as it had done when Thanos had finally assembled the Infinity Gauntlet, though on me the effect is increased and far more pronounced thanks to my direct contact with the gems of infinite potential. The grooves and folds along my skin light up in a scintillating glow as if I'm about to turn into one of my Iris Way portals and the mane of burning flame that sits as a mowhawk on my head blazes out like an inferno at my last power up.

The energy swirls around me, overlapping and combining before eventually settling upon a new equilibrium and the lightshow fades from view as my body returns to normal. On the surface, at least. But from deep within me, I know that my original goal, the one that I've carried with me from the first moment of awareness in this new universe, the one that've I've killed and bled and died for is finally complete.

I am finally… omnipotent.

Fun Fact: You, every single one of you, is amazing. Thank you for sticking by me for so many words, chapters and even years. Know that I appreciate you, whether you've left reviews and entire commentaries, or merely lurked or even flamed me. Writing this story and making this journey has deeply impacted my life and I'm grateful you've been willing to give me a chance and tell this story to you. Thank you all.

AN: I was originally going to include the aftermath in this chapter, but considering it is way too long already, I'm cutting it off here and saving that for the first of the epilogues, in which we'll see what Michael does with his new powers, Thanos, Jessica and the Korbinite race. Afterwards, well, I'd be more than happy to discuss that with you in a stream or something, or just come hang out with me in the Emerald Library discord server!