[A/N]: Fucking finally, you guys hit the 200 Powerstone goal! But damn, it was so slow. What happened to my hot-blooded soldiers? Where's your spirit? Anyway, the next goal is 450 Powerstones for another bonus chapter. You know what to do! Let's make it happen!
Oh, and by the way, this chapter is a big one and it's very special to me! Do share your thoughts at the end.
The private jet cut through the sky above the Palmer Peninsula. Antarctica's harsh landscape spread endlessly white below them.
Domino sat across from Jay, her mismatched eyes tracking the storm clouds gathering on the horizon.
"Will you remind me again," she said, "how our romantic world tour turned into flying into Antarctic storms?"
Jay's smile carried manic energy. "You know Dom, I've always had a place in mind to set up my secret base. Spent months arranging people to look for it, but every search came up empty." He leaned forward. "Until I thought of a different approach."
"And that is?"
"We're going to jump randomly."
"What? Jay, this isn't the time to joke around."
"I'm not joking, Neena." His voice carried absolute certainty. "I know it's somewhere in the Palmer Peninsula. And with your probability manipulation, there's a very high chance we'll get it right."
Before she could protest, the cargo door opened with a mechanical hiss.
Cold air screamed into the cabin.
"Jay, wait!" Domino grabbed for his arm as he snatched up a prepared pack, but he was already pulling her with him toward the opening.
Then they jumped.
Domino's stomach lurched into her throat. The shriek tore from her lungs as they plummeted, but the howling wind swallowed the sound whole. The world spun between white, gray and white again. No up, no down, just violent disorientation as snow and wind battered her from every direction.
Jay absorbed the vibranium metal from his necklace and completely engulfed Domino under his now massive frame.
"Teleport us now!" she yelled, clinging to him desperately.
"Can't do that, Dom!" Jay shouted back over the roaring storm. "We need a very high level of danger to get maximum potential from your powers!"
He focused inward, where the transparent dice floated in his mindscape. When he'd first taken Domino's probability manipulation, it had been traditional transparent six-sided dice. Constant training combined with his Heightened Potential and Adaptive Power perks had evolved it into a twenty-sided dice that glowed with possibility.
The dice spun and reality bent.
They were flung sideways by the wind, tumbling through the storm with zero visibility. Something massive struck them, sending them careening through the eye of the storm.
Then suddenly, the storm vanished.
Clear blue sky stretched overhead. Warm air replaced Arctic cold. Below them spread lush greenery that had no business existing anywhere near Antarctica.
The first thing Jay noticed were the pterodactyls.
"Oh shit," Domino breathed against his neck, eyes shut with terror as she clung to him.
The ground rushed up at them. Jay braced, Vibranium form hardening to its maximum density. They hit with the force of a meteor strike. A bone-jarring impact that should have pulverised them both. Instead, the kinetic energy absorbed into Jay's body, building, building, then exploding outward in a shockwave that flattened vegetation in a perfect circle and sent a wall of water surging across the lake.
Domino kept her eyes squeezed shut, arms wrapped around Jay in a death grip.
"Dom," Jay said softly, returning to normal. "You can look now."
She cracked one eye open, then both went wide.
Greenery stretched in every direction under a sky that should be frozen darkness. In the distance, something massive and reptilian moved through the trees.
She punched his arm. "Was it too hard to teleport before we entered the storm?"
Jay laughed. "We didn't teleport. We accidentally landed here." He spread his arms wide. "Welcome to the Savage Land, Neena."
Her gaze tracked to the pterodactyls circling overhead, then to what was definitely a sauropod browsing vegetation in the distance. "Is that a fucking dinosaur?"
"Finally. Finally, we're here. Thanks to your powers."
Domino took several deep breaths, trying to process the fact that they'd just jumped into an Antarctic storm and landed in a hidden tropical paradise full of extinct megafauna. Her heart was still racing, but Jay's good mood was infectious.
Seeing Jay's good mood and adrenaline from the fall rushing through her body gave her the courage to finally speak what's on her mind for months now.
"Jay," she said carefully. "Can I ask you something?"
"Always, Dom."
"How do you know about this place?" The question opened a door to larger concerns. "And before this, about Anthony Masters' secrets. About everyone's secrets. You always know things that are impossible to know, like you've studied us all before meeting us. Is this one of your powers?"
Jay's expression shifted, becoming serious. He studied her face for a long moment, then seemed to come to a decision.
"What I'm about to tell you must be a secret that never leaves between us."
The gravity in his voice made Domino nod immediately.
They found a quiet spot near the lake, sheltered by ancient ferns that towered overhead.
Jay went through every method in his arsenal to ensure privacy. His technomorphing checked for surveillance. Power null field expanded around them. Kim Il Sung's scrambling ability disrupted any supernatural observation.
Layer upon layer of protection, more thorough than she'd ever seen him employ.
The air itself seemed to thicken, charged with an electric taste on her tongue, creating a disorienting pressure against her temples that faded after a moment. Whatever he was doing, it was thorough.
"What I'm about to tell you may seem jarring and impossible," Jay began. "But you need to keep an open mind."
"Okay."
"I'm not from this world."
Domino smiled, trying to lighten the mood. "I know. After all, how can someone have no record of existing just a few months ago that weren't fabricated by Fury?"
Then the implications hit her. "Wait. Don't tell me you're some shapeshifter alien with tentacles and shit. Let me tell you, mister, I may be bold, but I'm not that bold."
Jay didn't laugh.
The silence stretched between them.
"I'm not from this universe" Jay said quietly.
"What?"
"Yeah. I'm from a different universe. A world similar to this, but with no superpowers or aliens. Just normal and miserable humans being normal and miserable alone."
Domino sat back, processing. Her mind raced through implications. Finally, she made a gesture with her fingers showing something very small. "Is that all? I mean, yeah, it's weird, but it's still way better than tentacle shapeshifter aliens. Considering magic is real now, I could believe that."
"Very funny," Jay smirked. "But seriously. Back home, I was obsessed with movies, television, and comic books. Two of the big ones in my universe were Detective Comics and Marvel Comics. Marvel has a lot of flagship characters. Guys like Spider-Man are the most popular. There's also characters like Wasp, Ant-Man..."
"What, it's a bunch of insect superheroes?" Domino asked with a grin.
"Iron Man, Thor, Black Widow..."
Her eyes widened. "Wait..."
"Captain America, X-Men... Domino."
The world tilted slightly. "Your universe had comic books about me?"
"Not just comics. Animated shows, a couple of video games. Actually, Marvel comics started back in the sixties, so there's a lot of material there." Jay kept his gaze locked to hers. "Neena, I've seen the adventures of Marvel superheroes since I was a little kid. I mean, this universe is an alternate of all the others. But all of you are really similar to the ones from the shows and movies, not to mention the comics."
"Stop, stop, stop!" She shook her head. "Jay, I... what am I supposed to say about this? So I'm, what, fictional?"
"No, you aren't," Jay said immediately. "Let's nail that one in the head right now. You and I are as real as anyone else. We aren't fictional, we're flesh and blood. As far as I know, all my world had was a window. A glimpse into other worlds that we put to the page. Even then, the question of real or fictional isn't..."
He pointed at the sky, at the undiscovered and untouched Savage Land bright and shining in the sunlight. "This is real, Neena. You, me, all of us are real."
He looked back at her. "The important part isn't that. The important part is that I knew so much about you, Dom. I've seen and read about you in movies and video games, not to mention the online forums."
"Yeah, that's a little creepy."
"Well, I didn't know I'd actually be meeting you," Jay sighed. "Neena, I just... I want no secret between us."
Domino remained silent.
She stood up, walked to the lake's edge, stared at her reflection in water that had reflected dinosaurs for millions of years.
Nearly an hour passed.
Jay didn't move from where he sat, elbows on his knees, watching her back. Domino picked up a smooth stone, turned it over in her fingers, then let it drop. The ripples spread across the lake, distorting her reflection.
A pterodactyl's cry echoed in the distance. The humid air pressed against her skin, thick with the scent of earth and growing things that had no names. She wrapped her arms around herself.
When she finally spoke, her voice was small. "Was me coming into your life, me falling in love with you, all part of your plan? Was it all because you read about me in your world?"
Tears ran down her face as she said it.
Jay was beside her before she could blink, arms wrapping around her from behind, pulling her back against his chest. His hands covered hers, where they gripped her own arms.
"No way is that true. I fell in love with you because you are you, not because I knew about you before." His voice was fierce. "Neena, the woman I saw in movies and the woman I know are different people. You've surprised me, challenged me, made me feel things I never expected."
They talked for a long time after that. Jay told her about Bobby, the old vet from his inner circle, the only other person he'd trusted with this secret. Though he'd lied to Bobby about the specifics, he needed that father figure's steady presence as he prepared for what the world was about to go through.
Domino listened, but something still twisted in her gut. She pulled away slightly, turning to face him.
"If you knew all this," she said, voice harder now, "if you knew about me, about what I'd do, what I'd become, did you ever actually see me? Or just some character you recognized?"
Jay flinched like she'd slapped him.
"That's not fair."
"Isn't it?" Her voice rose. "You're telling me you had a cheat sheet for my life, Jay. How am I supposed to—"
"The movies got you wrong." The words came out sharp, cutting through her building anger. "They made you a side character in someone else's story. They gave you a tragic backstory and called it character development. They never showed you the way you hum when you think no one's watching, or how you always check on everyone else before yourself, or how you pretend you don't care when you care more than anyone I know."
He stepped closer, and she didn't pull back.
"You think I fell in love with ink on paper?" His voice dropped. "I fell in love with you over and over again as I got to know more and more new sides of you. That wasn't in any comic book."
Despite herself, Domino's lips twitched.
"Okay," she said quietly. "Okay."
Eventually, seeing Domino's shoulders finally relax, Jay tried a different approach. "Hey, I have a lot of comic book knowledge stored in my head. You wanna know embarrassing stuff about other heroes?"
That got a flicker of interest. "Wait. Is there embarrassing stuff about me?"
Jay rubbed his neck. "Uuuhhh..."
"Jay."
"Well, it's not much. Just that you're deathly afraid of chickens."
Domino's face went through several expressions in rapid succession. Then she looked away, jaw tight.
Jay surprised says, "Don't tell me you are also afraid of chickens? Dom, I saw devour a whole chicken for breakfast once."
"I was seven," she said, voice flat. "The facility kept them for eggs. One of the handlers thought it would be funny to throw me in the coop, test if my powers would protect me." Her fingers curled into fists. "Turns out luck doesn't mean much when you're a kid getting swarmed by thirty panicked birds with claws and beaks. I was covered in cuts and feathers, screaming, and they just... watched."
The silence stretched.
"Dom, I—"
"And now every time I see one of those beady-eyed bastards, I'm back there." She let out a shaky laugh. "So yeah. I eat them out of spite."
Jay stared at her, something breaking and reforming in his expression. He pulled her close again.
"I'm sorry."
"Not your fault." But she leaned into him anyway. "Is this knowledge why you are always preparing for something bad to happen?"
When they'd both calmed down, Jay took a deep breath. "I have a lot of info on our world. Good and bad. And I spend a lot of time preparing for all the bullshit I can. There's a constant set of cameras watching the area around others. Max created a program specifically checking on the inner circle, keeping me updated on their safety and his. The same is happening for a few others. Peter Parker, Kamala Khan, a lot of prospective superheroes, and villains. There's a lot I've been keeping track of."
He couldn't keep the exhaustion out of his voice. "They talk about the 'mutant problem' like we're some kind of disease. Like humanity was peaceful before the X-gene activated. But humans have been finding reasons to hate each other since the beginning. We're just the latest excuse for the same old fear."
Domino studied his face. "You can't save everyone, Jay."
"I know." The words came out quiet. "But I can try those close to me."
After that, it was just trading stories, trying their best to push past all this. Maybe it would work out, maybe it wouldn't.
But they were honest with each other now.
And that felt damn good.
"So," Domino said, slipping her hand into his. "What exactly are we looking for in Dinosaur Land?"
Jay's grin returned. "Antarctic Vibranium. The Savage Land is the only place where it's available. Also, how sick would it be to have your secret base beside dinosaurs? Plus, I wanted to see if the stories about this place were true."
"And are they?"
Jay gestured at the pterodactyls, the distant sauropods, the impossible greenery. "What do you think?"
Domino squeezed his fingers. "I think my life got a lot weirder after I met you."
"Regret it?"
She pulled him down for a kiss. "Not even a little bit."
Somewhere in the distance, a tyrannosaurus roared, and they both laughed at the absurdity of standing in Antarctica's hidden heart, two people from different universes learning to build something real together.
The Savage Land stretched before them, full of dangers and wonders and possibilities.
Just like their future.
Author's Note:
This was Chapter 100 on my Patreon. Hard to believe we've reached this point, especially since my first fic ended at just 49 chapters.
I didn't want this to just be another number, though. This chapter marks a turning point: Domino learns a truth that reshapes how she sees Jay, and together they step into a place as mysterious and untouched as the path ahead of them.
In a way, it's fitting: just like them, we're venturing deeper into uncharted territory. Thank you for sticking with me this far; here's to the next hundred pages of madness, heart, and discovery.
PS: If you guys missed it, this chapter was inspired by DesertChoclate's most famous fic DIAL.