I've renewed the book cover, and it'll stay that way.
Give me suggestions or ideas for Rod's adventure.
And I think I'll release all the chapters at one time rather than scattering them all over the place.
In the next chapter, another major plot will be hinted at.
Happy reading—peace!
- - - - - - - - - -
The space car's canopy hissed shut, sealing them in with the quiet hum of Rod's custom engine.
Beth was already sprawled in the passenger seat, kicking her legs against the dashboard like she owned the place.
Morty hovered awkwardly in the back, glancing around at all the glowing panels and half-finished gadgets wired into the walls.
"So…" Morty started, "where exactly are we going, Rod?"
Rod flicked a series of switches, the dash lighting up in an almost musical ripple.
"Somewhere fun, Morty.
Somewhere that'll make you forget you're fucking stuck in a permanent puberty loop, Morty."
Morty frowned.
"Permanent what now—Wait, what're you talking about!? 'Cause that's not—"
"Yup." Rod cut him off with a smug grin.
"And now that you know about it, you're gonna start noticing all the weird little tells.
Your brain is itching because it's trying to remember something it knows happened, but it can't pull the file, Morty.
You can't feel it, Morty. But now you know about it...I wonder if you can feel any difference."
Beth spun in her seat to face Morty.
"Morty! Don't you get it? It's why you're so dumb!" she announced cheerfully.
Morty glared. "Wow, thanks...w-what should I call you?"
Beth smirked, "Call me, the greatest of all Beth!"
Morty smirked, "S-So you want me to call you Goab?"
Rod blurted a chuckle, "Pft!!"
Beth stunned, "FUCK YOU, MORTY!"
Rod chuckled, pulling them back to their seats and kept going into the void between stars.
"Don't take it personally. Loops keep you fresh-faced but also keep you you.
Same hormones, same baseline. Makes it harder to change, no matter how much experience you rack up."
"That's… horrible," Morty muttered.
"Yeah," Rod said, smirking, "but also hilarious. Nevertheless, you can grow up whenever you want, but I don't think your personality will ever change, Morty.
Even if you grow your physical body to your actual age.
You're dumb, Morty. Just face it, bwahahah!
Hey Beth! Watch this."
He jerked the wheel hard, the space car spinning through a micro-wormhole that spat them out in the middle of a glowing nebula.
Beth squealed with delight, plastered to her seat.
Morty yelled, grabbing the seatbelt like it was a lifeline.
"WHAT THE HELL WAS THAT, ROD?!"
"Our shortcut to the next vacation spot," Rod replied, deadpan, flipping a lever that released a pair of chrome drink holders from the console.
"Now—anyone want snacks? Or should we go straight to the part where we piss off someone for Beth?"
Beth immediately voted for "piss off someone dangerous."
Morty groaned. Rod grinned.
"Majority dictates the kingdom follows."
The car shot forward, leaving the nebula behind, three mismatched silhouettes outlined against the blur of stars.
Rod's hand hovered over the navigation sphere, the little holographic galaxies spinning beneath his palm.
"First stop's gotta set the tone," he said, eyes flicking between the glowing orbs.
"Something wild enough to break you in, Morty."
Beth leaned over the console. "Lame. Let's go somewhere that explodes!"
Morty winced. "What do you mean 'explodes'?"
Rod smirked. "Alright, fine."
He slammed his palm down.
The nav sphere flared green, and the car dove into a ribbon-thin tear in reality.
The next second they shot out over a sprawling floating marketplace that stretched across dozens of interconnected asteroid shards.
Neon signs in alien scripts screamed from every angle.
Holographic hawkers shouted in a dozen languages.
Something that looked like a cross between a stingray and a cruise ship glided past overhead, spraying mist over the crowd.
Beth's eyes lit up. "Ohhh, this is awesome!"
Morty stared out the viewport.
"Is that—are those aliens fighting over a stall?"
On the street below, two creatures—each the size of a van and covered in glittering scales—were slamming into each other while a vendor tried to sell popcorn to onlookers.
Rod grinned. "Welcome to Zarkonn.
Everything's legal until it's not, and even then it's negotiable."
He dropped the car into a parking tether, the clamps locking onto the frame with a thunk.
The canopy slid open, and the noise of the market hit them like a wall—music, haggling, laughter, and the occasional sound of something breaking.
Beth hopped out first. "Can we get food? And weapons? And pets?!"
Morty climbed out more slowly, still gawking. "Erhhj..."
Rod slung an arm around each of them, steering them toward the chaos.
As they stepped into the crush of bodies and booths, a group of insectoid street performers began playing something halfway between a rock concert and a war chant.
The crowd surged with the beat.
Beth was already dragging Rod toward a stall where a cloaked vendor waved what looked suspiciously like a still-moving alien skull.
Morty stayed frozen for a second—until a glowing drink was shoved into his hand by a passing stranger who winked and said, "Don't let it bite."
Rod laughed, already negotiating for something sharp and probably illegal.
And that's when the first explosion went off.
The air on Zarkonn was already thick with smoke and the aftertaste of an explosion when the crowd went dead silent.
She floated down like some cosmic executioner—cape snapping behind her, eyes burning with starlight.
The last Vindicator still breathing.
The one who hadn't just walked away… she'd run.
Supernova!
"Drop your precious crap!" she barked, voice booming through the asteroid marketplace.
"Now!"
Vendors shrieked, throwing valuables to the ground.
Shards of alien crystal, pulsating eggs, and weapons that hummed with a hungry energy scattered everywhere.
Chaos spread like fire in oxygen.
Beth's eyes lit up. "Oooooh, let's rob the robber!"
She tugged Rod's shirt hard enough to wrinkle it.
"We can pretend to help her, then we can hit her on the head, then take her loot!"
Morty, pale, shook his head like a man remembering his own funeral.
"No, no, no, no—she tried to choke me to death last time! I am not getting space-strangled again!"
Rod's smirk widened. He reached out, ruffling both of their hair in one big sweep.
"Relax, you two."
His tone was too calm.
They walked toward her. The crowd instinctively parted—nobody wanted to be in the blast radius.
Supernova spotted movement.
Her head snapped toward them, her cosmic energy flaring.
She raised a hand, her fingers curling like a vice.
"You wanna be my example? I'll make it fast—"
Then she froze mid-gesture.
Her eyes went wide.
"Yo, Nova!" Rod called out like they were old drinking buddies.
"It's been a while! How's life?"
Her face twitched.
She looked down, shoulders trembling.
Mumbles leaked out of her, shaky at first, then rising.
"Rod… Rod… Rod…"
It built, the syllables hammering faster and harder.
"Rod. Rod. ROD. ROD. RODERICK!"
Beth groaned without missing a beat, still trailing behind him.
"Why is everywhere we go, there's always someone screaming your name?"
Rod barked a laugh.
"Hahahahaha! NOVAAAAAAA!"
Then the ground cracked.
A purple cosmic hue erupted around Supernova, swirling with orbiting miniature planets that crushed the air with their pull.
Rod's aura answered—if you could call it an aura.
It wasn't one color; it was all colors at once, fractals of light bending in impossible ways, rippling like wormhole edges.
Streaks of gold snapped into crimson, then bled into green and ultraviolet, clashing and twisting in on themselves until reality seemed ready to split.
The pressure between them made the asteroid's surface fracture like ice under a sledgehammer.
Lightning danced along the ground.
Neon signs flickered and died.
The whole market was no longer Zarkonn Prime—it was painted in two colors.
Supernova's devouring purple and Rod's impossible, multicolored wormhole burn.
And those auras? They were fighting for dominance.
The pressure snapped first—A deep, concussive whump that wasn't quite a sound so much as the air itself getting punched in the lungs.
Everyone in the market felt it before they heard it. Then came the light.
Purple and rainbow lances ripped upward, skewering the dusty Zarkonn sky until the clouds shredded apart.
Reality warped at the seams.
Market stalls bent like they'd been dropped into a black hole simulator.
A crate of space-mangos liquefied on the spot.
One poor alien's hover-bike folded in half mid-air and clanged to the ground.
The crowd didn't need instructions.
They screamed in fifty languages and ran.
Tentacled merchants dove headfirst into sewers.
A three-eyed barista flung their entire cart of boiling kaf'kor into the street and bolted.
Someone's pet slime just… exploded.
Morty was already yelling, eyes darting everywhere.
"OH GOD—Rod! Beth!
The atmosphere's peeling!
It's—holy crap—the sky's on fire!
The sky is on fire! WHY is the sky on fire?!"
Beth clapped like a kid at a fireworks show.
"Yesssss! More! Make the purple explode, Rod!"
Rod didn't answer her.
His grin only widened as the ground under his boots fractured into glowing fault lines, pieces of stone levitating from the sheer clash of forces.
Supernova's planets swung closer to her, orbiting at impossible speeds, each one humming with enough mass to crush a moon.
Her hair streamed behind her in zero-G waves, eyes locked on him.
Neither had thrown a punch yet——and Zarkonn was already dying.
Supernova floated above the shattered crust, her silhouette lit in searing violet fire.
Her eyes burned like miniature suns.
She exploded even more of her aura.
A surge of blazing purple energy roared outward, staining the sky with streaks of ultraviolet lightning.
The ground buckled, air screamed, and the horizon rippled like heat haze.
Rod stood there in his tattered coat, a crooked smirk on his face, holding a half-empty flask.
"Nice glowstick impression, Nova. Do you miss me? I thought we'd meet later, though."
Then he tilted his head back and laughed.
His skin prickled as his own aura ignited with even more fervour!
The atmosphere warped around him, reds slamming into blues, greens slicing through golds, colors bending into shades the human eye shouldn't even comprehend.
The planet's sky became a battlefield of pigments, the very light spectrum rebelling under their combined will.
The auras collided—and reality flinched.
Purple and rainbow slammed together in a soundless boom, the impact sending a ring of pure force tearing across the continent.
Mountains folded like paper.
Oceans vaporized into glowing steam.
Supernova darted first, a comet of violet fury.
She closed the gap in less than a blink, driving her fist toward Rod's skull.
He caught it. One-handed.
"You punch like you're a woman," Rod quipped, before slamming his forehead into hers.
The shockwave blew them apart, chunks of the planet's crust launching into orbit.
"Wait, technically you're one."
She spun midair, fury igniting hotter. "You think this is a joke?!"
She thrust both hands forward—BWOOM!—a beam of pure stellar annihilation tore toward him.
Rod raised his palm, rainbow aura coiling like a serpent, and split the beam in two as if parting a curtain.
Then he vanished.
No—he moved so fast her eyes didn't track it until his fist connected with her ribs, bending space around the impact.
She coughed blood that instantly burned into purple sparks.
"You're quick," she admitted, wiping her mouth.
"Quick? Honey, I'm not quick, alright? Phrasing my dear Nova, how you phras—"
Supernova roared, igniting her full mass into a miniature sun.
Her body blurred, her blows raining down like meteors, each strike fracturing tectonic plates.
Rod didn't dodge all—one punch caught his jaw, sending him skidding across the surface and ploughing a trench miles long.
He spat a tooth.
It regenerated instantly in rainbow light.
"I wanna say phrasing is important, meh.
But oh, you're still fun, Nova. You're always fun, hahahah!"
This time, he attacked first—A burst of multicolored shockwaves erupted from his body, distorting gravity.
She staggered as the ground beneath her inverted, flipping like a Möbius strip.
Rod flickered through her guard, each hit from him sounding less like a punch and more like the world itself breaking.
Supernova finally caught his arm—And they locked eyes.
For one second, the entire planet froze.
The skies were half-purple, half-rainbow, reality suspended between their auras' war.
Then—Everything moved again, but faster, wilder, unstoppable.
They tore through the mantle, fought in magma, punched each other through chunks of the planet now floating in space.
Their auras carved glowing scars into the void.
The first round had left the world looking like someone had bitten a cookie and spat out the crumbs into space.
Supernova hovered, battered but still blazing, her purple aura pulsing like a dying star refusing to go quietly.
Rod stood across from her—grinning, because that's what lunatics do when they're having the time of their life.
Below them, on the last chunk of solid ground, Beth and Morty stood inside a dome of shifting colors—Rod's multi-energy shield, a swirling cocktail of plasma, chrononic ripples, hard-light constructs, and whatever the hell "prismatic entropy" was.
Morty tapped on it nervously.
"Uh, Beth? Is it normal for Rod fighting out of nowhere a-and does a forcefield hum in, like, seven keys at once?"
Beth didn't take her eyes off the battle.
"When Rod's involved? Both of your questions have the same answer, Morty. Yupp!"
Supernova shot forward, her fists now glowing inside her aura, doubling the destructive output.
She drove Rod back with a blitz of blows, each one detonating like collapsing suns.
Rod blocked with one arm while tapping on a small wrist-mounted console with the other, muttering equations that sounded like they were written by a drunk god.
Supernova snarled, "You can't multitask against me!"
Rod didn't even look up.
"I can poly-task, sweetheart. That's a whole different league."
With a flick of his wrist, a cluster of rainbow-lit drones burst from a portal behind him, whirling in erratic patterns around Supernova.
They scanned her—her bone density, muscle fiber arrangement, aura wavelength. One drone even zipped inside her mouth for a nanosecond before she could bite down.
She blasted them apart… but too late. Rod already had the data.
"Alright, Nova," Rod said, cracking his neck. "I need to remind you about our deal.
I let you off, and you need to show me a different prowess every fucking, time we meet!
I don't believe you found another new thing to show me, Nova!
Now, I'll show you when you go against my order. I showed this to you before, and now I'll show you again!"
He slammed both palms together, his rainbow aura tightening into a singularity between them.
Then—SCHRRAAK!—energy erupted outward, building a carbon-mirror clone of her physique around his frame.
Muscle fibers wove from light and raw matter, bones sculpted from compressed neutronium lattices, veins carrying liquid chronos.
In seconds, Rod wasn't just matching her aura—he was matching her body.
His skin is still human, but you can see several auras swirling around his body, creating a pattern of the universe!
His body shone with stars and galaxy clusters.
Now every punch, every kick, each blow created twin shockwaves that split space itself.
Beth and Morty watched from inside the shield as pieces of the fight ripped the color out of reality before slamming it back in.
Morty pressed his face to the barrier.
Beth shouted, "FUCK HER UP, ROOOD!"
"Oh my god, h—he's turning into her, but, like… better?"
Beth smirked. "No. I don't think so, I think it's Rod turning his body into capable using stars power?
I don't know the details, Rod doesn't teach me that yet."
Supernova's confidence started cracking.
Her attacks weren't just blocked—they were answered with improved versions.
She swung with a meteor punch; Rod swung with the same punch but layered with gravitational bleed-through, bending her arm mid-swing.
She tried a flare burst; Rod returned it, but his carried a spectrum shift that burned through her aura like acid.
Finally, he seized her wrist mid-punch, twisted, and with one fluid motion drove her face-first into the planetary core fragment beneath them.
It cracked like glass.
He held her there as his multicolored aura roared to maximum.
"See, Nova… you were strong because you thought you were born unique."
He leaned in, voice low but sharp.
"But I'm strong because I AM ________!"
[You can fill in the blanks. If your answer is correct, I'll like the comment!]
The rainbow aura imploded, then detonated—A wave of light and force so intense that even Beth and Morty's shield buckled for a second.
Supernova's aura shattered like brittle glass, her body flung into the void, her light extinguishing in silence.
Rod exhaled, the rainbow-muscles unravelling back into his natural frame.
The multi-energy shield dissolved around Beth and Morty.
Morty's eyes were huge. "Dude… you just… you just killed her."
Rod winked, tossing him a can of soda from a pocket universe.
"Haha, no, I wasn't, Morty. She showed me something new, and I need to let her go.
Now, now, I think I can create something really special, hehehe. BETH!"
Flashback:
A distant space station bar—neon, sticky, louder than black holes—somewhere safe enough for cosmic fugitives
Supernova drifts in, aura dim, eyes haunted. She orders something strong. Or… anything.
Lights flicker over her. She's scanning the room with that burnt-out cosmic glare.
And then she sees him.
A man exactly like her, same cosmic aura, same shimmering presence—but human-shaped, grounded, and… astonishingly beautiful.
His aura pulses soft lavender, matching hers, but calmer.
Coordinates ping in her brain.
Supernovarian? Impossible. Myth? Hallucination?
He turns—slowly—and she witnesses "the most beautiful face a man can have."
Think cosmic perfection with a smirk that says he knows how ridiculously gorgeous he is.
She lowers her guard—just a little.
He introduces himself, "Call me Gobble," he says, voice echoing like starlight.
They talk.
Pour drinks.
He's charming, attentive, not bewildered by the wreckage she is.
One drink leads to another.
She's in his sleek space car—panoramic views of nebulae streaking past, the hum of exotic engines soft under her ear.
She should be alert… but the exhaustion is cosmic-level.
Her eyelids droop.
She doesn't resist.
She falls asleep.
Then, she heard him said, "....me's Ro....rick…San..."
[Inside the bar's reflection in the car's window as she sleeps]
The man's face… shifts. A subtle wobble, like a poorly edited hologram.
Then—the face solidifies into someone else entirely.
Rod Sanchez. Rainbow aura flickering instead of lavender.
He leans close, whispering, "Damn… acting like a cosmic loner was kinda hard. Hehehe…"
He pauses, grinning like he's unlocked a game.
"Wait, my dear Nova… I'll just study you for a little bit… MUAHAHAHAA!"
Cue lighting glitching, the space car's hum warping into eerie silence.
Black. Not space—black like there's nothing to be seen.
Supernova's eyes flick open.
She's not in the space car anymore. She's… nowhere.
Her vision glitches—frames skipping—like reality's running on bad Wi-Fi. She floats in a void, yet feels something cold beneath her back.
She tries to move—finds her arms and legs bound, not by chains but by streams of color—rods of crystallized light piercing through the air and locking her in place.
Her aura flickers weakly.
That's when she notices—half her star-core is exposed, the molten, burning singularity that pulses inside her chest like a sun with a heartbeat.
Rod's voice echoes from everywhere and nowhere.
"Ah, good morning, Nova. Or… whatever counts as 'morning' when you're inside a custom-rendered RodSpace™ Reality Box."
She snarls, "Let me out, Sanchez!"
Rod steps into view—except his face is three seconds delayed from his movements.
His rainbow aura shimmers like oil on water, distorting her surroundings with every pulse.
"Oh, Nova, you are out. Out of your reality, anyway.
I pulled you into mine. Welcome to the sandbox, baby."
She looks down—her body's wrong. Her arms, instead of ending in hands, stretch into translucent tubes feeding into floating tanks filled with liquified colors.
Inside the tanks, she sees swirling miniature supernovae, each one sparking like a dying star.
She realizes—they're pieces of her own collapsing star core, siphoned out.
Rod twirls a syringe-like instrument the size of a harpoon.
"This here? This isn't just extraction—it's starfold separation.
You're a living collapsing star, so I figured… why not fold the gravitational boundary of your body and spread it like cosmic butter?
Oh, and I replaced about 14% of your plasma matrix with my own rainbow entropy strands.
For science. And for… y'know. Fun."
She strains against the bindings, aura flaring—but each time she flares, the colors holding her pulse back in perfect counter-spectrum, sucking away her energy.
"Fighting just fuels the system," Rod says, sipping something from a glowing mug.
"Every watt of cosmic anger you spit out gets recycled into a clone-cell generator I'm using to simulate your entire species.
Basically… I've already got baby Supernovarians brewing in the corner there."
She whips her head toward the corner—and her stomach twists.
Suspended in fluid are… copies of her. Dozens. Half-formed. Some with eyes, some without.
All twitching like they're dreaming of exploding.
Rod's grin widens.
"You're a rare species, Nova. And you're the last one. That makes you perfect for research.
Your biology's like a dying sun with a hangover—unstable, dramatic, and dangerously hot.
I'm mapping your decay curves, your lightshift under stress, and—oh yeah—your emotional frequency spectrum."
She hisses, "You think you can understand me by… dissecting me?"
Rod leans closer until his rainbow-lit eyes fill her vision.
"Understand you? Oh, sweetheart… I am you now. And once I'm done, I'll be better than you ever were.
She lets out a raw, cosmic scream—
The reality around her cracks like glass, glitching into multiple versions of the lab at once.
In one, she sees herself already dead; in another, she's free and killing him; in another, there's nothing but darkness.
Rod taps a console, stabilizing it all instantly.
"Easy there, Nova. Break my reality, and you break you—you're synced now.
And you don't wanna find out what desynchronized annihilation feels like."
- - - - - - - - - -
Do you get any of that?
OOoohhweee—Supernova is kinda hot, but I can't fuck a cheater brains out, can I.
That's all guys, peace!