Victor

DISCLAIMERS

I do not own the rights to any of the characters of the Marvel or DC universe. Any original characters referenced in this tale are my intellectual property (I think? copyright law is confusing :S)

I know and care little about the sexuality of any of the creators, actors, or characters involved in the Marvel/DC universe. Similarly, this story contains graphic descriptions of gay male sex. If that may offend you, I suggest looking elsewhere for entertainment. Otherwise enjoy some smut. The smut will be widespread and hopefully organic to character growth.

Partial credit goes to the story Mutation by Phoenixfire543 (on nifty) for inspiring me to write my own variation on the whole superhero genre. His protagonist inspired mine power wise, though mine varies a lot in temperament and disposition.

Glossary

JAJ – John as Jean. 'link' - psychically connecting at the middle layer in order to share/blend powers or to create a sensory link in order to share sensations. tk - telekinesis tk hands - hands consisting of tk energy used to manipulate matter invisibly. text between asterixes indicate telepathic communication ^text between these indicate communication through manipulation of water vibration to produce sound^ 'other sight' - enhanced perception of reality, including but not limited to perceiving weaknesses, electro magnetic spectrums, temporal disturbances, gravitational distortions, temperature fluctuations, electron movements and mystical enchantments/energy. 'second sight' - visions of past, present and future. interspace - the space where Victor stashes stuff temporarily using teleportation energy.

Author's Note

This sub chapter gets very meta... whether that's a good thing or not is completely subjective. Personally I'm fine with breaking the 4th wall sometimes as long as it's not done too frequently or stupidly (see House of Cards or literal God resurrecting Ben Grimm in Marvel Comics).

Other notes of interest, sex, violence and genetic manipulation happens while the fate of everything hangs in the balance...

Chapter 9

Part 3 Reaping

Month 10

I made political arrangements with Nate Grey, a future clone son (complicated) of Cyclops and Jean Grey from an alternate timeline for a NAP with his island nation of Providence.

I publicly announced to the world that the millions of new mutants (triggered by Hope releasing the Phoenix force) could find safe harbor in Latveria protected by aliens, Asgardians, Help Bots and enhanced super soldiers while receiving specialized training if they wanted or needed it.

First Training session with Iceman since the X Men fought the Avengers and then various X men fought against Phoenix possessed members. The school had been relocated to Limbo, Illyana's home dimension. Training has been suspended due to all the internal conflicts with the various X Men and Cyclops recent calls for revolution from the new mutants.

We work on Iceman's control, he's been practicing his control of ice proxies while I've been busy with my other responsibilities.

After training we gossip... or exchange information.

I asked him "I heard you took down Illyana and Colossus while they were Phoenix possessed."

"Yeah... but I didn't really do much, just kind of let slip that they got stronger after Namor got taken down and they ended up fighting each other. I heard you did that."

"Yeah. I drained 95% of the moisture from his body and around him while Scarlet Witch fired Hex Bolts at him. Namor may have had the powers of the water god but he didn't have the experience to wield it against someone with a similar power set."

"Wakanda was terrible."

"That it was."

"It would have been worse if you weren't there." Bobby said.

"Things can always get worse."

"It seems like it lately."

"Life as a mutant. Never a dull moment. Regardless of how much you may crave some boredom from time to time. Always have to prepare for the next disaster."

Second training session with Iceman, more training on controlling more ice proxies and how long to keep them active before they become sentient and problematic to use.

After training Gossiping

Beast has fucked with time and brought back the younger versions of the original X men (Angel, Jean Grey, Cyclops, Beast and Iceman) to teach a more violent Cyclops a lesson about the youthful idealism they used to have back in the day. Beast also was dying from some unrelated condition and Young (non blue) Beast helped to reverse his condition.

Third Training session is cut short as Iceman seems distracted. We go back to his room to talk.

Iceman shared his frustration with recent events including an awkward conversation with his younger self (which Young Jean Grey attended) over his sexual orientation because Young Jean Grey outed Young Iceman due to unrestrained telepathy. I'm not a fan of Young Jean since she tried to mind probe me upon our first meeting, which wasn't the part that annoyed me. It was her complaining about me to Emma Frost simply because I could erect telepathic defenses to stop an inexperienced class 5 telepath from reading my thoughts. Nosy whining brat.

I commiserated with Bobby about how annoying Young Jean Grey is.

"Did you know before about me being?"

"Yes."

"How?"

"First training session in the Danger Room you were checking out the ass of my ice proxy. That and the almost moment with the flesh proxy in your bedroom. It was kind of obvious."

"Oh..." he trailed off for a moment and then jumped tracks and asked "Why didn't you say anything?"

"I did, I told you if you ever wanted to talk about anything I was a phone call away. I figured that if you wanted me to know you'd tell me in your own time . It's not like I was in any particular rush, we'll live forever if we're smart."

"Oh... I guess you think I'm pretty stupid hiding something like this all this time. That's what everyone seems to think."

I put my hand on his shoulder "Trust me when I say, I never think about anything the way everyone else does. It's both my blessing and my curse. Anyway, it's not like I occupy some high moral ground, I've done some really stupid, crazy things in my past. We all have to find our own path in life, no matter how winding it ends up being."

"What kind of stupid things?" Bobby asked.

I 'linked' with him and shared my memories of my time in the Xavier school looking for love in all the wrong places and using sex as a coping mechanism to avoid thinking about what Jackson had wanted to do with me... and about how every moment I had to be careful to control my inner power so as not to hurt my friends and randoms around me and how it was alienating and lonely. Some of the memories were quite graphic with me getting fucked by lots of different mutants and humans, Luke, Onyx, Mark, Sean, Mike, Allesandro, Scale and quite a few nameless strangers. In hindsight my early sex life seemed kind of excessive and desperate and maladjusted but the memories were still hot.

He gets hard... so do I...

I told him it's time for a new lesson... naked. He objects but I ignored his protests and teleported away his clothes and my armor. He tried to get away and I teleported behind him grabbing him around his middle. He freezes (literally) I stand behind him my thick cock pressed against his tightly clenched butt cheeks, my mouth an inch away from his left ear, I placed one hand on his ice abs.

"Now let me in Iceman."

"I haven't..."

"This isn't about sex."

"Then why can I feel your dick behind me..."

"You're a sexy naked ice man and I'm a filthy homosexual... Erections happen but let me into your mind so I can show you how to modify your mortal body by manipulating your ice body."

I 'linked' with him on the inner level, sharing my memories of bodily modification... We start off with something small, modifying the length of his pinky finger, gradually moving up in difficulty until we're adjusting his height and mass together. The physical closeness along with the psychic connection helped to make corrections as Iceman experimented.

I was proud of him... and turned on. He turned around having adjusted himself to be a couple inches taller and thicker all around. He looked so happy and I kissed him. It surprised us both but Iceman kissed me back, softly, experimentally and I deepened the kiss until we were both hard and grinding our hard cocks against each other getting worked up.

I broke off the kiss to his obvious disappointment but I disappeared my underwear and his eyes glazed a little at the size and thickness and he nervously gulped.

"Don't worry, I'm going to show you something fun" and I linked with him again, steering him as I shared my knowledge of anatomy and blood flow and all the usually boring stuff in order to teach him how to upgrade his cock from 7 inches to 9...

Then I kissed him again hard and deep, squeezing his new cock before trailing kisses downward until my mouth was full of hard cock. He moaned "Oh god, that's so good."

It's good for me too as I stroked my own cock as his pleasure became mine and I deepened the connection so it was two way and he groaned as my pleasure added to his and I deepthroated him faster and he ...

groaned and shouted "I'M CUMMING!" and he filled my mouth with salty goodness.

I stood up, my hard cock, rigid and dripping precum and I looked Bobby over with lust and fondness and affection. He's so cheerful and friendly on the surface but below the surface are pockets of doubt, fear, self loathing and anger. I found it intriguing and endearing. "Mmm tasty."

"I'm so sorry, I couldn't hold back."

"No need to apologize, it's good to let go and have some fun."

"So um... What now?"

"What would you like to do now?"

"I don't know." He said but his cock was still firm and hard and wet and pointing right at me and he kept looking at my cock with equal parts of desire and trepidation.

"You want to go back to mine and see what happens? Less chance we'll be interrupted by whichever disaster of the week the X men wants to meddle with."

He gave a short nervous laugh and nodded. I pulled him into my arms and teleported our stuff into interspace while I teleported us back to Latveria. We arrived within my room and he said "Nice place."

I looked around, it had a large bed and basic furnishings but I hadn't really spent much time there other than to sleep in recent months. "It works for me."

Then there was an awkward pregnant silence filled by doubts and possibilities as I calculated the wisdom of pursuing this course of action. I closed the gap between us and kissed him, making a choice to take the risks, pulling him into my arms, where he relaxed and hardened at the same time, I kissed him and stroked him while maintaining a loose sensory connection. Just enough to make it extra stimulating without the risk of premature ejaculations.

I led him to my bed, pulling him down onto the mattress as our tongues tangled and our hands roamed wild and impatient as they squeezed and fondled and stroked and slid over warm skin. I pinned him to the bed by the wrists and for a moment he looks scared but I kissed him and his eyes close as he surrenders to my kiss and then my kisses trailed downwards and I used 'other sight' and 'hydro senses' to detect the level of effect each kiss has...

I licked, suckled and nibbled on each of his hard erect nubs of nipples while 'ice hands' pinned him down by the wrists as I trailed down kisses over his 6 pack, making wet trails as I slowly made my way to his hard throbbing cock. I licked and blew on his cock and just before I deep throated him I made a quick gesture and had a mouthful of his left testes. He moaned and groaned and squealed as I rolled around his left ball in my mouth before I put his other ball in my mouth then I released his balls and he thrusted his groin at me suggestively and said "please."

"Not yet, there are other games to play first." I lifted his legs into the air, keeping them up with another pair of 'ice hands' as I buried my face in his tight little hole, he tasted musky but clean.

He groaned and squirmed "What are you doing?"

"Just messing about..." I rubbed my index finger against his puckered hole, making little circles... "Have you even been fucked before?"

"NO!"

"Have you ever fucked yourself?"

"No." He said softer, lying to me.

I abandoned my position between his legs to straddle his chest my hard cock poking his chin up to look at me. "Don't try to lie to me, I'll know."

Bobby sighed, his face coloring with embarassment. "Ok, I tried it once with a carrot, to see what it felt like... when I was younger."

"A reverse snow man, how amusing..."

"What?" then he got it and said "Oh... I wasn't snow at the time."

"Must you ruin a perfectly filthy joke with facts."

He smart assed "You told me not to lie."

I leaned over and kissed him and said "It's a good thing I like you or I'd spank you for that." My movement adjusted the angle of my cock so that my cock head rested on top of his chin rather than the underside of his chin. Bobby looked at it with longing "You want a taste?"

"Maybe."

I moved my cock a little so that my cock head brushed against his soft pretty lips. It only took him a second to swallow a mouthful of my cock with his warm wet mouth, I groaned, a lot of pleasure and a little bit of pain as he scraped my cock with his teeth.

I increased the telepathic link between us so that he could feel what I felt, which sidestepped the awkward corrections necessary to improve his cock sucking technique as he now knew how everything he did felt on me, bypassing the sometimes problematic corrections of other people sexual techniques. He was able to experiment, finding the best way to please me, without the needs for words, which incidentally pleased him as my pleasure had become his.

I stroked his cock with a 'tk hand' increasing the pleasure flowing between us as he sped up his cock sucking. I rotated myself 180 degrees and swallowed his cock whole. We 69'ed for less than a minute before the rebounding, resonating sexual pleasure shattered us both... and we both got a mouthful of cum. He may have got a couple of mouthfuls, I hadn't had sex or wanked in over 6 months.

He sputtered as he tried to swallow it all, I eased off him so he could swallow it without my cock slamming his esophagus. It had been a while...

I rolled off and away from him, panting and blissful as we enjoyed the afterglow of a double orgasm. The room smelled like sweat and cum. I shifted about cuddling up to him, my hard cock pressed against his thigh and my face nuzzling into his neck.

"You're still horny?"

Little bit. I grinded my cock a little into his warm solid thigh, wanting to be inside him, to feel him beneath me, to cum inside him, to mark him as mine.

"Doesn't feel like a little bit."

I kissed his neck, trailing kisses, nibbling on his adam's apple and stroking his semi hard cock until it was rock hard again. He groaned and pushed me away "I'm sore and sleepy."

"Sorry, it's hard to resist playing with you when you look so hot..."

He shifted to ice and said "Can I sleep now?"

"I don't know. Can you sleep like that?"

He shifted back to flesh and bone and he responded with "I don't know."

"Neither do I, how about we nap and figure it out later."

"mmm yeah that sounds good," he rolled over onto his side and closed his eyes. I nestled in behind him, squeezing my hard cock in between his cute virgin butt cheeks.

"Goodnight."

He didn't argue just drifting off to sleep in my arms, it felt good even though part of me wanted to drive my hard cock into him and make him beg for more. I shook off the lingering trace of Phorcys out of my mind and settled to sleep.

I woke to Iceman's soft exploration of my body and hard cock. He looked embarassed at being caught out and I simply said "It's okay, feel free to touch, lick or bite me. I don't mind at all."

He smiled, relieved and kissed me, trying his own variation of 'ice hands', they weren't as well formed or as controled as mine had been but I liked that he was learning from me even while we were naked. I admired that. I also really liked the way his tongue felt trailing over my body and down to my cock. He licked at it and blew on it. I deepened the connection between us so it was about mid strength, he'd feel about 50% of what I felt... Then he moved down to my balls. It felt nice having someone make the moves again, it'd been decades since I had an active lover, not since Hakeem. Then he lifted my legs and paused while looking at my puckered hole.

"You don't have to if you don't want to. Rimming isn't everyone's thing..."

"I want to try it." and then he was tentatively licking at my hole and then lapping at my hole, then driving his tongue into my hole hungrily.

"Oh yeah, that's great Bobby, give it to me..."

He pulled away. "Guess I don't need to ask you if you've been fucked before." He said as he pressed a finger against my puckered hole, I relaxed and his finger slipped into me, it felt nice. I shared with him a memory of using water as a lubricant and as an ice dildo... "You're filthy."

"I know I am but what are you?" We both shared a brief moment of laughter, before he added a second finger inside me, and I moaned, wanting more, needing more and he gave it to me, he shoved a third finger alongside the other, fingering my hole, stretching me out, hitting my prostate. The finger fucking was hot but the expression of lust and dominance and the stiff cock that he was stroking with his other hand made it even hotter.

"Insanely horny."

"Yeah I used to be that way all the time. Want to fuck me?"

"You sure?"

I had a short outburst of laughter that I smothered and said "Yes. Fuck me." I shared an image of the how... and Bobby like a good student did what he was told and lifted my legs higher, lined up his cock with my hole and pushed and he was partially inside me.

"Wow."

"Yeah. Give me all of it." I grabbed his bum and pulled him closer, forcing him deeper into me and we kissed as he drove into me slowly. I slapped his ass FUCK ME BOBBY

"Oh God, it feels so good."

I rested my ankles on his shoulders, giving Bobby easy access as he plowed my hole. Bobby fucked me hard for a couple of minutes while we exchanged wet sloppy kisses and rubbed our hands all over each other's bodies... Then he blew inside me which triggered my own second orgasm. He pulled out, panting.

"That was fun."

"I hadn't even kissed a guy till today and now I've fucked you... Is that normal?" Bobby asked.

"I've never really been that familiar with normal but it does seem to be fairly common around me."

"My cock is sore."

"So's my ass."

"I'm sorry."

"I'm not. I had fun."

"So did I."

"Good. Shall we do it again?" I asked.

"I should head back. Where's my clothes?"

I teleported in his clothes and he got dressed, then I got armored up and teleported him back home. He was quiet and thoughtful when I left him in his room.

Week 4 Training Session with ice man. We spent an hour working on ice proxy armies pretending that last week hadn't happened...

Afterwards in his room, the sexual tension was palpable.

"So..."

"Yes?"

"So anything interesting happened since I last saw you ?" I asked.

"Well some people came back from the future to mess with us, then more people came back to stop them, which included a future version of myself that was an ice wizard and one that looked like a ice hulk... Usual insanity around here."

"Sounds more interesting than what I've been up to. I've been having technical problems in my lab with my transdimensional probes, I don't know if it's the transdimensional gateway or the probes, sometimes I get perfectly fine reception from my probes and other times nothing but whiteness. Some of the worlds I cataloged I double checked and either my coordinates are off or the probes are being weird in certain universes or they've disappeared entirely. I have no idea what's going on."

"Mmm sounds weird." Bobby said sounding disinterested and distracted. The disinterest in my technical project wasn't surprising even the Phalanx were more interested in their various responsibilities than my current intellectual and technological conundrum. I let the silence linger waiting for Iceman to say what he really wanted to say instead of engaging in small talk. Several minutes went by in silence, which I used to scan the surroundings with hydrosenses, flick through a couple books in the library with 'water hands' and generally calculate transdimensional variables, pondering whether there was such a thing as transdimensional drift and whether it was worth risking a trip into the Infinite Gap to find the answers I wanted. Then Bobby spoke "I can't stop thinking about we did last week."

"Do you regret it? " I asked, legitimately curious as to his current head space, as he had taken my lessons to heart and had blocked his surface thoughts from casual detection and I didn't want to telepathically probe him.

"It's not that, I don't know what it means..."

"Us having sex?" He nodded. "It means I think you're hot and I like you and I wanted your naked body against mine and to ravish you stupid."

"Oh." He blushed, looking down. "So you like me?"

"Duh." I walked over and lifted his chin and gave him a brief peck on the lips. "Why do you think I've been hanging out with you so much?"

"Because I'm a pivot apparently. Whatever that means." he said looking directly at me.

"It means you're important." and I kissed him again, liking the feel of his lips against mine. He pulled me closer by grabbing the back of my head and french kissed me. I kissed him back harder and my hands roamed underneath his shirt, feeling his soft skin over firm hard muscle.

He pulled away for a moment and asked "Your place?"

"Yes" I teleported us back to my room.

I teleported away my armor and linked us in a two way connection on the middle level, sharing with him the knowledge of how to do 'water voice' and how to communicate telepathically through the link so we wouldn't need to use our mouths to share information, freeing them for more entertaining uses...

I stripped him naked with 'tk hands' and kissed him and stroked him and teased him and licked him and that quickly we were naked and hard and 69ing in my bed, his hard cock driving into my throat while his filled mine, I liked having his tight little bubble butt in my eyesight, I teased his hole with a single finger as the pleasure reverberated between us, through our sensory link.

I eased a finger into his hole as he fucked my mouth faster and faster yeah fuck me with your finger, I rubbed against his prostate, enjoying the feel of his tight hole squeezing around my finger and a few seconds later he spasmed above me, Oh god and he pumped his sperm into my waiting mouth, his pleasure swamped me and I emptied my balls into his throat, which he swallowed quickly and hungrily. He rolled off me, panting.

"Well that was fun."

"Yeah..." he turned about so that we faced each. "I was wondering if you'd like to, you know..."

"You'll have to be a bit more specific, I'm stupider after I blow."

"Would you?..." he gestured towards his bum, rubbing his finger against his hot little pink hole...

"Fuck you ?"

"Well that's not exactly the words I'd use..."

"Have sex with, make love to, top, pop your cherry? Pick a colloquilalism and say it out loud. I want to hear the words from your pretty little mouth."

Bobby made a cute little pout of frustration and I slapped his cute little butt.

"Top me please? I want to feel what it's like and we've... you know."

"Yeah I guess I do know. Any particular preference of position?"

"I want to see you as you do it."

"Okay, lets try cowboy to start off with, you can set the pace to start off with."

Then I used the ambient water to make ropes of water around Bobby's legs and wrists, with 'tk hands' cupping his ass and stroking his cock and I streamed trickles of water up inside him, slicking him up as he moaned as the water was cold, then warm and swirling... I wet my hard cock, lying back and then Bobby was suspending over my cock and I strengthened the connection between us so that he could share my power and take control of the 'water hands' and 'tk hands'.

He eased onto my cock, for a moment there was pain but then there was the sensation of his tight hole clamped around my sensitive cock head, the pleasure pain flowed through us both, the pain a little stronger than the pleasure but the pain faded as his hole adjusted to the unnatural intruder and opened up. Bobby stopped paying attention to the 'hands' and he slipped down a few inches, driving me deeper inside of him. I groaned as he moaned deeply as I filled more of him. I grabbed his ass, rising to a seated position and kissing him. The pleasure grew stronger and I thrusted a little up, warming up his insides for more... He clutched at my back as our kiss deepened

Oh god. Yes. More. Bobby

I'm going to make you mine. I drove upwards, over and over, his hole giving way to my cock. I wrapped my arms around Iceman and rolled us over so Bobby was on his back and I had better leverage.

FUCK ME he screamed in my mind as he dug his nails into my back and I drove my cock against his prostate over and over again driving us both wild as the barriers between us wore down and there was only pleasure of giving and receiving physical pleasure. The little bit of pain of his nails and my wilder thrusts inside his formerly virgin hole just added more depth and spice to the pleasure.

We came together, our climax stretching out for a long, beautifully intense moment before shattering us. As the afterglow bathed us in lots of pleasant neuro chemicals, I eased our minds apart and readjusted our bodies so that my cock rested nicely in Bobby butt crack and he was in my arms.

Bobby didn't go home for nearly a week. We just stayed within my room sexing and snuggling. He fucked me, I fucked him, we took turns topping. We fucked in lots of different positions and different states. One of the more entertaining roots was me fucking him as snow... He was soft and cold and it was like I was fucking a snowman and myself at the same time. It was weird and hot. We couldn't seem to get enough of each other but he got called away by the X men interrupting our fun sex cocooning. I had even taught him how to use his ice proxies to avoid fetching food, sending ice proxies down the hallways to collect snacks.

Month 11

It had been a few days since I had seen or heard from Iceman after our sex marathon and while my body and mind was occupied with my transdimensional mapping problem, part of me was thinking about Bobby and how long to wait until I called him again. However my romantic/sexual confusion was quickly pushed to the side once George and Harry alerted me that there was a blueish Earth sized planet in the sky over Latveria...

I called for backup from Danger, Iceman and Quentin. Kristoff (Doom's adopted son, long story) is first on the scene fighting off robots of advanced nature. I teleported onto the roof with Kristoff and technopathically shut down the robots which is harder than usual as they have advanced AI, essentially level 5 sentience. It's troubling. While inside their electronic consciousness I had discovered a horrible truth and the answer to my transdimensional questions.

The multiverse is crumbling and these robots are the servants of the Ivory Kings or as they are more commonly known the Beyonders and their task is to go from universe to universe, during incursions, harvesting Earths for resources and to use their remains as beacons and building bridges between different Earths. Incursions typically lasted 8 hours, and involved two Earths being in the same universal phase state harmonically for 8 hours. However if both Earths remained at the end of the 8 hours both Earths would rapidly crash together ending two universes in some unknown method. In this case the robots/Sidera Maris/Map Makers had already destabilised the harvested Earth and it would blow up spreading their transdimensional beacons like pollen. These Sidera Maris were Bridge Builders and they had already planted at least one beacon on Earth to draw others for the harvest and have been tasked to protect it while the incursion lasts...

My first instinct is to destroy the beacon but I get a presentiment that alerts me that its necessary for something much bigger than Earth to play out as it should. I don't know what the plan is but I have learned to trust my presentiments even if they seem completely counter intuitive.

Doom arrived a short moment later. There are other unexpected visitors, the members of this universe's Illuminati. Namor, Beast, Black Bolt, Stephen Strange, Reed Richards and Tony Stark as well as an unknown female. Their presence so quickly on the scene of an incursion implies that they already knew about the incursions and probably about the multiverse collapsing. Their selfish secrecy is typical.

Iceman, Quentin and Danger arrived before I have a chance to question the Illuminati who disappeared off planet with what appears to be an antimatter bomb. I linked with the Phalanx and told them to gather together everyone with a high IQ in order to brainstorm a way to avoid the end of the multiverse. As well as hundreds of mutants that may prove to be of use, power wise.

A quick psionic scan of the planetoid reveals that it's empty of life, except for the Illuminati who are planting the bomb. I linked with Quentin and broadcasted I'm taking care of this planet, my way. Get off the planet now. They left.

I teleported over some supplies from my personal storage. I took a dose of Inspiration and Insight and assembled with 'water hands and tk hands' an upgraded portable helmet version of a Cerebro, that would amplify my telepathy as well as my technopathy. I linked with Danger and using our combined technopathy forcibly rewrote the Bridge Builder's programming to serve a new purpose. My purpose. To serve me and convert any other Bridge Builders in their vicinity with a 'programming update'.

I 'linked' with Quentin, Iceman and Danger and dosed myself with Transition (Gateway's blood synthesized into another serum) and Divinity and used the psychic /cybernetic connection with Iceman to use his mostly latent psionic abilities, Quentin for his class 5 telekinesis and telepathy and Danger's cybernetic processing power to achieve what would have been impossible for me to do alone. I teleported the Trojan Bridge Builder onto the Harvested Earth via a portal using Gateway's borrowed power. Then I accessed the Divine to give me God like strength and power and created a planet sized energy bubble over the harvested Harvested Earth and using a giant tk boosted ice hand the size of Alaska I shoved the energy coated Harvested Earth back into it's own universe via a Divine enhanced portal. It could explode in its native universe, possibly confusing the Map Makers a little longer.

Then I collapsed from the inevitable Divine Burn Out.

I woke up 3 days later in my secret underground bunker, inside my sarcophagus, a dose of Panacea being drip fed into me intravenously which helped speed up my recovery post Divinity usage... Accessing the Divine had some serious drawbacks. I had a Divine Burn out protocol in place after my energy experiments, my body would teleport inside the bunker to be treated to doses of Panacea and gene therapy would be administered and regulated by a computing system of my own design.

I teleported inside Castle Doom and an infuriated Doom told me that I have guests waiting for me within the castle as well as scattered throughout Latveria as well as hundreds more wanting to talk to me about the Multiversal collapse problem including a very annoyed Tony Stark...

I arranged a public meeting with everyone already in Latveria, scheduled for the next day within the newly (Help Bot) built Latverian Convention Center in order to discuss the threat. Then I arranged a private meeting with Tony Stark and the Illuminati scheduled for 1pm.

I met up with the Phalanx first and thanked them for holding down the fort in my absence. Then I talked to Quentin, Iceman and Danger who had set up within Castle Doom with the converted Bridge Builders.

Danger had told me that it was unlikely that the Bridge Builders would stay converted for long. Their advanced adaptation capability made them resistant to long term technopathic conversion. During my absence she had been forced to monitor their collective electronic consciousness and had to forcibly reprogram them twice. Quentin helped contain their violent weapon usage within a class 5 tk bubble but a few of them had been destroyed.

Iceman hugged me ... and we had a quick glad you're not dead root before I teleported over to the Wakandan Necropolis to have a private meeting with Tony Stark and this version of the Illuminati.

I dosed myself with Divinity and Insight in case I needed to fight anyone, though the only person that I thought could pose a threat to me would be Dr Strange...

I had a quick scan of the place and they had managed to build 39 planet destroying anti matter missiles. I was impressed, though I doubted their resolve in using them to kill a populated planet. They also had that female and a guy with an axe in the basement. I went downstairs and telepathically probed them both. The female was a member of the Black Swans, formerly known as Yabbat Ummon Tarru, she was a religious zealot in service to Rabum Alal or as I knew him Doctor Doom. I came to the immediate conclusion that he must be a future version of Doom as he had been furious at being out of the loop about the incursions and didn't have the multiverse skipping powers he had access to in her mind in the current time frame. Time travel makes life endlessly more confusing, what with alternate selves clogging up the Multiverse.

What was more interesting than the revelation about a future Doom being some kind of legendary multiversal figure is that the Black Swan's temple was the abandoned Library of Worlds. A place the Beyonders had created back when they thought life was interesting, containing knowledge of worlds and universes no longer existing.

Reed shows me his Bridge (a multiverse spanning viewing platform and portal) and rattles on about it's design and usage but I simply interface with the Bridge and learn everything I need to know from that instead. I probed Reed's mind and found out that the Latverian incursion was the 4th they were aware of. The first had happened in Wakanda and had resulted in Black Panther capturing the Black Swan and bringing the Illuminati back together. The second had happened in a remote area of Pakistan, which had been stopped by Steve Rogers wielding the Infinity Gauntlet but resulted in the shattering of 5 out of 6 of the gems except the gem that gave it's user mastery over time which had simply disappeared. Not long after that Steve Rogers objected to the manufacture of anti matter weapons and Stephen Strange had mind wiped him. The third had been in New York a week ago, which must have been why Iceman was called home...

Galaktus had actually resolved the third incursion by converting the Other Earth into energy to save that universe from destruction. That was where they had captured Terrax the Enlightened, the guy with the axe, he had some interesting and useful memories of wielding the power cosmic.

I have a go at them for failing to use the Infinity Gems in a constructive manner. They were terribly short sighted. They could have gone backwards in time to give themselves more time to prepare for the incursions, they could have stalled time or gone forward into the intangible future for better weapons. As according to Iceman there were future versions of him giving him a hard time. That was only the Time Gem. They could have used the reality gem to transform them into gods, or at least to improve their speed to Northstar levels so they could work faster... They could have used the Space Gem to travel the universe to collect better tech from advanced alien races. They could have used the Space and Time Gem together to steal Celestial Tech at the height of Celestials power.

They don't seem to be properly chastened for using the power of a God simply as a crude tool instead of using it as a springboard for actual growth. Typical of self involved heroes, completely miss the bigger picture. Regardless, the Illuminati seems to have a barely repressed dislike of me for ruining their secret and criticising their methods and I am not impressed by their audacity at keeping a world and universe endangering threat a secret from those that could have helped, simply because they didn't want debate from those that might object to their methods.

Next Day

Public meeting. I had spent all my time after the meeting with the Illuminati in my secret bunker level mass manufacturing doses of Insight, Inspiration and Panacea for the gathering.

The Latverian Convention Center had been set up to house thousands of people and it was filled to capacity with the world's brightest humans and various mutants called to save their world from destruction. A lot of these mutants had only been mutants for less than a couple of months but everyone that could possibly be of help was needed for this crisis.

I separated people into groups based on their powers and or intellect in order to maximize idea generation, processing, analysis and communication before they got split up further for actualization. Those in the idea processing group were dosed with Insight, Panacea for those in the psychic shielding group and Inspiration to those in the idea actualization groups. I warned everyone that double dosing was dangerous and that doses should be spaced about 8 hours apart, though that could be reduced somewhat by doses of Panacea which shortens the refractory period to 3 hours.

Quentin was his own group in the center of a spiral pattern, responsible for idea generation. He also used his class 5 telepathy to induce the telepathic equivalent of tachypsychia or more commonly known as bullet time on the assembly. This maximized the effects of Insight used by the idea processing group, allowing the 10 minutes of enhanced intelligence, neural processing and memory recall to be spread out over a perceived time period of 10 hours (similar effect as I have in my 'mental library').

Analysis was handled by Danger and Sage using their naturally superior intellect to crunch the numbers on the probabilities of success for each of the ideas suggested on their merits. Broken down further by the goals; stopping the incursions all together at their source by fixing the underlying multiversal collapse, destroying Other Earths, relocating Other Earths out of the way and relocating the populace of Other Earths off planet during incursions. The data is then dispersed to groups with the highest chance in the form of a handheld Wakandan computing device.

Communication was led by the Phalanx and Emma Frost. The Phalanx oversaw the newly upgraded officers with class 4 telepathy, numbering 50 so far as they installed and maintained psychic shields between node members. This was done to reduce the risks of psychic blurring between participants. Emma Frost handled the mutant telepaths, which included the Stepford Cuckoos, Young Jean Grey and Sage creating psionic shields, overseeing the integrity of the neural network and helping to foster telepathic communication within the group of thousands.

I served as facilitator between the various groups making sure the process goes smoothly, removing those who can't handle the pace and double checking the telepathic shields remain intact while allowing free flow of ideas. The ideal process being that Quentin generates the ideas which are then spread through the network which each member sharing their particular expertise, enhanced further chemically by Insight, while the various psychics amplify communication while maintaining each person's individuality with Sage and Danger processing probabilities of success.

I vetoed against all the planet destroying ideas as too wasteful and unnecessary as the anti matter weapons are sufficient for that last resort option. I selected teams to work on each workable idea and provided doses of Inspiration for use in designing/building the prototype models.

I break the thousands of people into about 20 different groups working on various projects. I assigned each work team a telepath to speed up team's communication, a technologically minded expert/ mutant like Box (control over machines) or Magneto, or Mad Maximus, or Forge or Nate Grey to help with the design work. Skrulls and a few Help Bots are tasked to do the heavy lifting. A project leader is assigned to all the work groups. Those with theoretical knowledge that might be of use after coming down from Insight are sequestered in a suite to brainstorm other ideas for avoiding the Multiversal calamity. Those who are suffering from Insight come down were dismissed with thanks to go rest and recover.

The impromptu think tank has come up with some interesting ideas that form the basis of projects. There's one for building a teleportation gun that could theoretically mass teleport over the local population, evacuating civilians to another world and maybe recruiting any of their super powered or geniuses to help the cause. Another teleportation device that would be more simple to create is one that would simply teleport the Other Earth a hundred thousand miles backwards in space...

Another project is the planetary phase weapon, creating the Kitty Pryde effect allowing two objects to temporarily occupy the same space for a limited time. Another is a time bomb that will displace another Earth by a week shifting it out of the way both in time and in space.

While they're busy with that I dose myself with Inspiration and Insight and go off and work on upgrading my equipment in preparation for the upcoming fight. I take the Bridge Builders with me below ground, interfacing with their tech in order to find out their armory capabilities.

They have on board technology that enables to identify the threat posed by super humans along with an X gene neutralizer that renders mutants powerless. I develop a counter measure in case that happens. I don't want another Scarlet Witch like debacle on my hands. I collected blood samples from all the mutants gathered in order to synthesize the most useful of their powers into a MGH formula in case of another Map Maker attack. Their unaffected blood will also provide a genetic blueprint for me to modify them back to their original power set via Elixir's power set in case of problems.

I assembled my various armies. The Skrulls, the Super Skrulls, the Help Bots, the Doom Bots, the Asgardians, the thousands of new mutants who have come seeking asylum in Latveria as well as those just visiting for the conference. I announced to them that there is a new threat on the horizon for this world and universe and they will all need to be willing to train harder than they've ever had before and potentially sacrifice everything in order to save anything from what's coming.

I get the Phalanx and the enhanced soldiers to collect blood samples from the Asgardians who had previously been unwilling to provide blood samples which was understandable after the Ragnarok debacle but irrelevant now. I step up training, having Balder work on training the troops on hand to hand while I upgraded the enhanced officers into class 4 telekinetics and have them engage in telepathic training with the Phalanx in order to fast track them into telekinetic competence.

In the spirit of cooperation I hand over a couple of the Bridge Builders to the Illuminati in order for them to reverse engineer it into a weapon against the Beyonders and or other Map Makers. I told them to be careful not to permanently damage them as they're passably sentient. I leave them in charge of planetary defense while I'm gone.

I hand over another Bridge Builder to Doom so he can use the technology to upgrade his weapons and hack into the Map Maker's network. It feels right... even though intellectually I know it's a terrible idea to hand over technology this powerful and dangerous to Doom.

I pass on the remaining Bridge Builders over to Danger in order for her to dissect them cyberpathically for information.

With the Illuminati busy with the alien hardware I gave them, I visited Attilan and explore the under-city, telepathically communing with the Alpha Primitives for information on the tech they maintained. I psionically observe the armory containing all of Mad Max's tech. Then I explore Wakanda and its various tech, then Atlantis, then I make a visit to Providence to look through Nate Grey's tech, then through Stark Tower and the Baxter Building and Beast's lab to look at his temporal portal. I interfaced with their computing systems in order to copy their databases and inventories. I used enhanced perception to see and enhanced interpretation to theoretically understand the principles of various weapons and devices to inspire me to come up with new ideas on better tech.

I used the cumulative knowledge I had gained from the Bridge Builders and from the telepathic interrogation of the captive Black Swan, along with the information gleaned from my efforts at trans dimensional mapping and time with the Panoptichron's database to modify my trans dimensional gateway to the extra dimensional coordinates of the Library.

I arrived at the door to the Library and am greeted by the Black Swans... Well greeted is not the right word. I'm attacked by them but I covered myself in layers of shielding while telepathically broadcasting that I come in peace over and over again... Which eventually got them to stop attacking or maybe it was because they couldn't break through my various layers of shields. Either way they stopped attacking long enough for me to explain that I'm only interested in accumulating knowledge in order to save the Multiverse. They take me to their leader...

I have an argument with the Future version of Dr Doom who had apparently in my absence traversed time with the help of Owen Reece aka the Molecule man and gone back 25 years and set the incursions in motion. The presentiment made a bit more sense now that I know the beacon was necessary to create this time loop. God I hate closed circuit time loops.

Rabum Alal explains that the Beyonders created Owen Reece as a common thread throughout every universe in order to serve as a multiversal bomb to destroy everything as part of an experiment to end their previous experiment, the Multiverse. He told me what he thought their one weakness was, time travel. They were a strictly linear species. Apparently they were incapable or unwilling to travel through time. I having had unpleasant experience with time travel wondered if they were truly incapable or simply unwilling to suffer the indignity of interacting with future and alternate selves...

I left him to his multiversal machinations as the vague ticking clock in my head becomes louder. Regardless I work my way through the Library searching through books, hard drives made of light, various keepers of knowledge (that I telepathically probed) in order to enhance my knowledge of science, magic and the multiverse.

One of the things I learned is that what I had been calling the Infinite Gap is called the Super Flow or White Space and it was populated by various races and factions who have set up outposts outside of normal space time for various reasons.

After having extracted as much information as I can from the Library I returned home to dump the data into my special cybernetic storage as my current hard drive is full of compressed data. I also needed to review the training progress of my troops and the rate and state of the incursion problems.

Once I've transferred the extraneous data into my secure storage facility I check in on the progress of the projects. It had only been a few hours in this reality even though I had spent at least a week researching in the Library. Time apparently moved differently within the Library probably because it was separate from normal time. With my new knowledge of advanced alien tech I telepathically project new information into the minds of various groups in order to accelerate their progress faster and further.

Then I returned to my secret bunker to mass produce various new serums to replicate other mutants powers, upgrade my cybernetic storages with alien tech, study the Asgardian blood samples to understand their unique DNA sequences and generally stock up on supplies.

Once I've done that I installed cybernetic devices the size of a thumb nail inside the brains of all my warriors (except the Asgardians) to enhance their perceptions for battle. I further upgraded the remaining Latverian special forces into class 4 telekinetic telepaths. A few thousand class 4 telepathic telekinetics should have enough raw strength to push a planet back through a transpatial rift... Theoretically anyway.

Beyonder Preparation

I visited the Panoptichron, currently staffed by Shadow Cat, Morph, Sabretooth, Remy Gambit (son of Namor and Susan Storm) and tried and help slow the Multiversal collapse by interfacing with the Panoptichron. For a moment I'm essentially omniscient as I see the past and future of everything in existence...

Then my mind burns out from the information overload and I'm left with a metaphysical migraine and the memory of my dream or vision? of the Renegade God replays in visceral playback. Reminding me that I may not be a pivot but just a puppet or plaything of unknown forces...

:: Dream Scape/Astral Plane? ::

A shadowy figure, roughly 5' 8" appears before me. It introduces himself by saying. "Hello I'm a Renegade God"

"God of what? Shadows?" (I had grown accustomed to meeting Gods and despite a basic appreciation of their existence and strength, I had become kind of irreverent of them since I used to get pounded by the God of strength for a few years... and I had kicked Thor's ass a few times)

"No, your God, I created you and shaped your world by blending elements of two existing worlds and adding unique elements to give it greater depth. You're my avatar in this world."

"So am I your puppet or your proxy?"

"It's complicated. Sometimes you do what I want and other times you veer off course and you need to be nudged back into line."

"I don't believe I'm anyone's stalking horse."

"It's not important whether you understand everything right now. I have a message for you. The darkness will come and I need you to serve as a beacon to the others as an example of strength, superior intellect and strategy. You need to grow stronger, faster, smarter to fight the oncoming darkness."

"Who are these others?"

"Your friends, your enemies, the Marvel Gods. I can't stay too long here, my presence disrupts the balance of this world and damages my standing in the Meta verse."

"Marvel Gods? Meta Verse?"

"A smaller group of Creators but with massive influence, they've coasted too long on earlier success and have grown fat and lazy and don't respect the medium. Your existence challenges them. I need you to become stronger..."

Then he disappeared and in typical dream fashion I was elsewhere watching various heroes and villains being resurrected by increasingly preposterous fashions. Colossus infected with a virus, captured by an alien with his body replaced with a duplicate, Phoenix left in the ocean while the Phoenix force replicated her body and possessed it long enough to eat a sun for a snack then commit suicide, Nightcrawler died then sacrifices his soul to mini demons and returns to Earth via a technological portal into the spirit realm, half the universe dies when Thanos wielded the Infinity Gauntlet and is resurrected as if nothing ever happened. Johnny Storm kept alive by insects from the Negative Zone after he 'heroically sacrificed' himself to kill them. :: ::

I had blocked most of it out previously as being irrelevant but now I had confirmation of part of it being accurate.

All the alternate timelines I had been part of had separated into their own distinct Multiverse... The timeline where I had killed 7 million people in a fit of rage and Phorcys had slaughtered another hundred million with my body and powers still existed. That wasn't even the worst news. There were at least three distinct multiverses, the Marvel Multiverse, the tangential multiverse in between and the ShadowVerse where apparently I was a pivot or a cats-paw for a strange God.

I was the origin point of a new multiverse, starting with my prime universe and spreading via my interference. My temporal travels had created 2 distinct universes and my trips into other universes via various means had caused a divergence from the moment I interacted with the native occupants of those universes to create another variation based on that template. Which meant that I couldn't save the true multiverse I could only create alternate diverging universes and the Shadow Verse that I had incidentally created as the agent of the Renegade God.

I had an impossible choice to make, I could quickly run through each of the universes in the Marvel Multi Verse increasing the size of the Shadow Verse from 11 distinct universes/realities to potentially hundreds of thousands but it would do nothing to stop the Marvel Multi Verse from collapsing in on itself or the trillions of sentients from dying. All it would do would be create alternates of those realities and individuals and create trillions of additional variables that would make saving the Shadow Verse even more difficult.

I went back to 616 alternate universe to talk to the others about my discovery.

616 Alternate.

After a very long tumultuous discussion between Iceman, Quentin, Danger and I, we come to the reluctant conclusion that increasing the amount of universes in the Shadow verse would just accelerate this Shadow Verse's incursions with the tangential realities.

Since the original 616 had a convoluted backstory involving several other realities eg (295 apocalypse reality, home of Nate Grey, a Blink and Bishop) 616 Alternate had a semi insubstantial relationship with the Tangential Verse which meant that even though the incursions originally occurred in the Marvel Multiverse and the Shadow Verse only contained 11 universes, we were still at risk from incursions from the Tangential Verse. It was a real mind fuck.

I took them with me to the Panoptichron in order to help me come up with a Beyonder killing plan. However that mission was derailed once Danger succumbed to foreign programming once entering the Super Flow/Infinite Gap, a remnant of Beyonder code. Quentin and I linked together to restore her base code but it kept trying to reinfect her. I sent her back with a Tallus in order to keep in contact with her, so she could keep us updated about the incursions.

I visited the ruins of The Inter-dimensional Council of Reeds and the current Parliament of Doom with Bobby while Quentin stayed behind in the Panoptichron to work with the Time Breakers (the insectoid aliens that had used the fake Time Broker to abduct me) to monitor us and the others. I collected more technology and information from the lobotomized Alternate Dooms. The place had been damaged in a conflict with Mad Celestials.

There are now two teams. My team trying to stop the Multiversal collapse by eliminating the Beyonders and buying the second team more time by using the Panoptichron to monitor, predict and increase the amount of time between and during incursion events ... Which gives more time to evacuate planets or their resources. The second team was comprised of those on the ground or skies stopping the incursions.

First Stage of the Beyonder elimination plan is more specific intel gathering. I accessed the Panoptichron the human way, interacting with it, having Shadowcat segregate the 11 specific realities in their databases.

The Panoptichron is an alien construct abandoned long ago by its creator, which utilized a semi sentient Mkraan crystal that could see all space time and an integrated advanced computing system that cataloged the data and allowed a user to see and even to interact with realities. At one point this Panoptichron had been used a weapon by Hyperion who had deliberately smashed two realities together just to see if it could be done. I had Shadowcat use it to do the opposite, pry universes that were experiencing incursions apart, unfortunately it does little except slow the rot by extending the deadline from 8 hours to 12.

Once I've had a chance to look through the data on the 11 universes I make selections as to who to contact in each of the available realities in order to get information that could prove useful.

I interacted directly with various people with advanced knowledge and intellectual capabilities in order to raid their minds for their knowledge of genetic potential to increase my knowledge even further. Quite a few of which of dubious moral integrity. Including Thanos a purple genocidal Titan Eternal with various technologically enhanced abilities, former wielder of the Cosmic Cube and Infinity Gauntlet. The High evolutionary (a student of Nathaniel Essex from the 1920's who had artificially enhanced himself with the help of an Inhuman). The Games Master (an omnipath of considerable skill) and last but not least an Ex Nihilo (a subset race of the oldest race in the universe, the Builders) able to evolve life on an individual scale and a planetary scale.

Most don't cooperate willingly (except for the Games master who is intrigued by the intellectual challenge and distraction), most of them fight me for having the arrogance to transport them against their will and presume to be worth talking to. It's annoying but predictably annoying. Regardless I obtain what I need from them with varying difficulty and return them to where they came from. Thanos was particularly feisty, I summoned an infernal army to drain him of some of his excess hostility and energy before psionically sapping him for his information.

Once I had sifted through the data I had acquired through means both fair and foul, I moved onto the next stage of my plan weapon stockpiling and recruitment of potential allies and genetic harvesting of useful powers.

Second Stage of the Beyonder Plan.

Recruitment and harvesting...

I started with those I have a friendly relationship in the 616A reality. Iceman and Quentin. I took samples of their blood and perform a psionic sap, boosted by a physical sap. Quentin has the most promise as at one point he had become psionic energy and then reconstituted his body from memory.

I used my newly acquired knowledge of genetics and artificial evolution to upgrade my Phalanx to the next level, making them class 5 telekinetics and class 5 telepaths. They make good test subjects as they have clean DNA. I send 6 of them back to 616 A to oversee Latveria and 616A defenses and have Charlie and Danny/Delta oversee the operations of Panoptichron, assisting Shadowcat in the maintenance and operation of the system. Then I send back Iceman and Bobby back to guard their home world & reality from the variety of external threats facing them.

I used the Panoptichron teletransportation system to teleport myself to Danger and task her with the continuance of the Help Bot manufacture industry as mechanical foot soldiers may be of great use against an enemy robot race. It's a bit awkward as asking a sentient computing system to send her metallic brethren off to fight a war not of their making but she's been operational long enough to understand the difference between a self aware electronic consciousness and an advanced computing system so she doesn't take offense.

Next I summoned the members of the Illuminati to have a discussion about what I needed from them. After some heated discussion (mostly on their end) they agreed to assist me by providing blood samples and allowing me to sap them. This provides me with their total knowledge, their powers and genetic potential as well as access to certain members of their groups/acquaintance.

From the Inhuman Black Bolt, I gained access to the Inhuman royal family's blood, powers and minds. I sapped and sampled Crystal, master of the 4 classical elements (Earth, Fire, Wind and Water, just like Aang) then Karnak is next, telepathically absorbing his unparalleled experience with using 'other sight' to determine weaknesses. LockJaw provides the biggest challenge as he's a huge dog with the power to traverse interspace or the antiverse to go anywhere.

From Tony Stark I gain access to his Extremis effected blood and access to Bruce Banner aka the Hulk's blood, both as Bruce and as Hulk. It provides valuable information to have a sample of his gamma irradiated blood as the Hulk as he is capable of limited spontaneous adaptation depending on his emotional status. I recalled Wiccan and Hulkling from Zombie Verse, sapping and sampling Wiccan's class 6 (maybe 7) mystical potential for future study and Hulkling's automatic shapeshifting to defend against attacks.

From Beast I gained access to his time travel tech, his biological expertise and more importantly to the various X men and mutants under their theoretical supervision. Cyclops provides his ability to tap into an unknown source of energy to power his optic blasts. Rogue 616A provides her expertise in use of the physical sap, including the ability to use the genetic templates of those she has previously touched whenever she wants. Hope Summers provided me with proximity based enhanced mutant power mimicry essentially allowing me to mimic a class 5 at his utmost as well as the ability to jump start and enhance other mutant powers to their upper limits.

Rachel Summers provides class 5 telekinesis, class 5 telepathy, temporal abilities including generating a chrono shield to defend against temporal disruptions and the ability to chronoskim (send a consciousness forward and back in time). ShadowCat/ Kitty Pryde provided the ability to phase between intangible and super dense form. Multiple Man provided the ability to produce dupes, though with my new genetic knowledge I found out that he was a branching subset of humanity, neither human, mutant or mutate. Not that it was important but it was interesting.

Reed Richards provided me with access to himself and his family. I acquired his elastic mind and body, his wife's ability to generate psi force fields and manipulate light so as to turn herself and other things invisible. Franklin Richards raw untapped potential to manipulate reality and Valeria Richards provided raw intelligence. Johnny Storm provided fire form and nova blast. He also put a good word in for me with the Silver Surfer who didn't bleed so much as share a sample of his Power Cosmic for me to wield.

Stephen Strange, master of the Black Priests (animated mystical warriors) provides me with enhanced mystical knowledge that is superior to previous lessons. Stephen Strange has mastered a new form of magic that is part magic and part advanced science, allowing him the ability to warp reality around him. Namor provides me with a sample of his blood and some Atlantean weapon tech.

Then I move to one of my former mentors, me, or future me. I teletransport FM over to the Panoptichron and to him it's only been two years since he saw me last but to me it's been 4 very long strange decades. I informed him of the situation... He offers his assistance and through him I get access to Future Broadcast, providing me with an experienced and varied energy absorber and redirector.

I informed the 8 other Earths of the threat, JAJ (currently Queen of Vampires) of Vampire Verse through a Bridge Builder, then Ultimate Reed Richards aka The Maker in Ultimate Verse, Xavier in Alternate Timeline 1,2,3 and 4 (he had been salvaged from his Onslaught persona). I informed SHIELD high command of the Exile vs Weapon X Battle Royale Universe and Captain America of the Civil War Universe and finally the Watcher of the adjacent Zombie Universe in the Tangential Verse.

I teletransported the 5 people (Eye Boy, Blindfold, Cipher, Domino and Elixir) from the Civil War Universe for a sample of their DNA after Captain America told them of the importance of their contribution to stop the Multiversal threat.

The Maker, the Ultimates version of Reed Richards had a radical change in outlook since I had last sapped him. He had become cold and ruthless after being rejected by Susan Storm after the death of her father. He had created his own society of perfected super humans called the Children of Tomorrow utilizing a localized time field to allow 900 years to go by in a matter of a year. He was already aware of the multiversal threat and was more than willing to help in my lab work and technical work...

The Maker is amoral, possibly evil, but if evil is anything it's self involved and self interested. His temporary assistance was guaranteed, his long term assistance was another problem to deal with if I survived the Beyonder confrontation.

I teletransported Rabum Alal's Molecule Man over and physically and psionically sap him, taking a sample of his blood for reference purposes.

Last of all was the acquisition of Absorbing Man's abilities, the ability to absorb the inherent properties of whatever he touches (or touches him). He wasn't overly moved by the call to altruism which wasn't surprising since he was a small minded villain, so I offered him a private island and a few million dollars in his bank account. Then he was all too happy to help out or cash out as he referred to it.

I used all my knowledge of genetics and Elixir's power to create level 1 clones of myself and experimenting with genetic grafting of the various donors to enhance myself at will with various powers. I used the Panoptichron's teletransportation to make use of the empty Zombieverse for testing, running through various powers seperately and in various combinations to test for stability and the synergies between them.

Last Stage of the Beyonder Plan, preparing myself mentally and physically for a direct confrontation with the Beyonders.

In my darker moments I wondered if there was any point in direct conflict with the possible creators of the Multiverse. I kept reminding myself that maybe some class 8 entity existing outside our perception of the Multiverse was using them as a proxy. So hard to know. So hard to know if it made things better or worse.

I dressed for battle, having acquired several artifacts of power and having made or improved other weapons and armor.

I dressed in my usual adamantium alloy armor my hands uncovered, my head covered by the upgraded Cerebro helmet, with a Cyclops like visor for my eyes to protect them against the pressure of space and to allow me to project energy beams from out my ears easier. I had the War Sword sheathed on right hip. Captain America's shield on back (stolen from a fallen Colonel America from Zombie Verse), Vibranium daggers sheathed on my ankles. The Ultimate Nullifier (acquired from Uatu the Watcher) around my waist. Mandarins Rings (borrowed, on my death, they'll teleport back to him). The Maker helped to enhance my cybernetic implants and teleportation device to cross transdimensional space.

This was the calm before the storm.

///////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////

The Phalanx on my request had gathered the major players of 616 within the Desert Realm of Panoptichron to make a short speech. There are the X men and some of their strongest B grade mutants, the Avengers, the Fantastic Four and various other assorted heroes (Squirrel Girl), anti heroes (Deadpool) and flip flopping villains (Loki, Doom). They were to be my second wave for if I failed to either reach a diplomatic solution or a final solution to the problem.

"Okay people. I'm going to go on in first, try and discuss terms, see if we can resolve this without further blood shed. If not I'll try and gather some intel while I try and soften them up. If I fail, you can attack them in a second wave."

Iceman said "You can't go in alone, these aliens are dangerous."

Thor said "You shall not deny me a chance for achieving glory and honor."

"You guys are the second wave. If I fail. You can go in and kill them all. If you fail. I have left word with the Shadowcat running this place to inform Danger so that she can launch the third wave of attacks. If they fail Loki or Doom will be in charge of the 4th wave comprising of every other super powered person remaining of dubious morality. "

The members of the Illuminati stood together and Tony Stark said "We're not letting you go in alone. If you fail, we lose the element of surprise."

I looked them over and the 'heroes' behind them, most of them looked determined to fight...

I sighed and decided upon a compromise that should settle the matter. "Fine. You can come with me, if you can beat me in a battle."

"The 6 of us against you?" Beast asked incredulously.

"No, everyone who thinks me going in by myself is a bad idea against me in a cage match, if I can't take you all down within ten minutes, you can come with me, if on the other hand I kick all of your asses, you'll concede that I'm better off fighting unencumbered with you and all your collective baggage."

"How dare you..." Tony Stark started to protest.

"Easily. Half the X men are pissed off at Cyclops, others are disturbed by Beast fucking with time to bring back the original X men and subjecting them to their inevitable fates, as for the non mutants, you went to war with each other over a stupid law, which resulted in you having to mind wipe yourself to prevent some bad guy from getting access to personal details. Black Panther wants to kill Namor for what he did to Wakanda and... I could go on but honestly I don't have the time to waste."

There was a moment of silence before Steve Rogers came up to me and asked "So what are the rules for this competition of yours?"

I telepathically instructed the Phalanx to start powering up in preparation for their task.

"Simple, no holds barred cage fight, all of you against me and to give you guys a chance I'll limit myself to the powers I had before I came to your world. Limiting myself to hydrokinesis, mysticism, energy control, precognition, enhanced perception, telepathy, telekinesis, teleportation, technopathy, biomorphic manipulation and probability control. If you're incapicated the Phalanx will teleport you out, the battlefield will be limited in size to a square mile inside a psionic and telekinetic cage generated by the Phalanx so that no stray energy bolts can blow up the Panop and it limits the amount of material to be manipulated."

Steve Rogers gave me an assessing look and pivoted and walked in the opposite direction while the other members of the Illuminati gave me death glares. I smiled as I heard Steve Rogers give the call to arms... "AVENGERS ASSEMBLE."

"You have 5 minutes to organize your teams however you like... and I'll do you the favor of ditching all my weapons to help even the playing field a little more." I teleported away everything but my underwear to the confusion of many.

I teleported a mile away and sat down and drew a circle in the sand with an ice blade and the Phalanx gathered around the line in the sand, focusing their new class 5 powers to create a class 6 tk, psionic cage to surround me. I sat down cross legged and chanted my own mystical rosary, spells for protection, luck, speed, strength, endurance, energy absorption and so on while I layered various shields over myself, (energy, tk, telepathic).

5 MINUTES LATER.

The opposition had assembled into three groups. The Avengers including some new additions, the X men under Beast's leadership and Cyclop's X men. My supporters were few, consisting of Iceman, Quentin and the Phalanx. Iceman chose to stay out of the fighting due to conflicting loyalties and Quentin assisted the Phalanx in creating and maintaining the 'cage'. Stephen Strange remained apart...

In the Avengers group was Thor, Hulk, Wasp, Hank Pym, Captain America, Tony Stark, Deadpool, Scarlet Witch, Hawkeye, Black Widow, Sentry, Wiccan, Hulkling, Black Panther, Black Bolt and Vision.

Beast's Xmen included himself obviously, Young Iceman, Wolverine, Young Hank Mccoy, Storm, Young Jean, Rogue, Kitty Pryde and Young Cyclops.

Cyclops Xmen included Cyclops, Emma Frost, the 3 Stepford Cuckoos, Magneto, Illyana, Young Angel, Tempus, Hijack, X-23 and Gold Balls.

Then there were those who chose not to fight for various reasons.

Christopher Muse (class 5 biomorphic control-healer) stayed outside the 'cage' as he "didn't want to get in the way" (his words) along with Morph (different shapeshifter, with pheromone control that sympathises with those nearby and fuzzes with technology). Armor, Pixie, Rockslide and Anole have been left on the sidelines to watch me getting sliced up (Wolverine's words, probably cranky over being dunked... repeatedly). The Fantastic Four, Loki and Doom decline to fight as does Squirrel Girl.

"37 opponents..." I smiled and stood, drawing on ambient water to clothe myself in ice and bone. "You should have brought everyone. Oh well this will do I suppose. The fight will start in 10 seconds."

^10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. BLAST OFF.^

I attacked the highest priority target first, targeting Wiccan, shutting down the blood flow to his brain so he couldn't utter a single word, then teleported in front of him, grabbing him by the throat, absorbing his class 6 mystical power into me while flying full speed into the tk cage before the others could react. The collision with the 'cage' knocked Wiccan out, then he disappeared, teleported to the other side by the Phalanx, to be healed by Christopher.

The Avengers were quick to follow behind me, Hulkling, Hulk and Sentry just behind me, Hulk Stomped, Hulkling flew at me, fist out, as Sentry blasted at me. I simply teleported back into the center, where I had started while the others were racing towards where I had been...

Thor threw Mjolnir at me while Wolverine leapt at me claws out and Captain America threw his shield at me, enraged by my brutal first strike. I caught Cap's shield in one hand, while using my other hand to slow Mjolnir's progress while Wolverine's claws dug deep through my bone armor and dinting my vibranium armor core. I was knocked to the ground with Wolverine snarling in my face and clawing and stabbing with him adamantium claws.

"Wolverine don't." Captain America said, I used the captured shield to dent Wolverine's skull, knocking him down. I stood and threw the shield at Sentry who had an energy blast heading in my direction and drew upon the ambient moisture in the 'cage' to create a low lying fog to disguise my movements. I grabbed Mjolnir, absorbing its enchantments into myself, removing the 'must be worthy' clause from wielding it.

Storm used wind to dispel the fog but I had just enough time to shape a bladed staff for myself made of half ice and half bone, ice blade on one end and on the other end a skull for the purposes of bludgeoning. As well as freeze the water droplets just enough to create a stinging rain. Young Jean formed a small tk shield around herself and the others but she was standing right next to a source of water... and I shattered Young Iceman with a thought, spraying them with sharp bits of their friend. It shocked the younger members of the X men into inaction. The other X men were spurred to violent reaction.

Storm, Kitty Pryde, Rogue, Magneto, Cyclops, a semi recovered Wolverine, Emma Frost and Magik/Illyana all attacked. Storm with a ball lightning attack which I absorbed, Kitty aimed for my heart with a phase strike which I teleported out of the way of, Rogue punched me with super strength, Magneto tried to rip the cybernetic core from my body but I countered him with by telekinetically holding it in place. Cyclops attacked me with an optic blast which hit me in the face and I used Mjolnir's basic Uru metal nature to smack Wolverine into the 'cage wall' denting his skull while using my stick to hit Emma Frost while she's in diamond mode. Magik used a fireball attack against me and I threw Mjolnir at her and she teleported away. I teleported out of the melee before their combined attacks could overwhelm my defenses.

I cast the spell of infernal summoning using Wiccan's power and ... the cage was filled with demons from the lower plane with high concentrations of Arch Devils, balrogs and succubis. The new infernal army gave me a chance to catch my breath and repair the damage done to my body and core...

The 34 remaining opponents fought to the center, clearing a path, Black Widow and Hawkeye fell early, running out of ammo quickly against the infernal horde. Sentry and Thor were doing the most damage to the infernal army, Emma Frost and the Stepford Cuckoos, provided telepathic support to the group against the succubi telepathic attacks that were distracting the men... Hulk was busy Hulk smashing the Arch Devils, when he could lay hands on them anyway... The Balrogs bombarded the others with fire attacks.

Hank Pym fell victim to a succubi telepathic attack when he joined Magneto's team of warriors fighting their way to me...

Hijack fell to a Balrog attack. Scarlet Witch and Illyana teamed up to fight the Arch Devils, disabling their teleportation and hexing them.

The Stepford Cuckoos and Emma Frost joined their powers with Young Jean, braiding their power together to form a tighter defense against the succubi and find me and attack me telepathically.

:: Mental Landscape ::

A large blood red diamond phoenix avatar attacked my outer defenses but my telepathic defenses had layers and layers of defenses and they all had a tinge of Vamp's psychic vampirism to them, so their attacks fed me. However, their combined strength bordered on class 6 and I wouldn't be able to sustain the defense indefinitely. I would have to cheat... :: ::

I knew my only chance to stop their telepathic attack would be to attack their bodies which were surrounded by the others fighting off the demonic army. My opponents were dropping off slowly from the prolonged attack and defense but there were still too many to fight directly. I teleported about and drove my fist through one Arch Devil's chest, absorbing his teleportation and infernal stamina, then to a succubi, stopping her whip strike against Young Cyclops who was on the floor. Young Cyclops looked confused by my interference but I was simply absorbing the succubi's telepathic power to boost my own, helping him was incidental. Then I sapped him while he was confused and unleashed a full on optic blas attack against the trio driving their way through the inferno troops, Thor, Sentry and Magneto using Thor's hammer as his own personal hands off weapon to smack down Arch Devils, Balrogs and Succubis. Thor used his thunder against any infernal opponent in his way and Sentry used his energy powers to obliterate the enemies. The optic blast was blocked by Sentry but it removed Young Cyclops from the field of play.

Hulk was bouncing over the place with Hulkling flying overhead... Hulkling spotted me and dive bombed me, tackling me to the ground, tearing my underwear. I teleported with him attacking me... using his bulk as a shield and a battering ram to take down Gold Balls whose ability to generate gold balls from out of his body was both amusing and tiresome as the battlefield was littered with his balls... Tempus encased us in a temporal bubble and I teleported out.

"How did you escape that?" Tempus asked having incidentally solved my Hulkling problem.

"I have been casting anti magic spells since I reclaimed my powers after Scarlet Witch stole my powers and time is just another energy source to me." I explained cryptically.

Scarlet Witch and Illyana appeared beside me and Scarlet Witch cast a hex in my direction which I countered with some probability manipulation, that diverted the blast to hit Tempus instead... who fell down. I teleported behind Scarlet Witch and Illyana who were now arguing about Scarlet Witch's spotty aim and I sapped them both, acquiring their mystical powers which I used to launch a chaos wave attack against the others. It hit both demons and 'heroes' alike. For a moment everyone but me looked like one of those actors in an old school farce, unable to hit anything, slipping and falling, firing wildly... Even Deadpool who had previously been having a blast, blasting away at Arch Devils as if they were carnival game clown targets couldn't hit a target and was less appreciative of the sudden slapstick routine.

Then it was over and the demons were the first to recover and attacked with vigor... The Wasp, Young Beast, Beast, the Stepford Cuckoos, Rogue, Kitty Pryde, Tempus and Young Jean Grey fell to the attacks. The Phalanx teleported them out of the way before they could sustain fatal, soul consuming damage...

Then there was only Hulk, Iron Man, Captain America, Vision, Sentry, Thor, Deadpool, Black Panther, Storm, Cyclops, Emma Frost, Black Bolt and Magneto left.

Only 13 opponents left... Unfortunately the infernal army had lost the momentum and were being destroyed left, right and center by the more experienced warriors. Not that it mattered they were expendable troops, they'd recoalesce on the lower planes after a few days anyway, a little weaker but maybe a little wiser for the combat experience.

I teleported over to a Balrog before it got blasted in the face by Deadpool and absorbed its fire power and used it's power along with my energy projection powers to direct a powerful energy attack burning Deadpool until he was simply charred bones ... and he was gone from the game.

Emma distracted me with a telepathic bombardment of imagery while the remaining 11 attacked me as one... Hulk used Hulk clap to cover the sound of the others attacking. Captain America threw his shield at me, I was hit by Mjolnir, Storm's lightning, optic blast, energized electrons (Black Bolt), Iron Man's repulsor blast, Thor's thunder and a vibranium dagger to the skull. I was knocked to the ground by the force of the multiple impacts. The telepathic bombardment stalled and Sentry was above me, his hand just an inch away from my face and he said "Concede or die."

I smiled. They would have won if they fully committed to the battle, rather than to a sense of honor... As reward, I teleported behind Thor and sapped him absorbing his powers and his Asgardian life force to access the Divine for a minor feat of regeneration and creation, reforming my body and imbuing me with renewed energy. Thor punched me and I went flying... as I wanted. Hulk and Sentry came chasing after me while I cast several spells in quick succession then I teleported back into the fray with the others. I drove my fist into Captain America's face and he smashed into the 'cage' and disappeared. Black Panther attacked me with another vibranium dagger which I dodged while Thor blasts me with thunder as does Storm, while Magneto tried to rip my cybernetic core out of my chest, saying "Why won't you surrender to an overwhelming force?"

"I don't give up, I simply regroup." I said then I drove my hand into a palm strike into his throat, absorbing his power over the magnetic spectrum and drove Thor's recently reclaimed hammer into the back of Black Panther's head, his vibranium armor cushioning the impact, so it wasn't fatal but it was still a knock out. Hulk and Sentry redirect their movements back towards the current battle.

Black Panther and Magneto disappeared from the playing field. Hulk and Sentry are within range... I drove my fist into Storm's solar plexus and headbutted her, using the momentary contact to steal her power and life force. Hulk smashed my face in rage, crumpling my skull, it tickles...

Storm disappeared and Black Bolt uses his fearsome power over the sound spectrum to attack me with a single shouted word. "STOP!" I lose most of my body, reduced to adamantium skull, protecting my brain and vibranium cybernetic core, protecting my heart.

The battle is taking a drastic toll on my flesh... but it's good... I've moved so far beyond flesh anyway.

I temporarily abandon the mortal shell to be psionic energy following Quentin's example and driving a psionic knife through Black Bolt's brain, causing him unbearable agony which he endured without a single sound. He drops to the ground and I reformed in a new body or an old one... Manifesting in my first form , when I was merely Vittorio. I used teleportation to bum rush Emma Frost as she is in diamond mode. Using the full force of my telepathic power to broadcast a single note with devastating effect on her diamond form, triggering a chain reaction in the bonds of her diamond form, while the bonds that make a diamond are strong, they are also brittle. It locks her in diamond form while it deteriorates... I teleported to the apex of the 'cage' and dropped Emma...

She disappeared before she would have crashed and shattered.

There's only Hulk, Iron Man, Sentry, Vision, Thor and Cyclops remaining. They're all super pissed off...

I would need more to win against their rage, I diverted most of my psionic energy and attention over to my abandoned body, using the Vittorio body as a 'meat puppet using it as a decoy to regenerate my abandoned body. Vision sees through my ploy and alerts Cyclops to my regeneration and they both attacked me. Cyclops hits me with an optic blast which I absorbed and redirected at Vision who simply goes ghost mode... becoming intangible. I teleported over to Cyclops, tackling him and placing my hand over his mouth as he optic blasts me. I drained him of his life force to speed my regeneration. Creating a new body was easier than regenerating the damaged one I had left behind, the energy from Cyclops helps to speed up the recovery nicely. The Vittorio meat puppet is failing under the combined attacks of Hulk, Iron Man, Thor and Sentry. I had only had the ability to program it to level 3 before I abandoned the shell.

Cyclops disappears and I used my remaining technopathic and telepathic might to hijack Vision and his nanobot body to attack the others. Iron Man and Sentry work together to try and fend off Vision while trying to restore him to himself while Thor and Hulk attack me directly. I teleported alongside Vision who has used a phase strike to rip out Sentry's heart... I attacked Tony's armor, draining it of all its energy, then redirecting it back into the armor in a concentrated burst, frying every bit of circuitry inside it, trapping Tony in his metal shell.

Sentry regenerates and in a blind post resurrection rage, obliterates Vision.

"Bob?" Tony asked within his shell.

"THERE IS NO BOB, ONLY THE VOID!"

Hulk leaps at Void trying to punch him but get a faceful of photonic energy in the face flinging him into the 'cage'. The 'cage' rattles from the force of impact but the Hulk is only enraged and becomes mindless fury directed at the Void. While Tony is teleported off the battle field and the Void and Hulk engage in a furious fist fight I engaged Thor.

"Look what you've done!"

"Turn the tide of battle?"

"You unleashed the Void, he'll kill us all."

"Doubtful. The others are reinforcing the 'cage' now. I can feel it through my connection with the Phalanx."

"Who are you?"

"I am the god of War, Water and Wackiness. No one can withstand my madness." Then I laughed... or cackled as Thor launched Mjolnir at me again. I used telekinesis to slow it down long enough for me to grab it and absorb it's regenerating mystical enchantments.

"How are you wielding Mjolnir? You can not be worthy!"

"I'm not wielding it. I'm merely stealing its enchantments for a mana boost. I have no interest in the power of wielding the power of Thor using a magic hammer" I said while glancing over at the inscription. "What would be the point? I have better powers at my disposal."

"You mock the god of thunder at your own peril. I shall make you pay dearly for impugning me." Mjolnir returned to his grasp.

I smiled as the sounds of two titans clashed in the background while Thor was obsessed about some deluded notion of pride. "Bring it Bitch."

Thor lunged at me with the full force of his noble Asgardian power and heritage, wielding the full force of Thunder and god like power and I reached out with a thought and the power of a class 5 bio manipulator and turned him into Donald Blake, his mortal alter ego. "What have you done?" He said, having dropped to the ground due to the momentum of his movement.

"Wackiness. GOD OF WACKINESS. I turned your powers off like dear old daddy."

He punched me, but it hurt him rather than me, his mortal strength no match for an adamantium skull. I focused a flicker of telepathic power and put him to sleep. He disappeared.

Then there was 2. Void and Hulk were fighting but I recognized the game... I had been playing the game myself. If I wanted to simply win, I would have pulled a Scarlet Witch upon absorbing Wiccan's power and depowered the lot of them but it had never been about winning, it had been about pushing myself and them to the breaking point to see whether they'd become stronger under the pressure or shatter...

The Void was toying with the Hulk, the Hulk was putting in a good fight, he had grown a foot somehow and was leaving craters every time he leapt about but the Void was too fast and too powerful to be taken out easily by a mostly melee fighter (Hulk clap and the aftershock from Hulk Jumps being the only ranged attacks Hulk engaged in). Void kept dodging Hulk's strike and retaliating with energy blasts of increasing size and strength.

The Sentry's alter ego being involved at this late stage wasn't the plan but it could still be of use... I teleported next to Hulk and sapped him for a second to which he responded with "HULK SMASH"

"Easy tiger, we're on the same side for the moment." He tried to punch me but I teleported out of the way and used Hulk's subconscious memories of his transformation to trigger my own transformation. I morphed into a jolly green giant too...

and launched myself at Void who merely laughed and energy blasted me against the 'cage'. The Hulk attacked him with renewed enthusiasm while I made alterations to my current form to be more like Hulk, host to extradimensional energies...

I attacked Void again and was again struck by a vicious energy blast, this time I absorbed some of it. Hulk and I would alternate attacks, each time that I got attacked, I'd absorb more energy, modify the body to contain more energy and wait for Hulk to finish attacking so that I could go again. After a couple minutes of this routine I could tell from the Void's body language that he was growing quickly bored of the game and like a cat with a mouse he'd soon go for the killing strike. I waited for Hulk's next attempted attack and teleported behind Void, digging the fingers of one hand into his face, my huge hand dwarfing his face, while my other arm pinned him. He laughed hysterically and blazed like the sun as Hulk went into for another attack. The energy he generated was massive, more than a dozen suns, localized in an area less than a mile. It burned even my enhanced Hulk like flesh but my body lasted long enough to absorb the energy necessary to amplify my telepathy to cage the Void persona and allow Robert Reynolds to seize control of his body and powers again. The attack ceased and I modified my flesh into something resembling normality and made bone shorts to cover my nudity.

Robert Reynolds dropped to the ground, emotionally and psychically spent from restoring his psychic defenses against the void, returning to his mortal alter ego. "What did he do?"

"Nothing too traumatizing. Bruce will be fine as will Vision, there were a few nanobots remaining, he'll regenerate himself in a few hours or days. "

"How are you so CALM?" he shouted the last word, verging on hysteria. The 'cage' came down.

"I turned off the part of my brain that generates the neurochemicals associated with fear before the game began. I don't really feel much of anything at the moment. Manifesting bodies has some entertaining side effects."

"What are you?"

"I'm Synergy. I can teach you how to conquer the Void if you like."

"How?"

"I'll link with you telepathically with the Phalanx as support and we'll help you confront and reintegrate your darker self."

"It needs to die."

The others approach warily and I wonder if they are more afraid of me or the Void. It doesn't matter. I reached out telepathically to the Phalanx who are tired from maintaining the 'cage' for so long against repeated damage and told them of my plan to cure the Sentry of the Void. They agreed to help.

I reached out to Jean Grey, Emma Frost and the Stepford Cuckoos telepathically and asked them "Would you like to see how telepathy can heal the damage of a conflicted mind."

They accepted warily, holding back but I modify myself to activate the Hope buff, amplifying their powers and they are filled with confidence as Emma and her clone daughters are instantly dialed up to their natural limit of class 4.99 and Young Jean is brought to 5.8. Their combined power isn't as powerful as the Phalanx and me but psychologically they're not afraid any more as they are brimming with telepathic power and filled with the thoughts of everyone nearby. Well everyone except the Phalanx and me.

They joined with Quentin, the Phalanx, Robert Reynolds and me in the psychic excursion deep into his mental landscape.

:: Mental Landscape::

Robert's psychic landscape was that of a white room with one side being the Sentry a figure of boundless energy and in the other corner was a dark menacing figure in the corner of the room that beckoned and haunted him. It was crowded with the 17 of us in there...

I reached out and pulled Robert Reynolds the man, closer to his bright avatar, the Sentry persona and shared with him my memories of merging with my psionic time duplicate, before I integrated my darker half into my core.

I turned Robert so that he faced me: You created both of these avatars, the Sentry is your ideal self, the hero, the bright shining sun, take him back into you and claim his strength for yourself.

Robert: I can't do it.

Void: I'm always waiting, anything good you do I will ruin by doing something worse.

Me: Ignore him, we're here to help you reclaim your life and your mind.

Quentin: We're here to back you up and if he gives you any grief we'll fuck him up.

Me: Come on Robert, you're the only one can do this, we can give you moral and psychic support but you must make the decision if it's to mean anything. The first step is hard but once you make the decision it is surprisingly easy to move forward. Trust me.

Robert: I don't know.

Emma: Do it for your wife. Lindy...

The Stepford Cuckoos: Do it for Lindy...

The others: Lindy, Lindy, LINDY.

Robert buoyed by the moral support stands resolutely in front of his brighter self and says quietly: to me

and they merge into one... bright shining gold man.

Me: It's time for the last step, you have to reclaim the darkness.

Young Jean Grey, looking haunted: Can't we kill it?

Me: We could but without the darkness, there is no humanity, just something superior and alien who has no compassion for those still locked in a struggle with their darker selves. If all there is light within Robert Reynolds the God of Light and Power then he'll have no tether to his former humanity, at one point he'll decide we're all lesser for having the darker impulses that he doesn't and he'll burn us out, because we are corrupted. I dont want another god like entity deciding we're not worthy of existing. That's not the way to escape the darkness Jean Grey.

There's quiet for a moment and I lead Robert Reynolds, the man, the sun god, the man with incredible power to stand before his darker self and accept it as a necessary evil as I did with Phorcys.

Robert: Are you sure there's no other way.

I sighed and said: sadly not.

and Robert steps forward and embraces the Void and I linked with the others channeling their combined powers into a force distilling, diluting and distributing the darkness so that he's 80% good and 20% evil...

:: ::

I exit from Robert Reynold's mindscape and as I watch the people about, there are 3 reactions... grudging respect, open hatred and repressed suspicion.

I expect that noone is too eager to go off into battle with me now that they've had a taste of my ruthlessness. Success. I guess.

They'll probably have a party after I'm dead to celebrate.

Oh well.

"Well I hope that little battle taught you all something useful. I've left instructions behind for upgrades for your weapons and armors, when you're up for it. It's about time to head off." I teleported my armor and weapons back onto me.

Goodbye kiss? I asked Iceman telepathically, he hesitates for a moment before he walked up to me and gave me a brief kiss.

"Come back safe."

I smiled and said "Thanks." I took a deep breath, erasing all doubts by neurochemical manipulation and punched myself in the face duplicating, producing 8 dupes, armored exactly like me. I excreted a small section of Mkraan crystal and threw it to Richard Reed. "You can watch my opening salvo on this, I touched the wall yesterday while using Absorbing Man's power, it was very educational being an omniscient and omnipresent crystal. This will serve as a beacon, it'll let you know when you need to come through."

Then I duplicated again by slapping the outstretched hands of the two dupes on either side of me. There's now 25 of me in 5 lines of 5 and we each activate the genetic imprints of everyone I had touched today and for the weeks prior. I have all their powers, cranked up to their utmost limit by Hope's power. It essentially provides me with a God Mode level of power but it's inherently unstable as it's too much power for my current vessel, despite the Hulk like body modifications.

I teleported out just outside the Beyonder's realm with my Super Phalanx of class 6 telekinetics, class 6 telepathic, class 6 mystical, class 6 molecular control/transmutation, class 6 energy projecting/absorbing dupe selves. I linked with my other selves and together we merge with our armors, using it to replace our human skin with a thick exoskeleton as we chanted. First we chanted singly running through the mystical rosary of spells to increase strength, power, luck, energy absorption but it was too slow so we chanted in perfect hive mind unison, rapidly going through the mystical rosary together providing stacked bonuses for the group.

BEYONDER BATTLE

I/WE waited outside the fissure, struggling to contain the combined power of the SUPER PHALANX.

Individually I have class 6 magic that is amplified by my adamantium/vibranium alloy body with hands and eyes unaffected by the transformation. In one hand I have my War Sword and in the other I have claws of various energy types (psionic, energy, nova flame). I also have class 6 telekinesis and class 6 telepathy along with my class 5.99 hydrokinesis and multiple forms of energy absorption at my disposal.

In a telepathically parasitic hive mind (with me in the center) with 24 copies of myself at my most powerful... I have class 7 power, I could rip apart the multiverse if I wanted...

The Beyonders challenge me by saying "We are beyond. Dreamers. Destroyers. All of Reality our whim. Who dares stand before us?"

"I am Synergy, I am the power of unity, friendship, good morale and other force multipliers. I am more than the sum of my parts and I wish to speak on behalf of those with insufficient strength to ask you not to lay waste to us on a whim."

There's a long moment of silence where I adjust the power flowing through the Super Phalanx in order so that we don't spontaneously combust.

They let me/us through.

I closed the fissure behind me/us so that the inevitable battle is confined to this extra multiversal space.

I can see the shape of things and there are only two options. I live and they die, they live and everything I know and love dies...

I telepathically transmit a message to the Super Phalanx but it's unnecessary, they all got the precognitive insight that I had and... The outer 16 Phalanx members created and maintained individual shields of various energy types (tk, energy, invisible force fields, mystical energy, telepathic shielding etc) while the inner 8 touch my hands feeding me their energy, the Rogue effect multiplies with the multiple touches so that the typical 1:60 ratio (60 seconds of power for 1 second of physical contact) to 1:540. With 9 times my original power focused I created a combo shield combining all the others with a vampiric/parasitic quality that absorbed the shields beyond it...

The Beyonders hadn't reacted to my arrival or my layering of shields... They had pale green ovoid heads with energy cores contained within exo armor of advanced extraterrestrial design.

I took a deep breath pulling in energy from the 24 others...

I made an attempt at diplomacy. "You need to stop all interference in the Multiverse. We will not tolerate your attempts to obliterate us any more."

"We made the Multiverse on a whim and we'll destroy it as we see fit."

That was all that I needed to hear... They weren't open to reason, so they'd have to suffer for their arrogance.

I sent the Super Phalanx off to attack the Beyonders en masse while I chanted and channeled energy safe within the eye of the proverbial storm as the others unleashed their full powers against the massed Beyonders. They used anything and everything against the Beyonders while I watched with a psionic eye and watched as they unleashed class 5, 6 and 7 attacks. Energy attacks with the power of a thrown sun, black holes used as grenades, energy conversions turning' flesh to energy, telepathic attacks, temporal attacks, heat blasts, anti matter strikes. Telekinetically thrown War Swords, bone spears, vibranium daggers, various elemental spells with class 6 power amplified by vibranium alloy armor. I watched and I assessed the damage variants. Beyonders died... but so did members of my Super Phalanx once the Beyonders broke through the erected shields... I cataloged the damage ratio and decided on the ultimate finishing strategy...

With only 10 of the Super Phalanx remaining I sent them off on a suicide attack, focusing on the attack that appeared to do the most damage to the Beyonders . Energy attacks and conversion. Along with a bombardment of Ultimate Nullifier fire... Beyonders exploded.

I chanted several spells in quick succession amplifying my energy absorption and vital stats and teleported myself directly in front of one of the Beyonders . I thrusted my palm at his face with super speed and with my greatly enhanced absorption powers sucked him dry of his life force within a couple of seconds and smashing through his metal torso and absorbing the energy within. His powers added to mine and his memories became mine.

&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&& The Beyonders had been class 6 from the moment they existed... Over time they grew bored and created the first universe 616, they didn't really have a grasp of time or pain or death... They were a race of class 6 reality warpers, anything they wanted became reality. They had no natural predators.

Universe 616 and it's participants didn't behave as expected. Other races became powerful and relevant and time was manipulated and reality and multiple diverging universes grew from the first and abstract concepts were given life and personality and the Multiverse became more and more complex, each extra universe adding more variables until it became like a fractal, endless and unpredictable.

They had watched billions of years of universal evolution as if it was just a intellectual diversion.

The Beyonders had decided the Multiverse had outlived it's usefulness and had to be razed in order for the next experiment to begin... &&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&

The Beyonders were lost... They've lost critical momentum in their retaliation, they haven't been hurt before, they've never felt fear. They were confused and unsure what to do against an enemy more powerful than they are and immune to reality warps. I reached out with elongated fingers around the remaining 5 Dupes, absorbing their powers and mass into me.

This gives the Remaining 30 or so Beyonders a chance to regroup and while I'm trying to decide on a productive body shape, they combine their remaining power into concentrated attacks against my one incoherent mess of a body. Huge chunks of flesh are lost.

I ripped apart my insides to give birth to several adamantium proxies armed with vibranium katanas to keep some of the Beyonders busy. They're sleek and they attack with brutal efficiency, they slice and dice in acrobatic displays of double handed swordsmanship, weaving in and out of the massed Beyonders slicing at exposed skin and at the metal chassis, containing the Beyonder's energy form. It's part Danger smooth elegant, efficient fighting strikes, part Sentinel adapting and changing to defend and strike. The adamantium golems slice through exo armor, piercing energy selves. Other Beyonders are recoalescing. Apparently the former attacks weren't as fatal as I hoped.

I ejected out a combat mage from my mass, to provide me with various buffs as I reform the cybernetic cores inside me into one streamlined version, transferring files, compressing others and deleting redundant information. Then I eject the excess vibranium as a vibranium spike blizzard, ripping through the recoalescing Beyonders ceaselessly.

My Battle Mage self stays close behind me as I shield him my bulk as I become a flesh, bone and metallic abomination. I'm now a giant head on top of a mass of greenish flesh with adamantium tipped tentacles extended from the torso... I have no arms or legs.

While the adamantium proxies fly around at speed, propelled by tk, I devour Beyonders, one by one. I launch a tentacle around or through the Beyonders exo armor torso and consume its flesh head and crack open it's armored torso and devour its energy form...

Adamantium proxies die but my Battle Mage keeps amplifying my powers so that I can effortlessly maintain the tk boosted vibranium blizzard indefinitely. The Beyonders fight back and I lose flesh, sometimes quite a bit of flesh, but I just regenerate, or consume more of their flesh. I'm monstrous and a small part of me wonders what Bobby thinks of seeing this battle but I dismiss it as an irrelevant concern.

With the added power of each of the Beyonders I devoured I could drain and destroy the others faster and faster... I used time warps and energy blasts and black holes to distract them. Each one of them was a class 6.9 reptilian god... but together they could have been a class 7 at least... but they had never pooled their powers together before and weren't getting a chance to do so now. I only had to kill one and their weaknesses just multiplied. They had never died, they had never suffered, they had never felt fear and it had left them cold, arrogant and slow to adapt to real danger.

I killed my way through all of them... Until there was only one left. He pleaded for his life. I decided to teach this Beyonder a lesson about being weak and deprived it of half of its power, rendering it a class 4 reality warper. I gave my Battle Mage a final task, to guard the Beyonder Realm and the last Beyonder and make sure they didn't resurrect.

Their dispelled energy fed into me making me absurdly powerful, I was rapidly approaching the class 7 upper limit and I didn't think my body could contain this much energy much longer. I reached out through the Shadow Verse and into the Tangential Verse to reorganize the Shadow Verse into 13 universes. In the shape of a clock face. I used the class 7.99 power to create an energy shield around the clock shaped Shadow Verse to protect it from further incursions from the Tangential Verse. I made Alternate Time Line 2 the center of the Shadow Verse and the hub of the Shadow Verse transdimensional network.

With the Beyonders brought down and the Incursions ended I could power down and release the death grip hold I had over this new found power. I reverted to my pre Beyonder level of power but I shattered, mind and body having been pushed far beyond their limitations...

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End Notes

Well this climax took a lot of random twists and turns that even I didn't expect. Hopefully it was entertaining despite it's length. It took me ages to put this together so that it would feel complete.

Supplemental Information

The Shadow Verse.

1. Prime Time Line with Sentinel Future 2. Alternate timeline 1 Kitty & Xavier alter the timeline by altering the past, erasing Victor's efforts 3. Alternate timeline 2, Apocalypse war zone 4. Alternate timeline 3 Victor eats Apocalypse before he can cause trouble, 'ends' with young victor dying in a car accident at the age of 10 5. Alternate timeline 4 Victor merges with himself, increasing his power by 150% and ends with young Victor getting absorbed into Onslaught. Aborted time travel architecture. 6. Exile and Weapon X impacted battle royale universe. Brief stay there as a result of the Time Broker interference. 7. Civil War 8. Zombie Verse 9. Zombie Adjacent Verse, that also got infected with Zombieness. (originally part of tangential Verse) 10. Ultimate Universe the world with an Ultimate Reed. 11. Universe 616 A 12. Vampire Verse 13. X men run future?

Tangential Realities

Realities that have formed the fundamental foundation of 616 universe in the form of trans dimensional refugees, temporal interlopers and so on.

Age of Apocalypse 295 Age of Ultron House of M

terrax former cosmic herald of another Galaktus was also there.