The Endbringer alert was a surprise, but not too inconvenient. Lisa was handling the occupation, so there wasn't any issue with me leaving. Naturally, Taylor was coming along as well. I considered bringing Bonesaw to help with healing, then realized that was probably a good way to send everyone into a panic.

I took Taylor and myself to the coast once we were suited up. One of Dragon's aircrafts was there, with heroes loading in already. Despite being public enemy number one, we were equipped with armbands, given anti-radiation medication, and shuttled in with remarkable efficiency.

Compared to the last Endbringer fight, barely anyone had shown up. A good part of that was probably my fault, considering my crusade through the city wiped out every villain group but my own.

Defiant, Miss Militia, Assault, Battery, Triumph, Weld, Flechette, Vista, and Clockblocker were all the Protectorate would bring to bear. Panacea was along for the ride too, for obvious reasons. We got a few dirty looks as we entered, which I think is a pretty tame reaction.

"Hello, Lord Indra," Panacea sneered.

I ignored her, turning to Clockblocker and feigning a dramatic double take. "I can't believe it," I gasped. "My nemesis: The Gobstopper!"

Clockblocker choked out a laugh, freezing up when Miss Militia's hand dropped on his shoulder.

"Don't engage him," she ordered. "It's not the time."

"Indra," Dragon's voice sounded out through the craft. "Will anyone else be accompanying you?"

"Nope," I shook my head. "We're all that you need."

"Then we'll be departing," Dragon announced, and the aircraft began to seal itself shut and rise off the ground.

A silence fell over the craft, an awkward silence nobody was quite sure how to break. It probably didn't help that we were flying toward a fight with a living nuke.

I shrugged, and turned to an empty corner of the craft. Flashing the clone seal, I popped out three shadow clones and whipped out a storage scroll.

I extracted a small mountain of paper and ink and spoke to the clones, "Get started on the seals. I'll manage the knives."

The clones began to create seal tags, working at high speed to produce as many seals as they could in a limited timeframe. I rolled my sleeves up and channeled chakra into my bones, sprouting kunai out of my arms like a macabre tree branch. The bone knives started to fall from my arms, dropping into two piles at my feet.

"Ah, excuse me?" Dragon asked.

"Yes?" I responded.

"Could I ask what exactly you're doing?"

In response, I shed all my knives, snatching one from the air before it hit the ground. I held a hand out to one of my clones, who handed me a completed seal tag. Smacking onto the knife, I turned around and threw it across the aircraft.

The room tensed as the knife soared, only to pause as I vanished. I reappeared across the room, snatching the flying blade before hit could hit the wall.

"Teleportation seals. Gonna have to stay mobile in the fight," I informed the group.

"You can teleport, too?" Flechette asked incredulously. "What the hell do they put in the water here?"

"Fluorine, I think. I don't know, I'm not a dentist. Well, not yet," I shrugged, then turned to Defiant with a shit-eating grin. "I told you that you couldn't capture me."

I flickered back to my original position. "You," I pointed at one of the clones as I unsealed a familiar brush. "Gonna need quick access for these. Tat me up."

I flicked a tattoo brush to the clone, who caught it and accepted my outstretched left arm. He drew on my forearm, creating a storage seal on my wrist as I continued to produce knives with my other arm. Once the seal was complete, the clone began to collect knives, attach seals, and hand the completed teleportation kunai off to me to seal in my wrist.

I considered what else would be helpful with dealing with Behemoth. Water Jutsu probably wasn't cutting it, so the only real option for consistent damage output was my Susanoo. I spawned another clone, who quickly flashed through hand seals and medically disabled my pain receptors.

At this point the rest of the aircraft was looking at me oddly, but I didn't really mind. I unsealed a oversized burrito and began to tear into it, trying to recover as much chakra as I could before the fight.

"Do you really have to do this, now?" Battery complained.

I flipped her off and continued to eat.

"Let him eat," Panacea interjected. "If you haven't figured it out yet, he's got some sort of bioenergy power."

"Rude to just reveal that, but she's right," I said after a swallow. "Well, half right. There's a bit more to it. Won't get anymore out of me."

"My apologies, my liege," Panacea returned to sneer at me.

"You're just mad I've got the better healer on my payroll," I shot back.

"The better healer?" She growled. "I'm not the one who's created abominations!"

"Hey!" I protested. "As a genetically modified abomination, I take offense!"

Panacea's palm hit her forehead. "Why do I even try…"

We arrived before Behemoth surfaced, and Taylor and I split off. She'd be working in search and rescue, and I'd be taking the fight to the monster itself. My first order of business was to start flickering around the city, leaving teleportation kunai scattered throughout the whole battlefield.

I wasn't feeling as prepared as I thought I would. Sure, Teleportation would give me an edge, but there was still a non-zero chance that Behemoth would end me. Behemoth was the hero killer for a reason. And honestly, I would sacrifice a lot to avoid death.

I want to see how to perform Izanagi and Izanami.

Izanagi was my fallback: my get-out-of-jail free card. Go blind in one eye, temporarily alter reality to my whim. An eye for my life felt like a good trade. That being said…

I want to see how to medically restore a blinded Sharingan.

Learning Izanami was more for curiosity's sake. Surprisingly simple in execution, just repeatedly snapshot specific moments in a fight. Then, blind your eye to trap your opponent in an illusion, doomed to repeat those reference points. Useless against Behemoth, since he's astoundingly inhuman.

Feeling a lot more secure, I wiped the blood from my eyes and returned to gather with the rest of the combatants. Legend was going through his usual motivational speech, which I tuned out in favor of taking a moment to breathe.

I opened my eyes back up at the sound of movement, capes moving to offensive positions. The earth began to thunder, the ground trembling beneath our feet. Behemoth was imminent.

I want to see Behemoth.

The armored titan was digging upward, shredding through the earth. I moved to the top of a building a few hundred feet from his destination, staring down at the spot where the streets were beginning to warp upward.

It was time to begin.

I felt the familiar drain of chakra as I wrapped myself in my Susanoo's ribcage, minus the all-encompassing agony I was used to. I still felt the strain, but it was more comparable to a sore muscle than a million needles covered in salt and hydrochloric acid.

My ribcage expanded to its full skeletal state, arms and heads erupting out as it increased in size. I didn't stop there, though. Susanoo training wasn't my forte, but I'd been able to push myself a layer further through training.

I continued to push, forming another layer. The white bones were wreathed in a layer of red skin, growing taller and stronger as my Susanoo became a horrible, blood-red simulacrum of a human. My avatar stood over thirty feet tall, clearly visible to all as it looked down upon the city.

But I needed more.

A growl rumbled in my throat as I forced my Susanoo further than I ever had before. White bones ripped out from beneath the skin, growing in a tight spiral. The torso was completely enveloped in the gleaming bone armor, which continued to spiral around the arms and head until the only red exposed was a thin slot on the face for its two glowing eyes. Now over forty feet tall, my Susanoo was just a tad bit shorter than the monster about to break through to the surface.

My body still didn't hurt, at least not in the traditional sense. I could feel the strain regardless, as much as a body without functional pain receptors could feel strain. Small twitches involuntarily surged through my muscles, and an unusual full-body weakness permeated throughout me.

Was it uncomfortable? Absolutely. Was it worth it?

I conjured my weapon of choice for this fight: a compound bow. The bow was the same bone white as my armor, each limb ending in a sharp spike that would be a severe safety hazard if implemented on a real bow. It was a gargantuan thing, even for something the size of my avatar; More comparable to a ballista than a bow.

A wide grin split my face as I hooked my fingers around the bowstring, conjuring an equally massive arrow and slowly drawing it back. The extraordinary draw weight was a struggle even for my armored Susanoo. The string was drawn back slowly and surely, creaking as the limbs of the bow stretched inward. The strain vanished as the arrow reached home, the compound bow's design allowing the fully drawn bow to rest in it's final position with ease.

A satisfied groan involuntarily left my throat, the sensation of raw power resting in my avatar's hands an unmatchable high. Oh, yes. It was absolutely worth it.

Behemoth erupted from underground in a plume of fire and ash, his arrival a manufactured volcanic eruption. He rose from the split earth, the debris covering his body melting and bubbling and slowly flowing back down the pit he came from. Capes rushed into action: blasters blasted, Alexandria moved in to start pummeling, but I held my fire and waited for the right moment.

Behemoth continued to move, casually batting Alexandria through a building. He began to target the ranged fighters, lightning erupting from arms and literally frying heroes as he continued to exit his hole.

I let go.

With a crack to match Behemoth's lightning, I loosed my arrow. It obliterated the sound barrier in an instant, shattering every window around me. It cut through the air with the speed of a jet, flying true into my target: Behemoth's lower leg. The white arrow lodged into Behemoth's shin, the momentum enough to sweep it out from beneath the titan, before dissipating into formless chakra.

Behemoth roared as he fell on his ass, falling right back into the hole he came from. His roar was far louder than my arrow could muster, but I took that as a sign I was doing something. Behemoth rose again in an instant, with none of the fanfare. He was out of the pit before I could finish drawing another arrow.

Sparks writhed around Behemoth's body as he raised his arm in my direction. I was his focus now; The target of Behemoth's ire. Electricity built as my bowstring was pulled taught, both of us prepared to strike.

Behemoth was first. I watched as plasma formed to bridge the gap between us, raw electricity forcing the air itself into a suitable medium to turn me into ash. It was incredibly fast, even for my reaction speed, but I was prepared.

The lightning struck the building, blowing the top clear off, but I wasn't there anymore.

I teleported to another building, my bow still fully drawn. I adjusted my aim, and let loose another shot. The arrow flew from Behemoth's flank and soared into his face, cracking a horn and gouging a nice stripe across his face. He stumbled for a moment before digging an arm into a nearby building and pulling himself up to stability, inadvertently destroying most of the structure.

The fight was in full swing, now. The Triumvirate had all made it to the field, flying through the air and assisting the blasters in their relentless assault. Dragon and Defiant's drones swarmed Behemoth, pummeling it with high-impact weaponry and carving small chunks out with molecular blades.

Nevertheless, Behemoth continued to have eyes for me. My arrows weren't doing much more than cosmetic damage, but the sheer force behind them was critical in staggering him. A staggered Behemoth was a Behemoth not actively oblitering the raks of capes, and therefore I was his biggest bother.

Behemoth tried to hit me with massive lightning strikes a few more times. Naturally, this resulted in him taking a long, hard shaft from behind, over and over. He quickly clued into the fact that his strategy wasn't working, and altered it. Instead of single massive strikes, he began to rapid-fire smaller ones.

The frequency meant I was teleporting more, which meant burning more chakra. I was still able to dodge consistently, but every once in a while the plasma would scorch a chunk of my armor, slowly turning pure white to pitch black. While it was nice drawing his attention away from the rest of the fight, it wasn't sustainable.

I teleported away from the fight to draw my bow, then teleported back to fire. I wasn't at risk any longer, but it meant the damage was now being turned on the rest of the combatants. Every time I rejoined the fight, the ranks were down more and more people.

It was a little humbling. Even being Behemoth's biggest pest wasn't enough for me to save everyone.

That didn't stop me. Casualties were expected in a Behemoth fight. I had to push on and continue to stagger him, because those staggers were seconds that people weren't dying.

Behemoth continued to turn the city into a hellscape, and I continued to retaliate until I was interrupted. When I teleported back behind my cover spot to redraw my bow, Alexandria was there waiting.

"Indra!" She shouted. "A time-bomb is going off in five minutes! Eidolon will work to contain the blast, but we need heavy hitters to join in to keep Behemoth in place while we evacuate the rest of the combatants."

I gave her a winning smile. "Anything for you, my dear! Do I just have to keep him distracted?"

She ignored my first comment, responding, "Keep him distracted, and try to avoid making him follow you around. We've already lured him near the epicenter. We'll give you a warning when it's about to go off. Provide cover for retreating combatants, if you're able to,"

I nodded, allowing my bow to dissipate and forming a new weapon. A pole formed between my avatar's hands, growing and growing before sprouting a long, curved blade on the end, tapered down to a sharp point at the end. A colossal naginata, my long-ranged melee weapon of choice.

"It will be done," I assured Alexandria, and teleported away.

I appeared on a building to scout, mentally marking Behemoth's location and the surrounding combatants. I flickered back into the fight as Behemoth released a roaring wave of fire, interposing myself between the fire and the group of people.

I blurred through hand seals as the flame crashed against my armor, molding a metric fuckton of water release. A small tidal wave erupted from my arm, washing over the flames and quenching them in an eruption of steam, blocking Behemoth's line-of-sight on the fleeing capes.

Behemoth roared, the shockwave blowing away the steam, but I had already moved. I toed the line of his kill aura, staying only a few dozen feet outside his range as I began to assault him with my oversized polearm. I heavily incorporated Defiant's style of halberd combat into my Susanoo's form, swinging and thrusting with relentless efficiency.

Behemoth lunged forward, trying to get me in range to burn me from the inside-out. I flickered backward and retaliated with a thrust, spearing him in an eye. An unprompted peal of mocking laughter erupted from my throat, before I quickly regained my focus and teleported behind the beast.

My blade ripped and pierced through his armor as I used a combination of body flickers and teleportation to circle around him. Neither his roars or fire were fast enough to hit me, though he still managed to occasionally scorch my armor with a burst of lightning.

Alexandria took the field again, placing herself between me and a lightning strike, shrugging off the damage and allowing me to get a few free blows in. She charged the Behemoth as Legend joined me in circling the Endbringer, dodging blasts of plasma and retaliating with his own multicolored lasers.

I took a bit of delight in toeing the line around his kill aura, leading him around in circles as he kept trying to leap toward me. He was simply too slow compared to me for it to be effective as a strategy, but I pretended to stay on the same level as the monstrosity to keep him desperate for a lucky immolation.

"Thirty seconds!" Alexandria yelled.

Legend unleashed one last flurry of lasers, one last rainbow artillery strike before disappearing in a flash of light. Alexandria rammed into Behemoth like a bull, before purposefully taking a smack and using the momentum to zoom away. I twirled my naginata to build up momentum before swinging it down on Behemoth's head in a brutal overhead strike, before promptly teleporting away.

I reappeared about half a mile away, hearing Behemoth's enraged roar far off in the distance. I let go of my Susanoo, letting out a relieved sigh as the strain faded. I walked over to the edge of the roof and sat down, dangling my legs over the edge. I closed my eyes and rested, waiting for the wonderful sound of an explosion in the distance.

A white flash lit my vision even through my closed eyes, and I sharply inhaled as the shockwave washed over me, feeling my hair blow back in the warm wind. My eyes opened to a crater, and engaging my Sharingan gave me a clear view of Behemoth's body, stripped to a crude skeleton of what he once was. I teleported to whatever teleportation seal remained closest to Behemoth, flickering toward the skinned atrocity as fast as I could.

I was first to arrive and the first to attack, not bothering to resummon my Susanoo. Instead, I began to unseal teleporation Kunai by the fistfull.

I want to see Behemoth's core.

I smelled blood in the water. Stripped of his armor, this was the best shot I'd ever get at reaching his core. I began to forcibly teleport as much as I could, slowly burrowing a hole in Behemoth's hyper-dense skeleton.

Behemoth struggled to raise an arm and my direction, but by the time he managed it I'd left a cheap water clone and moved to another vantage point. My clone was fried in an instant, but I kept ripping chunks out.

I've never been much of a fighter, but in the moments between teleporting a larger hole through Behemoth, I finally understood the appeal. See, I was always the type to break into someone's home and stab them in their sleep, rather than engage someone in one-to-one combat. I didn't help that I had a rather poor experience in most physical altercations.

Uber and Leet felt more like a chore, Burnscar was agonizing to finish off, and Lung's tail swipe hurt like a motherfucker. But here and now?

Right now, nothing mattered more to me than tearing another chunk out of Behemoth. I barely registered his weak attempts to ward me off, moving faster and faster, battering him with as many teleportation mediums as I possibly could.

I avoided his shockwaves by dropping a kunai, moving backward, and teleporting back to the kunai once the wave had passed over. HIs flames weren't worth bothering with, too slow to matter, and what little electricity he could still manage was nothing to my Sharingan's precognition.

My armband's beeping and the sudden warmth in the air was the only real sign of his final attempt to get me away, bathing our surroundings in radiation. It didn't deter me whatsoever, aside from making an idle mental note to check if Bonesaw could give me a quick radaway treatment after the fact.

I maintained my furious pace as the hole burrowed deeper and deeper, then finally breached the core. A wide smile split my face as esoteric material began to appear at the nearby kunai deposits I was using, and Behemoth's movements grew more erratic.

Behemoth tried to roar out another shockwave, only to waver and fail to produce much more than a harsh breeze. His body began to twitch and jerk, moving unnaturally and without control. The same sparks that used to to signify the preparation of a massive lighting strike began to turn against him, scorching his skeleton as he lost control over his power.

With one last warbling cry, Behemoth fell and went still.

A gasping laugh erupted from my throat, somewhere between an exhausted gulp for air and the unbridled relief of victory. Bloodlust gave way to euphoria as I dropped to my knees, a wide grin spread across my face as I stared at the colossus that I felled. I don't know how long I stayed there, basking in the satisfaction of a task accomplished.

Then, a golden sun rose in the west.

The warmth of euphoria left me in an instant, like I was dropped right back into the wave that Leviathan once swept me away in. Scion appeared above Behemoth, staring down at him in something resembling confusion. He turned to me, and his expression stayed the same. Then, he spoke.

"You do not belong here."

I choked as a flash of light ignited my retinas, and something suddenly felt wrong. I looked down to see a hole in my torso, punched clean through where my heart and lungs should have been, blood spilling out by the pint. For all my ungodly regeneration, the wound refused to heal. I fell to my side, feeling my head go light as my body lost blood by the pint.

I struggled to move my arms, placing my hands together and struggling through practiced motions. I felt a pressure in my left eye I as I cast the jutsu, before it suddenly lost all feeling.

I cast Izanagi, and reality became an illusion.

Scion and I swapped places. Scion was on the ground with a hole in his chest, and I was midair, beginning to fall. I flashed a clone seal and produced a horde of one-eyed shadow clones, all of us teleporting around to scatter throughout the battlefield.

I kept my distance and continued to produce clones, not that I expected to do much. I didn't have much chakra to spare anyway, and the clones I did make were there to distract Scion as I tried to figure a way out of this situation.

Scion seemed to have taken notice of me, which is a remarkably hard thing to get him do. I don't think I can run away and expect him to forget about me. There was only one way I could see out of this situation, maybe, and I had to at least give it a shot. Here's hoping Scion's human form makes him human enough for this to work.

The golden god sealed up the hole in his chest with an idle wave of his hand before beginning to mow down my clones. He didn't even bother dodging, stoically obliterating clone after clone with barely a glance. He withstood water dragons, pressurized water blast, water constructs, obliteration orbs, and bone-themed melee attacks with contemptuous ease, all while I sat back and snapshotted as many moments as I could.

He was cutting clones down faster than I could make them, even after investing a good chunk of what was left of my chakra reserves into a pair of shadow clones instructed to create more throwaway clones.

Ultimately, his idleness was in my favor. It was remarkably easy to discern what Scion was feeling each moment of impact: nothing. He didn't care about a single hit, didn't feel their impact, didn't even move an inch.

I snapshotted dozens of attacks and began to string them into a coherent loop, flashing through hand seals and feeling the same pressure as before building up in my right high. I took a fortifying breath as I flashed the last hand seal, before my world went dark.

I cast Izanami, and I didn't know what happened.

The battlefield went still and clones stopped dying, but I held my breath regardless. I felt a rush of chakra as one of my two major shadow clones willingly disperse, and I got his memories of watching the golden god go still through one eye.

I gasped in relief and fell on my ass, exhaustion flooding through my body. I felt the terror of the moment rush through me all of a sudden as I shook on the ground. Going from toying with Behemoth to being toyed with by Scion was a whiplash of emotion I hadn't been able to process in the moment, and that's before taking into account my near-death experience at the hands of a laser faster than I could react to going through the chest..

I heard the shuffling sound of my remaining clone weaving hand seals as the rest of my shadow clones dispelled, refilling my near-empty reserves to merely low on chakra. A hand came to rest on my eye as I felt a now-familiar pressure build, before blooming into an itch as my sight was restored in one of my eyes.

It was blurry, barely functional, but enough for my regeneration to latch onto and begin returning to full capacity. I watched through triple-vision as my clone weaved the seals once again, before pressing it to my other eye and repeating the sensation.

Vision restored, I watched as people began to return to the crater. People gaped at Behemoth's corpse, at Scion's immoble, flying form, and then finally at me. Now wasn't the time to process; Now was the time to act.

My last clone helped me to my feet and then popped, adding a little more chakra back into my belly. I caught Scion's eye and sent a probe, finding his mind completely open. HIs consciousness was caught in an illusion, perpetually oblitering clone after clone after they struck him, each kind of attack I sent his way a repeated focal point in a personalized time-loop I made for him.

Scion hadn't even noticed yet, having nothing better to do than destroy this random interloper's clones for hours on end. With Behemoth already dead, his goal was technically accomplished, and so he may as well kill something else.

Scion's psychology wasn't what I was interested in. I dug deeper, implanting a deep link in his mind and threading my chakra through him like a puppet. I clumsily forced his body to fly toward me and look me deeper in the eye, allowing me to sink my hooks in further.

Scion's empty body became my mind-controlled puppet, and with that came administrator access to the shard network. I quickly forced him to send out the commands to manually put all Endbringers on standby, then put him on protection duty against any threats to me.

Mutters began throughout the crater as Scion took his place floating behind me. I turned to the Triumvirate who were staring at the two of us. Alexandria's emotions were imperceptible behind her mask, aside from the tiniest frown twitching her lips down. Legend was staring on in abject confusion, and Eidolon's eyes were wide behind his mask.

I quickly ran through my options, finding them all to be pretty poor ones. In the end, I came to a conclusion. When in doubt: wing it.

"He shot first."

That drew a few incredulous looks, but I didn't bother with those. Instead, I focused on the Triumvirate, watching as they drifted down toward me.

"What did you do to him?" Alexandria asked, sounding much more stable than she was likely feeling.

"Trapped him in an illusion," I responded. "But you've probably figured that out, right?"

She nodded stiffly. "And how long will this illusion last?"

I grinned. "Believe it or not? Until the person comes to accept their fate and becomes a better person. I don't think it's capable of much self-reflection, so I think we've got a few centuries, at least."

Alexandria's voice lowered. "So, you know what he is, then?"

I nodded, "And I know why you know what he is."

The three of them tensed, but I relaxed. There was nothing they could do to me now, with Scion prepared to intercept anything they could muster. Alexandria's frown grew harsher as she watched my reaction.

"You've mastered him."

"Completely. He's nothing but a puppet. I've always wanted a pet elder god, you know?"

"And what will you do now?"

I shrugged. "I'm in the mood for wings, I think."

"You know what I mean," she growled. "What are you planning to do with it? He's a threat."

I snorted. "You overestimate me. This was a spur of the moment decision that I made out of desperation. I fully intent to fuck off right back to Brockton Bay and try to pretend this never happened. Might send him to wipe out some S-class threats, or build him a lighthouse to stay in. Now, I'm going to go find Hive. I believe I've more than done my part in this battle."

"Fine," she replied in a clipped tone. "But we will want to be in contact with you soon."

"Sure, shoot me an email or something."

I gave Scion the command to turn invisible, slapped a teleportation seal on him, and moved us to the seal I gave to Taylor. She jumped as I appeared next to her, before launching herself at me with a quick hug. I returned the favor, before pulling back and speaking.

"Ready to get back to Brockton?"

"Yeah," she nodded. "But… before we go, can I ask you something?"

"Go ahead."

"I feel bad that it's taken me another Endbringer to realize this, but I can't lose my nerve now. I was worried about you, and I don't want you to die more than anything. I really like you, and I was wondering if you wanted to go out sometime, like, romantically?

Wow, I'm just getting all sorts of bombshells dropped on me. Wasn't really expecting it, on account of being the shiftiest person I know.

"Yeah," I agreed, "That sounds nice. It'll have to be later this week, though. I'm exhausted."

"I figured," Taylor nodded, "I saw you fighting earlier."

"Yeah, about that…"

How the hell am I supposed to explain Scion to her?

It took more time than expected to explain that powers were the result of two gods having so much sex that society collapses, culminating in a multidimensional explosive orgasm that they used to move onto the next set of realities. That led into the explanation of how an unexpected threesome resulted in one of them dying and being blended up into power smoothies, and how I was now privy to via turning Scion into my personal sock puppet after murdering Behemoth.

It was quite the conversation. After that, I stopped by Bonesaw's lab to check on her. She'd taken to going by Riley ever since she'd made friends with some of Heartbreaker's kids, but I couldn't help but still think of her as Bonesaw. Another character flaw I should probably address sometimes.

That time was not now. Instead, feeling bone tired, I teleported to Alec's place.

Alec welcomed me without question, plopping down on a sofa. "How'd the Endbringer thingy go?"

"It went well, I think," I took a minute to gather my thoughts. "But if I'm completely honest, I'd rather not talk about it. I'm more interested in spending time with someone who doesn't give a single shit about that.

Alec's lips quirked up into a smirk. "Well, luckily for you, not giving a shit is my default state. So, what should we get to eat?"

"Wings, and a lot of them," I told him. "Today is a good day for a food coma."

"Hell yeah. How about some Mango Habanero? Unless you're too much of a bitch to handle some spice…"

I snorted, flopping onto another couch and catching the controller he threw at me.. "Alec, never change. Know any good co-op games?"

"Do I know any good co-op games?" He rolled his eyes, snark in his voice. "It's like you don't even know me!"

We stayed up till dawn, shooting the shit and ripping through food. I passed out with a smile on my face, and everything was perfect. Or, at least good enough for me, and that's as close to perfect as I need things to be.

Alexandria had some good ideas. With Scion under my command for... an indeterminate time, and actively monitoring any threats to me and mine, I had the whole world at my fingertips. Death and taxes were no longer a certainty, and in this new age of absolute power anything I wanted could happen.

Well, until Scion breaks free and my hubris is made manifest in the form of an ass-whooping of cosmic porportion. ...But that's a problem future me could hopefully circumvent.

I suppose I should start with my friends. I know Taylor would appreciate her mother being ressurected. Alec... just wants to laze around more. I'm sure I could find some way to utilize near-omnipotence to assist. Riley would like some flesh monsters and experimentation options, probably.

So, with the gifts celebrating my ascention to proxy king of the local multiverse cluster decided, I turned to my own desires. If there was one thing I wish I could change about my time in this world...

Well, I guess I have a cat to raise from her ashes.

The End.