The Power of Ten Book Four: Dynamo

“Can’t believe you’re using Sivana and Hector Hammond,” I muttered to her in approval, our voices masked by magic. “And Ivo, too? Seriously?”

“Useless Geniuses are in short supply,” she bantered back, as the flow of hamburgers continued. “Also, it lets me keep tabs on them. Luthor’s branches had a sour enough rep that it’s still possible to do business with the crooks, and I’ve got a ruthless enough reputation that they get to mess with me exactly once, and then I take them off the board.”

Which she had done with the Ultra-Humanite, body-stealing brain-transplanter that he was. One more Useless Genius gone from humanity’s side of things. It was a good thing there was a ton of super-tech to reverse engineer and apply, which we were pretty good at, as opposed to needing to invent it outright.

“And Zoom, too,” I mused, glancing over to where Barry Allen, the Flash, was chatting with Bolt from the Champions and Quicksilver from the Avengers about various things, the hum of their conversation barely even recognizable.

“I couldn’t change him murdering Barry’s mother. But the second he hit the timestream again, I pureed the bastard and set him on vivus. There might be a couple more skips from him still to come, but basically his timeline remaining is VERY short,” Nami grinned fiercely.

“Couldn’t happen to a nicer psycho,” I agreed, noting the very satisfied moment.

“I see you finally asked Sama about the Amazons back there.” She glanced over towards the invisible plane knowingly.

“Diana was curious, so I asked.” I could only sigh. “Definitely not Diana’s sisters.”

Sama had quite literally killed them all off, sending them all into true reincarnation. The Amazons of -1832 were perpetual reincarnates who had the standard Amazon perfect bodies, max Stats, and carried their knowledge from one life to the next. They were opponents of both the Phoenix and the Magi of the Dragon, as well as manipulators and influencers all over the globe through the families they’d been born into, married into, and had children in.

Sama had gotten fed up with their interference in her plans and their callous treatment of their descendants, and offed the lot of them with vivus, wiping their past lives out and meaning they reincarnated as completely new people now. Without those resources, prior memories, and descendants to draw on, the influence of the Amazons had plummeted, and they had ceased to be an impeding factor.

Tellingly, the two Phoenixes before our Jean Grey had lived a LOT longer lives after Sama had done that... and the Magi had been much more active...

There were three Amazons in the Ultra Corps right now, actually. Sama killing their preincarnations meant they weren’t perpetuals anymore, so if they died early due to violence or something, they again started over with a clean slate, just like everyone else. However, they couldn’t even do an incarnation dive, it was all wiped clean, so there was no following the soul back to learn who they had been, and getting stuffed into niches worn deep by their preincarnations.

They still got the looks and perfect stat line in their new lives, so it was hard to feel bad for them.

Naturally the Amazons’ families and descendants were always looking for their matriarchs, and the support network they’d built over the millennia still existed. It was just that nobody knew which Amazon was their matriarch now, and grudges and plans literally centuries in the making had evaporated and had no teeth behind them now. Without millennia of experience and knowledge of all those secrets they’d taken with them to their graves, the Amazon families had declined, at least until they finally started taking some steps on their own to secure themselves against dissolution.

It meant that there wasn’t anything resembling an Amazon society on our world for Diana to open a discourse with. The closest being was Hippolyta, who was Diana’s Amazon mother on her world, but was a daughter of Ares on ours, and quite the egotistical shrew for it, too.

Nami was available for brute force if the JLA or JSA needed her, but otherwise kept herself very busy handling a whole lot of corporate-style evil with flare and gusto that terrified a lot of rich masterminds as she went firmly into their areas of business and was very, very happy to butt heads with them there.

They didn’t have the power to kill her, and if they resorted to violence, they had an odd habit of being stuck right in the middle of such and dying to whatever they had put into motion.

Pulling the trigger on the sniper bullet that killed yourself when it went through a dimensional aperture and into the back of your head was always entertaining. It was more fun when the rocket your mercenary launched slammed into your office and reduced you to meat and bone fragments instead of a Dynamic Enterprises office building half a world away.

Teleporting the merc to a neighboring building where he could be witnessed just put a nice cap on things.

I saw the very grown-up Billy Batson coming this way with a smile, and headed off to give them some room. Nami could handle the TK easily enough, I was just making myself useful.

She was teaching Captain Marvel to be a pretty good kisser, actually...

----------

=============

No kissing, sorry, but...

If you're not reading this on Royal Road, you're helping pay a thief. Please read it in its original home, it's still free! You get the foreword and afterword, author comments, and comments from people with questions! I have not given permission for this story to be copied by a bot and posted ANYWHERE ELSE.

=============

Time for another of those universe-changing moments...

“My lord Hercules, what is it about Elder Gods not liking existence and everything?” Morgan asked perfunctorily as she sent out waves of psychic disruption from the Rebellious Rings of Raggadorr and tore the rain of falling symbiotes in every direction from the control of their Dark God.

“They are incomplete things, born of Chaos and Void, missing many of the essentials of true life,” Hercules answered, sweeping his golden Mace Nemean out and tearing apart a deeply infected symbiote dragon that had no ability to resist its creator. “When I Bound Zom and its shadows into that raw universe, I was also a thing of raw chaos and power. I had no limits on many aspects of my soul... and absolute emptiness on other aspects. To embrace that power is to have random parts of you overwhelmed by the forces that empower the rest of you. You will be nothing of what you were when you come out the far side.”

He had given up the status of a Chaos God-King rather than be lost in such. Still, there was no denying that his status among the Olympians had risen markedly... as had his quiet power.

Lightning was crashing and playing across the sky. Six Eternal weather goddesses were backing Rune King Thor as Mjolnir clashed with the power of the Void God, who was finding the going pretty damn tough as a whole solar system worth of lightning was literally Hammering into his defenses with every titanic blow from the Runefather of Asgard.

Thor was there to deal with things mortals could not, and Knull was strong enough to surprise and slay a Celestial. His army of shadowed klyntar symbiotes was falling all over the Earth, taking hosts and forcing them into combat with those not so blessed.

That was, except for the counter-signals being broadcast through their hive-mind by tens of thousands of mentalists, assisted by the spawn of Venom, who were also completely free of their creator’s control.

Those signals were only spreading. “He’s heading for Anti. Isn’t that stupidity?” Morgan pointed out, her efforts synching with Nimue, Circe, and Dealer, and ever-expanding the Rings’ disruption to the dark god’s control.

Hercules just laughed. “Lacking common sense is one of those things Chaos seems to empower the most! She’s bringing Venom forwards now...”

They could see the ripple in the falling horde as it bent away from the source of control disruption, and streams of black reversed to white. The horde was turning in upon itself as those freed from control by Anti’s absolute defiance of Knull spread through their hivemind faster and faster, and the Sublime Chord rising throughout the world cut the bounds of slavery with Truth, Hope, and Valor echoing into the chained heart of the dark god’s control.

Sama was advancing through the horde. She didn’t have to actually fight anything, as a wave of whiteness spread through the Klyntar’s shadowed masses as she swept by. Not even the most corrupted black Klyntar could leap upon her before washing white and collapsing helplessly inside her Null.

The black-and-white colors of the Klyntar named Venom were upon her, although it did not dare occlude her mouth or her Mask-like Specs, its face grinning widely across her flat chest. Soft Hag’s laughter echoed in the sky, and closed upon the dark god attempting to fight off a Skyfather at the height of his power, backed up by Eternal Casters with power enough to contest all Knull’s power over shadow... power that was evaporating as his control over his symbiotes and their unwilling worship and psychic support abandoned him.

“You!” An almighty blast of void-born energies covered the sky, and hurled Thor away, most of it countered by blasts of lightning that took any danger from the hit and left the God of Thunder unharmed. “You, the one who broke my Sword!” he seethed at Sama Rantha.

A Hag’s mocking laughter rose to the skies, and all around her, tens of thousands of white Klyntar tilted back their heads and echoed it in impossible unity, jeering at their god and creator.

“So I did, little godling of nothing,” she purred, but made no move towards Tremble, crossing her arms in great satisfaction as she stood in the sky before the terrible Void God. His shadows and power could not even approach her, held completely at bay by her Null. The full arc behind her was occupied by white Klyntar as he loomed and leered and yet did not dare approach her. “I see that you miss it greatly. That’s fine, I brought along an old friend I’m sure you wanted to see again.”

“What...” the dark god began with a sneer, and then the great figure was looming up behind her, clad in the white skin of a converted Klyntar, and moreover, the one at the heart of the movement that was tearing the Klyntar free of his grasp. “You! The traitor!” he blurted out in astonishment.

“Allow me to introduce Gorr the God-Judge and Anti, his Klyntar. Nemean, your Strength, and Mjolnir, your Thunder, if you will!”

Great hands reached out through small Portals to Gorr’s sides. Both gods looking on opened their grips, and a great Hammer and a golden Mace were grasped and withdrawn.

“YOU HAVE FAILED YOUR PEOPLE!” the God-Judge proclaimed, seething with all the Onus of his own power and Domain, a power that rose only against gods who had betrayed those who had faith in them. Hammer and Mace rose together, Strength and Storm coming together to administer Justice! “Judgement upon you! The will of the Klyntar will be their own, never yours again!

“Feed the Land!”

He had been receiving instruction, it seemed.

The Hammer and the Mace crashed into the dark god, and vivus exploded forth. With each crashing impact, Strength compressed Thunder, and only silence issued forth as Knull screamed in agony as he was driven back across space. With each strike, thousands of symbiotes splashed white as they were freed from Knull’s commands, and joined their hivemind in empowering Judgement upon their god and creator.

A Dreadskull against Immortals laughed where it sat around Gorr’s neck on a brazen chain, burning gray with more than Divine power as it leered and laughed at the dark god who was eating each and every impact in terrible, unified silence, only his own screams ringing forth as Gorr effortlessly kept pace with him.

Lightning and Thunder revolved about them, growing and growing as white dots splashed into existence across the sky, the entire Klyntar Host painted with freedom and raising semi-solid jaws to join the Chord ringing liberty across the stars.

The explosion as Knull died covered the sky of the entire hemisphere in whiteness, even though by then the battle had taken the two gods millions of miles from Earth. The Thunder of the discharging storm rang in every heart in the system, swallowing the scream of a dying sliver of Oblivion forever.

---

Far out in the Void at the edge of the universe, I detonated a little gift from the Underweb in Knull’s kiln and home, a place wrought from the corpse of the Celestial he’d killed so many eons ago. What essence had managed to hide there screamed as the nigh-invincible armor was reduced to free energy, devouring what remained of him in a final vengeance from the ancient being as the darkness Knull valued most was lit up with cosmic light and fire from the true death of something more and less than a god.

The Widow in the Web watched in satisfaction, and Death chuckled from somewhere as another immortal being was added to my toll...