A glowing green portal opened up in the shadow of Uranus, and a massive celestial object emerged from within it, the tip nearly pushing into the atmosphere, causing ripples across the planet's surface.
The Saraswati.
And with it, me!
The moment I entered this world I knew the first threat to spot me was also the greatest threat to me personally.
The technokinetic endbringer, the angel of madness, chaos and death, the orbital kaiju, Simurgh.
My tech cannot be allowed to fall into her hands at any cost.
Hence she was also my first target.
I moved the ship, tip first into position, the targetting systems locking onto the Simurgh's location, in orbit above Kathmandu.
The moment my signals reached the moon though, her head snapped to me, like a woman possessed, her eyes piercing past the solar system, into my very soul.
A chill ran down my spine as I saw her gigantic body turn at a frightening speed, sending massive storm wave across the indian subcontinent.
Beside her, little blobs of matter began to float into place, as she began to assemble some kind of device, clearly targetting me.
"Oh fuck no, kaiju lady!
This ain't your game!" I smiled, charging up the portal projector, streaks of green and black dancing along the shaft of the antenna.
Time to make the gamble of a lifetime.
Will I kill her first or will she become a multiversal threat?
Then, as if realizing something, she turned sharply, raising a marble white hand and pointed at a satellite, telekinetically pulling it to her.
Her mouth hung open, probably using her signature brainwashing scream to prime something or someone while she began to idly fiddle with the satellite with blinding dexterity, not even sparing me or the weapon I had aimed at her another glance, as if she had accepted her death.
Whatever she was planning couldn't be good.
Immediately, I aimed the portal projector at her and pressed the trigger.
A massive portal to the blender dimension opened up inside her, bisecting her body, and core in one fell swoop.
Her hands didn't stop though, even as her artful marble body began to turn ash gray, cracks fracturing out from the portal, and feathers shed from her angelic wings.
Finally, she closed her mouth, forming a creepy, yet hauntingly beautiful smile.
She pointed a finger at the device she had completed.
It lit up like a christmas tree, pulsing with power, and a wave of energy burst from within it, streaking across the planet's atmosphere, causing all electronics on earth to flicker all at once.
An EMP? That's her grand plan?
A last fuck you to me and the world, this lame?
Not something I would expect from the kaiju that brainwashes entire cities into nascent sleeper cells for breakfast!
I don't believe that for one goddamn minu-
Then it hit me. A signal from the device emerged, this time flowing outward, forming a broadcast net of sorts at lunar distance.
I narrowed my eyes.
What does this mean? It's not doing anything?
I know it's a trap, obviously.
But what kind?
I opened a portal at the edge of the net, and sent in a probe droid in.
At first, nothing happened.
Then, something flickered on earth's surface.
Hmm.....
I opened a portal on world, somewhere in Berlin and popped my head out, opposite an electronics store.
And seeing the image of my probe droid broadcasting acroos all screens I finally realised what she was up to.
She had essentially taken away from me the element of surprise.
With my probe broadcast on every television, computer and phone screen across the entire planet, everyone knew something was up.
She had just revealed to the world that something or someone else was out there.
Some existence, extraterrestrial.
And with that revelation, humans did as humans do.
Through my technokinesis, I could already feel people panicking at their computers. Through their mics I could hear their curses. In the UN assembly, in the white house, in every center of authority, phones were already beginning to ring, heralding my arrival.
Now with extraterrestrial life all but proven to the world, the world that was already breaking at the seams, would be plunged into further chaos.
True to her purpose as a conflict engine to the last breath.
Fuck this shit. Less than a minute into this world and all my plans for silent infiltration and takeover are already flushed down the shitter.
"Haaangh!" I groaned, running my hand across my face.
Fuck that bitch!
Should have entered the world inside her non existent cunt, and split her apart myself!
"Papa?" Star prodded at me, worried.
I turned to him and put on a loving smile.
"It's okay Star. Everything's fine." I said, patting his head, and he nodded, eyes squinted happily.
It's alright. I planned for this too, just in case.
Sure, I didn't expect the Simurgh to figure out my plan this early, but I'm not going to get caught pants down.
I connected to the ship interface, and pushed my power to full blast, information filling my head to bursting.
I didn't have much time.
Even with my position hidden in the shadow of Uranus, it will only take less than 5 minutes before this world's threats notice me.
So here goes.
"Deploy magnetic disruptors." I ordered, ports opening up all the way across the length of the ship.
Droids emerged, leading the disruptor array out, surrounding the ship, precenting any tinker tech from reaching me or the ship.
"Release the anti photonic mist. Activate dimension gyroscope. Forcefield at full capacity!"
A silver pink gas flowed out from small ejectors in the ship asy nano swarm shaped it into a nebular cloud around the ship, preventing relativistic powers from attacking me. This would protect me from one of the strongest heroes in this world.
Legend. Someone who had the power to turn into a beam of energy that could travel at near light speeds, and maybe even faster, without losing any of his stopping power. The mist though, would form a reflective maze, that would deflect his light form and throw him into the surface of the planet at light speed. Even he won't survive that impact.
The dimension gyroscope on the other hand would stop multiple threats from crushing me with the many aberrations of physics that they could manifest, weakening reality bending powers to nearly a quarter of their potency.
And finally, my classic forcefield was just there for protection against standard bogeys like rayguns, solar cannons, nukes, etc.
Though it also had the handy feature of stopping teleportation within it, to prevent access to the wealth of tech and raw materials that lay within my ship to the many teleporters and pocket dimension tinkers in this universe, chief of which was the resident kidnapping specialist, discount illuminati chaffeur and portal master, Doormaker.
"Come Star." I said, opening a portal to the armory, and sending my nano swarm out the Berlin portal to cover the planet while I prepped the other doomsday devices.
An alert rang out on my bracer.
"Intruder alert! Entry attempted. Attempt thwarted. Send retaliatory strike via nano swarm?"
"Yes." I ordered, and the screen beeped green, "But before that, calculate the origin coordinates of the intruder."
Cauldron. The illuminati equivalent of this world, only with OP superpowers and access to a whole treasure trove of power granting shards.
They were the literal power brokers of the world.
You wanted a superpower without going through the trauma and mental breakdown of a trigger event?
You contact them. They sell you a vial of power granting serum. At the small cost of millions of dollars and owing them an unconditional favour.
Small price to pay for the many power hungry monsters in the world.
They were already here huh? That's some fast work. No worries.
Rick isn't the supreme being in his multiversal cluster for no reason.
"Coordinates detected." The A.I. replied.
"Check recent connections." I asked.
"Three. Brockton Bay. Dallas. Boston."
"Hmm....Interesting. They are already contacting their assets to figure out my prowess.
Dallas was Eidolon, the strongest superhero in the world.
Boston, I suspect Accord, the Thinker with the power to plan anything and everything.
But what caught my attention was Brockton Bay.
"Brockton Bay is definitely Coil." I muttered.
Thomas Calvert, the Deputy Director of the Parahuman Response Team, the in-world government organisation meant to fight and contain superpowered individuals, and in the shadows, a part time crime lord with one of the most broken powers. Destiny manipulation, he calls it.
From his perspective, Coil's power grants him the ability to 'split' the world into two timelines. He is then able to do whatever he likes in either timeline, collapsing the timeline that is least ideal and keeping the timeline that he wants. In actuality, his power isn't one that creates multiple timelines, but is instead a powerful form of precognition.
In practice, Coil's power allows him to first attempt two different courses of action, then pick the timeline he wants to keep while retaining all knowledge from the other timeline. In this way, he was able to test his plans in different permutations before acting upon them, allowing him to make the most informed decision that he could. This was, however, limited by the fact that time still moved forward in his timelines, preventing him from simply simulating the entire day ahead of time and proceeding from there. No matter what, Coil is forced to pick one of his timelines.
He was basically a quicksave mechanism. The good old video game mechanic of fight, die, repeat, until you can beat the boss with a hundred carefully plotted pokes to the butt. Heh. Too bad, I'm not an NPC. I'm the main character!" I said, opening a drawer, to reveal a small cache of crystallized xanthenite, otherwise known as time crystals.
I picked one up and and attached it to my laser gun sights.
The gun that can fire across timelines.
I grinned devilishly.
"You wanna turn this fight into a video game?
Then I'll use the ultimate pay to win equipment to crush you into the ground."
The time-space fuckery detector began to beeped incessantly as the world began to warp around me ever so slightly.
"Computer. Find Coil. And if the nano swarm has completed infiltration, display a live video feed. I want to see their faces as I pick off their most prized agents like rats."
The Simurgh may have made the first move, but I'll make the last.