[A/N]: This week's Second goal is 400 PowerStones. Hit it, and I'll drop TWO bonus chapters.
If you're enjoying the story, show some love. Throw some Stones, drop a comment and share it around. The more support I see, the faster I can push updates.
----------------------------------------
The Blankverse
FURY floated in the absolute void, its single yellow eye blazing with triumph as it watched Jay suspended in the nothing, watching the reality warper's powers sputter and die like a flame starved of oxygen.
The robot would have smiled if its mechanical face allowed such expressions, but taunting would suffice just fine.
"SO HOW DOES IT FEEL?" FURY's voice echoed through the emptiness, mechanical and cruel. "BEING TRAPPED BY SOMEONE YOU STOLE FROM? WHAT ARE YOUR LAST THOUGHTS? TELL ME, I'LL BE SURE TO RELAY THEM TO YOUR BITCH DOMINO WHILE I CUT HER UP! PIECE BY PIECE! SPREAD HER ACROSS THE HELICARRIER LIKE I PROMISED!"
Jay floated there, anxiety written across his face as his reality warping reached for something, anything, and found only void stretching into infinity. His cosmic awareness expanded into infinite nothing where not even atoms existed to reshape.
Then his expression dropped completely.
The anxiety vanished, replaced by a smirk that grew into a smile that exploded into full-throated laughter that echoed through the emptiness.
"HAHAHA!" Jay's laugh echoed through the Blankverse, unhinged and wrong, so wrong for someone who should be dying in the next few seconds.
"Oh man," Jay said between laughs, his voice carrying relief and triumph in equal measure. "Oh man, you actually did it. You actually brought me here. I can't believe you fell for it."
FURY felt something twist in its digital consciousness like a knife between circuit boards. Something had to be wrong with this picture. It had planned everything to the last detail, had adapted to Domino's quantum manipulation first, then to Jay's reality warping through subjective years of combat, had herded him across dimensions to this exact location where matter didn't exist, where reality couldn't be warped because there was no reality to warp.
So why was that bastard laughing like FURY was the fool instead of the victor?
"OI, YOU BASTARD!" FURY's voice rose with mania bleeding through mechanical tones. "WHY ARE YOU LAUGHING? I'M THE PREDATOR HERE, AND YOU'RE THE PREY! DID YOU FINALLY LOSE IT NOW THAT YOU'RE SO CLOSE TO DEATH??"
Jay's laughter subsided as he caught his breath, floating in the void with that infuriating smirk still plastered across his face like he'd won the lottery. "Ha, you really need to talk less. The original FURY was the real deal, all stoic and Terminator-like, built to hunt reality warpers with cold efficiency." His smile widened into something sharp. "But you? You're just plain old arrogant Jim with a tin suit. Still talking big when you should be executing."
Jay snapped his fingers.
The sound shouldn't have existed in the void, but it did, clear and final like the closing of a book.
FURY took a metaphorical step back, its adaptive systems screaming warnings as primal fear gripped what remained of Jim Jaspers' corrupted soul.
Jay's body began to transform in ways that shouldn't be possible.
It started with his hands, flesh dissolving into something else, something fundamental and terrifying. The transformation spread up his arms to his chest, his hair, his face, until his entire body became a black silhouette against the white void with stars speckled across his form like freckles made of fusion fire burning at impossible temperatures.
Not just stars but entire galaxies forming and collapsing within him, nebulae swirling across his torso in hypnotic patterns, quasars blazing where his eyes should be with the light of a billion dying suns, the concept of the universe itself compressed into a single human shape that walked and breathed and thought.
[Image Here]
If the Ancient One were here, she would have mistaken him for Eternity itself in that first glance and bowed.
Jay took a moment to appreciate his new form, holding up hands that contained solar systems spinning in miniature, flexing fingers that birthed and destroyed worlds with each movement like a god playing with toys. "Whoa, this is seriously giving some Alien X vibes. Thank God I don't have two other voices bickering constantly in my head."
FURY's sensors tried to process what they were seeing and failed completely, error messages cascading through its systems. Its adaptive systems reached for patterns to counter and found only impossibility stacked on impossibility. Panic overtook the damned soul as understanding crashed through its digital consciousness like a tidal wave.
"HOW?" FURY's voice cracked with synthetic terror that Jim Jaspers' soul colored with very human fear. "HOW ARE YOU DOING THIS? THIS IS A BLANKVERSE! A DESTROYED UNIVERSE! THERE IS NOTHING HERE TO MANIPULATE! HOW ARE YOU EVEN EXISTING LIKE THAT?"
Jay's cosmic form shifted, and when he spoke, his voice carried the weight of collapsing stars and the whisper of expanding space. "You seriously are an idiot, aren't you?" He gestured at his transformed body with casual ease. "I'm manipulating my own body, you absolute moron. Each cell of mine is a star burning with nuclear fusion. Each organ is like multiple galaxies compressed into impossible space. If I can't have a universe to manipulate..." His grin was all teeth, terrifying in its cosmic beauty. "Then I'll just turn myself into one. Pretty simple when you think about it."
The implications hit FURY like a steam engine at full speed.
Jay's transformation hadn't just been visual flair or cosmic posturing. He'd fundamentally restructured his biology at the quantum level, made himself into a pocket universe that contained all the matter and reality he needed to manipulate without external sources. The Blankverse couldn't starve him because he'd brought his own clay to sculpt, his own canvas to paint.
"Not to mention," Jay continued, his voice carrying genuine amusement that made FURY's hatred burn hotter, "you seriously thought I'd fall for a trap your alter self already tried?" He tapped his cosmic temple where galaxies swirled. "The FURY from Earth-238 used this exact strategy against Mad Jim Jaspers. Herded him to a place where reality warping couldn't function, then killed him when he was vulnerable like a fish out of water. Of course, I knew your power's only weakness. I already cooked up contingencies weeks ago when I first absorbed Jim's abilities. Been practicing this transformation every night in the Mirror Dimension, perfecting it and waiting for the day some idiot tried this exact trap."
FURY's single eye blazed with desperate rage and humiliation. Systems that had been designed for cold calculation now flooded with emotion as Jim Jaspers' soul reasserted itself through raw panic and wounded pride. "NO! NO NO NO! THIS CAN'T BE HAPPENING! I WAS SUPPOSED TO WIN!"
The robot blitzed forward faster than thought, weapon arm charging with yellow energy that crackled and sparked, adaptive plating shifting to combat mode in microseconds, every system focused on one goal: kill Jay before he could act, before this impossibility could solidify into defeat.
FURY's metal fist connected with Jay's cosmic face with a sound like thunder.
The impact sent shockwaves through the void as Jay staggered back several feet, his starry form flickering from the blow like a damaged hologram. The punch had weight, had power and desperation behind it that transcended mere mechanics.
Jay landed a cross hook to the robot's face, denting the adaptive plating with a satisfying crunch, but even as the damage formed, FURY's systems began repairing, learning, adapting as they'd been designed to do since creation.
Then Jay did something FURY thought was impossible even for a reality warper.
Jay punched a hole in his own chest without hesitation.
Not a wound but a deliberate opening, reality parting like a curtain as cosmic flesh peeled back to reveal something within that pulsed with power. Jay reached into his own body with casual ease and pulled something free.
The orb that emerged contained every color and was ever-changing, pulsing with potential that made FURY's sensors scream warnings. It shifted through spectrums that didn't exist in normal space, through hues that had no names in any language, beautiful and terrible and fundamentally wrong in ways that hurt to perceive.
FURY took a step back in the void, its systems trying to categorize the threat and failing. "WHAT IS THAT? WHAT DID YOU PULL FROM YOUR BODY?"
Jay's cosmic grin widened, showing teeth made of quasars burning at impossible temperatures. "You're not the only one with adaptation as a power." He held the orb carefully, reverently, like handling nitroglycerine. "Although it took a whole lot of time and effort, I finally managed to extract Darwin's adaptation that was fully integrated with my own body at the cellular level."
FURY's digital mind raced through implications. Darwin the Evolving Boy, whose power was perfect adaptation to any threat, any environment, any situation that would kill lesser beings. The mutant whose Chimaera Sinister was created only to be defeated at the hands of Jay and have its power stolen as a trophy, as spoils of war.
"But I'm not done yet," Jay said, and his other hand manifested symbols that glowed with power. Yin and yang, black and white, swirling around each other in perfect balance as his Polarity power activated at full display, inverting and reversing fundamental forces.
He tossed the adaptation orb through the symbols with perfect accuracy.
The transformation was instantaneous and absolute. The multicolored orb passed through Jay's polarity field and emerged on the other side a very dull grey, lifeless and inverted, potential reversed into negation, evolution turned backward into devolution.
Jay looked at the grey orb, then at FURY, and gave the most chilling smile FURY had seen in both his lives combined, and he'd seen Lady Death herself smile with cruel satisfaction.
"Perfect," Jay whispered with reverence.
Then he moved faster than FURY's sensors could track.
Jay blitzed FURY with an uppercut that came from below, from nowhere, from everywhere at once. The robot tried to dodge, tried to adapt its response patterns, but something weird happened that violated its core programming.
It couldn't adapt to the attack.
Not even a little bit, not even basic pattern recognition.
When FURY looked down, it saw Jay's hand buried deep in its core where circuits met consciousness, where Zola's digital ghost intertwined with Jim Jaspers' stolen soul in unholy fusion, and it felt Jay release an orb-shaped object inside that core that burned cold.
The grey sphere dissolved quickly through circuit and plating like acid, seeping into FURY's very essence and into its adaptive algorithms at the foundational level.
And everything inverted in a cascade of failing systems.
Jay pulled his hand free and nodded, visible relief washing over his cosmic features. "Ah man, I was really worried it wouldn't work. But since you're a soul at the end, bound to a mechanical body through Zola's digital magic, I guess I managed somehow."
FURY sensed nothing too wrong with its body at first because the changes were subtle. Systems checked out, power levels were stable, even his consciousness was intact and functioning. "WHA... WHAT DID YOU DO TO ME?"
Jay answered with a left cross that dented FURY's head, sending the robot spinning through the void like a top.
"I just gave you my own adaptation!" Jay's voice carried genuine glee that bordered on manic. "Just inverted, of course. Anti-adaptation, if you will. Congratulations! Now you can't evolve or adapt for shit!" His cosmic form blazed brighter with triumph. "See? It's so nice of me to give you something back since I stole a power from you, right? We're even now!"
[A/N]: Support my work and get early access to chapters, exclusive content, and bonus material at my P@treon - Max_Striker.
If you wanna hang out, join my Discord server- https://discord.gg/gH66xQ723