[A/N]: Yay, we did it 🎉 Our first goal of 200 PowerStones is officially done, and this is your Second bonus chapter!
Now for the next target 👀Second goal: 400 PowerStones. Hit that, and I'll drop TWO more bonus chapters.
So if you're enjoying the story, drop your stones, leave a comment, and share it around. Let's keep this rolling đź’Ą
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"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!"
The full horror of it crashed through FURY's consciousness like a revelation of damnation.
Its adaptive systems tried to compensate for the damage Jay had inflicted, tried to learn from the attack pattern and evolve countermeasures like they'd done thousands of times before.
But nothing happened except error messages.
The algorithms ran but produced no results, spinning in useless loops. The adaptive plating remained static and unchanging. Even the learning protocols found no patterns to incorporate into its combat database.
Every advantage FURY had possessed, every edge that made it the perfect predator for reality warpers across dimensions, every evolution it had achieved through hours of combat against impossible foes, all of it locked in place, frozen and unable to improve or grow or change.
FURY couldn't form a coherent thought beyond primal panic as it responded with the only thing its most basic self understood: violence without thought.
It threw a wild haymaker at Jay's cosmic face with desperate strength.
Jay didn't dodge, took the punch head-on with his starry form rippling from impact, and replied with a rabbit punch to FURY's midsection that dented metal plating and cracked internal systems.
Jay smiled as red blood still flowed from his starry nose, human biology asserting itself despite cosmic transformation. "It's been a while since I've gone down and dirty like this." He wiped the blood away, leaving a smear across his cosmic features that looked like a comet's trail. "And in this verse where I can't manipulate anything external, and you can't adapt for shit anymore, a fist fight seems like a fitting end, don't you think? Old school."
And so, their fight continued in the most primal way possible.
Not with adaptive evolution or cosmic powers that could reshape existence itself, but with pure, brutal and visceral violence. Two beings reduced to their most fundamental nature: the will to destroy and the will to survive.
The fight was ugly in ways that transcended aesthetics.
Jay's cosmic form gave him strength beyond normal human limits, each punch carrying the weight of collapsing stars compressed into knuckles, but FURY's mechanical body had previously adapted to hunt beings far stronger than baseline reality warpers.
They traded blows in the void with no ground to stand on, no air to breathe, just two combatants suspended in nothing while they tried to destroy each other with increasing desperation.
FURY landed a kidney blow that would have ruptured organs if Jay hadn't restructured his biology into something more durable.
FURY yells with Jim Jaspers' accent bleeding through mechanical tones, "It's you damn mutant if only you were never born, if only I could have banned you abominations birth! If only I could stop you, parent, from fucking having popped you muties out!!"
Jay responded with a flurry of jabs that dented FURY's faceplate, each impact carrying frustrated rage that had been building since this fight started.
"It's always this hate with you lot!" Jay's voice rose with each punch, cosmic fists connecting with mechanical face in rhythm with his words like percussion. "And your rants won't shut up! It's always the same tired speech about purity and control!"
FURY tried to block, but without adaptation, without the ability to learn Jay's patterns mid-combat, it was just a tough robot fighting a cosmic being who was learning and evolving with each exchange.
"The threats are so exaggerated they're like children screaming about monsters under the bed!" Jay grabbed FURY's head and kneed it in the faceplate with bone-shattering force.
He threw the robot away, and it tumbled through the void before stabilizing with damaged gyroscopes.
"One sees a father or a mother who shouldn't be approved!" Jay's cosmic form blazed brighter with each word, his anger manifesting as literal starfire that burned without fuel. "And you say to yourselves: they should have had to pass a test, do you understand? They should have gotten licensed to have kids like getting a driver's license!"
FURY charged again with weapon arm swinging wildly, but Jay caught the blow and twisted with cosmic strength, servos screaming in protest as metal bent wrong.
"It starts as a joke!" Jay's voice cracked with emotion that had nothing to do with physical pain and everything to do with fury that transcended this fight. "Then perhaps there's tragedy. A postpartum mother who should have gotten help but whose insurance didn't cover the therapy she desperately needed!" He headbutted FURY, and both combatants reeled from the impact. "A father who erred because he was raised believing men are pathetic if they're caregivers instead of breadwinners!"
Blood flew from Jay's nose as cosmic flesh split and bled human red that looked wrong against his starry form. FURY's optical sensors cracked, yellow light flickering like a dying star.
"The test comes out!" Jay grabbed FURY in a grapple, cosmic strength versus mechanical leverage in a test of pure power. "And yes, there are some problems, but nothing that can't be ironed out, yes?" His voice dripped with bitter sarcasm that cut deeper than fists. "But now anyone with mental illness, with a criminal record, is barred from becoming a parent! And you'll argue that's sensible, yes?"
He threw FURY again with the robot crashing through the nothing and tumbling end over end.
"Because you never know anyone like that!" Jay's shout echoed through the void with the weight of personal experience. "So who's to tell you they're not like they're portrayed in stories?" He followed up with a flying kick that sent FURY spinning violently. "Sick. Dangerous. Criminal. These words expand to cover more and more people!"
FURY tried to fight back with mechanical fists swinging wildly in patterns that should work, but without adaptation, without learning from failures, it was losing ground with every exchange.
"Suddenly it's anyone with diabetes!" Jay blocked a punch and countered with an uppercut that lifted FURY off its metaphorical feet. "Anyone with cancer, because they could die and leave children orphaned! So how dare they try to have children when they're not perfect?"
Another punch, this one breaking through FURY's chest plating with a shriek of tortured metal.
"It is deaf couples!" Jay's voice rose to a roar that shook the void itself. "Disabled couples! Interracial couples! Gay couples! Because don't they know how hard they're making it for their children by not being normal?"
FURY's systems screamed warnings as damage accumulated faster than repairs could manage without adaptive evolution to compensate.
"Then it is whoever you want!" Jay grabbed FURY's head with both cosmic hands that burned with stellar fire. "You think you're working for the greater good! You can't even fathom the life of someone who isn't exactly like you!"
He smashed FURY's head into its own knee, and metal shrieked like a dying animal.
"Some gene, some history, some past behavior..." Jay's punches came faster now, a rhythm of violence and fury that transcended mere combat. "And suddenly you too are sick! Dangerous! Criminal! Unworthy of existence!"
FURY tried to speak, tried to defend its ideology, but Jay's cosmic fist crashed into its vocalizer, and only static emerged like a death rattle.
"Human hate can adapt to anything!" Jay's laugh was bitter, broken, carrying pain from another life. "Because the truth is this!" He grabbed FURY by the throat with crushing force. "You think you're safe because you follow the rules!"
Another punch, straight through the chest plate and into the core systems.
"But if someone hates you, they will come up with the reason after the fact!" Jay's cosmic form blazed with stellar fire that illuminated the void. "Only then do you realize what you put in power! Only then do you realize what you stripped away from others thinking it could never happen to you!"
FURY's systems failed one by one as circuits sparked and consciousness fragmented like breaking glass.
"There is terrible power in a joke!" Jay's voice cracked with emotion raw and bleeding. "Taking the truth and making it ugly! Making suffering into comedy so people don't see the horror!" He pulled his fist back, cosmic energy coalescing around it in preparation. "Do you understand, JASPERS? Do you finally get it?"
At the end of infinity, since there was no time to measure in the void, Jim Jaspers' human soul and mechanical body finally gave out under the assault.
Jay landed a final punch straight through that yellow signal eye, his cosmic fist tearing through optical sensors and central processing and the digital consciousness that held what remained of Mad Jim Jaspers in a prison of circuits.
The eye flickered once with desperate light.
Twice with fading awareness.
And finally went dark like a star collapsing into nothing.
FURY's body went limp, floating in the void, just another piece of dead machinery in a universe of nothing, its crusade ended with a whimper.
Jay floated there, bloodied and battered despite his cosmic transformation that should have made him invulnerable. His starry form was cracked in places, showing human flesh beneath the cosmic facade. Bruises that looked like dying stars marked his body. Wounds that bled actual blood instead of stardust. A few teeth floated away, knocked loose during the fight and drifting through the void.
He was a tired man who'd won an impossible victory through sheer stubborn refusal to die, through preparation and planning and willingness to suffer.
But Jay wasn't done with this place.
His cosmic form turned slowly, painfully, as he looked toward a not-so-empty corner of this supposedly empty verse. His cracked lips pulled into a blood-chilling smile that showed missing teeth and split gums.
"You know," Jay called out to the void, his voice hoarse and rough from screaming, "if you wanted to meet me, you could have just called. No need for a petty message like this."
The darkness shifted in ways that made reality flinch.
The void that should have contained nothing suddenly contained less than nothing, an absence so profound it had presence.
A figure materialized from nothing, dressed in a black robe that seemed to absorb light itself, with pale skin that had never seen the sun and dark eyes that had witnessed every death since the universe began and would witness every death until the universe ended.
She looked at Jay's battered cosmic form and smiled, the expression carrying something between amusement and respect.
"You've seen better days, huh?" Her voice was soft, almost gentle, like a lover's whisper or a mother's lullaby. "Though you are the most interesting outsider I've met in eons. Most just scream or beg."
Jay's cosmic form flickered, threatening to collapse back to merely human. Blood dripped from his nose, his mouth, seeping from wounds that reality warping couldn't quite heal because they were wounds to his soul as much as his body.
But his smile remained, fierce and defiant and furious despite exhaustion.
"It's good to see you too, Lady Death."
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