[A/N]: This week's Third goal is 600 PowerStones. Hit it, and I'll drop TWO bonus chapters.
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Death raised one pale hand. "Arise."
The shadows responded.
From the darkness, figures emerged in spectral form. Souls pulled from rest, given shadowy substance, compelled to fight.
Jay's Comic Book Nerd perk recognized them instantly.
Bor of Asgard materialized first, nine feet tall with his battle axe. Captain Mar-Vell stepped forward, cosmic awareness analyzing for weaknesses. Goliath rose behind them, Bill Foster's gentle nature buried beneath Death's will. Thunderstrike appeared, lightning crackling. Zuras the Eternal emerged, millennia of wisdom corrupted to singular purpose.
And behind them, towering over the planet itself, the true horrors manifested.
Celestials.
Exitar the Executioner's two-thousand-foot form blocked out the sun. Beside him, another materialized, then another. Shadows of Space Gods pulled from across timelines.
Jay stared up at the army. "Holy shit. You've been busy."
Death's smile was razor-sharp. "Every being that has died in this multiverse belongs to me by cosmic law." She gestured with casual authority. "Did you truly think you could fight Death itself and win?"
The shadows lunged as one.
Captain Mar-Vell's fist connected with Jay's jaw, death-enhanced Kree strength sending him sprawling. Goliath's hand slammed down, cratering the land. Thunderstrike's mace caught his ribs with a crack.
Pain exploded through his body. Direct attacks wouldn't work, they were already dead. He needed a different approach.
Life constructs materialized around his hands, white energy coalescing into brass knuckles pulsing with the Life Equation's core truth. Not just power but certainty that life had meaning and free will deserved protection.
He surged forward, ducking under Bor's axe, and planted his fist in the ancient king's spectral chest.
White light exploded.
Shadow became substance. Hollow filled with weight. Cold flesh warmed as blood flowed through veins, nerves firing after centuries of silence.
Bor staggered back, shadows peeling away. His spectral form solidified into flesh and blood, air rushing into lungs. Life returned to his eye.
"What in Búri's name?" Bor stared at his hands in shock, flexing fingers. "I'm... alive? I was in Valhalla, and now..." He touched his face, confirming his solidity. "This is impossible."
"Yeah, you are." Jay grinned. "Sorry about the punch, welcome back."
He twisted aside as Mar-Vell charged, countering with an uppercut carrying the Life Equation's reversal.
Mar-Vell's shadow exploded into light. The Kree warrior collapsed gasping, his heart restarting, blood pumping for the first time in decades.
"By Hala..." Mar-Vell's voice cracked. "I was at peace, and now you've brought me back?" Tears ran down his face. "What have you done?"
"Giving you a second chance." Jay blocked Goliath's fist, absorbing the impact.
He punched upward, striking Foster's chest. White light rippled outward and the shadow dissolved.
The giant form shrank rapidly, flesh materializing, bones reforming at human scale. Foster collapsed, gasping and crying and laughing.
"I can breathe!" Foster sobbed. "Oh god, I'm not dead anymore! Jan, I can see you again!"
"This is impossible!" Death shrieked. "They belong to ME!"
"Life Equation says otherwise!" Jay dodged Thunderstrike's mace, caught it mid-swing, and drove his fist into Masterson's chest.
Another explosion, another shadow to flesh. Masterson hit the ground alive.
"I was dead, at peace, and..." His voice was barely a whisper. "I'm actually here and breathing."
"Each one I hit reverses their death!" Jay moved through the army like a hurricane. "You brought them to fight me, but all you did was give me targets to save!"
He punched through Zuras, the ancient Eternal gasping back to life.
With each hit, the Life Equation sang louder. With each reversed death, the cosmic certainty solidified. Existence mattered. Free will deserved protection.
Death screamed, watching her army crumble. "Celestials! DESTROY HIM NOW!"
The Space Gods moved with the inevitability of falling mountains.
Exitar's hand descended, large enough to crush city blocks. The shadow swallowed entire neighborhoods.
Jay looked up, and his grin widened. "Fucking FINALLY! I've been waiting for this!"
He threw his arms wide, life constructs exploding outward in a sphere of white light.
The constructs merged and transformed, taking a shape from Jay's deepest memories.
A Gundam.
Two thousand feet of solid life energy materialized, taking the RX-78-2's form with perfect precision. White armor gleamed, green optical sensors blazed, the v-fin antenna crackled with power.
Jay stood in the cockpit, his awareness merged with the construct. The Gundam was his body, the Life Equation flowing through its circuits.
"Master's not gonna believe this!" Jay's voice boomed from the external speakers. "Fighting Celestials in a mecha! This would be peak fiction!"
Exitar's palm met the Gundam's raised hands. The impact sent shockwaves across three states.
But the Gundam held, white light blazing brighter as Jay poured more Life Equation into the frame.
"You're big!" Jay grinned. "But size isn't everything when I've got mathematical proof on my side!"
The Gundam's beam saber materialized, sixty meters of condensed life energy humming with power.
Jay swung upward, carving through Exitar's arm. The Celestial's limb dissolved into screaming shadows.
"One down!" Jay pivoted. "Who's next?"
The second Exitar lunged, cosmic energy beams lancing from its armor.
Jay's Gundam deployed its shield, absorbing the assault. He returned fire with beam cannons, white light meeting cosmic fire in explosions that lit up the sky.
The third Celestial grabbed the Gundam from behind. Jay activated the verniers, thrusters blazing. The Gundam shot upward, tearing free, and executed a mid-air spin.
Jay came down hard, beam saber piercing the Celestial's head. Shadows exploded outward as it dissolved.
"This is the coolest thing I've ever done!" Jay laughed. "Sorry, Dom, but fighting Celestials in a Gundam just topped every mission story!"
The battle raged across multiple dimensions. In Earth-9602's physical space, the Gundam traded blows with Celestial shadows. In conceptual realms, Life and Death clashed as pure ideas.
From Death's perspective, the fight lasted subjective millennia as she threw every shadow at her command. From Jay's perspective, experiencing all possibilities simultaneously, it lasted a single eternal moment.
And through it all, one truth became clear.
Earth couldn't handle it.
The planet groaned under the strain, tectonic plates grinding, oceans boiling, atmospheres igniting as reality's fabric tore.
Jay felt the planet dying and guilt stabbed through his exhilaration.
People lived here. Innocents caught in cosmic conflict. Heroes who'd tried to maintain balance.
And he was destroying it all.
"Enough!" Jay's Gundam dissipated. "This has to end before we kill everyone!"
Death stood amid ruins, billions of resurrected heroes and villains staring at their hands in confusion.
"You can't win," she hissed, less confident now. "I am eternal, inevitable!"
"And I'm done playing around." Jay's right hand began to glow, power theft activating with the Life Equation's energy. White light bled into gold into colors without names as his arm became pure concept.
He'd take her power completely, end Death itself, remove the threat permanently.
Death's eyes widened, existential terror flooding her features. "No! If you end Death, the multiverse will collapse! Every being's pain will become eternal! The Living Tribunal will unmake you!"
"Then maybe you should have thought of that before threatening everyone I love!" Jay lunged forward, fingers extended to pierce her essence.
And froze.
A hand rested on his shoulder.
Simple, gentle, casual, but it stopped his momentum completely. The contact bypassed his danger sense, ignored the Life Equation's warnings, froze him with effortless ease.
Ice flooded his veins. In his strongest form, wielding the Life Equation itself, he should have detected anything approaching.
But he'd felt nothing.
Death's expression shifted from terror to shock. "You?" Her voice cracked. "What are you doing here in my Multiverse?"
Jay turned slowly. His heart hammered despite the Life Equation telling him he wasn't in danger.
A young girl stood there casually. Pale skin, dark hair falling to her shoulders in messy waves. Simple clothes, jeans and a black t-shirt with a band logo. Nothing remarkable except her eyes.
[Image Here]
Those eyes carried depths that made his cosmic awareness scream. Ancient, eternal, kind in ways that predated existence.
"Dom?" The word escaped in confused surprise. "How are you here?"
The girl smiled, mischief and infinite knowledge mixed together. "Ara, did you mistake me for your girlfriend? That's sweet in a 'brain damage from fighting' way." She tilted her head. "But no, Jay, I'm not Neena Thurman, though I see why you'd think that." Her voice resonated across dimensions. "We haven't met officially, though I've been watching you."
Understanding crashed through him.
"Lady Death?" His voice barely above a whisper.
"Not quite." The girl's smile turned playful. "That's one of my aspects, but you can call me by the name my siblings use. I'm Death of the Endless, but everyone just calls me Didi." She patted his shoulder again, absurdly casual. "I've been watching you for a while. You're way more interesting than most outsiders. Most people run screaming when they meet Death, but you punched her in the face repeatedly! That takes guts!"
She glanced at Marvel's Lady Death, expression shifting to gentle disapproval mixed with amusement.
"Now then," Didi said cheerfully, "how about we all calm down before you accidentally erase a fundamental aspect of existence? That would make such a mess. Last time someone tried it, Michael had to get involved, and he's such a stickler for proper procedure."
She moved between them, her presence taking up more space than her frame should allow. "Besides, if you keep fighting, Access is going to have a panic attack holding the barriers between Marvel and DC together."
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