The sky had not returned to normal.
It couldn't.
The Omega Signal wasn't just light — it was a ripple in the concept of reality. Even now, streaks of inverted lightning and aurora-like patterns bent across the clouds. Whole blocks of the SCP containment zone were floating in midair like broken chessboards.
Ethan leaned against the charred remains of a containment turret, chest still heaving. The White Lantern Proto-Core pulsed against his Carnitrix, sending faint tendrils of light along the plating.
Jason stood beside him, scanning the horizon with a gaze that could slice through dimensions. "We have ten minutes before the first wave arrives."
"First wave of what?" Ethan asked, already knowing the answer.
Jason's eyes narrowed. "Everything."
---
The first to arrive were the SCP rapid-response Omega-Black teams. Black exo-armor, sigils burned into the plating to prevent extradimensional contamination, rail rifles humming with void charges.
"Target identified," the squad leader's modulated voice echoed over the static. "Classify as Keter-plus. Orders: recover artifact, neutralize host."
Ethan stepped forward. "Recover artifact? You mean me."
The leader didn't answer. Instead, his shoulder cannons rotated into position — and opened fire.
---
The Carnitrix dial spun before Ethan's conscious mind caught up. His fingers slammed down on a fusion sequence: Diamondhead + Kryptonian + Force-Sensitive.
The first rail slugs shattered against crystal armor plating as he blurred forward, each movement punctuated by shockwaves. His crystalline forearm elongated into a blade, slicing through two exo-suits in a single sweep.
Jason blurred into their ranks like a shadow storm, dismantling weapons and crushing armor with surgical precision — but his eyes kept flicking to Ethan. Testing him.
The White Lantern core reacted mid-fight, whispering in his mind: You are not using me.
"Fine," Ethan muttered — and triggered an Omega-layered fusion. The white light flared across the crystal-Kryptonian frame, supercharging his strikes. Each blow now didn't just break armor — it healed the ground beneath it, unmaking SCP anti-energy traps as if they were cobwebs.
The SCP team fell in seconds.
But the hunt wasn't over.
---
The air shimmered — and Endless defectors stepped through a portal lined with fractal geometry. These weren't human; their forms were stretched, blurred, constantly shifting between shapes.
At their front, a man in gold-threaded robes stepped forward. His voice was both a whisper and a shout. "Ethan. The Carnitrix is not yours to wield. Surrender it — or drown in eternity."
Ethan tilted his head. "You guys really need better lines. That one's getting old."
They moved as one. Dozens of weapons that shouldn't exist unfolded from their bodies — spears of frozen time, guns that fired absence, blades made from stolen days.
Ethan met them with a Rath + Heatblast + White Lantern fusion — claws of living plasma, wrapped in the Lantern's life-entity glow. He tore through weapons like paper, the Lantern light erasing their time anomalies before they could infect him.
Jason handled the other flank, his attacks turning defectors inside-out in single strikes. "They're delaying us," he called out. "Something else is coming."
He was right.
---
The ground split open — not with fire, but with a sound that was all teeth. From the chasm rose a tide of Shub-Niggurath spawn, their bodies like blasphemous coral, covered in eyes that looked in every direction but forward.
Behind them, a figure stepped through the rift — cloaked in darkness so complete it bent the light around it. Ethan recognized the voice before he saw the face.
"You lit the Omega Signal," Shiva's Bloodline said, her tone almost admiring. "Now the real predators have your scent."
Her eyes darted to the Lantern core. "Last chance. Give it to me — and I'll keep your death clean."
Ethan glanced at Jason. Jason didn't move. "Your choice," he said.
Ethan looked back at her. "…You really don't listen, do you?"
---
The Carnitrix interface exploded with options. His mind was already ahead of his body — slotting combinations like a pianist playing an impossible song.
Big Chill + Diamondhead + White Lantern + Shiva's Bloodline hybrid key — a form wreathed in crystalline frost, wings of living light, each movement warping air and freezing space at the edges.
The first wave of spawn never reached him. He looked at them — and they froze solid in mid-lunge, the Lantern energy filling the gaps between their atoms and locking them in eternal stillness.
Shiva's Bloodline actually laughed. "Better. Much better."
Then she attacked.
---
This was nothing like their last fight.
She wasn't testing him now — she was killing him. Her strikes moved faster than the eye could follow, chains of violet fire lashing out and detonating in bursts of anti-creation energy.
Ethan's hybrid form deflected the first dozen — but the thirteenth tore into his side, shattering crystal plating and spilling Lantern light into the air like blood.
Jason stepped forward — but an Endless defector's weapon locked him in a temporal snare, forcing him to fight elsewhere.
It was just Ethan and her.
---
The Lantern core's voice cut through the chaos: Fuse deeper. Stop thinking in layers. Become the idea.
He understood instantly. This wasn't about stacking forms — it was about merging everything he was into a single, unified state.
His hand slammed on the Carnitrix — and the Omega Fusion Protocol engaged.
White light consumed the battlefield. His body became something neither alien nor human — but conceptual. The crystal-Kryptonian frame flowed like light itself, wings spreading into patterns of shifting geometry. The Shiva Bloodline signature interlaced with his form, giving his strikes the weight of cosmic destruction, but without the rot.
When he struck her, the world rang. The blow sent her skidding back across the spawn horde, disintegrating them like smoke in a hurricane.
She rose slowly — breathing hard. "You… you might actually be worth killing."
Then, with a smile that didn't reach her eyes, she stepped backward into the rift and was gone.
---
The Endless defectors were gone too, leaving only the broken SCP zone and the smell of burnt ozone.
Ethan dropped to one knee, the Omega form peeling away like light fading from a dream. His chest ached — not from injury, but from something deeper. The Lantern core was silent now, but its presence was heavier, more knowing.
Jason approached. "You realize what this means?"
Ethan looked up. "Yeah. The hunt's not ending."
Jason shook his head. "No. The hunt just went galactic."
Sherlock's voice crackled over comms, distorted by interference. "Ethan. Get somewhere secure. We've just intercepted three incoming fleets — SCP, Endless loyalists, and something I can't even name."
Ethan exhaled slowly. "And here I thought today was rough."
Jason offered a hand, pulling him up. "That was the easy part."
---
End of Chapter 12