The pole snapped from Hydro's grip as he dropped from the helicopter, plummeting through thick, smoky air. Wind howled past his ears, drowning out the alarms echoing from below. The ground was rushing up fast, too fast.
"Ohhh, this is so stupid-this is so stupid-THIS IS SO STUPID!"
He slammed into the pavement like a human meteor, cracking the ground beneath him in a shockwave of dust and pressure. The force cratered the street, sending debris flying in every direction.
When the dust settled, Hydro was just sitting there, legs crossed, rubbing his head like some kid who tripped over his own shoes.
"Ow... okay, that one's on me," he groaned, brushing bits of asphalt off his jacket. "Good golly I should've just taken the damn stairs."
Above him, the sky tore open. The Other Earth loomed huge, an entire planet hovering close enough to see continents shifting, oceans swirling. The clouds bled color like spilled paint, and the gravitational pressure made car alarms scream on every street.
Hydro squinted up at it, jaw slack. "Yeah, uh... I didn't expect this. I can't lift that. Nope. Not today. Not ever."
He stood, stretched his arms, and looked at the fleeing crowd.
"Crap-yeah, I think I'm joining them. Screw this hero stuff."
Hydro broke into a sprint with the rest of the civilians. The city was pure chaos, sirens blaring, screens glitching, people running in every direction. A dude in a suit was yelling into his phone while tripping over his briefcase.
"I told you, Marlene, I'm NOT dying before the quarterly meeting!"
"Bro, we're literally under another planet!" someone yelled back.
"Yeah, and I still have rent due!"
Another man pushed a shopping cart full of toilet paper and energy drinks.
"You laugh now, but when the apocalypse hits, I'll be hydrated AND clean!"
Hydro nearly face-planted dodging a falling traffic light.
"Oh my god, oh my god, oh my god, oh my god!" he shouted fast mid-run. "What is the world is happening right now?!"
Someone else screamed from behind, "YO IS THAT ANOTHER EARTH OR AM I HAVING A MENTAL BREAKDOWN?!"
Hydro shouted back, "BOTH, PROBABLY!"
He kept running, weaving through crowds and overturned cars, but his mind was racing faster than his legs. Even with all the power inside him, everything he's done, everything he's 'survived'-this was one of those moments that stripped it all away. The cosmic strength, the immortality, the shadow army... none of that mattered. Right now, he was just a teenage idiot running from the apocalypse with everyone else.
"Even if I'm beyond omnipotent," he muttered between gasps, "I still can't be a hero. There's no heroes in this world. Not anymore."
Evacuation sirens blared louder as huge transport trucks pulled up. Soldiers and volunteers were yelling at people to get inside.
"MOVE MOVE MOVE! Priority to kids and elders!"
"The sky's literally FALLING, just get in the damn truck!"
Hydro skidded to a stop, staring at the vehicles filling up. The Other Earth was now so close that the horizon was glowing with a warped halo of light. People were crying, praying, hugging strangers. For a second, he felt something... helplessness. Real, raw, gut-deep helplessness.
Then-
BAAAM!
A sudden blast erupted from Hydro's area-an instinctive surge of power, like his soul was rejecting annihilation. The shockwave burst outward, knocking people off their feet and shattering nearby glass. Hydro stumbled back, rolling across the ground.
"WHAT-THE HELL-WAS THAT?! he shouted, coughing through the dust.
The air twisted. Pressure built so strong it crushed sound itself. Then-Impact.
The Other Earth collided. But not in the way anyone expected.
The explosion didn't burn or break-it bloomed. Colors exploded across the sky-magenta, teal, gold, and shades that didn't even have names. It looked like someone painted the atmosphere with cosmic oil and let it drip. Lightning crackled in slow motion. The oceans shimmered like liquid glass. Buildings rippled instead of crumbling, their outlines bending but never breaking.
It wasn't destruction. It was fusion. The two worlds merged like a heartbeat syncing with another. When the light finally faded, silence followed-a deep, reverent quiet.
The ground stopped shaking. The sky was... beautiful. A vast ring of shimmering color wrapped around the planet like Saturn's halo. Floating islands drifted lazily above city skylines, waterfalls falling into thin air. The cityscape stretched taller, yet somehow... familiar. Real, but unreal.
Hydro groaned, rolling onto his back. "...Oh, what the hell?"
He pushed himself up, brushing dirt off his jacket and adjusting his cracked glasses.
"Agh... Oh, my back... It's stiff."
He looked around-people were slowly standing up, eyes wide, phones already out.
"We're... alive?" someone whispered.
"Bro, I swear I saw my life flash twice," another said.
"I think I just feel an illusion, right?" someone else muttered.
Hydro blinked, jaw slack as he saw sky islands, neon rivers running between buildings, and clouds glowing like auroras.
"...Okay, this is definitely not Kansas. Or Tokyo. Or anywhere that makes sense." The world's news feeds exploded instantly. Every screen flickered on with emergency broadcasts.
[LIVE - CNN]
"This is unbelievable, folks. Reports confirm a global shift-our planet has physically expanded! Satellite images show a massive energy ring surrounding Earth. No confirmed casualties yet, but-wait, is that a floating island over New York?!"
[BBC WORLD]
"In a shocking twist, experts claim Earth's surface has tripled in area. The collision wasn't destructive-it was transformative. Cities have fused with unknown architecture, and physics appears to have... well... taken a day off."
[NHK JAPAN]
"All citizens remain calm! The Self Defense Force confirms zero major injuries. However, Mount Fuji now has... wings? Officials describe it as 'a temporary visual distortion.' More updates soon."
[ABS-CBN PHILIPPINES]
"Mga kababayan, wag kayong kabahan! Ang Earth ay lumaki, parang naging Saturn na may singsing! Pero safe tayo, walang major na nasaktan! Pero teka-bakit may island sa taas ng EDSA?!"
[SKY NEWS]
"The world as we know it has changed overnight. Scientists are calling this the 'Dimensional Merge Event.' And here's the kicker-gravity seems to be adapting. We're still standing. Somehow."
[LIVE ON TWITTER (of course)]
"#NewEarth just dropped. Who designed this update??"
"Bro, this is like Minecraft Creative Mode but with rent."
"Someone tell a God to fix this, it's literally his fault."
Hydro snorted as he scrolled through the chaos on someone's discarded phone. "Oh my god." He looked up at the vibrant, alien skyline-half awe, half exasperation.
"...How in the actual goldfish did this happen?"
He stood, stretched, cracked his neck. The wind carried strange sounds-faint echoes, like voices from other worlds bleeding through the seams of reality.
Hydro gulped.
"This doesn't feel right. This was never happened in my original timeline."
A broken radio randomly played "Kids" by MGMT faintly in the background, he walked off into the glowing horizon-his shadow stretching long and restless behind him.
[NASA Headquarters, Houston, Texas - 11:42 PM - Awhile Ago]
The lights were still on.
They hadn't gone off for weeks.
The control room was a haze of coffee steam, glowing monitors, and people who hadn't slept in three days. Every screen showed the same thing - the image of another planet, slowly pulling into orbit, as if the universe had spawned a mirror and hung it over Earth like a threat.
Someone muttered, "That's not a moon... that's a goddamn planet."
A silence spread across the room, broken only by the beeping of incoming data. The air felt thick, like everyone was holding the same breath.
Dr. Aisha Vance - head of astrophysics, twenty years in the agency, caffeine in her veins - leaned over the table, eyes glued to the readings. Her voice was steady, but you could tell she was on the edge.
"Cross-check the gravitational mass again. There's no way it's that close. It should've torn the atmosphere already."
Her assistant, Ravi, tapped frantically on his keyboard.
"Ma'am, I've run it six times. It's... not a simulation error. The trajectory shows collision, not orbit."
"Define 'collision.'"
"As in... planet-to-planet contact."
The room froze. Aisha blinked once, then twice, like her brain was buffering.
"That's impossible. It'd annihilate everything. There wouldn't be a world left to stand on."
Someone from the back called out, voice shaky, "Ma'am-Hubble just went offline. The feed's scrambled. We're losing optical data-switching to thermal."
Aisha turned to the main screen - and what replaced the feed looked like a slow, breathing heat signature, pulsing with color. The "Other Earth" wasn't just moving. It was reacting.
Ravi whispered, "It's... alive?"
Aisha snapped back, "Planets don't breathe, Ravi. Get it together."
But even as she said it, the temperature data rose another five degrees.
Another analyst shouted from her station, "Ma'am! We're picking up sound frequencies-inaudible range, but it's definitely... rhythmic."
"Like seismic activity?"
"No, like... a heartbeat."
Everyone stared at the waveform on screen - pulsing slow, steady, like something huge and ancient was just waking up.
Then came the call.
[INTERCOM: "White House requesting live status update - NOW."]
Aisha inhaled sharply.
"Alright. Patch me through."
She turned toward the camera, face half-lit by the monitors.
"This is Dr. Aisha Vance, reporting on the phenomenon designated as Object Alpha-Blue. Current analysis suggests it's a terrestrial planet roughly one-point-four times the size of Earth. Current mass estimates defy Newtonian limits-gravitational pull should have destroyed orbital stability by now, but somehow... it hasn't."
She hesitated. Her voice cracked, just slightly.
"We're not dealing with normal physics anymore, sir. This is something else."
A deep voice came through the feed - the President himself, tired, but trying to sound collected.
"Doctor, are we talking about an extinction-level event?"
"If it continues on trajectory... yes. But it's not falling. It's-" she swallowed- "approaching in alignment. Like it's being guided."
"By who?"
"...That's what scares me. We don't know."
The room went silent again. You could hear the hum of the computers and the faint, distant sound of someone quietly crying in the corner. Everyone was still working-but they all knew. This wasn't something you could "fix." This wasn't a problem with an equation. This was the universe folding in on itself, and humanity was just watching it happen.
[11:58 PM.]
Outside the NASA building, news choppers hovered, catching glimpses of the strange sky. The Other Earth had gotten close enough that you could see mountain ranges, clouds, entire oceans reflecting sunlight at a weird angle. It was so close that it felt wrong.
Inside, Ravi kept scrolling through live satellite data until his eyes widened.
"Uh-Doctor Vance? You're gonna want to see this."
She walked over.
"What now?"
"It's not just our instruments picking this up. Civilian tech too-phones, cameras, even car sensors are detecting something."
"Meaning?"
"The entire electromagnetic spectrum's been hijacked. It's like... the planet itself is transmitting data."
He zoomed in on the waveform again, showing the repeating pulse. Aisha frowned.
"Enhance audio."
The speakers buzzed, then hummed with a deep, resonant tone. It wasn't just sound. It was something felt in the chest.
Every few seconds, a pattern emerged - like a repeating signal, buried in the noise.
"Is that Morse?" someone asked.
"It's... something older," said another. "Pre-human frequency alignment. Could be universal harmonics."
Aisha's hands were trembling now. She looked like she wanted to scream, but didn't.
"You're telling me a planet is singing to us?"
"Not singing," Ravi said quietly. "Communicating."
For a long minute, no one spoke. Then, out of nowhere, the frequencies spiked, and every monitor in the room flashed with static. The light dimmed. A wave of pure static energy swept through the facility, knocking out half the systems.
When the power came back, something new was on the main screen - an image transmission. Blurry, distorted... but real.
It looked like Earth. But wrong. Buildings that didn't exist. Continents rearranged. Rings glowing around the atmosphere.
"What the hell is that?" Aisha whispered.
"It's us," Ravi said. "Or... it's about to be."
Another operator yelled, "Impact timeline adjusted! ETA: three minutes!"
Aisha froze. "Three minutes?! That's not- we can't-"
Before she could finish, the building shook. Papers flew, monitors cracked. Outside, people in the streets screamed as gravity warped, pulling upward for a second before snapping back. The air glowed faintly blue, like auroras bleeding into the clouds.
"Ravi-record everything. Every frame. We're witnessing first contact... with reality itself."
He nodded, tears welling up. "I never wanted to be right about something like this."
The sky went white.
For a heartbeat, everyone in NASA fell silent, just staring.
Then the view from the satellites showed something no one expected: the impact wasn't violent. The light spread outward, enveloping Earth gently, like a blanket. Colors rippled through the clouds.
And when the wave passed... the planet was bigger. Beautiful. Alive.
[12:14 AM - Post-Event Broadcast]
Every surviving feed came back online one by one. Scientists, still shaking, stared at their screens. Earth was surrounded by a glowing, multi-colored ring. The atmosphere shimmered like glass.
Aisha slowly took off her headset.
"We survived."
Ravi slumped in his chair, eyes still wide.
"We didn't survive. We evolved."
The intercom cracked again. The President's voice came through, quiet, almost reverent.
"Dr. Vance... what are we looking at?"
Aisha smiled faintly-half awe, half fear.
"A new Earth, sir. A merged one. We're... not alone anymore."
The camera zoomed out one last time, showing the full picture - Earth with its new shimmering ring, a kaleidoscope of colors slowly orbiting.
And as the feed faded to black, the last thing picked up was a whisper through the signal-barely audible but real.
"Alignment complete."