A/N: I do not own Deadpool or any other Marvel characters who appear in this fanfic.

"Wade F. Wilson, reality designation Earth-TRN1107," Judge Sylvie Laufeydottir addressed me. "You stand accused of mulitversal flooding, adding over 150 new realities to the multiverse in under two hours. And I'm still figuring out how to…manage, if you will…the multiverse, which means I am alone in cataloging these new realities as they form. That's an overwhelming task on its own, without you screwing around and adding timelines to the multiverse for no apparent reason. What defense have you to offer?"

"Call this an amateur defense, but I didn't even know that was a crime," I said. "I'm used to ordinary crimes like murder, as well as being exempt from said crimes on account of being a superhero. So what are you gonna do? Prune the new realities I made, because I didn't really think that was your thing. And also, may I point out that I did you a favor saving the multiverse from potentially being overrun by a horde of %$#&ing zombies! So you're welcome."

"You haven't done the multiverse as big of a favor as you think you have. Zombies are becoming an increasingly common problem. Earth-2149, Earth-TRN893, you name it. They are popping up all over the place, and I am actively working on ways to keep them from spreading."

"How's that any different than what the TVA was doing by maintaining the Sacred Timeline, huh?"

Sylvie slammed her gavel on the desk, "Because I am not inhibiting new realities from forming. I'm trying to stop already-existing ones from being destroyed."

"Then why am I here? That's all I was doing. Forming new realities." I nonchalantly kicked my feet up on the desk I sat behind in the Courtroom at the End of Time. Yep, that's its real name. Courtroom at the End of Time. Everything's got that "At the End of Time" suffix around these parts. Courtroom. Citadel. I even saw a room labeled as containing the "Bidet at the End of Time," so I guess Europe never ditches those things. Then again, I guess you shouldn't criticize it until you've had your junk hosed down by it.

"Your guilt or innocence will be decided by a jury of your peers…or as close to it as I could get, given who's currently been called for Multiversal Jury Duty."

Twelve TemPad portals opened up and down the juries' bench, and out walked-

Oh &%#$.

Six variants of me and six variants of Cable.

Hello, deadlock.

"Jurors, how do you vote?" Sylvie asked.

"Guilty," all six Cable variants said.

"INNOCENT!" all six variants of me yelled.

"Well, it's a tie," I said, getting up. "Been nice being here, but I've got some important #%$& to get back to, so…yeah."

"Not so fast," Sylvie said. "In the case of a tie, I serve as the deciding vote. And after surveying the evidence, I deem you guilty."

I narrowed my eyes. The white eye section on my mask narrowed as well, pulled by the double-sided tape I attach to the inside of the mask. All superheroes do it. Don't let any of them convince you they don't. "So what's my sentence? Prison?" I asked, then stretched the truth. "I've been locked up before, and I had nooooo trouble escaping. I doubt any place you trap me will be any harder for me to Houdini my way out of."

"No, I prefer a more…reformative approach," Sylvie said. "So I think you will be assigned with naming all of the new realities that you created. Here," she grabbed a book about two inches thick from behind the desk and placing it atop it, "is the book of rules on how to name a reality. And I know how you love adhering to rules."

I turned to look at you, my fans, reading this on your computer screen at 2:00A.M. because you can't get back to sleep, "Wonderful. So this is gonna be Comirnaty all over again."

"So you'd better get to work. You've got 171 realities to catalog," Sylvie banged her gavel again. "Case closed."

"Arrgh," I groaned two hours later, throwing the TRN Conversion Rulebook across the room. "Sylvie, this is so &%#$ing boring!"

"Every second you complain is another second this job takes you," Sylvie called from the next room over, "so get back to work."

I looked back at the list of realities I had to sift through. Eleven down, 160 to go. These rules were so unnecessarily complex. There should be a simpler way. It should just be something simple like how I wanted the reality I created by time-traveling with Cable to stop the Murder Hornets to be called Earth-TRN291. In case you forgot since it's been a while since "Deadpool's Tomorrow War" was posted, I chose that number after the month (February 1991) that I debuted in Marvel Comics. Heck, even bat#%$& zombie-fest Earth-TRN893's name is sorta logical – 893 being phone code for "TWD," the universally – pardon me, multiversally – recognized acronym for The Walking Dead.

I grabbed the rulebook off the floor and said, "Earth-TRN909. Does it have at least 14,500 habitable planets? Yep…okay, go to page 672."

But as I flipped to page 672, a TemPad portal opened across the room…only the portal was flashing orange and black instead of uniform orange. In looked like some lame Halloween decoration, the type the Avengers put up at their Halloween parties at the Avengers Compound. Not that I've ever gone to one of those lame-ass things wink wink….

Out of the portal tumbled…Loki? He looked strangely disheveled, given that the Loki I know has been living it up in Las Vegas for the past four years after using his magic tricks to strike it rich at every casino out there. Or was this just him disguising himself as disheveled looking to try to guilt me into doing something for him? One can never tell with that double-crossing jackhole.

"Oh hey, Loki," I said. "What happened? Vegas throw you out on your ass for beating the house one too many times?"

Loki stared at me, "Who the hell are you?" He then summoned one of his daggers, as if that was gonna intimidate me.

I chuckled and donned my best Aussie scent, "That's not a knife…," and then pulled my knife, which was a good two inches longer than his, from my belt, "…that's a knife."

"What's one against two?" Loki asked, summoning his other dagger as well, and still clearly overlooking my katanas. "Now you tell me where Sylvie is, or I'm going to stick you in a very painful spot."

"I've been shot up Main Street more times than I can count…but if Sylvie's the one you're after, then she's in there," I pointed him out the door. "Give her a jab for me with your gherkin knives, will ya?"

"I'm not here to kill her. Wait a minute…you are?"

"Kill's a bit strong. I'd settle for throw acid on half her face, Sal Maroni style."

Suddenly, Sylvie walked in the door and asked, "What the hell is going on in – Loki?!"

The god of mischief turned to face her and said, "Sylvie? You're here – what happened? I ended up in some other timeline and-"

"Boooo-riiiing," I interrupted.

"My God, is there a way to shut you up?" Sylvie asked.

"Who is this weirdo?" Loki asked. "He acts like he knows me but I've never met him before."

"You don't know this Loki," Sylvie said to me, "He's a variant from Earth-TRN732. Loki, this is a…troublemaker, if you will, named Deadpool, from Earth-TRN999. He's here organizing realities for me to make up for flooding the multiverse with a veritable tidal wave of new realities."

"I am not a troublemaker," I protested. "I've saved the world more times than you have."

"Yeah, but I've saved more worlds than you have, so…."

Damn, and I thought Cable's comebacks were aggravating.

"If you weren't in Vegas, where were you?" I asked Loki, pointing to the portal. "Avengers Halloween party?"

Sylvie looked at the TemPad portal, "I've never seen one do that before. Loki, what's happening on the other side of that portal?"

"I don't know what happened," he said. "This morning the entire universe suddenly started…melting away. Like, everything was turning into some sort of black slime and flowing into the air. Everyone too. Mobius, everyone else in the reality, even me, until I came through the portal."

"Black slime?" I asked. "Were you in a location called Lake Lapcat, by any chance? Was Fury Bowser there?"

"Shut up or I'm going to sew your mouth shut."

"Ohhh…I wouldn't do that if I were you."

Sylvie dashed over to the portal and leaned into it, immediately pulling her head back out a second later. "Oh my God," she gasped. "I've never seen anything like that before."

"What? What is it? Something cool?" I asked, running over to the portal and looking in too. And…Loki was actually right, for once. The entire universe was melting away – even the air itself seemed to be dissolving. The sky was a yellow-orange color and…what was that? I focused on the sky, where a flicker of movement had caught my attention. It had looked at first like just a cloud or something, but…it didn't look like how clouds just blow in one direction. It almost looked like a waving-back-and-forth motion. And there were more of the waving objects, stretching out to every horizon, visible only if I really focused. "Sylvie, do you see that in the sky?" I asked.

She leaned back into the portal and asked, "See what? The black stuff floating around?"

"No, beyond that. It looks like…tentacles, really."

"Tentacles? I don't see anything."

"I may be slightly drunk right now, but I'm not hallucinating-level drunk. I know what I am seeing, and what I am seeing is a bunch of goddamn tentacles in the sky."

We both backed out of the portal and Sylvie ran over to the list of realities I had been looking at and had left on the desk. "Loki, what reality were you in?" she asked.

"…TRN904," he said.

"Okay, that's…strange. It's on here, but it's fading or something."

"Fading?" I asked. "Is it fading, or was your pen running out when you wrote it on there?"

"I don't write it on here. Nobody does. It automatically appears on here when a new reality forms."

"What did you mean about tentacles?" Loki asked. "I didn't see any tentacles when I was there."

"I wonder if I could only do it because of my powers," I said.

"Your healing powers?" Sylvie asked.

"No, my fourth wall-breaking powers."

"Wait a minute," Sylvie said. "When I was reading through the journals that He Who Remains kept when he was in charge here, he mentioned something about back during the Multiversal War. There was a variant of him, called the Conqueror, who had some sort of…beast that he used to destroy realities."

"Hmm…does it have Lego set potential?" I asked.

Sylvie ignored me and continued, "It was some sort of octopus-like monster that could destroy whole universes. It was called…what was it?" She pulled a thick, blue book off one of the shelves in the room and flipped through it. "Here," she said. "Its name was Shuma-Gorath."

"Gesundheit."

"No, that's its name. Shuma-Gorath. And apparently after everything was merged into the Sacred Timeline, this monster went into some sort of deep sleep. And He Who Remains theorized that Shuma-Gorath might return one day if the multiverse ever did."

"Okay, so now he's back," I said. "Just a big octopus. Slice him up into a bunch of calamari."

"There are some problems you can't solve by eviscerating them."

"Really? Because that goes contrary to every single one of my life experiences."

"So how do we stop this beast?" Loki asked. "And what's to stop him from preying on our timeline?"

"In short, nothing," Sylvie said.

"Do we even have any chance of stopping him?" Loki asked. "Sylvie, can it be enchanted? Like you did to Alioth?"

"Maybe," Sylvie said. "But this thing is far more powerful than Alioth was, so I don't know if I would be able to."

Suddenly, the TemPad portal changed from flashing to constantly black. I saw this and looked over at the list of realities. Earth-TRN904 was gone. "Well whatever we do, we have to do it fast. For all we know, Earth-TRN999 might be next," I said. "And all that work I put into eradicating Murder Hornets and fighting hordes of $&%#ing zombies will all be for nothing."

Sylvie ran to one of the Citadel's windows and looked out at the timestreams flowing by outside. I followed and, for the most part, everything looked normal. Only then I noticed a gigantic octopus latched onto one of the glowing timestreams, siphoning energy from it and causing the timeline to crumble like a termite-ridden tree branch. "Look! Over there!" I pointed. "Is that Earth-TRN904?"

"Yes," Sylvie said.

"Wonderful," Loki said. "So now we have to stop a giant octopus who's going around, devouring timelines like they're candy bars. Is that all or did I miss something?"

The octopus finished eating Earth-TRN904, and then floated to a different point on the timeline and started feasting all over again. "What reality is that?" I asked. This one was a larger branch; it was a secondary fork off the Sacred Timeline, but had countless, nested, smaller branches emerging from it.

"That's…Earth-TRN937," Sylvie replied.

"Earth-TRN – oh #$&%! That's my timeline! Wait…if that one's eaten, will all the ones that come off it be destroyed too?"

"Most likely. No doubt that's why Shuma-Gorath's eating it: it'll be a larger meal for him."

"$#&%! We've gotta get to Earth-TRN1107 now! I put in all that work to save everyone there from Earth-2149's zombies; I'm not gonna let them now be devoured by a space octopus."

"And where do you propose we take them?" Loki asked. "There isn't time to save trillions of beings before the reality is gone, nor is there room to house a bunch of multiversal refugees in the Citadel here."

"We wouldn't have to," Sylvie said. "Anyone we save could be brought to the Sacred Timeline. Shuma-Gorath won't dare attack that because if he did, all the timelines branching from it would be erased from existence too, and then his food source would be gone."

"But how will we even do that?" Loki asked. "There's only three of us, and we've only got one TemPad that…oh dear." He held up his TemPad and finished, "That only has one charge left. Enough to get us to Earth-TRN1107, but not anywhere from there."

Why do all the time and space travel devices I encounter have such lazily-written rules concerning their use?

"Gimme that," I grabbed the TemPad from Loki and tried to figure out how to operate it, "How do you work one of these things?"

"You just tell it where you want to go," Loki said. "Where are you going?"

"To the last person in the multiverse I'd want to ask for help."

No, we're not going to see who you think we are, and yeah, that statement was a bit inaccurate and played up for drama. In all fairness, though, I never want to ask anyone else for help, so…yeah.

I held up the TemPad and said, "177A Bleecker Street, Earth-TRN1107."

"Who lives there?" Sylvie and Loki both asked as the TemPad portal opened before us. Not surprisingly, this portal was blinking orange and black too, confirming that Shuma-Gorath was already devouring the reality as fast as I devour a McRib. #MakeTheMcRibAvailableYearRound, people!

"Doctor Strange," I said. "He can make a bunch of portals all at once, so he should be able to round up a lot of people and send them to the Sacred Timeline."

"Do his portals work across the multiverse?" Loki asked.

"…Don't know. At the very least, we can send everyone through this portal into the Citadel here until we can find another TemPad to send them to the Sacred Timeline."

"We can't just keep doing this for every new reality that Shuma-Gorath attacks, though," Sylvie said. "This might work for now, but we need to come up with a real way to stop him."

"Let's figure that out once Earth-TRN1107's saved as much as possible. I find that I think much more clearly when I don't have a personal stake in matters. That's the only reason Ajax was able to stab me in the head during our fight at his evil lair that I suspect was secretly a decommissioned helicarrier. Maybe one of the INSIGHT ones, who knows?"

"Here we go," Loki said, and we all charged into the portal.

We emerged in front of the New York Sanctum, and immediately the effects of Shuma-Gorath's attack affected us, causing us to start flowing away into slime. Only for me it was different, because as soon as part of me melted and flowed away, my healing factor sucked the material back into me. Ha! Even universe-eating cephalopods can't kill me!

"That certainly looks strange," Loki looked at me. "It's like you've got a halo of that weird stuff floating around your head at all times."

"It's cause I'm an angel. Yondu had the whistle of one and I have the spirit of one." I walked up the steps to the Sanctum's front doors, grabbed the gun from my belt, and shot out the doors' locks. "Breaking and entering 101," I said, easing open the door and-

-suddenly my right hand was chopped off and I was thrown back down the stairs and onto the sidewalk. "OW!" I screamed. "What the #&$%, Strange? It's me, Deadpool – oh &$%#."

In the doorway to the Sanctum was not Doctor Strange but Magik. The sister of the real last person I'd wanna ask for help from. She aimed the Soulsword, on which blood from my severed wrist was still burning and sizzling, at me and asked, "What do you want?"

But I was completely confused, and I don't think it was just because of the shards of my skull that got lodged in my brain when I tumbled onto the sidewalk. Magik was wearing the Cloak of Levitation, which I presumed meant that…she was the Sorcerer Supreme now? But – what? Last I saw she was with the X-Men! Oh, wait. That was in the future of Earth-Whatever-Reality-TRN937-Branched-Off, and this is the present day in Earth-TRN1107.

"I'm assuming this," Magik gestured to the world melting away, "has something to do with you, Deadpool? Just like every other problem in the world?"

Okay. That was unexpectedly low.

"No. We're trying to save as many people as we can from this #&$%, and we need Doctor Strange's help to do it. So point us in his direction and we'll gladly be on our way."

"Funny you should ask where he is, because last I checked, you killed him."

"…As in…killed his will to continue being Sorcerer Supreme?"

Suddenly, Wong walked through the doorway too and stood beside Magik. "No," he said, "killed as in literally killed him. When the horde of zombies from Earth-2149 attacked this reality, one of the first places they struck was the Sanctum. I managed to escape, but Strange was infected, and then soon after, you decapitated him while fighting your way through the zombies. After the zombie threat had been neutralized-"

Conveniently, no mention of who neutralized said threat.

"-I sought out the most powerful magical being remaining in the universe," Wong finished. "To take up the mantle of Sorcerer Supreme."

"And he found me," Magik said. "So what exactly is going on?"

Sylvie summed up what we knew so far about Shuma-Gorath as quickly as possible while my hand regrew, my skull healed, and reality continued to melt away. I looked at the sky and, once again, vaguely saw a giant, tentacled form stretching across the heavens, which was strange since Shuma-Gorath wasn't actively devouring this reality. Then again, I'm working with two versions of Loki, we're fighting an octopus, and Magik is the Sorcerer Supreme – this entire day has been strange. And at the same time not Strange because…y'know, no Doctor Strange.

"So…Wade, who exactly is it you want to save?" Sylvie asked.

"Well…," I said, "that would be Firefist, Domino, Peter, Cable, Dopinder, Yukio, Negasonic Teenage Warhead, and…ugh, I guess Colossus."

"You guess?" Magik asked.

"Yeah. We're not too tight. But if I request him to be saved, I get to lord it over him forever. So that'll be neat."

Magik sighed and began chanting some strange incantation that sounded suspiciously like it was in Elvish from Lord of the Rings, but might have just been in some other made-up tongue like Old English. Then partway through it she stopped and asked, "Peter who? I need his last name."

"Peter…ah, son of a bitch!" I yelled. "He never told me his last name, and for that matter neither did Dopinder. Goddamn it, and I don't even have Peter's phone number!"

I pulled my phone out of my pocket and dialed Dopinder's number. "Hello?" he asked after a few rings. "Mr. Pool, is that you? What the heck is happening to the world?"

"Yeah, Dopinder, it's me. Don't worry, you're gonna be okay. All I need is for you to tell me your last name. You'll thank me later."

"Okay, it's Basu."

"Thanks, buddy. Don't be alarmed if a portal opens next to you in a few seconds and you see a scary witch on the other side, she's with me – OW!" I yelled as Magik stabbed me in the leg with the Soulsword.

"Are you okay, Mr. Pool?" Dopinder asked.

My Inner Snark continued, "Sorry, the witch got mad and stabbed me. No, no, don't stab me again, that wasn't even a #&%$ing insult! You were in that movie The Witch! Anyway, Dopinder, see you in a few seconds, then."

I hung up, and, while Magik continued her spell or whatever she was doing, Loki asked, "So…this Peter guy, you can't save him?"

"Sadly, no. But I guess this is his Final Destination. I helped him cheat death after the X-Force skydiving mission, and now the Grim Reaper's catching up to him. Scary times."

"What do we do after saving these people, though? Shuma-Gorath is undoubtedly going to target another reality next."

"Well, we now have to save exactly seven people from each future reality Shuma-Gorath tries to eat so as not to appear like we're showing prejudice and favoring one reality over another. Superheroes can get people to forget about a lot of $%#& they do – slander, murder, indecent exposure even – but perceived prejudice can ruin your rep forever. And I'd rather not dabble in that. Forever's a long time for me."

"We cannot possibly hope to save seven people from every reality Shuma-Gorath attacks," Sylvie said. "We'd be devoting all our attention to damage control and not how to stop the damage from happening in the first place. And what if he eats something like Earth-TRN893? Do you propose we rescue seven zombies?"

"Maybe start a multiversal zoo with them as your first exhibit. All I said was rescue. I really don't give two $#%&s what you do with them afterwards."

Magik finished her spell and cast a ring of orange energy around us, and the ring formed into seven portals surrounding us. And out of each portal came one of the seven people I requested that Magik save, each with a different reaction.

"Woah, what just happened?" Firefist asked. "Then again, this is hardly the strangest thing I've seen this morning."

"Ah, now we're talking," Domino said. "It's the end of the world and my luck still isn't failing me."

"Hey," Cable greeted me. "Been a while. Last time I saw you was after our Murder Hornet-killing time-travel heist."

"Oh, there you are, Mr. Pool," Dopinder said, then looked at Magik. "And I assume you are the witch Mr. Pool was talking about."

"Never call me a witch again and I'll pretend you never said it this time either," Magik said.

Dopinder quickly nodded, eyeing the Soulsword. I can't blame him. I've never been lightsabered, but I expect a burning sword is about as close as you can get. And let me tell you, it hurt.

"Hi Wade!" Yukio said.

"Hi Yukio!" I replied.

"Hey, Douchepool," Negasonic Teenage Warhead said. "Just what I need to make this day worse."

"Wade," Colossus said, a suspicious tone creeping into his voice. "Please tell me you aren't responsible for what is happening to the world. The Professor can't pinpoint the source of this disaster using Cerebro, and you're the only person who's ever been able to evade Cerebro before."

What the #&%$? How the hell have I "evaded Cerebro"? I mean, I'm flattered, but it's still really strange. Then again, my mind is sorta half in this world, half in your Earth-1218 at all times, so maybe that's the reason why. "No, I am not to blame," I said. "That award goes to a giant space octopus called Shuma-Gorath who lives outside the multiverse and basically is eating your entire reality."

"That sounds suspiciously made-up," Cable said, then turned to Magik. "Portal lady…not sure what your name is. Can you bring Mantis here to act as a lie detector for Wade?"

I slapped my forehead, "No, no, no. Every additional person we save from this reality is someone extra we've gotta save from every other reality Shuma-Gorath attacks. Don't ask. On the other hand, we could then leave Mantis here, but it would be sorta heartless to bring her to our 'evacuation point' here and then leave her behind. And while 'Heartless' is one of my favorite songs, heartless I am not."

"Isn't it heartless to play favorites and abandon everyone else in this reality?"

"There isn't room for everyone in this universe in the Citadel at the End of Time, which is the only place we currently have direct access to. But I'd be happy to choose seven random names out of countless trillions and send you back to your doom."

"…You might still choose me."

"Wanna bet?"

"…No."

"There you go."

"I'd get chosen," Domino said. "I'm lucky that way."

"Okay, everyone, please walk single file through the TemPad portal to the Citadel at the End of Time, and do not panic at your drab surroundings. You will soon be transported to the much better-looking Sacred Timeline. At least I think it looks better. I've never been there."

"Wait a minute," Magik said, shutting the seven portals after everyone passed through them, "I have the Eye of Agamotto. We can use it to turn back time and stop Shuma-Gorath before he attacks this universe." She grabbed the Eye, which was hanging around her neck.

"That won't work," Sylvie said, and Magik glared at her, making me wonder if they were seriously about to waste time on a catfight in the middle of the apocalypse. Sylvie continued, "Shuma-Gorath devours entire timelines from the outside. That means that he is, in a way, rewriting history. Every point on this timeline, all the way back to the nexus event that created it, is simultaneously in an ever-worsening state of…this," she gestured to the universe melting away. "As it gets worse for us here, it gets worse for the past and future at the same rate. Time-travel won't fix it; you'll go back in time to find-"

"The same #&%$ happening back then," Magik nodded, letting go of the Eye of Agamotto. "If this reality truly is lost, then I guess the best we can do is try to save all the others from this monster."

Geesh. Prior to this conversation, the last time I felt so unimportant in an adventure was all the way back in '09 when I was gone for, like, 75% of X-Men Origins: Wolverine.

"Okay," Magik pointed the Soulsword at our TemPad portal, "everyone, through there. I don't know what's waiting for us on the other side, but it's gotta be better than this." With that, the eleven of us – wait, should we count Magik towards the number of people to save in each universe? – turned and ran into the TemPad portal.

Suck it, Watcher. Meet the real Guardians of the Multiverse.

A/N: So for those of you wondering why Deadpool wanted to save Earth-TRN999's Peter but made no mention of Vanessa, given that he saved both of them in Deadpool 2's post-credits scenes, I do have an explanation for that, but I couldn't find a seamless way to work it into the story. I'll just lay it out here:

After saving Vanessa (and Peter, and killing his past self and Ryan Reynolds), Deadpool returns to the present only to discover that Vanessa has once again died, so he goes back in time to save her again, but ultimately she still ends up dying each time he tries to save her. Eventually, his repeated time-traveling draws the attention of Doctor Strange, who informs him that Vanessa's death is an Absolute Point in the timeline (think Christine's death in Episode 4 of What If…?), and that there is no way to save her. Deadpool asks why she had to die and Strange says he can't say, warning that it could compromise future events if he does. But since none of you live in this fictional universe (or do you…?), I can say here that it's because her dying started the chain of events that led to Deadpool joining the X-Men, saving Russell, etc., and ultimately being in the Citadel at the End of Time when Shuma-Gorath launched his attack. And the help of Deadpool will prove crucial to saving the multiverse from Shuma-Gorath.

I plan to have the conclusion to this trilogy-of sorts posted sometime in November or December – I've got some other fics I want to work on in the meantime. Until then, as always, I'd love to receive a review!