A/N: I do not own any of the characters in this story.

Chapter 2: Dalek Super Bowl

EARTH-616 (SACRED TIMELINE) – FEBRUARY 9, 2025

"Come on, Sylvie, quit hogging all the bandwidth!" I yelled. "Kickoff's in ten minutes and I don't want to miss anything. For $#&%'s sake, this is the Super Bowl!"

"Well, I need to use it to power my Reality Scanner," she replied. "It's scanning the multiversal…stuff the Sentinel left behind from hopping between realities to determine which specific reality it came from."

"Oh, so like void stuff?" the Meta-Crisis Doctor asked.

"Call it what you will."

"For crying out loud, how many offshoot realities of The Matrix can there possible be?" I groaned. "Well…then again…. What If…the resurrection pods hadn't been built? What If…Neo had chosen the blue pill? What If…Agent Smith hadn't possessed Bane?"

"Bane?" Harley asked. "You mean that strongman with the weird mask?"

"No, no different Bane. Didn't know he existed in your universe, though."

"Yeah. I few months before Shuma-Gorath destroyed it, he was going on a crime spree throughout Gotham until the Birds of Prey tracked him down and stopped him."

Oh, hello. Back again, readers? So, to fill you in, after the Sentinels raided the vibranium train, we headed to the location in the jungle where the Sentinel had been found yesterday and Sylvie used her sonic thermometer to scan the "multiversal stuff" it left behind. But we got there too long after the Sentinel had left, and so she could only narrow its source down to a few thousand universes. Hence her now hogging bandwidth trying to pinpoint its exact source.

Rose had suggested that we head underground into the vibranium mines to where the Sentinels had just been, but T'Challa told us the attack happened in a section of the railways not meant to be directly accessed by people. By the time we would've gotten there, Sylvie said, the Sentinels would've been gone long enough that she wouldn't be able to get much better results than she collected in the jungle.

After a few more minutes of just watching the TV buffer, I resorted to my favorite pastime: bitching and moaning. It's to me what baseball is to America. "Sylvie, hope that you're done with that before the Super Bowl starts. Because the second you start conflicting with it, I think you know which of the two I will give precedence."

Sylvie summoned a dagger in her left hand as she continued working with her right hand. "And I think you know right where I'm going to stick you with this if you try to kick me off the Wi-Fi."

I've been shot there by heartless bad guys more times than I can count. And somehow the thought of Sylvie going to work down there with a knife still terrifies me.

"Well, even if we don't get to watch the game from the beginning, there's no reason we can't play another game to fill the time," the Doctor said.

"I'm rather fond of grenade football," I said. "I'm sure I have a grenade around here someplace that we could use…."

"Yeah, how about something else? Anyone?"

"Chess," Magik suggested.

"Oh, sure, says Beth Harmon over there," I scoffed.

"Not sure what the hell that means, but it can't be any worse than you, the only one of us who couldn't be killed playing it, suggesting grenade football."

"It's a perfectly fun game! You're constantly in a state of suspense. Did the person who passed me the grenade just pull the pin on it? Didn't they? Will I be blown to #%&$? Won't I be blown to #%&$? It's so much fun!"

"What I want to know is why the Sentinels want vibranium," Loki said.

"Uh…to build vibranium Sentinels, maybe?" I replied. "Zion's APUs wouldn't have stood a chance against vibranium Sentinels. That showdown in Revolutions would've been a straight-up massacre."

"Is it bad that I'm giving less and less thought to what you actually mean when you start talking like that and just trust you know what you're talking about?"

"Most people just tune it out eventually. Fortunately, we can easily remedy it here. After the game, we're pulling up HBO Max and bingeing all four Matrix movies. If we're gonna be going up against Sentinels here, you should probably all know some basic #$&% about them. Depending on how the game goes, I'll either be cursing out Revolutions or pointing out its few redeeming qualities."

"Are you serious?" Magik asked.

"What, will it be past your bedtime?"

Magik slammed her left hand into the crook of her right elbow and raised the lower half of her right arm at me. My secondary "eff you" gesture if both of my middle fingers get chopped off.

"Here's what I really want to know," Harley said. "How is it that so many alternate realities are treated as fictional books or movies in some of the other universes?"

I leaned forward towards the table at the center of the large, U-shaped couch all of us (except Sylvie) were sitting on. No one else followed my lead and leaned in like I was sharing some big secret, so I probably just looked stupid. About a second later, Harley leaned in, but the damage had already been done. "You wanna know what I think?" I asked. "I think it's the Watcher. We're all just prisoners in his little multiversal zoo here – hey, speaking of, Sylvie, how's that multiversal zoo coming along?"

"I am not building a multiversal zoo," she said. "I don't recall ever agreeing to a multiversal zoo."

"Well then what the hell did you do with the zombiemunks we trapped in Limbo?"

"I went back there the next day to see what had become of them, and I found that they'd all been burned by Lockheed," Magik said. "So no need to worry about an invasion of zombie chipmunks."

"Unless there's another zombiemunk reality somewhere," I said. "But back to my point. The Watcher gets his jollies watching us live out our lives, oblivious to his presence and the fact that he could jump in and solve all his problems with a snap of his fingers…not to reference a certain someone that the good citizens of Earth-616 are far less fond of. He realized we need entertainment to stay content so we don't put too much thought into quantum mechanics and other nonsensical #$&% like that and discover that the multiverse is real. But since he has no imagination of his own, he gives us our entertainment by borrowing from other universes and implanting visions of them - in the form of dreams - into certain individuals' minds so that they'll then create books or movies based on those universes."

"Why?" Loki asked. "Doing that would be all but coming out and telling us that the multiverse exists."

I was hoping someone would ask that so I'd finally get the chance to deliver a big, dramatic, philosophical line. "Well, where better to hide the truth than in something everyone thinks is a lie?"

Suddenly, a bright blue, cylindrical beam of light appeared in front of the TV, from the floor to the ceiling. "What's that?" Rose asked.

"It looks like…oh no," the Doctor said. "A Dalek teleport beam! Get down!"

"A what now?" I asked, but suddenly a Dalek materialized in the center of the beam. Strangely, it was silver instead of the usual bronze color, but then again, post-New Dalek Paradigm, anything's apparently on the table for them.

"What is that thing?" Magik asked.

"EXTERMINATE!" the Dalek declared, blasting its whisk arm at all of us. I shoved Loki to the side of a beam heading for him, then tried to deflect two more off my katanas. The swords stopped the beams, but their blades were immediately melted and dripped off the hilts into a messy puddle on the floor.

No…my swords…. We'd been through so much together. Stabbing Francis. Taking the hands out of the guns of the criminals. Stabbing Juggernaut. Stopping a bunch of other despicable lowlifes over the years. And now they were gone….

Sylvie grabbed her sonic thermometer and shot a laser from it at the Dalek. "Holy #$&%!" I yelled. "That thing's a gun too?! I want one!"

Unfortunately, the laser ricocheted off a forcefield surrounding the Dalek and blew out the windows lining the side of the room overlooking the street. "EXTERMINATE! EXTERMINATE!" the Dalek monotonously continued.

Meanwhile, all of us sheltered behind the couch. "How do we fight that thing?!" Harley cried.

"Hang on, I gotta do something real quick," I said. I looked at everyone else like they were Negasonic Teenage Warhead during our 2016 battle at Francis' lair-place-whatever-it-was. "Look away, children! I said LOOK AWAY!"

"From what?" Sylvie asked.

"Alright, screw it! But if you get traumatized, I warned you to look away, so I am not liable for said trauma!" I unzipped my fly, grabbed a portion of my underwear, and yanked on it as hard as I could. Oh God, I forgot how much that hurt! I pulled my underpants out through the fly and waved them above the back of the couch. "Yoo-hoo, Dalek! White surrender flag here!"

"Oh my God," Rose said.

"Daleks do not accept surrender!" the Dalek said. "You will be EXTERMINATED!"

"Yeah, well, before you exterminate our asses off the face of the planet, I've just got a question!" I yelled over the barrage of extermination rays blasting my innocent couch to smithereens. "What the hell is the Horde of Travesties?"

"Are you kidding me now?" the Doctor asked.

"What the #$&% is the Horde of Travesties?" Harley asked.

"That's what I wanna know!" I said. "Okay, fine, the Skaro Degradations? The Nightmare Child? The Could've-Been King and his Army of Meanwhiles and Neverweres?"

"EXTERMINATE! EXTERMINATE!" the Dalek droned on.

Well, this was looking bleak. It was 6:29. The Super Bowl would be starting any second. I was gonna miss it because this stupid Dalek – who, by the way, I have always wanted to get to meet – came in at the worst opportune time, and I was gonna be the lone survivor of the Guardians of the Multiverse.

Unless….

"Doctor, is there any way to get past the forcefield around the Dalek?" I asked.

"Stuff like lasers and bullets can't get through unless you concentrate fire on its eyestalk," he said. "But if we could get close to it and find a way to take it down at close range, that should work."

"EXTERMINATE!" the Dalek continued, blasting fluff from my couch everywhere.

"Okay, guys, here's the plan," I said, clapping my hands to get everyone's attention. "Modern weapons won't work on this thing, so we're gonna need to go retro. Times like these make me wish I wasn't so fond of guns and had more of a Game of Thrones-esque arsenal on hand, but we'll make do with what we got. We will fight this Dalek and we will win, for the honor of House Stark…which could've actually been a name for this place before the Battle of New York."

"Speak English!" Magik yelled.

"You attack it with your Soulsword, me with my knives, and Harley with your mallet. Everyone else, use one of my guns or Sylvie's sonic thermometer to try to distract it. And you heard the Doctor; aim for the eyestalk!"

Magik's armor appeared down her right arm, and finally the Soulsword appeared in her hand. "Ready," she said.

"Uh, I left my mallet in the corner over there," Harley pointed past the Dalek to the far end of the room.

"Then onto Gun Squad you go," I said. I unstrapped my guns from my utility belt and other pouches. "Everyone else, take your pick, and then we all rush that guy and take him the hell down."

"Are Daleks technically guys?" Loki asked.

"They're voiced by a guy; that's close enough for me."

Suddenly, a hole was blasted through the back of the couch between me and Magik. Well, that was it. If that was a few inches to the right, Magik would've been killed, and were it a few inches to the left, everyone else would've been leaderless for thirteen minutes (give or take). And thirteen minutes without my guidance would be lethal in a situation like this.

I leaned over the back of the couch and pointed my knife at the Dalek, yelling "FORTH EORLINGAS…whoops, sorry, wrong fantasy franchise."

"EXTERMINATE!" the Dalek answered, blasting its whisk laser at my face.

I ducked under it, then popped up again. Sylvie and Loki each summoned a pair of daggers, while Rose and Harley each grabbed a pair of guns and Sylvie handed the Doctor her sonic thermometer. "…Aaaand, GO!" I yelled.

Rose and the Meta-Crisis Doctor cut left around the couch while Harley cut right, and I leapt over the back. Sylvie followed to the left and Loki followed to the right. Magik, meanwhile, leapt up behind me and then springboarded off my back to lunge at the Dalek. OW! Dammit, that's the exact sort of thing I would do, but still…ow!

I tumbled to the ground as Magik aimed her Soulsword in a downward strike at the Dalek. But the Dalek wasn't focused on Magik, because it was busy yelling, "EXTERMINATE!" at Harley. Meanwhile, the Doctor shot a laser from the sonic thermometer at the Dalek, but it once more deflected off the Dalek's forcefield…right into my 85" flatscreen TV. The TV fell off the wall and crashed to the floor in a flurry of sparks.

"NO!" I screamed. "YOU BROKE MY TV, MOTHER#$%&ER!"

The Soulsword broke through the Dalek's forcefield but somehow rebounded off its armor, knocking Magik off balance. "What the hell?" she said. "That's never happened before."

"EXTERMINATE!" the Dalek said, swiveling its whisk arm to face her.

Sylvie, Loki, and I leapt for the Dalek with our knives drawn. I stabbed both of mine right for it center, hoping to maybe poke the Dalek mutant within the armor as well. But as soon as my knives made contact with the armor, their blades splintered apart. What the #$&%?! First the Soulsword, now my knives? Why was this Dalek so indestructible?!

The Dalek fired its whisk laser at Magik, but she managed to deflect the attack off the Soulsword, blasting the laser through the ceiling instead.

Meanwhile, Loki's and Sylvie's daggers had suffered the same fate as mine, and Harley, Rose, and the Doctor weren't any more successful. Then I got an idea. "Doctor, pass me the sonic thermometer!" I said.

The Doctor tossed it to me. "Do you have a plan?"

"Hopefully. If not, we're #$%&ed."

I looked over the sonic thermometer until I found the laser-firing button Sylvie had pointed out when we were in Wakanda. "Eat this, you bastard," I said. I leapt on the back of the Dalek and leaned over its top, then jammed the sonic thermometer into the end of its eyestalk. "Exterminate!" I yelled.

"Vision impaired!" the Dalek said.

I pressed the laser button on the sonic thermometer, blasting the laser into its eyestalk. A second later, I heard muffled explosions inside it, along with an undulating scream from the Dalek mutant that ended a few seconds later. The whisk laser stopped firing as the Dalek's arms drooped down, and the blue glow of the eyestalk faded.

Everyone warily stood up, and a few seconds later, Harley asked, "So…that's it? That was easy."

"Where the hell did this Dalek come from?" Loki asked. "And what did it want with us?"

"I'd say it wanted to exterminate us," Rose replied.

"Yeah, but why?" the Doctor said. "Sylvie, do Daleks exist in this universe?"

"They're not supposed to…," she replied. "So it would appear we've got another visitor from another universe. First the Sentinels, and now a Dalek."

"Well, what a joy this has been, guys," I said. "But now my four favorite possessions are destroyed, I've got a hole in the ceiling here, and I might as well install a balcony where my floor-to-ceiling windows used to be."

"What are your four favorite possessions?" Harley asked.

"My two katanas, my TV, and my couch. Not to mention my knives."

"Are you serious?" Sylvie raised an eyebrow. "We've gotten three incursions from other realities in 24 hours. We've got more pressing problems that you losing a bunch of your weapons. Like Loki said, where did this thing come from?" She grabbed her sonic thermometer and scanned the Dalek with it. A few seconds later, the device beeped. "Here we go," Sylvie said. "It says…Earth-328767."

"Does that mean anything significant?" the Doctor asked.

"I'm not sure. I'll have to check the Multiverse Register back at the Citadel. But until then, I can finish figuring out what universe the Sentinel came from."

"Ah, ah, ah," I said. "First things first." I grabbed one of my guns off the floor, turned around, and blew my Wi-Fi router to kingdom come.

"What the #$&% was that for?" Sylvie asked.

"Well, if I can't watch the Super Bowl now, you're not doing your thing either."

A/N: Hope you enjoyed the chapter! Not sure when my next post will be, because I've got a couple one-shots I want to get written, and some longer ones I'm working on at the same time as this one. But this story will be finished – not gonna abandon it just when it's getting good!

Please R&R if you'd like!