A/N: Welcome back! Including this chapter, I have four more planned for this fanfic before it's complete. I'll post one each on the remaining four Saturdays in December: Chapter 14 on the 17th, Chapter 15 on the 24th, and wrapping things up with Chapter 16 on the 31st. I hope the ending lives up to your expectations!

Read, review, and enjoy!

I do not own any of the characters in this fanfic.

Chapter 13: The Reversal

THE CITADEL AT THE END OF TIME – FEBRUARY 11, 2025

"Do you have any idea how dangerous what you just did was?" Sylvie asked.

"That's not something I really think about before I do something," I said. "Overall it's worked out pretty damn well for me so far."

"Well this time your luck ran out."

"I'm confused, what exactly is bad here?" Harley asked. "We shut down the planegate. Mission accomplished. I mean, we didn't take out every Sentinel, but nobody's perfect."

After Magik brought us back to the Citadel, Sylvie sent all the members of Strike Team X except me and Harley back to their own universes, then ordered the two of us to her chamber. I figured we were in trouble; either that or she wanted to have a ménage à trois, which seemed highly unlikely.

And in trouble we were.

"The trouble isn't that you shut down the planegate, it's what happened while you were shutting down the planegate. The fact that someone on this team of yours was sucked into it, and now we don't know where the #$&% he is."

"Sheesh. Didn't know Cad Bane was so important to you. If I'd known I would have arranged a meeting for you two before we left-"

Sylvie slammed her fist on her desk. "Is everything a joke to you?!"

Hmm….

*Final Jeopardy! theme intensifies*

"So Bane ended up somewhere across the multiverse," Harley said. "What the hell's the big deal?"

Sylvie sighed and pressed a few buttons on her desk. "I've never told you about incursions, have I?"

"Incursions…incursions…not ding-donging anything up here." I tapped my head.

"Incursion like an attack?" Harley asked.

"No." Sylvie tapped another button, and a hologram appeared above the desk. Two large spheres – one red, one blue – hovered near each other. "These represent two universes. Technically, as we're going to be thinking about them here, they aren't spheres, they're those long tendrils you can see branching off the Sacred Timeline out there." She gestured to the window. "But regardless. Say you take a small part of one universe, like Cad Bane, and transplant it into another one." She reached into the red sphere and pulled out a speck of light, then guided it into the blue sphere. "Now watch what happens."

Slowly, the red sphere drifted towards the blue one. As they collided, splinters of both universes flew away from the site of the collision. The sphered were both gradually destroyed, leaving a mess of blue and red fragments in the wake of the collision.

"Both universes are destroyed," Harley said.

"If someone stays in another universe for too long, yes." Sylvie waved the hologram away. "Whatever universe Bane ended up in, his home universe is going to seek it out, homing in on him, and destroy both itself and whatever universe he ended up in."

"So we find him," Harley said. "You've gotta have some sort of gadget here that can do that."

"I don't. I don't know what universe he came from, and I don't know what universe he ended up in. When you destroyed the planegate, my scanners here at the Citadel detected flashes of M-Rip Energy leading from Earth-9466 to over 500,000 other universes before it finally shut down for good."

"How did that even happen?" I asked. "We destroyed that half of Shuma-Gorath's brain; why did the planegate suddenly start leading to all over the #$%&ing place? And why wasn't the existence of the planegate causing an incursion, then, between Earth-9466 and the Daleks one? The two halves of his brain were parts of the same object split between two universes, after all."

"Because Shuma-Gorath didn't originate in any universe. Or if he did, it was one destroyed long ago during He Who Remains' multiversal war. If something doesn't have a home universe for another universe to collide with, there isn't going to be a collision." Well, that explains why I don't cause incursions left and right when I go gallivanting around the multiverse. "And my best guess about what happened to the planegate is that as the half of Shuma-Gorath's brain in Earth-9466 was being destroyed, the link to the half in Earth-328767 was severed, so the device creating the planegate started homing in on any minute traces of M-Rip Energy present across the multiverse. Which brings us back to the fact that we have no idea where Bane is, because of your rash idea."

"Well, I can tell you he was from Earth-119. Does that help?"

"Somewhat, but not entirely. Whatever universe he ended up in, that universe's energy signature would be too large for my scanners to detect Bane's signature inside it. It's going to come down to looking for abnormal signs in Earth-119's path and trying to figure out which timeline it's on a collision course with so we can prevent the incursion from happening."

I may be a stubborn ass most of the time, but even I can recognize when I've gone and made a #$%&ing mess of things. "…Sorry. I should've thought this through better. I'm used to just going in, stabbing, shooting, the end, no big multiversal stakes or anything."

"Mallet for me," Harley said. "Bash some bad guys upside the head and…boom. That's it."

Sylvie gave a resigned sigh. "Then there's the matter of Peter, who can't be sent to any other universe, but would undoubtedly be killed if he set foot back in Earth-9466."

"So he's gonna have to spend the rest of his life in this Citadel?" Harley said. "That blows."

"Oh, he's not staying here. Already thought of that idea. Already threw that idea in the trash. The two of you caused this problem, so the two of you are going to solve it."

"And you're sure we can't just get rid of Earth-9466 so he can go wherever he wants?" I asked.

"Yes. The Sentinels only took over one planet in that timeline; trillions of other beings are living out their lives in peace elsewhere in the universe."

I figured that would be her answer, but it couldn't hurt to ask.

"So what you're saying is we need some other extra-multiversal hideout to store him in?" Harley said. "Hmm."

"Uatu, let us into the Nexus of All Realities!" I shouted at the Watcher. No response. And seeing as how I wasn't allowed to keep the Infinity Stones I took from Earth-TRN1111, I doubted I'd be able to force my way into the Nexus. Of course, I had the power of plot armor on my side because I could always just threaten Spideypool52 again and make him open us a portal to the Nexus-

"What about the Carlysle?" Harley suggested. "He can stay on there; that thing's fricking huge."

"…Okay," I said. "Maybe this'll count as my atonement for failing to save Peter when Shuma-Gorath ate Earth-TRN1107."

"Fine by me," Sylvie said. "And now that we've gotten that out of the way…as much as I hate to admit this, your stupid, reckless plan…did actually end up helping us."

Were my ears mistaken? Was that praise I heard?

"And don't let that go to your heads," she continued.

She said "heads" but she was only looking at me…very pointedly, at that.

"After you shut down the planegate, my scanners detected that all the M-Rip Energy in Earth-9466 vanished. The planegate was the only source of it; there isn't any in the Sentinels themselves like we thought there was."

Well, that was certainly good news. Nonsensical, but good. "Then how the heck did the ones that stole the vibranium from Wakanda get there?"

"The Daleks," Harley said. "It's gotta be them, right?"

"That's what I'm thinking," Sylvie said. "The Daleks were the only ones who had the ability to travel across the multiverse at will. The Sentinels could use the planegate, but that only led to Earth-328767, and the Daleks probably used their own universe-hopping tech to send the Sentinels to Wakanda."

"So they've been masterminding this whole thing," I said.

"It certainly makes sense," Sylvie said. "Of the Sentinels and Daleks, only one of those races has the technology to build spaceships and travel across the universe. If only one of them was going to figure out how to replicate the planegate's technology in miniature and use it to travel wherever they want, like we do with our TemPads, it would be them."

"So the Daleks sent the Sentinels to Wakanda to steal the vibranium to make more Daleks, that one that attacked us in the tower came after us itself, and even with the planegate shut down, they can still travel across the multiverse?" Harley summed up. "Did I get all that?"

Sylvie nodded. "But at this point, Earth-9466 is off the playing field. They don't have the ability to travel across the multiverse anymore. It's just Earth-328767 we're concerned about now. Which leads us to my next point…." She tapped a few more buttons, and another hologram appeared above the table. A list this time. "I scanned that universe for life signatures, and this was what I found."

Over 500 million Daleks, 1 Kaled – presumably Davros – and then…nothing else.

"Is there anything other than them?" Harley asked.

"No. Davros' Reality Bomb did exactly what it was meant to: it wiped out every living creature, star, planet, everything that existed in that universe, beyond the Dalek fleet. And now that they're aware that alternate universes exist, no doubt their plan is to prepare an updated army made of vibranium Daleks and use them to destroy every universe."

"Where exactly is this leading, because I could've easily figured that out too," Harley said.

"I've decided to prune Earth-328767," Sylvie said quickly, like she wanted to be donne with saying them as soon as possible. "I'll send out the Reapers to erase it, and then hopefully this crisis will be over." She sighed and muttered, "I swore I'd never do this."

"You know, I have an old friend who always makes me feel better after I do something I feel bad about," I said. "His name's cocaine."

Sylvie gave me the finger. "The two of you can go now. Back to your rooms or back to the Sacred Timeline; either's fine with me, since our mission is all but over now. I'll be in touch to let you know when you're next needed-"

An alarm blared throughout the Citadel.

"What the hell is that?" Harley asked.

"Proximity alert," Sylvie said. "Something's approaching the – holy #$&%."

The number of Daleks in Earth-328767 suddenly dropped from 510 million to 260 million.

"Where'd all those Daleks go?" I asked. But I had a feeling I knew.

Suddenly, a Dalek saucer appeared outside the windows in Sylvie's chamber. Followed by another. And another.

"Uh oh," Harley said.

Sylvie spun her chair around and took in the sight outside the window. Harley and I walked over to it too. It looked like the Dalek saucers were completely surrounding the Citadel. "Well, this #$&% just went sideways," Harley said.

"And here I was thinking the third plot point was just losing Bane to the planegate," I said.

A light on Sylvie's desk blinked and beeped. "Incoming transmission," she said, walking back to the desk.

The door to the room was flung open, and the rest of the Guardians entered…along with Peter, who was floating behind Magik, seemingly asleep. "What the hell is going on?" Loki asked. "What's the alarm…oh #$&%."

"Daleks. I know," I said.

Sylvie pressed the button. "Who is this?" she asked.

For a few seconds there was silence. Then….

"You have destroyed the Daleks' trans-universal gateway, have you not? Answer. Answer!"

"Yes, we did," Sylvie said. "What of it?"

"You have interfered with our plans, and for that you will be-"

Aaaand here we go.

"EXTERMINATED!"

The transmission ended.

"#$&% me," I said.

"Seriously?" Harley asked.

"Not literally, unless you want to. If we're all gonna be exterminated anyway, why not make the most of our last few moments?"