WHERE IT ALL BEGAN
Sponby was standing outside of his old home. Despite all the traveling he did, only a single day had elapsed on Earth. The house and most of the surrounding area was still pretty badly torn up, but Sponby managed to get inside.
Sponby headed back into Insano's lab. He headed over to his makeshift living area, which, fortunately, was still intact. Also intact, and the reason he came here in the first place, was his old robot Burton. Well okay, "robot" was being charitable: it was just a prop made from a vaccuum cleaner and spare parts.
But Sponby was feeling nostalgic. He had a starship, and though he could pilot it by himself, it would be much easier to have an AI piloting it. Again, Burton was about as smart as a rock, but Sponby was pretty sure that he could rig up an AI.
Sponby absorbed Burton into his body, but when he turned around to leave, he was blinded by a bright light. Once his eyes adjusted, he realized what the source of that bright light was...
"Hello, Sponby." Spoont said.
"You! I killed you!" Sponby exclaimed.
"I got better. Now then, I've heard what you did to the Great Machine Force. I figure that you won't be around much longer anyways, so I want my piece of you before they annihilate you." Spoont conjured a sword of light.
"Good luck!" Sponby conjured a sword of darkness, and they went to it. Sponby could tell that Spoont was not only fully recovered, but that he was significantly stronger than when they last met. Did this guy have Saiyan blood or something? Hmm, Saiyan blood...
Spoont slashed Sponby's stomach, leaving a huge gash. Sponby countered by junctioning one of the starship's tractor beams to his arm, which he used to hold Spoont in place.
"Any last words?" Sponby asked.
"Yeah. Get a stronger tractor beam." Spoont broke the tractor beam, slashing Sponby again. This time, Sponby lost one of his arms, though he regenerated that in an instant. Spoont tried to get another shot in, but Sponby summoned his heroic willpower and grabbed the sword of light with his arm.
"Yeah, 'heart' sucks as a power source, doesn't it?" Sponby taunted. He ripped the sword of light from Spoont's grip, absorbing it and fusing it with his sword of darkness.
LIGHT AND DARK
His new weapon, the Fusion Sword, easily cleaved through Spoont's body. Spoont tried to open a portal to escape, but Sponby dragged him back with the tractor beam. Sponby slashed off Spoont's limbs, and the sheer power of the Fusion Sword meant that Spoont was unable to grow them back - at this point, he was pretty much helpeless.
"Wait! Don't kill me! I know how to stop the Great Machine Force!" Spoont cried.
"Oh, really? I was just planning on killing every last one of them."
"No, that won't work. They have effectively infinite resources. You need to go to the Heart of Machines and kill the leader."
"And where is this Heart of Machines?"
"It's a closely-guarded secret. You'll need to invade one of their flagships and get the data."
"Thanks for the information." Sponby cleaved Spoont in half, killing him for good. But then again, he could probably regenerate from that too...
"IRON FIST TECHNIQUE LEVEL 2: SOUL PUNCH!" Sponby reached into one half of Spoont's body and ripped out his soul. He absorbed that, and for good measure, he absorbed the pieces of Spoont's body. The light struggled within him, but Sponby quickly adapted to it.
Sponby's body underwent a change. Rather than being a vaguely-humanoid black figure, he gained glowing red eyes, red tattoos all over his body, and slightly more defined features. He gained all of Spoont's absorbed powers, abilities and knowledge as well, though he didn't quite double his power (he could tolerate Spoont's light, but he couldn't use it as effectively as his own darkness).
With Spoont's knowledge came a terrible realization:
Sponby had killed Spoont in the throne room of Castle Fevrier. This was an alternate-universe Spoont.
And there were more of them.
VANITY SHIP
Sponby realized that, if he was serious about destroying these Great Machine Force guys, he'd probably need a lot more power. He still hadn't quite gained control over his portal device, so hunting down AU versions of himself was probably inefficient.
No, what Sponby realized was that he had a lot of potential with his current abilities. He'd need to find somewhere to refine his abiltiies and get more out of them, which would (for the time being) give him yet another major power boost.
But before that, he had one thing to do. Sponby drew on power from his Z-Crystal and absorbed the remains of his house and Insano's lab. It wouldn't provide much of a power boost, but it would give him plenty of raw material.
He flew up into the atmosphere and absorbed the secret Nazi killsat positioned right above his house. Sponby processed the data on the satellite, and realized that there was a group of Neo-Nazis planning on kickstarting Instrumentality by making Nightcrawler the Pope, opening a portal to Hell and detonating several grey goo bombs all around the world, which would apparently result in everyone merging together into a nanotech Nazi-God or something. It was a stupid fucking plan, but Sponby fired the killsat at the Neo Nazi headquarters, kiling them all.
With that done, Sponby used the raw material in his body to recreate the Great Machine Force's starship that he had absorbed, though with a few personal touches. For one, it was bright red, so that it would go three times faster, and it had purple streaks for stealth, because have you ever seen purple camoflague before? No, you haven't, so it must be a stealthy color!
Sponby then used various fragments of personalities he had absorbed to piece together an AI, which would control the ship so he didn't have to. He decided to call the ship "The Quickening", and of course, he named the AI BURTON.
"I AM ONLINE." BURTON said. Sponby sat in the comfortable captain's chair on the bridge; he didn't expect to pick up any passengers, so the rest of the ship was armaments, shields and engines. And even if he did pick up passengers, he could modify the ship in an instant.
"Good. Activate the portal device and send us through it." Sponby had copied most of his powers to The Quickening, and had instructed BURTON on how to use them, though at a slightly weaker level.
"YES SIR. COMMENCING MST TRANSPORT IN 3... 2... 1..." A portal opened up in front of them, and the engines powered The Quickening through the portal at several hundred times the speed of light.
BACK THERE
The Quickening appeared above a lumpy-looking planet. The surface appeared to be dark purple.
"Hey, it's this place!" Sponby said, recalling his adventure with King Damocles and the insect-like species known as the Equinox. "BURTON, find a place called 'Castle Fevrier' and set me down there."
"YES SIR." Sponby de- and re-materialized in front of a giant flaming castle, with insects running around and on fire (not necessarily in that order).
"Huh, what the hell?"
"Great-Lord Sponby!" one of the Equinoxes cried. "Please, help us! A demon has destroyed Fort Fevrier!"
"Yeah, we'll see about that." Sponby ran into the burning castle, navigating the relatively simple hallways until he entered the throne room. Sitting on the throne was King Damocles, holding off a flurry of attacks by another familiar face with his barrier...
"Well well well, what a surprise!" The figure turned around. It appeared to be Archetype, the ten-foot-tall alien woman who had captured him before, but she looked different; her face was scarred, and rather than wearing glowing power armor, she instead was wearing similarly-patterned armor made out of inky darkness...
"Yeah, what a surprise. I've got my own rogue's gallery now, and they all have Joker immunity." Sponby shrugged. "So, let me guess, you're from an alternate universe?"
"Perhaps. But I do remember what you did to me, Sponby; you tried to absorb me." She looked down at her black armor. "Our emergency teleportation is quick and dirty; it has a chance of failing and leaving you a barely-alive mass of flesh, hence why it's emergency only. So when I used it while partially-absorbed by you, it took parts of you with me... and it fused us together on a genetic level, giving me some of your own power." She laughed evilly.
"Wonderful. Just what I need, another AU version of myself running around."
"Oh, you think I'm a version of you? Quite the contrary, 'Great-Lord'; you are an alternate me. Archetype isn't my name; it's my species. Your Doctor made you in our image."
"Whatever, I don't care about exposition. Let's just get this over with so I can fight you 256 more times." Sponby shifted into his shadow form, and Archetype did the same.
MIRROR, MIRROR
She took the first shot, firing several Disintegration rays followed up with a Broken Shining Finger. Sponby blocked the rays and countered with a Holy-Flare-Meteor-Ultima quadcast, which destroyed what was left of the castle. Damocles protected himself with his barrier.
"Ha! You're stronger than when we last met." Archetype taunted. She used a Stellar Flashbang to take advantage of Sponby's weakness to light, but he no longer had that weakness thanks to Spoont; it still hurt him a bit, but not nearly as badly as she expected.
"So, you like using my techiques, huh? Well, we'll see how you like the Level 2 Swat Technique! AUTO-FUCKING-SHOTGUNS!" Sponby generated about 500 autoshotguns, each of which had four barrels and unlimited ammo, and let loose. Archetype tried shielding herself, but the sheer amount of bullets broke her shield quickly, and she was reduced to little bits.
But she too had an impressive healing factor. She pulled herself together and regenerated in only a few seconds.
"Is that all you've got, Sponby?" Archetype created a huge axe, but Sponby cut through it with his Fusion Sword. He diced her up, but unlike Spoont, she regenerated from those wounds as well. Sponby had to pull out his trump card...
"SWAT TECHNIQUE LEVEL 3! YOU'RE IN MY SPOT!" Sponby teleported right on top of Archetype, telefragging her. She was reduced to subatomic particles; she couldn't regenerate from that.
"Thank you, Great-Lord!" Damocles said. "We will rebuild our castle and replenish our supplies."
"It's what I do." Sponby said.
I GOT BETTER
But to his surprise, Archetype returned!
"Ha! Telefragging might work against lesser beings, but I'm not one of them!" she boasted, laughing madly.
"Fuck!" Sponby shouted. "Hey Damocles, wanna do that dragon thing?"
"Yes, of course!" Damocles turned into energy and fused with Sponby, transforming him into a massive dark dragon with red markings all over. Just like last time, he ate his opponent, but rather than doing the stupid thing and finishing her off with phantasmagoric breath, he simply sapped her power and absorbed her. It wasn't much of a boost, but he did regain a few of the powers he lost (though he didn't even notice losing them, due to having so many).
Damocles de-fused from Sponby.
"Once again... Thank you, Great-Lord! But do not count on that ability again; I can only use it once in my lifetime."
"Yeah, whatever." Sponby was pretty sure he had heard that last time too, but he could care less. "So hey, I saw this planet from orbit, and it looked kinda... lumpy. What is it exactly?"
"We live upon our God! He protects us and provides us with all we need to flourish!"
"Okay. SO does your God have a name?"
"Uh...?" Damocles was confused. "We... don't really have a name for it."
"Okay. Well, since I'm here, I'm going to be training for a bit to develop my powers. I hope you don't mind if I stick around here for a few weeks?"
"We would be honored, Great-Lord! Only... we are lacking in accomodations at the moment."
"Ha, don't worry." Sponby pulled a communicator out of his pocket. "Hey BURTON, beam these guys down a new castle."
"YES SIR. BEAMING DOWN IN 3... 2... 1..." A new castle immediately manifested around them.
"Suck it Linkara! My spaceship can make castles for bug people!" Sponby said to no one in particular.
TRAINING FROM HELL
Over the next two months, Sponby experimented with various combinations of his various powers. He learned to use them more efficiently, and he finally learned how to use some of the less energy-intensive ones in his non-shadow form. He also figured out how to directly apply weapons and other offensive abilities to himself, without using the fucking Guardian Forces to junction them to his body; this also increased efficiency, and it finally allowed him to fully absorb their personalities and powers into himself. They would probably sit unused like his powers from Arma, but hey, who knows when you'd need to refine 100 trading cards into a tent?
Finally, Sponby messed around with Spoont's light powers as well. Though he trained quite a bit with the powers Spoont had absorbed from other sources (one of his new personal favorites was the magic demon werewolf form), he still couldn't directly use Spoont's light tendrils. Hell, he wasn't even sure how he managed to create his Fusion Sword in the first place, though he had refined that further as well.
Sponby eventually figured out another roundabout way of using light-powered magic by directing spells through the Fusion Sword, but he could only use them at 60% efficiency or so; he had plenty of other abilities that could mimic light magic, but in order to become truly powerful, he'd need to master all of his weaknesses.
Also, Sponby managed to convert Neutro's anti-magic field generator into an anti-anti magic field field which, despite its nonsensical name, finally made him (mostly) immune to anti-magic in general. Coupled with his ability to use powers in human form (again, mostly the magic demon werewolf form), he was now pretty much unstoppable to anything he could think of, though he knew that someone out there had the exact combination of weapons to neutralize and kill him, and probably that he'd fight 5 billion permutations of that person before he finally found and killed Insano.
Also, he learned kung-fu offscreen.
BACK TO THE FUTURE
At the end of his 2-month training period (though it was more like 3 months due to the calendar the Equinoxes used), he bid farewell to King Damocles and his subjects, and returned to The Quickening.
"I HAVE LOCATED 3 GREAT MACHINE FORCE FLEETS IN THE LOCAL MST-BRANES." BURTON ANNOUNCED IN ALL CAPS.
"What? MST- Listen BURTON, just take us to the closest one."
"MST STANDS FOR "MULTIUNIVERSAL SPACE-TIME. THERE IN ONE FLEET CLOSE TO US ON OUR CURRENT BRANE, AND TWO MORE CLOSER TO US, BUT ON ADJACENT BRANES."
"I just told you I don't care. Okay, which one's the weakest?"
"THE ONE ON OUR CURRENT BRANE IS THE STRONGEST, BUT DUE TO THE UNRELIABLE NATURE OF OUR PORTAL DEVICE, WE MAY NOT BE ABLE TO REACH THE WEAKER ONES."
"Okay, take us to the strongest one. I'm sure I can handle it."
"COMMENCING WARP IN THREE... TWO... ONE..." The Quickening accelerated far, far, far beyond the speed of light, making physics weep in a corner somewhere. It only took a few seconds from Sponby's perspective to reach the Great Machine Force fleet.
"RECEIVING TRANSMISSION." The giant impractical monitor in front of Sponby flickered, showing an image of an ugly-looking lizard alien.
"This is the GMF Super Exadian. Identify yourself, Corvette-class ship."
"I'm Sponby, bitches! Fire everything you got, BURTON!" BURTON complied by, indeed, firing everything. But the Super Exadian's shields took everything Sponby had, and came back for more.
"ENEMY SHIELDS AT 95%. I WOULD RECOMMEND A TACTICAL RETREAT."
"Fuck that! Accelerate to 100x lightspeed and punch through their hull!" Sponby ordered. BURTON complied, though The Quickening took a bit of hull damage in the process; Sponby instantly healed it, and BURTON beamed him aboard.
Almost instantly, Sponby was attacked by a veritable army of mecha-mooks. Sponby dispatched all of them with ease. He then searched around for a transporter pad, but the first one he tried was locked.
"Ha! You didn't think we would let you do that twice?" a voice over the intercom said.
"Fine! I'll just kill more of your guys! In fact, I was planning on letting you guys go, but I think I'll just kill all of you now."
"...Fine. Come to the bridge." The transporter pad opened up, and Sponby stepped through it...
OLD FACE
...and ended up in the brig. A human dressed in dark clothing stood guard.
"What the fuck? I'll kill you-" Sponby tried firing a shadow tendril at the man, but some kind of force field blocked him.
The man in black turned around and grinned wickedly. He reached into his torso, pulling out his own intestines, which became rigid and took the form of a large, bloody spear.
"Yeah, nice trick. I can do that too." Sponby switched to his shadow form and drew his Fusion Sword, but his attack rebounded off of the force field. The man in black was unimpeded by the field, and he stabbed his spear wildly at Sponby.
"Ke... ke ke ke ke ke!" the man laughed. "Ke ke ke ka nu!" The man transformed into a hulking demon, at least three times as tall as Sponby and twice as wide. He grew three more sets of arms and created eight bloody swords.
"Pah, this'll be easy." Sponby powered up and switched to his magic demon werewolf form, which at least matched the demon in size and was twice as powerful, and that was without adding all of Sponby's power sources. Sponby's enchanted claws ripped through the force field.
The demon got in close and tried massacring Sponby in melee combat, but Sponby ignited his claws with hellfire and cut through all of the demon's swords. Sponby ripped the demon's throat out with his powerful jaws, and the demon stumbled back, holding its throat.
"Ghhk..." the demon sputtered. It tapped into a hidden reserve of power, growing even larger and gaining wings. Sponby leapt onto the demon's chest and ripped its heart out, consuming it in his bloodlust. The demon returned to its human form, lying on the ground and bleeding out.
"HA!" Sponby returned to his human form as well, and for good measure, he kicked the son of a bitch. The man tried to beg for mercy, but his injuries were too great; he spoke his last. Sponby absorbed the man, adding more demon to his magic demon werewolf form.
EVOLUTION
Sponby wandered around, eventually finding another transporter pad that took him to the bridge this time. He ran forward, ending up in a brightly-lit atrium; the way forward was blocked by three humanoid-looking guys, all of whom had four arms and power armor, though their faces differed from one another.
"Of course, more Archetypes." Sponby sighed. "Well, come on, let's see what you've got."
They all fired finger beams at him. Sponby shrugged all of them off, though he noted that these beams were powered by light magic; obviously, these guys did their homework. Too bad he figured out a way around it.
Sponby responded by creating several squirt guns on his body, which soaked the three Archetypes in DMSO. He then fired every disease and drug that he could think of (and a few that didn't previously exist) at them; one of them instantly died, one fell on the ground and started having a seizure, while the third... morphed into the thing that Tetsuo turned into at the end of Akira.
"KANEDAAA HELP ME" the Archetype said while firing tentacles all over the place. It absorbed its two brethren, mutating even further.
Sponby tried firing a shadow tendril at Tetsuo, but his tendril was absorbed. Okay then. Sponby shifted into magic demon werewolf form and ripped through Tetsuo, but all of the damage he inflicted was regenerated quickly. He even tried empowering his claws with energy from the Fusion Sword, but even those wounds didn't last long.
"Okay, I get it! Regeneration is fucking annoying!" Sponby yelled. As he was pondering a way to kill this thing, the walls, ceiling and floor of the atrium all exploded. Tetsuo fell into deep space, never to be heard from again, but Sponby barely managed to grab a ledge and pull himself toward it, narrowly avoiding the same fate.
BRIDGE
Finally, Sponby made it to the bridge of the Super Exadian. It was much larger than The Quickening's bridge, with at least 200 crewmen mulling around.
"Ah! Welcome, Sponby." The captain, a gigantic humanoid with a pumpkin for a head, floated down to greet our hero.
"Pump- okay, fine. Whatever. Give me the coordinates for the Heart of Machines and get out of here." Sponby fired a number of shadow tendrils at Pumpkinhead, but kept them suspended a half-inch above its skin.
"Okay. Prepare a Mass Teleport, everyone." Everyone but Pumpkinhead warped away. "Also, this was totally a trap." He warped away as well.
Sponby looked out into space, and an absolutely massive ship warped in. The Super Exadian was probably about the size of the Moon, but that thing utterly dwarfed it.
"FFFFFFFFFFFFF- Okay, let's deal with this." Sponby floated up to one of the terminals and jammed his arm into it. He tried hacking it, but... there was nothing there. The only data left in the system was for running the life-support systems, and a single text file entitled "Fuck You ".
The massive ship fired a warning shot. The laser barely grazed the hull of the Super Exadian, leaving a huge gash across it.
DRAGON
"Okay, I can fix this. BURTON!" Sponby remotely connected with The Quickening.
"I AM DETECTING A STRUCTURE ROUGHLY EQUAL IN SIZE TO THE PLANET NEPTUNE. IT APPEARS TO BE A SHIP."
"Yeah, I saw it! And I'm on the Super Exadian, but they've wiped the hard drives. I'm a sitting duck!"
"I MAY BE ABLE TO HACK TOGETHER BASIC ENGINE CONTROLS. BUT I WILL NEED TO PHYSICALLY CONNECT THE QUICKENING TO THE SUPER EXADIAN."
"Yeah, do that! Just hurry up with it!" Sponby felt the bridge shake; he looked up and saw the red hull of The Quickening right above him. BURTON started firing shadow tendrils into the bridge, absorbing a great deal of it.
Sponby, figuring that he might as well go all the way, bodily fused with The Quickening and started absorbing the rest of the ship. BURTON fragmented his AI to work as quickly as he could. One of the AIs gained a God complex and tried to take over the rest, but Sponby quickly put an end to that.
The massive ship fired another warning shot, but Sponby had enough control of the Super Exadian to start the engines, moving it out of the way. Sponby and BURTON finished absorbing the ship, reconfiguring it with more weaponry, shield generators and engines... and something else.
"READY FOR TRANSFORMATION." BURTON said, reabsorbing his fragmented AIs. "WHAT WILL YOU NAME THIS SHIP?"
"The Dragon." Sponby said. The ship started to transform, reconfiguring itself into a humanoid form. "And this... will be the Dragonlord."
DEUS EST MACHINA
The massive ship sent a transmission.
"Greetings, Sponby!" a voice said. "I have been watching your progress in detail, but I never expected you to take over one of my Super Exadians."
"Yeah, underestimating me is generally a bad idea."
"Indeed! Now, please allow me to introduce myself: I am Rossum the Machine-King, leader of the Great Machine Force." The voice definitely sounded regal enough; it spoke with an air of unwarranted self-importance, though if he controlled a ship that big, Sponby supposed that he actually might warrant it.
"Cool. Tell you what: let me go now, and I promise I won't hunt you down and kill your entire organization."
"Ah, I'm afraid I can't do that! You're quite the interesting specimen. Your power is beyond anything I've seen in any other Archetype, and I'd like to learn more about it."
"Well, why don't you dedicate your undoubtedly considerable resources to finding Doctor Insano? In fact, why don't we cut a deal? I'm looking for him too, so once I'm done with him, I'll let you have him, and in exchange, you leave me the hell alone."
"Oh, I HAVE found Doctor Insano. AU versions of him, at least; the particular version that created you still eludes me, and I doubt that I'll ever be able to find him or one with his particular talents. Instead, I'll just have to settle with dissecting his greatest creation and replicating it as best I can."
The massive ship, which Sponby understood was called the Deus Est Machina (he wasn't sure how he knew that particular bit of info, he just kind of did), started getting serious in destroying the Dragonlord. They knew about Sponby's massive healing factor, so they probably figured that they could reduce him into more manageable chunks for transport.
But Sponby was not about to repeat his time as an experiment. He was going to show these bastards why messing with him was not a good idea.
DRAGONLORD
Sponby started by firing every possible weapon he could think of, no matter how strong or weak. While doing this, he buffed himself up with everything in his arsenal, including several layers of protect, shell, reflect, haste, etc. The reflect spells in particular seemed to help quite a bit, as they reflected a majority of the energy weapons fired by the Deus Est Machina.
But the Deus Est Machina shrugged his attacks off as well. Sponby synchronized himself with BURTON and the Dragonlord, and they all temporarily became one being. By doing this, Sponby reached a new level of power; he was still short of being Type III on the Kardashev scale, but only by a couple of factors.
"SUMMON TECHNIQUE LEVEL 7: DRAMATIS PERSONAE!" Giga Sponby shot himself in the head with an Evoker, summoning the various alternate characters he had played over the years: Tandem the Spoony Bard, Doctor Insano (the non-evil one), Spencer D Bum, Terl, The Ultimate Spoony, Hulk Spogan, the Spoonyvatar, Spoonkara, and many, many others. They all assaulted the shields of the Deus Est Machina, breaking the shield with their combined power.
"And to finish you off! SUMMON TECHNIQUE LEVEL 8: DRAGON AVATAR!" Giga Sponby transformed into a huge dragon, almost the same size as the Deus Est Machina. "EXA FLARE!" He fired an immense beam of plasma through the void and at the Deus Est Machina; the Personae gave their power to the Exa Flare, allowing it to punch through the ship's armor.
...but the ship simply regenerated from the damage.
Giga Sponby defused into its component parts (Sponby, BURTON and the Dragonlord), completely drained. The Dragonlord transformed back into the Dragon.
"WE HAVE ENOUGH ENERGY TO WARP AWAY." BURTON said.
"...Yeah. Do that." Sponby didn't have the energy to stand, much less fight back. BURTON tried to open another portal, but the Deus Est Machina blocked it somehow.
NO ESCAPE
"Ha ha ha! Very good, Sponby! That is the most damage that the Deus Est Machina's ever taken!" Rossum taunted. "Do you have any more tricks up your sleeves?"
"No, I don't. I give up." Sponby said back.
"I see. Honestly, I expected more of a fight from you." The Deus Est Machina opened a portal, and forced the Dragon through it. The last thing Sponby heard was the cruel mechanical laughing of Rossum the Machine-King. He had lost.