CHAPTER ONE

"So, James, why did you choose the Company?"

The creature before me was something that came right out of a Lovecraft story. Its skin was made of porcelain, shattering and knitting together every time he moved or spoke, with colorless mist erupting from these cracks. The fog spiraled and coalesced by itself, forming shapes that hurt my brain to watch.

The juxtaposition between that impossible being and the crisp, clean, and well-illuminated office made the experience even weirder. I thought that my life couldn't possibly get even more bizarre than finding myself falling into a hole that wasn't there a second ago after replying to a job offer talking about multiverses, waifus, and nonsense like that. However, I had to revise my opinion when the hole bottomed out, and I found myself sitting in a job interview with this hitherto unidentified and unnamed fellow.

Also, I should be polite. "Sorry, but how should I call you?"

"I fear you don't have the necessary number of extraneous tracheae, nor the capacity to modulate sound into the right metaphysical wavelengths, to pronounce my True Name," it said, just as the lights flashed. The room started feeling like closing around me. The creature loomed over its desk; its unblinking eyes fixated on mine as his voice changed into a chorus of deep undertones, and the smell of brimstone assaulted my nostrils. "You, however, can call me the Archon of Sodomy, Goge Vandi—"

Then it coughed. The lights went back on as it sat reclined back on its chair, and all I could smell was the pleasant scent of pine and the aroma of the coffee in my cup again. The cold sweat trailing down the back of my neck was still there, though.

"I apologize; my wife always says I let my sense of dramatics get the better of me," it said, paying no heed that I was now positively glued on the chair with fear. "I was just having a bit of fun with you; you can call me whatever you want."

I tried to manfully ignore the fact I wanted to disappear out of here faster than the last anal virginity in a maximum-security prison. With this pleasant thought, I took a sip of my coffee to have time to gather my bearings, then answered.

"So, Doctor McNinja—" I said, and he snorted violently. Any satisfaction I could feel at taking him on his word evaporated as I needed to duck a projectile sent at me with terminal velocity, and—oh. It was his nose. A nose that's already regrowing. Right-o, because why the fuck not. "I honestly thought it was a joke, but it's kinda hard to turn down even a hoax when the first thing offered in the advertisement is fucking immortality."

Doctor McNinja nodded, the movement cracking his... skin? Eh. Let's call it skin and making pieces of himself fall and rattle as they reached the floor. "I see. That part is a real crowd-pleaser with our more, let's say, mortality-challenged clients. Anything more that grabbed your attention?"

"Well." I paused, scratching my chin. "I also liked that thing about 'sign now, and your dick will become the drill that will pierce through the planes of existence. The marketing was on point there, I'd say."

He let the silence extend until it became uncomfortable, and I scrounged enough courage to ask. "So, about the job?"

Doctor McNinja smiled. It wasn't a friendly smile. "Impatient, aren't we? Let's get to the brass tacks, then. You know the basics from the pamphlet, but the most important thing is that we have two, and only two, core tenets in The Company: to have fun and profit," he said, and his smile got wider as my eyebrows almost climbed to my hairline. "Honestly, some people would say the Company is evil, and they would be partially correct, seeing how our prime export are slaves. I would, however, insist on adding that we aren't necessarily evil against you.

"Being a conglomerate of moustache-twirling villains acting against the people who work for us, or want to buy from us, would be a foolish business model." He shook his head as if the mere concept offended him deeply. After all, no one wants to buy things from the only shop in town where they punch you in the testicles every time you enter. The Company in general and the higher-ups in particular? We don't care an iota if you're a giant rape daemon eating a deluge of souls because you feel like it, nor if you're a knight in shining armor trying to instill freedom one mind-rape at a time."

"Seriously?" I couldn't help but exclaim — and by his pinched expression, he agreed with my sentiment. "I thought that people like that only existed in bad fanfiction."

"Everything can be bad fanfiction if you look at it from the right viewpoint, but I digress. If you're entertaining the Powers That Be and we're profiting from it, it's all good work! Indeed, suppose you meet your manager by the water cooler after that. In that case, he'll pat your back and maybe even offer you a slightly virginal onahole for free as an incentive to keep up the good work," he chuckled, making clear that was something he'd do. "That's how we do things — it's not that we want to do good, but the Company is too big and doesn't see sufficient logic, profit, or fun, into bothering to be evil for evil's sake. Say, do you want more coffee?"

I jolted at the non-sequitur, enthralled by his speech, and finally took notice of the empty cup I was holding. I nodded, and it was refilled after the slightest movement of his fingers.

"Many thanks."

Doctor McNinja waved his hand dismissively. "Think nothing of it," he said. "Now you've heard the basics, aren't you curious about what I'm offering in your case?"

I didn't have it in me to even act like I was surprised by that. If this were like those Create Your Own Adventure stories I've read, the inscrutable boss would give me some platitudes, let me select my poison, and send me into my merry way with a slap on the bum for luck.

Doctor McNinja, finding something in my expression that he liked, continued, "Generally, we send Contractors to worlds so they can catch some waifu templates for us to clone. To understand why we'll need to dip our toes into the underlying mechanics of the multiverse. In layman's terms, empowering a Contractor and punting him into a new world is shuffling him to the side in the Multiversal Chart," he made a brusque gesture to the side. "The Omniverse, where the Company and our employees reside, has a lot more metaphysical weight than those worlds; instead of going into another stage, it's as if you're going right through the curtains and grab some coke on your way to the backstage."

He then snapped his fingers, and the air shimmered, an infinite number of delicate light points anchored by an inlaid, intricate structure appearing above his desk. The entire illusion spiraled and expanded with every single second that passed. It was beautiful, fragile, and scary because, if I was right about my conclusion, every single point of it was an entire fucking multiverse.

"The Company needs them to do that because we get a waifu template from what we call an Ephemeral Reality and register them to our database; the simple act of existing here has a cumulative degenerative effect on the template's soul. If we're fortunate enough, we get a score of functional clones by capture, then some damaged, almost brain-dead ones that we can pump up to the gills with hardware and drugs to get their powers to work. Lastly, what remains are just the cold ones — soulless, unpowered husks," he paused, leaning over his desk and through the illusion, which cast his face in a sinister light. "Understand it: souls are power, James, and power is the only true currency there."

The Doc must've mistaken my silence for speechlessness and hurried to add. "Honestly, it's not that bad. My friend has an almost lobotomized clone based on someone who did him a dirty turn during his Contractor days; it's now a footrest in his living room. Little thing it is, it changes colors every time you kick it and keeps squealing the most amusing things, like 'please, please stop kicking me in the balls'. Funniest thing I've ever seen, and then—"

"Okay, okay, wait a second here," I raised my hands to interrupt him. "I thought The Company's currency, if I remember what the pamphlet said right, were those credits you can use to buy and sell in the Catalogue?"

"And what do you think these credits are?" he said, and I was stumped for an answer. "These 'credits' are the only basis for the Omniverse's entire economy, but where do you think they could possibly come from?"

Try as I might, I couldn't find an answer that wouldn't make the entire economic system precarious at best, especially when the businesses dealt with reality-warping waifus and husbandos like they were going out of style.

"Credits are formed by small, lesser than nanoscopic even, pure shards of might that The Powers That Be let dribble down to us. Better yet, they do it on a constant, measured basis. They are, quite literally, particles of omnipotence made into money," he said, and it made a disturbing amount of sense. Because what, in the grand scheme of things, could be permanent and powerful enough to create an economic system that could endure such ridiculously overpowered players taking part in it? "No one has any clue about why they do that or what they gain from it, other than maybe the experience and being slightly entertained by whatever these shards create. I even remember the last time someone thought to ask and visited one of them. He went right for the Dreamer In the Center of the Maze itself — hoping that a contingent of reality-warping waifus would give him leverage enough to convince the Blind Sultan to get into cryptocurrency."

"What the—" I said, facepalming so hard it hurt. "Are you serious?"

"I kid you not. I don't think the Nuclear Chaos even noticed him, just thought something slightly, tangentially even related to the concept of 'get off my lawn,' and that was it," Doctor McNinja said, shaking his head. "The resulting wave atomized the Contractor and his waifus, then proceeded to consume their fate retroactively from the point of the origin of time onward. By our count, two hundred and thirty-four entire universes were just erased," he said, snapping his fingers, "just like this. I think we still have a plaque congratulating such an example of sheer, undaunted idiocy hanging on a wall somewhere around our entry hall. Even if no one remembers who he was."

"I can see that," I agreed, feeling a chill run up my spine, and decided to steer the conversation to safer topics. "You were talking about the job offer, though..."

"Oh, apologies, let's see... yes. So you got the basics, but I don't want you as a Contractor," he said, interlacing his fingers under his chin, which made the sound of tortured glass. "I want to truly employ you. See, the Company is a colossus, and we have fingers into every pie — why try to do a multiversal bridge by yourself when you can pick a Minecraft clone army to do it? Why try to create great works of transporting technology when a cluster of captive, addled Cirillas and Elizabeths can give it to you for a fraction of the price? And, I'm proud to inform you, my sector is the Troubleshooting Corps," he said, contorting hands into a salute that I'm sure involved more fingers than he originally had.

I raised an eyebrow. "You know, I'm having this funny feeling about how this specific troubleshooting gig doesn't involve patient, careful guidance to solve a problem."

Doctor McNinja surprised me by letting out a bark of a laugh. "Are you mad? It's Troubleshooting because we find trouble, and then we shoot it — preferentially with an Ultimate Nullifier," he said and opened his arms. "Come on, James, why bother selecting a starting world when you can come to the Omniverse, living there with us and finding adventures in many a reality, having and profit into doing missions and trade?"

He then slapped his hands, and a screen appeared before me. My eyes went wide as I read it because it had just offered superpowers.

Superpowers.

Superpowers for me.

My first instinct was to squeal with joy, just select my build with enough enthusiasm to break my finger and be done with it. Still, I managed to hold myself together somehow. I was flying blind: this thing was big, bigger than anything I'd ever imagined before, and I had the impression that the Company wasn't all that generous about retirement packages.

Not that I'd ever want to retire, mind you, not with the promise of power and adventure dangling just before me — it was bait, yes, but bait delicious enough that it still worked anyway.

Surprisingly I didn't have that much of a hang-up about signing up with what was, being brutally honest, a multi-universal slavery ring. Until about an hour ago, the people I'd work for, against, and with were nothing but fictional characters for me.

I finished my cup of coffee — the savory but strong taste and the rich smell calming me slightly.

"Look, Doc," I offered, forcibly wrenching my eyes from the delicious, marvelous offer of power the screen before me represented and trying to be as painfully honest as possible. "My answer will probably be yes anyway, but so as I can be clear: if you're expecting some Ultimate Rapeman: Genocidal Infanticide Liver-Eating Show from me, it's not my vibe and—"

Doctor McNinja interrupted me, shaking his head. "Oh no, nothing of that. Didn't you pay attention to what I said about the Company? We already have plenty of hardcore people like that, and you aren't going to be a Contractor anyway — oh no, you're going to do worse. You're going to get into business, my lad."

I snorted.

Fuck it, down the rabbit hole we go. "Give it plain and simple to me then, Doc."

His answering grin was sharp, and I was confident my own mirrored it. "First thing first, you get the Care Package — a place to stay, a method to enter and exit worlds and track your missions, simple things like that," he says, his fingers dancing on his own screen. "Seeing how you're not going to have a world, as you're going to live in one of our cities, we'll give you a flat rate of five hundred points to choose your build. Being sincere, I expect you to be at least heavily superhuman at the end of this, seeing how we don't have that many requests which can accommodate for weaklings."

I agreed and focused on the screen, my fingers flying through the options — first thing first, keeping myself alive was the top priority. The menu was pretty intuitive, and as the Doc said, every freebie included in the Care Package had clearly marked and had connections with my future job.

"I see you haven't talked about buying waifus yet," I said, looking him into his black, featureless eyes. "There's some caveat about them, isn't there?"

Doc let a huff of a breath escape his lips, which is funny because I don't think he needs to breathe. "No, that's part of the limitation we impose on employees — we'll need to actualize your, well, your everything to become a resident of the Omniverse without ripping yourself apart. To do that, it needs an investment of power. That's where I come in," he said and held a hand as I started to protest. "Honestly, with your Care Package and if for what I've gleaned from talking with you, you'll do fine. The problem is, we'd also need to make your waifus as viable existences here, and it's costly."

"Just say it, Doc, it's always better to rip the band-aid at once," I asked, and he nodded.

"You, as an employee, don't get waifus per se; you get True Companions. The hard limit of how many depends on your patron, which is me," he said and narrowed his eyes. "Look, James, I'll be level with you; we need quality and mobility for the insertions, not a guy with an army. It would also be costly to make them viable in our reality, and I'm not comfortable carving even more from my power to do it." Doctor McNinja smiled. "Yet."

Even if I wanted to protest, even then, his last line shut me up nicely enough. A core group of valuable members with different specializations and that I trusted implicitly would be loads better than getting a thousand cheap bitches. After all, even a man drowning in pussy needs to breathe, and a giant harem looked like it would be a nightmare to manage.

"But not all is lost!" the Doc continued cheerfully. "You still get one now and more with time. We do this to encourage you to make good and serious choices. You'll also have a Stamp to have some fun, even if you don't get credits from selling waifus, nor are will they be able to live in the Omniverse."

Well, there's at least that then, but something made me curious. "Marketplace?"

"A true hive of scum and villainy, where both employees and Contractors can buy and sell almost anything — after paying the Company a tax, of course," the Doc said, then his demeanor sobered up as he continued, "And trust me, you don't want to skim the taxes. The Tax Collectors are just plain scary."

I recoiled, incapable of imagining what he could consider a legitimately unsettling being.

"James, seriously, I golf every other weekend with a fellow from the Tax Department. He looks like a giant mosquito, or he would if mosquitoes were constituted by tarred tapeworms interlaced together and had a giant proboscis, which looks unsettlingly similar to a turgid, spiked penis." He lowered his voice to a whisper as if he was telling me an important secret. "I love the guy to pieces, but after seeing him suck the soul of a debtor through his rectum, I can't help but be terrified of him. Pay. Your. Taxes."

I could only nod and focus on the screen before me, refusing to contemplate the bullshit Doc McNinja had sprung on me, even as the image of a giant rape mosquito kept stubbornly flashing on my mind.

Come on, brain, focus.

It took some minutes for me to confirm some suppositions about the Catalogue while my disturbing boss kept silent, and apparently, I was right on the money. After reading the entries back and forth twice to confirm the information, I could feel my lips twisting into a positively vicious smile.

"Hey Doc, look at this shit," I said proudly.

He didn't answer immediately, taking his time to study my choices and letting out an appreciative huff. "Trying to play for the long game, aren't you? Kryptonian Template directly cribbed from our ol' big blue scout, and a good amount of Defenses to keep yourself alive," he said, nodding appreciatively. "Both power and function. Nicely done, and you managed to do it with points remaining!" He then made a so-so gesture. "Well, one point."

"Honestly, everything that interests me other than what I've chosen is much pricier, so I'll save this wee little credit for a rainy day."

"Fair enough." Doc McNinja conceded, raising an eyebrow with a crack. "I'm not seeing any Draconian Heritage here."

I scoffed. "Fuck those giant lizards—being a dragon stops being cool when everyone and their mother turns into, I dunno, Licorice Dragons, if I remember my fanfictions right. There's also the fact that Kryptonian, especially Kal-El, scales better, and it's only allowed on chargen for me."

"Of course, it's just a bit rare to see, but whatever floats your boat," he agreed noncommittally. "Finally, the waifu, then?"

I selected her with a flourish and looked at the Doc to see his reaction. He remained distinctly nonplussed, thought.

"Cute—so, we're getting a brand new version of Cortana with a YorHA android template, specifically 2B? Daring, but agreeable," he said, stopping to consult something in his terminal. "Say, why don't you go for a Nasuverse Servant template?"

I thought about it; I swear, but having a Black Box would mesh well with Cortana, and I also didn't know if I had the means to generate enough Mana to sustain her as a servant. So the android body was the safest answer for her and me, and if it came with 2B's booty as a bonus? Excellent.

"Reasons," I answered, trying to look very serious indeed, and acted as if I couldn't see him outlining a suggestive shape in the air (even if he was entirely correct). I took a deep breath and revised my choices again to be sure, and found nothing wrong with them.

"Yeah, Doc, I think that's it," I said, feeling more relaxed after my decision. "So, anything else? Do I need to sign something? Sacrifice a baby goat while proffering my undying loyalty? Bleed into something?"

Doctor McNinja chuckled. "No, not really, but lad — please satisfy my curiosity. After you get enough points, would you be interested in aiming for the Outsider heritage like I did? You're not the Transhuman type, and we've already talked about Draconian Heritage."

"Sure thing, of course I'd wanna be like my boss," I agreed facetiously, as I felt I had to at least consider the possibility. After all, he was investing his own essence to give me fucking superpowers. That had to mean something. "Why do you ask?"

"Because, if you can forgive an old creature its theatrics, I'll offer you a taste for what is to come," he said, spiking my curiosity. "Honestly, I wanted to do it ever since that cunt from the Genesis Sector jumped the gun and did it first." He finished, tilting his head to the side and waiting for my answer.

I put my brave face on, forcing myself to ignore that Doctor McNinja had just cursed. "Go on, hit me with your best shot."

"Oh, you're going to regret this—"

Then everything shuddered as iT took a deep breath — the world heaving as IT gook something more than mere air — and IT stood up. Dissonance caressed my skin, trying to rip my body apart from my sense of self, while hot knives made of raw oblivion slowly wormed inside my nails. IT trembled in ecstasy, even as the world before me contorted and screamed.

The sheer wrongness spread more and more like a terrible infection on reality as HE|IT became greater and terrible and oh my god, he was teeming with infinity—

"James Collinsworth," the being professed in a voice which shod any pretense of humanity as easily as rotten skin. "You've chosen from your own free will; you chose to be reborn as a child of the stars. You choose to be unleashed. Your destiny shall be the clay we will use to build our great altar, and your feats shall be woven into our tapestry of legends. So as I say—'' the void gazed back at me, pits filled with a thousand galaxies going through annihilation and rebirth over and over. I trembled, fearing the moment I'd be touched and just burn and keep burning until the stars— "Let there be light!"

The finger finally made contact, and I turned into a mass of raw, scalding pain with blood dripping from my eyes-

Yet, even then, I kept smiling.

Worth it.

"Good luck, lad," Doctor McNinja said softly, his voice back to normal as I started sinking into unconsciousness and everything around me went dark.

Just you watch, Doc.

I'll show them why they should fear the man in the sky.