Multiversal Hopping 101 (Omake Inspired by Everything Everywhere All At Once)
The multiverse spiraled out before me, a thousand different paths I could've taken laid bare, a billion different lives flashing before my eyes. One moment, I was a Rogue Trader, sole surviving heir of the von Valancius dynasty by virtue of a drunken one-night stand one of my great-great-great grandparents had with the forebears of one Theodora von Valancius, de-facto ruler of the Kronus Expanse, a beacon of hope and freedom in a galaxy of madness and war. The next, I was a Warmaster of Chaos, the Black Commissar, the man who had done the impossible and forged a rebellion started by chaos cultists into a stable, lasting protectorate that managed to be infinitely more competent, reasonable, and caring than the Imperium of Man. Another moment, and I was a Daemon Prince, the fruit of a desperate bargain I'd struck with Slaanesh, a being of the warp that was somehow still loyal to the Imperium and the Emperor.
Again and again, endless forks in the road, endless paths I could've taken. Endless ways that yours truly, a seemingly ordinary man plucked from the squalor of the Underhive of some as-yet-unnamed Hivecity, would go on to have the mantle of "Hero" thrust upon him. Endless testaments to the fact that no matter what, my life would always be crammed to the brim with the sort of wild adventures someone who didn't dream of a peaceful, comfortable, and long life might crave. For any ordinary mind, if the weight of all these possibilities didn't prove too much to handle, the existential dread of being forced to recognize that all of these possibilities were just as real as any other certainly would.
But while I may have been a coward, a selfish, craven little bundle of self-interest through and through, in this universe or any other, I was at least a coward blessed with a mind that was far from ordinary.
I scanned the universes before me with practiced efficiency, countless different lives flashing before me. A crime lord. A tzeenchian sorcerer. An Ecclesiarch. An Imperial Saint. A bounty hunter. An unusually intelligent leader of an Orkish WAAAGH. A Necron lord. A T'au Fire Warrior. An Astartes. Even a life where I'd been born a woman and became a Sororitas. A Primaris Psyker...
...I'd been fishing for that one timeline where I'd been a blank and got inducted into the Culexus Temple, but a Primaris Psyker would cut it.
All of a sudden, I was back in my own reality, standing before a Chaos Sorcerer of the Black Legion. Except this time, my memories of this universe were accompanied by the memories of another. The Chaos Sorcerer's eyes went wide as his psychic attacks were inexplicably deflected with ease, the crude mental defenses I'd thrown up suddenly fortified by a will of Ceramite, tempered in the hellish holds of the Black Ships and honed to a razor-sharp edge in the Scholastica Psykana. I'd grown up with the voices of the warp clawing at my mind, spent my whole life fighting tooth and nail to keep them out. I hadn't succumbed then... and I certainly wasn't going to succumb now.
"Nice try," I growled, my voice deceptively soft as my fingers curled, Warp-Lightning crackling in my palm. "But I know a liar when I see one."
AN: Was looking through all the alternate Cains featured in all these Omakes... and I couldn't help but be reminded of the movie Everything Everywhere All At Once (definitely a movie I'd recommend seeking out, it's a work of art). And then I had another idea: what about a Cain who could "verse-hop", tapping into the skills and abilities of all these other versions of himself? After that, the Omake practically wrote itself.