The Dimensional Beasts were the Taken Lucent mutations of so many mechas and respective pilots, consumed and morphed by the Taken Storm casted by the Arch-Titan of the Second Knife. Soyle - secretly a Prismatic Guardian with Xenologia as their Ghost - and the now-nonexistent Timemaster have sent those beasts through a Dimensional Quake leading to the Island by a Space-Time Oscillation Bomb and a continuity bomb. Now that the breasts had been brought to the Island, Pechy and the reunited Fantasy Dreamer team had to wish it off to tame them and free them all from the Darkbolts' control, and it's reported as well that the fireteam lost to Earla and Akia. Afterwards, the prophecy from the Oracle gave way to an CXA-mandated alliance, with the Exo Stranger finally thrown out of the now-consumed Void of the TVA. The Greater Warlock was the one sending the Corridors of Time, and not only they found out the Stranger is still alive and kicking, but that the mysterious woman's supply of the Pandora's Box energy is complete (thanks to the Vex confluxes)... and that the Witness has been remade and has escaped.
Location: Miss Continuum's mothership
"So you're still alive. George Kurai. Jouji Minami. Black Zi-O. It's you." Kyon recognized Jouji.
"Kyon. Oh my goodness. And these new allies!" Jouji is surprised.
"Sadly... so many Pretty Cures have been brainwashed into becoming Shocker's Lightbearers..."/"悲しいことに...多くのプリキュアが洗脳されてショッカーの光の戦士よになってしまった..." Preme revealed. "That includes... Hagumi Nono."/"その中には…野乃はぐみも含まれる" (*1)
"NO!" Jouji is shocked. "NO! Why!?"
"Calm down, Jouji!" Puca hugged Jouji.
"My... My... Hagumi..."
"She's still alive... just brainwashed..."
"Brainwashed...?"
"Shocker did it. But... you..."
Jouji then immediately learned that his timeline has been purged for the Hypertime's safety.
"We're terribly sorry for everything, Black Zi-O." The Canon Bringers bowed.
"My apologies." Ms. Continuum sighed. "Your timeline was going out of control."
"It's... over?" Jouji drooped down.
"No. The Darkbolts are warring against us." Ms. Continuum revealed.
"Pechy, Dreamer, Paige, Beta, Amaya, Earla, Akia, Preme, Puca, Warrior King, me and Wolverine, let's make... us fireteam!" Deadpool suggested. "12 people. I'll let Pechy be the leader."
"The latter, yes, but the former, no. We are an alliance." Pechy declared.
"Huh?" Jouji noticed.
"You're welcome, Mr. Kurai."
Pechy offered Jouji help. "We're going to save all existence, together."
Jouji is so moved by this. He immediately hugged Pechy.
"Your wouldn't allow me to trick." Mysterio groaned.
"The Canon Bringers will kill you if you step out of our lines." The Warrior King threatened the illusionist.
Suddenly, the Warrior King received a vision, which was caught on by Pechy's and Continuum's use of Strand.
"The warrior, you destroyed our home! You destroyed the Oasis!"
An army of Whispers (*2) attack the replenished Warrior World, attacking it's people. This forced the Warrior King to attack and destroy those Whispers.
"No! No! This world is mine! Mine!"
The King himself is slowly overwhelmed by the Whispers. Then two figures appeared. One was a female wearing armored dress and wielding a strange, glowing sword. One was a gray-skinned man covered in technological armor with three large glowing circles in his chest. He's covering his hands into flora and terrains as he all over the planet.
"You were centuries too late. Your cryo-sleep (*3) turned your chase into what TV Tropes calls Sadistic Choice." The woman taunted the King.
The Warrior King is riled up. He charge against the woman in rage, but she simply stabbed him in the chest.
"Urgh!" The Warrior King is bleeding.
The technological man descended with an evil expression.
"I am Arak, the Son of Thunder. Telos, the Blood Moon (*4). The Nature Who Laughs." The man gathered all the Whispers. "You took too long. You will pay for everything! The Darkbolts warned you even before you woke up. Now, you took too long for everything, so we-"
"Shut up!" The Warrior King refuted.
"Valda, my love. Destroy him." The man commanded.
The woman quickly pulled the blade out, causing the King to limp down. She then...
-*Slash!*
"NOOOOO!" The Warrior King got back to reality.
"We have something... horrible." A Canon Bringer picked up.
"Centuries... I overslept for centuries!?" The Warrior King is horrified. "So I got the vision of an alternative timeline or something was... it was because... I took too long!?"
"No... What!?" The Canon Bringer is baffled.
"Shit..." Another Canon Bringer is disappointed.
"Arak and Valda... They've..." Yet another Canon Bringer figured it out. "And that... that's actually..."
"What? Happening?" Deadpool heard it.
"The timeline is real. That vision and the ones the Warrior King received before... came from Arak himself." Hope's Canon Bringer revealed. "He and Valda... both may have become... evil."
"NOOOOOOOOOO!" Liu Kang is pissed.
"WHAT!?" Nix Uotan, the Superjudge, is baffled.
"We can confirm. It's all a mental shitload of communication... originating from Telos. From Arak himself." Hope's Canon Bringer continued. "But Arak was only the 'writer' of these visions, not the sender. The sender seems to be deceiving the Warrior King by... making it somewhat misleading, even if the main content is still perfectly accurate."
"The Darkbolts thinks I'm a failure because I took too long to take back the orb." The Warrior King got it. "But I... don't want to let that haunt me. No."
"I think the Darkbolts' leader wants to grant you your true wish, that is both Warrior World and the Oasis were both safe. Basically the ventures of cryo-sleep retroactively undone, and instead you get to..." Beta figured it out. "Except that the Oasis would still be barren if the orb was out of the picture not long after it dropped there."
"The Darkbolts' playing mind tricks against us, especially you." Amaya scoffed. "Not falling for it."
"Wait... If Telos is evil for real now..." Hope thought about it. Arak the Son of Thunder being turned into evil? But did he become truly evil? No, I don't think so. I don't recall any story about his existing villainy, not even from CXA themselves. Apparently, he lost his memories and served multiversal variants of Brainiac. (*4) Then who truly turned Arak evil?
"A second Earth, in Doom. More doom than the Island you have been cherishing thus far." The Oracle, in all her wet glory, spoke up.
"Second Earth... or... Earth-2?" The Superjudge heard it.
The Harbinger got it. "Got it! Our next destination is Earth-designate-2!"
"Thanks, seer." The Superjudge have a thumb-up to Hope and the Oracle.
"You may be of use, but do not betray us. Or I'll drink you. I can." Jones warned the Oracle.
"Alright, next stop: Earth-2, old Blood Moon." (*4) (*5) Ms. Continuum went to command.
"Wonders of the World. It's time to go back to your home." The Superjudge declared.
The mothership left the "Battle Royale" Galaxy and floored the warp-drive into a self-inflicted Sideways Rift, to go to Earth-2.
While the mothership is blitzing, Pechy visited the Exo Stranger, who's been cleaned up by the Canon Bringers back into the regular, usual shape that she dearly longed to return to after the Vex chase in the past she explained.
"My body's finally back to normal shape. And I don't go Lightless again this time, unlike when I lost my Ghost." Elsie is excited. "Finally! This is the form I was when I found a way to save Ana from the corruption of Darkness!"
"Anastasia Bray. Your sister. What's she doing?" Pechy heard it.
"Ana? I told you, my new Ana was corrupted by the Second Knife."
"No, I meant what's she doing, after she's been corrupted?"
"Ana and Clovis-45 shared my original Clovis's questionable tendencies. Banshee-44 was shed from Clovis-45, while Ana... now reminds me of my original timeline, when Ana uses Stasis and was corrupted by the Darkness."
"Hm."
"Ana's been killing those who neither accept 'legends makes their own fate' fiasco now calcification. Those who wanted to keep defying the Second Knife but also even calling them... hypocrites. Of course those unworthy of even calcification gets destroyed."
"What?"
"Calciforms are for those who don't know, according to the evil Guardians, how to make their own fates. And all those who knows to 'do' that get uplifted and becomes Guardians. But those who seriously defy the Second Knife so much... they would be killed."
"What if one were to argue that the Guardians are meant to make their own fates, not actively destroy others'?"
"The less shallow and more serious the argument gets, the more likely the one actively bright that argument up are to be hunted. I saw some making the argument, and I was able to see through the argument. That was when I was still imprisoned."
"So while the heroic Guardians choose to make their own fate, the Second Knife seeks to actively destroy others'."
"Exactly."
The Warrior King has calmed down. He then looked at the refreshed look of the Exo Stranger.
"Wow, you seems to have restored your body."
"I'd like to thanks the... what? I'm surprised I had to be thrown into this place." Elsie shrugged.
"Continuum Exploitation Authority. CXA for short!" Pouchy spoke up.
"Hi there, Pouchy!" Pechy smiled.
Elsie calcified Pouchy, turning him into a multitude of Strand loops with marbleized voxels where the fanny body of his used to be. The whole thing fell down and clanked on the ground.
"Hey! What're you doing!?" The Warrior King is baffled.
Elsie undoes the calcification, giving Pouchy back. "It seems not even toons are immune."
"What the!?" Pouchy is confused.
The King put Pouchy back on. "Seriously? Why should you test that?"
"The not-so-Exo robots here told me about cartoon physics, so I had to put that on a simple test." Elsie recalled.
Both the girl and the King facepalmed. The Stranger pulled out her rifle, and then moved.
"I'm coming to your designated locate. And it's going to be a strange journey."
Pechy and the expanded gang, alongside the Wonders of the World went to the opening, gracing the now-apocalyptic atmosphere of...
Location: Earth-2, Reality-52
"In just a few days... it's all gone to waste." Alan Scott of Earth-2 mourned.
"Dude! This is what happens when you put something on a Bus for too long without proper maintenance!" Deadpool complained.
"Henshin!" Kyon and Jouji transformed together.
KAMEN RIDE: NEXT DECADE!
RIDER TIME! KAMEN RIDER BLACK! ZI-O!
"Where we droppin'?" Jones exclaimed. (*6)
"There's a fucking Boom Tube over there!" Hope's Canon Bringer noticed a flash on the ground, covering a country-sized area.
Hope reloaded her self-modded SCAR - dubbed the Striker AR - and stocked medium bullets. Amaya cranked the weapon she request - a lever-action precision-ready shotgun dubbed Sovereign Shotgun (*7) - a breathed nightmare on the shells for some reason. Amaya grinned as her villainy was being used to help save all of existence, and now she's ready to drop in.
Thank you, James Olsen, the Doctor Impossible (*8), for enlightening us.
"It's Arak's voice! He's there!" Hope's Canon Bringer dropped first.
The entire gang and the Wonders all dropped from the mothership and dived to where the perpetual Boom Tube is.
Location: Boom Realm
A strange realm with echoes vaguely sounding like "BOOM!", with twisted architectures and bizarre landscape barely comprehensible to a normal mortal human. A ginger guy with a divine body and technological suit is ruling there, cheerily talking with the gray man in a technological armor.
"Telos, do you know what can you do with all those Whispers in our disposal?"/"テロス、我々が利用できるそれらのフィーラーで何ができるか知っていますか?" Said the guy.
"I can force all timelines and singularities to kneel before Darkbolts! In fact, we're already doing this to worlds such as the World of Black, where Black never became Black RX!"
"Oh, good news! All you have to say is-"
BOOM!
"Someone... is entering your Throne World here." (*9) The man then checked in. "Make it impossible for them to leave. I and Valda will get them."
The man left the room, and traversed elsewhere in the realm. He used some sort of gateway powers to filter out the realm, just as the gang dive in.
"Valda, any hole in the realm, patch 'em."
Meanwhile...
BGM: He's You (Scott Pilgrim, extended)
A woman in a pink coat and blue shirt and jeans is straddling across the wild. Using a flashlight to navigate in front of the fog, she is also creeped by the noise of this realm.
This place is weird...
The woman did a while walking around, trying to escape. The woman could seek help from another survivor. And that's where in the noise, some sound came to her way.
Somebody was fighting. The audio cues was barely enough for the woman to get her turning. It seems there's a swordfight near here.
The woman carefully passed the bushes, and in the strange first, there's two women fighting with swords.
One has green glowing hair with a long ponytail by one strange glowing crown-like ring on, and green eyes. She's wearing an almost-greyscale longcoat, and light armor with glowing green trims and chitin accents. She's fighting with a strange bony cleaver glowing green, as well as some paracausal powers the woman doesn't know. She is accompanied by a strangely bone-shelled Ghost with green eye.
The other has dark brown hair, short and half-neat, with pink streak down the side. She is wearing a dark blue sweater and a simple plaid skirt, and is wielding a pixelated blue sword.
(Name: Lily Pilgrim, Age: 18, self-note: Why... Destiny is haunting me... Literally!) (*10)
"Huh?" The woman is confused. "How did I just... read this?"
(Name: Taylor Jolicoeur, Fun Fact: Taylor herself exists in real life)
"Wait... who pulled my name to show here!?"
It was Taylor Jolicoeur. She's lost in the Boom Realm, the ginger one's Throne World.
"C'mon...!" Lily is exhausted.
"Krilly, finish her!" The green one called.
"I-I-I can't!" The Ghost muttered in a feminine voice.
"What?"
"What?"
Taylor Jolicoeur of the Dreamcatcher Crystal Universe All-Star just saw a mysterious Guardian trying to finish off Lily Pilgrim. (Lily Pilgrim note: OMG... we're not the only one! I'm in a strange crossover! AAARGH)
"You're... Lily Pilgrim?" Taylor looked at the pink-streak. "Ok. I'm Taylor Jolicoeur. From the Dreamcatcher Crystal Universe All-Star. I'm a dream warrior. Protect the Dreamcatcher. Blah blah blah. Defeating aliens, too."
Lily bounced off in a warp position, seemingly clipping around the ground before standing back. "Yes. Daughter of Scott and Ramona. But... who exactly is this woman?"
Taylor glared at the Guardian.
"What exactly is this woman?" The two looking at the Guardian and the bony Ghost.
"Why do you claim to be... Crota?" Lily squinted. "Crota, the Son of Oryx, the Monster of Luna, the God-Knight?"
"Yes. And I cut." The woman smirked.
The woman immediately closed the distance, and went for a massive energy-powered swing on the other two.
BOOM!
"Fuck!" The one named Crota stepped back.
A Boom Tube has just suddenly spawned, causing an eruption that blocked the incoming slash.
"Can you help me escape this realm?" Taylor cut to the chase.
"Uh... this place is completely new. This is not canon, and in fact, I don't even see it in any fanfiction I'm aware of." (This setting is pretty much extra-canonical, just like the entire "The tales between worlds" project. Go figure.) "So no, I cannot help you escape."
"I am Crota. The God-Knight, the Sword Logician." Crota smirked. "Krilly, watch me."
Crota, with her eyes gleaming in bloodthirsty, immediately blitzed towards the two mortals, going for a big quick slash with her (bony) cleave: the Sword of Crota.
BOOM!
A Boom Tube erupted from the ground, shielding the two and forcing Crota to brake and then step back.
"Fuck!" Crota is annoyed. "Damn this environment!"
"Please, stop!" Taylor shouted, while pulling out her own sword. "I'm just a wanderer from another world. Please stop. I need to survive."
"Me too." Lily sighed.
"Hmph. I'll cut you then." Crota shrugged, much to the Ghost's shock.
"Crota, enough fighting!" The Ghost pleaded. "I heard it. They don't mean to harm you!"
"Natch." Crota held her Sword right.
Crota went for another swing. This time, Lily reacted it.
"Subspace."
Lily pushed Taylor down to the ground, causing the latter to seemingly clip through. Taylor found herself in a black inert void, while Lily blocked Crota with her sword. (Note: It was originally Kyle's sword.)
Crota is enjoying this. The only grievance at the moment is that her Ghost, Krilly, is trying to stop the fight now. Taylor got out and rolled to the side.
"What in the stars is happening?" Taylor is confused.
"Well... can we just stop... now?" Lily refuted.
"She's right." Krilly agreed.
"Huh?" Crota stepped back.
The literally womanized God-Knight stowed her Sword. "Why, Krilly? Why!?"
"Enough fighting. We're to survive." Krilly pleaded. "Those two Lightless guests does not want to harm you. They spoke up their survival."
"You want me to be caught off-guard and be slain again? I am Crota, the God-Knight, the Son of Oryx! I am the blade of his pride! In fact, he even tried to avenge me!" (*11) Crota complained. "I am the blade, they are paper! A properly-sharp blade cuts through paper virtually effortlessly. Why can't I be fighting for the pride?"
"Seriously?" Lily is confused. (Lily Pilgrim note: Son? Then why is she a female? Doesn't that make "Crota, Daughter of Oryx"?)
"According to the Darkness encoding (*12), I do remember." Krilly recalled. "You were absolutely intimidating, and yet the Lightbearers subverted your Sword Logic and slaughtered you, and then ripped away a part of your soul during your funeral. Then your father came for vengeance, and he was slain too." (*11) "Without the Darkness, you would not remember anything meaningful upon resurrection. You're a Lucent Hive, after all."
"So... you're an... alien?" Taylor is confused.
"Yes. And also, I'm a male. This is my female human form. A girl." Crota revealed, in a threatening tone, which then distorted. "Do you wanna see my true form?"
"Oh. That's scary." Taylor stepped back.
"I killed thousands of Guardians before finally lost my physical body." Crota recalled.
Unbeknownst to the three, there's three Guardians is also straddling around, just like Taylor was. They're a classic fireteam and not part of the Prismatic Fleet, and yet they're still Prismatic.
"I smell thee..." Crota and a Hunter smelled each other's energy.
"Great. Here we go again." Taylor fell to the sidelines.
"Enjoy this fiction." Lily stepped back.
"I recognize them... It's the same Guardians that first truly killed you!" (*11) Krilly warned Crota.
This shocked Crota out of PTSD, for those Guardians and friends in a fireteam of six has gotten the Ascendant blades and got her (then him) permanently killed. Those same Guardians would later slay her father, Oryx, and ultimately the Hive bloodline as well. (*11)
"How dare you... kill... my... family! ME TOO! AAARGH!"
At that moment, the Guardians emerged the scene. Cue Crota striking the durable Titan with her Sword.
"Guardians, fuck you! You killed me! You killed my father! (*11) You only have YOURSELF to blame! FUCK YOU!"
The Titan headbutted the literally womanized God-Knight, who retaliated with a bunch of Threadlings. She then pulled out a Sentinel Shield to whack both the Titan and the Warlock off. The Hunter evaded both, only to be swarmed by Threadlings.
The Warlock had a Nova Bomb and Stasis shards, to make a much larger and more potent version of their Transcendent grenade (*13). They were prepared.
But Crota simply raised the Sword, causing a blast of Stasis to freeze the three. In particular, this prematurely detonated the Nova Bomb, shattering the Warlock. Crota glanced at the shatter, and then moved on to beat the Titan down.
"Fuck you! Fuck you! Fuck you!" Crota smashed the Titan with each swing of her Sword. "This! IS! For me! For ORYX! For the Hive! For SWORD LOGIC! (*14) THIS! IS! IT!"
That last swing shatters the Titan. The Hunter no longer frozen, but still seriously slowed by Stasis: now that Hunter is even more sluggish than a Titan in a normal day.
Shit... Crota's back!? For revenge!? (*11)
"Yes! I'm back!"
Crota has choked the Hunter, and is holding them at gunpoint with her own Golden Gun.
(Title card: Crota's Revenge)
"Why..." The Hunter is in serious trouble.
Crota pulls the trigger, exterminating the Hunter. Now all that's left is three Ghosts, shivering in fear over such sudden takedown of the whole fireteam. Even worse is as it turns out, Crota has the abilities of a Hunter, a Titan, a Warlock and a Hive God, all in one. Not to mention, her Sword can still take the Light. This shocked Krilly and horrified the Ghosts.
"Stop!" Deadpool (of all people) suddenly appeared.
BGM stops. (Lily Pilgrim note: Deadpool from Marvel Comics?!)
"Who are you!?" Crota noticed Deadpool.
The three Ghosts is disgusted at the sudden crap, before reviving the three resurrective Guardians.
"You look like that Kuroda-Vanitas design. Complete with that Give chitin up there, holding your hair. Let's see... you're Lucent, oh my! Wait... I heard your abilities. So that means..." Deadpool checked in. "Yeah? That means..."
"The ultimate Guardian?"/"究極のガーディアン?" Crota answered with glee. "Great!"
"Ugh... no... Can't believe we're busted by..." The Titan is fuzzy.
"Crota... of all... Hive God..." The Warlock groaned.
The Hunter suddenly thinks Crota is sexy now, which might only have added to the bloody element of surprise when the Guardians stepped in. Also, they noticed Krilly, a bony Ghost looking like it's Lucent.
A Lucent Hive.
The Guardians noticed. Crota really is a Lucent Hive now.
"Lucent... How?"/"ルーセント…何?"
"Huh? Stupid Guardians." Crota glanced.
"Wait... it's Young Wolf and friends! The Fireteam Alpha! Classic Destiny character base! It's the OG, from the Destiny 1 trailers and then some!" (*15) Deadpool wheezed. "OMG! OH! MY! FUCKING! GOD!"
"Wait... how did you recognize us?" The Warlock is shocked.
"Uh... yeah? We really are veterans." The Titan confirmed. "It's Young Wolf and friends. The greatest fireteam of modern day, in our own... reality? We remember killing Crota in some of the most wacky ways possible. (*11) He's only powerful in melee. Oh wait, he's turned into a girl!"
"Yeah, why would Crota be a girl?" The Hunter is confused.
Pechy and the gang came and found Deadpool.
"You found survivors!" Pechy noticed. "Wait..."
"Pechy?" Taylor recognized the Dreamcatcher princess.
"Taylor?" Pechy noticed.
The two quickly hugged each other in reunion and relief. "My stars, you're alive!"
"You have yet another friend?" Hope noticed.
(Name: Pechy Comet, Age: 20, Occupation: Dreamcatcher princess/Goddess of the Wishing Star)
"My goodness! I thought you perished somewhere far far away!"
Pechy calmed, now that Taylor is safe. This is after Taylor got into a fight between Lily and Crota.
"Huh? You're?" Crota is confused.
"Who in the sky are you?" The Hunter have no idea.
"No Guardians have seen any of you before... except maybe Crota." The Titan shrugged.
"Go explain with me!" Deadpool called Hope's Canon Bringer.
Deadpool and Hope's Canon Bringer explained everything. Trust me, it's a lot of exposition. (Yes, it really is.) (Lily Pilgrim note: Ok... I see...)
"EEEEEEEEEEHHH!?" Crota and Krilly are shocked.
"The Second Knife?" The Warlock noted. "Wait... they're us?"
The Exo Stranger showed up for real.
"Elsie? You're alive. But..." The Hunter recognized Elsie. "You... you've changed."
"It's you. From an alternative timeline." Elsie recognized them back. "The Second Knife. But you are not like them."
"The Second Knife? Us?" The Warlock looked at their Transcendent hands.
"In the timeline I was accepted in, you three and friends were among our best Guardians. You unmade the Witness. You avenged all its victim. You ended the war between Light and Dark. But then... something changed in you. And all of the sudden, you became evil. Abusing the harmony between Light and Dark. By the time I finally noticed... you calcified the Vanguard!" Elsie explained. "You took Ana and Banshee away from me. You enacted the Final Shape with both precision and with added Lucent. In that timeline, you became the new Warlords. You, and the Prismatic Fleet, went on to enslave the Vex just to travel to the countless copies of the past. The Second Knife forced me to watch everything that transpired, from the Pale Heart!"
"But our... Vanguard... Ikora, Commander Zavala, Crow, even Orisis and Shaxx and Saint-14-" The Titan responded.
"The Traveler transforms, yes. But us becoming like Warlords... no." The Warlock shrugged.
"Exactly. In the alternate timeline I was accepted in, you became evil. Effectively turning your back on the Vanguard, the Coalition, and the Last City. In that timeline, you caused the Second Collapse. You finally took the Osmium Throne an me made it your own. You have Taken the Hive Pantheon and invaded millions of timelines, one by one. And what did you do throughout? Destroying others' fates. Guardians make their own fate, not destroy others'." Elsie continued. "Yes, the Witness desired stagnation. But the Second Knife desires madness. Devotion inspires bravery, bravery inspires sacrifice, sacrifice leads to death, so be ready to die, you remember? But the Second Knife subverted that."
"The Second Knife is... our subversion?" The Warlock is intrigued.
"From another timeline. By the time I became Prismatic, millions of timelines were taken over. Some of them had the Final Shape - the Witness had won there. But all versions of Witness that the Second Knife met... were effortlessly Taken and destroyed. Each in one single, fell swoop." Elsie continued. "I escaped through the Corridors of Time, and I had to dive through Vex to hide from them. That did a number on my body, which was recently fixed by the Continuum Exploitation Authority, or CXA."
"We, Canon Bringers, are from CXA. Welcome." The Canon Bringers bowed down.
"Canon?" The Titan is confused.
"You know the most extreme manifestation of Light and Darkness, right?" Elsie noted. "It's Lucent and the Final Shape. Combine the right elements to get them. The Great Warlock discovered it, and all well downhill from there."
The Warlock immediately casted Solar and Stasis in each. They tried to pump Arc and Void onto Solar, and Strand onto Stasis. But so far, they couldn't properly do it.
The Titan clenched their two fists, while the Hunter has the Strand rope dart and their own knife - the Hunter is trying to freeze the rope and heat the knife.
Seconds later, they finally did it. The Warlock got the Light hand burning in shock of paracausality, while the other got... sliced.
"Ahhh!" The Warlock is shocked. "My hands!"
The Warlock extinguished the elements, turning their hands back to normal.
The Titan rose a frozen claw, sliced up from their first, and the reaction is the same as Warlock. The other fist, too, is burned through.
The rope. dart is frozen, causing it to form a blocky structure circling and cycling around. The knife is now glowing with great gradient of Light.
"You did it. You finally did it." Elsie is satisfied with this.
"Woah!" The Guardians them went back to normal, clearly shocked. "Is this... the extreme manifestation?"
Pechy calcified herself, causing her to be spliced up. This is intentionally self-inflicted, to show.
"Yeah. You got it." Pechy went back to normal, but doused in burning flame of Light. "Elsie taught me this."
"Wait... You're saying... fight fire with fire?" The Hunter shrugged.
(Lily Pilgrim note: Lucent and the Final Shape. Those extreme manifestation of Light and Darkness? Only seen the Final Shape in the eponymous expansion before...)
"Lily Pilgrim, changed by the new adaption? You came from the fanfic (*10), didn't you?" Deadpool greeted Lily. "Hello there. I'm Deadpool!"
"Where are you?!" The voice echoed. "WHERE ARE YOU!?"
"It's Arak! He's finding us!" The Warrior King noticed.
Earth-2 Alan Scott smells something "fishy".
"Flash, I think I've found someone."
Earth-2 Jay Garrick got it. Alan-2 pointed, and Jay-2 ran.
"Alan Scott from Earth-2, with all the multiversal Green." Deadpool pointed out.
On the center of it all...
"Alright. All escape ways and points are blocked."
Quickly though, the Flash simply circled around, running into making a cyclone. The Flash then simply left.
"Huh?" The ginger guy noticed.
A moment later...
"It's really him. James Olsen. Doctor Impossible." The Wonders confirmed.
"Jimmy Olsen of Earth-2. But how?" Hope's Canon Bringer is shocked.
"I imprisoned him. How did he escape?" Alan-2 knew the obvious. "Everyone, go find him!"
"Wait... I smell some... metaphysical blades... of some sort of... strange magic I..." Jay-2 glanced at Crota.
"Sword Logic?" (*14) "You're suggesting me that... that guy is a Hive?"
Crota shrugged. "Very well. Let's go."
"Alright." Krilly obeyed.
"I'll come." Lily came forward.
"Eyes up, Guardians!" Deadpool rushed.
The gang, now with Taylor, Lily, Crota and the Guardians joined in, went to get to the center, where the Doctor Impossible is.
"Why this forest... Ugh..." Arak, floating up. "Valda, you can navigate. Now help me."
"My love, those perpetuators are sneaking. But I. WILL. FIND. THEM. ALL."
Pechy and the gang traversed through the Boom Realm, with the Canon Bringers, the Wonders and the Superjudge and Harbinger knowing about Boom Tubes that spawn everywhere here. Everyone sticked together as a close-knit expanded fireteam, with the Canon Bringers leading the way. Even a veteran CXA-robot, Hope's Canon Bringer, is surprised by how different these Boom Tubes as well as this piece of the Ascendant Realm.
"That atmosphere supports Mr. Garrick's suspicion. Anyone agreed?" Crota ducks down through the boom-forest.
The echoes of "BOOM!" are still there. The entire gang sneaks through the forest and crossed through puddles of blood - blood of those killed in this realm.
"Dreamer, beam that up!" Pechy pointed a bunch of... paracausal vines.
Dreamer blasted those vines off with those eye beam from Cyclops, then cleaned the vines out with the roots of Groot.
"Oh wait..." Dreamer found a note.
The gang quickly got the note.
Experiment 14, in a time-dilation events created by Darkbolts' Weapon Z facility. This was the last day. Everything was going well until an all-star fireteam from the so-called Alpha-timeline, consisting of Ikora Rey, Zavala, Uldren "Crow" Sov, Osiris, Saint-14, Shaxx, Saladin Forge, Anastasia Bray, Elizabeth-1, Eris Morn, Luzaku and Caiatl, with Mithrax, Mara Sov, Nimbus, Savathun and Petra Venj as support. The Vanguards, accompanied by 14 fireteams, have infiltrated the realm of the events, with Darkbolts casualties of over 2,000. Experiment 14 gas been brought out safely, while the Z- The note is ripped in half.
"This... the Coalition... They've..." The Guardians is horrified. "They... they... no..."
Hope's Canon Bringer picked the note and stored it. "We cannot confirm if those Coalition were really from your timeline. Let's go."
The gang yet continues.
"Hah..." Doctor Impossible is bored.
James Olsen of Earth-2. Watch out for the... Witness. It is back. (第2の地球のジェームズ・オルセン。目撃者に気をつけろ...戻ってきた)
"Hey, Great Warlock!"/"こんにちは、神のウォーロック!"
The one true Witness has returned because a Warlock of mine has left a Prismatic well on the Nitro river caching the supply of the Pandora's Box energy. The original Echoes' portion reacted with the energy, causing the Witness to be remade. It has risen again. We cannot allow it to ruin the Darkbolts' conquest.
"The Witness? What was the... Witness?"
Our greatest enemy before the advent of us Second Knife.
"What did it do?"
They tried to enact the Final Shape. (彼らは最終形態を制定しようとした) (*16)
"Wait... you're saying that you, the true master of the Final Shape, had to stop a strange creature from enacting the Final Shape?" (*16)
We are better than the Witness. We have become legends.
"Huh." Doctor Impossible shrugged.
"Almost there..." Amaya pulled out her scythe, and transformed.
"Great." Doctor Impossible shrugged. "See ya, I have more pressing matter to do."
Nononono, please! Listen to me! The Witness could bring all our efforts down-
James Olsen of Earth-2 hung up. Amaya sneaked in.
"Boo!" The nightmare woman went for a great swing.
Doctor Impossible blocked the scythe with his bare hand.
"I am the New God." He smirked.
She pulled out the Sovereign Shotgun and headshot him, blasting him with her own nightmare powers mixed with angelic light.
"Argh!" Doctor Impossible is knocked away. "Impressive, stranger!"
The gang has arrived.
"James Olsen, enough!" The Wonders came.
"How did you get out?" Alan-2 called Olsen out.
"Us Wonders have new friends and allies, here to avenge the society we fought for!" Helena Wayne the Huntress of Earth-2 called Olsen out.
"Doctor Impossible." Val-Zod, the Superman of Earth-2 called Olsen out. "Prepare to die! You have done enough!"
"Ha! The Darkbolts granted me my wish, and have faith in the impossible!" Doctor Impossible laughed. "And what are you stupid little... Dreamcatcher?"
"What!?" Pechy and Taylor is shocked.
The Wonders immediately unleashed all they currently had against the Doctor Impossible. The Kryptonians, the gadgets, and the art of combat, all done in a familiar way. Doctor Impossible just stood there, and tanked everything single thing the Wonders have thrown on him.
And with that, the Green Lantern resorted to imprisoning him again.
"Enough is enough!" Alan-2 tried to intercept Doctor Impossible all by himself.
"I know. Catch."
Doctor Impossible bypassed the energy and choked the Green Lantern.
"Stop it!" Jay-2 rammed Doctor Impossible.
All he got was a collision, which would broken human bones without the Speed Force. (*17)
"Jason 'Jay' Garrick is a doo-doo." Doctor Impossible flicked the Flash away.
Then Doctor Impossible whacked the Kryptonians down, leading to Kara Zor-El of Earth-2, the Power Girl, bleeding. Then he jumped to Kendra Munoz-Saunders of Earth 2...
"Douche!"
He grabbed her wings, and then cracked her back with his knee, just as she detected him.
Kendra fell to Helena-2, killing both from the impact.
"Oh hell no!" Beta suspended Doctor Impossible with Strand.
Beta then casted Arc lightning (*18) on Doctor Impossible mid-air. He quickly recovered, and casted that Stormtrance (*18) back at the gang.
"What the hell!?" The gang is shocked. Somewhat literally.
The gang stepped back, but the Wonders were too injured and thus got caught in the storm, killing all of them except Alan-2 and Jay-2.
"Argh..." Jay-2 is fuzzy.
BGM: Make Your Own Fate (Destiny 2)
"I'm a Lightbearer too." Doctor Impossible then raised his hands. "Winter's Wrath!" (*19)
A massive shockwave of Stasis slowed the gang down.
"Holy fuck." Wolverine groaned.
Both Wolverine and Dreamer unleashed their claws, covered in Strand. Turns out Elsie gave Wolverine the paracausal powers.
"Wait... I got it too! Now I have two...!" Deadpool got the two Golden Guns in his hands (instead of the golden Desert Eagles), showing he got the paracausality as well.
The gang went against the Doctor, with their arsenals put to the good use. Crota, in her female human form, is specifically doing composite Guardian stuffs.
The gang, valiant and fighting seriously, annoyed Doctor Impossible. Most of the Wonders are dead now, so the gang's pissed, which only made Doctor Impossible struggle even more. This was the fight that James Olsen the New God has to watch out for.
"Damn it!"
"Cool!" Jones threw his gifted shield to Doctor Impossible. (That shield was originally owned by Steve Rogers, a.k.a. Captain America!)
"Oh! You too? Great!" Earla threw her shield as well. (Lily Pilgrim note: Wait... Core Timeline is involved in this too!?)
"For the Light! For the Dark!" The Guardians quickly Transcended.
Cue a bunch of Nova Bombs and Sol Hammers thrown at Doctor Impossible.
But amidst that grueling brawl, Laelynn did not participate yet. She is watching for signs of watchers, that are Arak, and Valda the Iron Maiden.
"Laelynn!" Elsie called. "What are you doing?"
"Watching for someone trying to hunt us." Laelynn looked around.
Elsie simply gave Laelynn true paracausality through a blast of Transcendence. But suddenly...
"Urgh..." Laelynn slumped down, jerking.
"Oh no!" Elsie is shocked.
Laelynn is overwhelmed by the paracausal powers that Elsie just dumped on her. Suddenly, she got some visions... of her childhood stuffs and the future wedding of Pechy Comet and Ron Davis (*20), as well as a vision... of a scratched giant white ball known as the Traveler. And then...
Once upon a time, in the kingdom of Rosas... which you might have known from a Disney flop known simply as "Wish", released in November 2023. A tyrant, the King Magnifico, was hoarding all the wishes, only granting one wish per month. A black girl known as Asha got the help from the Star, and Magnifico knew all the stuffs. He resorted to using the forbidden magic, and embraced his tyranny. There, he got Star and all the unfulfilled wishes, and nearly brought Rosas and its residents to its knees. But the people spoke up, and Magnifico was sucked into his specter's mirror, only to be hung by his beloved Queen Amaya... into the deepest corners of the dungeon where he learned how to fully use the magic. Wait... did I just... spoil you that movie? That box office relatively minor bomb, losing few tens of million dollars to marketing budget? You mean $250 million gross on the $200 million of production budget, for that intentional but divisive cel-shading style mimicking hand-drawing? Ok then. You know what? Magnifico had enough. He escaped through the sheer willpower, causing the forbidden magic to spill his being out of the mirror, allowing him to free himself. It was a few centuries after the Rosas incident. Asha is long dead by then. Magnifico kind of gotten his revenge: he slaughtered the then-future residents of Rosas, and then-
"Enough-oooarrrgh!"
Laelynn threw up. Her puke has paracausal residues. (Gross!)
"Miss Laelynn! Are you alright?" Elsie stopped fighting, and went to Laelynn.
Laelynn stopped, in shock of the visions she just received. Elsie picked those visions up through the psychic of Strand.
"My goodness. Those strange..." Elsie then read those visions. "Wait... something's wrong."
Laelynn's irises is now basically the same as the Ghosts', even to the glow as well. Elsie noticed this.
"Wait... Laelynn... You've become... a greater Ghost!"
Elsie is shocked. The rest of the remaining gang is still fighting, valiantly and seriously, with the Guardians - enhanced humans uplifted by Light and later the Darkness - managing relatively consistently good hits.
But all the injuries Doctor Impossible got easily and fairly quickly healed off, even without the Solar used.
"See? You cannot truly hurt me." Doctor Impossible boasted.
"Fuck!" Crota had enough.
Runes appeared on her body, and she transformed into... himself. The chitinous energy shells were grown from her body, and her eyes expanded into the three eyes of his. The transformation enlarged Crota into the God-Knight, including even the crown ponytail. That crown is on. He is morphed. Voice is fully distorted back into some... familiar tones.
Crota, the Son of Oryx, has risen.
"ENOUGH!" Crota has Transcended, turning his body's glow into a crystallin gradient glow of Prismatic.
"You're Lucent! Damnit!" Doctor Impossible is caught off-guard.
Crota simply stabbed Doctor Impossible in the heart.
"OLSEN!" Arak has arrived.
"Oh no!" That woman in armored dress.
The remaining gang except Crota turned their gaze.
"Oh no... It's you..." The Warrior King recognized these two.
It's Arak (Telos) and Valda. They're serving for the Darkbolts, just like Doctor Impossible.
Doctor Impossible coughed blood, but thinks that he'll heal anyways. Too bad, the Sword of Crota stayed taking the Light and the Dark from the ginger guy, causing Olsen to scream in agony.
"NO!" Arak panicked.
"You tried to gaslight me!" The Warrior King called the Arak out, knowing how the visions has affected him. "You told me that taking extra centuries to chase the orb turned my chase into a sadistic choice!" (*3)
"Arak, the Son of Thunder!? And Valda, the Iron Maiden!?" Lily is shocked. "TURNED EVIL!?"
"Help... MEEEEE!" Doctor Impossible screamed.
Crota simply stuck the Sword down, causing Doctor Impossible even worse damage on him.
"NOOOOOOOOOO!" Doctor Impossible then fell unconscious, causing a Ghost to spawn out.
"How dare you...!" Valda is pissed.
"Stop it!" The Canon Bringers targeted the two.
"Whispers."/"フィーラー"
A massive army of Whispers came flocking. These are the real deal this time around.
"I'm sorry, Olsen..." Doctor Impossible's Ghost then flew away.
"Get over here!" Next Deacde pointed.
ATTACK RIDE: DARKNESS STRAND!
Next Decade pulled the Ghost back, and then chained it. "Huh."
The Whispers circled around the battlefield and nearby forest, very close in proximity to the gang.
"Those Whispers... what are they?" Dawn is confused.
"My spawns. Those Whispers aren't the ordinary Whispers."/"私の子孫。あのフィーラーは普通のフィーラーではない" Arak revealed. "My Whispers, as well as Darkbolts' Whispers in general are the 7th experiment of Weapon Z facility. Omniversal Whispers. The Whispers with the power of the most powerful of top gods. Even one of them can warp reality and even destroy a multiverse by itself."
"Weapon Z... Damn..." Dreamer recognized that.
"Wait... Dreamerine, why did you betray us?" Arak noticed. "Why did you deny the Weapon Z facility?" (*21)
"I knew y'all would brainwash me." Dreamer immediately fired Cyclops' eye beam on Arak.
Arak tanked the blast, and Valda intercepted Dreamer, who blocked with her Strand-infused claws. Pechy and Beta tried to calcify Valda, but...
"Fuck off!"
Valda is wreathed in Solar flame, revealing herself to be another Lightbearer.
"Arak, destroy this place and annihilate those resistance!"
"We had been rejecting the Final Shape. We unmade the Witness because of that, so we could be saved." The Warlock recalled. "But thinking about it... the Final Shape in general is just the end. Exactly what it is. The end point. The ultimate form. Our Final Shape is better than the Witness's or the Second Knife's. We could calcify anything that doesn't flow in our favor. We can reshape stuffs to make it better. Coupled with the Light, we can transform even fate itself. After all..."
"Guardians make their own fate." The Guardians declared.
"What?" Arak is confused.
The Titan struck down, implanting Stasis and Strand to bind a colossal area, and because Ascendant Realms are related to darkness, the area covers the entire Throne World, and thus the Whispers are suspended and entangled. The Warlock then waved gently, causing the Darkness to move and twist, calcifying the Whispers into sliced and dimension-cracked glass semi-neatly and rigidly spliced, floating in the air. And the Hunter twist the knife in the air, and...
"Nonononono-" Arak realized something.
The glass calciforms breaks and shatters into oblivion, destroying the Whispers and causing joint explosions that spawned raining Lucent-fied Stasis shards that bombarded Arak and Valda.
"IT BURNS! AAAAARRRGH!"
"NOOOOOOOOOO!"
Arak fell down, while Valda is burned in Light. Both were staggered by Stasis, and both slowly limped down.
"Take that, Darkbolts!" Jones cheered.
Supreme and Puca stood here, holding on raining Stasis. But even further... the barrier is shattered.
"Wow. Just wow. This realm is collapsing." The Titan noticed.
The forest crumbled, and the realm is falling down. And because it's partially made of Boom Tubes, more Boom Tubes erupted.
"The echoes of Boom... is back at us!" Lily panicked.
But then she stopped. She has Subspace, something that her mom (Ramona Flowers) can use. If only the Subspace can swallow the entire gang and co., even the dead Wonders...
"Anyone shifting?" Lily shrugged.
A strange, transparent curtain - dubbed by Kyon as the Aurora Curtain (*22) - appeared in front of the gang, only for that to be sucked into the Subspace. Then the Warrior King circled with the Sling Ring there, casting a portal on the Curtain.
Thanks to the Subspace, everyone clipped down safely. The Boom Realm is no more - it completely collapsed into Boomb Tubes that detonated, leaving only the post-apocalyptic remains of the world of Earth-2.
"Track the alliance, Arak and Valda." Ms. Continuum on the mothership.
BGM ends.
Location: Arena, Council of Kangs (Marvel Cinematic Universe version)
The ground is blasted, from the Subspace gives... Pechy and the gang. (Location: Council of Kangs' Arena, Note: What's going on with Jonathan Majors there?)
"Oh wait... We're in the cinematic version of that arena." Hope's Canon Bringer recognized this place. "But... something's changed."
"The Council of... Kangs?" Deadpool is confused. "But why? Why!? This coliseum, too, is so weird! WHY!?"
Those Kangs has been transformed, yet still looks like they're only turned partially grayscale, mainly their now-resonant armors. That iconic scene is back... infested with Darkness now, powered by Pyramid tech plus more.
"Holy shit!" Amaya is shocked. "This can't be!"
"Kangs?" The Hunter have no idea. "Never heard that before."
"Wonderful!"
"Superb!"
"Majestic, majestic!" (*23)
"The fine guests has come!"
"Excellent!"
"Oh yeah!"
"Booyah!"
"Epic, epic, epic!"
Those Kangs is empowered by Darkness, which baffled Crota and the Guardians.
"Bruh!" Crota shifted back to his female human form. "What in the Dark is this!?"
The Kangs welcomed the leaders... Rama-tut. Scarlet Centurion. Immortus. And leading them all... Kang the Conqueror. (Name: Kang the Disciple, Occupation: Disciple of the Witness)
"Who left the plot threads hanging around?" Deadpool shrugged.
"Jonathan Majors?" Lily shrugged. "Domestic stuffs and trial?"
"Marvel, explain this!" Deadpool complained.
"I am Kang the Conqueror, the New Disciple of the Witness." Kang himself declared. "Hello there... Deadpool and guests. And Wolverine."
"Jonathan Majors, you need to explain what your MCU plot could've been after Quantumania!" Deadpool mocked Kang. "Also, what you call now... Kang the Disciple?"
"Seriously?" Kang the Disciple. "Ok, yes, I am a Disciple. The newest Disciple, in fact."
"Yes! Yes!" The Council of Kangs agreed.
"In the name of the Darkness, I have rebuilt and reshaped everything I ever did, changed the Council into something far better, and finally... now that you have come, how about..."
"The Witness!?" The Guardians are baffled. "How!?"
"Wait... you want to see the Witness?" Kang heard it. "Alright! O Witness, come and meet!"
The Council of Kangs cheered.
"Oh. My. Traveler." The Titan is baffled.
A crack in the atmosphere is behind Kang the Disciple.
And then, a slim figure phased by, spontaneously appeared with the crack. It passed by, shifting it's metallic robe and resonant long cloak, all in black. The figure's white head has flying floating-face smoke as the hair. It is steepling their hands, and its pitch black eyes open.
It's the Witness.
"Welcome back, Guardians. Now you have some guests."
The Guardians shivers at the Witness's presence, even though this Witness is from a different timeline than theirs.
"No... How did you..." The Warlock looked up.
"It is... weird-feeling." Beta stepped back.
"The splinter assimilated. The Witness." The Canon Bringers recognized it. "Freeze!"
The Canon Bringers pointed at the Witness, much to Kang's amusement.
"Why should we?" Kang the Disciple shrugged.
"Because we won't let you ruin our mission. You know you're behind the war between Light and Dark." Hope's Canon Bringer recalled.
The Witness remembered that moment. The moment the Guardians and co. infiltrated the collective consciousness with the Darkness, and used the Light to free the dissenters inside and then destroy the Witness.
It is not amused. "No. No! NO!"
In an angry tone, the Witness echoed through the coliseum and then beyond. The calcified voice echoed into a strange sound which reverberated beyond, ending up reaching a crack inside the place outside linear time that the coliseum is in. The sound then into a crack of white.
Location: Corridors of Time
And through...
Location: Future World (Dreamcatcher)
In a world full of cyberpunk mixed with contemporary and then some, people seemed to be peaceful and outgoing. But then that sound ended up being heard as strange and otherwise-inaudible tone by two powerful figures...
Queen Crystal and her friend, Lucifer.
"What?" The queen noticed.
"Did I just hear... something strange?" The man noticed.
"From... above?" She looked up.
"What?" The man looked up.
From the top of a skyscraper, both found a white cramp in the sky. The crack looked like... radiolaria, something neither of which even knew existed.
Note: Oh hi! As of the original writing (August 31st 2024), say hello to IVY: World of The Future (2024)! But first yet... uh...
Yes, Kyon and Jouji (whose meetings are Canon spoilers for Century King Zi-O) recognized each other. Also, they're in the same page as the CXA, allowing updates such as the Pretty Cures' brainwashing, to be revealed. Jouji Minami from Century King Zi-O timeline, alongside the Kyon too, coming from a long-purged timeline, and are pretty much needed by Pechy, the Warrior King and the CXA to help with the campaign against Darkbolts. The fact that Jouji Minami himself reacted almost violently after learning about Cure Tomorrow's brainwashing, especially given he's the protector of magical girls like her, is pretty much intended by me, and fits at least decently with canon of the fics.
Remember all the Oasis-related visions that the gang's received? It turns out these are there to mentally punish the Warrior King for taking far too long to get the orb back. Since he decided to keep the orb at Oasis as it is meant that to the Darkbolts, the Warrior King has just failed his people at that moment, but still moved on, thinking that he himself would consider Warrior World to be inside him. So not only Darkbolts are playing mental tricks against him, but also misled him with the message of those parts of the visions in particular. And the vision included in this chapter in particular reveals that Arak, the Son of Thunder, the Telos the Blood Moon, is the architect of those vision, taking advantage of timelines and dimensions to cherry-pick the Warrior King's existence just to make sure the actual King himself regret leaving the orb be - or more accurately, letting himself be in cryo-sleep in the first place. Now with the Warrior King venting and Arak (and his beloved Valda) defeated by the Guardians' trick, how would the gang wake him up and get him back to heroism?
Exo Stranger has her Exo body fixed, so from there on out this form will look just like the actual Elsie-1 in canon. Also, I also intended Pouchy to be briefly calcified not only for fun, but to reveal that the toon physics wouldn't be enough to save you from the Final Shape. Anyways, once the Earth-2 is visited... Oh boy, the society's world is now barren and busted, turned into an post-apocalyptic hell-scape with an Ascendant Realm stuck in. The realm the gang dropped in is called Boom Realm because it's a Throne World made of Boom Tubes, and is riled by James Olsen of Earth-2, the Doctor Impossible from Earth-2: Society (2015-2017), which reveals that thanks to the Darkbolts, the villain has escaped imprisonment and became a frickin' Lightbearer! After his death, his Ghost is then captured by Kyon, just like the six Ghosts that were captured by Amaya earlier.
The gang is expanded as they traversed on the realm: Taylor Jolicoeur, Lily Pilgrim, Crota and the original 3 Guardians. Taylor Jolicoeur is no-brainer for this fic, but Lily Pilgrim, the daughter of Scott Pilgrim and Ramona Flowers, has been retconned to match what happened in Scott Pilgrim Take Off (2023) which gets even more hilarious because this chapter is titled "Earth-2 Take Off". (Even funnier: 2 squared equals 2 plus 2, and it's 4!) Crota here is based on the design of Kuroda-Vanitas, a Destiny artist who's drawn womanized versions of certain bosses of Destiny franchise, but because a Lightbearer Hive is Lucent (it's blatantly from The Witch Queen (2022) expansion), Crota's Ghost, Krilly, is also a Hive Ghost as well, hence the bone. (Krilly's name is derived from the Krill, the proto-Hive; most of the Lucent Brood calls their Ghosts "Krill"). And finally, the original Guardians: it's the Young Wolf and friends, the actual Fireteam Alpha, the greatest veterans. They're from the original timeline and canon, sometime after the events of the base campaign of The Final Shape (2024) expansion. They also dons the armors from certain Destiny 1 (2014) trailers, as remembered by the Destiny community. This addition is my short but sweet love letter to the Destiny franchise, especially the Light and Darkness saga (2014-2024). Needles to say, these are veterans and now the New Light that came to action only in Destiny 2 (2017), so they remembered fighting and slaying Crota. Crota remembers not only all that too, but even the father Oryx's revenge, for she learned about Oryx's vengeance (the events of The Taken King (2015) expansion) from Krilly, who has Darkness encoding due to Crota also fully wielding Darkness as well (without Darkness's connection to mentality and psychics, Krilly wouldn't have none of the memories that Crota loses every time Crota die again). By extension, the Prismatic Guardians' Ghosts would have some level of Darkness encoding as well, as does everyone who have both Ghosts and Darkness but not necessarily Prismatic. The encoding would explain why the Prismatic subject would remember, where ordinary Lightbearers would forget everything about their past lives upon resurrection.
James Olsen is working for Darkbolts, and is friends with converted Arak and Valda. So when the gang infiltrated the realm, both would patch the realm so there would no longer any direct escape route, and then while Jimmy is warned about the Witness, Arak and Valda search for the gang. The following fight scenes get more complicated the more characters are involved, so I mainly focused on some highlights. There's also another vision about Wish (2023) received by Laelynn upon receiving paracausal powers from Exo Stranger, and Laelynn's puke happened because she's disgusted by the role Magnifico have after the escape. (Foreshadowing?) The fight against Impossible ended with Jimmy getting stabbed by Crota's true form (Crota is canonically masculine, so the true form has to be it), and the Sword sucked the Light and Darkness powers, leaving only the Ghost to be dragged down by Kyon as Next Decade. Transitioning to versus Arak and Valda with the sight, as the two, especially Arak, is horrified at James' death, leading to the Telos commanding the Whispers - the experiment No.7, each Whispers is at least as powerful as a multiversal god, but no more than the greatest of such gods - to destroy the gang altogether. (Jimmy has killed most of the Wonders by that point, and it's really bloody, with R-rated level of gore at that) The Guardians were smart to actually implement the Final Shape in unison, shattering the realm and calcifying the Whispers, which exploded into expanded Stasis burst plus residues of Light, all which is what ultimately defeats both Arak and Valda altogether.
Lily Pilgrim got a few uses of the Subspace in this chapter: avoiding one of Crota's swing, and some uses to help with the evil Jimmy Olsen, and finally to help the entire gang escape the collapsing Boom Realm. They ended up in a renovated arena of the Council of Kangs. If you're confused at why would the Kangs of MCU be empowered with Darkness and be transformed, or why the MCU version of Kang the Conqueror is now a Disciple of the Witness, please refer to the end of #3 (The Witness found Kang in the Corridors of Time, after his defeat and apparent death in Quantumania (2023)). So now we know where the Witness went to after being accidentally remade. This Witness is originated from the same timeline as the Guardians that would become the Second Knife and the Prismatic Fleet. The original Witness is still no more, yet the original Guardians still mistook the Witness for the one unmade in Excision. But the Witness, too mistook the Guardians as well, thinking then as the Second Knife but-never-became-evil, when the original Guardians are in fact from the canon timeline (i.e. the timeline the Light and Darkness saga (2014-2024) took place in).
And finally... back to IVY. In the Future World, the Queen Crystal and a mage-warrior known as Lucifer, also known as Master Void, resides here. Lucifer has been redeemed following the events of IVY: World of The Future (2024), and now suddenly he and Crystal is hearing the Witness's echo. The Corridors of Time is eating away the Future World, just like it did to the TVA's Void. Looks like Ivy Comet has not to only deal with the aftermath of the Hyper Genesis Wave incident, but also... the Corridors of Time. Since this chapter is made with the YouTube premiere in mind, dragon's coming to the fate of the future!
For now, be sure to promote the entire crossover project as well! Confused? Here's how you can do it: share the project and the fanfiction to social media, TV Tropes pages, appropriate forums and conversations, and get everyone to know and help! (No drama please!)
Until next time...
Cross-trivia:
(*1) - Hagumi has been brainwashed into Shocker Cure Tomorrow, as revealed in Prologue #1.
(*2) - Whispers (フィーラー, Feeler), also known as the arbiters of fate (運命の番人), are beings born of the planet, canonically said to enforce the course of destiny in the Final Fantasy VII remake project. In Final Fantasy VII Remake grey Whispers appear in large gatherings whenever events stray too far from fate's intended path. In Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, two types of Whispers appear: white and black. When visible, they appears as empty flying cloaks with nothing inside and typically appear in dense swarms. They gather to block people's ways, guide those who stray from their intended path, and may even attack those who defy their fate too strongly. Though they are supernatural and usually invisible, they are not omnipotent and have a physical presence in the world; they can fail to do what they set out to accomplish, or act too late, especially when met with opposition, and can be harmed and thus, destroyed.
In Dreamcatcher: Warzone, not much is known about what the Whispers exactly are, aside from the fact that similarly to canon, they wants to dictate fate itself.
(*3) - Referencing the Wing Commander Academy (1996)'s 8th episode, "Recreation".
(*4) - References to the DC Comics' Hypertime Crisis event, Convergence (2015).
(*5) - Created by Brainiac from splinters of multiple destroyed universes, the planetoid called Telos was administered by a being also named Telos (actually Arak, the Son of Thunder). Brainiac brought it from universe to universe, so it hung like a blood moon in the sky, kidnapping cities to save some part of a given reality before it was destroyed by a Crisis or whim of fate.
Later rechristened "Earth 2" by the humans of the New 52 (2011-2016)'s Earth-2, the planetoid was found in a binary star system, orbiting a red sun and a yellow sun. Due to a threatened takeover, the eleven colony ships were caused to crash land on the planet, while the flagship, Overwatch-One, remained in orbit. A year after crash landing, the death of the commander of Overwatch-One, Terry Sloan, sparked an investigation into the realities of the settlers' new society.
(*6) - Referencing Fortnite Battle Royale (2017-).
(*7) - Amaya requested the Sovereign Shotgun in #2 and #3.
(*8) - Jimmy Olsen was a hacktivist who went by the web-name "Accountable". The scale and effectiveness of his activities led the public to assume he was an entire organization. He was eventually captured by the World Army and imprisoned at their Arkham Base. After merging with the Mother Box and becoming a New God, Jimmy called himself Doctor Impossible.
(*9) - Beings which have obtained sufficient paracausal power have the ability to create pocket universes within the Ascendant Realm (extradimensional plane of existence related to the Darkness) known as Throne Worlds. These are personal realms whose forms and laws are defined by their creators, and which serve as a refuge for the creator's consciousness or "soul" in the event of their death in the physical world.
The most prolific creators and users of Throne Worlds are the Hive, who may become "Ascendant" through practicing the Sword Logic and eventually become powerful enough to create their own Throne Worlds. All laws within these realms obey the Sword Logic, even other paracausal forces, such as the Light. They are typically formed and can grow in size by the deaths of powerful entities, including the Light-affiliated Guardians. Throne Worlds are completely immune to the effects of paracausal weaponry, such as the Harbingers of the Awoken, being spiritual worlds created from the mind of their resident Hive god. If one of the Hive gods is slain in the material world, or in another god's Throne, their soul will pass to their throne where they will regain their strength until they can re-enter the material world; this can potentially be accelerated by the sacrifice of lesser Hive. If an Ascendant Hive is killed within their own throne, they will die permanently. The lesser Hive may enter the Ascendant Realm at will, but only if they are Ascendant Hive, those Hive warriors who command legions of lesser soldiers and can pay a tithe of death and destruction to the Hive god who rules them.
(*10) - Lily "Kimberly" Pilgrim is based on the heroine of "Lily Pilgrim vs. Their World" by ApellaZant. Due to the timeline changes by Scott Pilgrim Take Off (2023), certain things have been changed or fixed. For example, Gideon Gordon Graves has been killed a few years later (so Sean Williams could try and get revenge on Lily for what Scott and Ramona did).
(*11) - References to Destiny 1 (2014), specifically The Dark Below (2014) and The Taken King (2015) expansions. The Guardians (including the veteran versions of the Young Wolf) were able to avenge Eris Morn and her fireteam (the first major fireteam against Crota; Eris herself was a Bladedancer (Arc-power Hunter), but lost her Ghost, Byra, on her campaign, nowadays she uses Hive magic and Stasis (making her technically a Revenant)) and slay Crota on both physical realm and the Ascendant, eventually with Sword Logic used against himself. Only for Oryx to find out what happened and get the Dreadnaught going, intending himself to get revenge on the same Guardians... only for the Hive King himself to be slain as well. (Canonically, neither could truly rest in peace)
(*12) - Based on the Darkness (paracausal force)'s association with thought, perception, subjectivity and the raw processes of life.
Following the canonical discovery of Strand, Osiris (former Lightbearer turned Broodweaver) hypothesized that the Darkness is associated with thoughts and consciousness, whereas the Light is tied more strongly to the physical universe. The nature of Strand, Deepsight and Nightmares all reflect this connection; Stasis crystals have also been noted to exhibit computational properties, potentially supporting simulation or even cognition within themselves. This may also explain the Darkness' association with the Ascendant Realm, as the latter is a dimension whose nature is heavily influenced by thoughts and beliefs.
As an extension of this theme, the Darkness is associated with memory, whereas the Light is associated with forgetting. This is exemplified by Deepsight, which allows one to, among other things, experience memories associated with an object's past. In contrast, when the Light is first bestowed upon an individual via resurrection by a Ghost, they (tends to) forget all details of their past life.
(*13) - Freezing Singularity: Throw a mass of Void energy and Stasis matter. On impact, deploys a miniature black hole orbited by a slowing field. After a short duration, the black hole implodes, suppressing and dealing heavy damage to all nearby targets.
(*14) - The Sword Logic, also known as the Bladed Path, is a supernaturally thanatological study of the Darkness which serves as the guiding religious principle of the Hive and the Worms. It is closely related to the winnowing philosophy of the Witness, although it may be viewed as an interpretation rather than necessarily synonymous with it. Most information regarding the Sword Logic comes from the Hive religious texts known as the Books of Sorrow, the scriptures of Dredgen Yor, and scattered pieces of arcana from Toland's journal.
(*15) - Yes, the Young Wolf and friends are the three originals, from some of Destiny 1 (2014) trailers from mid-2010s. Similar-looking fireteams, such as the fireteam depicted in Lightfall (2023) (Shayura, Reed-7 and Aisha), also appeared in some trailers for Destiny 2 (2017).
(*16) - References to The Final Shape (2024) expansion.
(*17) - The Speed Force is a cosmic energy field and force based around velocity and movement, and one of the Seven Forces of the DC Universe. It is the representation of reality in motion, being the very cosmic force that pushes space and time forward and granting all DC Comics' speedsters their power. The Speed Force has existed since the birth of the greater omniverse, wielded by the Celestial Beings known as The Hands. It is a cosmic energy field and force based around velocity and movement, being the very cosmic force that pushes space and time forward, granting movement to the omniverse.
(*18) - Stormtrance: Chain Arc lightning to enemies from your hands until Super energy is depleted.
In the hands of a Guardian, the Stormtrance is summoned by focusing Arc energies within and then unleashing them in a continuous stream of lightning, dealing damage to enemies targeted by it. As it deals damage the lightning spreads to other enemies, wiping out large numbers of enemies in a short amount of time.
(*19) - Winter's Wrath is a super available to Warlocks that have chosen the Shadebinder subclass from Destiny 2 (2017): Beyond Light (2020). The Shadebinder summons a Stasis staff, which they use to freeze their foes.
(*20) - References to Dreamcatcher: The Last Wish (2023) flashback and IVY: World of The Future (2024)'s wedding scene (takes place in 2027).
(*21) - Referencing Dreamer's escape in Fell Doomsday (#1-#2), where Dreamer rose out of the experiment pool built by Soyle and the Timemaster. Dreamer was experiment No.23.
(*22) - The Aurora Curtain is the primary mode of transformation and transportation used by multidimensional travelers. It originated in Kamen Rider Decade (2009).
The Aurora Curtains act as the doorway between the many A.R. Worlds, often used by the likes of Tsukasa Kadoya, Daiki Kaito, and Narutaki to traverse across the multiverse, with almost little to no restriction in terms of space. So long as a curtain was activated by a user, anyone can pass through them.
(*23) - The Darkness's catchphrase from Destiny franchise.