Most thought Rebecca Mausgrau died over a decade ago. Her name was little more than a whisper to those who once knew her—a mother who vanished, a sister who never came back. Yet in the cracks between worlds, where no map or hero dared tread, she endured. Not only endured, but thrived.
Rebecca was not like other beings. She was not bound by the laws of inheritance or mutation, nor by the blessing of cosmic accidents. No, her gift was singular and absolute: every power that came into existence eventually became hers. When someone, somewhere in any reality unlocked a new ability, Rebecca's veins sang with it. If a warrior honed a fighting style to perfection, her muscles remembered it without ever training. Her body was a living archive of power, her will the only leash holding it in place.
It made her terrifying. It made her lonely.
Rebecca chose the path of the hunt. She did not involve herself in wars of kingdoms or politics of heroes. She hunted monsters—beasts born from chaos, creatures that slipped through the cracks of reality. That was where she found meaning, not as a conqueror, but as a predator.
---
Tonight, in a realm where the skies bled violet and the land was a wasteland of fractured stone, she tracked something massive.
The air shook with its movements long before she saw it. Every step of the beast split the ground, every breath was thunder. Its hide looked like obsidian metal, jagged and shifting, with spines that glowed like embers. Its eyes burned like suns swallowed into shadow.
Rebecca crouched on the ridge, tightening her gloves. She could feel it even before it roared.
"Stronger than the last one," she murmured, her lips curling into a smile. "Good."
The beast turned, as if hearing her thought, and unleashed a scream that shook mountains into dust. It charged, claws carving trenches into the earth.
Rebecca leapt, soaring like a comet, her fist glowing with the combined essence of a hundred powers—kinetic force, elemental rage, raw muscle. When she struck its jaw, the air fractured like glass, ripples tearing through the realm.
The monster reeled back, bellowing, but not down. Its tail whipped, sending waves of burning debris across the battlefield. Rebecca landed in the rubble, brushing shards off her shoulder. She didn't flinch when molten rock rained around her.
"You'll do nicely," she said, rolling her neck.
---
The battle raged. The beast's claws slashed with enough force to shred steel, but Rebecca's body healed before the wounds even finished cutting. When its jaws snapped, she braced, catching them with her bare hands, muscles infused with Juggernaut's unstoppable strength and Colossus' metallic durability, though magnified tenfold by the echo of countless powers.
It tried to overwhelm her. She laughed.
Her powers shifted like a storm. For one moment she wielded fire, her arms wrapped in living flame; the next, her skin shimmered with diamond armor. She mimicked speedsters she had never met, moving faster than its eyes could follow. Each strike landed with the fury of worlds behind it.
Finally, she thrust her hand into the beast's chest. Energy surged, tearing through sinew and stone-hard bone, and she ripped out its core: a pulsating, molten crystal, thrumming with unstable energy.
The monster collapsed, its body breaking into obsidian shards that evaporated into smoke.
Rebecca stood, staring at the core, feeling its resonance in her palm.
"One less," she whispered. "But there's always more."
She crushed the crystal. The energy burst like fireworks, absorbed into her skin. Her eyes glowed briefly before returning to their calm, storm-grey hue.
---
Rebecca walked across the ruins of the battlefield, her boots crunching over ash. The realm was quiet now, its terror gone. Yet she felt no triumph.
Hunting was endless. As long as realms bled into each other, chaos birthed more monsters. Her path was unending. She did not know if she hunted to protect others, or merely because it gave her purpose.
Once, she had family. A daughter—Vanessa. A sister—Silvanna. She still remembered holding Vanessa as a baby, her tiny golden hair catching the sunlight. She remembered Silvanna's sharp smile, the way she used to tease her about always being too serious.
But those were shadows now.
Rebecca chose exile, chose silence. The world could not handle what she had become. If the wrong people realized her nature—that she contained every power ever created—they would hunt her, fear her, or worse, try to use her. Better to be forgotten.
Better they thought she was dead.
---
The void rippled above her. Another rift opened. Rebecca's instincts sharpened—another hunt had begun. She could feel the presence of something ancient, slithering through the tear, hungry for blood.
Rebecca cracked her knuckles and adjusted her jacket, the diamond-shaped insignia on her chest glowing faintly.
"Let's see what you've got," she said, stepping toward the breach.
She leapt into the rift, swallowed by light.
---
Elsewhere…
In another realm, far from Rebecca's endless hunt, Silvanna sat in Stark Tower, staring at the necklace Tony had found—the picture of her sister, frozen in time. Vanessa was alive. Silvanna was alive. But Rebecca…
No one knew.
Not yet.
---
Rebecca fought through another realm, her legend growing like a ghost story across dimensions. To some, she was a savior. To others, a demon. But one truth echoed in the whispers of survivors:
She cannot be stopped.
And one day, inevitably, her hunt would bring her back to the family who thought they had lost her forever.
But until then, Rebecca fought alone.
The Huntress of Realms.