The white light wasn't light. It was the absence of transition. One moment, I was in the damp, static-filled darkness of the sub-basement, the Monitor's cool hand in mine. The next, I stood on an endless, polished floor the color of old bone, under a sky that wasn't a sky.
Above was a vast, intricate tapestry of dying light. Countless threads—some gold, some crimson, some deepest blue—snaked and wove through the void. But many were fraying, snapping, their light guttering out into dull, frayed gray before dissolving into anti-matter blackness. The silence here was absolute, a vacuum that pressed on the eardrums. This was the Monitor's domain: the cosmic control room at the edge of all things.
The pain was my only anchor. The Velocity-9 toxin burned in my chest, a welcome, familiar agony compared to the chilling emptiness of this place. The psychic scrape of the Black Flash's scythe still itched at my soul.
"Your first assignment," the Monitor's voice echoed, though he stood beside me, gazing up at the tapestry. He pointed to a thread that was a particularly violent, electric blue, just as it intersected with a thick, sickly yellow strand. Both were fraying rapidly. "A universe designated Earth-77. Its vibrational frequency is… unique. A world where the essential concepts of 'hero' and 'power' are twisted, commercialized, saturated with a compound known as Compound V."
He looked at me, his eyes reflecting the dying lights. "The Anti-Monitor's wave approaches it. Its destruction is inevitable within the local time-frame. Your objective is not to save it. It is to harvest. Infiltrate. Identify the most powerful assets. When the wave hits, you will be extracted. The shadows you raise in that moment of universal death will be exceptionally potent."
A dossier of information, not images but pure understanding, slammed into my mind. The Boys. A world of corrupt, celebrity "heroes." Brutal, cynical, and weak. A perfect training ground.
"And my… condition?" I rasped, gesturing to my chest.
"A temporary stabilization field," the Monitor said, waving a hand. A subtle, white sheen coated my skin for a moment. The fiery ache of the serum dulled to a background hum. "It will last for the duration of your mission. A permanent solution must be earned. Fail, or betray my purpose, and it will be removed. The Black Flash is still… curious about you."
The threat was clear. I was a weapon on loan.
A section of the bone-white floor in front of us irised open, revealing not a hole, but a window. Through it, I saw a replica of a gleaming, modern city—New York, but sharper, more arrogant. I could almost smell the cheap perfume and blood.
"Go," the Monitor said. "The wave comes. Be efficient."
I didn't need a second command. Cloaking myself in Zoom's suit and the crackle of blue lightning, I stepped through the window.
---
The world of Earth-77 stank. It stank of greasy food, hyped rhetoric, and underlying fear. I appeared in a back alley behind a "Vought American" headquarters, the hum of my stabilized speed a quiet song in my veins.
My sovereign sense pulsed. This entire world was one giant, walking dungeon. Every so-called "Supe" was a potential shadow. But I needed the strong ones. The unique ones.
I started with speed. I became a ghost, a rumor. I would appear in a Vought lab, a blue blur stealing files on Compound V. I'd shadow a hero team, like the Payback, listening to their petty squabbles. I learned the players. Homelander, the psychotic god. Queen Maeve, the disillusioned warrior. Black Noir, the silent killer. A-Train, the speedster.
A-Train. That was an opportunity.
I found him training in a private Vought facility, a blur of red on a mega-sized treadmill, his face a mask of arrogant focus. He was fast by this world's standards. Pathetic by mine.
I didn't announce myself. I simply matched his speed, fell into stride beside him on the track. To the outside cameras, there was just A-Train. To him, I was a sudden, terrifying presence in his personal space, a man in black and blue lightning keeping perfect, effortless pace.
"Who the f—" he began, shock breaking his rhythm.
"Your heart's going to give out in six months," I said, my voice a distorted static. "The Compound V is shredding your aorta. You're a dead man running."
He stumbled, tumbling off the treadmill in a crash of limbs. I stopped, standing over him as he gasped.
"What are you?" he panted, fear in his eyes.
"The future," I said. "A faster future. Give me a reason not to take your speed as a shadow right now."
It was a bluff. I couldn't claim a shadow from a living being, not without the kill. But he didn't know that. His fear was delicious. And it made the Beast inside twitch, interested in the raw, cowardly emotion.
I left him there, trembling. The message was sent. Something new was in town.
My real target was a weaker, but more uniquely powered Supe. I needed specialists. I found my answer in the files: The Deep. Power over sea life. A joke to this world. But a shadow that could command marine creatures? That had potential on worlds with oceans.
I tracked him to the coast, where he was doing a pathetic, publicity-driven "clean-up" after a Vought-sponsored oil spill. He was alone, brooding by the water.
No theatrics this time. Pure efficiency.
I moved with Zoom's speed. From his perspective, I was a hundred feet away, then I was directly in front of him, my hand already sheathed in a minimal, focused Chidori. The screech was muffled by the ocean wind.
His eyes widened. "Hey, man, I'm with the Sev—"
I thrust my palm into his chest. Not enough to vaporize. Just enough to stop his heart instantly and cleanly. The look of stupid surprise was frozen on his face as he crumpled.
The world didn't react. The dungeon didn't clear. He was just a man who died. But my power stirred.
Sovereign's Right.
His shadow peeled from his body, a watery, blue-tinged wraith that knelt on the wet sand. Its form shimmered with the faint shapes of fish and tentacles. My first asset from this world.
But the act, the casual murder, stirred something else. A hot, red anger began to bubble up, not at me, but from me. The frustration of being a tool, the lingering fear of the Black Flash, the sheer, arrogant waste of this pathetic world—it fed the Beast. A faint red aura, just a corona, flickered around me for a second. I felt my canines sharpen.
No. Not here. Control.
I forced it down, breathing heavily. The stabilization field on my serum seemed to strain. The cost.
My comms—a simple white earpiece given by the Monitor—crackled. "The wave approaches. You have ninety of your seconds. Primary target acquired: Homelander. His shadow would be a significant tactical asset. Extract him to the central park. The annihilation will be focused there."
A location pulsed in my mind. Homelander was there, at a rally, smiling for cameras.
This was it. The real test. I needed to corral the most powerful being on this planet to a specific point for slaughter.
I blurred into the city. The sky was beginning to tear. Not with light, but with a creeping, silent un-color. The Anti-Matter wave. It didn't destroy. It unmade. Buildings at the edge of the city simply ceased to be, their absence a stunning scar on reality.
Panic was absolute. And in the center of it all, on a stage, stood Homelander. His smile was gone, replaced by a snarl of confusion and rage. He wasn't looking at the unfolding end of his world. He was looking at the screaming crowd, as if their terror was a personal insult.
"ENOUGH!" he roared, his voice cutting through the chaos. He levitated, heat vision glowing in his eyes. He was going to kill his own people in a final, petulant tantrum.
Perfect.
I shot onto the stage in a burst of blue lightning and thunder, landing between him and the crowd. Time slowed to a crawl. I saw his shock, the slow adjustment of his eyes toward this new threat.
In frozen time, I walked up to him. I couldn't hurt him, not yet. But I could deliver a message.
I leaned close to his ear, in the space between microseconds. "The real god is here. And he's hungry. Follow the lightning, or die where you stand."
I snapped back into real-time and unleashed a continuous, massive bolt of anime lightning—Indra's Arrow—not at him, but into the sky, creating a terrifying, crackling beacon that led toward Central Park.
Homelander, enraged and now personally challenged, took the bait. With a scream of fury, he shot after the trailing arc of my lightning.
The race was on. I led him, a zigzagging bolt of blue, through the crumbling city. He followed, a red-and-blue missile of pure rage, blasting anything in his path. We were the two fastest things in a dying world.
We reached the park. The Anti-Matter wave was a towering, silent wall of nothingness, less than a mile away, consuming skyscrapers like a rolling shadow.
Homelander landed, chest heaving. "What is this?! Who are you?!"
"I'm the bell," I said, my voice calm. "And recess is over."
The Monitor's voice was final in my ear. "Now."
Above us, the bone-white window irised open. A beam of pure white light lanced down, pinning Homelander like a bug. He screamed, struggling, his heat vision and strength utterly useless against this cosmic extraction beam.
The Anti-Matter wave reached the edge of the park. The grass, the trees, the air itself ceased to exist in a spreading, soundless void. It was seconds from us.
The beam retracted, pulling Homelander up. Just as his feet left the ground, as the wave touched the edge of the stage he stood on, the Monitor's stabilization field on my serum vanished.
The sudden, violent return of the full, toxic burn was like a supernova in my chest. I screamed. It was pain beyond anything—a chemical, mortal agony.
And the fear. The crushing, primal fear of being unmade by the anti-matter, of failing, of dying in this stupid, pathetic replica world, hit me like a physical blow.
The combination was the key.
The Beast did not stir. It ERUPTED.
A roar that was not sound but pure, destructive force erupted from my throat. A pillar of red, furious chakra exploded from my body, shattering the ground for fifty yards. The pain was buried under an ocean of limitless, burning rage.
ONE TAIL.
A cocoon of red energy formed, a tail of pure chakra lashing out. My mind was gone, submerged. The last human thought was a glimpse of Homelander, frozen in the beam, his eyes wide with a new, genuine terror as he looked at me—not as a rival, but as a natural disaster.
Then, the Berserker saw him. A fly. A shiny, struggling fly.
The Berserker moved. It wasn't speed. It was hatred given motion. It crossed the space and swatted the extraction beam. The cosmic energy flickered. The Berserker grabbed Homelander's leg.
The world ended.
The Anti-Matter wave washed over us.
In the heart of the annihilation, two things happened: The Monitor's beam, strained but holding, yanked a screaming Homelander into the portal. And the Berserker, holding onto his ankle, was bathed in the pure, unraveling power of the Anti-Matter wave.
There was no pain. The rage burned hotter. The chakra screamed and fought the uncreation, eating it, transforming it.
TWO TAILS.
A second tail of chakra burst forth. The Berserker's form grew larger, more bestial. It was not unmade. It was forged in the annihilation.
Then, the portal snapped shut. The white light vanished.
I was falling through a gray, silent void—the space between spaces. Not dead. Not alive. I was a burning comet of red chakra, two tails whipping in a non-existent wind, my human form lost within a growing shell of a fox-like demon. The Kurama transformation was advancing, fueled by the cosmic energy of a dead universe.
The mission was a success.
Homelander was taken.
I had my shadow of The Deep.
And I had lost everything else.
I was now the Beast, falling endlessly toward the next world, trailing the ashes of a reality I had helped erase.
The war had its first soldier. And its first casualty was my mind.