"Acknowledged," was all I said before entering my own command codes. A flashing light in the top corner of my visor blinked, waiting for the final command to activate. A waypoint also popped up, pointing me to the same spot I'd originally emerged to face down The Destroyer. Spinning, I dodged the wreckage of a car launched at me before flying back down to the street, my armor landing with a rattle.
The Destroyer met me there, his fist already pulled back and ready to hammer into me. "So, you've finally decided to die," he said with an obvious strain in his voice.
Despite the fist ready to drive me into the ground and my suit barely holding together, my focus was still on the waypoint blinking six-inches behind him. Perhaps The Destroyer really was tired from fighting a battle against superhumans then jumping into a gauntlet of lethal forces pulled from across multiple realities? Or, maybe, he just didn't expect me in my battered armor to charge head-first toward certain death? Either way, my shoulder connected with enough force to push him back three, four, now five inches. "Boosters to max!" I ordered, feeling a surge as my jet pack and thrusters expelled everything they could give against the strength of the monster's frame. Anxious, I watched the suits power levels drop to 9%, 8%, 7%. Finally, at 3% remaining, The Destroyer finally budged and the waypoint in my visor changed from a blinking red to a solid green. "Activate Plan Omega!"
A distant hum filled my ears as something in the air shifted. My suit wrapped its arms around The Destroyer and pinned itself to the street, ejecting me in the process. I took a moment to lay there, breathing heavily, my body covered in sweat and racked with pain. I tried to replay the fight in my head as best I could, not just this one but all the ones before, hoping there might've been another way for this battle to end. It was the nearby rumbling that brought me back to reality as The Destroyer wrenched his way out of my temporary anchor, wrecking my suit in the process.
"I don't know what your plan is, but I do know getting out of the armor that's keeping you safe is a bad idea," he said stomping over to me with a sadistic smile on his face.
I decided to lay back down. "Go ahead and kill me. Do a jig on my corpse. I don't care anymore because whatever you decide, you won't escape what comes next." The Destroyer loomed over me, his bulk casting a shadow over my face as he blocked out the sun. The darkness didn't last long, however, as a green glow soon radiated from the north, south, east, west, and even directly above us.
"What is this?" he said, turning to watch as the light spread from each point. It took a second before he realized the green light spreading from one point would soon reach the light spreading from another - and that was all the time Plan Omega required. He zipped away toward a gap between the converging lights, but he wouldn't make it. Plan Omega already factored his fastest speed to position us in the very center of the bubble, and he was moving noticeably slower thanks to the battle we fought. Soon enough, the bubble was complete. A ripple at its wall and a low, dull tone confirmed it had trapped The Destroyer. Screams and cries confirmed I'd also doomed everyone in the city along with him - not just those still hiding in the partially demolished buildings and those still trying to get out to the evacuation zone, but even those sitting safe in the shelters at its edge. I'd doomed us all.
Sitting up, I cradled my head between my knees as the world around me trembled and shook. The wind blew with a fury, swirling, trapped with nowhere to go, until suddenly it simply ceased. A high-pitched buzz drove a spike into my ears, a precursor to the thunderous boom of the reality anchors breaking. A scent I'd never realized was there grew overwhelmingly strong until it just disappeared, and I knew, whatever it was, I'd never smell it again. The glow of the bubble amplified brighter and brighter until it emitted a blinding flash, and the world we knew vanished.
Once I was sure the city had settled into its new place, I slowly rose to my feet. Peeking from windows, a few civilians poked their heads out while a couple braver ones even ventured out to the street or up to the rooftops. Around us, the city was more or less in the same state as when the portal cut the city off from its place in our reality. No, I corrected, no, from "their" reality. Though I couldn't see it, I knew what lay beyond the city limits was a wasteland few would survive crossing.
A fist grabbed me by the shirt and lifted me off my feet, into the air, high above the city below. "Where did you take us?" demanded The Destroyer, his face inches from my own.
I smiled. "A different reality. A reality where you can't hurt those people anymore." Twisting as much as I could without breaking his grip and becoming a stain on the ground, I took in the apocalypse around us. "Welcome to my home, to a reality where you won."
Seeing the confusion on his face, I continued. "All of our nation's might, every nations' might, the might of every single superhero on the planet. Nothing could stop you. You were The Destroyer. You became a conqueror, a butcher. The living embodiment of a massacre. My team and I built a machine to escape to another reality but in the end, I was the only one that got away. I swore I'd never come back, sealing off these coordinates forever. Then you appeared on my adopted home. I thought we might have a chance this time with my experience. But after our first fight, I knew it would end the same way. So, I built a device to trap you and unlocked the coordinates back here." Defeated and my confession given, I hung my head hoping he would just drop me.
Instead, we floated to the nearest rooftop where the monster set me down. "So, what happens now?"
I felt a disturbance in the air, a quake in the ground, the dread of an impending doom. "Now, we wait."
Wow, that was fucking long. You made it to the end, huh? Why put yourself through that? Unless you skipped the other parts and just jumped right into the last bit, in which case, wow, you're dumb. I mean, who fast-forwards through a movie to watch the credit. Oh well, you're here now, unfortunately (for both us). So, based off of the Reddit Writing Prompt "Forbidden realities exist, places too hostile to support life. But your enemy is too strong so you destroy the restrictions on your teleporter," or something like that. Honestly, it appeared months ago and I started writing months ago, but you know all of my excuses by now. The biggest challenge was the ending. I like the story ending with the line, "Now, we wait," but it's the lead-up to it that I feel is lackluster, especially compared to the fight scenes and the portal's activation which happened just before. What I was also uncertain about was the length of the fight scene, as providing details to four different portals and their effects felt very long in the writing process (not sure how it reads as I don't read this trash). All in all, I really liked writing this one as it gave me the chance to think about other dangerous realities and what can come from them. It was always my intent for the story to end the way it does, although I really did think about stopping when The Traveler opens the portal to the zombie reality (I didn't think about the zombies infecting the living superheroes until I started writing the scene). As I always say, hopefully I can keep up with regular posts (if not once a week, hopefully every other week ... or at least once a month). Luckily, I do have a couple stories I've been sitting on, so hopefully I can simply jump into them to keep this going.
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