[A/N]: The next goal is 400 Powerstones for Two more Bonus Chapter. If you're enjoying the story, please vote, comment, and share!
Domino held Jay's face between her hands, forcing him to meet her eyes. Her thumbs brushed away blood from where his nose had bled during the power theft. "I'm fine. For the fifth bloody time, I'm FINE. Stop looking at me like I'm about to shatter."
Jay's hands covered hers. His grip trembled slightly. "I saw you being unmade hundreds of times, and then I heard you scream."
"And my healing factor put me back together. That's what it does." She kissed him quickly. "I'm here, so stop panicking."
"I'm not panicking."
"Babe, you're absolutely panicking."
Jay took a deep breath, forcing his racing heart to slow. The parking lot around them was a mess of bodies and blood, but Domino was alive and that was what mattered. He pulled her into another hug, needing the contact to confirm reality.
Over her shoulder, he noticed something odd. The parking lot looked different somehow. The light had a strange quality to it, slightly muted, and when he focused, he could see the faintest shimmer in the air like heat haze.
"When did she..." Jay pulled back from Domino, looking around properly.
The Ancient One stood nearby, her hands still glowing with residual magic. The Mirror Dimension surrounded them completely, seamlessly integrated. She'd pulled them all into it so smoothly that Jay hadn't even noticed the transition.
Brian and Jamie lay unconscious but breathing, the pentagrams on their foreheads now completely gone. No trace of corruption remained. The Ancient One had cleansed them while Jay had been focused on Domino, her expertise with dealing with dark magic making the process look effortless.
She approached them now, her movements carrying exhaustion. Her hand reached out, patting Jay's head with maternal affection she rarely showed. "You should calm down, Jay. Such worry doesn't fit someone with the title of my student."
Jay nodded, leaning into the touch as the gesture helped ground him. Then he noticed her hand shaking. Not much, just a slight tremor.
His eyes tracked up. Dried blood marked her face in thin lines from her nose and ears. Her complexion was paler than normal.
"Master?"
Green light flooded from his hands. Tommy's healing aura washed over her, and Jay used the connection to scan deeper and what he found made his stomach drop.
Her body was failing, shutting down from the inside out. Cells dying faster than they should, organs struggling, and the damage was systemic and catastrophic.
He pushed deeper and found residual energy signatures. Three distinct patterns: the Mind Stone's yellow glow, the Time Stone's sickly green, the Space Stone's deep blue. All three had left marks, burning through her system.
Jay's eyes met hers as she gave him a knowing look.
"It's alright, Jay. I knew the consequences when I used the Stones." Her voice was calm and accepting. "Plus, it's fitting. After being freed of Dormammu's influence, I was destined to die either way. This just accelerates the timeline. The Dark Dimension's corruption had sustained me for years. Without it, my body simply can't maintain itself. The Stones just hastened what was already inevitable."
Jay's face went blank as his enhanced mind worked through possibilities at superhuman speed.
Then he spoke, his voice flat. "Nah. No Satan-cosplaying demon gets to take anyone I care about from me."
Red strings materialized from his palms. Jamie's quantum string manipulation, stolen and integrated, responded to his will. The strings reached out, wrapping around the Ancient One, connecting to her at the fundamental level where reality met biology.
And he began rewriting.
The process was delicate. Unlike Franklin's cosmic reality warping that could reshape existence with a thought, Jamie's quantum manipulation worked through the fundamental strings that composed reality. More limited in scope but no less useful when worked precisely. Jay pulled at the strings carefully, finding the ones that represented the damage from the Stones and simply... unknotting them. Making them remember what they'd been before the corruption set in.
But it wasn't enough. The damage was too extensive and the decay too advanced. Jamie's power alone couldn't reverse this much cellular breakdown laced with energy from multiple Infinity Stones. He needed more energy, more power to make the changes stick. Unless….
Jay's head snapped toward Mad Jim Jasper's corpse.
The bisected body lay where Selene's portal had cut through it, upper and lower halves separated by feet of blood-soaked pavement. Even hours dead, the latent potential in that flesh called to him. The unactivated X-gene that could rewrite universal constants. The reality warping that would have made Jasper one of the most dangerous beings on Earth.
Domino caught the shift in his attention and saw where he was looking. Her hand shot out, gripping his arm. "Jay, no! You remember what Lady Death warned you about, yeah?"
Jay met her eyes, but his expression was set. "My loved ones come first."
"Not arguing with that. Just saying Death literally threatened you. Specifically about this kind of thing." Domino's voice carried fear but also understanding. She knew what he was going to do and knew she couldn't stop him. "Just... be careful, babe."
Jay moved toward Jasper's corpse.
He knelt beside the upper half, red strings extending from his hands. This was going to take everything. Jamie's quantum manipulation alone wasn't strong enough to resurrect someone, let alone someone with the potential to rewrite the universe who had been dead hours ago. But Jay had stolen something else from Selene. Something perfect for this situation.
Her life force vampirism. And more importantly, the vast reserves of stolen vitality he'd drained from her ancient body. Seventeen thousand years of accumulated life force, taken from countless victims and now residing in Jay's system like a battery waiting to be tapped.
He channelled nearly all into the resurrection.
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