Outside the MINDSCAPE, on a distant world forgotten by most star maps, Ultimate descended through the sky, shrinking his colossal form as he neared the surface.
The planet's clouds burned deep red, stained by an atmosphere thick with sulphur and carbon monoxide. Below, its inhabitants — tall, lizard-like beings bred for assassination — roamed with a confidence born from their high resistance to nearly every known poison.
Ultimate landed softly, boots touching alien stone. He looked around with a faint curiosity.
The place was surprisingly advanced — not enough to impress him, but enough to be less disappointing than humanity. He inhaled, even though he did not need to.
He just wanted to feel… alive. Normal. Something he had forgotten how to be.
In the corner of his vision, motion flickered.
He vanished.
A single blink later he reappeared thousands of kilometers away, standing atop the highest tower. Below him, the city pulsed with neon veins and strange languages. He looked down on them like an overlord studying ants.
He didn't know why he came here.
Why he spared the planet.
Why he hesitated.
Maybe some dying part of him was trying to reconnect with who he used to be.
But he barely remembered that person.
All he remembered now was destruction.
All he thought about was death.
He was a chaos of anger wrapped around a hollow center. And he knew, soon, the darkness inside him would swallow what little remained.
So he came here.
To understand himself.
To return to whatever "roots" he still had left.
He vanished again.
This time he reappeared as a citizen — taller than most, his human form replaced by a blue-scaled lizard walking upright. His shimmering scales drew glances as he passed, but he ignored them.
He only wanted to observe this world… and, if they were lucky, leave them alive.
Because soon the stars around them would die, replaced by nothing but pitch-black void.
He turned into an alley.
Two lizard men revealed themselves from the shadows, despite him sensing them before he even arrived. He had heard their whispered conversation — loud to him as thunder.
They raised their guns.
Ultimate didn't respond.
The one on the left froze mid-movement. His eyes stared forward, empty.
The other swallowed as realization struck.
He fell to his knees, throwing the gun aside.
"Spare me… please," he whispered, bowing his head.
Ultimate stared at him, voice echoing like something speaking from the void itself.
"What did you say about a cosmic energy source?"
The lizard trembled. At first confused, then remembering the conversation he had earlier.
Ultimate's tone darkened.
"So he knew the information," he said, glancing at the lifeless husk of the first attacker.
"Speak."
"The major family here… they recently found a crystal."
"A crystal?" Ultimate repeated, already losing interest.
"It can store energy — huge amounts of it!"
Ultimate paused. He did not need such things. But curiosity tugged at him.
Without emotion, he ended the lizard's life. Then he vanished.
Inside a high-security vault, time bent around him. A single tap melted the outer wall. Cameras saw nothing — the speed of the moment defied physics.
Gold. Diamonds. Wealth beyond measure.
But only one thing mattered.
A faint, strange energy pulsed from the far end. He raised a hand. A crystal broke free of its container and flew to him as if drawn by gravity itself.
He turned to leave.
But then he sensed them — lives beneath the vault.
Crying.
Suffering.
Looking through the ground, he saw cages, chains, broken bodies. Torture.
It did not horrify him.
He had ended planets.
Yet for the first time… something inside him hurt.
He felt sorrow.
A small, fragile spark.
Then the darkness swallowed it.
With a wave of his hand, all the prisoners died painless deaths — silent, merciful erasures.
He vanished again.
Now floating in space above the planet, he opened his palm. A star formed — a smaller version of the one Striver had once created. Hot. Hungry. Alive.
He threw it.
It tore through the atmosphere, melting everything it touched, sinking into the core.
A single moment passed — then the world exploded into drifting shards of burning stone.
Ultimate watched the destruction and… smiled.
Then he vanished, heading toward the next galaxy.