She left the remaining Viltrumite soldiers on the ground, not even bothering to finish them off. She raised her bone pick and strummed her biwa.
TWANG
All across the world, beneath the soldiers and heroes that were about to get caught in the temporal crossfire, millions of sliding wooden shoji doors materialized out of thin air. They slid open, revealing the endless, impossible geometry of the Infinity Castle.
I swear it was every other day that she was using the Castle as a massive, interdimensional bomb shelter. The doors actively pulled the remaining human soldiers inside, sweeping up tons humans and aliens, dropping them safely onto the wooden platforms of her pocket dimension where the time ripples couldn't reach them.
"Good call," I said, watching her work.
But the entity wasn't about to let its work go to waste. It was a cosmic force of nature and it really, really hated my chaos.
"YOUR POCKETS OF DEFIANCE WILL BE ERASED."
High up in the sky, a massive blue tentacle reared back and whipped forward. It aimed for the empty air right next to Nakime.
CRACK
The sound was deafening. It sounded like a massive pane of glass shattering right next to my ear.
The blue tentacle literally whipped a hole in the dimensional barrier. It bypassed the physical world entirely and cracked the previously impervious pocket dimension of the Infinity Castle from the inside out.
Nakime gasped, stumbling backward and clutching her chest as a violent shudder ran through her biwa.
In the sky above us, a massive, jagged rift tore open, revealing the interior of the Infinity Castle. The wooden platforms, the twisting stairs, and the billions of terrified civilians Nakime had rescued before the war started were now completely exposed to the blue, time-warping light pouring down from the entity.
"No!" Nakime yelled, her newly restored eyes going wide with panic as the wooden structure of her castle began to rapidly age and rot under the cosmic light. The dimensional walls were literally peeling away like old paint.
"Okay, plan B," I snapped immediately shifting gears into crisis management. "Levy! Get out here!"
The shadow of Angstrom Levy erupted from the ground next to me, his mutated brain pulsing with bright purple energy.
"You both are incharge of Rescue operations" I ordered, pointing up at the exposed rift in the sky. "Open portals from inside the Castle to literally any other safe dimension in the multiverse. I don't care if it's a dimension of talking pixels, or walking blocks just get the humans out of this universe."
Meruem nodded silently, raising his hand. Shadow Levy just glew brighter in compliance. The two of them blurred into motion, jumping up into the exposed rift. A second later, countless neon-green portals began ripping open across the wooden platforms of the failing Castle, sucking the civilians inside and spitting them out into random and hopefully safer universes.
I turned to Nakime.
"Go," I said, pointing at the rift. "Get inside the Castle. Strengthen the walls from the inside. Repair it faster then it rots. You have infinite stamina now, just hold the dimension together long enough for them to evacuate!"
Nakime didn't move.
She stood there in the bright sunlight, the Green Spider Lily pulsing softly behind her ear. Her perfect face was set in a mask of stubborn defiance. She reached out and grabbed the lapel of my purple jacket, her grip surprisingly strong.
"No," Nakime said firmly.
I blinked. "What do you mean, no? The dimension is collapsing, Nakime. You need to fix it from the inside so you're safe."
"I am done hiding in a box," Nakime said, looking right into my eyes. Her voice was trembling slightly from the emotional weight. "I was forced to spend four hundred years hiding in the dark. You gave me the sun. You gave me perfection. I can finally stand toe-to-toe with you, face the danger by your side, and you want to send me away while you fight a god?"
"Nakime, it's a cosmic entity that manipulates time—"
"I don't care, even if it's that RNGesus of yours," she interrupted, her grip on my suit tightening. "I am not leaving you out here to sacrifice yourself for everyone else. I am your partner and I am staying. I can rebuild the castle, but you, John, I can't lose you. Not again."
I looked at the fierce, unyielding devotion burning in her eyes and felt the weight of her loyalty.
The tension in my shoulders completely melted away as I let out a soft chuckle shaking my head.
I reached up and gently flicked her on the forehead.
"Dummy," I said softly, a warm smile spreading across my face.
Nakime blinked, rubbing her forehead in surprise.
"Sacrifice myself?" I asked, raising an eyebrow. "Nakime, since the day Conquest put his fist through my chest and I came back, I have never truly been in danger. I don't fight fair and I especially don't do heroic sacrifices."
I turned around to face the shattered moon and the glowing blue tentacles thrashing in the sky.
"And right now? I have the perfect trump card for a raid boss like this." I said aloud, cracking my knuckles.
Deep within my soul, I consciously activated my most ridiculous trait.
RULE OF COOL!
The deafening noise of the temporal storms raging across the planet suddenly muted into a dramatic silence. The ambient dust swirling in the air froze in place. The sunlight shifted angles to cast a cinematic spotlight directly onto my hovering figure, plunging the rest of the ruined mountain into a deep, contrasting shadow.
All that could be heard was the soft breeze lifting the edges of my suit.
Nakime stepped back, her eyes wide as she felt the weight of the aura I was projecting. An aura that silenced the world; a ridiculous way to show my power.
"You see," I announced to the sky, my voice now amplified echoing like a stadium announcer. "The thing about cosmic entities is that they think they're the biggest fish in the pond. But there is always a bigger fish."
The massive shadow pooling at my feet bubbled up till it boiled and expanded rapidly, turning the entire crater of Mount Rushmore into a lake of violet-tinged ink.
"It's dinner time!" I yelled, spreading my arms out while glaring at the glowing blue tentacles in space. "And this time, you'll have plenty to eat! Arise!"
The shadow sea erupted.
Nakime took a sharp breath, confused. She had probably expected another Viltrumite variant or a massive beast like Thokk. She had never expected what came out of the shadows.
The reveal was slow, agonizingly cinematic. First, a pair of massive, glowing purple energy vents broke the surface of the ink. Then, a pair of shoulders so broad they blotted out the sun.
As the shadow rose, it became apparent that it wasn't a person, an alien, or a familiar, no, it was a titan.
An incredibly muscular figure rose from the ink. He wore ancient, otherworldly armor that looked like it was forged from the crust of a dying planet. His skin was a dark, cosmic purple, and his eyes burned with the furious, starving light of a collapsed star. He radiated a power that made the air itself warp and scream in protest.
It was the shadow of a being that literally consumed entire dimensions for breakfast.
In front of the entire universe watching the spectacle unfold, my ultimate shadow fully manifested.
He threw his massive arms out wide, absorbing the spotlight provided by my trait, and took a deep breath that pulled the clouds toward him.
[IMAGE HERE]
"RISING FROM THE ASHES OF DEATH!" The titan roared, his voice carrying through the ears of every living being within the next galaxy, "I HAVE COME AGAIN TO QUENCH MY HUNGER! IT IS I... OMNIPOTUS!!!"