With This Ring (Young Justice SI) (Thread Fourteen)

Where You
Stood

By New God standards, it's not much. A simple spear. But shot from a New God bow by an archery-focused New God it has a little more kick to it. Artemis looses in the direction of the sun, her aim guided by the probe array.

And then we wait.

I kicked myself after I spotted it, but given everything else that's been going on, noticing the fact that despite its level of illumination the sun was far smaller than it should be wasn't all that far up my list of weird things. The Earth is habitable despite that due to being a great deal closer. What happened to the extra mass? No idea.

Artemis nods. "I hit it, but-."

A translucent figure appears just in front of us. Pale red skin, short black hair with a noticeably receding hairline, skin tight black body stocking with a black cape and a collar which must obscure his vision if he turns his head left or right. Red boots which extend to the tops of his calves, red gloves which extend to near his elbows, a white belt and a white starburst on his chest which reminds me of the logo of the Japanese version of Dr. Light. His ears are slightly pointed and his eyes.. glow the colour of the sun which serves as his backdrop.

He looks… Tired. His eyes aren't fully open and he doesn't appear to be focusing well. His clothing isn't as tight as I thought at first glance; it's flopping in places, as if it stretched in the wash. Either that or the wearer shrunk. Though it's possible that the spear sticking out of his chest has something to do with that.

I have no idea who he is.

"Hello there."

The figure… Blinks, looks in my direction and then closes its eyes for several seconds.

"You look rough."

"How I look-" He opens his eyes and the glow is a little brighter. "-is but a tiny fraction of how I feel."

"Good show. That's what you get for killing the universe."

"True as that may be, I'm still more than strong enough to add another godling to my tally." He raises his right hand to the spear impaling him and.. it vaporises, the material simply vanishing. "Do you have something you wish to say, or are you simply offering yourself to me?"

"Before I do that, I'd like to know what happened. We've had to piece things together from very little, and I'm sure that we've missed some things. And I doubt that you've been overwhelmed with conversational partners recently."

"True again. And yet I find that I do not care for it. In short: I won. But I misjudged the nature of the game. I absorbed all of the energy in the universe and it was glorious. Briefly. All too briefly."

"Because once all of the energy is gone, what do you eat next?"

"Yes. Originally, I ate slowly enough that it wasn't a problem, feeding on the fear and pain of worlds before throwing them into their sun. But when I came to this region, the United Planets fought… Better than anyone I'd fought before. They did… Something to me which exacerbated my hunger. Whereas before I ate to please myself, now I was constantly ravenous. I was forced to drain more and more systems to sustain myself, long after everyone had stopped resisting. I was reduced to draining power from the spatial dimensions themselves!"

"And it amounted to nothing. As the universe shrunk and shrunk around me, I was forced to hide in the last remaining system. The only place I couldn't drain directly because my powers have been deluded into treating it as part of my body."

"Okay, but why couldn't you just smash it to pieces manually?"

"What makes you think I couldn't?" He manages a small smile. "The material is useless to me, but the emotions they radiate give me some relief. Those I can feed upon."

"Did any of them contact you?"

"Melmoth did, him and Aurakles. When I told him the story, he seemed quite taken with my lifestyle. I believe that I inspired him. He offered me a tithe of pain and suffering in exchange for a trivial amount of help in overcoming the New Gods and guaranteeing that I would maintain this sun. I assume that you do not intend to continue that deal."

"Couldn't if I wanted to. The time machine left this era and ended up being destroyed in our relative past. Unless an earlier version of it jumps forward, you're out of luck."

"Unfortunate. Still, I imagine that the Sheeda will feel at least a little despair if I kill you."

I nod. "Probably. For a while. But that's all temporary, isn't it? A microcosm of your foolish overindulgence in the rest of the universe. Once you've eaten all they can provide, what do you do next?"

...

He watches me for a moment.

"Do you have a better idea?"

"Of course I do. Otherwise I'd have tried to kill you with the opening bombardment. Though it does rely on you being rationally self-interested and not just a total maniac. I've been disappointed before on that score."

"Tell me."

I carefully draw the Sword of the Fallen from its scabbard.

"This blade was created to kill things that can't die. It does this by nullifying their exotic energies and causing them to reincarnate as mortals. If you allowed me to use it on you, you would survive and be freed of the need to feed on the huge amounts of energy you do now. Though you would obviously be weaker, you could then seek ways to re-empower yourself that didn't come with the same drawback."

"And what would stop you killing me once I gave up my power?"

"We need you to repair the universe. I assume that you know what you did to shrink it?"

"Yes. But there isn't enough power to undo something on that scale."

"On the contrary: there is a way to get more power from the Bleed. But there isn't enough material to build enough generators to satiate the being who ate the universe."

"So you expect me to let you stab me."

"Or you could go and join the titans on the Source Wall. They can't be destroyed. If eternity staring into space is what you actually want, that option has been available to you since you got here. Or you could keep going as you are, and eventually the Sheeda will die, and then you will too. So my question is:-"

I smile and fan out my right hand.

"-how rational are you?"

"Killing you sounds more appealing."

"Lots of people say that. And I'd make a fight of it, but against a being who killed the universe I think I'd probably lose. But… Then what?" I shrug. "Killing me might give you a short term boost, but it doesn't fix the core problem. You're still stuck here, in a dead universe."

"There are other universes."

"Sure, but you're not stuck here because you can get to one. You're stuck here because you can't. And I can't build a portal because I can't adjust what I know about portals to the altered physical laws your actions have produced. And frankly, I'm not eager to unleash you onto anyone else."

"And what will you do if I choose the status quo?"

"Try to work out how to kill you. Kill you or die trying. And in either case, you don't get what you want. Would you like some time to think about it? We've got a clock based on beetles."