Finding Utopia - Part 3

Written by HikerAngel

Commissioned by TRM

Here and Here are the first two parts, for anyone curious! It's been a while! Sorry about the lack of updates this month, I've had two humongous commissions to finish, and this was one of them!

“So, all that devastating destruction was you, huh? Gotta say, I’m impressed!” Diane spoke cheerfully, callous to all the lives I had ended without a second thought. “I really suspected you didn’t have it in you. That I had broken you beyond recognition. But it looks like that’s what power does! It turns people into me!”

“Shut the fuck up,” I responded, not desiring to give her beliefs as second thought. Sure, I was finally looking her in the eye, but she deserved no more of my acknowledgement.

Energy was building up within my clenched fist. I could release the attack at any time, but I wanted to build it to a point where the devastation it could cause would be uncounterable. Die was my last obstacle, the only threat still looming over me like a tumor-ridden skyscraper—one I couldn’t wait to demolish in a single blow. I had to make this attack count. Drawing a fight out with this childish dumbass was a surefire way to get me killed.

“Oooo, looks like the space-fairing mommy of none still has that defiant mouth!” Die replied to my simple four-word response. She didn’t seem to desire to respect my request. “Why do you spit such hateful words my way? We’re both powerful creatures of endless potential! Let’s team up and wreak further havoc upon this pitiful multiverse! I’m sure you’ll make an excellent playmate!”

She really was pure chaos. Any sensible person looking for a partnership with the one person in all of existence who could pose a threat to them wouldn’t start their opening with “mommy of none.” This bitch didn’t care about partnerships or even wreaking havoc upon the multiverse. All she cared about was whatever that little die block in her chest told her to, or to specifically spite me. Or both.

Was her goal to make me angry? To make me want to fight her? It didn’t matter—I was going to fucking tear her limb from limb.

Her smile only grew wider in contrast with my ever-angering expression. She was as adorable as I was painfully gorgeous, yet we were both unassuming roses with thorns that could pierce the fabric of reality should we become careless or curious all the same.

My charged attack reached its peak, several billion universes worth of energy burgeoning within the sinuous feminine musculature of my arm. Die was likely clued into my desire to harm her. I’d just have to strike her before that clue could reach the investigative level.

“Fuck. You.” I spoke, intending those words to be the last Die ever heard, regardless if she died or I died. I flew forward faster than I had ever approached anything in my life, reality tearing at the very seams as it struggled to keep up with my immense speed. While the moment would have been an instant of an instant for anyone who wasn’t me, my brain processed every single planck second to ensure my success.

Space and time warped around me like an infinite tunnel, guiding me directly to the very punchable face of Die. Energy wisped about and crackled, its power so immense that not even my garish brute-force of physics could slow its resolve to be unleashed upon whichever poor soul was caught within its trajectory. And yet the soul my fist was unstoppably barreling towards deserved no sympathy. She wanted to see how random and cruel the universe could be? Well, I was more than eager to give her a fist full of it.

I drew arbitrarily closer and closer to Die, her unmoving, blank expression imbued me with a newfound sense of confidence. She wasn’t this fast. She didn’t even know the punch was about to hit her. Certainly, this battle’s victory was mine before a proper clash had even begun.

But then, I could have sworn Die’s pupils shifted over ever so slightly to lock with mine. Not only that, but it almost seemed as if her smile grew even wider, as if she was filled with unsettling glee at the idea of my fist attempting to connect with her body. I could feel my stance wavering slightly. Was this to be my end? Was Die playing with me? No, it didn’t matter. I steeled my resolve, knowing that no matter what, this would all be over one way or another.

Suddenly, I was back at my starting point, standing a few meters away from Die as if I had never initiated any sort of attack. My arm was no longer brimming with charged power, but it hadn’t dissipated from my body either. It was as if I had traveled back in time with all my memories intact.

“Wh-huh?” I couldn’t help but stutter, confused out of my wits. I attempted to move, only to find that my body was simply not responding to my actions. It was as if my mind had been severed from all other connections.

“Ah, ah, ah, ah ah!” Die spoke with an air of immature superiority, clicking her tongue and wagging her finger childishly. “It’s not your turn to attack yet! We haven’t even rolled the dice to see what game we’ll be playing! Heck, we haven’t even finished our epic moral discussion on how the two of us aren’t so different!”

Fuck, so we weren’t exactly as even power-wise as I had assumed. It didn’t seem like Die was even going to let me go out on my own terms. I was just a superpowered doll for her make-believe tea time. At least my mouth still worked and Die was going to hear about it.

“I don’t want to talk anymore, you bitch!” I remained stalwart in my resolve. “Much less do I want to play any games with you!”

“Oh Reyla, it’s not about what you want,” Die replied, lackadaisically twisting her head to the side. “It’s not about what I want, either. It’s all about my namesake, the reason anyone was put into this universe of universes to begin with.”

Die sounded like a cult leader, or at least the de facto mouth piece of an aimless one. I was pretty sure she wouldn’t accept being the “leader” of anything. The concept of an organized movement was probably lost on her. All she knew was the tiny porcelain cube within her chest. Gripping the die like it was a sacred memento, she gave it a hearty spin.

“All that matters… all that is left to matter… is chance.”

I braced for something, anything. Then everything went black.

Mommy, Mommy, Mommy and Me is filmed in front of a live, studio audience.

A crowd’s worth of clapping hands erupted from somewhere. Not that it mattered, that was the only part of their existence that the cameras could catch. Light erupted and existence was brought back in the form of a three-walled living room/kitchen combo, complete with what appeared to be a front door. It was unusually built, made with excessive convenience in mind instead of practicality, reminiscent of the ancient suburban homes of old.

“Whew, lemme tell ya, work was killer! The boss had me working two whole hours today!” Cue laugh track. I walked onto the set, cheers erupting from the audience.

“Aww, that’s awful to hear, dear!” my wife, Falcha, responded, clasping her hands together and bringing them up to her cheek in worry. “I hope she didn’t push you too hard!”

“Oh not really, thank goodness my robot underlings aren’t snitches,” I downplayed with a hand wave. My voice then rose an octave with excitement. “After alI… I was able to sneak in a telekinetic phone call to the travel agency!”

“Ohmigosh, Reyla does that mean…?”

My face smug with excitement, I held up my hand and two holographic tickets materialized within my palm. Some audience members slightly chuckled at the sight gag. “We’ve got a two-way teleporting trip to the Neo-Bahamas!”

“Oh boy, a vacation episode!” my daughter, Cassette, quipped. Between her and Silver, she was known for being the child with a wink, wink knowledge of the fourth wall. The crowd laughed accordingly, appreciating the meta comedy that she injected into an often stale formula.

Falcha ran up to hug me, peppering me with kisses as a bonus. The audience ooo’d and aaah’d. They simply couldn’t get enough of our romance. Yes, I too was beginning to tire of the audience as well, but such was life. Every day was perfect otherwise. An unchanging status quo of often wacky adventures with my family. What more could I ask for?

A quick cut and some stock footage of a teleporter station and we were at one of the many beaches of the Neo-Bahamas. Once more, the audiences let their approval be known as I stepped out of the changing room in my brand new bikini, though at the very least, my lovely wife shared the sentiments of the endless panopticon that now appeared to be haunting me for the rest of my days.

Falcha’s tongue licked her sumptuous lips like a shark fin exiting water as her half-lidded eyes drank in every inch of my barely-concealed body. Clearly, the camera wanted to emphasize this, as it broke the three-camera rule for a close up on her face at a unique angle.

Maybe I could have also done without the oversexualization, but then again… I was sexy as fuck. I might as well flaunt my energy-filled prowess, after all, it took me absorbing countless millions of universes just to look this pretty. I had earned this.

“Moooom!” Silver complained, drawing everyone’s attention away from me. “You’re distracting all the solar-paneled boats from the nearby lighthouse!”

My family cringed on cue as an explosion sound effect played from stage right, complete with a few flashing orange and yellow lights. The audience laughed at the absurdity. Even though the scenario appeared to be horrific, I couldn’t help but find the humor in it as well.

“Don’t worry, dear,” Falcha reassured me. “It’s not your fault, you can’t help being that hot!”

But it was my fault. I sought out power and became this smolderingly sexy as a result. That being said, I reveled in it. I wanted it to be my fault. Something about this world… it was all wrong. Like the myriad of alternate earths I had ventured to, it was no utopia—no matter how desperately it wanted to seem like one. Therefore, it was useless to me.

A pudgy man walked from stage left, clearly intended to be some one-off character who would deliver a bad quip. But before anyone could find out what purpose his character was supposed to fulfill, I had my fingers wrapped firmly around his throat.

The audience gasped in shock at my surprise brutality, though my ears had no time for their dismay. I was too busy listening in on the strained gurgles of the pathetic man I held in a chokehold three inches off the ground. I heard my wife call out to me, but I didn’t dare give it any more thought. I… it wasn’t her, I knew that much. But it still looked like her, laughed like her. I couldn’t bear to see her face twisted into horrifying despair again. I heard my children scream out in fear, fear of me. That was almost enough to break me, enough to make me never want to frighten them again, no matter how fake they were.

At this point, my indecision had gotten the man killed. I couldn’t feel his pulse anymore as he lay still in my grasp. I let him go, his body falling to the sandy concrete with a thud. My fate was set in stone now.

Random extras became cannon fodder as I mowed them down with extreme prejudice, twin beams of energy erupting from my glowing eyes melting them into ash and molten flesh. They only existed to compliment my story, after all—so removing them was an act of mercy, right?

Then I heard a laugh. An all-too-familiar laugh. One that simultaneously sent a shiver down my spine and made me furious enough to want to rip the sound particles right out of the air. An air-headed and childish giggle.

I stopped everything I was doing, my eyes darting to the source of the laugh—one far into the endless darkness of stage right.

“Wow, I’m surprised you started without me! I wasn’t supposed to show up until act 3 for some proper destruction!” Diane spoke, slowly manifesting from the empty blackness and floating towards me with her usual spunky demeanor. The crowd went wild with applause as she made her grand entrance.

“Fuck you, Die,” was all I replied with. Most of the audience gasped in disbelief at my potty mouth. Surprisingly, I got a more visceral reaction out of them for a swear word than any of the gratuitous violence I had committed up to that point.

“Oooh, and using big girl words too? You’re more powerful than I gave you credit for, already breaking out of the simulation-induced trance and everything!” Die complimented backhandedly. “Oh well, At least you left your family for me to kill! That’s what I’m here for, after all!”

Immediately, I attempted to stop her, but I was helpless to her whims. All I could do was turn to look at my wife and children one last time before their heads erupted like melons packed with C4. Seeing the aftermath was one thing, but actually witnessing the exact moment where the life drained from my family’s bodies was another devastation entirely.

Adding salt to the wound, instead of feeling the slightest bit of sympathy, the audience continued to cheer Diane on as she resumed committing atrocities. When I did it, they were horrified. To them, I was just some villain of the week they couldn’t wait to see deposed, she was a saint who could do no wrong.

Understanding that this was a lose-lose situation, I just checked out. I took a seat atop a charred corpse and sighed. If I couldn’t defeat Die and she wouldn’t kill me, I didn’t see why participating in the endless cycle of suffering and misery was necessary.

“Ugh! Quit putzing around, you putz! You’re no fun anymore!” Die lamented, stomping her foot in disappointment, though a smile remained firm on her face. “Where’s the despair? The thousand-yard stare of defeat as you realize you’ve just lost everyone you’ve ever loved!?”

I didn’t need to justify my actions with a response to that.

Die caressed her chin, pondering a potential purpose. “Ahhh, is that it? Was this one just not doing it for you? Maybe you’ve got something against sitcoms? Well, don’t worry, I’m sure what the dice cook up next will be something for the history books!”

I heard the rolling of the die, Though I didn’t bother to look to see what it would show. Regardless, I heard the snap of her fingers, and everything was black again.

The inky blackness was interrupted by a brightening glow of a lone oil lamp, one which Falcha had ignited with her fire magic.

“Wakey, wakey, dear! Unless, you want your beauty sleep again, not that you’d need it with that bod!” she said in jest. My legs, acting of their own accord, shot up from our shared cot to rush to Falcha, where I promptly embraced her with a passionate kiss. The sudden rush of her humid breath mellowed any grogginess I might have felt, though I was beginning to wonder why I desired such a need to desperately embrace her.

Just yesterday we had spent the day in her study, reading up on a number of mystical runes. The most heart-pounding moment to occur was when Silver accidentally miscast a smoke spell into the study when she was trying to surprise us with a new spell of light she had learned. Luckily, a wave of our fingers and the harmless effect was dispelled and we all had a good laugh about it afterwards. A slow, boring day if anything—just the way I liked it.

…Right?

Right.

Right.

“Ah! Such force, Reyla! What’s gotten into you this morning?” Falcha asked, though her tone dipping an octave suggested she was totally into it.

“Just, happy to be alive and well, I suppose!” I replied, mirroring the wide smile on my wife’s face as I played with her braids.

“Good, because I just foooound…” she dragged out the last word, building suspense as she retrieved a piece of worn parchment from her side-satchel. “...A map to a thought-to-be lost and forgotten dungeon deep in the woods. Doesn’t that sound like good fun?”

My weak smile quickly flowered into a bright, beaming one as Falcha poked and prodded at me, knowing all of my most vulnerable tickling spots. Any negative thoughts I might’ve had were pushed into the back of my mind, disappearing on arrival. “It does indeed, babe! Well, what are we waiting for? Adventure awaits!”

Letting the children stay at home with the goblin nanny, the two of us ventured out into uncharted territory. I donned what I believed to be optimal gear for the expedition, though when Falcha exited the changing room, my jaw nearly dropped.

What could generously be referred to as an “outfit” on Falcha was some sort of bikini, but one somehow even more scantily-clad than its contemporaries. A strange metal of sorts roamed around her body in chunks, leaving portions of Falcha’s naked body visible for fleeting moments before their glimmering surface covered them once again. The blotches, while in perpetual motion, did appear to group up generally around her private areas, though it only further served to taunt me as my eyes darted for openings in the cracks.

My mouth remained agape as tantalizing glimpses of impossibly full breasts, deliciously sculpted stomach, and taut, silky thigh were revealed for brief moments by the ever-shifting metal. It seemed almost catered to the idea of a nebulous male gaze, one that was ever present and existed solely to be satisfied at all times. But then again… the male gaze and lesbian gaze did have a lot in common.

“What? This outfit gives me a special defense against fire damage,” Falcha replied, noting my dumbfounded expression. “We’re sure to run into traps of that nature on our journey!”

All I could do in response was nod like an idiot, still gobsmacked by her lack of shame.

Shame… Why would a woman feel shame for being naked? Why did I think that?

No, best not to think about it! After all, we had a long trek ahead of us!

It was relatively peaceful for the first hour or so. Sunlight still pierced the treeline and most underleveled creatures knew better than to face down two humans during the day.

But as we ventured farther and the thick treeline began to swallow the sun, the creatures became less afraid of us. Beasts of larger caliber began to emerge from the bushes and attack. But the two of us weren’t frightened, if anything, we were exhilarated! A life of thrilling combat in pursuit of fortune and glory, a worthy life to pursue.

While I still didn’t understand why her outfit specifically looked like that, Falcha’s enchanted liquid metal provided great defense as we battled foes, materializing as various shields independent of her actions to block attacks she simply couldn’t have anticipated.

As soon as a brief respite from combat occurred, Falcha ran to me with worry, desperately checking every inch of my body, fearful that I was hurt.

“You’re… completely unharmed? But that beast from earlier tore a huge gash through your back!” Running my finger past it, my clothes had been absolutely shredded, three large claw marks ran up the entirety of my dress’ back. Though curiously, my skin remained pristine and untouched. Maybe it just missed me? I couldn’t even recall being attacked at any point during the heat of battle. I certainly didn’t feel it…

“Well, just be more careful next time, my love. I don’t know what I’d do if I lost you,” Falcha said.

I know what I’d do if I lost you. Came an errant thought. I… wasn’t sure why it came to me, but it had. Best to just think little of it, as it would distract me from the adventure at hand.

After a little while longer we arrived at the cave entrance, though not without a caveat. A group of wandering Orcs had made camp around the entrance, using it as shelter.

“Maybe they’ll just let us by if we leave them alone,” I suggested.

“No. They’re Orcs,” my wife replied, surprisingly definitively. “They can’t be reasoned with.”

“No, that… that can’t be right…” I said, though I wasn’t quite sure why. Falcha’s confused expression seemed to agree.

“Babe, c’mon, everyone knows that Orcs aren’t people like us. They’re just brutes without the brainpower to peacefully coexist with others. That’s like, grade one knowledge.”

But that… didn’t sound right. Why would a people with their own language, culture and civilization be unable to coexist? Why would they be viewed as lesser or inferior? What kind of utopia was this!?

But then, my train of thought was derailed as an arrow whizzed by my head, breaking against Falcha’s malleable armor. She whimpered in fear as some of the arrow’s splintering shards shattered into her skin. Turns out, we weren’t exactly having a quiet conversation and alerted some unwanted, green-skinned company.

The sight of my wife in distress enraged me beyond reason. The Orcs attacked her with intent to kill, now I would attack the Orcs, though they would not be able to mitigate my intentions.

I clenched my hand into a fist in front of me, and the archer Orc’s rib cage was crushed like an aluminum can as two nearby bushes on opposite sides of him rammed into his torso at high speeds. The remaining encampment began to disperse out of fear, realizing they had just messed with a sorceress beyond their comprehension. But I wouldn’t let them escape. No, they had already committed an unforgivable sin against me.

They ran into the trees to hide, attempting to throw me off their trail. But little did they know that I controlled the trees. While I had studied to be a Chloromancer, what my body was suddenly capable of surprised even me. I could barely lift the pedal of a flower with my herbakinesis, but now the entire forest obeyed my every whim.

Snake-like roots erupted from the ground, encasing the fleeing orcs in cocoons which would become their tombs. I could’ve waited until they suffocated, but that wasn’t good enough. The root entrapments squeezed tighter and tighter, until blood began to ooze from the creases. I only stopped once my peripheral vision caught a glimpse of Falcha’s disturbed face.

I immediately stopped everything I was doing, rushing to her side. “F-Falcha, are you okay, are you hurt in any way?”

“Reyla, wh-what the hell was that!?” my wife asked, just as confused as I was.

“I-I’m not sure…” I paused, taking a second to actually process what had just happened. “How… how did I do all of that?”

I checked my stats, though the number that popped up seemed unable to make up its mind. It seemed to frequent around the 41st level, one which my wife shared, but every second or so it would flash into a number so large I simply couldn’t read it with how quickly it had appeared only to vanish again.

“I don’t understand, why is your counter bugging out like that? I can’t even think of someone throughout all of history who’s made it past 999,”

“Sorry 'babe,' it’s because she’s my playmate now,” came an unexpected voice in response to my wife, one that instantly snapped me out of my trance. Instantly, my level 41 moniker rose in value exponentially, surpassing quintillions of levels before short-circuiting the counter altogether as my memories flooded back to me and I recognized this reality for the farce it was.

“Die.”

“Heehee, in the flesh, Rey-Rey!”

“R-Reyla, wh-what’s going on?” said a confused Falcha, only I wasn’t able to answer her question before the arrow that had failed to pierce her earlier reformed as if time was being reversed upon it, before piercing directly through her armor and becoming lodged within her skull. Her body sputtered twice, gurgling as one of her eyes filled up with blood, before she collapsed on the ground, being killed instantly.

I had now witnessed my wife die for the fourth time. I would say it was starting to grow stale, but… I just couldn’t stand to see the love of my life perish again after getting her back again, no matter how imperfect the surrounding world was.

“I still don’t understand, why are you so committed to torturing me? Reliving the same scenario over and over?” I asked with tears in my eyes, not really expecting a response. To my surprise, Die actually answered my question, though it was as unsatisfying as I should have expected.

“Becaaause, silly goose, the die told me to! Or, more accurately, rolled me to!” I would’ve groaned at her wordplay if I wasn’t either permanently bereft or enraged with Die in my presence.

“You… you’ve done all this… just because random chance told you too!?” I lashed out, even as reality around me begged and whined for me to conform. “All of this distinct, personalized suffering, all on a whim!?”

“Yeppers! That’s pretty much the gist of it. I sometimes wing it here or there depending on what seems more fun to me, but whatever the die says is fun to me! It always picks correct, especially if it’s something I don’t even know I want!”

“I bet that die would never roll an instance where you perish and I get my life back,” I spat through gritted teeth.

Diane adopted a smug, cat-like smile, like she knew the answer was yes but wanted to remain within the realm of plausible deniability just to fuck with me further. “Oh, why don’t we find out right now, hmm?”

With a mighty roll of the dice, it spun around within her chest cavity far longer than its contemporaries. Knowing that it would just be more of the same, I attempted to stop the roll short, putting all my effort into speed as I tried to chase Diane down to no avail. Even when I thought I had gotten close, I hadn’t. She had managed to dodge my grapple with fractions of a planck second to spare or simply block my attacks outright with attacks of her own that simply didn’t seem powerful enough to do so. The forest around us was reduced to a wasteland as I unleashed everything I had at her, not that it would matter.

It was like entering the ring against a professional athlete. Even if we were the same weight class and theoretically could have the same results, she simply had more training and experience than I did. She’d been an unstoppable goddess for significantly longer than I had, I was sure of that.

The die slowed to a stop like a game show wheel, finally setting upon western-styled cowboy hat. Once more, the world went black, only to be inundated with the piercing yellow of a heat stroke-inducing sunrise. The multicolored terracotta of the canyons were baked orange in its haze as the massive ball of fiery death blanketed its warmth as far as the eye could see.

I wiped the beads of sweat off my brow in one fell motion of my salt-stained sleeves. It was tough being a lesbian in the wild west, but in our small town, it barely felt like an issue. While the nebulous time period was somewhere around the Civil War, this little borough somehow managed to be a hotspot for minority groups being able to express themselves freely, far removed from the horrors of combat and human debauchery.

The echoes of a soft banjo played over the hills. It was peaceful, pristine—dare I say it, perfect. Maybe even a u-

No, I wouldn’t go that far.

“Howdy, dear, what’s ail’n yew t’day?” Falcha, my lovely wife, asked, taking note of my thousand-yard stare. “Yew’ve barely tilled the ground here! Not that we’re really rushin’ fer food ‘r anythin’, we’ve got quite the surplus!”

That was true, most necessities were accounted for. While work could be grueling at times, it kept us honest.

“Nothing’s ailing me, sweetheart, I just… I’m appreciating the sunrise, is all.” I replied. For some reason, I didn’t share the thick Texan accent of Falcha. I could force myself to do it, but I just knew that it wasn’t my voice.

It wasn’t my… anything…

Nothing here was my anything.

That’s right… None of this was real. All a mere illusion of perfection that Die would inevitably come to squash, if I didn’t do it myself first. This time, I had sussed it out in thirty seconds flat.

But maybe… maybe I could enjoy it my way. Before Die showed up and ruined everything. To do that, however, I’d have to quell the nagging voice in the back of my head. The one that knew this was a false utopia, and that people were suffering unjustly in the world.

I rocketed into action, frightening my “wife” as I casually floated up into the sky without as much as a twitch from my form. I honed my powerful hearing, deafening all my other senses. If a Civil War really was taking place, I’d surely be able to hear the sound of erupting gunpowder. Sure enough, I picked up on canonfire in the east.

I left my poor, confused Falcha in the dust as I zipped into the horizon. Traveling at speeds too fast for human perception. When I arrived at the scene, the sonic boom of me suddenly appearing in the dky knocked all the soldiers off of their feet. I might have overdone it a bit, some of them didn’t get back up. Oh well.

I slowly descended from the air, giving the remaining combatants quite the surreal view. My farm girl clothes couldn’t withstand such blinding speeds, leaving me effectively in the nude.

“Now, remind me, which one of you wants to keep people enslaved?” my booming voice pondered, frightening them further. My squinted eyes alternated between the men in blue uniforms on the left and the men in gray uniforms on the right. All it took was one of the blue-clad generals to frighteningly point at his opponents for me to make up my mind.

“Ah, very well. Now you die.”

I could tell they were confused as even my declaration of their demise was delivered in the same cheerful cadence as the rest of my rambles. However, when I suddenly jetted forward, only to make a dead stop before one of the nearest gray-clad men and obliterate him with a knee to the crotch, that changed everyone’s tune.

They began to scatter like cockroaches to my divine light, alas, they were far less durable. I zigged and zagged from person to person, pausing just long enough for the helpless victims to comprehend who exactly was bringing about their demise before I personally removed them from this mortal plane.

I allowed myself a bit of fun physics-trickery as I gripped a man by the neck from behind to hold him in place, only to flick my finger against his back. I had angled him in such a way that his rib cage exploded, sending several bone fragments piercing through the skulls of nearby soldiers. Killing two birds with one stone—or, more accurately, six soldiers with one bone.

Several men from the union side desperately fired their rifles at me while my back was turned. At this point, I couldn’t help but laugh at how comically ineffective their retaliation was.

“Do you fuckers know who I am!?” I shouted, causing all of the men to grip their ears in pain from my volume even as I remained with my back to them. “I travel through fucking alternate dimensions! I’ve had nukes and futuristic machinery fail to make a dent against my perfect, sexy skin. This…well, this is somehow a rung below a complete and utter embarrassment!”

A twitch of my head and every gun became useless. Their wood rotting and metal rusting beyond repair. Only then did I finally turn around to address them with my perfect eyes.

My bent knees straightened, my hands finding their place at my hips as I rose to my full height, my intense blue-silver gaze boring into each of the stunned blue-clad soldiers. “Now, to all those who are not experiencing shock at this moment, please relay this message to your superiors: I, Reyla, will bring a swift end to this war. After doing so, I ask that they abandon their imperialistic and capitalistic notions for a more humanitarian perspective on life. Otherwise, they will understand suffering like nothing else. Am I being clear?”

A few men nodded. I was fairly certain one of them had died standing up due to sudden heart failure.

I wasted no time ensuring that they understood the memo. I was sure they could figure out what would happen if they ignored my demands. I had more skirmishes to settle, after all.

It would only be a matter of time before she showed up. That much I knew for certain. What I couldn’t ascertain was how much time I’d have until that happened. She probably expected me to become familiar with this reality, like I had with the previous two, going on little adventures and whatnot until she would show up and wreak havoc.

If I wanted this war to end before Diane showed up. I couldn’t afford to pick favorites. I sped through the plains, carpet bombing all who stood below me before the term would even come into existence. Eventually, I arrived at what I believed to be the central authority of the Confederacy, some random and pitiful fort that several leads pointed me towards after I had twisted their spines—rather literally—for information.

I was making good time, perhaps I could take a moment to enjoy this encounter…

I could hear the men within the fort scrambling in fear from the strange intruder at their doorstep that clearly didn’t belong. Not because I descended from the sky nor because I was not adorned in the traditional garb of an American at the time, but because I was a woman. To them at this time period, my ilk were better known for staying barefoot and pregnant in the home, though if they were interested in a closeup of my bare foot, I would be happy to provide it at 300,000 kilometers per second towards their faces.

I used a subtle amount of X-Ray vision to peer beyond the cobbled brick—and by “subtle” I meant an ample dose of radiation that wouldn’t kill them for at least another five years, though I would ensure they’d never live to see that day. How merciful of me. I could have expunged a bit more effort to ensure that the men were never exposed to radiation at all, but I didn’t care enough to do so. These people weren’t worth it anyways.

“Buttress those doors, you fools!” The man at the highest rank demanded. Sergeants of all statuses did as they were told, understanding that I was no mere woman and that precautions usually reserved for an entire army were to be expended at once, even though it wouldn’t matter much.

Six dozen men held counterweights against the door. I almost felt bad for how effortless this was going to be. Well, no. Not really.

“Knock, knock, anyone home?” I pondered in my best airheaded, valley girl voice, before rapping the door with my fist twice. The entire front side of the fort was already blasted to bits from the first knock, but the gesture felt incomplete without the second, even as it brushed up against nothing but debris-choked air. The men within the fort who had hidden behind cover could not have anticipated the walls and ceiling collapsing in and burying them. I giggled as my flawless nude form strode past the mangled corpses of the men. If only civil disputes were always this easy!

If there was one aspect of the fort’s design I had to begrudgingly give these guys credit for, it would be the integration of an underground hideout. Sure, it was no match for my enhanced vision, but it spared the men below from a fate that the men above simply couldn’t have avoided.

I knew that the rubble blocking the exit would certainly rile up the detestable creatures below, so I fell deathly silent, concentrating to see what they were chatting about.

The apparent leader of them, a man whose name plate read “Robert E. Lee”, tried his best to calm the nerves of his frightened cohorts. Though based on his brain activity, he too seemed to be freaking out, barely containing himself above the surface.

“Men, I say, best contain yourselves!” he spoke. “This could be a union trick, perhaps the woman was a distraction for some sort of bomb array. Are you all sure you even witnessed this woman?”

A trick? Oh, I wouldn’t let the union take all my credit like that! Without any warning, I began to descend downwards into the earth, the rock and metal forced to chip and shatter under my mightiness.

One of Lee’s top scouts seemed to take notice of me. “Sir! She’s—!”

He wouldn’t get a chance to finish that report, as I walked right through his unimportant, pathetic body, erupting it into a red rain of organs and viscera.

“D-dear God!” was all the General could muster out of his fat little mouth.

“Oh I assure you if there’s a god in this room with you, it’s not the one you’re thinking of,” I said ominously, flicking a piece of jawbone off of my shoulder sourced from the previously exploded man. “Anyways, I just wanted to drop by and say that your stupid, racist army was demolished by a proud lesbian with a more diverse heritage than I care to indulge. And you failed nation-state wouldn’t have lasted more than four years anyways. Bye.”

With a dismissive brush of my hand, I atomized Lee, as well as a good chunk of the eastern seaboard of America. Not like anyone would miss it, really. After all, those colonies were due for a fresh start anyways. One that didn’t involve stealing land from people who were already living there.

I exited the ruins of the fort, feeling mildly proud of myself. Even though I would have preferred to live in a utopia from the get go, having a world I could fix was pretty satisfying as well. Hopefully, I still had enough time to return to Falcha before—

Well, nevermind.

Before me stood a rather pouty Diane. Her arms crossed in disapproval as she stared me down. Clearly, destroying roughly 2,500 square kilometers of land was enough to catch her attention. I just sighed and rolled my eyes, ready for apathy to consume me once more as Diane reset the world once more.

“Aww man, you’re no fun! You say you won’t join me… then you go and do my job for me, only you’re not in despair!” Die said, an exaggerated pout coming to her face. “The chance die keeps rolling utopias for you to live in—ones that I can later destroy—and you haven’t appreciated any of them!”

That reignited my anger. “You dare call these worlds perfect!?” I shouted, channeling more passionate ferocity in my breath than I somehow ever had before. “I’ve seen a perfect world. I’ve lived in it most of my life! These so-called utopias you uselessly generate are rife with suffering and despair!”

I punctuated my anger by distorting the world around me, absorbing it into myself as I had countless times before. I was surprised to see that, behind the curtains of this reality, was the fantasy world. All of its assets were still in play, merely hidden in the nebulous idea of a background behind the wild west setting. I didn’t hesitate to absorb it too. What was one more world of false promises? As expected, behind that reality was the sitcom blackness, and as also expected, it too was channeled into my ever-beautifying body.

Then I saw it. Something I never thought I’d ever see in my life.

Die, for the briefest of infinitesimal moments, was surprised—and not in a “pleasant” kind of way.

In that very moment, she had come to the very same horrifying revelation that I had. Though I would have recharacterized it as deeply, deeply cathartic. Whatever affront to reality she could summon was mere set dressing. She hadn’t dodged my attacks earlier, persay, merely overlapped a universe atop the old one where my attack had missed. Normally, this was an effective method of reality manipulation, only the two of us realized at the same time that said reality manipulation involved creating the very thing I had already effortlessly consumed billions of. Not to mention, her tricks were rapidly growing stale on me.

She desperately attempted to dull my memory and trap me in another so-called utopia, but I was quicker on the draw. I destabilized the reality before it could even manifest, absorbing it all into my body faster than Die could summon it. At first, I believed I simply didn’t have the experience of being a goddess to contend with Die, but being able to nullify her only method of attacking helped me realize that it—alongside most of her existence—was all for mere show. Now I was the one who found laughter coming to her lips, though it took the form of a reserved chuckle, one that spelled out “you’re so fucked” in no uncertain terms.

There had never been legs as endless nor as shapely as mine. There had never been breasts as heavenly as the gravity-defying orbs upon my chest. There had never been a physique as chiseled, a body as ravishingly sensual as mine had become. All Diane could do to counterattack was spin that stupid die, and all it could do was make me more powerful as its infinite potential siphoned directly into my perfect form.

My arm lifted up, appearing in slow motion, the sheer power within it igniting the atmosphere—or, more accurately, lack of it—as it reached towards my nemesis. She put up universe after universe, but I knew better now. They were mere illusions, sordid obfuscations from the immutable truth: that this bitch was outclassed by me.

Die put her hand up in a desperate, last-ditch attempt to hinder my attack, but her flesh, blood and bones simply melted like butter and evaporated into nothingness when they came into contact with mine. Her chest die kept desperately summoning scenarios to put me through, as if it too wanted to see me fail above all else. I simply never let such rushed and poorly-constructed realities come to pass, the best they could offer was being absorbed into me and empowering me further.

The sensation of warmth, of incredible, delicious, sensual power tickled through my body, my musculature sculpting into levels of invulnerability neither of us could truly comprehend. None of that mattered. My hand pierced through her chest cavity’s defenses as effortlessly as it had her arm, my perfect, slender fingers curling around her chance totem.

“P-please! You can’t do this! We—we need each other!” Diane desperately begged, realizing that she was about to lose everything. “You complete me! Order and chaos on a multi-galactic scale! We’re destined to fight for the rest of time!”

“I don’t care about any of that. You killed my family. You ruined my utopia. Worst of all, you can’t even be useful enough to offer a viable replica of one.”

“B-but, you’re thinking so small about this! We could be titans! There are endless families of yours out there! Endless utopias! They don’t matter! Revenge is so short-sighted!”

For someone I initially mistook as a nihilist, she clearly valued her own life, as well as her place in the universe. Die certainly didn’t want to die. I think I hated her even more now.

“Like I said, I don't care about any of that.”

I clenched my fist as tightly as I could, then yanked. If only it was her heart. Diane screamed in bloody agony as her source of power was violently ripped out of her. The sheer force of my tug pulled several organ chunks and shards of rib cage out alongside it, the giblets floating throughout the vacuum of space as Diane’s body fell limp. Without her precious little artifact, she was no different from anyone else—a bloated, frozen corpse that was quickly suffocating to death.

But that wasn’t where her story would get to end. That would be too merciful. When I had first encountered her on my earth and she killed my wife’s spirit in front of me, she had insinuated that a mere mortal couldn’t replicate such an action. But I was no longer a mere mortal. A thousand years honing one’s chakras in a low-oxygen environment? Try a few seconds. Another thousand years learning to call them to one’s location through spirit throat summoning? Finished before the last sentence was finished. Another another thousand years practicing astral projection to interact with the spirits themselves? Done before that sentence had even begun.

Diane’s ethereal spirit wasn’t even granted a second to process its own existence before I came down upon her with everything I had. My vicious, universe-spanning attacks clawed through her existence, unwavered by such limitations as time-space linearity or the laws of reality.

Her ghostly shrieks were slowly diminished as I broke the barriers of every known dimension just to deliver my godly vengeance upon her. I left no atom untouched, ensuring that every fiber of her being was sufficiently terminated with extreme prejudice. I alternated my methods between that of a beastly cavewoman and a ethically bankrupt surgeon, precise strikes and sweeping generalized blows complimenting each other as her quarks discovered my wrath. I wouldn’t be satisfied until she was string theory confirmed, but I made sure that her last conscious experience was my shrapnel chest spike piercing directly through her ghostly skull. Her pathetic whimpers became gurgles as Diane perished a second time over.

Silence permeated the empty, desolate space around me. It was over. It was finally over.

I took a deep sigh of relief out of instinct. The universe contorted to my whims as my lungs filled with stardust. The universe was finally at peace.

“I did it, Falcha. You and the children can rest easy now. Die can’t torment you anymore.”

I manifested a trio of graves on a nearby planet, the headstones were made out of solid curium, Falcha’s favorite element out of the entire periodic table. I wasn’t sure how long I spent sitting by those empty tombs, mementos of the life I could never get back. I didn’t shed any more tears. For as depressing of a situation as it was, I knew that I had gotten as close to closure as I could.

A great weight had been lifted off my shoulders. Sure, I had been told again and again that “revenge isn’t the answer!” and that “it’s a cyclical form of violence” but I was beginning to realize just how big of a load of BS that all was. Sure, that may have applied to humans and their meager squabbles, but I was a goddess. I decimated what I wanted to and now my biggest competitor had just been wiped out.

I was simply too thorough for loose ends.

…Right?

…

…Right?

I felt something. I could only describe it as a looming sense of dread. A booming of drums in my ear, an unrelenting low vibration in my brain. I looked over my shoulder, my breath bated.

My eyes frantically looked about the remains of the empty universe… only it wasn’t empty. There was a definitive presence here—somewhere. It felt distant and vague, but its presence was unmistakable.

I stood up from my respectful kneel, assuming a more prepared stance. Despite my body being unphased by a supernova, I could feel my hairs standing up on end.

Then, the presence multiplied. Was it several assailants? No. All the energy was being excreted from the same place. It didn’t add up at first, but my advanced brain quickly pieced it together—this new adversary’s power was so overwhelming that I could detect it even when they were likely thousands of universes away.

Whoever this was, they were dangerous, they were out for blood and they were gunning for me.

9,000 universes away.

I stood my ground, the universe locking in place around my feet.

5,000 universes away.

I called upon all the known energy that I could conjure, draining all of the universes behind me into a cacophony of power.

2,000 universes away.

My beauty was radiant, blinding, unopposed, as was my rage.

1,000 universes away.

Whoever this new asshole was, they wouldn’t stand a chance.

500 universes away.

My senses dulled time around me, focusing everything I had on making sure I’d strike this bitch down before they even got a chance to-

-1 universes away.

My senses went haywire like a confused, ancient GPS as I tried to make sense of what had just happened. It generated results the fastest—as a screeching pain in my body was quick to follow. Reality and physics finally caught up afterwards, blood and metal exploding from my stomach as a horrific gash erupted deep within my core.

I understood immediately that my shrapnel-laden torso was the only reason I was still alive at that very moment.

I grunted as my posture faltered, my legs nearly failing me even though I was floating inches off the ground. The mere attack of this enemy had been dealt with more intent behind it than anything in the previous fight with Die.

Any regeneration abilities I could have utilized weren’t working. It was as if they now recognized my fractured form as a default which did not require fixing. I fell to my knees, unable to maintain my form as my infinitely powerful body tore a wormhole in reality as soon as its unrestrained weight made contact with the planet’s surface beneath me.

But whoever had dealt this near-fatal blow would not allow me to warp away so easily. My arm was fiercely gripped by an all-too-familiar hand—and that’s because it was my hand.

Another hand wrapped its lithe fingers around my throat, turning my head towards, well, myself.

She was me, same in beauty in grace as I was, like looking in a mirror. The only thing she didn’t share was the shrapnel that I had jutting out of her chest. Instead, she had a massive scar that tore diagonally across her face, which completed a greater scar that her shoulder seemed to share.

“Remember me, you piece of shit?” She spat, vitriol in her voice. I couldn’t muster a response, not only because her nails were digging into my trachea, but because I simply didn’t know what to say. I couldn’t remember who this was, appearance notwithstanding. I had killed so many on my quest for vengeance, that even someone who looked exactly like me and probably went through a similar experience to me felt like a stranger I didn’t care enough about to bother empathizing with.

When I didn’t answer, she attempted to jog my memory. “I don’t care that you broke into my house, I don’t care that you frightened my children…. But Dianne was the love of my life. You took her away from me. Now, I will take everything away from you.” Ah, so that’s who this was. I must’ve forgotten to dispose of my alternate self upon finding that near-identical earth.

I attempted a retort. After a waterfall of blood erupted from my mouth, I was barely able to gurgle out a response. “I’ve… already… lost… everything.”

The alternate Reyla was taken aback, pivoting twice on her back foot and releasing me from her grasp. At that moment, it was as if her hyper-advanced brain went through all five stages of grief in a millisecond of a millisecond, recognizing the cycle of torment she’d be perpetuating should she continue down this path. She backed up further from me, as if I was a cursed omen. Maybe I was.

“If you’ve already lost everything, then letting you live would be far greater of a punishment.” Alternate Reyla spoke, her eyes narrowing in disgust at the sight of me. Her other arm—the one not currently choking me—lit up with an ethereal blue aura, using a fraction of her power to heal what would have been a fatal wound. She then sent me adrift throughout the endless cosmos, my beautiful buxom body reflecting off of stars’ light as it remained motionless. Not because it couldn’t move, but because I refused to let it move.

I had overcome my greatest adversary, only to be reminded just how ultimately powerless I was in the grand scope of anything. But I had been spared, and as I quickly learned, that was not a destiny many of my ilk seemed to share. The slow and steady rotation of my limp body allowed my eyes to catch a glimpse of Alternate Reyla’s fate. An alternate Falcha, one distinct from my own, caught Alternate Reyla off-guard with a devastating punch into her gut, one that tore right through her body, Alternate Falcha’s arm erupting from the woman’s back, soaked in blood and viscera.

This alternate Falcha then leaned in close, whispering something so quiet and personal into Alternate Reyla’s ear that I couldn’t make out, even with my advanced hearing that could detect a fly’s buzzing from fifteen universes over. That being said, I knew what it was. I could practically read it on her gritted teeth. Alternate Reyla had wronged this alternate Falcha, probably in the same way that Die had wronged me and that I had wronged my very own alternate. Only this Falcha didn’t choose to be merciful in her attempted execution, continuing to punch holes into Alternate Reyla’s stomach until her pristine white dress was Swiss cheese and red wine.

Alternate Falcha was then flanked by an Alternate Die, another one. She tackled my near-identical wife, reality twisting around them from this newest alternate’s raging fury. Slash after slash of supremely sharp fingernails tore through spacetime and bits of Falcha all the same. This vengeance-filled alternate was not so subtle in her distaste for her victim, but the words simply drifted in one of my ears and out the other. It didn’t matter what she claimed it to be, I knew what her motivation truly was—same as all the rest of them.

As one could probably guess, this went on for a while. Near-omnipotent women stabbing each other in the back as that “near” status was called further and further into question.

While I had wanted the cycle to end with Die, I couldn’t even be sure if it had started with her. Ultimately, she got what she wanted. Chaos. Random chaos. Spread as far as the advanced eye could see. Alternate Falchas, Dies, Reylas, among other miscellaneous, powerful women. There was even some sort of man I didn’t recognize? I suppose that proves once and for all that the universe really is infinite. They were all tearing each other apart in an absurd race to see who could have the last laugh of vengeance, all the while their pocket of the multiverse decayed from abuse.

A stray black hole sucked me into its orbit. I drifted about it like a leaf in a lazy river, closing my eyes as it pulled me beyond the darkness. I didn’t resist as it tried and failed to pull my perfect body apart, my soul as bereft as the middle of the gravitational phenomena.

There was nothing left for me here. There was nothing left for me in any universe. I was just one of many trapped in a cruel cycle of death and vengeance. Somehow, I had managed to survive in spite of my horrid atrocities, but that didn’t bring my Falcha back. Even the graves I made to immortalize my family were most certainly desecrated in the war of the alternates.

I checked my hand. The chance die was still clenched tightly in my palm. It called to me with its allure, though I knew it had no intrinsic addictive properties of its own. That was my doing. My own mind was calling out to it, craving its destructive decision making.

I needed it. I needed it. Some sense of purpose, no matter how nebulous or lackluster it ultimately was. What little amount of humanity that still resided within my jaded heart desired it more than anything. If this cruel, deceptively finite universe wouldn’t let me die or find peace, then I would make that its problem.

With a single hand, I tore the shrapnel out of my chest. It didn’t matter how enhanced it was, I didn’t care about the pain anymore. The massive gash in my chest was far larger than the one Diane had, but the dice block wasn’t picky. I slipped it in between the red innards, the strange material fitting perfectly. Strands of energy poured out of the small cube, embedding themselves within my supple flesh. Diane’s power was added atop my own. There was no denying now that I was one of the most powerful creatures in existence, if not completely omnipotent.

All that remained was chance. Fate left to the randomized wall of lava lamps of the universe. I pressed my perfectly manicured finger up to the bone-white surface of the die, taking one last deep breath of my own volition before I subjected myself to the whims of luck.

I gave it a spin. Only then did I finally find a smile growing upon my face.