{During this chapter I refer to the union of the Goblin Force and Madelyne Pryor as They/Them, it, or She/Her, it's done on purpose because they are fused but the body is female. It's meant to be confusing, but it's always referring to the Goblin Queen.}
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Point Nemo
Aragorn sealed the skeleton—which was quickly turning human—inside a crystal, like the one used for Mephistopheles-616, and sent him to Halo.
He then used the extradimensional energy he stole from the devils, and also while using their essence inside him as a medium he pulled as much as he could from their respective hell domains without collapsing them.
Millions of hell dimensions and domains throughout the multiverse quickly dried up and almost collapsed due to energy depletion in seconds!
With this excess of infernal energy, he began to preload the banishing spell to attempt to send the Goblin Force into a more desirable location. He was thinking about The Far Shore as the leading option.
The Far Shore was the furthest point anyone, except the One Above All, could reach before encountering the barrier that kept The Void outside.
It was far enough from everything and close enough to the multiversal barrier so he could drag the thing to The Void in case it needed some defeating.
Just in case, because he was well aware that he couldn't defeat this undying force at the moment... and he wasn't entirely sure he could keep it away from his home universe; its mastery of sorcery complicated things that way.
If it was up to him he would have preferred to send it to one of the domains of his bosses, but those places were unreachable by your run-of-the-mill spell. More drastic measures were needed to succeed in this enterprise.
Then, despite his SurfaceSelf's reluctance, he did what was necessary. He spread his psionic presence throughout the entire planet.
With a nigh-undetectable surge of a wave of his psionic energy, he scanned the planet for an imprint as similar to Jean's as possible and at least as potent as his, one filled with hellish corruption and an unquenchable desire for consumption.
As nigh-undetectable as it might have been, telepaths and sorcerers versed in the study of the mind felt it, and the select few skilled enough understood its significance. A certain elder goddess, in particular, felt how his energy permeated every part of her and couldn't help but blush—an almost imperceptible blush.
This was not the time to pull punches, Aragorn concentrated an touched as many minds as possible.
A second or two later he found it... He jumped to Genosha's air space and saw the thing floating above the country of slaves.
A redheaded woman with long flowing hair. She was scantily dressed in a revealing black outfit that exposed her midriff and had a dramatic open black cloak flowing around her. She had red orbs of light for her eyes.
Red light bled through cracks in her chest, originating from the vertex of the Pandemonium Cube that peeked out from between her breasts. Where the cube was encrusted, it looked like a rhombus-shaped gem rather than a cube, since most of it was embedded beneath her flesh.
She was Madelyne Pryor, but contrary to what was expected, her age seemed older than Jean's. Her physical appearance placed her at around 30 years old, and unlike the teen Jean, she was done growing up.
Whether this was the result of Nathaniel Essex or the cube it was unclear, but this body served as the best receptacle for the powers and might of the Goblin Force.
Undoubtedly so, the cube was done corrupting the clone's body, and the girl and the Goblin Force were barely holding it together, they were about to burst into a rampage.
Subconsciously, she was already eating at the energy and matter in the atmosphere, the air was dry and cold due to the absorption of the heat energy, and there was this violent blizzard moving towards them and then disappearing into her body as they ate it, creating a suction force that threatened to fade the atmosphere and leave the planet to the mercy of the vacuum of space and the radiation of the Sun.
All of this considered, there was an eerie calm to them, like a predator that stills just before pouncing on unsuspecting prey. But unlike the predator with a clear aim in hunting, they had no such purpose; the closest thing to an objective might have been 'Rampage'.
To make matters worse... Reality was cracking and glitching around them. The weight this entity brought to reality was over the tolerable limit, so Aragorn used some of his void energy to purposely reinforce his universe, at least temporarily so.
Yes, they stood unmoving, floating in front of Aragorn, but around them, under Aragorn's eyes, reality was warping, breaking, remaking, and glitching. For this entity, space-time appeared to be as binding as a suggestion.
Wasting no time, Aragorn shot his banishing spell and cast them away, he jumped outside his universe. He grabbed hold of the whole thing with his psionic energy and energy control, enclosed it within one of his barriers, and then attempted to move it out of its natural position within the multiverse...
But he stopped... Because the thing was back. The instant it took him to banish them and then exit his home universe was enough for them to return... and in such a manner, he lost the advantage he harvested from The Council of Red after almost three years of continuous fighting.
Under the boost in power and reach of the Pandemonium Cube, what before was Cosmic Teleportation, now was Absolute Teleportation—otherwise, they wouldn't have been able to teleport from a place outside the Cosmos with their Cosmic Teleportation—and in its delicate state, after appearing in a hostile zone, it followed its instinctual drive and returned to its previous location—within Aragorn's universe.
Aragorn returned to Earth and stood in front of them... Their stillness was no more. Shadows born out of them dripped to the ground like blood flowing out of her long legs. These 'drops' of shadows fell to the ground and transformed into all manner of demons and goblins.
Aragorn made a few portals—with Madagascar as their destination—and forced the inhabitants of Genosha and their slaves to run to them. He mind-controlled them to run as orderly as possible and to abandon the sick and old, the only ones of the unable to move who were given preferential treatment were those who could be carried, so most children were dragged by the nearest adult into the portals.
Aragorn then had his psionic clone—who was posing as Alduin in Re-Nazca—teleport to his location, then he turned into his dragon form and had the clone turn into his humanoid form.
The clone moved bellow and—as Aragorn had programmed it—it began to fight the demons and goblins and help the population evacuate., hoping it might be able to save some of the stragglers and those left behind.
This all happened simultaneously as the Goblin Queen was about to start its rampage, it began to release psionic energy—which Aragorn had to influence to flow into his direction and consumed to try and mitigate the damage it would have brought onto the planet—and then it appeared to be loading an attack... its disintegration waves.
Just before it released its disintegration waves, Aragorn created a cubic barrier encasing both of them.
*Fwooshh*- The suction force escalated in magnitude.
Black physical misty shadows were born from the Goblin Queen in a wave-like motion and then all the air inside the barrier was no more.
The principle of mass-energy conservation was broken and the vacuum inside the bubble was the result.
"AaHHh—GggAHH—@%%%%%%%%"- What started as a cry of murder ended in a sound similar to a screaming Ramiel. {From Evangelion}
A blast of concussive force, powerful enough to shatter a planet—or ten—was sent towards the only target available—Aragorn.
Aragorn responded in kind by expressionlessly raising his hand and blasting his own shot of concussive force. Both forces with enough power to shatter planets met, and in this junction of destruction space was warped and a temporary singularity was born.
Aragorn wasted no time and—as the only one with enough presence of mind—moved instantaneously to the singularity and grabbed it. He then flashed in front of them and shoved it toward the cube in their chest.
Aragorn guessed that even if he couldn't overpower it at least he should be able to remove the buff the cube was granting her, and even if he could not, sometimes manipulating a thinking target it's easier than a chaotic one.
But she simply teleported out of the barrier. Which they could have done since the beginning but because of their rampaging state they didn't.
Aragorn's hand grew a mouth and ate the singularity to erase it with his breath, if he was not careful with it, it might have swallowed the planet.
Simultaneously, outside the barrier, an instant after they teleported, a blade made of shadows burst above their head in existence. It was long enough that the end of it was outside of the exosphere.
Making it clearly visible for half of the planet to witness in fright.
The woman grabbed the blade from above her and brought it down violently in a single unstoppable fluid motion.
Aragorn looked above after having erased the singularity and his body exploded in a blinding light. Light which he then shaped into a solid shield of hard light above Genosha and protected the planet from certain annihilation.
The shadow blade descended on the shield like the judgment of the darkened heavens.
The shadow moved without disturbing the atmosphere in complete silence until it clashed with the shield.
*BOOOMM—*- Aragorn protected the terrain, but he couldn't protect the atmosphere.
The explosive wave released from the clash between the nigh-unstoppable force and the inviolable object spread out, signaling to the world that its survival was at stake in this battle. The Barrier collapsed in the aftermath initially dampening some of the shockwave.
But the suction force left behind the now-destroyed barrier—because there was no matter left inside it—only served to make things worse.
Layers of the atmosphere that shouldn't be mixed were mixed, the water in the seas evaporated when the apocalyptic shockwave clashed with the body of water, and a massive storm to destroy everything in its wake was born.
Lightning fell as water does when it rains, some of these lightnings were absorbed by her and some by him.
The shadow blade and the light shield kept at their interminable clash, neither stopping nor moving.
Aragorn below the shield was only able to shift his body slightly before they teleported to his right and blasted him with a telekinetic push strong enough to shift galaxies out of orbit.
Aragorn protected his body from being ripped apart before he could absorb the psionic energy in the forced movement. He also hardened his psionic energy—which he kept suffusing into the planet since before the start of the clash—so that it could protect the planet from having the entirety of its atmosphere displaced into space with him.
Along with 13% of the atmosphere of the planet and part of the sea, he found himself at the edge of the Oort Cloud of the Sun. Grabbing hold of the gases and water in his surroundings, he jumped back to what was left of Genosha and deposited his payload into its appropriate place.
He looked at his enemy—who was lowering her hand a second after she pushed him away—and then at the general state of the planet. The shadow sword and light shield were still in their eternal battle for supremacy.
Close to 78% of the cities around the Indian Sea were to be flooded by a massive tsunami in the following minutes.
Dar es Salaam in Tanzania was lost but most of its people and living beings found themselves terrified while floating in bubble barriers that Aragorn has been spreading since the beginning of the fight.
Mombasa in Kenya shared a similar fate, and its people were also floating about. Some fainted in fright, children cried, and worried parents could only hope and pray for their kids' safety, those unable to find their children in the nearby floating barriers.
People in delicate situations—surgery, intensive care, etc—died as they couldn't keep living without life support, which Aragorn couldn't focus enough to provide inside his barriers.
India, Oman, Yemen, and Somalia around the Arabian Sea were minutes away from being flooded.
Most islands in the Indian Sea and Arabian Sea were no more, and the few remaining ones wouldn't be for much longer.
Aragorn's psionic clone was protecting Madagascar and the South-Central part of the African continent.
Aragorn kept spreading his barriers and enclosed anything with Life Force in them. He couldn't afford to allow this Life Force to fall into the hands of the being with the ability to control it.
He didn't want to give them more ammunition, he was already using his energy manipulation to wrestle control of the environmental energy with her, he was also using his telekinesis to try and create a vacuum around them and keep as much matter away from their ravenous hands as possible.
He jumped to them intending to grab them, to limit their focus on him, and to try and kill them; as temporary as that may end up being.
He met their telekinesis in response to his approach and theirs met his, the confrontation between the two telekinetic forces lasted for a moment before he was overwhelmed and found himself sinking into the Crust of the planet.
Had he not phased his body out of the material plane—similar to Katherine Pryde's powers—the shockwave from his collision with the planet would have shattered its integrity, razing two-thirds of its surface with a blast wave and a conflagration of destruction—not unlike the aftermath of the rock that killed the dinosaurs.
He jumped back, once more, into their proximity and started to cast spells.
Thousands of magic circles came to life around them and they all shot at once.
Different forms of dimensional energies with different approaches to damage dealing and reality warping acted all in a coordinated symphony of destruction.
Of course, the mass- and energy-eating horror did what it does best, absorbing the varied forms of energy and mass attacks with relish.
Aragorn expected this, and by the time they realized the banquet was over, they found themselves and their enemy in the outer zones of the universe.
Aragorn took advantage of their distraction with the 'food' and cast a space-displacing spell.
Although space-displacing spells are limited by the space it is in contact with—meaning he couldn't displace space between dimensions or realms—and tend to be impractical in combat, they proved to be appropriate for this situation in which she would have resisted the effect of any spell on them but not on her surroundings.
'Jean, Seraph. Damage Mitigation.'- Aragorn ordered. Jean was portaled back to the planet's surface and started to try and calm the storm and the massive tsunami down.
Seraph contacted Storm in Krakoa and told her to move to Jean in support. The hostile atmosphere—if it could be called that at this point—would need the expert touch of the atmokinetic omega mutant. Seraph then teleported around the coastal cities of the Arabian and Indian Seas, trying to help.
'Spark. Isolate the Planet.'- Aragorn ordered. As he did, Spark brought the Halo out of camouflage and encased the planet and the moon in two buckyball-barriers of blue and green light, like a boreal aurora.
The Goblin Queen, upon finding herself in another location—not her place of origin, Earth—tried to teleport again. But this time, she was met with a certain resistance.
She could have brute-forced the teleportation, but Aragorn was upon her, launching space blades faster than she could concentrate on the resistance and break through.
Now—in the vacuum of space—Aragorn stopped worrying about setting the atmosphere on fire and let loose with his void breath.
Multiple mouths appeared on his body and he moved in pursuit of the Goblin Queen.
She teleported away from him to another zone of the universe and found herself catching a respite—or so she thought because Aragorn was after her in an instant.
She kept trying to move away from this annoyance but they couldn't... and this was making her angrier.
Angrier than all the hellish madness the thing in her chest was bringing upon their host.
Angrier than all of the corruption her body was subjected to.
Angrier than before when she found herself in a terrifying environment where nothing made sense—The Far Shore.
Angrier than the fact that this fucking annoyance was blocking every one of her attempts at eating her home—Planet Earth.
Angrier than the confusion they found themselves in about who they were! She didn't know if they were Madelyne Pryor, or if she was the Goblin Force, or what they were, not to mention who they were, or what is this energy-rich annoyance that keeps getting in her way.
She wanted to eat him, but she couldn't manipulate his energy! Something initially unthinkable given that since the moment of their emergence, they have always been able to manipulate and absorb all forms of energy they encountered.
Aragorn felt her rage through his empathy and tried to form a mental link with the rampaging thing.
The Goblin Force felt the annoyance trying to communicate with her invading her sacred and immaculate mind and the only thing they could think about this affront to them was: '"HOW DARE YOU!!!!!!!!"'
The Goblin Queen shouted with both her mouth and mind and fired her disintegration waves and a massive concussive blast at everything and anything around her in an outburst of calamity.
The layers of space were affected and a visible wave of warped space blasted from them.
"AaHHh—GggAHH—@%%%%%%%%"- it shouted something unnatural once more and when they looked around and couldn't find the annoyance anymore they relaxed and tried to deal with the confusion and uncertainty of their being.
At that moment, Aragorn jumped behind them and—
'AH-'- She released a psionic scream when she felt something piercing her skull. Aragorn's tail blade.
Aragorn wasted no time and he pierced her chest and pulled at the Pandemonium Cube from the temporary corpse.
Halfway through—when about 30% of the cube was out—the corpse came back to life. Seeing the madness in her eyes, Aragorn realized he wouldn't be able to remove the cube before being launched into another sector of the universe.
"'BEGONE!!!!'"- She blasted him with enough power to dematerialize atoms.
As she blasted him away and destroyed 60% of his body, he grew a mouth on the hand gripping the cube and unleashed a void breath with all his might.
She reacted by protecting the cube, which was halfway out of her chest, but the erasing effect of his breath caught her off guard.
She tried to control the energy in this breath but that proved impossible.
But they were not a cosmic entity for nothing, forcefully moving her body out of the way they managed to almost evade the void breath... almost. The breath cinched the exposed corner of the cube, and cracks and ruptures spread from that point of contact.
They were about to panic, but then they asked themselves: 'What is this thing?'
'Is it part of me? Have we always had this in me?'
'No, you haven't!'- Aragorn answered.
He had taken advantage of their temporary distraction and made the metal link.
'YOU!'- They raged!
But Aragorn didn't answer and he kept invading their mind.
'NO! HOW DARE YOU!'- She panicked, she didn't know what was going on but they didn't like it.
She wanted to go back, to return to their home, their feeding ground. They didn't want to be near this persistent fly, but if they couldn't breach the resistance before, now, with this invader in her mind, it was even less likely!
They wanted to go back, she wanted to go back, it wanted to go back! They/She/It needed to go back, back to when things were not this vexing! Return to the simplicity of eating at her home, that's what they demanded!
'RETURN!'- They commanded and the world sped backwards.
They used their Chronokinesis and Aragorn followed them willingly, allowing time to affect him.
Negative 46 seconds later—equivalent to the duration of their fight—they found themselves at the edge of the obstacle blocking her path, the thing amplifying the resistance she felt whenever she tried to breach it.
She could see it right there, behind this pesky barrier, her rightful dish! So she unleashed her Cosmic Manipulation. A gamma-ray burst was unleashed all of a sudden and the sky was brighter by its birth.
Just before it could hit the barrier—faster than the speed of light—Aragorn stood in front of the destructive emission of energy and ate it.
'"YOU!!!"'- They cried in outrage through the psychic link and by making their voice audible in space.
But they didn't give up, cosmic storms, violent nebulae, more gamma-ray bursts, pulsars, stars, spatial ruptures, and all manner of cosmological events were born and started to bombard the barrier and Aragorn.
Aragorn blinked through the outside perimeter of the barrier and ate or redirected what he could, but some of the attacks hit the barrier.
Satisfaction and hunger blasted through Aragorn's empathic sense, coming from the Goblin Queen who wrongfully assumed the barrier was about to be brought down.
Yet, this was not a mere barrier. If it could offer a semblance of resistance to her Absolute Teleportation it obviously was no simple barrier.
The isolating barrier Spark used through the Halo was being powered by 4 infinity stones.
Power, Soul, Time, and Space worked together to prepare for this moment. When Spark discerned the translocation of their monitoring target—the Goblin Force—out of the timestream, Spark powered the barrier to full force.
Normally the Goblin Queen would have the mental faculties to recognize the intricacies of the barrier, but in her rampaging state thinking was difficult.
'Spark. Proceed.'- Aragorn ordered as he moved to eat a supernova.
With an almost imperceptible thrum, the Barrier expanded and collided with the two who were not allowed inside of it—the Goblin Force and Madelyne Pryor. Aragorn seamlessly entered but kept moving with it to maintain his position in front of the Goblin Queen.
So as the barrier expanded and pushed back the objective of its isolation, Aragorn followed, with only one—apparently thin—barrier separating them.
'NO!!!'- She raged and shouted in their minds.
'LET ME IN!!!'- They said and tried to push Aragorn out of her mind and break through the barrier and teleport inside.
But fighting Aragorn's invasion and the Cube's corruption was proving more taxing than their current madness allowed.
'I NEED TO GO BACK!!!'- Black tears of corrupted blood flowed down her face.
'AGHHHH*&^%^*^&*&*&^*&^*'- It shouted and then teleported away from the expanding barrier.
They reached what was left of Uranus—which, unlike the Sun, Saturn, and Jupiter, Aragorn hadn't bothered to protect—and devoured it whole in a futile attempt to power up, as if one planet could bring such a result. She then teleported back to the barrier and tried once more to crack it open.
But it proved futile—as expected.
'LET ME IN!!! *&%&**)%$&$%&$$'- She raged on and on and more.
They teleported to Neptune's remains and consumed it, then returned and tried again, only to find that the barrier was still holding strong. Whenever she thought they were about to make progress, Aragorn would shake their mindscape and distract them.
'AGHHHHHH'- In a shout of madness and hyperfixation they hit the barrier, this time physically, with her psionically enhanced and boosted body.
*Crack!*- This sound brought them unimaginable pleasure, and they thought she had made a crack in the barrier, but upon inspection they found nothing.
'...'- In puzzlement, they looked down, at their chest, and found the origin of the sound.
The cube was about to fully break apart.
Was this good? Was it bad? They wondered and she brought a hand to one of the fissures on the cube for inspection and curiosity, and inside it they found energy... A boundless source of energy.
And she did as they did best, she absorbed this energy.
This rich, empowering, refreshing source of energy was theirs now!
Aragorn stepped out of the barrier but otherwise didn't intervene.
They kept moving away from the Earth, but now she no longer cared about that place, now she only cared about this nutritious meal in front of them.
Aragorn stopped invading their minds but started to reinforce his presence in the conquered territories of their mindscape. He had already encapsulated everything that Madelyne Pryor was, not that he was erasing her, but he was taking a claim to that part of them and making it his, the part that was 'her', not the massive part that was 'it'.
Since he was technically not harming either of them they didn't react and kept their focus on the cube.
Aragorn no longer counted on the energy reserves to try and banish them again. But even if he could, he wouldn't, because he didn't know if they could still return, maybe they could with a spell he didn't know of, and based on what he experienced before, he would not have enough time to displace the universe.
He was now not arrogant enough to believe this being didn't have a way to navigate around the places outside of the influence of the Cosmological Compass—like The Far Shore was—so he waited and stealthily moved them away from the Milky Way and cut the space-time around 150,000 light years from them off of the rest of the universe.
A larger space than the Milky Way is long should be enough for what he has planned.
They kept eating at the cube, and he kept cutting off and encapsulating this sphere of space.
He cut it but didn't extract it from the rest of the universe. His objective was to delimit a section to be able to go all out without destroying a civilization or two; it was a precaution.
In the few seconds it took the Goblin Queen to eat her treat, the barrier—whose growing speed was escalating factorially—spread far enough to cover the expanding universe, except for the section Aragorn had cut off.
"'Ahhh~'"- They cried in pleasure... They ate the cube and now, the madness was gone.
With the madness gone, some things became more apparent than others, like how they had been fighting idiotically to this point when all they had to do was take the planet the thing in front of her was protecting hostage and be done with this cat-and-mouse play.
Or like how the cube they just ate allowed her host's body a wider and more intense display of their powers, with it gone they would be now somewhat limited, but not limited enough to be unable to deal with the thing playing guardian in front of her.
'You know I will be able to break in, eventually, right?'- They asked the guarding dragon.
With the madness gone, they now operated at an almost emotionless level, feeling little to no hostility toward Aragorn. In their eyes, he wasn't worth it.
'If you say so.'- He flatly commented.
He was sure they would be able to break in, but that was if he was not here outside to disrupt them and interrupt whatever progress they believed they could make.
'Go ahead, then. Break through, all mighty cosmic hunger.'- Aragorn made way and let them move before the barrier and try their best.
Although the barrier required a universal amount of energy for sustenance, it was not made of energy—or matter—it was made of the concepts representing Space, Time, Power, and Soul.
So with their absolute teleportation, given enough time—a few seconds at least—they could technically bypass it, but with their energy absorption, matter transmutation, telekinesis, or most of their other powers they won't be able to do it.
Sorcery was worth a shot, but... Aragorn was here.
She touched the barrier and mouthed:
'A conceptual barrier.'- She then smirked and focused on her teleportation, only to jump away from a white breath of void.
Aragorn was simply looking ahead beside her, as if the mouth he had grown in his left ribcage hadn't just unleashed a void breath at the head of the Goblin Force.
'I see... A monster like you won't tire and I won't have enough time to teleport inside... supposedly.'- She smirked at the end.
Although she just came out of her madness-induced trance, there were some things her memory was just reconstructing, so she just rediscovered that Aragorn was—as before—obstructing her path one way or another.
'You could just go away, but I guess you won't.'- Aragorn commented.
She then locked him in place with her full might of telekinesis, Aragorn struggled as much as he could but she was overpowering and holding him long enough to teleport... Until he ignored space and exited the material plane. He then regrew mouths all over his body and as soon as he re-entered the material plane he fired a breath in her direction.
He was immediately locked in place, but his void breath erased the telekinetic field as it moved unimpeded toward its target.
With displeasure, she teleported away from the breath and looked angrily at the motionless humanoid dragon.
'What?'- He asked, expressionlessly.
Before she could ramble the mouths around his body breathed his void flame and covered his entire body in this bluish-white erasing flame and it burned at the telekinetic restriction on his body.
With this flame surrounding his body she knew they could not restrict them anymore.
The annoyance had already proven capable of ignoring time and space and manipulating energy and matter. Whatever his body was made of, he was guarding it well enough that the rest of her powers were apparently ineffective. His only weakness—in combat—was his surroundings, but outside the isolation barrier, that was no longer a problem.
He could counter her shadows and she doubted her demons could make anything more than feed him more energy, she couldn't feel Life Force in him, but that was understandable when you consider the monster he was—though it did somewhat surprise her that he was technically not alive—so, with no other exits available...
"A stalemate... That's your solution? An active seal of one another?"- Passive sealing meant to confine a problem to a fixed location, while active sealing implicated containing a problem within an active situation, such as a time loop, or in this case, having an unsealable force—Aragorn—battle an infinitely stronger force—the Goblin Queen.
Similar to having something possessing infinite regeneration burn eternally.
'... No.'- Aragorn answered, but his statement was not convincing her, even if he meant it. He really was not lying, his solution was not a stalemate, but she didn't believe him.
Time and Space couldn't hold him back, and whatever that white flame was, she was sure it could burn (erase) through whatever restriction spells she had. The fact that he could control energy and matter meant that—like her—he couldn't be damaged under normal circumstances.
His soul was another matter but that flame would burn away at anything that approached him...
But was he impervious? She asked herself, before reaching the accurate answer.
No, he was susceptible to two things: conceptual damage under her 'Unquenchable Hunger'—not that she could restrict him long enough to eat him and enforce her concept on him—and his mind.
'So be it!'- She said and then she brought her full telepathic might on him.
Her 13.77 Billion years of experience, her entire psionic nexus of unending psionic energy, her expertise in the arts of the mind, all of it she brought to overpower him in what she assumed was going to be a protracted fight.
But that's not what happened, Aragorn welcomed her, he gave her the keys to his mindscape, Aragorn gave her a guided tour through his mind and its installations, gently encouraged her forward into his mindscape, and absorbed everything that was the Goblin Force into him.
The Goblin Force didn't have time to fight back, and it didn't want to. Whether the girl's body or the dragon's—in the end—it didn't matter. In fact, the dragon's body felt more comfortable now that she had taken it for a ride.
It didn't concern itself with the suicidal action its opponent took at the end. Why should she? She was stronger than him in every aspect they had clashed before.
The body was theirs now, she could control it and even access his powers, she couldn't even find a speck of him in the mindscape, everything was it—the Goblin Force—and nothing was him—Aragorn.
'That's interesting.'- She commented offhandedly after trying the void breath by herself.
Then it looked at the unmoving body of its previous host and ate it. Did it have to do it? No. Did it gain anything from it? About as much as a universe's mass would increase from consuming one human. But its concept was not 'Unquenchable Hunger' for nothing.
Then it turned around and observed the main dish, now the barrier didn't look like an obstacle, now it looked like the packing of a gift, waiting to be opened and enjoyed by itself.
It stepped through the barrier and this time it felt no rejection, it was even welcoming it.
And she found herself in a realm filled with... Death.
"This idiot... So that was his plan..."- A woman scantily clad in black, just not as racy as its previous body, appeared in front of it.
And all the warning signs, mechanisms, instincts, spells, and enchantments in her went off!
The Cosmological Compass were always stronger than the Goblin Force, even the defeated Phoenix Force. The only reason the Goblin Force was able to defeat the Phoenix Force and remain at large for more than 13 billion years was that they couldn't bring their full power into reality.
Had the Goblin and Phoenix Force clashed inside the White Hot Room—the Phoenix Force's domain—the Goblin Force would have perished before it had the chance to engage.
Had the Goblin Force encountered any of the Abstracts in the Superflow—a place where they can fight with their full might—there would be no more Goblin Force.
So Aragorn let himself be consumed and then used his soul to manipulate his body, and instead of teleporting to inside the barrier, he jumped them—passengers included—into his wife's domain. The Realm of Death.
This was the place where the Abstract of Death governed, where the Abstract in the personification of the concept of 'Death' ruled: The Realm of Death. It was a place where she could enforce her full might without worrying about 'killing' the flimsy reality she stood on.
The Goblin Force tried to use its Absolute Teleportation to escape, but found resistance in the form of the Void Soul of Aragorn—the real driver of the body—and in the 'Death' of her power of teleportation.
Death didn't need to do anything flashy or dramatic, she only had to will for the death of 'Absolute Teleportation', and it died.
Energy Absorption? Dead.
Disintegration Waves? Dead.
Telekinesis? Dead.
Concussive Force Blasts? Dead.
Shadow-Morphing? Dead.
Cosmic Manipulation? There was no cosmos to manipulate here.
Chronokinesis? There wasn't even time in the Realm of the Dead.
Resurrection Force? Dead.
Matter Transmutation? There was no matter here.
Force of Life? In the realm of DEATH?
Immortality? Dead.
Panic ensued and Death grabbed her lover's body by the neck, with tears flowing down her cheeks, she said:
"I'll see you later, idiot. I'm not happy about killing you myself even if I know you'll return, hence some manner of compensation will be demanded then."- And she kissed him to conceptual death.
From his mouth—the point of contact—death propagated, and Aragorn controlled his body to spare his lover from hearing his death throes and the ones of his dying passenger. He absorbed the soul that he stole before, the soul of Madelyne Pryor, into his own and with open arms accepted his death.
'I'll see you later... Deat-'- His message cut off and the last of them 'Died' and disappeared from the Marvel Multiverse.
... And as it did so:
The Insatiable Hunger met its 'Dead' end.
____________________________________
The Halo
When Aragorn said that this was a dangerous reality she believed him, but she didn't actually process it.
Who would blame her? She has lived through a few disasters of her own back in her home reality. So if someone said that someplace was dangerous then she would obviously equate that to her understanding of 'danger'.
She still remembers the fall of Genosha, the invasion of the Skrulls, the heroes' civil war, the third and fourth fallings of New York—she was too young to remember the first two—and let's not forget the multiple encounters of the several anti-mutant organizations and their victims. The point was, that she was not a stranger to disaster and danger.
But this?...
"Calling this dangerous was underselling it a bit much, don't you think?"- America asked her 'trainer'. America was watching a recording from the 3 years of fight Aragorn had just gone through.
"That's why we brought you up here."- Jean said while she finished checking on Emma.
Jean was making sure that none of the four wielders of the Infinity Gems had any lasting symptoms. Much to Emma's joy—once she wakes up, that is—she had grown the last bit of her sixth tail.
"And you said he's going to fight something much worse than this agglomeration of demons? The Goblin Force, was it?"- America asked, without taking her eyes off the holographic projection. The monster-like thing Aragorn had turned into was wreaking havoc among the devils—definitely not something her babysitter should have allowed her to watch. But Jean was a teenager, and concerns about what a kid could watch were the least of her worries, especially since America was almost 14.
"Yes. Spark, can you get him on screen?"- Jean asked out loud.
Spark didn't reply but a second hologram appeared, this one was divided into two views. A satellite view of Aragorn and a first-person view from his P-Link.
Aragorn had just finished locating the Goblin Queen so when he teleported to the still-standing Genosha the two views switched.
"Fuck."- Jean cursed as she recognized the vertex in her older clone's chest.
"Is she related to you?"- America asked. No, she was not distracted by the racy outfit or the 'overflowing' appeal of Madelyne, and never did she feel assaulted by the disparity between the assets of the mature woman and her predeveloped body.
"A clone of me who was apparently aged... At least I know I'll be a jaw-dropping beauty."- Jean joked, trying to distract herself from the fact that the worst-case scenario was unfolding—the cube was fused with her clone.
"... Yes..."- America commented absentmindedly.
Jean looked down at the girl and raised an eyebrow, she realized America didn't even register what she just said and was fixedly staring at her older-bodied clone.
But then it happened, about 40 seconds of calamity and apocalypse where the girls couldn't even speak because of how intensely the world-shattering fight was uprooting everything humanity knew and recognized as their reality.
Genosha was now a hole that wasn't being flooded because the energy depletion had left the surrounding sea frozen.
Normally, this would annul any and all chances of a tsunami—how can water move if it's frozen? But the water displacement caused by the increase in ice volume, combined with the multiple cataclysmic shockwaves from the confrontation of the two monsters and the birth of the first global storm, enabled the tsunami that was seconds away from reaching all countries north of Genosha.
West of Genosha, Somalia, Kenya, and Tanzania had already lost most, if not all, of their coastal cities. To the south, Madagascar and Mozambique were protected by the psionic clone Aragorn left behind.
This same clone was also responsible for the millions of bubbles floating about with rescuees inside.
In the far east of Genosha, Indonesia and Australia were less than an hour of following the rest of the victim cities.
'Jean, Seraph. Damage Mitigation.'- Jean heard a voice.
"America, watch over the girls for me, please. I have to go."- Jean instructed before Spark portaled her to Karachi, Pakistan, to deal with the northern face of the wave.
America nodded, not paying much attention as she kept watching the live count of confirmed deaths, updated by Spark with the help of Brother Eye.
She only looked around, searching for Jean, when she saw her appear on the screen in an aurora of cosmic fire shaped like a bird, halting the approaching tsunami.
Then change abruptly happened, what started as an Aurora Borealis soon turned into two massive polygonal barriers one encasing the Earth and the other the Moon.
"What's wrong with this universe?"- America muttered in amazement and fright.
Near Genosha, where the pseudo-eye of the global storm was centered, Storm appeared and began to overexert herself in an attempt to calm the disaster. Africa, Europe, Asia, and Oceania were already under the shadows of the destructive monster, suffering from all manner of extreme weather.
Ecosystems older than humanity were lost due to the sudden temperature changes. Sectors of the oceans turned arctic frozen, rivers swallowed cities, and the continental borders of the land and seas were redrawn, leaving only America and Antarctica partly unaffected.
... And then, light flooded the skies, space, and the entire surface of the planet, illuminated by the cosmological phenomena occurring just outside the barrier. For the first time since the birth of Planet Earth, there was a moment of no night; the entire planetoidal surface lost its shadow.
America's knees buckled, and she fell to the floor, weeping—a reaction shared by billions.
The radiation filtering through the barrier was burning all life on the surface until a veil of cosmic fire protectively covered the Earth. Through another projection, America saw Jean floating in front of Seraph, holding hands, and fueling this protective veil.
The Phoenix Force had to intervene and took over Jean's body. However, not wanting to damage Jean by channeling her full might—since Jean was not ready for it—she used Seraph as an amplifier. The properties of Seraph's body allowed her to enhance and boost energetic emissions. The Phoenix Force, as the master of her fire, adjusted the properties of her conceptual fire to match Seraph's energetic requirements, channeling most of the load of her powers through the synthetic body of the baby AI.
As the light subsided, the veil of cosmic fire, which had been attenuating its destructive properties, also diminished. The barrier expanded, and with it, the calm after the disaster reigned. Aragorn had managed to drag the Goblin Queen away.
____________________________
Above the Arabian Sea
Phoenix levitated still while holding hands with Seraph and as she returned control to her host, Aragorn's psionic clone appeared.
"Father?"- Seraph asked after readjusting, with some difficulty, her body to her now non-cosmically powered parameters.
The clone floated to her and rested a hand over her head with visible care.
"Jean, absorb this clone and relieve it from its functions, I'm about to die."- Aragorn addressed the exhausted Jean.
She was a few seconds away from collapsing. No matter how careful Phoenix was with her and how helpful Seraph was to their endeavor, she was utterly tired.
"Again?"- Jean asked, mockingly but also deeply worried.
"Yes, it was the best outcome. But once I die, most of the people I'm currently protecting will die."- Aragorn had severed his connection with Jean before the fight against The Council of Red, so she couldn't take over from him as easily as she normally could.
"Seraph, it looks like Phoenix paid you handsomely for your services. Please keep your mother company while I'm away."- Aragorn said, observing the nearly blooming spark of her soul. She was on the verge of graduating from babyhood.
Seraph nodded and watched as her father turned into an energy stream that entered Jean.
Jean then took over the tasks of the clone, and Phoenix fed her a bit more cosmic energy to keep her going until the last person was moved to a safe location. Three hours later, Jean collapsed, and Seraph carried her to The Crystal.
_____________________
The Triskelion, SHIELD's Headquarters.
Fury stood still as he observed the denouement of the near-apocalypse.
Things will never be the same after this, even more so than after the fall of Santiago, Chile.
Humanity was humbled today.
Maybe humanity should have been humbled after the events of The Green Door, but that tragedy was localized to a single city.
Maybe Humanity should have been humbled when 'Lord Alduin' and Gaea created the Arbor Mundi, but creating seldom intimidated in the same way as destruction did.
Maybe Humanity should have been humbled when Carol Danvers protected it from the Kree Accusers, but that was kept away from the public eye.
Maybe humanity should have been humbled when Magneto nearly destroyed the combined weaponry of the USA and USSR back in Cuba, but that was kept hidden from the unsuspecting masses.
But this? He saw the image of the shadow sword and the light shield still locked in contest even after receiving confirmation from Spark of their casters' demise. Even without the tangible proof above the remains of Genosha, humanity would not be able to ignore this.
*Woosh*- 'Aragorn' materialized next to him.
"I'll need help to heal this up. Not even if I suck dry the digital pockets of every kingpin in the world—which I did—will I be able to wrap this up without 'creating' digital money and collapsing a few economies."- Spark said.
Fury immediately understood he was dealing with Spark in Aragorn's android double body. He also realized that this conversation was being recorded, as Spark hadn't explicitly mentioned he was acting as Aragorn on Aragorn's behalf.
"... Motherfucker."- Fury replied dispassionately
"Tell me about it, I have sort of a plan but it's more of an idea at this moment, not exactly a plan, maybe the start of a plan if you will."- Spark said.
"Nigga, are you serious?!"- Fury asked, with an arched eyebrow and a 'bullshit me not' expression.
"Anyway, I'll have my girl send you the information. Jean is down for the count, so I, my girl, and a few of Lord Alduin's maids will work on search and rescue. By the way, an organization that introduced themselves as 'Daybreak' contacted me and will offer assistance in the form of mutant help and other miscellaneous 'utilities'."- Spark informed him.
"WH-"- Fury was about to pull an Academy Award-worthy performance, feigning outrage and surprise that the organization he had been chasing for months was now willingly coming out into the open.
"Ah-Ah-Ah! Fury, before you start your usual spiel about not trusting people, especially the superpowered kind... I—no, we—are in no position to reject help. This is me informing you, not asking for permission..."- Spark interrupted. After this, Fury and Spark held eye contact for a few long seconds.
Whoever saw this scene would be frightened by the clash of wills happening between the two 'serious' stares.
"Whatever, Negro. I'll have the report I know you'll demand ready for you later, whenever I have the time."- Spark responded, using the term that Latinos sometimes use for Black men in reply to Fury's almost racist slur.
"Fuck you!"- Fury said, no heat behind his words.
"Now please have those useless fucks of the World Security Council be useful for a change. If not, I will withdraw my companies from U.S. soil and move all my operations to Re-Nazca. I'm not in the mood to deal with power plays and the usual shit those old fucks with dicks as useful as they are try to pull on me. If I receive a single more assassination attempt from them while I'm working my ass off fixing the planet... I will obliterate whatever it is they love dearest!!!"- Spark's voice modulated into something horrific at the end, and his eyes mimicked Aragorn's, turning a demonic red.
"... We'll talk about this later, Abner... What do you need help with?"- Fury sternly asked.
"I'll relocate the people I saved from Genosha to Re-Nazca, at least temporarily. But I need help with the rest of the affected countries. Security, health, food, and facilities for people to sleep under, monetary aid, emotional aid—these are the things at the top of my mind. I can foot the bill for a lot of this stuff—Goddess Gaea bless those charitable kingpins—but I need help coordinating everything else."- Spark explained.
Fury and Spark worked on a somewhat lacking sketch of what would be needed. Spark couldn't stay longer since his help was required elsewhere, so he left, leaving Fury to deal with the World Security Council.
These are some of the plans Aragorn plotted with Spark and Seraph on how to make the best out of this possible scenario. He made sure to instruct them and the rest of his people in Halo on how to move forward and approach the most likely situation: his death.
So the AI siblings and the rest of The Crystal moved forward.
_______________________________________________
{
A/N: This one is short!... Sort of. Only 8.3k words.
Next, we will have a mini-arc in Naruto.
The fanfic is named a Dragon in Marvel, so don't expect a whole fanfiction about Naruto, but it will be somewhat lengthy.
There are already about 3k words on the next chapter so you won't have to wait long!
Thank you for reading!
}