Awkward conversations were not normally interrupted by the end of the world. But Aiden supposed that this was just what life was like for him now. The sky split, black light swept over the world - casting everything in bizarre inverted hues - and the ground shook and trembled. Luz and Kala both dove for cover. Kyute, still being completely insensate, just laid on the ground. But Aiden kept his eyes locked on the heavens above him as the sky split in a black bolt of jacked lightning, then wrenched wide. Then, spitting from the blackness overhead like a loogie loosed by the world's most disgusting outer-god, came the
object
.
It shot through the skies, whipped through a skyscraper's upper levels with careless disregard for human lives, and then came down somewhere in Dimension City's sprawling downtown.
"Shit!" Aiden exclaimed as the light went normal again and the black lightning-shaped crack in the sky swept shut with a rumble. The clouds stirred around in the heavens, sucked towards that closing motion and blooming together in a curious interference pattern. He turned to Luz, Kyute and Kala. "What was that!?"
"I have no idea," Luz said, lowering her hands. "I think it was
bad
though. Definitely bad."
"Cock yummy dang, wow..." Kyute muttered.
"Kyute is still on the prior chapter," Aiden whispered to himself. He looked back at the sky. His first instinct was...well. He had recently realized he could fly. He had superpowers. But was it actually
wise
to go running off? He was the central key to this whole pocket dimension. If he died or got hurt, the entire thing fell apart, and if it fell apart, then the whole multiverse was fucked. But if he just stood around, people would get hurt. People who were real, and had been put here to make
him
happier. He bit his lip - then the decision seemed to snap through him with a flash. He looked back at Kala and Luz, then grinned.
"Well. Seems like each of us have powers!" he said. "Luz, you mentioned you know magic, right?"
She nodded, then gave him a thumbs up.
"Kala, you can still fly, right?"
Kala grinned. She floated off the ground, her hands brushing along her slightly rumpled skirt. "Easier than walking right now," she said, then giggled, her cheeks flushing as she put her hand over her mouth. "Like, dang, Aiden."
"Right!" Aiden blushed and tried to not think about how hard someone had to fuck to make a Supergirl expy have a hard time walking afterwards. "Lets go!" He held out his arms and felt a strange lightness in his chest as Luz hopped into his arms, her lithe body pressing up against him as she tucked her legs against her chest, giggling softly.
"Mmm, warm," she said, pressing her cheek against his chest.
Aiden focused and drifted up and off the ground, calling to Kala. "Put Kyute somewhere comfy!" he said - and Kala blurred off as he carefully accelerated, not wanting to test his powers of flight by slamming headfirst into some concrete, especially when he was carrying his girlfriend in his arms. By now, the sounds of distant crashing and screaming made it clear that whatever the space loogie had been, it hadn't been
good.
Still, Aiden guessed he had a chance for a quick exchange of dialog before his newfound flight powers got him there - so he whispered to Luz. "I am sorry about not thinking about you, you know...there...today's been
super
weird."
"Yeah, it has!" Luz laughed, then shook her head. "For one thing, I learned that I
kinda
have a thing for being cheated on."
Aiden blanched.
"...did I say that out loud?" Luz asked, her cheeks burning. "I meant to say I have a thing for watching, uh, boyfriends. That is. Cuckolder? What even is that? I don't know! I-
no manches!"
Aiden wasn't sure what that meant in English, but he was pretty sure he could guess: They had just come over the downtown region of Dimension City and saw the impact site of the big space loogie. It had looked like a large seed pod, but in the time it had taken Aiden to gather up Luz, take to the skies, and fly over there, the pod had spread apart and birthed into being a figure made up primarily of hands, arms, and glaring eyes. Palms over what could be a mouth, attached to wrists emerging from where a jaw or mandible would be. Waving arms that served as legs, palms rasping along the floor. Eyes peering past fingers that clutched to flesh of writhing blackness. It was long and snakelike and seemed to have multiple segmented joints on where its spine should have been allowing it to corkscrew and contort with hideous, twitching motions that seemed to have two settings: Eerie, perfect stillness, then blinding, blurry speed.
"EUGH!" Aiden exclaimed as Luz froze in his arms.
"Never seen one quite as nasty as that," a voice spoke at Aiden's side. Aiden looked over and saw Hyperman, in his red, blue and yellow costume. The mixtures of the colors were all inverted - yellow dominated, with red covering the chest and blue serving only as the highlights, but other than the color changes and swapping a large stylized S for an equally bold and stylized H, Hyperman's costume was painfully derivative.
"Are you
sure
the Caretakers aren't going to get sued for that?" Aiden asked, figuring quipping had always made dorky Peter Parker less frightened. Maybe it'd work for him! To his shock, no, it didn't, he just felt even more terrified.
"Haven't yet," Hyperman said. "Hypergirl has told me that you, ah, have similar powers. But since you're new, stick to rescuing civilians. I'll handle the beast. Okay?"
"G-Got it," Aiden said, nodding. That did make sense.
Hyperman frowned, regarded the beast, then glared at it. Two red beams of light exploded from his eyes, hit the creature...
And did absolutely nothing.
"Huh," Hyperman said.
A horrifying thought crossed through Aiden's head. The horrifying handbeast unfolded a limb of crackling joints, grabbed onto what appeared to be an off brand Toyota SUV, and then threw the preposterously huge and dangerous vehicle directly at Hyperman's face - making the SUV, for the moment, only
slightly
more dangerous than it already was while just driving around on the road. Aiden had just processed the thought when the car took to the air - and so, he reacted just a little bit too slow. His leg lashed out, caught the side of the SUV, and redirected it at the very last second.
Thus, rather than hitting Hyperman's body, the SUV whipped off, spun, clipped Hyperman's right arm, then struck the side of an office building, sending a spray of shattered glass flying in every direction. Hyperman rebounded into Aiden's side and he cried out in shocked pain and alarm. Aiden, who was currently holding one (1) sexy girlfriend had to shift his arms in a hurry, slinging Luz over his shoulder and grabbing Hyperman around the belly.
"Ah!" Hyperman gasped out, his face gone gray and pasty. "My arm's broken. That's a first."
It wasn't just broken, his bone was jutting out of his skin.
"Fuck!" Aiden whispered. "I was afraid of this."
The dimension he was in had been crafted to be a stopgap to keep the Cathurian from invading the multiverse. The only thing that mattered here was him - an Earth-Prime entity to keep the universe from falling apart. Everyone else had been sculpted by the Caretakers to
keep him from going crazy
. That was it. Kala Banvers was here because he thought the character she was based on was hot and the idea of nailing a hot superhero was sexy and would make him happy. Hyperman was here because of the same reason (albeit with extra steps involving gender swap beams.)
They weren't here
to actually be superheroes.
Aiden didn't know how multiversal engineering and planescaping worked, but he was
pretty
sure making a dude who was actually as strong as Hyperman was supposed to be was really
fucking hard
. So, just cheat it!
All fine and good until something from another universe showed up and started chucking SUVs around.
"Get out of here!" Aiden said, then flew to the as a fire hydrant whistled through where he had been a second before. He released Hyperman, who flew away at a relatively sedate pace - for Hyperman, meaning it was still crazy fast - and then flew down and landed behind some rubble. He set Luz down, kissed her forehead, said: "Wish me luck, and also, hide, also, in case I don't come back..." He leaned in then kissed her, fiercely. Luz looked faintly shocked - but then the screams of people running for cover drew him away.
Aiden blurred around the side of the cover and saw the horrifying handbeast advancing towards several DCPD police officers who were, in a bizarre lapse in the otherwise realistic facsimile of a world that this pocket dimension presented, actually standing between civilians and danger. Aiden shot forward before he knew it and hoped against hope he hadn't just doomed an entire multiverse by trying to be brave for a bit.
He got between the handbeast and the officers as it brought raking claws down in a sweeping arc. The impact smashed into him, picked him up, sent him flying. He whistled through the air, his stomach lurching out from under him, struck something fragile that shattered into a million pieces, skidded, rolled, then landed on his back. He coughed, wheezed, and then drew in a slow breath - wondering if he had just gotten his entire body killed.
Instead of, say, agony and dislocated limbs and powdered bones, he instead felt the kind of mild ow he normally felt from banging his shin. Just. You know. Over his entire body. He stood and saw that he had been knocked into the lower levels of one of those fancy skyscraper store things that sold, like, jewels? He wasn't entirely sure, honestly, since his passage through the room had shattered display cases and sent chairs tumbling. But he had bought the cops time to run away from the handbeast and learned a very important lesson.
Whatever it was that had given him superpowers, it was real. Not just for show.
"Well, time to use it," Aiden said. He had never even been in a fight before. He stepped to the hole he had busted through the wall, then shouted. "HEY! You big ugly hand thing!"