A suffocating aura descended over the museum parking lot. The air itself grew heavy, pressing down on everything like an invisible weight. Survivors stumbled, gasping, and some even dropped to their knees.

  Jay's powers surfaced with intensity. Black tendrils of Darkforce coiled around his left arm while brilliant white Lightforce blazed from his right. The two energies crackled against each other, creating sparks that left afterimages in the air.

  The demons howled. Their bodies were twisted amalgamations of flesh and shadow, all claws and teeth and burning red eyes. They charged as one, a wave of supernatural violence aimed at the remaining civilians.

  Jay caught Domino's eye and nodded once.

  She understood immediately.

  Jay launched forward, and light daggers materialized in his hands. Pure white constructs hummed with purifying energy. The first demon lunged, jaws gaping wide. He drove the dagger straight through its skull. The creature's scream cut short as holy light exploded outward from the wound, incinerating it from the inside out.

  The mask of humanity fell away, revealing the monster underneath. The thing that had been alive since before civilization. Since before humans learned to speak in anything more than grunts.

  "What... did you just call me, boy?" Each word dripped venom. Dripped rage that had aged like wine in a barrel. Concentrated fury that could crack mountains.

  Jay's white hair whipped in the supernatural wind gathering around Selene. His eyes blazed with every color of stolen power. Blue, white, green, red, purple. A cosmic kaleidoscope of theft made manifest.

  "I called you a geriatric whore who's terrified of becoming irrelevant. Want me to repeat it slower? I know memory's the first thing to go when you hit your third millennium. Or was it the fourth? Hard to keep track when you're that fucking old and irrelevant."

  Selene barked. The sound was half rage, half something else. Something that might have been delight. Sexual excitement at being challenged. At being treated like prey instead of predator for the first time in centuries.

  "You think I don't know?" She stepped forward. Each footstep cracked the pavement. Power gathered around her like a visible aura. Psychic and magical both, creating a storm of energy that made the air scream. "You think I can't sense it? You don't possess those god-touched powers you wielded during the New York invasion! That magnificent display of denying death itself!"

  The ground cracked beneath her feet in concentric circles. Windows shattered for three blocks. Car alarms wailed in chorus. The museum's walls developed hairline fractures that spread like spider webs.

  "Rewriting death must have taken its toll, yes? Breaking fundamental laws of existence? You lost your chance at godhood, didn't you! Spent it all saving those pathetic mortals who will die anyway in a few decades! Wasted your ascension on temporary sentiment!"

  She threw her head back and laughed. The sound echoed off buildings.

  "You're weakened! Diminished! And you dare insult me? ME? I who have outlived empires! I who have drunk the blood of gods and titans and creatures whose names would drive you mad!"

  The demons howled in response to their mistress's rage. More demons came and raised their voices in chorus. A hymn of violence and hunger and ancient, terrible need.

  Power gathered around Selene like a visible storm. Psychic energy crackled purple and black. She raised both hands toward Jay. Fingers crooked like claws. Eyes burning with power that predated human civilization.

  "Let me show you the difference between age and youth, boy. Between experience and enthusiasm. Between a god and a fucking child playing with powers he doesn't understand!"

  The power released.

  And the parking lot became ground zero for a battle between ancient evil and modern defiance.

  Jay went into a full massacre, and after the demon's death, released a cloud of Darkforce energy. Jay's left hand shot out. The darkness flowed into him, pulled by instinct and hunger. It traveled through his body, and something inside him shifted. The Darkforce touched the Lightforce already burning in his core, and they collided. Merged. The darkness bleached white, converting automatically through his Polarity power.

  He felt stronger and fuller. The white glow around him intensified.

  Another demon came from his blind spot. Jay spun, light whip wrapping around its throat. He yanked. The head separated from the body mid-leap. More dark energy released. More absorption. More conversion.

  The pattern clicked into place in his mind. A realization that made him smile despite the carnage around him.

  Create light constructs. Purify demons with holy energy. Absorb their Darkforce essence. Convert darkness to light through Polarity. Repeat.

  An infinite loop.

  The demons had never seen anything like this. They were predators, hunters from dimensions where fear was food and violence was currency. But this human moved through them like death incarnate, turning their own energy against them with every kill.

  Three demons tried to coordinate an attack. Jay created a sphere of light that expanded outward in a pulse. The holy energy caught all three, and their screams echoed as their flesh burned away. He absorbed the residual darkness before their corpses hit the ground.

  His hair began to lighten. The dark strands bleached incrementally with each absorption, each conversion. The process was visible, white spreading from the roots like frost creeping across glass.

  Meanwhile, Domino moved to intercept the demons targeting the frozen civilians. Probability manipulation kicked in automatically. A demon leaped toward a cluster of office workers. Domino fired without really aiming. The bullet ricocheted off a car's side mirror, caught the edge of a parking meter, bounced off a fire hydrant's cap, and buried itself in the demon's eye socket. The creature dropped.

  "Next," she muttered, already tracking the next target.

  Her guns came up, both loaded with ammunition she'd laced with tachyon particles. She'd learned from their time together. Regular bullets were for regular problems.

  These weren't regular problems.

  She fired. The first round caught a demon in the chest. The demon's body vibrated, before collapsing as its molecular structure destabilised.

  "Betsy!" Domino's voice cut through the chaos. "Stop standin' there with your jaw on the ground and use those psychic powers to get these people the hell out!"

  Betsy stood frozen. Watching Jay work was mesmerizing in the worst way. He moved with surgical precision, each kill efficient and brutal. The demons died screaming, and he just kept moving, kept absorbing, kept converting their essence into more power. There was something beautiful and terrible about it. Like watching a force of nature destroy everything in its path.

  The shout snapped her back to reality.

  The butterfly mark blazed across her face. Purple psychic energy crackled outward from her left eye, spreading across her features like living tattoos. Betsy reached out telepathically, touching dozens of minds at once. Not commanding. Just... suggesting.

  'Leave. Walk away. Don't run. Don't create panic. One foot in front of the other. You saw nothing. You remember nothing. Just walk.'

  The civilians began moving. Their eyes were glassy, pupils dilated, irises reflecting purple light. Their movements were mechanical and Jerky.

  It was wrong. Violating their minds like this was wrong. But the alternative was watching them get torn apart by demons.

  Betsy swallowed the guilt and pushed harder.

  Domino covered their retreat. A demon lunged at a group of stumbling office workers. She didn't aim, didn't need to. Her power ensured the shot would land. The bullet left her gun, curved in mid-air through a path that violated three laws of physics, ricocheted off a streetlight, a broken window, and the metal framework of a collapsed awning before catching the creature between its eyes.

  "Yeah, that's right. I'm the one you want." She ejected the magazine, slammed in a fresh one. "Come on, you ugly bastards. Let's dance."

  The parking lot became a killing field. Blood and ichor painted the pavement in abstract patterns. Demon corpses littered the ground, already beginning to dissolve into sulfurous smoke that stank of rotten eggs and burnt meat. Car alarms wailed, broken glass crunched underfoot, and the museum's walls were scarred with claw marks and scorch patterns.

  Ten minutes of coordinated chaos continued. Betsy guided civilians in their jerky, puppet-like exodus while Domino provided covering fire with impossible accuracy. And Jay carved through demons with methodical brutality, his hair growing whiter with each kill.

  The parking lot emptied. The last civilian stumbled around the corner, out of sight. Betsy let her telepathic hold drop. Somewhere several blocks away, those people would blink, confused about how they'd gotten there. Better confused than dead.

  After killing most of the demons in his way, Jay stopped moving.

  His hair was completely white now.

  He turned toward Selene.

  The External watched him with undisguised hunger. Her tongue traced her lips, slow and deliberate. The gesture was obscene in its intimacy. Like she was already tasting him. Already imagining what it would feel like to consume him, body and soul.

  "Wonderful. Truly wonderful. I was right to pursue the Braddock bloodline, but you..." Her smile widened. "You're not ready yet, boy. Too raw and too unrefined. You must ripen. Mature. Age like fine wine before I partake. It's not time. Not yet. But soon. Oh yes, very soon."

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  She clapped her hands once.

  A portal tore itself open behind her. Similar to the dimensional gateway she'd used before, but this was darker. Wrong. The edges dripped with black ichor that hissed and steamed where it touched the ground, eating through asphalt like acid.

  Two figures stepped through.

  Brian Braddock, Captain Britain himself, emerged first. The Sword of Might hung loose in his grip, point dragging on the ground. His armor, once pristine, was now covered in dark symbols that writhed and shifted across the metal surface. Runes that predated language. Sigils that human eyes weren't meant to see as his cape hung in tatters.

  Jamie Braddock followed. His usual manic energy, that chaotic genius that bent reality like taffy, was gone. Replaced with eerie stillness. His clothes were disheveled. His hair matted. His posture was wrong. Bent and Broken.

  Both moved with mechanical awkwardness. Their gait was identical and Wrong in the way that dolls walking would be wrong. Like puppets with most of their strings cut, operated by someone who didn't quite understand how humans moved.

  Betsy's breath caught in her throat.

  Finally. Finally seeing her brothers after hours of searching.

  "Brian? Jamie?"

  She ran toward them. Relief and joy overwhelmed everything else. Tactical thinking evaporated. Training forgotten. They were here and alive. That was all that mattered.

  Then she saw their eyes.

  There were no irises nor any pupils. Just solid crimson that glowed with unnatural light. The red of arterial blood. And on their foreheads, carved into the skin itself, inverted pentagrams leaked black fluid that ran down their faces in thin rivulets.

  Betsy stumbled as her legs went weak. The joy died in her chest, replaced by ice-cold horror.

  "What... what have you..."

  Her voice wouldn't work properly. The words stuck in her throat.

  Brian moved.

  The Sword of Might came up in a horizontal slash. Faster than Betsy could track. Faster than she could process. It would cleave her in half. Split her from shoulder to hip.

  But a shield of pure white light materialized between them.

  The sword struck with a sound like a bell being rung in a cathedral. Vibrations echoed outward, rippling through the air in visible waves. The shield held, but hairline fractures spread across its surface like spider webs.

  Betsy found herself behind Jay. She hadn't seen him move. Hadn't registered anything except Brian trying to kill her. Her own brother. The man who'd protected her their entire lives. Who'd taught her to fight. Who'd held her when their parents died.

  Trying to murder her with dead eyes like a possessed blade.

  "Oi, you Bro-Con!" Jay's voice was flat. Cold as winter in Siberia. "Wake up. Look at their eyes. Look at the marks on their foreheads. They're controlled, obviously. Now get your head in the bloody game before one of them takes it off your shoulders."

  The shield dissipated into motes of light.

  Jay's right hand moved. Darkness coalesced from the shadows between cars, from the spaces under corpses, from everywhere light didn't reach. It formed a sword of pure Darkforce.

  He raised it toward Selene.

  A test to check her depth.

  Dark energy carved through the air, leaving a trail of absolute black in its wake. The slash moved fast enough to create a vacuum in its path.

  Jamie's hands moved. Red strings materialized around his arms, dozens of them, glowing with reality-warping power that made the air shimmer and distort. He thrust both hands forward. The strings shot into the ground.

  The pavement split and peeled back like skin. And underneath, instead of concrete foundation and dirt, there was flesh. Pink and wet and pulsing as a massive maw erupted upward from the impossible wound. Hundreds of teeth in concentric circles like a lamprey's mouth, each one the size of a human hand. The tongue was covered in suckers that pulsed with their own heartbeat. The entire thing reeked of stomach acid and decay.

  The maw was easily twenty feet wide. It rose up, blocking Jay's attack completely.

  The darkness slash flew straight into its gullet.

  The maw devoured the attack completely. Swallowed it whole as it's teeth gnashed.

  Then exploded from the inside. Jay's attack detonated in the creature's stomach. The teeth shattered, spraying enamel shrapnel in all directions. The tongue dissolved into chunky soup. The entire construct collapsed into nothingness, folding back into the pavement, which sealed itself as though nothing had happened.

  Jay's attack had been neutralized. But only barely, the maw had been destroyed in the process.

  Selene stood untouched behind the dissipating gore. She reached out, patting Jamie's head like rewarding a well-trained dog. "Good boy. Such a good, obedient boy. You did exactly as I taught you." Her fingers trailed through his hair. The gesture was possessive. Intimate. Wrong in a way that made the stomach turn. "You've learned so well. Both of you have. Such eager students once I showed you the proper... incentives."

  Betsy's telepathy flared. The butterfly mark spread further across her face, wings extending down her cheek, across her jaw. Purple energy crackled around her fists, sparking and hissing. "What have you done to my brothers, you evil bitch?"

  "You poor, stupid child." Selene's voice dripped false sympathy. Maternal warmth coating poison. "Don't be like this. You'll understand soon. When you join them. When I remake you the way I've remade them. The Braddock bloodline is too special to waste. Too powerful to leave untapped. Even you, little butterfly. Even trapped in that stolen Asian flesh, you have potential." Her smile widened, showing too many teeth. "I'll make use of every inch of you. Just like I did with your brothers."

  Blue energy rippled.

  Jay vanished and reappeared beside Domino in the space between heartbeats. In his hands, wrapped in sealed cloth stained with age and handling, was a katana. The bindings were old, frayed at the edges. He began unwrapping them with careful precision. Each layer of cloth that fell away released a faint hum. A vibration that set Selen's teeth on edge.

  Domino changed magazines, rounds clinked as they loaded. She didn't look at Jay and only kept her eyes on Selene and the Braddock brothers. "A'right, I'll ask. Why these people specifically? You've got magic older than civilization. Mutant powers that make most of us look like parlor tricks. You've been alive for millennia. Why now? Why the Braddocks? What makes them worth this kind of effort?"

  Selene's playful expression vanished. Wiped away like makeup.

  "The tides have shifted, girl. The balance has broken." Her voice carried the weight of centuries. Of watching empires rise and fall. Of outliving so called gods. "A mortal man now possesses the power to rewrite fundamental laws of existence itself. To deny death. To trap deities. To reshape reality according to his will."

  Her gaze locked onto Jay. He'd just finished unwrapping the Muramasa blade. The cursed katana gleamed dully in the afternoon light. The metal was dark and Hungry.

  "Do you understand what that means? What kind of attention that brings? When one human can do what gods cannot?" Selene took a step backwards as she could feel an erriness from this blade. The few remaining demons parted for her automatically. Instinctively. "Ancient powers are moving. Entities that have slept since before your ancestors learned to make fire. They're waking up. Looking for champions and weapons. Making others like you, choose. Join them, submit to them. Or die before they become a threat."

  She spread her arms wide, encompassing the parking lot, the controlled Braddocks, the carnage. "And I am not going to be left behind. I will not be prey in the new world being born. So I looked for others touched by cosmic significance. Those who carry the spark to change reality itself." Her hand gestured to the Braddock brothers like presenting prizes. "And I found a merry little family. Every single member destined for greatness. Powers that reshape the world. Bloodline that breeds true to potential. Perfect vessels, perfect tools and most importantly, perfect servants."

  She ran her fingers through Jamie's hair again. Like caressing property. "So I made my move. I'm Creating my own empire again. Starting with making them my first retainers. My loyal soldiers. My devoted... pets."

  Domino's grip tightened on her guns "And how exactly did you manage that? Mind control ain't easy, especially not on reality warpers and mystical champions. These two aren't weak-willed civilians who fold under a stiff breeze. How'd you break 'em?"

  Selene's smile returned. Predatory in a way that made the skin crawl. She ran her fingers through Jamie's hair, then Brian's, the gesture lingering.

  "Tantric magic. Ancient Aghori techniques I learned millennia ago when the world was younger and crueler. When gods walked openly and humans knew their place." Her voice dropped to a purr. "The body and the mind are linked, you see. Control one with enough... intensity, enough pleasure mixed with pain, enough stimulation, and the other follows. Break them down to their most base instincts, then rebuild them. Condition them. Train them like the animals they are deep down."

  She leaned close to Jamie, lips nearly touching his ear. "Such devoted students they became. Such eager participants once I showed them what their bodies could feel. What I could make them experience. Hours and hours of instruction. Breaking them. Rebuilding them. Making them mine."

  The implication hung in the air like poison gas. Like something that made breathing painful.

  Betsy didn't scream.

  The sound that came from her was beyond a scream. It was something primal. Something that came from the part of the brain that predated language. Pure anguish and rage and violation given voice.

  Psychic energy exploded outward. Purple daggers materialized in both hands, solid constructs of psychic force sharp enough to cut reality. The butterfly mark blazed across her face, wings spreading from her eye across her entire left side. All technique abandoned.

  All the discipline beaten into her by years of practice and combat evaporated.

  Just rage and the desperate, animal need to hurt the thing that had hurt her family. That had raped her brothers. That had stolen everything.

  "I'LL KILL YOU!" The words tore from her throat. "I'LL TEAR YOU APART! I'LL MAKE YOU SUFFER! YOU FUCKING BITCH, I'LL—"

  Brian moved to intercept.

  The Sword of Might came up in a perfect guard position. Textbook defensive stance. The kind Brian had taught Betsy when they were children.

  Sister and brother met with a clash of psychic and mystical energy. Betsy's dagger scraped against the flat of the blade, throwing sparks that burned purple and gold. The force of the impact sent shockwaves rippling outward. As the Car windows shattered and the ground cracked beneath their feet.

  Brian's boot caught her in the stomach, launching her backward. The impact drove the air from her lungs. She hit the ground hard, pavement cracking beneath her, rolling, trying desperately to regain her footing.

  But he kept coming.

  The brothers advanced. Their movements perfectly synchronized. Mirror images of each other. Brian's sword came down. Jamie's strings lashed out. Working together with coordination that should have been impossible for two minds operating independently.

  Because they weren't independent anymore. They were extensions of the same will. Selene's will.

  Betsy rolled aside. The Sword of Might carved through where her head had been, gouging a trench in the pavement. She threw a psychic dagger. Jamie's strings caught it mid-flight, unraveled it back into raw psionic energy.

  "Brian, please!" Betsy's voice cracked. "Jamie! I know you're in there! Fight it! Fight her! Please!"

  Their faces didn't change. The pentagrams on their foreheads leaked more black fluid.

  They raised their weapons again.

  Selene watched with obvious delight. Clapping her hands together like a child at a puppet show. "Yes, yes! Fight your family! Show me that famous Braddock passion! Show me that fire I'm going to enjoy breaking out of you, little butterfly!"

  Domino fired two Kill shots in rapid succession, both aimed at Selene's head with perfect accuracy.

  Jamie's strings materialized between the bullets and their target. The shots struck the reality-warped constructs and simply... stopped. Hung suspended in mid-air for a moment. Then the strings twisted and bent space. The bullets doubled in size, then quadrupled and finally grew until each was the size of a baseball, spinning slowly.

  Then reversed course. Heading back toward Domino with the same velocity they'd been fired with.

  "Shit!" Domino's luck kicked in. She dove left. One bullet missed by inches, close enough to feel the wind of its passage. The other grazed her shoulder, tearing through cloth and skin. Blood welled up. "Luck ain't gonna be enough against that. Not when he's warping probability itself."

  Her dagger came out, charged with tachyon energy. She sliced the air where the bullets came, cutting through the bullets in perfect halves.

  Jay stepped forward. The Muramasa blade hung loose in his grip, point toward the ground. His completely white hair seemed to glow with converted Lightforce. But it was his eyes that drew attention. Every color of stolen power swirled in his irises.

  "Selene!"

  The External's attention snapped to him like a predator hearing prey. Her hunger returned, intensified. Looking at him now was like looking at a feast. At something she wanted to consume in every possible way. Devour, Possess and Own.

  "Yes, Power Broker?" Her voice was silk over steel. Seduction over threat. "Have you reconsidered my offer? Join me willingly, and I release the Braddocks. We could rule together. Ancient power and modern might. Combine your reality-breaking abilities with my millennia of experience. Nothing could stand against us. We would reshape the world into paradise." Her smile widened. "And the things I could teach you. The pleasures I could show you. The ways I could make you feel..."

  Jay's expression was cold. Carved from ice. His grip on the Muramasa tightened. The blade hummed, sensing blood about to be spilled.

  "I don't negotiate with ancient whores who can't tell the difference between power and performance."

  Selene's smile vanished. Wiped away instantly. Her beautiful face twisted into something ancient and terrible.

  "You're gonna regret this, Boy!"