25 years after Houston was destroyed in a brutal supervillain attack, Jay Martin is accepted into the Texan Hero Network. Tasked with this sacred duty, he takes on the alter ego of Quickwit and vows to always protect Neo Houston.
Unfortunately, desp...
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For a while now, the existence of the multiverse is something the Supers of the world have known about. Personally, Jay thinks it's kinda...boring. Ooh, look, a universe where Jay is a woman. Or wow, a universe where Jay is from Britain, or drives a mech, or god forbid, a universe where he has actual superpowers like superstrength or telepathy.
That is to say, Jay has met his multiversal equivalents on multiple occasions (girl Jay was his favorite. She was cool.) But they never really seem to be actually him so much as they are versions of Quickwit. It's as if different people had taken up the mantle of being a lame sidekick who fetches lattes, and memorized why electric cars can actually be worse for the environment sometimes. But this, this is a little more intense...
The alternate Jay is ranting, hands tightly clenched around his staff. "These wannabe gods want to pretend I exist to play out their tropes—they don't realize the power I have! The power to change the narrative to anything I want. And you know, I kinda got bored of the hero's journey. I got bored of superheroes..." Jay's doppelganger looks off to the side, eyes still wide. "So I changed things."
Jay takes a step back. "You're insane!"
"No, I'm not. I'm just not an idiot hiding behind denial like you."
"I'd rather be an idiot than a mass murder! How could you—to all those people?!"
The copy smirks, looking behind Jay. "Well it wasn't really me doing the murder. It was him."
Jay turns around, heart in his throat. Ice fills his veins as he spots two pin-pricks of red standing out from the gloom.
It's Stygian. But not Jay's Stygian.
The little bat-winged Pixiepuff runs to Pixamena's supine form.
"Wake up! Hurry!"
She startles awake, hugging both the pomeranians to her chest. She gives Jay a guilty look before disappearing in a flash of purple, pulling herself and the Pixiepuffs into her Pixie-Pocket dimension. Jay attempts to flee as well, but the plan is quickly foiled by a barrage of dark shapes that dart forward and quickly coil around him.
"Augh! Stop—!"
Jay cries out in pain as constricting coils of black wrap around him. It's not like the other times, not at all. Even before he and Gannet had their truce, the shadows were never like this, never painfully squeezing and pressing up against him so hard that white dances behind his eyes. Jay struggles fruitlessly, his vision swimming.
"'Gian..." he slurs.
Glowing hands cup his face, and he sees two cardinal-red irises before the world goes black.
Last time Jay had lost consciousness was when he'd been stabbed by Techtra. Like last time, he's dropped into a vast, empty, white space. Only, the words are back. Jay watches them fill in slowly, letter by letter. Sometimes, they even pause or blink out and are replaced by a different word. Most strange of all, though, was that the words were spelling out exactly what he was thinking...
