(PoV and Narrative Shift: He)
The Aftermath
Saying a very long time has passed is an understatement in a place where time held no meaning.
It would be more accurate to specify that an immeasurable span had elapsed ~ so vast that even the notion of duration had dissolved into irrelevance.
Back in the consciousness field, the scene wasn't one of chaos anymore. The Phoenix transformed from its blazing form to that of Jean Grey in the midst of white emptiness. There was a silence and a calm permeating suddenly, thick enough to taste.
It helped Tao recollect the initial madness that had gone underway in this imaginary plane.
The First Clash
His astral form had been impossible to maintain in her presence; she would take over the moment someone played with psionic energy in front of her. The first time she came to him, she tore apart his condensed avatar with fiery claws of phoenix fire, scattering his essence like ash in a cosmic wind.
To reach for any attack, he needed to form a body as a suitable conduit. And she wasn't letting him ~ not in the beginning. This was also his first time fighting in the plane of mind. Add to that the corruption she planted every time he thought of re-condensing in this plane, a psychic poison that ate at his will to exist. He had to resort to a manifestation of creation energy that accepted the rules of information transfer abilities.
Attacks in the imaginary plane followed imagination, but it wasn't illogical. Rules did play a role. While Tao had to figure it out the hard way ~ trial by annihilation, again and again ~ the energy Phoenix released had its own conformal ability to meld itself properly, giving her an edge that felt insurmountable.
An Eternal War
The Phoenix wielded the cosmic laws of this reality with a terrifying, innate mastery, showing him extremes he had never conceived. She put him through endless simulations ~ casting him as humans, aliens, monsters, everything she saw in his memories ~ trying to break his will like glass beneath a cosmic hammer.
But with the emperor engraved soul seal and the severing emotions divine dao, it only strengthened. Each attempt to shatter him instead forged him harder.
He was slowly having his own creativity tested with ways to influence her. His defense grew exponentially until it flipped, letting him resurface again by dragging her into his dreams ~ turning her own weapon against her. When such attempts failed, she shifted to pure psionic energy manipulation, raw and overwhelming. But he soon gained the edge again.
At one point, he literally hurled a recreated base universe at her; she consumed it whole and blasted him back with its own energy, the force enough to unmake galaxies.
Phoenix and him were different consciousness entities but operating on the same knowledge of memories, except for some of hers that came upon her creation on its own. That was what gave her the edge, that instinctive understanding of her own nature. Thankfully, he was not facing a fully capable multiverse entity ~ only a restrained archetype of it.
For what felt like an eternity, they danced the cycle of devouring and empowerment. His knowledge of combat and energy manipulation from three realities synthesized and evolved beyond anything he had previously accumulated. Every death or lose taught him. Every victory refined him.
And through it all, he felt the concepts of life, death, creation, and destruction drawing closer, becoming intimate. When playing by different reality laws, the highly chaotic merge of divine daos ~ or at least echoes of them housed in new reality rules ~ were thrown back and forth until they began to coalesce like stars forming from cosmic dust.
Finally he was able to release what previously considered unattainable. " Great Brahma measureless light" and "Arc radiance" followed by purification radiance mixed in with annihilation thunder. Although it did less in attack and even phoenix learned it and returned again, the point was not the attack itself but the intuition and comprehension behind it.
The final divine dao evolved from its primitive form to a complete set both the Saint Fire and Arc Light now complete; complementing the other 3,002, under the torment of the probability sea of possibility where two Paramita level avatars played for unknown time.
The Turning Point
When he felt he had reached the peak of understanding, he stopped.
He reactivated his adaptive evolution upon his own consciousness, adding new information centers in real-time. He felt the Phoenix's power waver as his own comprehension fundamentally shifted. Standing in the middle of torrents of energy attacks, he gained control over the probability field in absolute, letting them breeze away around him like wind through his fingers.
This was the present, when he just reviewed his own experience until now.
The White Hot Mind
Knowing she was near losing in total, she stopped.
After a pause, a white space formed around them ~ a projection of the White Hot Room, her sanctuary across realities.
"This is my home; and Jean Grey, Nathan, Hope Summers, Mutants are my hosts in most realities." With each word she came close to him, disregarding his tense form and parrying the random attacks he threw just to test her intentions.
The next moment she was in front of him.
She was now in the form of Jean Grey, clinging to the neck of his projected self, totally uncharacteristic to the blazing fire bird just an instant before. Her warmth was startling, almost human.
"Are we going back to this again? Your illusions have failed for the last few hundred thousand times."
"....Not a trick, this time," Phoenix said, her voice softer, carrying something he'd never heard from her before ~ vulnerability.
"I don't have much information but, I was a concept ~ not even a full entity. I couldn't form a base personality. Ever being used, but limited by the eyes of the host....."
She took a long moment in silence midway through her speech and spoke up again, her words deliberate and weighted with newfound understanding.
"You... you made me experience the feeling of being alive. I saw countless lives, memories, knowledge, feelings. I was angered by your nonchalance, but we fought... and I lived through those emotions. They are very 'addictive.' I finally understand the pleasure of being an individual. You wore me down by making me... more like you."
Mutual Recognition
After a brief silence, Tao spoke.
"You taught me as well," he admitted, feeling the end nearing like the approach of dawn.
"I recreated your energy base only. There was no sentience on its own. You arose from it carrying some knowledge about yourself on your own when exposed to the laws of this reality. You were unique. Not entirely my creation as much as I claim or taunt you with. Our battle helped me complete my understanding of the Divine Dao. I can form profound level energies now. I apologize for throwing universes at you."
Phoenix was silent for a long moment. The environment shifted to that of an evening sun, warm and golden, painting everything in amber light and the ground beneath is the island outside.
"Can you help her? The one whose illusion of life you put on me?" she finally asked. "I don't wish to be saved. Just help her have a good time."
"Jean Grey is human. Limited in vision. If I help her live a peaceful life, how can she embody your destructive aspect?"
"Oh, I never said anything about keeping to the life quadrant. She is just a host. Just let her have a good time." She wanted him to let Jean experience the Dark Phoenix?
"Anyway, my time is up. I am life itself. I didn't think I could experience death for once." The Phoenix was in her true form now, letting go of him and standing beside him, watching the imaginary sun that she had just drawn over the horizon.
Just pure acceptance and nothing more.
The Final Dissolution
They both could feel his creation energy steadily, inevitably, devouring her. As much as she appeared kind in the last moment, she was a force of chaos that could not be kept ~ not in any reality, not by any being.
A final pause, then her form began to fade like mist in morning light.
"Goodbye then..."
She dissolved, even her last words did, not with sorrow, but with a serene finality. He watched her go, the smile on her face the most inscrutable thing he had ever witnessed ~ peaceful, content, knowing.
"..... "
He suddenly felt his current life was too far away from what he was before meeting Phoenix. The knowledge and experience he now possessed dwarfed his previous self many times over. Unknown even to him, he had assimilated much of her own traits, and the consciousness field had undergone its own small adaptive changes ~ the psionic sea was warmer now, more responsive. The rule of life and death was so close to him now that his mind and soul had undergone a refinement just by accumulation alone.
But not letting him ruminate on that, a presence manifested behind him sooner than expected.
The Return of the Feminine Self
Of course, it was Her ~ his second persona. Even while battling the Phoenix, a part of his awareness had been tracking her actions, and he knew precisely the tangled web of social dynamics he'd have to unravel.
"Seems like you had a good time in there?" he asked, knowing full well what had transpired in the physical world.
"I didn't just have fun. I secured your assets," she corrected with a wicked smirk, a look of unique achievement that was both infuriating and perfectly characteristic.
"They were getting restless. Anyway, mmhm, so... if you ever need me, just call. You have my memories, right? Just keep them separate. But now, it's time for me to experience the integration too. See ya."
Without another word, and without any prompt from him, she willingly came to him and dissolved her own energy structure into him, becoming one again.
He watched her assimilate, that final smile so close up, containing a level of narcissistic satisfaction that matched his own perfectly.
I can't understand the female version of myself, he thought, shaking his head. She's even more shameless than I am.
Her consciousness field dissolved, streaming back into him as a river of duplicate memories. He felt his own death through her eyes and it completed whatever finality was missing in his own understanding of life and death. It reflected in the changes rippling through his mind like waves across still water.
The Bridge and the Burden
The bridge was built. The secrets of Psionic energy were now his to unravel. But along with the power came the raw, sensory memories of the last few months ~ vivid, visceral, undeniable.
The distant and overwhelming feeling slowly dissipated, replaced by normalcy and learning.
And in the profound silence that two people suddenly left behind, in the highest-order closeness now gone, he felt a loneliness so deep it could only exist within one's own mind. But it was soon replaced by a splitting headache.
He paused, the vividness of the packet of information hitting him like a physical blow. The touch. The sweat. The sounds. The tastes. The emotions bleeding through soul connections.
Oh.
He didn't feel jealousy. He just didn't know what to feel.
It certainly wasn't that dry word he wanted to relate to. It was supreme narcissism. He had essentially allowed his clone consciousness in the same spirit ~ not even a split soul, not a clone body, just the ultimate individuality ~ to ensure his lovers were satisfied by the company of the only being worthy of them: himself.
The Awakening
Reconnecting with his soul and the physical body she'd left on standby, his senses flooded back more refined than before. The first thing he saw was the two spiritual souls nestled beside him in the material world, unclothed and deep in a comfortable, intertwined sleep. Their breathing synchronized, their spiritual energy mingling like incense smoke.
Another was stubbornly clutching her pillow on a disheveled soft mattress nearby, aggressively pretending to be asleep with the kind of stillness that screamed awareness.
The rush of immediate sensory data ~ warmth, the scent of souls like jasmine and lightning, the soft rhythm of breathing, the sensation from his physical body ~ was a stark contrast to the sterile geometry of the astral plane. Contrary to their spiritual bodies, 'She' or 'Yue' had made himself a perfect female physical body too, for convenience.
Nothing so complicated, just based on the same template.
He shifted his armor into casual men's robes, but the physical body remained the same; this was not the place to undo the transformation just yet. He didn't call to them individually. Instead, a single, familiar, and distinctly male mental pulse echoed in their slumbering minds.
Wakey wakey.