Sorry, I forgot to publish. My bad.
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But before they could admire their son's handiwork, before they could process the sheer absurdity and beauty of what was happening, Oblivion moved.
The primordial void's form began to shift, void-substance flowing and reforming. The scythe melted back into his mass, Lady Death's skeletal remains merging with his essence in ways that made the watching entities look away.
What emerged was wrong.
Wrong in the way things are wrong when fundamental concepts get mashed together by grief and rage. Oblivion had merged with his sister's essence, combining void-energy with death-authority in a fusion that shouldn't exist.
The thing that formed was massive. Easily matching Luv's mecha in size. Four arms ending in claws that leaked reality-corrosion. A face that was half void-shadow, half skeletal grin. Wings of pure entropy spreading from its back.
It looked like something from the edge of the multiverse. The kind of horror Oblivion fought to keep reality safe from.
Except this time, he was the horror.
The abomination opened its mouth and screamed, and the sound was every ending that had ever occurred playing simultaneously.
Then it charged.
The impact when they collided shattered the arena floor. Breaking apart what remained of the equalization field. Made the surviving cosmic entities grab for safety as the entire structure shook.
Jay and Domino worked in perfect sync, their minds flowing through the connection to Luv, directing the mecha's movements with practiced combat experience. Duck the clawed swipe. Block with the left arm. Counter with the right.
But they weren't just fighting.
They were teaching.
"Feel the energy flow, Luv," Jay said, guiding his son's awareness through the connection. "It responds to what you imagine, but you have to believe it will work."
"Channel it here," Domino added, showing Luv how to direct death-energy to the mecha's fists. "Make it certain that when we hit, it counts."
And Luv learned.
Five years old and he was learning cosmic combat from his parents while fighting the primordial void, and somehow that made perfect sense in the moment.
The mecha's movements became smoother. More confident. Luv's imagination feeding off his parents' experience, adding details they hadn't thought to include. Energy wings sprouting from the back. Thrusters on the feet. A face-plate that slid down to protect the cockpit.
They rose into the air, the Oblivion-abomination pursuing them. The fight that had started on the arena floor expanded upward, the two massive constructs trading blows that sent shockwaves through dimensional barriers.
And as they fought, they grew.
Not just in size, though that too. The mecha was expanding with each exchange, Luv's imagination feeding on the combat, on the connection with his parents, on the desperate need to win.
But they were growing in power.
The integrated energy flowing through the construct was adapting, learning, evolving with each moment. Jay's Power Theft was subconsciously analyzing Oblivion's attacks and incorporating aspects of them. Domino's probability manipulation was finding better and better outcomes. And Luv's imagination was taking all of it and saying "yes, and what if we could do THIS?"
Oblivion matched them. The grief-mad fusion of void and death was growing too, drawing on reserves that predated creation. Each exchange left them both larger, more powerful, the scale of combat expanding beyond what the arena had been designed to contain.
They breached the arena ceiling.
The equalization field couldn't hold them. Cosmic entities scrambled to reinforce the barriers, but the two combatants were past caring about containment.
The fight spilled into realspace. Then into higher dimensions. The Watcher's observation deck became a front-row seat to something that should never have been possible.
Two beings- one a family merged into unity, the other a cosmic entity merged with death, growing to scales that made planets look small.
City-sized became mountain-sized became continent-sized became planet-sized.
And still they grew.
The gallery had relocated six times already, cosmic entities retreating to safe observation distances as the combatants expanded past solar system scale.
"This is impossible," one of the Celestials said, its voice carrying the weight of genuine shock.
"The upper limits," another added. "They're breaking the upper limits we thought were absolute."
Because there were supposed to be limits. Cosmic entities had power, yes, but that power operated within frameworks. The Celestials could reshape matter. The Abstracts embodied concepts. Even beings like Oblivion had defined operational parameters.
But what was happening now had no framework.
The mecha was galaxy-sized now. Spiral patterns running along arms that could wrap around star systems. Eyes that glowed with the combined light of a trillion suns filtered through rainbow-death-energy.
Inside the cockpit that existed in a pocket dimension somehow exempt from the scaling, Luv was laughing.
Pure five-year-old joy at being able to imagine something and have it be real. At working together with Mommy and Daddy to do something amazing. At being powerful enough to protect them like they always protected him.
The Oblivion-abomination matched them size for size, but there was no joy in it. Just rage and grief pouring more and more energy into the construct, trying to overwhelm through sheer power what it couldn't defeat through skill.
They breached into overspace.
The realm above normal reality where abstract concepts had physical presence. Where the multiverse itself was visible as a vast structure of interconnected universes.
And there, in the space between spaces, the mecha grabbed a spiral galaxy and swung it like a discus.
Oblivion caught it with two hands, void-energy corroding through stellar matter, but the impact sent him reeling backward through three universe-clusters.
The abomination roared and grabbed its own galaxy, hurling it back.
The mecha batted it aside with one massive hand, the galaxy scattering into component stars that rained across dimensional barriers.
"They're using galaxies as weapons?" Eternity said, and even his voice carried wonder.
"And the family construct is winning," Infinity added. "Look at the patterns. Every exchange, they adapt faster. Learn quicker."
Because that was the difference.
Oblivion was fighting alone. Pouring all his grief and rage and primordial power into a single unified assault. Powerful, yes. Devastating, absolutely.
But alone.
The mecha had three minds working in harmony. Jay's tactical brilliance finding the openings. Domino's probability manipulation ensuring they capitalized on them. And Luv's imagination turning every advantage into something more.
Family.
That was the weapon Oblivion couldn't counter.
The mecha caught Oblivion's next strike, twisted, and threw the abomination across overspace hard enough to crack reality.
Before the void could recover, Jay had an idea.
His dad's signature move. The thing that had saved his life more times than he could count.
Through the connection, Domino felt the plan form and grinned. She'd seen Jay's dad fight. Knew exactly what he was thinking.
The mecha's right arm began to shift. Energy flowing, concentrating, forming into a new shape.
A drill.
But not just any drill. A spiral construct galaxy-sized and spinning with enough force to bore through dimensional barriers. Green energy at its core—the Power Stone's raw force given rotational momentum.
Luv felt what his parents were building and understood instinctively. He'd watched the shows. Seen the drills that pierced the heavens.
His imagination fed into the construct, making it more than it should be. Adding spiral patterns that glowed with determination. Making the rotation not just physical but conceptual, drilling through possibility itself.
But it wasn't enough yet.
Jay felt it, knew what was missing. The drill needed to be more than just power. It needed to be final.
He reached deep, past the Infinity Stones' integrated energy, past the stolen cosmic powers, all the way down to the source.
His blood.
The rainbow blood that was equal parts human stubbornness, cosmic power, and fatherly love. He channeled it into the drill, the chromatic fluid flowing along the spiral patterns and turning the green energy into something else entirely.
The drill blazed multicolored now, each of the six Infinity Stone colors visible in the rotation, swirling around a core of pure integrated energy.
But Domino wasn't finished.
She channeled the Death Stone's full authority into the construct, every ounce of death-energy she could muster. The drill turned darker at its edges, violet-black power mixing with the rainbow light.
Death energy didn't just end things. It made endings certain. Inevitable. Final.
The drill that spun before them now wasn't just a weapon.
It was an ending given form.
The most lethal weapon Oblivion had ever faced, and he'd fought at the edge of the multiverse against horrors that made gods weep.
Through the connection, the family spoke as one:
"GIGA! DRILL! BREAKER!"
The mecha charged.
Oblivion raised all four arms, void-energy pouring from the abomination in waves that corroded through dimensional barriers. Death-authority from Lady Death's essence created zones of absolute ending around him.
But the drill kept coming.
It pierced through the void-energy like it wasn't there. The rotation caught the death-zones and pulled them apart, the spiral momentum overwhelming even the authority of ending.
The drill struck Oblivion's chest.
And tore straight through.
The sound was the sound of creation and ending happening simultaneously. The drill bore a hole torso-sized through the primordial void's construct, through the grief-mad fusion of brother and sister, through layers of reality that tried and failed to absorb the impact.
Rainbow light and violet-black death poured into the wound, and where they mixed something unprecedented occurred.
The death-energy didn't destroy the void-substance.
It gentled it.
Domino had channeled not the violent ending, not the harsh termination, but the peaceful conclusion. The kind of death that came naturally, that was accepted rather than fought.
The abomination began to dissolve. Not violently. Not with screaming or resistance.
It simply… let go.
Lady Death's essence separated from Oblivion's void-substance, the skeletal remains reforming into her proper shape. Her consciousness, fractured by the merger, pulled itself back together.
And Oblivion…
Oblivion collapsed.
The primordial void's form shrinking, the cosmic scale reducing back to merely immortal, then to merely massive, then to something almost mortal-sized.
He hit the ground of overspace hard enough to crack abstract reality, and didn't rise.
The mecha stood over him, drill still spinning, ready for another strike if needed.
But it wasn't needed.
Oblivion was finished.
The gallery was silent.
Cosmic entities who had witnessed the birth of dimensions, who had seen realities born and die, sat frozen in their seats.
Because they had just watched a family, a mortal father and mother and their five-year-old son, defeat the primordial void in single combat.
They had watched that same family destroy nearly the entire multiverse structure in the process, galaxies scattered like broken toys, dimensional barriers shattered, reality itself cracked and bleeding.
The fight had been so catastrophic that the damage assessment was still calculating, numbers climbing higher with each passing second.
Inside the mecha, Jay and Domino were exhausted. The connection was fading, Luv's imagination finally reaching its limits.
But before they could dispel the construct, before they could check on Oblivion's fallen form, a voice rang out across all of existence.
A voice that came from everywhere and nowhere.
A voice that even The Living Tribunal turned to face with something approaching concern.
"Alright, that's enough fun for a single chapter!"