Klarion watched Satoru Gojo die before his ethereal eyes and froze the man's corpse in place.

Something inside him had cracked in the end. Just as planned.

He ignored the blaring in his senses, of an imminent arrival of a Lord of Balance. He had overdrawn his power in the mortal realm, pulled out everything he could at once to deal with this annoyingly powerful teenager. This ultimate agent of Order that would just screw everything up given a few more years to grow.

Not on Klarion's watch, no.

Just as the boy's soul tried to slip away and use whatever residual cursed energy it had left to transform into some nasty shadow creature—a cursed womb like a void in space surrounded by a searing bright white accretion disk—Klarion pulled the cursed womb back from the air and shoved it into the boy's chest. The blaring of the Lords of Balance reduced in volume, and Klarion prepared to do one final thing—returning the boy's power.

With something extra, of course.

To tilt things his way.

He caressed Gojo's pristine cheek, that looked like it had been cut from marble, "Call me Gege the way I'm giving you preferential treatment, Sa-chan. No one gets to be this lucky!" He laughed. "I can't wait to work with you more often after this!"

This all went against everything Klarion stood for—this self-sacrifice would have made him rip his hair out in frustration at any other time, were it not for the potential Klarion sensed in this path.

He beheld the tiny little black hole that represented Satoru Gojo's power. Cursed energy. It differed from chaotic energy. It was structural, orderly. It had predefined rules. Binding vows, limitations, heavenly pacts. So many goddamn rules!

Yuck! How could anyone bear to use such a chained up and rigid power?! It was disgusting!

It needed more whimsy. Sure, some of the rules had charm, but many of them would make it so that the kid's powers couldn't even work! Like this dumb Domain Expansion for instance! Kent had snuck out by just crawling through the barrier, and there was no Innate Technique that worked because the sure-hit effect couldn't target anyone inside! What the hell was this? Completely broken!

It needed looser rules. Adaptivity. Not omnipotence—that made things boring after all. And omnipotence was the ultimate order. No, this would provide just the right amount of chaos for things to finally… make sense. For things to flow naturally. And nature was the ultimate chaos after all.

He manifested a pure chaos spark, pushing the object out from the chaos realm and into the mortal realm like passing a kidney stone. It was agonizing. Teekl was screaming.

The chaos spark was an orange marble of all potential, chaotic and unbound by order. He smushed it together with Limitless and beheld the chaotic fusion that followed.

The two orbs met with a flash, like the collision of two rogue suns in some forgotten corner of the cosmos. For a split second, both orbs turned crystalline, hard and sharp as diamond. Then, the crystal shattered, and in its place bloomed wild ribbons of color that swirled, danced, and tangled themselves into impossible, slithering shapes. They rippled like liquid silk, transforming into vines covered in feathers and scales, which then dissolved into glittering sand and drifted away on an invisible wind.

Limitless pulsed black and white in turns, trying to assert its precise, mathematical structure, but the spark twisted it, bent it out of shape as if it were a rubber band stretched past its breaking point. Space warped, folding in on itself, the air taking on the appearance of smeared paint or melting glass. Sound, if it could even be called that, thrummed around them in rhythms that seemed alive, like alien heartbeats or laughter from the deep.

The rules that once contained Limitless unraveled, twisting and bending like strings pulled free of a puppet. Time stuttered and skipped, flickering between frames of existence that no longer lined up. Satoru's cursed energy, normally disciplined and deliberate, was now churning in kaleidoscopic patterns of illogic.

Unknown colors that didn't even belong in this realm painted the skies of this Domain as the chaos spark became smothered by the physical laws of the universe, tamped down on and reduced to a cosmically insignificant extent. It no longer had the power to rewrite galaxies—not that the Lords of Balance would ever have let that fly. For most of this transformation, Klarion had been forced to hold the doors of reality shut with all the concentration he could muster while ensuring that the process continued on as smoothly as possible.

Until finally, it was ready. The New Limitless.

Truly Limitless now.

Chaotic power in the hands of an agent, not a Lord. Perfectly circumventing the rules.

And best of all? Gojo wouldn't be loyal to Klarion, not right off the bat at least, which muddied the waters even further as far as the Lords of Balance and Order were concerned. Klarion didn't need that anyway. His physical vessel was well and good in terms of directing and proliferating chaos, but he didn't need the loyalty of Gojo given to that vessel.

Not when Gojo was already plenty loyal. Not to Klarion, but to what Klarion represented.

The heart he had tossed to the kids disappeared inside a red portal. Ra's could find use for that. As for the hole in Gojo's chest… Klarion waved his hands, resetting the injury from a moment before it had happened—Gojo really had fought like he had any hope of winning, what an actual idiot! What a fascinating idiot, however! Ultimate confidence, even in the face of zero basis or grounding in reality! Faith in his own cult of self! Patriarch of his own clan and pope of his own church!

Satoru Gojo's eyes lit up as he regained life.

"Wakey wakey, honored one!" Klarion sang. "By the way, funny story, you too are a comic book character! Just thought I'd let you know. In fact, it's a multiversal law—every world is someone's story. And your world was someone's story, too."

Gojo's disbelief turned into a grin, "Must have been a rotten story."

"Alright now, you win," Klarion said, "Let's stop going off-script now, okay? I'll give you guys a head start. Kent's in the Tower of Fate."

He wasn't. After he had escaped Unlimited Void, Klarion had stashed him in a pocket dimension, along with Abra, healing from the damage they had endured in this battle. He just needed the Titans to think that Kent was in the tower, so they would go in and progress the episode as intended.

Klarion would need a reason to fight them, and to be banished by Gojo's hand—the Lords of Balance were hard at work twisting fate with all their might, stacking the odds against Klarion. Teekl meowed in uncertainty, but she knew the truth, deep down. Sorry, kitty.

Klarion would get those pesky bastards back for this in time, but for now, there was no other path ahead than this.

"Why this favor?" Gojo asked with a frown. At least he knew to step easy around Klarion. Good. Klarion hated annoying brats. Except for when they were like Gojo. Then they could get a pass.

"I take good care of my goons. I'm a great boss," Klarion explained. "And you can go off-script again if you'd like. Just remember, it's your choice. It'll all be your choice! Have fun with that. Alright, goodbye." He snapped his fingers, disappearing the kids.

Salem

August 19th , 22:35

The moment we appeared outside, next to the Bio-Ship by magic, I fell on my knees and threw up.

Everything felt… wrong. So wrong.

Infinity!

It turned on. But it… it was wrong, too. It looked different to my Six Eyes. My Six Eyes felt different, too. I was seeing—too much. Too much junk. Too much… was that magic?

It was the tower. Right. We were near the foot of the tower.

My power rhymed with the old version. I cycled between Infinity, Blue and Red with ease—the responsiveness of this power was off the charts.

But I didn't know why. I didn't understand it. And that knowledge, that my very own cursed energy was not really mine, terrified me to the core.

I didn't know what to do, didn't know what to say.

Why hadn't I just died instead?!

Aqualad and Megan fell before me. "Talk to us, Gojo. Are you alright?"

I took deep breaths, and centered myself. I tried to produce positive energy, and found that I could. I looked inwardly, and ignored all the changes to my energy, instead looking through the material using Six Eyes Reversal. I focused on what was wrong. Nothing. I was fully healthy.

I got up and wiped my mouth. "I'm fine," I said, looking down. "I'm okay."

"Let's go to the Bio-Ship," Megan offered, "You can wait there… while we get Kent, okay?"

Right. Made sense. They had to progress the epi… the… uh. I blinked. No, they just… had to go on, I guess. It made sense.

Shouldn't we… radio Batman? Ugh, whatever. I wasn't paid enough to think. That was Aqualad's job.

I could hardly even speak as Megan walked me back into the Bio-Ship and I sat on my chair—up front and in the middle. The Satoru Gojo seat.

I hardly noticed when the others had made their way to the tower. The doors opened and they stepped through, gone to my senses.

I saw Klarion, the white-shirted guy, and Kent Nelson watching from the streets. Klarion looked at me and grinned. Then he held an index finger in front of his lips, telling me to keep quiet.

My desire to rip his head off warred with a bone-deep sense of dread and a… certainty that things would somehow be fine if I didn't intervene. I threw aside the fear, the hatred, the anger and instead focused on that—that certainty. What the hell was that?

Things… were going… according to script. Klarion had said as much, and the way my friends proceeded without me suggested the same: a script, the natural flow of causality before I came to this world and ruined everything.

And Klarion was one of those all-powerful beings beholden to that flow. Beholden to rules. That's why I wasn't dead. Only… tormented.

No, that felt incomplete. There was more to it than just that.

I watched them enter the tower numbly, wondering if I should follow. Wondering if it even made sense to.

I could sense a slight refusal for the world to change its due course on my behalf and by my action.

I was a virus, foreign to the body that was this world.

My actions would destroy everything in time.

…Unless I took the next step.

I saw it, in my mind's eye. A metaphysical step over the line and into this world, one that I hadn't taken yet. I had stood at the boundary line all this time, waiting for an opportunity to go home.

What would happen to my connection to my own world once I took the next step? Was this not what Zatara was specifically referring to? Was this not his fear? That this new source of power would inextricably link me to this universe forever?

And yet…

I grinned.

…I could distantly sense a potential that I never had before. A widening of what I could once do. I had grown more hands. More legs. More eyes and more ears.

I had become a spiritual abomination, and my potential was now… infinite.

Limitless.

Step in. Step forward.

Change it all.

Gather the power.

And once I was ready to leave, I would leave, unconstrained by the boundaries of reality and by the very laws of the universe.

I had to go into the tower.

Without the key, I'd probably be punished. Likely by a can't-miss attack, like in a domain.

Simple Domain.

I had worked on the particulars of it for a while, after I had seen the New Shadow School brokies practice it in front of me. My Six Eyes made replicating the technique by sight possible, if not easy. It required work, of course, but…

With this chaotic cursed energy, my intent smoothed over every intricate movement of energy, imbuing raw intent into my power.

A domain expanded around me.

A zone of absolute me-ness.

And within its borders, I imbued it with… a concept. Or, an aspect of a concept. Not a technique. The immutability of Infinity.

I warped my way into the Tower. A searing wall of pure heat tried to immediately kill me. I poured my energy into the simple domain, repelling the magic, repelling the very conditions that would have forcefully burned me to a crisp had I entered without this power.

Chaos. Chaos repelling order.

Magic repelling magic.

Finally, I had my magic defense.

Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

Was that so fucking hard, Zatara?

After almost a minute of trying to kill me and failing, the automatic defense systems simmered down, and I was met with a projection of Kent Nelson standing before me in this square brick room. "You have entered without a key and the tower does not recognize you. Leave, or perish. The fire is not the worst that this Tower could throw at you." I didn't doubt it.

"I was sent by Red Tornado," I said, "And I'm here to save your life."

"Kent Nelson entered just moments ago," the projection argued.

"Against his will and under duress."

"Very well," it said, "Proceed."

I looked around at the doors, using my Six Eyes to find what I was searching for. Six Eyes made the task even more complex than it had to be.

Oh well. Guess I'd just keep looking. Nothing could get past my Six Eyes, not for long.

000

Kent was dying. Wally didn't know what to do. Klarion rained down witchy fire at them, hammering away at a golden dome protecting them both. They were going to die. They both were!

Wally clenched his jaws, blinking away the sight of Gojo getting his heart ripped out. Of all of it disappearing like it was just a nightmare only for them to end up here anyway, at the top of the Tower of Fate.

Like it was fate.

They hadn't even called the Justice League. What the hell was wrong with them?

It was Klarion. Had to be. He… did something. Forced this… 'fate'.

Wally… didn't believe in fate. He looked up at the Helmet also inside the protective golden dome, representing that concept, the 'magic' helmet.

He had to take it.

He stood up and grabbed the helmet from the air, and held it over his head. Then he saw him suddenly appear, like he always did—Gojo, having teleported between Wally and Klarion. Outside the bubble of fate magic.

Gojo, whose back was so broad as to completely conceal the slight Lord of Chaos.

Gojo, who had just been killed by said Lord, now back for a second round.

Not again. Not again!

He wore the helmet.

And was in a dark room.

"Hello?" For a moment, he could have sworn that he had heard the echo of 'hello' before he had even spoken. "What the--?" Wally blinked, having heard it again. An echo, and then he spoke. "Wait- uh—I." He tried to circumvent the echo, break out of its weird, deterministic hold on him, but he found that he couldn't. Everything he was about to say, it already said. The experience nauseated him, almost.

"Ignore it," he heard the voice of Kent Nelson behind him. Wally whirled on his feet to look at the old man, grinning genially as he walked up to him, walking with his cane. "It'll only drive you crazy."

"Kent, you're alive!"

Kent looked slightly pained, "Sorry to disappoint. But no. I'm just a soul that the helmet grabbed before it could ascend. Because of how long I've used it, you see."

"What, then… doesn't that mean that I--?" Wally trailed off.

"No, you're still alive. You put the helmet on, and my soul got sucked in. Now Nabu is controlling your body."

"Nabu?"

"The real Doctor Fate. One of them Lords of Order I told you about. He's the guy controlling your body now. Wanna watch?"

Wally looked where Kent gestured and saw a window into the outside world, where Gojo had shot a purple orb of energy at—the cat!

He was going to kill the cat?!

Somehow, the cat had been thrown into the air before the purple streak of energy shot through it as quickly as lightning, looking like a shooting star streaking over the sky of Salem.

The cat, for its part, disintegrated into nothing, and Klarion held his head as he screamed, "Nooooooo!" He slowly dissipated, feet first. His face was the last to leave.

And just as his mouth was about to disappear, he… he grinned.

Wally blinked. "Klarion is… dead."

"If only," Kent sighed, "Your boy did good, killing the familiar and banishing Klarion back to the chaos realm. He shouldn't resurface for quite a while yet."

Doctor Fate, puppeteering Wally's body, dispelled the orange shield and immediately fired an attack at Gojo, one that almost struck at his back. He doubled over in focus, repelling it with a growl, and looked at Doctor Fate in shock. "Wally, what are you doing?!"

"You are an abomination," Wally felt his mouth moving and words coming out of it. He felt every one of Doctor Fate's movements. Even though he couldn't control himself.

"No!" Wally shouted, "That's not what I meant to say—"

"It's not you," Nelson looked troubled, pained. "It's… Nabu. Klarion got his claws on the boy, and now Nabu deems him a threat to fate. Perhaps it might be for the best. What the Batman told me about him, this Gojo… it's enough to make anyone familiar with fate get flexible with their morals, considering Klarion did his work on him."

Wally looked at him in disgust, "How can you say that?! He almost died for us—how can—"

Wally became distracted by the feeling of Doctor Fate speaking again, "An aberration unto fate. You must be excised."

"I just got rid of Klarion!" Gojo shouted, angrier than he had ever seen him before. His Japanese accent slipped as he ranted, "Took care of your problem, oh glorious lord! And now you want to kill me. For what reason?"

Doctor Fate didn't argue. Instead, he just kept firing his beams of light. Gojo slipped between them, moving like greased lightning, and Wally was treated with a first row view of what it meant to be an enemy of Gojo.

He pointed his finger at Wally and red began to form. Then his eyes widened and he shot off the projectile way off mark.

"Dammit!" Gojo growled, "You let go of him now and I won't disintegrate that goddamned helmet, Doctor Fate!"

"Nabu," Kent pleaded, "Please reconsider. Don't make the boy fight his own friend. Don't kill him."

A voice boomed inside the helmet space, "He is Klarion's masterpiece—his greatest agent yet. We could not reach him in time. He had such potential for Order as well. But he is lost. He is unbound. And he will, by his own volition, one day cause great harm and disorder."

"How can you know that?!" Wally screamed.

"His fate is chaotic. Unknowable. In flux, constantly, and dangerous," the Lord of Order said, "I cannot see or guess at his future. Or any future that he touches. He annihilates fate with every step, weakening the power of Order by his own presence."

"So you can't see his future," Wally shouted, "That's what makes you so sure he's evil? You know what I call that? Paranoia!"

"The chance that he will do any good is vanishingly low. Even now, he has tipped the scales. His strength has made the world more dangerous. Your enemies far stronger, Wally West. Soon, you won't be able to keep up because of what Satoru Gojo represents. You… are too weak. I fear that we all are."

Damn this. Screw this. Fuck this.

Wally reached for the thing in the core of his being, the tether he had with that unexplained natural phenomenon he had tapped into after replicating the Flash's experiment. His connection had been tenuous for the longest time, and it still was, but now… now he needed its power more than ever.

To phase out from the helmet. To regain control over his body, taking it back from the clutches of Doctor Fate, before he killed Gojo, and watched him die again. Powerless to stop it. Again.

No. Never again.

You won't get to touch anything that matters with that weak-sauce mentality.

Perhaps he had been right. Perhaps, all along, Wally just… didn't have what it took to be as fast as Barry?

Well, he'd just have to take it now, because there was no other choice.

Do or die.

Do or die.

Do or die!

He felt like an earthworm, digging himself further and further down the soil, towards this magical—yes, magical—wellspring of pure potential. The nexus point and origin of all movement. A force that buttressed the natural universe.

Without his body being able to respond to him, all this was was a tribulation of the mind. But he could tell, intuitively, that it was precisely this separation between body and mind that let him visualize the process, that let him see the truth, that let him sense towards his potential.

This could kill him.

He didn't care.

This could get rid of his powers.

Not the worst case scenario.

"Do you trust Satoru Gojo?" Nabu, the Lord of Order, asked, all the while as he fired shot after shot at Gojo, his reluctant opponent. "Do you trust that what you're doing is the right thing? That defying fate is the answer to the world's problems?"

"Fuck you!" Wally roared.

Wally pushed through further.

And he realized. It wasn't that this could kill him. It would.

Unless…

He grit his teeth mentally and refused to consider the option of death, refused to consider loss. Instead, he would search desperately for a crumb of hope.

Be his own hero. No one would save him here. No one could save him. Except for himself. Kid Flash.

He dove head-first into the power, the source of it all, and screamed.

Deeper and deeper he fell into this ball of thick coiling lightning and energy, in between the cracks of pure potential that would have razed his body and mind to the ground. And as he fell, he realized his relationship with this power—an evasive dance of death. A respect for forces of nature. Not hubris. The human body was infinitely frail compared to what this power was.

And thus, the body had to bow its head. And listen.

Walk the path of lightning.

Feel the lightning.

Be the lightning.

Futile, he faintly sensed the words of Nabu chasing him even here. The Speed Force will not prevent what is to come. None can except I.

That's what it was called, Wally thought. The Speed Force.

Feel the lightning, Wally thought again, be the lightning.

Now run, Wally, run!

He drew as much of it as he could without destroying himself and vibrated. Faster, faster, faster, kilohertz turned into megahertz that turned into gigahertz and then terahertz. Petaherts. Exahertz.

And there it was.

Control.

Wally took a single step forward as Doctor Fate, phasing through the helmet, leaving it behind.

And his clothes.

Gojo blinked at Wally, naked like the day he was born, clothes bunched up the ground behind him. The helmet was on top.

Wally covered his groin. Gojo threw his head back and howled in sustained laughter.

???

??? ??th , ??? ?DT

The instant before Klarion was brought back to the chaos realm in truth, he cast about for one last errand—the robot who could copy powers.

Ivo was still recovering in the hospital, and there Amazo was, in a mirror dimension, cut off from the cycle of life and death. He was birthed from a chaotic interaction of otherworldly powers, and his soul was unperceivable to the very concept of death itself. A metaphysical glitch in the system.

An unkillable foe. Another wildcard. Another pawn.

This one, Klarion hardly touched. He was already passively absorbing and imitating a permutation of death-natured magic, twisted within his own cursed energy. He would break free soon, as his power, hatred, and his maker's resentment reached to a boil.

Klarion moved to do something about the robot's unhealthy hatred for the false Honored One. They'd never get along at this rate. Klarion intended to make it so that once manifested, Amazo would lose his memory—and his attachment to Ivo. That way, he and the boy could find each other and really shake things up. Klarion's will leveraged the power of chaos magic for one last hurrah before he needed to find another cat, and cast his spell.

A glowing ankh of golden light blocked Klarion's working. Even in the hallway between the mortal realm and those above, Fate waited to intervene.

No! Klarion's mind boomed with his mental voice, That one is mine, too!

You've had your fun, Nabu intoned evenly, But balance must be achieved.

Reality shook with approval. The Lords of Balance were backing this turn of events.

Klarion screamed. He loved it when his plans were thrown into chaos. And the resultant rage that followed. Chaos reigned supreme today, even at its own expense.

This will be fun to watch either way, Klarion thought, allowing himself to finally be banished, knowing that he would be back.