“YOU ARE NOT WELCOME HERE, OUTSIDER,” The vast mercury ocean trembled, words formed from the groans of the earth. “YOU DARE TO THINK YOU CAN STAND BEFORE US AND WIN!”
A titan of metallic silver formed from the waters, a bitter face filled with countless mouths. It gnashed its teeth as more and more mercury flowed into its body, a slime that uncovered the world. Dan laughed and slipped higher into the sky as Mnggal took a more cohesive shape.
“We’ve never met, so I’m not sure why you’d think so,” he shrugged and motioned to the ring of broken down ships visible in orbit. “Why the display? Or better yet, why haven't you used these to travel to other worlds?”
“EVERY DEITY NEEDS HIS ALTER AND I HAVE VISITED MANY MORE WORLDS THAN YOU,” Mnggal roared with the voice of the world. His behemoth’s mass struggled upright, a colossus that targeted Dan with its fists. “YOU WILL KNOW IN TIME, NONE CAN CHALLENGE THE MELANGE, THIS GALAXY WILL KNOW THE SCOURGE ONCE MORE!”
“Right…” Dan sighed and rocketed free of the consumer's reach. Mnggal wasn’t something you could negotiate with, but he’d assumed as much. “Sorry to intrude then, I’ll visit again when I’m strong enough to push this place into the sun!”
Mnggal-Mnggal smashed at the surface of the planet, a deep bellow of a laugh. It pointed a semi-solid finger at the sky and mocked Dan’s retreat.
“TOO LATE, OUTSIDER!” Mnggal’s many mouths grinned as he slipped back into the form of an ocean. “OUR MUTUAL ENEMY HAS FINISHED HER PREPARATION, SOON YOU WILL BE AS TRAPPED AS THIS SHATTERED FRAGMENT OF MY WHOLE.”
“Sure, whatever you…” Dan snapped to face the edge of the sky. A vast storm closed in from space, big enough to swallow a world. “Uh oh…”
Dan blasted free of the atmosphere, a rush of speed that led him away from the storm's course and closer to May and Gladius. The clouds shifted with him, locked onto his body like a missile.
“Shit…” Dan signalled May on the coms. “Get yourself out of the system, that storm is some kind of attack…”
“The hell I will!” May snorted back over the fuzzy connection. “We’re almost to you now, just aim for the launch bay and we’ll pick you up!”
“Too late…”
The purple-blue storm clouds extended system long tendrils, a hand that encased him in a wall of fog and lightning. The electric casing stayed a foot from his touch, no matter how much he strained his speed.
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“Not good…” Dan released a wave of heat vision into the mist. Useless, as it simply passed through without a ripple. “Is this a force storm or…”
The volume of lightning increased. A luminous purple that tried to steal his sight. He squinted past the glow. A web of finely linked electric arcs closed toward him with a slow crawl. Every inch it advanced, pressure fell onto his body in waves. The spider sense in his heart itched at him to flee, but no escape was in sight.
Dan called all his Ki and fused it into his bioelectric field, a layer of blue that did nothing to silence the scream of his instincts. Whatever this was, it was going to hurt. Pressure built, until his Ki enforced barrier flickered. A rainbow of light swirled around him, a halo that slipped up and down like a blur.
“NOT TODAY!”
Dan ground his jaw until his teeth squealed, reserves tapped to hold his biofield in place. The kaleidoscope of light became a tunnel, filled with an irresistible force. Drawn up, faster than his mind could process, Dan vanished from existence.
----------------------------------------
[Warning, the user has entered a new parallel! Scanning for cosmic core…]
Dan groaned. Head filled with thunder, he pried his eyelids apart and squinted. He was adrift in open space, bathed in the light of a yellow sun. Nice of whomever sent him here to provide a power source… his head tilted as he spotted a familiar blue-green orb.
“Earth…”
[Cosmic core located… accessing…] Dan’s system interrupted his confusion with a flash of text. [The user has been forcibly teleported to a distant part of the omniverse, please commit actions that change the course of fate! Each change from the natural order will charge energy for your return home.]
“What?” Dan raised his eyebrows, so much for the ultimate system. “You can’t just send me home right away…”
[Emergency retrieval is available. The user can be instantly returned home, but the system will become unavailable for ninty days as it recovers.]
“Alright… well, let’s see where we are,” Dan flew toward the earth-like planet and let Venom mask their presence as best he could. He poked at the symbiote, impatient to have another escape option. “How close are you to digesting that phantom drive?”
“We are close…” Venom rasped, haggard after their trip through the rainbow portal. “Perhaps another day or two, if we are not interrupted again.”
Dan nodded as they slid past a primitive space station and into the upper atmosphere. The ability to jump through the phantom zone without a spaceship would be very convenient. Even if this earth was a danger, he could hop away and change the timeline on some random planet.
‘Hey system,’ Dan probed as he dove toward the coast of North America. ‘Could I call my summons from here?’
[You can, but they would be unable to return until you gather the needed energy. Each summon would place the system into a thirty day period of inactivity. The emergency system will not transport your servants.]
A sigh escaped his lips. Dan hoped to draw in Merlyn, but he would be needed at home. There was one summon he could call… Goku had little to do at home, beyond smash against the unbreakable wall of Etrigan. He could call the Saiyan in if needed and nothing at home would really change.
“The Great Lakes…” Dan drifted over the continent and admired the landscape. He’d never seen the lakes before, let alone from such a vantage point. “They're beautiful… HEY!”
A twist of his body, brought on by his spider sense, shifted him to the side just in time. An airborne missile, the high pitched squeal of a man forlorn. Dan raised an eyebrow as a man dressed as a bargain villain set out on a journey into space.
“What kind of idiot tosses a bank robber into orbit…”