With a deep gaze and eyes sharp enough to cut off the heads of a million men, the twelve tailed goddess of truth and lies appraised the sleepy eyed man in front of her.
“So what now?...Will you take the throne of the King of Gods for yourself?” said Ko.
Billy laughed, waving her words away as if as if she’d been joking. Completely ignoring the borderline murderous expression on her face.
“Me?….King of the Gods? Perish the thought. No, I’m fairly sure, my friends here, would have already been very clear on this. We have no interest in the affairs of the heavens, save that it does not affect our world below.”
“Tch…This bastard!” muttered Zenith. Sensing that they were being trifled with. Gathering his power, preparing to teach the strange upstart the error of his ways.
******
Raw celestial forced crashed through the defensive magical arrays, shattering them as if they were nothing. Men and women screamed, panicking, as the earth was torn asunder around them.
A few brave souls fought the fear. Standing as one to fight for their world, despite knowing just how much the odds were against them. Marching as one, shoulder to shoulder as they fought using weapons that were capable of devastating entire cities.
Ornate walls and ancient constructs were torn down on the might of the celestial onslaught. The entire area getting reduced to red magma and black ash. A fleet of airships and automata were torn apart by a ray of psychic force.
In one area, Angelo and Annais, would stand back to back, their clothing and hair soaked in blood, as the two stood to face an opposition of two billion. In another area an illusory army of thousands charged across a battlefield, roaring as they faced down a desolate hoard.
All this took place while a storm of wind and blood and fire gathered, sweeping across the land. Reaping lives and causing havoc as the towering cyclones of crackling red and blue tore across the landscape at breakneck speeds.
The lightning and thunder briefly illuminating a sky filled with raucous many headed monster and blank faced boys.
******
A windswept Enzo Maynard stomped his way into a fortress, shaking himself dry after having been soaked by the rain. Feeling faintly feverish, despite the fact that it should have been impossible for someone with his immortal physique to grow ill he wandered into his offices.
He almost walked into Darlene, who somehow was still working under Enzo after all that happened. She’d stood by the door with a large stack of paper in her hands. A cartoonishly tall stack, slightly taller than she was.
“If I have to reprint this paper work, there will be dire consequences, you know.”
“Sorry...Sorry…It’s just been that kind of day.” said Enzo.
“I’d say, how goes it, out there, Mister Imperial Secretary of Commerce?” said Darlene.
“I don’t know, how about you tell me, Madam Undersecretary?” said Enzo. His expression dour.
To his surprise instead of answering with something flip, the fox-kin woman just sighed. Looking exhausted. Seming to deflate just a little bit before bouncing back to her usual, self-possessed, self-confident, slightly terrifying self.
“Well,.... How should I put this, even with a hundred thousand Billies working around the clock to help make this thing happen, I’m pretty sure we were naive going into this without a proper plan.”
“Mhm...So it turns out that making a vast transdimensional empire is harder than it sounds...Who would have thought…” said Enzo. His tone dry and tired.
*****
Elsewhere, ‘a’ Billy lay on a couch in an office building that he and his forces took over. He lay with his head on Elena’s lap while Edna sat next to them, with a modified laptop in her own lap.
Her fingers flying over the keyboard, making reports and charting down the details that were coming in through their army’s network of phone-constructs. Her thoughts moving a mile a minute, as she and Billy adjusted and readjusted the plans for the military campaign that was unfolding around them.
Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
“Hey, you okay, Billy?” said Elena.
“Nhm?...I’m fine. How about you guys.” said Billy.
“I’m good. I’m kind of hungry though, but that can wait.” said Elena.
Edna shrugged.
“I could do with a coffee.”
Billy nodded and with a slight grunt, he got up to go head down to the nearest local convenience store to grab himself and the girls a few things to eat.
Edna and Elena watched him, unable to avoid thinking about how much he didn’t look like the Dreaded Emperor of Multiple Conquered Worlds.
*****
Jermaine watched a palace topple, spewing stone and ash as it fell. The people watched as their old leaders were conquered and after a moment of quiet contemplation they turned as one and began to fall to their knees.
Watching the natives of the foreign land despair in their defeat Jermaine gave a quick order to his people, to have them wrap things up, while sending the details of the victory over the boss ladies and Billy who were miles away in the territories they’d already conquered.
So….As should have been guessed, the affair with the gods, actually went off, pretty okay. There was no raising of arms, no heaven shaking battle. That was one day where no one died. The entire battle fought with words and meaningful silence.
The ten thousand years that they spent in the heavens, were spent diminishing the intensity of the war and buying time for the people of the BTC to gain the power needed to protect their world. Weakening their two opponents while they strengthened themselves. By the time they’d called for the banquet and talks they’d already down what they’d set out to do.
Most importantly Billy had done, what he’d set out to do, regaining the entirety of his lost strength by reaching up into the heavens and then breaking through into the realms that lay beyond. It wasn’t perfect, but by the time the ten thousand years were up, he possessed eighty to ninety percent of the power that he’d held before his trip back in time.
Far more power than any aeon of the heavens. Far more power than most existences of the more rational, more comprehensible planes of reality could gain before being forced to ascend to the planes that lay beyond.
Six highly powerful Gods sat at the table, preparing to make a move on him to put him and his people in their place. And they and the several thousand divine soldiers that they’d quietly brought with them, leaving them arrayed on the periphery of the banquet hall, were all quickly and neat shut down. Slammed with the raw weight of his power. A wave of suffocating, stifling aura rolling over them and everyone in the hall.
Jermaine would recall feeling it, and compare to the one time he’d gone swimming as child and swam too far and too deep. He’d remember feeling a burning pressure in his lungs.
He’d remember how just before then, he’d heard a sailor talking about, the deep sea, and crushing depth. That layer of the ocean where the weight of all that water was enough to turn a massive submarine into a small ball of scrap, or reduce grown men into putty.
That was what, the boss man’s aura felt like, it was cold and deep and made it impossible to breathe. For five whole minutes the madman had let that baleful aura of his, sweep over the entire hall, letting it spread over the entire territory.
Introducing the several hundred of millions of miles of heavenly territory to the immensity of his power while he idly sipped the chilled wine that had been brought to the table.
Then when the five minutes were over, it was like it had never happened. The girls pretended not to have felt it, either that, or it was possible that Billy just didn’t let his aura fall over them. Which might have been the case since most of their other guests didn’t seem affected either.
The Gods at the table were definitely pretending though, quietly putting to bed any thoughts of making war the entity in front of them.
With that done, all that was left to do, was talk about the details of what came next and what came next was Billy unilaterally claiming Monde and a small fraction of the worlds around it, along with their associated territory in the heavenly plane.
Ko and Zenith, two gods from two opposing sides looked like they at least wanted to attack right then, but the two were old gods. Old enough to know what a losing battle looked like. They swallowed their hurt feelings. And instead demanded that a price be paid if the BTC were going to claim heavenly territory for themselves.
Billy compiled by handing both sides an infant which confused everyone at the table till he explained that they were newly resurrected, semi-reincarnated bodies Alceus and Zwolfe. The former king of the Gods and a very high level, very venerated personality amongst the Eight Million Gods.
This and the eyes that fell upon them all, watching as the two factions received two newly embodied individuals who souls were said to have been lost to the void, was enough to settle things. With the six gods making an awkward exit.
******
Several days later the BTC and most of their personnel would descend, returning to Monde. After a few days dissembling the hackneyed attempts of Brutus and few of their quelled former enemies to try and bring down what they’d built during the ten years of their absence.
Then they took a few months off where they all just scattered to go and do their own things. Getting reacquainted with old friends and checking in on the things they’d put on hold for the last ten years. With multiple copies of Billy being entered in multiple bedrooms of the Bone Tree Manor as he and his lady friends made up on ten thousand years of lost time.
Then after their break was over and they’d done some important recharging, they began taking over Monde and all the other worlds they’d purchased.
The actual take over was surprisingly or perhaps unsurprisingly easy. The BTC now possessed an elite force of over five hundred high level immortals and countless world breakingly powerful shades.
The actual conquests happened almost like clockwork. All told, taking over the three galaxies that lay within their small slice of heavenly territory only took a weeks.
After all there were only a few hundred habitable worlds between them. With yet another copy of Billy doing most of the work, it was actually a fairly painless task.
Beginning with him dismantling all the weaponry in a given world and paralyzing their military and ending with his politely informing the former ruling class that they were now under new management.
Sometimes the native rulers and peoples would try to fight, but as was always the case when a match was highly imbalanced, they were brief fights. Micro-Wars. Usually ending in days, if not in hours.
The hard part was what came after, when Edna, Ell and the rest had to work to build up a proper multiversal government. Trying to figure things out before the citizens of their new empire died or tried to revolt.