Marvel: Karma

Blink crouched on the fire escape, watching Ms. MODOK's hover-chair weave between buildings like a mechanical wasp drunk on power. The villain's massive cranium gleamed under harsh streetlights, cybernetic implants pulsing with stolen tech that had no business existing in this reality.

"Come on, genius."

Blink's lips curved into a predatory smile as she calculated angles with the precision of a master chess player. "Let's see how smart you really are."

Her first dagger wasn't aimed at Ms. MODOK—that would be too easy. Instead, it punched through reality itself, opening a portal behind the building. The second blade materialized from thin air, striking the hover-chair's left stabilizer with a metallic CLANG that echoed through the urban canyon.

Ms. MODOK spun like a top, mechanical systems screaming as they fought to compensate.

"Spatial distortion detected," her voice crackled through speakers that sounded like they were gargling gravel. "Adjusting flight patterns to—"

"Yeah?" Blink's grin widened. "Adjust this."

A flurry of daggers erupted from her hands like deadly confetti. Each blade tore open reality, creating interconnected portals that formed a three-dimensional maze of crackling purple energy around the floating megalomaniac.

Ms. MODOK tried to fly up—

WHOOSH

—straight into a portal that spat her out sideways like a cosmic pinball.

She dove left—

ZAP

—only to emerge from below herself in a mind-bending loop that would make M.C. Escher weep with envy.

Every escape route led to another entrance. Each portal grew smaller than the last, reality folding in on itself like origami made of space-time.

"Impossible!" Ms. MODOK's voice pitched higher, panic creeping in. "My calculations show seventeen different escape vectors—"

"Calculations are cute," Blink said, her voice carrying the casual confidence of someone who'd been rewriting the laws of physics since breakfast. The portal net tightened. "But you forgot the most important variable."

The portals collapsed inward like a dimensional flower closing for the night. Ms. MODOK's chair sparked and died as contracting space crushed its systems with the subtlety of a hydraulic press. The villain herself remained unharmed but completely trapped in a bubble of warped space-time—a cosmic snow globe with an very unhappy occupant.

"What variable?!" Ms. MODOK demanded, her massive head straining against invisible barriers.

"I'm really, really good at this."

Blink opened one final portal beneath the trapped chair—a one-way ticket to dimensional limbo that yawned like a hungry mouth.

"Enjoy the timeout, doc."

Ms. MODOK vanished with a sound like reality sighing in relief.

Dean let out a breath he didn't know he'd been holding.

The street looked like a war zone—broken concrete scattered like confetti, sparking cables writhing like dying snakes, water from a burst hydrant turning asphalt into a small lake. But the immediate threat was over, and somehow he was still breathing.

Holy shit. I just watched someone get banished to another dimension.

Blink teleported beside him with a soft pop of displaced air, breathing hard but wearing a grin that could power a small city.

"Not bad for a Tuesday, right?"

Before Dean could formulate a response that didn't involve existential screaming, she grabbed his wrist and examined the Tallus with the focused intensity of a jeweler appraising a diamond. Her smile died faster than a Windows 95 computer.

"Okay, this is weird." Her voice dropped an octave. "This shouldn't be active."

"Uh..." Dean's brain performed the intellectual equivalent of a Blue Screen of Death. "There was this quiz thing online, and then it just showed up. Something about isekai and—"

"A quiz?"

Blink's eyebrows shot up so fast they nearly achieved escape velocity. "Dude, that's not how this works. The Tallus only activates for chosen Exiles. People the multiverse picks to save reality."

She paused, studying his face like she was reading a book written in disappearing ink.

"You have no idea what I'm talking about, do you?"

"I was hoping you'd explain it," Dean admitted, his voice cracking slightly. "Because yesterday I was failing Victorian Literature, and today I'm apparently cosmic tech support."

Blink sighed—the kind of sigh that carried the weight of infinite realities—and raised her hand. A new portal opened, purple energy swirling like a whirlpool made of dying stars and broken dreams.

"Field trip time," she said, grabbing his arm with surprising gentleness. "There's someone who needs to see you."

"Who?"

"The guy who watches everything and really wishes he could unsee most of it."

They stepped through.

Dean's stomach performed gymnastics that violated several laws of physics and at least three international treaties. When reality finally stopped having an identity crisis and reassembled itself, he found himself standing on gray dust under a black sky filled with stars that looked like they were having an existential breakdown.

"Where are we?" he whispered, his voice barely audible in the alien landscape.

"Earth's Moon," Blink said with casual indifference. "Sort of. Time moves differently here. Also, the coffee's terrible."

In the distance stood a ruined observatory that looked like it had been designed by someone who thought "subtly ominous" was the height of interior decorating. Ancient stone mixed with impossible geometries, creating a structure that hurt to look at directly.

Blink led him inside, past floating debris and artifacts from universes that no longer existed—or maybe had never existed in the first place. The air tasted of cosmic dust and regret.

At the center of this interdimensional museum of broken dreams sat a man Dean almost recognized.

Almost.

He was big—not gym-big, but presence-big. The kind of size that came from carrying the weight of infinite possibilities. His coat had seen better centuries, maybe better millennia. An eyepatch covered his left eye, but the right one...

The right one glowed with cosmic energy that made Dean's teeth ache just looking at it.

His face was a roadmap of every bad decision the universe had ever made, every hard choice that had saved worlds and damned souls. Scars crisscrossed his dark skin like a topographical map of cosmic suffering.

"Blink," the man said with a nod that conveyed volumes of shared history.

Then his glowing eye fixed on Dean, and his expression shifted—surprise, followed by something that might have been awe. Or terror. Possibly both.

"So..." His voice carried weight that made reality itself seem fragile. "You're the anomaly."

"Nick Fury?" Dean asked, though this version looked like he'd been through a cosmic blender operated by sadistic gods.

"Not anymore."

Fury stood slowly, his movements careful and deliberate, like he was trying not to disturb something infinitely fragile. Each gesture spoke of power barely contained, of knowledge that came with prices too high to calculate.

"I'm the Unseen now. Cosmic punishment for saving the world one too many times."

His voice carried weight that made Dean's teeth ache and his soul question its life choices.

Blink crossed her arms, her expression grim. "He activated a Tallus without being chosen. That's supposed to be impossible."

Fury studied Dean with his cosmic eye, and Dean felt exposed—like every embarrassing moment of his life was being catalogued and filed under "Interesting But Cosmically Irrelevant." But there was something else in that gaze, something that made the Watcher's eternal punishment feel less like torture and more like a holy vigil.

A careful distance. Like Fury was looking at the sun and trying not to go blind.

"The Tallus should only work for Exiles," Fury said, his words measured and precise. "People chosen through official channels to preserve the multiverse. You weren't chosen through any system I recognize."

Dean's throat felt dry as cosmic dust. "Is that bad?"

"Bad? Good?"

Fury shrugged, though his glowing eye never stopped seeing things Dean couldn't begin to imagine. "The multiverse doesn't deal in human concepts like 'good' and 'bad.' And right now, it's got bigger problems than one unregistered Exile."

The observatory felt cold despite having no atmosphere to speak of. Dean wrapped his arms around himself, suddenly aware of how small and insignificant he was in the cosmic scheme of things.

"I didn't ask for this," he said, his voice barely above a whisper. "I was just procrastinating on an essay about Victorian novels."

"The multiverse doesn't care about your essay," Fury replied with the kind of brutal honesty that could shatter planets. "It cares about survival. And right now, something's feeding on reality itself."

"Feeding?"

Blink's expression darkened like storm clouds gathering over a funeral. "We've been tracking it for months. An entity that consumes temporal energy—time itself. Every reality it touches becomes unstable. Heroes turn evil, timelines collapse, entire universes just... stop."

"We call it the Time Eater," Fury said, finally allowing himself to look away from whatever cosmic significance he saw wrapped around Dean like armor made of destiny. "Ancient beyond measure. Hungry beyond reason. It doesn't just destroy realities—it perverts them. Makes people believe their worst impulses are their greatest virtues."

"Like Ms. MODOK?"

"Katherine Waynesboro was a brilliant scientist," Blink said quietly, her voice carrying the weight of lost possibilities. "She helped Bruce Banner control the Hulk, saved countless lives. But the Time Eater touched her reality, and she became obsessed with 'improving' humanity whether they wanted it or not."

Fury nodded grimly. "That's the pattern. The entity doesn't just eat time—it corrupts it. Turns heroes into monsters who genuinely believe they're doing good. Makes saints into sinners and convinces them they're still saving souls."

Dean felt the weight of their stares, but Fury's gaze was different now—respectful, almost wary. Like he was looking at something that operated on frequencies beyond his cosmic clearance level.

"So what do you want from me?"

Fury was quiet for a long moment that stretched into eternity. His cosmic eye saw layers of possibility wrapped around this confused college student like a cloak woven from the dreams of gods. There were signatures here that spoke of powers far beyond his right to question—forces that could unmake cosmic entities with a thought.

"The question," Fury said finally, his voice carrying the reverence of someone who recognized the will of powers beyond his comprehension, "is why you're here. The Tallus chose you, but not through any protocol I understand. Something bigger sent you to us."

"Can't you just... take it off me?"

"Tried that with other Exiles," Blink said, her voice carrying hard-earned wisdom. "The device bonds at a quantum level. Remove it wrong, and you die. Remove it right... you might still die, but at least you'll die with your atoms in the right order."

"Comforting," Dean muttered, looking at the device that had become part of his very existence. Its surface was dull now, like a phone with a dead battery.

"So I'm stuck?"

"Kid," Fury said, settling back among his broken artifacts while maintaining that careful, respectful distance, "we're all stuck. The only question is whether you're going to help us stop the Time Eater before it devours everything that ever was, is, or could be."

Dean thought about Marcus—the terrified mutant boy with glowing antennae. About the mob that had wanted to tear him apart for the crime of being different. About Ms. MODOK, twisted from hero to villain by an entity that fed on the corruption of time itself.

About how terrified he'd been and how little his two karma points had actually accomplished in the grand scheme of cosmic horror.

"I don't know how to help," he admitted, the words tasting like failure. "I barely understand how my own abilities work, let alone cosmic horror management."

"Nobody does at first," Blink said, her voice softer now, carrying the weight of hard-won experience. "I've been doing this for years, and I still make mistakes. Big ones. The kind that keep you awake at night wondering if you've made everything worse."

"But you're learning," Fury added, and there was something almost reverent in his tone—the voice of a prophet recognizing divine will. "The multiverse is teaching you. Every choice you make, every action you take—it's all preparation. The question is: are you paying attention?"

Dean looked out through the cracked dome at the wrong stars, at constellations that spelled out the names of dead gods and broken promises. Somewhere out there, an ancient entity was devouring realities like cosmic fast food, turning heroes into weapons and hope into despair.

And somehow, he was supposed to help stop it.

"What happens if I say no?"

"Then you stay here," Fury said simply. "As an anomaly, you'll be observed. Protected. We'll find you a nice, safe reality to call home where the biggest threat is student loan debt."

There was something he wasn't saying. Something about why Dean's presence made the Watcher's eternal punishment feel less like cosmic torture and more like a sacred duty.

"And if I say yes?"

Blink and Fury exchanged a look that carried the weight of infinite possibilities and inevitable tragedies.

"Then you become an Exile," Blink said. "You help fix broken realities. You make impossible choices. You save people who'll never know your name and watch some of them die anyway."

"And sometimes," Fury added, his cosmic eye seeing the shadows of futures yet to be, "you fail. And people die because of it. But right now, with the Time Eater loose... failure might mean everything dies. Every story that was ever told, every life that was ever lived, every moment of joy or sorrow or love—all of it gets digested by something that treats existence like a midnight snack."

The observatory fell silent except for the sound of cosmic wind that had no right to exist but did anyway, carrying the whispers of dead universes and unborn possibilities.

Dean thought about Marcus again. About the X-Men taking him to safety. About how good it had felt to help, even in such a small way. About how helping people seemed to unlock something inside him that felt more real than anything he'd ever experienced in his mundane college existence.

"If I stay and train," he said slowly, each word carefully chosen, "will you teach me? How to do this right?"

"I can teach you the basics," Blink said. "But every reality is different. Every choice matters. There's no instruction manual for fighting something that eats time for breakfast and washes it down with the tears of angels."

Fury nodded, his cosmic eye picking up the faint shimmer of infinite potential that clung to the boy like stardust made of compressed destiny. Whatever force had sent Dean to them operated on a level that made cosmic entities look like bacteria under a microscope. His job was to watch, to guide, to serve—not to question the will of powers that could unmake him with a thought.

"The multiverse chose you for this," Fury said quietly, his voice carrying the weight of absolute certainty. "I can see it in ways others can't. You're not just an anomaly, kid. You're an answer to a prayer we didn't know we were making."

Dean nodded, his decision crystallizing before his conscious mind caught up to the implications.

"Okay." His voice was steady now, carrying new resolve. "I'm in."

Fury's good eye studied him for a long moment, seeing layers of destiny and purpose wrapped around this ordinary young man like a cloak woven from the dreams of gods and the nightmares of demons. Divine will made manifest in the form of a confused college student who'd stumbled into cosmic significance.

Then he smiled—the first genuine expression Dean had seen from him, and it transformed his scarred features into something almost hopeful.

"Welcome to the Exiles, kid. May whatever sent you here have mercy on all of us..."

His cosmic eye flared with ancient light.

"...because the Time Eater sure as hell won't."

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