Marvel: Karma

The training room looked like someone had detonated a garage sale inside a spaceship. Dean dodged another holographic laser, his teleport priming creating weird ripples in the air.

"Why does fake combat hurt more than the real thing?" he panted.

Blink was hunched over her Tallus, purple light dancing between her fingers as she ran diagnostics. "Because real combat doesn't let you try again when you screw up."

"Great. Very—"

Both their devices started screaming.

Not the usual gentle hum, but an urgent wail that made Dean's vision blur. Emergency warnings flooded the air in harsh purple light.

[CRITICAL ALERT] [TIMELINE COLLAPSE DETECTED] [IMMEDIATE EXTRACTION REQUIRED]

"Shit." Blink's casual tone vanished. She was already moving, hands weaving portals with desperate precision. "We've got maybe minutes before an entire reality just stops existing."

Dean's throat went dry. "Minutes?"

"If we're lucky." The portal stabilized with a sound like tearing fabric. "Forget everything we just practiced. We're going in live."

"Live as in—"

"As in people are dying right now and we're the only shot they've got." She grabbed his arm. "Ready or not."

She yanked him through.

Reality turned itself inside-out. Dean's consciousness scattered like confetti before snapping back together with the subtlety of a car crash.

The sky was bleeding.

Actual blood rained from clouds that looked like open wounds. Stars were going out one by one, and the air tasted like copper and dying atoms.

"Earth-47291," Blink said grimly. "Population heading for zero."

A skyscraper across the street was forgetting how to be solid, its upper floors flickering between real and not-real. Dean watched a car simply stop existing, like someone had hit delete on reality.

"How do we—"

"We don't." Blink's scanner swept the dissolving landscape. "Time-Eater doesn't leave survivors. But the Tallus caught something before this accelerated."

Her expression tightened. "Power signature. Big one. Still active."

Dean forced himself to check his own device, trying not to think about the way gravity kept changing its mind. The display showed a pulsing energy source toward what used to be downtown.

"There," he pointed.

"Then that's where we go." Another portal, smaller this time. "Don't think about what you're seeing, Dean. Just keep moving. Cosmic horror contemplation leads to madness."

The next portal dropped them in a park where trees grew downward and grass was trying to become sky. In the distance, Dean saw the source—a creeping darkness that wasn't black but absent. Not consuming the world, just convincing it that it had never existed.

"Time-Eater," Blink whispered. "It's not supposed to manifest this directly. Usually works through agents."

"What changed?"

"Getting stronger. Or desperate." Her scanner beeped frantically. "Shit. The signature isn't getting stronger because we're closer. It's getting weaker because whatever's generating it is dying."

They ran.

Through streets where physics had quit, past buildings that only existed part-time, around corners that led nowhere. Dean's abilities kicked in without thought—his teleport priming carved stable pockets through the chaos while his support aura kept reality coherent around them.

As they approached a zone where the air itself was dissolving, Dean's vision flickered with his Status Screen:

[KARMIC BATTERY: 8/100 — +8: Assisted in neutralizing Ms. MODOK]

[Tier-0 Miracle Adviced → Emergency Field: 5s of Space-Time Stable Field]

The dissolving zone stretched ahead like a wall of nothingness. Blink hesitated for the first time since they'd arrived.

"I can't portal through that," she said. "Space is too unstable."

Dean didn't think—just activated the emergency field.

[KARMA USED: -8] [Karmic Battery: 0/100] [Result: Local Space Stabilized - Blink & Dean Secured]

Reality solidified around them like invisible armor. Not much, just enough to let them push through the dissolving zone without their atoms deciding to become something else.

It lasted exactly five seconds.

Long enough to reach the other side. Not long enough to save anyone—but enough to witness what was left.

"There!" Blink pointed at a building that couldn't decide if it was a school or hospital.

They burst through doors that existed in four dimensions, into a lobby where the elevator was having an identity crisis as a staircase.

At the center floated a small crystal sphere, pulsing like a dying heart.

It wasn't a device. It was a person.

Or had been.

"We're too late," Dean whispered.

"By seconds." Blink's scanner provided grim details. "The echo's still fresh. They died less than a minute ago."

The crystal pulsed once more, then began to fade.

Dean reached out instinctively, but Blink caught his wrist. "Don't. Power echoes can be unstable."

"I know." He watched the last remnant of someone's heroic sacrifice dissolve into nothing. "They were right here. If we'd been faster..."

"We'd be dead too." Her voice was harsh but her eyes were gentle. "Time-Eater doesn't leave survivors. This person bought us time to get here. That's not nothing."

The crystal gave one final pulse and faded completely.

"So what now?" Dean stared at the empty space. "We just leave?"

"We document. Learn. Try to prevent it next time." Blink was already working, recording everything. "And we remember."

"Remember what?"

"That we're not always fast enough. Sometimes people die and there's nothing we can do except honor their sacrifice by not giving up." She looked at him with eyes that had seen too many failures. "This is what being an Exile means. Sometimes you save the world. Sometimes you watch it die."

Dean nodded, though something inside him felt broken. "I thought if we were fast enough, smart enough... I thought we could save everyone."

"So did I." Blink's smile was sad but not bitter. "Good thought. Hold onto it. But don't let it destroy you when reality proves you wrong."

The building was dissolving around them. Blink opened a portal home.

"Dean?"

"Yeah?"

"You did good today. Kept your-self level-headed in a collapsing reality. Most people don't manage that on their first real mission."

"We didn't save anyone."

"No. But we survived to fight another day. Sometimes that's the best victory you get."

Back in the observatory, Dean sat among artifacts from dead civilizations and tried to process what he'd witnessed. The Tallus had gone dark, but he could still feel that final power signature—a life that had ended fighting the darkness alone.

"First one's always hardest," Unseen(Fury) said quietly. "Doesn't get easier. Just gets different."

Dean understood now why Blink's jokes had an edge, why Fury's cosmic punishment felt more like penance than torture. They'd all been where he was—standing in the ruins of certainty, learning that sometimes the multiverse didn't care how hard you tried.

Sometimes you were just too late.

"What's next?" he asked.

"Training," Blink said. "Next time, we'll be faster."

"And if we're not?"

"Then we'll be there to witness it. To remember. To make sure whoever dies fighting the Time-Eater doesn't die forgotten."

Dean looked out at the wrong stars, at constellations spelling out names of dead gods. Somewhere, the Time-Eater was digesting another reality, growing stronger.

But here, three people who'd chosen to stand against the darkness were planning their next move.

It wasn't much.

But it was something.

---------------------------

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