Multiverse Stories (Multicross: DC, DXD, Marvel, ETC,)

Clang!

Clang!

Clang!

"What are you doing here, child?" the gruff man says as he hammers away at an unseen sheet of metal.

"I'm watching you work," a short answer comes from the other in the room. However, unlike the blacksmith, the other man is bodiless—more akin to a yellowish-green smoke than a physical form.

The blacksmith snorts, "I can see that, boy, I have eyes. I imagine he sent you here. That or it's that damn lizard messing with me again." Clang!

The hammer continues to fall, creating what most would believe to be a harsh pounding noise, but it doesn't. It's as if small symphonies are being played every time the hammer meets the metal.

The ghostly man sitting in the corner of the room just continues to watch as the blacksmith uses his hammer. The pounding of the metal creates an almost calming atmosphere, and even amongst the vocal silence, the air doesn't feel awkward.

Clang!

Clang!

Again and again, the hammer falls and rises, and the ghost simply watches in rapt attention.

The seconds turn to minutes, and the minutes turn to hours. While the calming atmosphere remains, somehow the ghost begins to sweat, yet even that goes unnoticed.

"You know you're going to disappear if you stay here, right? This forge isn't a suitable place for mortal souls." Even with the almost angry edge in the blacksmith's voice, there is a soft undertone.

"I don't know where I should go… Can I keep watching?" An almost childlike innocence comes through as the spirit asks the blacksmith.

The blacksmith places the hammer back onto the anvil and looks to his ceiling, contemplating for a few moments. However, unknown to the spirit, the blacksmith is accelerating his thoughts faster than even the quickest supercomputer could ever begin to fathom.

After only a couple of seconds, the blacksmith huffs in annoyance before walking over to one of the cabinets within the forge. He takes out what looks to be a very light but large cloak, seeming something similar to chainmail, yet not.

He walks over to the spirit and places the cloak around it. As the cloak disappears, as if it was never there, the spirit feels the heat begin to die down and a spiritual comfort envelop him.

The spirit simply looks up at the blacksmith. Even though the spirit is an adult man, the blacksmith towers over him. The blacksmith, satisfied, returns to his workstation and continues to forge whatever he was forging.

Picking up the hammer in his right hand, the runes inscribed into the hammer begin to glow in a symphony of colors. Again and again, the hammer falls and rises, but the spirit does not say a word.

Clang!

Clang!

Clang!

Soon enough, a necklace begins to take shape, which doesn't really make sense based on how the blacksmith is forging. It's as if the hammer isn't hitting metal but instead being used as a focus to shape it.

Without even realizing it, the spirit has walked next to the anvil and watches as the necklace takes shape. It is the most beautiful thing he has ever seen—a necklace formed of gold and other metals he cannot even understand. It is inlaid with jewels and other materials that seem to make the necklace pulse with power. For a few moments, reality itself begins to glitch as if trying to accept the necklace's existence.

The blacksmith, seeing the glitching effect, chuckles as if amused, and with a wave of his hand, the glitching stops. The necklace, finally finished taking shape, begins to glow with an ethereal golden light.

Holding the necklace in his hands, even as it burns with a temperature akin to that of a young star, the blacksmith simply holds it in his right hand, looking it over as if judging his own creation. For a few moments, both the blacksmith and the spirit stand next to each other. Well, the spirit floats, not stands, but semantics.

However, soon enough, after placing his left hand on the necklace, the blacksmith frowns and tosses the necklace away, groaning in annoyance.

The spirit is utterly surprised because as soon as the necklace is thrown, it seemingly breaks the spirit from his trance. Stranger still, the necklace, as soon as it hits the floor, disappears and returns to its base materials, which then place themselves back on the nearby shelves.

"What was wrong with it?" A simple question, but the blacksmith looks at the spirit after sitting down and taking a swig of some unknown drink.

"It wasn't what I was looking for. Trying to create universes within jewelry is a tough task. Any small mistake can make the whole thing crash down. The necklace itself was going to break apart within a few minutes anyways. Haaa… There goes another anniversary gift." But as he says this, the blacksmith stops, realizing that the spirit is still there.

Putting his drink on a desk nearby, the blacksmith takes the spirit in one hand before placing him in the chair next to the desk.

Soon enough, after taking another swig, the blacksmith asks another question. "What do you want?"

The silence is palpable as the spirit considers how to answer the question.

"I want to do what you do… Haaa… I finally realized it. But I guess it's too late now."

The blacksmith, hearing the response, merely raises his left eyebrow. After a few seconds of thinking, he realizes what the spirit is saying.

"Ahhh… A lost one, eh? To be honest, I'm not surprised. Motivation is a very powerful thing, almost as important as purpose. In fact, the two could be intertwined sometimes. You died without knowing, I would assume."

The silence between the two is enough of an answer.

The blacksmith lifts his hand, pulling his hammer back. As it telekinetically flies into his hand, he places it on the desk between himself and the spirit.

"I was in a similar boat to you once upon a time… It's been millions of years since then. I can still remember when I looked as thin as you." The last part brings out some laughter as the blacksmith begins to flex his muscles in front of the spirit, to which the spirit begins to clap his hands slowly.

Chuckling to himself, the blacksmith looks at his hammer. "The first time I lifted a hammer, I was six years old. And while I just wanted to be left alone to forge in peace, I realized that the world still existed around me. The world took my dream from me—or at least that's what I thought. But as that old fool once said, death isn't the end. It's just the next step. For millions of years, I've tried to use my time wisely, building things that would make the old me disintegrate due to pure and utter expanse. While once I simply wanted to forge basic tools, I can now forge tools that forge entire multiverses."

The hammer between them begins to glow as if responding to its owner's excitement as the old blacksmith reminisces. The hammer shakes slightly on the table as if responding to a question the owner made.

The blacksmith looks at the hammer questioningly. "Is this truly what you want to do?" The hammer glows and shakes once more, and somehow the spirit can tell that it is affirming the question.

The blacksmith sighs in an almost exasperated way as he takes the hammer in both of his hands before putting it on the nearby anvil, which glows with ethereal white and blue energy.

The blacksmith lifts his left hand, and the spirit finds himself being forced over next to him. He doesn't struggle, as he doesn't feel afraid.

The blacksmith places the hammer into the spirit's hand. The spirit finds that it weighs both heavy and light at the same time.

"Alrighty then. While I am hesitant to give you something like this, I'm thinking of trying something different. The bird brain has already tried to make his own help with that kid and his book, so I'm going to do something similar." The blacksmith's eyes begin to glow in fiery orange and red as the hammer begins to change, its once ever-changing features solidifying.

"I'm going to let you know now that I'm a decent employer. This hammer has been with me for a very long time now. It's yours now."

The spirit holds the hammer. However, after hearing that it is now his, he looks up and almost attempts to move to try to give it back.

The blacksmith simply raises his hand in a stopping gesture. "The hammer isn't mine anymore. Take good care of it. Besides, you're going to need this forge where you're going. Just remember this one thing." Raising a single finger, the blacksmith walks closer to the spirit before tapping him on the chest.

"Perfection shall be your ever-existing goal. Build and craft not because anyone asks you, but because you want to with every fiber of your being. Don't let anyone else determine your life."

The spirit, with his eyes widened, then feels himself being pushed as the hammer disappears into his very soul.

Even as the spirit feels like it is flying light years away from where it once was, he hears the blacksmith speak.

"I name you Caldan. May your hammer fall in favorable view. Tell those beyonders that #%%<>%^> says hi."

As the spirit flies away, it begins to see a familiar place—Earth. As the spirit falls down to the planet, it braces for impact before everything goes dark.

(A Few Hours Later) (Year: 2008) (Location: NYC)

(Cal POV)

Wiping my eyes, I see that I am lying on a park bench. As I take a moment to get my bearings, I find that I am looking right toward the Empire State Building.

However, there are definitely a few more towers than I remember—and no, not the towers that went down at a certain time. Instead, I see two companies: Stark Industries and Oscorp. My attempts to stand immediately stall as I simply freeze, realizing that the blacksmith definitely did not appreciate me sitting in on his work.

However, before I can begin to freak out, I see the hammer from before—looking like something similar from that Shadow of War game. As it floats there, a ghostly anvil appears below it. As the hammer winds up and slams down onto the anvil, it releases a golden light.

[These Are Your First Steps… Try Not To Get Us Killed.]

[Welcome, Prospective Creator, To The Celestial Forge.]

[+1000 CP Gift… Good Luck, Boy.]

[+500 Gift…Gotta One Up The Birdbrain]

[These Are Your First Steps…Try Not To Get Us Killed]

[Welcome Prospective Creator To The Celestial Forge]

(Free) Most Common Superpower/DC Comics: "Superheroes are larger than life, that's just a statement of fact. They don't look like the average man or woman off the street, they're…super. And so are you. You are quite simply attractive enough to have your visage immortalized in myth and legend. Between a chiseled and appealing body, a winning smile, a natural charisma and charm as well as a lovely, lovely voice and body language that radiates strength your aesthetics are on the verge of being a bonafide low level superpower. This is the sort of beauty that would be considered appropriate for the legendary heroes of Greek myth, the most divinely charming of demigods or "acceptable" in Heaven. And in a rather understated example, it's this level of charm that makes Superman's handsomeness so apparent that villains have been known to yell about it while running away from him. Not only is he the gold standard to the general public's approval of metahumans, in some iterations of his own cousin unconsciously recognize him as their ideal man and unsurprisingly many villainesses are unable to keep their hands off him."

(Even in separate fanfiction using entirely different sources the beauty perks just somehow appear…)

[1500 CP Banked]

The energy enters my body as I feel myself being forged on the anvil. Again, the clanging sound appears. I feel my muscles rearranging themselves, and my imperfections being re-forged away.

Breathing heavily from my physical transformation, I see the hammer winding up once more. As it crashes against the anvil, I wonder what is next.

(-200 CP) Blank II/Essential Body Modification Supplement: "Abilities which gather information about your past, present, or future do not work on you. This includes scrying, divination, mind reading, and even cold reading and lie detection. This ability not only affects your immediate person but also provides a degree of protection to items and people around you, making it difficult to predict the past, present, or future of any group you move with or vessel you travel on. If you have the Essential Mutuality perk, your affected companions gain the full benefit of your Blank perk even if they are acting independently.

I: You are immune to all supernatural and technological abilities and devices which perform the functions described above. You simply do not register to such abilities, though your own abilities function normally. Purely mundane skills at cold reading or lie detection will be less effective, but still function to some degree.

II: Even mundane versions of the above items do not function against you. Furthermore, you are able to detect when someone is actively attempting to discern such information through supernatural or technological abilities or devices and feed them false information of the type they expect. Thus, you can feed an image of yourself asleep in bed to a scrying spell while you're secretly across town beating up thugs or you can have a truth detection spell return 'truth' when you are telling a lie. Note that this does not protect you from compulsions to tell the truth or share information directly. Additionally, any items which you create have a measure of this protection, making it difficult to predict actions directly relying on those items and making it impossible to detect the items themselves with most supernatural abilities."

[1300 CP Banked]

(-100 CP) Stability/Age Of Krakoa: Just as insurance, you're a particularly stable Deviant. Your random mutations will never have a negative effect on you and, as a bonus, your body cannot be physically altered against your will and you will not suffer any negative effects from anything that changes your body or DNA.

[1200 CP Banked]

(Free) How Can You Cure Me When I'm Not Sick?/Age Of Krakoa: How downright offensive is it for people to say that treatments that suppress or remove Mutant powers are a cure? As if being born different was a disease? As if having powers was a curse? As if they're doing you a favor by forcibly stripping you of your natural abilities? And inevitably when a well-meaning but ignorant busybody makes one of these, it immediately gets appropriated by either anti-Mutant hate groups as a terror weapon or used by governments to institute an attempted mass depowering of all mutants. And then there are the people who want to slap a power-dampening collar on you and drag you off to "serve your country" or be "re-educated for your own good," or the people who feel entitled to tinker around with your genes or harvest your organs. As insurance against those people, you have blanket immunity to any and every attempt to remove, alter, lessen, damage, destroy, copy, steal, or replicate your supernatural abilities, DNA, or other aspects of your abilities or being without your freely given and fully informed consent. Nor are any biological samples obtained from you, be it a stray hair or an entire organ, viable for any purpose other than the ones you donated to explicitly under the same circumstances.

[1200 CP Banked]

(-200 CP) Mental Fortress/Age Of Krakoa: There are a lot of nosey telepaths in this world, and this is a bad point in time to have certain bits of metaknowledge get loose. This perk gives blanket immunity to mind reading and hostile telepathy. Not only are your psychic shields numerous, all-encompassing, and impenetrable, but if something did manage to get through them they would find that your mindscape is a vast and twisting labyrinth filled with deadly traps and countless dead ends, with miles to go before even reaching your surface thoughts, which are themselves protected by even more shields, let alone your memories or secrets and so on and so forth. You can, of course, allow others to read your mind if you want, and a set of innocuous but context-appropriate fake surface thoughts will keep any casual mind-readers from getting suspicious. You are immediately aware of any attempts to invade your mind. For an extra 200 CP, this extends to similar protection against any and all forms of mental or spiritual control, influence, corruption, alteration, or so on, natural or supernatural, as well as supernatural social influences.

[1000 CP Banked]

(-200 CP) Programmed Into Reality Itself/Age Of Krakoa: That's how deeply ingrained an Eternal's purpose is. You're not as rigid as some of them, being a Jumper and all, but that doesn't mean you can't reap the benefits of such. First, no matter what happens, you will always be you. No amount of experience will change you into a different person, and no influx of memories and information can alter your personality, you are who you are. Second, your soul is inviolable. It cannot be corrupted, destroyed, damaged, erased, stolen, or lessened by any means.

[800 CP Banked]

(-300 CP) Outside Perspective/CW Arrowverse: Be it Marvel or DC, reality and the laws of physics are thrown out the window, history is altered, people erased or killed and everyone irreparably damaged. Whether through time travel or reality warping, these changes are inevitable which makes you somewhat of an anomaly. A rogue speedster travelling to the past kills you, well they'll be surprised to find you waking and talking in the present, a psychotic psychiatrist with an all-powerful book warps reality to turn the very air you breathe into poison, well they'll be surprised to find that there's a little pocket of air somehow still remaining for you to breathe, an evil cabal changes the very universe to live out their fantasies, well they'll be astonished to discover that you still retain your memories and abilities regardless. It could be said that if reality is a bubble, you exist in a smaller bubble that at all times encapsulates and protects you or if you don't like that idea fanwank, for example, you could make it genetic, magical etc.(Reality Warping/Time Travel Protection)

[500 CP Banked]

(-400 CP) Enigmatic Engineering/Stellaris: "Your technology has rights-management included at the reality-level. You can decide who can reverse-engineer, derive from, manufacture, and even use your technologies. And you can change it at a moment's notice. If your xeno ally turns on you, then you can simply revoke access to those lasers you loaned them. Which not only disarms the ships equipped with the blueprints you gave them, it would also disarm ships armed with weapons derived from your gifts. Not only that, but the documentation, controls, and hardware suddenly become inscrutable. You could have soldiers looking at their guns wondering what the trigger does. This perk also protects from traitors trying to give away your technology, as well."

[100 CP Banked]

In that moment, multiple motes of light climb out from the anvil and enter my body. Each and every one ingrains itself into my skin, coding me in a kind of layer of golden and blue light. It is hard to describe the feeling, but I feel better—more secure. The last mote of light enters my hands, strangely enough, and I innately feel a knob form in my head, describing if I want my future creations to be able to be copied or not.

That's firmly staying on for a while.

The clanging becomes a lot more silent, especially after all of the motes of light enter my body. However, I can still faintly hear the noise in front of me as if it is tired and having trouble holding on. Strangely enough, the hammer floats toward me. As I hold it in my hand, it feels warm. It feels right. I feel like I finally have a direction to move in.

So, as I walk toward the anvil, I heft the hammer in my right hand and swing.

(-100 CP) Crafting Artisan/World of Darkness - Demon the Fallen: When it comes to the manufacturing of physical goods, such as blacksmithing, woodworking, basket weaving, etc, you are an expert in dozens of fields. More than that, you have a certain artistic flair to your work that others can't help but notice.

In that moment, I see a man hunched over what looks to be some kind of makeshift crafting station. His hands fly across each and every individual part until, in the end, the framework for a photo is made. In that moment, the person holds that framework up to the sky, as if it is the most precious thing he has ever seen before turning around and looking straight at me.

He then walks over to where I am standing and places a hand on my shoulder. Golden light envelops the both of us before I find myself back in Central Park.

As I look at my hands, I feel an urge to start crafting.

(To be honest, I don't really know where I'm gonna go with this. I just really wanted to write a celestial forge snippet he is in the comics universe of earth 616 but I'm debating on whether or not he should be before everything happens or after specific events And even then, I'm gonna have to mess with the sequence of events as the comic timeline is the biggest cluster fuck I've ever seen. That and I kind of wanted to form a bit of a duality between the Forge and the Grimoire. Hope you all have a good night.)