Chapters 164+165

Chapter 164: To Slice

Only a moment ago, a crazed man with a shattered cheekbone had been smiling up at the sky. Now, all that was left of him was the still-dropping blood, gore, and chips of bone in the bloodiest shower Walker had ever taken.

In the most non-threatening way he could, he slowly turned to the hissing laughter under the pitter-patter of red rain.

“I found youuu,” The Slicer hissed out, “Fouund you.”

The Slicer had grown. When it had left his planet in pieces, the size of the thing had been no more than several feet long. Its new size was about the length of a horse, with its width being closer to a horse that had spent a lot of time eating twinkies without a break. How it was even speaking when someone like Chipper couldn’t, he didn’t know. Just another strange thing about Walker’s first entity.

A quick identify showed it had changed again.

“Multiversal Cataclysm? Isn’t that a little too on the nose?”

“Quiet!” The Slicer hissed at him, “I’ve been trapped on a planet for years defending myself. Defending! For years!” He took three shallow breaths, then opened his circular mouth wide, several teeth making their appearance. Just to show it could, the inner workings of its frightening maw rotated, the saliva-covered teeth dripping as it gave a horrendous smile.

“Let me ask you a question, Creator. Do you have a shield?”

Walker’s eyes fluttered ever so subtly, but that was enough for the Slicer to laugh, “It’s true! He removed your shield!”

“Well, technically-”

Walker was interrupted as the Slicer attacked. Even though he tried to move quickly, a pinch on his side alerted him that he’d taken some damage. But when he looked down, it wasn’t the small injury he’d thought it was. The red river leaking from the opened hole in his robe was quick, telling him the wound was serious. He even spotted the edge of white bone as a few ribs were exposed to the air.

What was strange was that he felt no pain.

“Have you noticed my new paralytic evolution?” The Slicer said with another hissing laugh, “Breaking past the Psi Protocol takes some time, but I achieved it months ago, you worthless trollup.”

Though he was bleeding and surely in trouble, Walker couldn’t help but say, “What? Trollup?”

“I read! Shut your mouth!”

Another blurred image passed him, with Walker failing to move fast enough as two of the fingers on his right hand disappeared.

Well, you wanted to be a part of the next battle. Here you are, Walker thought to himself with chagrin.

Walker looked at the place where his fingers used to be, and now only two one-inch stubs remained. He calmed himself down as much as he could while the paralysis kept the pain at bay, but it was difficult. There was a special terror to losing parts of yourself without feeling a thing.

“I’ve dreamed of this for…”

Walker stopped paying attention as the Slicer began to villainously monologue. Based on his internal timer, he figured he had another fifteen minutes before the Omega Protocol entity exited stasis. Fifteen minutes before everything likely went to shit.

A flash of lightning accompanied by fire some few miles away told him that the Primigenials had entered the fight. Who they were fighting was beyond his understanding at the moment, but they hadn’t heeded his warning.

He’d asked them to hide. The Soul and Reincarnation systems were still in their infancy, and he knew for a fact that the protocol wouldn’t be able to bring them back. Even though he’d created them, Walker was worried that the systems wouldn’t work the way they were supposed to, even with the years he’d spent putting them together. Untested systems could be like that; he knew that from painful experience.

His thoughts pressed pause as a piece of his left wrist disappeared.

“Are you even listening to me!” The creature demanded, “It’s very important to me that you feel the terror of this moment.”

Walker lifted a bleeding wrist in the air, “You’re paralyzing the pain, man. And who bites a piece out of somebody when they’re talking to them? Are you suffering from anxiety or something?”

“What?”

“Look, it’s simple,” Walker said, stalling for time as he placed his bleeding right hand on his head, as if he were speaking to a child. “You take that anxiety, put it in a pill, and chill it. Take a chill pill.”

“That doesn’t make any sense,” The Slicer responded, the tail end of his body already coiling for his next piece of Walker pie. But it was already too late. As the Slicer had been focusing on the wrist and what he was saying, Walker’s other hand had been spreading Temporal energy over his body.

The Slicer leaped forward, but time had already slowed down by that point. The creature’s mouth was wide open as its two beady eyes stared at him with unadulterated malice, slowly moving through the standard temporal rate of the rendition. Now that the Slicer wasn’t moving so fast that Walker couldn’t keep up, he got to watch as its body stretched, thinning before his eyes.

Evolution Occurring.

The Slicer is evolving!

...Scanning...

...

The Slicer has gained Elastic Hyperstride.

It was a noticeable increase in speed, as just a little bit, Walker got to watch the Slicer’s eyes shift when he stepped to the side, if slowly.

Then, another notification came in.

Evolution Occurring.

The Slicer is evolving!

...Scanning...

...

The Slicer has gained Extreme Hyper Perception.

What? Walker thought as he took another step to the side, the eyes following him much better now.

Evolution Occurring.

The Slicer is evolving!

...Scanning...

...

The Slicer has gained Advanced Velocity.

“Fucking come on!” Walker yelled out as he lowered his gravity while placing Kinetic energy on his feet. He kicked off as the Slicer further adapted to his new evolutions, keeping up right behind him if still much slower. The world was still frozen as another update came in.

Evolutionary Merger Occurring.

The Slicer is merging key evolutions!

“That’s possible!”

...Scanning...

...

The Slicer has gained Supreme Temporal Speed.

“Got you again, bitch!” The Slicer yelled out as he was more than fast enough to keep up with Walker now. With barely a thought in his head, Walker took to the air, the deranged Bobbit Worm closely behind him. Using one hand to constantly place more Kinetic energy into his feet, he used the other to throw Continuum spiked with Temporal energy in front of him. In small bursts of strands, he sped himself up, draining the resources as he passed so his opponent wouldn’t gain the same benefit.

Together, the two moved across the wide breadth of conglomerated worlds below them. They passed a frozen Jacoby and Dion as they battled spiders the size of small dogs. Walker shifted directions and took a sharp turn, diving underwater and scooting through an opening between a large enough squid to be considered a Kraken as it devoured several dolphins at once.

Doing god’s work.

With a little distance now, he made another sharp turn, exiting the water and speeding ahead as they began to travel over a frozen landscape below them.

Walker had no idea how long the deathly game of tag ran for. With his adrenaline skyrocketing, every move he made blurred in the heat of the moment. He only had heartbeats to view the areas he passed over, but the Creator recognized many of his people and creations as they moved. In every frozen scene, in every picturesque moment, that small corner of him that had died with John Reed gained a little bit of life back.

The Symphonians didn’t know it, but in a way, they’d saved his life just as he was trying to save theirs.

After cresting a few trees, he made enough speed to have a quick look around. Judging by the several mountains he was currently flying over, he had to be somewhere on the north side of Symphony. Just below, he spotted several Hill giants moving in slow motion as they defended against several buglike creatures that had crossed over from Romulus and Remus.

Thinking fast, Walker aimed his body at the creatures below, zooming toward them with a blisteringly fast and currently on fire Slicer behind him.

“I’ll kill you!”

Ignoring that, he zigzagged a path through the creatures, allowing the Slicer to catch up a little as he stayed true to his name. Dozens, then hundreds of insects, historically demonic-like entities, and other odd creatures exploded as Walker’s flying wrecking crew of a monster destroyed everything in its path.

If anyone paused to wonder why Walker wasn’t facing off against the deranged Bobbit Worm, the reason was simple. Evolutions. Every time something tried to kill or escape the Slicer, he evolved to better fight against them. If Walker didn’t find a way to fully disable or outright extinguish the Slicer’s life, he would only make it stronger. It had to be an all-or-nothing gambit, or he would surely fail.

Walker began to angle himself toward another group when he had an idea. Stretching out his fully healed hand, telling him just how long they’d been doing this, Walker aimed his body up and out of Symphony’s atmosphere.

He left behind the trees, the rivers and mountains. He left behind Lucy, Runner, Chipper, and all of the Founders and Monsters who’d carved a place in his heart. He left behind the Dolphins, the terrors from the portals, and the Dinosaurs he never should have placed upon the sands of Cadence. With a huge burst of speed that tore tiny particles of flesh out of his body as the strands did their work, Walker Reed went for the gamble.

Traveling deep through the darkness of space, Walker placed as many Gravity resources as he could on the Galactic Planeteater, then, waited.

Turning around, he found the Slicer quickly approaching. The Bobbit worm showed quick thinking as he stopped in the empty space and looked around.

“What are you doing?”

Changing tactics, Walker canted his head, “Would you believe me if I said nothing?”

“No, I wouldn’t.” The Slicer looked left and right, scanning the area as Walker placed his hands behind his back, “You’re different? You lost that weird glowy shit all over you.”

“Yep.” Walker used one hand to scratch his chin before placing it behind him again, “I figured it was useless to run away from you. Why just extend my own death, you know?”

“Right! Exactly! You get it,” The Slicer chortled in an oddly terrifying way, “You know, I heard what that old wizard guy was saying before he got sliced. Even to me, that’s pretty fucked up.”

Are we really having this conversation right now?

“Yeah,” Walker ran his hand over his face, “I was blind to what Nobody was doing. Or John, I guess…or Mr. Harrison. Names are confusing, and frankly, I can do without them.”

“And my ass speaks assholese, what’s your point?” The Slicer demanded as his patience ran out.

Walker’s eyes twitched as he raised his left hand at an angle, “Hold on, just, give me a second. If I die, I want to say something important.”

“...what?”

“If a strawberry is filled with seeds and no two are alike, does that mean that every time you eat one, you’re committing genocide?”

“What?” The Slicer said, its expression one of extreme confusion.

“If a strawberry-”

“I heard what you said, but I don’t understand the point of the question. Why are these the last words you want to say?”

“They’re not, I’m just stalling…bitch.”

Walker added the last of the gravity resources he had to the huge mass already on the Galactic Planeteater, timing it to the very last second.

Ra’jin is no longer held in stasis

The final battle will now begin

…

Good luck Dante!

Now is the moment of truth…Walker activated the gravity well on top of every resource he could gather.

It didn’t start with a spark or a bang, but with a soundless suck as the already dark space became something darker still.

Reality seemed to shutter as thousands of gravity resources pulled in on one another, creating a cascading implosion that Walker would later think was akin to a collapsing star. A groan echoed out, as if the universe itself felt the pain of so much pressure compacted into one, singular point.

The Slicer didn’t have time for his evolutions to occur before he was sucked towards the burgeoning black hole directly against the Galactic Planeteater’s body. He didn’t even have time to scream as Walker, still protected by the resources he’d already placed on himself, quickly moved to the side and let the Multiversal Cataclysm pass him by.

So much gravity was impacting the area that Sonata and the landscape currently representing Symphony began to pull toward the rapidly expanding ring of light and darkness. Walker began to grow worried that he might’ve overdone it when something strange reached his ears.

The planeteater, which should by all rights be currently mashed into some kind of paste and condensed thousands of times over, made a sound.

“Ahhh, that’s nice.”

The sun peeked out further as it turned its body, shining a light on a figure so large that even though he stood before it, Walker couldn’t believe his eyes. Teeth the size of a small moon glared at Walker as the smiling form of an Ancient Galactic Planeteater looked at the expanding black hole before it.

“What is this? A gift?” It said in a pleasantly cultured voice that contrasted sharply with the entity's figure. “Well, don’t mind if I do. I haven’t had a delicacy like this in some time.”

Opening wide, the Planeteater stretched the roof and bottom of its mouth so greatly that Walker half-hoped its head would snap in two. With alarming speed for something so large, it reached out and snapped up the still-growing black hole in one bite.

“Ugh, why does that taste so bad?” It said with a few spitting sounds, “Who offers a gift that tastes so terrible? Hold on.”

Turning its head slightly, shockwaves rolled through the back of its throat before it opened its mouth. Walker heard a faint, “I’ll kill you!” Before a glowing shield sprang up, highlighting the Slicer within.

The Planeteater looked down at the circle with a great toothy smile, “I need you to take a timeout while the Creator and I speak for a moment. You’ve done well.”

“Fuck you!”

“Calm down, little one. Perform your exercise.”

“I’ll exercise your mother! I’ll-” Something changed in the shield as no more sound came out, and the Ancient Galactic Planeteater turned to look at the, so very small, Walker floating in front of it.

It gave Walker a smile he could feel in his bones, but that wasn’t the only thing that upset him. There was something strange about it. Fuzzy. Off. A feeling he couldn’t place.

Walker didn’t figure it out until he activated his Soul Vision.

Long black lines ran throughout its body.

Chapter 165: Desperation

Calm…calm…He thought to himself as his mind started to spiral again. Think about the solution, not the problem. Yes, he’s a planet-sized monster who plans on destroying you and everything you care about. Yes, if you lose, there’s nowhere to go back to. Yes, you don’t have a protocol shield anymore, which means if you die, he’s probably going to eat your soul, and that really doesn’t sound like a good time.

Walker took a deep breath. At least Athena’s safe, and those people on Earth are probably done with the Omega Protocol now that John’s dead.

Taking a brief moment, he soaked in those thoughts long enough to settle again. 

Think of the solution, not the problem. If the problem is that I have to somehow beat a galactic-level threat that eats souls, then the solution is…the solution is….

He drew a blank. How did you follow that up with a solution? 

Right, stick with what you know. Lay of the land.  

The land in this instance was the creature before him, meaning Walker needed to break down its strengths and weaknesses. Its size was massive, meaning anything he hit it with would have to be massive as well.

Strength.

Also, due to its size, it could probably eat the entirety of all of his planets in ten slow bites.

Strength again…

But it did have the Godeater parasite…so if he could learn to break that down, he might have a chance. But there was only one way he knew how to do that, and it was dangerous as all hell. 

When thinking about the parasite, he reviewed what he knew. 

He hadn’t gotten a great look at Councilmember Five’s soul, but he could make comparisons to his own. For instance, Walker’s soul was filled with two things. The long, black lines of the Godeater parasite, and the systems built into him, including his abilities. 

The planet-sized creature before him had no systems that he could see. It had the long line of the parasite, same as him, but rather than systems, there was a constellation of glowing dots making up its body. As he already had Soul Vision on, he quickly shifted his view to the Slicer and found a similar makeup to the creature’s soul, though without the parasite entirely. 

“What are you doing, little Creator?”

Walker paused, turning off his ability in case the planeteater could sense it. “Just…taking a look. After all, you’re very impressive Mr…Mrs…?

All large creatures love to have their ego stroked.

Walker’s expectations fell flat.

“Genders don’t matter to my species, but if it makes you feel uncomfortable, you can assume I’m male. Ra’jin does have a masculine sound to it.” It vibrated in place for a second, then barrel-rolled its entire body in a circle, again quicker than Walker felt it had any right to be. “The council is very particular in their hatred of you. I saw the rewards, which were…interesting. As I do not wish to be reduced in rank, little Creator, I’m afraid your story ends here.”

Walker smiled, “Be honest, it’s mostly Council Member One, right?”

“Yesss, hrmm.” He cleared his throat, “Yes, that’s true.” With a quick movement, Ra’jin looked over at the sun, then looked over at Symphony. “You’ve been quite busy, Dante. Or is it Walker? The Slicer has told me quite a bit about you. So much hate centered on a single person. I’m amazed so little time has passed in this place.”

“Yeahh,” Walker said as he filtered numerous memories through the back of his mind, even going so far as asking his icon to help. “What can I say, I’m a popular guy.”

“Ah, to be popular.” The planeteater replied with its frozen smile, “But I’m afraid I need to finish this and move on, little Creator. Your time in the protocol has been stupendous, historic even. But now, your time needs to end, so the next rendition can begin. I thank you for what you’ve done for our multiverse, and wish you the best of luck when you return to your homeworld.”

The shock of how pleasant the Omega Protocol entity was acting wore off right as one of its teeth fell out of its smile. Drifting in space, two more joined it immediately thereafter, a gap-toothed expression remaining on the planeteater’s face. As Walker was about to ask what was happening, the teeth began to shake, vibrating in space and illuminated clearly by a crescent of sunlight drifting over from the nearby sun. 

Gridded lines broke out across the flat teeth, then split, cracking into several long, thick shapes. Each spun in place before rotating, rictus smiles pointed at his cherished world down below. 

“First time witnessing a planeteater at work?” Ra’jin asked. 

“Ye-yes. I mean, no. We faced junior planeteaters in the second battle,” Walker said as the smaller, though still, battleship-sized planeteaters began to move toward the defending landscape in the near distance. “Why not just take big bites yourself?”

“That’s an excellent question. It comes down to the gift I received from the Alpha Protocol several days ago. I’ve found that it has instilled in me a great hunger for...Awakened. Those who are like you, in fact." The creature didn't move a muscle, but all of a sudden its gap-toothed smile seemed all the larger, "An Awakened. How shocking." Two more teeth fell out as Ra'jin opened its mouth wide enough for its gray gums to show, "I can taste the intoxicating stench of you even from here, little Creator." His head moved toward Sonata, "Mmm, that tastes even better."

Walker had heard everything he needed to. Tapping into his master key, he made a portal back to Symphony, aiming it in his mind for right near the Eternal Base. He stepped through just as Ra'jin's body began to move toward the green moon of his home. 

What he saw would forever stick to his memories. Each planeteater that had dropped down had split into a dozen more. Rather than the battleship-sized creatures he'd seen in space, each was now the size of a large car as they flew through every inch of space, gobbling up anything and everything that they saw. 

Pulses and flashes of blue, yellow, and white lit the scene as Symphony fought back against an army of smiling and hungry figures. 

Moving fast and thinking faster, Walker covered himself in Temporal energy, then invested several resources in reflections. There were too many figures for him to hope to kill them all before he could save his people from an untimely death, but perhaps he could distract them as well. By first covering himself in Temporal energy, he'd granted a small portion of it to the dozens of Davids now surrounding him. To cover as many bases as possible, Walker again tapped into the master key, creating portals across the areas of Symphony he could quickly picture in his mind. No jokes or laughter came from the Walker copies as they moved out, each sprinting to a different portal after their figures solidified. 

Now that it was just him again, Walker covered his hands in a heaping of kinetic energy. Stepping toward the nearest Planeteater, he braced his back leg on hardened space and threw the strongest punch he could. A small explosion slowly erupted at the area he'd struck, a clear fist-shaped indent made on the creature as it slowly moved backward, moored in time. 

Walker moved on to the next one. One-two-three, Walker struck out at the figures around him as he leaped forward, continuing onward in his attempts to slow down the destruction of Symphony, and, hopefully, kill a few of the smaller Planeteaters in the process.

He moved like a machine. Each Planeteater filled his vision as his mind raced to find a way to stop his world's destruction. There were no thoughts weighing on him about the innocence of the Planeteaters. No mercy. These creatures had come with only chaos and hunger in their hearts, if they even had one. 

Walker had found his solution, and it was death to the invaders. 

On the fifteenth punch, something changed. It felt as if time had begun to speed up again. He wasn't sure what was happening, but that didn't stop him from following through on the attack, pressing all of his force into the figure in front of him. Leaping to the sixteenth and watching it slowly turn toward him, he knew something was going wrong, but the thought of what would happen if he stopped kept his arm winding back, just as a terrible feeling erupted at the site of his shoulder. 

Looking over, he found something missing. 

His arm. 

"Fuck!" He screamed, as unlike with the Slicer, this pain wasn't numbed. It felt like nothing else than a burning, twisting stab of fire throughout the remainder of what was once his right arm. It looked like a bloody artist's rendition of a limited and drunken Jackson Pollock. Logically, he knew that his soul would heal it, but right now, the sight of spurting blood and cleanly hewed through bone, muscle, and fat filled his vision.

Through the pain, he heard an odd noise, followed by another. Turning to the right at what sounded like performative swallowing, the rictus smile of a planeteater greeted him as he watched his own fingers slip past the white teeth of the creature. A tingling, cold feeling dripped down his spine as he noticed the hazy and slightly opaque covering around the creature. 

The Planeteater was surrounded by Temporal energy. 

"Mmm-" He'd wanted to curse again, but all that came out instead was a mumbled sound of pain.

"Yes," The small creature said with a smile, its voice almost an exact duplicate of its much larger parental figure up above, only with a slightly higher pitch. "I did not know you had access to the origins of the universe. Another pleasant surprise. This has such a unique flavor to it, I almost don't want to take it away from you."

It floated closer, taking a bite of the air surrounding Walker. The opaque covering of Temporal energy lessened on Walker just as it grew on the other. 

"Yes, that is very flavorful. Not as good as all of the souls I've already taken, but still quite delicious." Behind it, two other time-covered Planeteaters appeared, their grins sending Walker's consciousness into a desperate overdrive. "This will make things much faster now. I thank you for your service, little Creator."

All three began to back up when they abruptly paused. Each mouth opened slightly ajar before the one on the right split in half, falling into pieces on the ground. The left, then the middle, followed suit, collapsing into the grass surrounding the Eternal Base. 

Walker's mind had just started to accept that fact when a barefooted and slight figure covered in dark wraps appeared in less than the blink of an eye. 

"Walker? Are you okay?" 

"I-" Walker looked at the cutoff point of his shoulder, which had only recently stopped bleeding. "I don't know..." He looked back at the figure, "Who are you? And how are you moving like that?"

The figure lifted the wraps off its head, revealing the bald figure of Runner Grove. A deep scar ran across one cheek, and one of her eyes now held a white glimmer, but otherwise, she looked the same as she had the last time he'd seen her. 

"Walker," She said in a serious tone, "Do you have any idea what's happened here in the last fifty years?"

"I...no." The burning feeling in his arm returned as his soul's healing properties took over, "It's the final ba-battle. I'm-"

"We know." Runner blink-stepped next to him, placing a hand on his shoulder, "We know it is, Walker. We've been preparing for it for a long time now. But none of that matters if you die here. If you die, we all die, right? So why are you down here instead of letting us do our jobs?"

Walker shook his head as he looked down at the tiny stub growing out of his shoulder, "If you all die, I don't have a reason to live. There's nothing else left for me. Symphony is-"

"You. Symphony is you, dear Walker." She cupped his chin, lifting his head up so their eyes could meet. "If I move on to that next place, then so be it. I did what I could for my people. But if you go and die, that's the end of everything. Don't be so crazy that you forget who we are and why you created this world in the first place. You're the father of us all, monsters and sapients alike- and we need our father to live."

Walker gave her a weak smile, ruining the solemnity of the moment, "You never answered my question."

Runner barked a laugh, "How did I know you would say something like that? Fine." She blipped three times, moving to different locations in his vision as the area around him seemed to not notice her passing. On the final blip, he felt her hand on his wounded shoulder as something was compressing against the wound of his arm.

She spoke up as she wrapped it in a foul-smelling cloth, "Virgil gave me a gift before you advanced us. The concept of speed, he called it. Though the system recognizes it as something else, or at least Ulysses does."

"What's it say now?"

"Inertial Sovereignty. Pretty catchy, right?" She tied off the cloth around his arm, jiggling it to make sure it could move as his arm grew back. Leaning down, she kissed the top of the wound, "There you go, all better."

"Thank you," Walker said with a smile, noticing that the pain had disappeared. He looked over at her with a glimmer in his eyes, "You've changed a lot since we last saw each other."

"Time will do that," She replied with a smile. Looking just behind him, she spotted something, her stance automatically changing to one that would allow her to put on a burst of speed. Runner Grove gave Walker one last look, the smile still on her face, "We'll take care of things down here, but there's not too much we can do about the giant thing blocking out the sun."

"I can take care of that, somehow." Walker said with a grimace, "I just need to figure out how."

"Don't worry," She said, patting him on his uninjured arm, "You will. See you later, Dad." 

Then she was gone.