Jay's Danger Sense shrieked with the urgency of an avalanche, every nerve in his battered body lighting up like wildfire. He twisted mid-step, rainbow blood still streaming from his shoulder-stump, and saw what his exhausted senses had missed.
Oblivion was moving.
Not the controlled, measured movements of a cosmic warrior guarding the multiversal boundary. This was the feral lunge of a wounded animal with nothing left to lose. The hole in his chest leaked void-energy in black streamers that corroded reality where they touched, but he was past caring about the damage. Past caring about the trial, the gallery, the cosmic order he'd spent eternity maintaining.
His sister was gone, and the only remains were scattered bones on the arena floor.
The scythe reformed in Oblivion's hands, cobbled together from void-substance and grief and the fragments of Lady Death's remains.
"You should have finished it!" Oblivion's voice was raw, stripped of his warrior's pride, only keeping remnant rage. "You turned your back on me! On the primordial void! You think mercy makes you better? You think goodwill changes what you are?"
The scythe came down in an arc that carved the air itself, aimed not at Jay but past him, toward where Domino stood holding Luv.
"I'LL CUT THIS ABOMINABLE FAMILY APART INTO VOID AND SCATTER THE PIECES PAST THE EDGE OF WHAT EXISTS!"
Jay tried to move, tried to summon the drill again, tried to do anything, but Darwin's Adaptation had already maxed out. His body was shutting down, cells screaming for rest, for healing, for anything except more combat.
The scythe was three feet from Domino's throat when suddenly reality folded.
There was no warning, buildup or gathering of energy. One moment Jay was collapsing thirty feet away, the next he was standing directly in front of Domino and Luv, materialized from nothing.
Teleportation.
But Jay hadn't done it. His powers were tapped out, and his consciousness was barely holding on.
He looked down.
Luv's small hands were pressed against his back, tiny palms glowing with soft blue-and-green light. The five-year-old's face was scrunched in concentration, sweat streaming down his cheeks.
"Daddy," Luv whispered huffing. "I brought you back. I brought you back to us."
The Arena erupted.
Beings who had watched cosmic entities clash after millennia, who thought they'd seen every expression of power the multiverse could produce, were on their feet. The five-year-old had just manipulated reality itself. But this was not the surprising thing, every being in this arena could, to some extent, do it.
But it was the raw, instinctive and mixture of Harbinger of Ninth Cosmos and The Mutant Shaman's Power now being channelled from a child's fundamental need to protect his family.
But there was no time to process it.
Oblivion's scythe was still coming, the void-enhanced blade screaming toward them with enough force to cleave through dimensional barriers.
Jay couldn't move or barely stand. The teleportation had cost Luv whatever reserves the child had suddenly gained.
But they still had the New Death on their side; Domino was already channelling the Death Stone to maximum capacity as she produced a Barrier made of spiritual energy despite being barely available to block Oblivion since the being was a progenitor of her authority.
Jay, having full trust in Domino's capability, did the only thing left.
He turned, grabbed his son's shoulder with his remaining hand, met Luv's terrified eyes, and smiled.
"That was amazing, buddy," Jay said, his voice somehow steady despite everything. "You saved Daddy. Now let's save each other."
And then, because fathers know things mothers don't always see and mothers know things fathers can't always understand, Jay and Domino moved in perfect synchronization.
Jay channelled what remained of his integrated energy, the fusion of six Infinity Stones and four cosmic abstracts into his son as he used his Power Theft to sync his family's power to a single beat. Gently, trying not to overwhelm the child's system.
Domino did the same with her Death Stone energy and probability manipulation, the violet-black and golden power flowing into Luv like water finding its level.
And Luv, the five-year-old terrified and desperate to protect the only people who'd ever made him feel safe, took that energy and did something no cosmic entity in the gallery had ever witnessed.
A Child's Wondrous Imagination.
'If Daddy and Mummy gave me their power, and I imagined something hard enough, wouldn't it just... be real?'
The answer, in the logic of a child who had never been told why that shouldn't work, was obviously yes.
The barrier manifested first, a shimmering dome of purple-gold-rainbow energy that snapped into existence around the three of them. Oblivion's scythe struck it and stopped, void-energy meeting the strange hybrid power Luv had instinctively created.
But the blade didn't bounce off.
It cut.
The barrier peeled apart like tissue paper, Lady Death's essence in the scythe giving it authority over endings that even Luv's desperate construction couldn't withstand.
The blade was six inches from Jay's face when it stopped again.
Stopped by death meeting death.
Domino had channelled pure Death Stone energy, and it was holding the scythe in place through sheer conceptual opposition. Void-energy tried to erase, but the new Death-energy accepted the erasure and transformed it into something else entirely.
Stalemate.
Oblivion screamed, pushed harder, void itself pouring from the wound in his chest to fuel the attack. The scythe inched forward, millimeter by millimeter, death-energy straining against the primordial nothing.
Jay looked at Luv. Saw the determination in his son's eyes, the absolute refusal to let the bad man hurt Mommy and Daddy. Saw the way the child's small hands were glowing, still channeling power he barely understood.
And Jay realized something.
His son didn't need to understand the power.
Luv just needed to imagine what it could do.
"Luv," Jay said softly, pulling his son close with his remaining arm. "Remember the robot shows we watched? The big ones that protect cities?"
Luv nodded, not taking his eyes off Oblivion.
"Can you make one?"
"I… I don't know how…"
"You don't have to know how," Domino said, her voice strained as she held the Death Stone barrier against Oblivion's assault. "Just imagine it, baby. Imagine it protecting us."
Luv closed his eyes.
The energy flowing from Jay and Domino intensified, rainbow light and violet-black death swirling around the five-year-old in patterns that made the watching cosmic entities lean forward in their seats. This wasn't how power worked. Children didn't channel energies that could reshape reality. Five-year-olds didn't construct defenses against primordial forces.
But Luv wasn't operating on cosmic rules.
He was operating on wonderful logic of imagination without burden of life weighing down on a pure soul.
And in five-year-old logic, if Daddy and Mommy gave you power, and you imagined something hard enough, it became real.
Oblivion saw the energy surge and swung the scythe again, desperate to cut through Domino's defenses before whatever was building could manifest.
The blade struck the barrier just as Luv opened his eyes.
And the universe said: "Oh. That's new."
The energy construct that materialized around the family wasn't a barrier anymore.
It was a mecha.
Two hundred feet tall, composed entirely of Luv's imagination filtered through Jay's integrated cosmic energy and Domino's Death authority. Rainbow light formed the superstructure, probability-defying joints allowing movement that shouldn't be possible, death-energy reinforcing the whole thing with the absolute certainty that yes, this definitely existed now.
Oblivion's scythe struck the mecha's arm.
The energy plates didn't even dent.
They absorbed the impact, distributed it across the entire structure through probability manipulation that said "the force goes everywhere and therefore nowhere," and held firm.
The scythe bounced off.
Oblivion stared.
The gallery stared.
Even Eternity, who had witnessed the birth of stars and the death of dimensions, chuckled with delightful surprise.
Inside what served as the mecha's cockpit, Jay looked at Domino.
& Domino looked at Jay.
They both looked at Luv, who was concentrating so hard his tongue was sticking out the corner of his mouth.
And despite everything, despite the pain, exhaustion and realization that the cosmic entity was trying to kill them, both parents burst out laughing.
"That's definitely our son," Domino managed between laughs.
"Remember my fight with Lady Death?" Jay was grinning now, the pain temporarily forgotten. "I built one just like this!"
"Like father, like son," Domino said, and there was pride in her voice. Love and the absolute certainty that yes, this ridiculous, impossible, wonderful child was theirs.
The mecha moved.
Not through Jay's control or Domino's manipulation.
Through Luv's imagination, responding to their combined will.
The family was operating as one now. Three minds linked through the energy connection Luv had established. Jay's tactical experience, Domino's probability manipulation, and Luv's pure creative visualization merged into a single unified consciousness piloting an impossible war machine.
And as the connection solidified, as Jay and Domino really looked at what their son had created, they saw the details.
The spiral motifs running along the arms.
The distinctive head design, massive and imposing.
The way the whole thing seemed to defy physics not through breaking the rules but through believing so hard in breaking them that reality bent to accommodate.
Jay's breath caught.
"Oh my god," he whispered. "He made Super Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann."
The show jay had recreated from scratch as they'd watched together as any self-respecting father would.
The episodes where Jay had explained the themes to his five-year-old son. Spiral power. The force of evolution. The absolute refusal to give up, no matter how impossible the odds.
Luv had been paying attention to more than just the cool robots.
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