The Hungry God

Session 09 - The Day the Timeline Unwound

The team had assembled a staggering number of alternate-reality Britneys — roughly thirty in total — and set up a relay network across dimensions, convincing each Britney to do the same in her own world so that a vast web of intelligence could be gathered. The goal was simple: learn everything possible about the Alpha Predator before it arrived. Armed with clipboards and carefully prepared questions, the team conducted interview after interview, building a dossier of hard-won knowledge from women who had already lived through the nightmare. It was methodical, exhausting work — until Jens sat down across from a Britney with glowing red eyes and crescent-shaped wounds carved across her chest, as though she had been caught in a trap built for something far larger than a bear. His opening line was, characteristically, “Your eyes are sexy as fuck.” It was the last thing he said with a body.

In an instant, Bad Britney stripped the flesh and muscle from Jens entirely, leaving nothing but a pile of bones on the floor. Yet Jens’s awareness remained, hovering in the room as a spectral presence, able to perceive the inner energy of every powered individual around him as glowing, open doorways of varying intensity. Ronnie burned bright. Sammy blazed. Dragon was the most powerful presence in the room outside of the Britneys themselves. Thinking fast, Jens projected his consciousness into Dragon’s body, seizing control while Dragon’s original, furious personality was reduced to a screaming voice trapped inside his own skull. Sammy and Ronnie, their own powers giving them a unique perception of the spiritual world, watched the transfer happen in real time and understood immediately what they were dealing with.

With Jens now piloting Dragon’s powerful frame, the team moved to contain the threat. Ronnie focused every ounce of his hatred and contempt — a lifetime’s worth — into a concentrated mental assault on the party’s own Britney, the conduit holding all the duplicates in place. She crumpled, and with her unconscious, every other Britney in the room vanished in an instant. Every one except Bad Britney, who sank to one knee but refused to fall. Sammy grew his arm to a monstrous size and swung a fist that cratered the floor where she had been standing, but she stepped aside at the last moment. Guy LeFleur, meanwhile, had scrounged a strange and impressive assault rifle from the R&D equipment scattered around the room and moved into a flanking position, waiting for his moment.

Jens, still riding Dragon’s body, had seen enough. He grabbed the nearest heavy desk, spun it upside down, and brought it down on Bad Britney with everything Dragon’s superhuman strength could offer. The impact was catastrophic — a thunderous boom, a red mist, and nothing left beneath the desk but pulverized remains. The victory lasted exactly as long as it took for that red mist to swirl upward and pour directly into Dragon, ejecting Jens’s consciousness back into the spectral void. The entity had simply jumped hosts. Now it was wearing Dragon like a suit, and Dragon was one of the most powerful beings in the room. Ronnie hammered the possessed Dragon with another focused mental assault while Sammy struck him with a massive blow, and Guy swung the butt of his rifle at Dragon’s skull — but Dragon’s head bowed at the last moment, and the strike whistled past.

With his body slowly being reconstructed bone by sinew by Regenerator across the room, Jens drifted through the chaos as a ghost, searching for another way back in. Dragon’s body was occupied. The unconscious Britney was sealed off. In desperation, Jens slipped into Boss Voss himself, and inside the commander’s form he found something unexpected — a spinning chakra of raw, untapped power. Without fully understanding what he was doing, Jens spun it counterclockwise. The world stopped. People began moving in reverse, slowly at first, then faster, the entire timeline unwinding around him. Jens was offered a series of choices — moments in history he could return the team to — and he chose the one that mattered most: before the Battle of Terra.

The world went white, and then it was green. The team found themselves standing on the alien world of Terra, beneath two suns, surrounded by lush grass and distant trees, with a city shimmering on the horizon. A tall, three-legged, three-armed warrior stood alone in a field, sword in hand, eyes fixed on the sky — waiting for something to fall. He turned, sensed them, and asked through a direct mental connection whether they were friend or foe. Jens answered by pouring everything they had learned directly into the warrior’s mind: every battle, every failure, every desperate lesson. The core truth was simple and brutal — if you kill it, it jumps. If there’s only one of you left to jump into, your whole planet is lost. The warrior stood in silence for a moment, then set his sword down in the grass.

A massive shape tore through the upper atmosphere, trailing fire and smoke — sixty feet of tentacled, whale-like horror rocketing toward the surface. The warrior flew up to meet it, caught it with all three arms, and the collision shook the sky. Then, without hesitation, he turned and flew upward, carrying the creature with him, higher and higher, until both of them vanished into the heart of the nearest sun. There was a flash, and then the team was back — standing at the airport, a young military man holding a Voss Corporation sign waiting patiently nearby, a limousine idling at the curb with Sam Elliott behind the wheel. Inside the car, on the table, sat four business cards. Ronnie was CEO. Jens was Chairman of the Board. Guy was CFO. Sammy was Head of Marketing. The Alpha Predator was ash, the timeline was rewritten, and the Voss Corporation apparently belonged to them now.