The nearest Karen turned to deliver a withering critique—and froze. I launched like a caffeinated comet, moving so fast I left afterimages that glitched in my wake. The Karen's face hadn't even finished forming its complaint when I reached her.

  “THE MANAGER IS OUT,” I bellowed, enhanced fist colliding with her perfectly powdered face. “PLEASE LEAVE A MESSAGE AFTER THE PUNCH.”

  She didn't fall—she exploded into pastel mist and crystallized indignation. The shockwave rippled out, knocking down lesser Karens like a row of entitled dominoes.

  I pivoted toward my next target—a Gravethrall bringing down its obsidian-crusted club toward a fallen soldier. I intercepted the blow in a burst of golden light, catching the city-leveling club in my bare hand with a thunderclap of impact.

  “ROCK BEATS SCISSORS,” I announced, because apparently the Final Blend was feeding me the worst one-liners, “BUT BARISTA BEATS ROCK!”

  I didn't just shatter its arm—I unmade it, the limb dissolving into quantum particles as I delivered a roundhouse kick that converted its head to a constellation of gravel.

  I carved through the enemy ranks like an interdimensional chainsaw—if chainsaws could teleport, perform spinning aerial combos, and occasionally deliver one-liners. Trolls, monks, Karens—they all fell before me in a ballet of destruction so beautiful it deserved its own Hans Zimmer soundtrack.

  And it felt fucking MAGNIFICENT.

  Three Karens tried to corner me, their perfectly manicured hands raised in identical gestures of disapproval, the air around them warping with the gravity of their combined entitlement.

  “YOUR SERVICE IS UNACCEPTABLE,” one began, her voice distorting reality, forcing itself past the time dilation. Their cancel powers were strong, but not as strong as me.

  I moved between them in a blur of golden light and righteous customer service vengeance, delivering strikes so fast they didn't register until their bodies were already falling.

  “SORRY, THE COMPLAINT DEPARTMENT IS CLOSED... PERMANENTLY!”

  I spotted Riley pinned down by a group of Gravethralls, their massive forms creating a living fortress around her. She was fighting with everything she had—each strike precise, each movement desperate—but her movements were sluggish with exhaustion.

  I was by her side in an instant, lifting two trolls by their throats with arms wreathed in golden fire.

  “Need some help?” I asked, smashing the trolls' heads together with a force that didn't just reduce them to pebbles—it created a shockwave that atomized three more behind them.

  “What... the... hell...” she breathed, her words stretching across seconds in my enhanced perception.

  “NO TIME TO EXPLAIN,” I said. “I'LL BE BACK.”

  The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

  I kept moving, kept fighting—not just fighting, but redefining combat itself. The battle wasn't just shifting; it was being fundamentally rewritten with me as the primary author.

  I paused just long enough to check my timer.

  Four minutes remaining. Two minutes in real-time, given the dilation.

  Still too many enemies. They kept coming, pouring in through portals that opened around the cavern. For every ten I destroyed, twenty more took their place. The math wasn't working in our favor.

  A terrible realization hit me: even with these god-like powers, I couldn't defeat them all before the potions wore off. We were still going to lose if I just kept fighting.

  Lava boiled up through the fractured stone like the earth itself was bleeding. The air shimmered with unbearable heat, skin-peeling, bone-scorching. A half-dozen Karens vanished in screams as molten tongues licked across the chamber. The ground cracked. The ceiling groaned. The world was coming apart.

  Karens scattered, their battle cries warped into shrieks of dread. Trolls trampled monks. Monks trampled each other. It didn’t matter who they worshiped. Their god had already answered.

  “Maybe,” I muttered, sweat boiling off me in waves, “didn’t think this all the way through.”

  A stalactite the size of a Prius sheared loose above me. I caught it—barely. My knees buckled. Muscles screamed. It didn’t care. Gravity doesn’t bargain.

  A monk locked eyes with me. No fear. No mercy. Just glowing hands and the serene calm of someone about to become a martyr.

  I dropped the rock.

  The explosion of bone, stone, and fire swallowed us both.

  Everything blurred. Limbs shredded. HUD screaming. The floor cracked like paper and the magma surged closer, orange and endless. I was buried in it—stone above, fire below, pressure all around. My health locked at 1. An alert blinked in crimson.

  [EMERGENCY MODE: ACTIVATED]

  “Well,” I whispered to no one, barely able to breathe, “at least... I saved them.”

  Darkness swallowed the world.

  Time became irrelevant. Seconds stretched like torture. Minutes broke apart. Pain was everything. Pain was God.

  Then her voice slid in, smooth and quiet.

  “Hey, hey... it’s okay. You’ll be okay.”

  Marla. Calm. Cosmic. Close. Her tone was morphine.

  “It’s okay. Everything is going to be okay.”

  After a while, even her voice felt distant.

  Forever passed. Breathing slowed. My countdown on Morning Brew edged closer to its end. To my end.

  Boom.

  Then silence. Had I dreamed it?

  And then—

  The sound and tremor came again.

  Metal tore. Walls screamed. Something massive ripped through the stone. I felt weightless as it was lifted from me.

  Light pierced the gloom. Not divine. Not soft. Headlights. Blazing, red, angry.

  From the hole in the cavern wall strode a mech—fifteen feet of rage-forged armor, limbs hissing steam, steel teeth grinding as it moved. Its plating was streaked in blood and magma. Sigils glowed faintly on its chassis, pulsing like a heartbeat. A masterpiece of engineering.

  Then the cockpit hissed open.

  Inside—was that a fucking cat? An actual orange tabby wearing what appeared to be a tiny general's uniform complete with medals and gold bars on his shoulder? A scar across one eye. He lifted one paw, solemnly.

  “I’ve got you,” rumbled a deep, commanding voice.

  OMG OMG KITTY! I could hear Marla in my mind.

  The mech's metal arms scooped me up with ease and I was cradled against cold steel that somehow felt warmer and more comforting than it had any right to be.

  “Hero of Earth,” the voice continued, impossibly noble despite coming from what sounded like a being that probably spent its days knocking glasses off countertops. “Rest now, for when you wake, the real war begins.”

  “Cats in mechs?” I wheezed, blood in my mouth, fire at my back. That’s... actually pretty cool.

  “Bean me up, Daddy,” Marla said.

  Behind us, the chamber roared and collapsed. The magma rose.

  And then the coffin lid of the world slammed shut.

  But I didn’t die.

  I was stolen, spirited away, my story not yet over.

  I might have been hallucinating but I could swear I saw that cat… that glorious little bastard… wink at me.