Oh thank god
Dr. Stephen Strange looked at the demonic abomination tearing up central New York with barely hidden relief.
He was well aware that wasn't a very...standard response to a gargantuan octopus like monster (damn, his life was weird) tearing up your city, but by god did he prefer it over the alternative.
People might judge him for it (nothing new there.) but when said alternative was having to watch your ex (the love of your life) marry someone else and having to try (and fail) to be happy for her, he honestly couldn't care less.
Getting invited to wedding stung.
Actually sitting through it hurt.
Being reminded of all the reasons why his relationship (the best thing that ever happened to him) broke down?
...Well.
It was rough, and objectively speaking, just another misery added to his overfilled plate.
The whispers, the barely hidden barbs and the poorly hidden (if even that) loathing members of the magical community tended to to toss his way when they realised that it had been him who lost the time stone to Thanos had taken their toll as well.
He wasn't in the best headspace, he could admit that much, and hadn't been for a while now. For the love of god, he'd come to the wedding of the woman he loved and watched her marry someone else. To hell with being a good friend, what kind of masochistic dumbass did something like that?
To say that he was one step off devolving into an emotional wreck wouldn't be too far off the mark. He was very much at the end of his rope.
Luckily, though, he had a convenient outlet for his discomfort (heartbreak) for the first time in weeks.
People fled in droves as massive appendages soared over their heads, air snapping and whistling as limbs the color of wet algae went absolutely everywhere. White suckers lined each appendage with symmetrical precision, large and pulsating visibly, to the point where he could see the rhythmic, unnatural movement from a distance away. All of the ghastly limbs converged on solitary nexus, a single wall of sea green and pink muscular flesh, a titanic eye embedded within it's core.
Tentacle Monster moved suddenly, limbs rocketing up and adhering to a building with destructive force, pulping stonework and shattering glass from sheer force. With speed that seemed almost impossible for it's lumbering form, It began to pull itself up, ignoring the droves of civilians as they screamed and raged and trampled over one another to flee.
No, this close he could feel it's dimensional resonance, feel the the distortions of energy it was drawing into itself from other planes of reality solely to exist in the physical world. It was so potent he could practically taste it.
It's metaphysical presence was powerful, but given it's size that was hardly a surprise. Magical beasts defied the law of conventional physics and biology by sidestepping them entirely and relying on power from extra-planar sources in much the same way that sorcerers did. The bigger they were, the stronger they tended to be, and though that wasn't a hard rule it was often what wound up happening. An unfortunate side affect of this was that they developed at least a rudimentary form of intelligence to match their evolved forms, which meant that he and his colleagues wound up having to go head to head with eldritch abominations the size of buildings with enough brains to make dealing with them a complete and utter pain in the ass.
This one would be no different wasn't lashing out at random, he realised quickly as he watched it ignore the fleeing droves, but it wasn't just ignoring them wither, massive bulk swivelling as it's eye focused on the fleeing civilians.
Stephen had dealt with enough of these intelligent nightmares to recognise the behaviour he was witnessing for what it was.
A hunt
And that's when he saw the girl.
...
America screamed as a tentacle wider than she wide whipped past her , missing her by inches and tearing the fire escape she had lunged for right down the side of the building.
The screech of collapsing metal and shattered stone nearly deafened her, and she slid back, ignnoring the dust as she tried to see-
Oh shit.
The eye was fixed on her, black pupil narrowed as the monster heaved more of it's ugly mass onto the crumbling rooftop.
She backed away desperately, trying not to fall over stray debris as the entire building seemed to buckle and shake.
It wasn't going to last, she realised with a growing sense of despair. It was either death by collapsing building or death by the shifting writhing nightmare fuel that had been hunting her across dimensions for days.
Abruptly, the despair seemed to give away to a wave of seething fury, and she screamed. The appendage that had been reaching for her froze, before retracting ever so slightly in seemingly wary consideration.
The monster seemed almost stunned at her reaction, and that only seemed to piss her off more, fury lacing through her brain with so much intenisty it almost whited out her vision.
Because she was exhausted.
She hadn't slept properly in days, hadn't eaten in longer, and the terror and the sharp sting of Strange's betrayal were like hot knives digging into her soul.
Why?
What could she have possible done to deserve this?!
(She was so, so tired.)
So she screamed, and this time, for just a moment, she saw what had given the monster pause.
Or rather, she felt it.
The faintest stirrings of blue light shining over her form and a near invisible shimmer of displaced air that had her voice petering out in shock. For a moment, she felt her power surge, finally playing along for the first time in who knows how long, and her eyes went wide in wonder.
And then the lights winked out, the energy that had been building in her veins slipping away like water no matter how hard she tried to reach for it, and it, and she was right back where she started.
Looking death right in the single, giant and ugly bitch of an eye.
Then the spell that had fallen over both of them broke, and with a hellish screech the beast fell towards her-
Light.
-Or it would have, if a whip of sparking eldritch light hadn't cracked down between them and wrapped around the offending limb with fluid grace and sliced clean through foul flesh in the same blindingly quick motion.
She watched in stunned wonder as it screeched in agony, it's remaining limbs losing their grip and sliding down after as it fell tumbled the ground, and she felt the thudding impact in her bones as a well over a hundred tons of unnatural muscle fell twelve stories down.
"Kid?"
She whirled around heart in her throat and-
Stephen Strange looked down at her with an impassive expression, and her brain nearly shorted out.
I'm sorry. It has to be done.
Not him, she reminded herself desperately, clamping down on the instinctive fear and distrust (and grief). He was gone (dead) and this was just an alternate. (wearing the face of a friend and a traitor.)
Not-Strange waved a hand towards her, something almost gentle in his expression as he took in sight of her,
"You back with me?"
Slowly, woodenly, she nodded.
(They sounded just the same, which was obvious, but right then it was destroyingher ability to think straight.)
"Good to know." He nodded before a look of discomfort flashed across his features. "Look kid, I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that you've had a hell of a time, and I am sorry about that, but I have to ask. What is that thing, and what does it want with you?"
...
Damn it, don't just stare, America. Talk!
"I don't-" She swallowed and shook her head. "It's been after me for days. I don't know why they keep coming after me. Str- my- friend used to say it was because it could detect the power I used."
"Power?" He looked curious, but a wariness had seeped into his posture. You didn't become the Sorcerer Supreme without having the good sense to be wary of the unknown.
She nodded, and god, she was so tired. He feet felt unsteady as she tried to stand up straighter, her head felt woozy and she considered it a miracle she was even seeing somewhat straight.
It must have been clear to Not-Strange because his features softened, and he reached out for her and her body went tight from the effort it took not to flinch. "Easy-"
A flash of rising green-
America's eyes went wide "Look out!-"
Credit where credit was due, he already raising his hands before she'd finished speaking, golden light folding into circular constructs and enveloping his form just as a tentacle blurred into motion and smacked him clear off the roof.
...
Shit!
Cloak!
The mental command had barely left him when the familiar feeling of the cloak of levitation's internal energies washed over him, gravity's hold on his body rendered obsolete.
His momentum went from somewhere north of a hundred miles an hour to zero in an instant, physics getting flipped off a la cloak of levitation with a simple flex of his will, and he spun in mid air and accelerated back the way he came over the span of a heartbeat.
It was going to take a hell of a lot more than that to put him down.
The girl (and she was somewhat familiar, power and possibility wafting off of her. Where had he seen her before?) was otherwise occupied, screaming her head off as the latest in a long list of headaches wrapped her in one clearly uncomfortable hold courtesy of it's regenerated limb and leaped off the building, coiled muscles shattering a good chunk of the structure into dust and debris the as it shot down into the street below.
It tore through the road, screeching in primal victory and rocketing forwards with twisted, impossibly swift movements, uncaring for the damage it caused.
But always careful never to hurt the girl.
He'd assumed it wanted her specifically for whatever reason, but he'd also assumed it wanted her dead. The fact that it was dragging her away rather than finishing her off...
Curious. And more than a little alarming, but at present he more immediate concerns.
He overshot it in a moment, and by the time it raised it's metaphorical hackles and froze in place he was already diving, hands raised ahead as wheels of condensed geometric light expanded out of his palms and hurtled down, reality seeming to blur as they scythed through the air and struck home.
Tentacle Monster howled as his modified cutting spells tore into it's hide, the noise of aquatic muscle getting shredded accompanied by sprays of green blood and flesh sloughing down it's body in a grisly display.
Good.
Tentacles shot through the air, rage and agony feeling the beast's movements as it sought to extract it's bloody vengeance, but there was a very, big difference between a terrified girl who was visibly dead on her feet an experienced practitioner of the mystic arts with even a split-second to prepare.
Unbreakable. Immovable. Absolute.
He poured his intent into the world, a tangible wave of power and will shaping itself into a defensive barrier, spirals of power bound into physical form. The beast howled as it's limbs impacted it with little effect, flesh bruising and twisting as it tried and failed to break something it had no hope of overcoming.
Not that he intended to give it much time to try. This had gone on long enough.
Incinerate.
A simpler spell, less complex in it's making but not lacking in power.
A beam of blinding light blasted out of his outstretched palm and punched through the foul thing, it's maddened screech drowning out the girl's panicked scream as the tentacle that had been supporting her very literally disintegrated into ash blowing in the wind.
Good.
Levitate
As though an invisible hand had reached out and caught her, the girl was plucked out of the air and moved with speed out of sight and reach of Tentacle Monster's desperate attempts to reacquire her.
Perfect. Immediate problem dealt with, which left Stephen with a choice.
He could kill it, but the things about basic magical beasts (and yes, this thing was very much basic) was that they didn't just show up. They were either summoned through a tear in reality or created from a similar phenomenon, the energies of existence warping otherwise ordinary creatures and transforming them into something other.
Destroying the creatures tended to deal with the symptoms, not the cause. If he kept it alive, it became that much easier to figure out who or what had spawned it and how to deal with either before sending the thing back or destroying it and preventing anything else like it from being born.
It wasn't a hard choice to make. The girl was safe, he had plenty of power to spare, and with any luck tracking down Tentacle Monster's point of origin would keep him busy for a few weeks. He was more than happy to work his ass off if it meant getting away from the mess that was his life for a little while. (He was due a break, damn it.)
"Look out!" The girl screeched for the second time that day, breaking him away from his contemplation. The spell kept her elevated in the air relative to him, but her flailing had flipped her head over heel and now she was dangling upside down and panicking at the sight of the octopus from hell striking for both of them.
"Please." Stephen raised a hand in a warding gesture and the writhing limbs bounced of the golden spell array, the defensive shield singing flesh and repelling the attack with such potency that Tentacle Monster seemed to fold in on itself from the force of it's own rebounding limbs. "Alright, let's wrap this up."
He called his power to him, an amount far greater than anything he'd used so far, and began to cast.
The air shifted as he wove the spell together, the world around him seeming to brace and steady itself as he ceased relying on his own power and chose to draw from another source entirely.
Sorcerers could take in the most basic powers of creation and use it to power their magic, but experienced masters of the mystic arts could do more. They could reach across the astral realm without losing themselves in the process and invoke the power of greater beings to accomplish feats they'd never achieve on their own.
Gods. Demons. Anything and everything in between. All of them could be viable sources of arcane might.
Assuming, of course, that the being in question allowed you to draw on their power or was contracted or otherwise obligated to provide said power on demand, otherwise having your soul flayed and your body horrifically destroyed would be the very least of your worries.
Kaicellius had learned and was probably still learning that lesson the hard way with Dormammu, but the less said about that idiot the better.
Regardless, this wasn't his first rodeo. With only a second's worth of focus and a clear mind, Stephen reached across the infinity of the universe and tapped into something beyond himself.
For a moment, he felt him. a being just outside of his conscious awareness, a sentience beyond his comprehension. He didn't deign to acknowledge Stephen's presence, for the sorcerer was so far beneath his notice that he didn't even warrant even an instance of brief consideration.
And then it was over, and red light blazedout of his hands as the power heeded his call and the spell took form.
'By The Crimson Bands Of Cyttorak, I Bind Thee!"
Chains of crimson light wrapped around the wild creature, limbs bound to it's form as the power of a god sealed all hope of movement away. It screeched and howled but it could do nothing more than that, impotent rage harmless as it's freedom was lost to it.
"And now." He intoned with finality "To end this."
Begone!
Reality shuddered, the air breaking into shimmering glass like fractals as the walls of space and time where pushed apart. The beast redoubled it's efforts to escape, but the infinite boundaries of the mirror dimension were already folding around it and swallowing it whole.
A wave of his hand, a shudder of space and it was gone, falling into the depths of the said dimension and appearing to blink out of existence entirely.
He'd pull it loose when he needed it later.
A heartbeat passed, then another.
Cheers began to fill the street, civilians who'd hidden and sequestered themselves into whichever nook and cranny they could find emerging and celebrating, because at this point New York was well used to bouncing back from exceptional bullshit.
He sighed.
That was that. Now for the girl.
...
America had collapsed the moment her feet were back on solid ground, laying flat on her back as she looked up at the sky and tried to breathe.
It wasn't doing her much good. Her head was still spinning and everything hurt.
God she needed to sleep.
Tears prickled the corners of her eyes as the adrenaline wore off, exhaustion seeping into her bones and dimming her vision.
"Kid?"
She startled into a modicum of awareness and blinked as Not-Strange's concerned expression came into her line of sight, drawing all the attention she had left to give as he knelt down besides her.
Her mind was so slow, her thoughts so muddled-
She blinked.
"Did you get it?"
The words were heavy, her speech slurred, and Not Strange's look went from mildl to seriously concerned in the time it took her to blink.
"Banished to the Mirror Dimension." He answered vaguely as he looked her up and down. "Kid, we have to go. Do you need me to carry-?"
But America had already stopped listening, a cold frission of terror kick-starting her lucidity.
Mirror Dimension?
Mirror Dimension?!
"It-It'll come back!" It took effort to get the words out.
"I promise you, it's gone-"
No!
"I can travel the multiverse."
His mouth snapped shut near-audibly
"That's why it's hunting me. Innate ability, no outside f-f-focus or power n-n-needed."
"That's...what?"
He looked at her with an expression that was disbelieving and made it clear how insane he thought she was, and she would have screamed if she wasn't so damn tired.
So she talked. Blurted out the story of her powers, her travels, and had enough presence of mind to edit out some of the less... pleasant tidbits as she tried to explain the danger they were very much still in.
"It followed me." she gasped, desperately ignoring his shifting expression and tying to get him to understand. "It followed me a-across w-worlds!"
His brows furrowed, contemplative and apparently not dismissing her out of hand, which would have been great if he wasn't being so slow. "I don't follow-?"
And then like a light bulb flickering on, she can see the moment realisation dawns on him.
"It can jump across dimensions?"
His tone was incredulous, but she didn't focus on it.
In the moment, she forgot all about Not-Strange and how to breathe for that matter, too focused on the sight of the air distorting and folding behind him as something forced it's way back into reality.
...
It truly was something, how quickly crowds could disperse when giant monsters popped out of thin air and proceeded to rampage in their general vicinity.
But the again, New Yorkers had plenty of experience at this point.
Regardless.
It had grown bigger.
That was Stephen's second thought.
His first was something along the lines of 'I call bullshit!'
Dimensional and universal travel on the scale the girl had mentioned should have been impossible to all but the most powerful of entities, even with all the magic in the universe, but apparently everyone and their mother had a gimmick nowadays.
He wrapped the girl in another levitation spell before rocketing straight up, and not a moment too soon as distorted limbs rocketed after them, the now free (somehow) and very, very pissed off Tentacle monster pulling out all the stops.
And some new ones too, he realized, looking down at it's form.
It had nearly tripled in size, now about half the size of a small building, with too many writhing limbs too count easily.
Some kind of mutation? Actively drawing power to bolster it?
He hadn't sensed anything, but at this point he was more than willing to concede to the idea that something exceptionally out of the norm was happening here.
Whatever the case, capturing it alive was now distinctly a secondary priority. Surviving and protecting the girl took point
With a thought, power coursed beneath his skin and he shaped it, pouring lethal intent and energy into existence and condensing it into a lance of shimmering power.
Burn
With a gesture, it shot straight down, aimed for the beast's eye. His opponent raised it's ocean of limbs, reaching up to intercept-
...
What?
The lance of light struck the tangle of flesh, and rather than reduce it to motes if ash it had shattered, light spilling across the mass before shifting into nothingness.
"Did you just nullify my spell!?"
In response to his incredulous question, a monstrous screech of rang out even as a veritable army of mutated limbs shot up, farther than they should have and shit shit shit!
His shield barely rose in time to intercept the impact. As it was, he was still sent rocketing to the ground, trusting the cloak to keep him in one piece as the he poured his efforts into keeping the girl aloft and out of the abomination's reach.
An effort that said abomination evidently did not appreciate, given that the hundred of tons of eldritch muscle and power that made it up somehow launched itself across the road and swamped him beneath it's bulk.
Shit!
His shield began to flicker under the sustained pressure, and he couldn't afford to bolster the spell efficiently without leaving the girl vulnerable. He may not have been able to see her, but he could feel her all the same, and he couldn't risk diverting power and leaving her at this thing's mercy.
Worse, Tentacle Monster's flesh seemed to actively drain the power of his barrier, and he was pouring in droves of energy to replace what was lost every second.
The beast screeched a final time, and he could almost hear the victorious cry as his shield buckled and sparked-
It's movements stilled.
Stephen felt it before he saw it.
An ocean of energy, power denser and more potent than almost anything he'd felt in the physical world. Between one heartbeat and the next, the pressure on his shield vanished as the beast move...no, it didn't move move.
It was blasted back, screaming in furious pain as an arc of violet light that shone to his physical sight as much as it did to his metaphysical senses drove it clear off of him and sent it bouncing with cataclysmic force, it's bulk gouging the road work and throwing up a storm of pulverised debris into the air.
Stephen was on his feet the very next second, staring in stunned shock as more and more arcing beams of light soared over his head and carved through it's flesh, it's screams falling to the wayside as kicked off into the air and, after pulling the girl to him, finally traced the source of this latest development.
The kid was almost unassuming, at first.
Tall, late teens at most, with a caucasian complexion and black hair that blew in the breeze ever so slightly. Dressed in jeans and a hoodie, he would have blended in with a crowd easily enough if it wasn't for his eyes.
His eyes were pits of near-overflowing violet light, the same light that faintly radiated across his form in a faint aura and condensed into blinding halos surrounding his outstretched hands.
Stephen watched in stunned silence as the kid grinned and began to speak, his words echoing across the street with a layered quality that made them far too loud and impossible to mishear.
"Look, I'm all for Kaijju, but damn, buddy, you are too ugly to let live." The boy fired again as Tentacle Monster howled, it's desperate attempt at a charge cut off and more of it's flesh being blasted off of it's frame for it's trouble "Also, this was my first day out in over a week and you kinda ruined it, so as of right now, I'm in one heck of a bad mood. Which kinda sucks for you, honestly, because this next bit?"
He grinned again, and this time the expression was all teeth.
"This next bit's really not gonna end well for you."
Then he caught site of Stephen looking down at him, and just like that, he started waving.
"Oh, hey Dr. Strange! I'm Arcane! Big fan!"
...
Stephen's eye twitched
What even was today!?