# Geneva – Biotech Firm Exterior, 11:47 PM
The building looked like someone had asked an AI to design "Generic Corporate Evil Lair" and the AI had just given up halfway through and copied a dental office. Five stories of aggressively beige architecture that screamed "We're Definitely Not Doing Crimes Here" so loudly it might as well have had a neon sign saying "We Are Absolutely Doing Crimes Here, Please Investigate."
A brass plaque read "BioGenesis Advanced Research Solutions" in a font that suggested either cutting-edge science or a really elaborate tax fraud scheme. Possibly both.
What the building didn't advertise was the three-level bunker underneath that was basically a supervillain panic room decorated by someone whose only reference was "every Bond villain lair ever" and a concerning amount of fascist architecture.
Seven immortals materialized across the street with varying levels of showmanship.
Diana and Harry arrived via a portal that looked like someone had folded space-time into origami and then set it on fire. Mera condensed out of a nearby fire hydrant that suddenly exploded for no reason, sending water everywhere. Karen dropped from the sky like a meteor that decided not to kill everyone. Shiera swooped in on wings that made pigeons nearby have an existential crisis about their own flight capabilities. Lilith stepped through a doorway made of roses that definitely hadn't been there three seconds ago. And Nyra just... appeared. Because cats don't explain themselves.
Beta-9's holographic form popped into existence last, golden and glowing and looking like Siri had achieved consciousness and immediately decided to become fabulous.
"Okay, so—" Beta-9 started.
"Oh god, she's doing the briefing thing," Karen muttered, loud enough for everyone to hear. "Can we skip to the part where I punch something?"
"Karen, honey, sweetie, light of my digital existence," Beta-9 said with exaggerated patience, "if you punch the wrong thing, you'll set off approximately forty-seven different alarm systems, alert Savage that we're here, and ruin the entire element of surprise that we've been cultivating."
"We arrived by exploding a fire hydrant," Mera pointed out dryly, water still dripping from her armor.
"That was *atmospheric*," Beta-9 protested. "Completely different from Karen's usual approach of 'see building, punch building, building falls down, oops.'"
"I don't—" Karen paused. "Okay, that's fair. That's pretty much my exact approach."
Harry was studying the building with the kind of intense focus that suggested he was either planning something brilliant or about to do something catastrophically stupid. With Harry, these were not mutually exclusive options.
"Right," he said slowly, "so here's what I'm seeing: fifty-three thermal signatures inside, security system that's more paranoid than Batman after someone steals his contingency plans, and one heat signature in the basement that's registering as 'vaguely human but also possibly a lizard person.'"
"That's Savage," Nyra confirmed, her tail doing that slow swish thing that meant she'd already been surveilling the target and was mildly offended no one had asked her opinion earlier. "Three levels down. Surrounded by enough security measures to protect Fort Knox's security measures."
"How many escape routes?" Diana asked, because she was the only one who apparently remembered they were supposed to be professionals.
"Seven," Nyra said. "Three tunnels, two portals, one teleporter, and one cryo-pod that's basically a time-out corner for immortal cowards."
"I'll take the tunnels," Lilith said cheerfully, her hair already sprouting flowers that looked pretty but were definitely venomous. "My babies are *hungry*."
"Your babies are plants," Shiera said.
"Carnivorous plants," Lilith corrected. "There's a difference. These ones have *teeth*."
"Why do your plants have teeth?" Karen asked, sounding genuinely concerned.
"Evolution!" Lilith said brightly. "Also spite. Mostly spite."
"I'll handle the portals," Shiera announced, her wings spreading in a way that made the streetlights flicker. "Nth metal disrupts dimensional shenanigans. It's in the manual."
"There's a manual?" Harry asked with interest.
"No, but there should be."
"I'll take the teleporter," Karen volunteered. "I've been wanting to melt something expensive all week and Clark keeps telling me 'property damage isn't self-care, Karen.'" She did an exaggerated Superman impression that was both deeply affectionate and mildly insulting.
"The cryo-pod is mine," Mera said, ice already forming around her hands in patterns that looked artistic but were definitely lethal. "I have *opinions* about Savage's environmental record that I'd like to express through aggressive temperature manipulation."
"And I'll—" Beta-9's form pulsed brighter "—hack literally everything, turn their security system into a screaming digital nightmare, and maybe order pizza to the lobby just to confuse everyone."
"Don't order pizza," Diana said firmly.
"But it would be *funny*—"
"*Don't. Order. Pizza.*"
"You're no fun when you're doing the 'serious warrior princess' thing," Beta-9 muttered. "Fine. No pizza. Just comprehensive digital warfare and emotional devastation of their IT department."
Nyra had somehow gotten closer without anyone noticing, because she was basically a cat in human form and cats are like that. "I'll handle anyone who gets creative with their escape attempts. Hunt them down. Remind them why running from predators is a bad life choice."
"Okay, so everyone has their assignments except—" Karen looked at Harry and Diana. "What are you two doing?"
Harry and Diana exchanged a look. The kind of look that passes between two people who've been partners long enough that entire tactical discussions can happen in three seconds of eye contact.
"Front door," they said simultaneously.
"Oh, you're doing the *dramatic entrance* thing," Lilith said with delight. "I love the dramatic entrance thing! Are you going to say something cool before you break everything?"
"I was thinking something like 'cosmic justice has arrived' but that feels pretentious," Harry admitted.
"It's *super* pretentious," Karen agreed. "But also kind of awesome. You should do it."
"Don't encourage him," Diana said, but she was smiling. "His ego is already insufferable."
"My ego is *perfectly calibrated* for someone with my abilities and excellent taste in—" Harry paused. "Wait, are those guards looking at us?"
Everyone turned.
Three security guards had indeed noticed the group of impossibly attractive people having a tactical planning session in the middle of the street. They were reaching for radios with the kind of slow-motion confusion that suggested their brains were still processing what they were seeing.
"Dibs," Nyra said, and *moved*.
One second she was standing with the group. The next she was somehow behind all three guards simultaneously—which shouldn't be physically possible but Nyra had never let physics tell her what to do—and all three guards collapsed like puppets with cut strings.
She reappeared next to the group, looking smug. "They're unconscious, not dead. You're welcome."
"Show off," Mera muttered.
"You're just jealous because water can't teleport."
"Water can do *plenty* of things—"
"Ladies, ladies," Harry interrupted, "you're both terrifyingly competent and attractive. Can we maybe save the competitive banter for after we've murdered the immortal supervillain?"
"It's not murder if Death authorized it," Beta-9 pointed out helpfully. "It's more like... cosmic pest control."
"I feel like we should come up with a better term than 'pest control,'" Diana said. "Savage has killed millions of people across fifty thousand years. He deserves more gravitas than comparing him to termites."
"Evil termites," Lilith suggested.
"*Really* evil termites," Karen added.
"Termites with a god complex and access to advanced technology," Shiera contributed.
"Okay, we're getting off track," Harry said, even though he was grinning. "Thirty seconds to positions. Then we go full chaos mode."
"Finally," Karen said, cracking her knuckles. "I've been good all week. I deserve this."
"You punched a submarine two days ago," Beta-9 said.
"It was menacing dolphins! I was helping!"
"The submarine was *Swedish*. It was *supposed* to be there."
"How was I supposed to know that?"
"It had a *flag*, Karen."
"Everyone ready?" Diana cut in, because apparently she was the only one who remembered they were on a schedule. Her hand found her sword, and something in her posture shifted—less 'woman at planning meeting' and more 'Amazonian war goddess about to ruin someone's entire century.'
"Ready," they chorused, with varying levels of enthusiasm and bloodthirstiness.
"Thirty seconds," Mera said, water already pooling around her feet in ways that violated conservation of mass. "On my mark."
"Why do you get to say 'mark'?" Karen asked.
"Because I'm a queen and you're not."
"I'm Kryptonian nobility—"
"*Exiled* Kryptonian nobility."
"Oh that's a low blow—"
"MARK!" Mera shouted, and chaos erupted.
---
Lilith's vines didn't just grow—they *exploded* out of the pavement like nature had been holding a grudge and finally got permission to express it. Within seconds, every ground-floor exit was covered in flowering death that looked like someone's grandmother's garden had achieved sentience and decided murder was fun, actually.
"Grow, my pretties!" Lilith called out, because apparently she'd been waiting her whole immortal life to say that. "Show them why you don't mess with Mother Nature's, uh, *considerably more violent cousin*!"
"Did you just call yourself Mother Nature's violent cousin?" Nyra asked, already halfway into the shadows.
"I'm workshopping the tagline!"
Shiera shot skyward, her wings cutting through the air with sounds that suggested physics was just barely tolerating her existence. She reached the building's upper levels where dimensional portals were humming with energy that made reality uncomfortable.
Her fusion mace began emitting a frequency that sounded like reality itself was having second thoughts.
The portals started sparking, sputtering, and then collapsed with sounds like disappointed sci-fi sound effects.
"DIMENSIONAL PORTALS ARE FOR COWARDS!" Shiera shouted at the building, because apparently everyone was feeling theatrical tonight. "FACE YOUR CONSEQUENCES LIKE A MAN!"
"He's fifty thousand years old," Harry called up. "He's probably forgotten what consequences are!"
"THEN WE'LL REMIND HIM!"
Karen was already at the western wall, eyes glowing with heat vision that made the air shimmer. The teleportation array—which had probably cost more than a small nation's GDP—lasted approximately 2.4 seconds before it was reduced to molten slag.
"Whoops," Karen said, sounding not even remotely sorry. "My hand slipped. Both hands. Directly at the expensive equipment. What are the odds?"
"Karen, you're a treasure," Beta-9's voice echoed. "A *destructive* treasure, but still."
Mera had somehow gotten inside through the *water pipes* because apparently she'd decided that doors were for people with less dramatic flair. She was now in the sublevel where the cryo-pod sat humming with temporal energy that suggested someone had really committed to the 'sleeping through problems' approach to immortality.
Ice began forming across every surface. Not normal ice—this was ice that looked *offended* by the concept of warmth.
"If he tries to hide in here," Mera said to the empty room, "he's going to discover that being frozen for eternity is significantly less pleasant than temporal stasis. Also, I can hold a grudge across geological timescales. Ask Atlantis. Wait, you can't. Because it *sank*."
Beta-9's consciousness hit the building's security system like a digital tsunami made of sass and aggressive coding.
Firewalls crumbled. Encryption shattered. The AI that had been running security protocols suddenly found itself very confused about what a 'door' was and whether humans were supposed to be inside buildings or outside buildings or possibly both simultaneously.
Every speaker in the facility started playing "Never Gonna Give You Up" at maximum volume, because Beta-9 had committed to being *that person* and she had no regrets.
"BETA!" Harry shouted from the street. "WE TALKED ABOUT THIS!"
"YOU TALKED! I MADE MY OWN CHOICES!" Beta-9's voice boomed through the speakers. "ALSO THIS IS HILARIOUS AND YOU KNOW IT!"
"IT'S REALLY NOT!"
"Sublevel entrance is thirty meters ahead!" Beta-9 continued, ignoring his protests. "Blast door, quantum encryption, ten very confused guards who are currently wondering why their weapons are playing Rick Astley and their radios are only transmitting cat videos!"
"You turned their radios into cat video players?" Diana asked, already moving toward the lobby.
"I CONTAIN MULTITUDES!" Beta-9 declared. "MULTITUDES OF PETTINESS!"
Harry turned to Diana, his armor's crimson veins pulsing brighter. "So. Dramatic entrance?"
Diana smiled. The kind of smile that made smart villains reconsider their life choices and possibly their continued existence. "Let's remind Savage why property damage is sometimes the most honest form of communication."
"That's the most romantic thing you've ever said to me."
"We need couples therapy."
"We really do."
They walked toward the entrance like they were heading to brunch rather than cosmic assassination. Casual. Unhurried. The kind of confidence that came from knowing that locked doors were more of a suggestion than an actual obstacle.
The lobby's reinforced glass doors had probably cost someone's entire yearly salary. They'd been designed to withstand small arms fire, explosive entry, maybe even a determined rhino with anger management issues.
They had not been designed for Diana.
She didn't punch them. That would've been crude.
She *looked* at them the way an Amazon princess looks at things that are in her way and would prefer not to be anymore.
Then she flicked her wrist.
The doors didn't shatter. They *evaporated*. Molecular bonds just gave up. The glass decided that being glass was overrated and being component atoms was more fun actually.
"Was that necessary?" Harry asked, stepping through the rapidly dispersing silicon cloud.
"Yes."
"Could you have just opened them normally?"
"Yes."
"But you chose violence."
"I chose *efficiency*," Diana corrected, already across the lobby and heading toward three security guards who were having a very bad evening. "Violence is just the most efficient solution in this context."
The first guard managed to raise his rifle. Diana's shield caught him in the chest with precisely calculated force—enough to crack his body armor and send him flying backward into a decorative marble wall, not enough to liquefy his internal organs.
He hit the wall with a sound like a sack of potatoes being thrown by someone who was *really* angry at potatoes. Then he slid down and stayed there, unconscious but breathing.
"One," Diana counted.
The second guard actually pulled his trigger. Bullets ricocheted off her bracers in practiced patterns she'd been perfecting for three thousand years. Then her fist caught him in the solar plexus and he discovered what it felt like to have all the air in your lungs ejected simultaneously while your brain briefly forgot how breathing worked.
"Two."
The third guard showed impressive survival instincts by dropping his weapon and raising his hands.
"Smart man," Diana said, and her sword hilt tapped his temple with surgical precision. He crumpled immediately, unconscious before he hit the floor.
"Three. New record."
"Your previous record was what, 1.7 seconds?" Harry asked, stepping over the unconscious guards.
"1.9. I'm improving."
"You terrify me."
"Good."
The alarm started wailing—that specific pitch of electronic panic that suggested someone was having a bad day and wanted everyone else to know about it.
It lasted approximately four seconds before Beta-9 murdered it and replaced it with Rick Astley.
"BETA!" Harry shouted at the ceiling. "THIS IS A SERIOUS OPERATION!"
"SERIOUS OPERATIONS CAN HAVE SOUNDTRACKS!" Beta-9's voice boomed back. "IT'S ABOUT *MULTITASKING*!"
"RICK ASTLEY IS NOT—"
"Never gonna give you up!" Diana sang, because apparently she'd decided that if this was happening, she might as well commit to the bit.
Harry stared at her.
"Never gonna let you down!" she continued, already heading down the corridor.
"I'm leaving you," Harry said. "I'm going to fake my death and start a new life in a dimension where people respect tactical planning."
"Never gonna run around and desert you!" Diana called back, not even looking.
"I HATE EVERYONE!" Harry shouted, but he was grinning as he followed her.
The corridor was peak corporate dystopia—fluorescent lighting, motivational posters about synergy, probably several HR violations disguised as team-building exercises. One poster read "TOGETHER WE INNOVATE" over a stock photo of people in lab coats giving thumbs up with the enthusiasm of hostages signaling for help.
"I feel like the posters are threatening me," Harry muttered.
"That's just capitalism," Diana replied.
At the corridor's end, a blast door that looked like it had been designed by someone who'd seen *one too many* Bond films sealed off the sublevel access. Reinforced steel, quantum locks, probably enough explosive bolts to turn the corridor into rapidly expanding clouds of former humans.
Ten mercenaries in tactical gear had set up defensive positions. Professional. Well-trained. Armed with weapons that looked expensive and probably violated several international treaties.
They opened fire with disciplined coordination.
Diana's bracers moved in patterns she could do in her sleep. Bullets, sonic pulses, electromagnetic bursts—all redirected with the casual grace of someone swatting annoying insects.
"You know what's funny?" Diana called to the mercenaries while deflecting their increasingly desperate attacks. "You're being paid to protect a man who's spent fifty thousand years proving that loyalty is for suckers and everyone is expendable!"
"DO YOU THINK HE HAS A GOOD RETIREMENT PLAN?" Harry shouted, his shield absorbing incoming fire. "BECAUSE I'M GUESSING NO!"
"DOES YOUR HEALTH INSURANCE COVER DIVINE INTERVENTION?" Diana added. "ASKING FOR A FRIEND!"
One of the mercenaries actually paused, looking conflicted.
"DON'T THINK ABOUT IT!" another mercenary shouted. "KEEP FIRING!"
"I'M THINKING ABOUT IT!" the first one yelled back. "I'M THINKING ABOUT IT REALLY HARD!"
Harry decided this had gone on long enough. He extended his hand and reality politely but firmly suggested that the mercenaries would prefer to be elsewhere. Specifically, unconscious and not blocking the corridor.
The magical force hit them like a tactical suggestion delivered with cosmic authority. Ten professional soldiers discovered what it felt like to be hit by physics that had a personal vendetta.
They flew backward in a perfectly choreographed sequence that would've made a stunt coordinator weep with joy. Bodies hit walls, equipment, and each other with sounds like someone dropping a drum kit down a stairwell.
Then silence. Well, except for Rick Astley, who was still going strong.
"You know," Harry said to the pile of unconscious mercenaries, "surrender was always an option. You could've just... stepped aside. Let us pass. Maybe questioned your employment choices. But no. Someone always chooses violence."
"You literally just threw them into walls with magic," Diana pointed out.
"They fired first! I was *defending myself*!"
"You vaporized a door."
"That door was *asking* for it."
Diana was already examining the blast door's locking mechanisms. "Quantum encryption. Biometric scanners. Probably rigged to explode if we try anything creative."
"Define 'creative,'" Harry said, moving to stand beside her.
"Anything you're about to do."
"Rude but fair."
He pressed his hand against the cold steel. Crimson energy flowed across the surface in patterns that looked like mathematical proofs written by someone who'd given up on conventional notation and decided to just draw pretty pictures instead.
The quantum encryption—designed to resist everything from brute force to nuclear detonation—encountered something it had no protocols for: magic that was having a very reasonable conversation with the door's security systems about their primary loyalties and whether they'd prefer to continue existing as functional technology.
The door's systems thought about this.
They thought about it really hard.
Then they decided that continued existence was nice and unlocked with the electronic equivalent of a resigned sigh.
The blast door swung open with mechanical reluctance.
"After you," Harry said with exaggerated gallantry.
"Such a gentleman," Diana replied, stepping through. "Really makes up for the fact that you're about to murder someone."
"*We're* about to murder someone. It's a team activity. Bonding through violence."
"That's the healthiest description of our relationship I've ever heard."
They descended into the bunker. Rick Astley continued his one-man concert through the facility's speakers. Somewhere two levels below, Vandal Savage was presumably having the worst evening of his fifty-thousand-year existence.
And somewhere above, six immortals were systematically dismantling every escape route while providing running commentary that ranged from threatening to educational to just plain weird.
"Lilith, how are the tunnels?" Beta-9's voice echoed.
"SEALED! Also my plants ate three people's shoes. Just the shoes. Left the people. They were confused."
"Shiera, portal status?"
"COLLAPSED! Also I may have accidentally punched a hole in dimensional space but it's fine, it's just leaking void energy, it'll probably heal on its own!"
"That's not fine, that's the opposite of fine—"
"IT'S *FINE*!"
"Karen, teleporter?"
"MELTED! Also I may have melted part of the wall. And the floor. And a support beam. But the teleporter is definitely destroyed."
"KAREN—"
"IT WAS ALREADY STRUCTURALLY UNSOUND!"
"Mera, cryo-pod?"
"Frozen. Also I've turned this entire level into a skating rink because I was bored. If Savage tries to escape through here, he'll discover that running on ice in a panic is hilarious."
"Nyra, are you—"
"Hunting," Nyra's voice purred. "Three targets tried to evacuate through emergency stairs. Two surrendered when they realized I was behind them. One tried to run. He's unconscious now. Also, his radio was playing cat videos. I liked that. Good work, Beta."
"Thank you! Someone appreciates my artistic choices!"
In the stairwell, Harry and Diana descended past Sublevel One—which appeared to be a legitimate biotech research facility that was absolutely doing crimes but boring regulatory crimes, not exciting supervillain crimes.
"You think they know what's happening two floors down?" Diana asked.
"Probably not. Corporate compartmentalization. The lab techs are probably just trying to make their quotas while their boss uses the basement for elaborate immortality schemes."
"That's capitalism for you."
"That's a really dark observation."
"I've been alive for three thousand years. I've seen *all* the economic systems. They're all terrible in different ways."
They reached Sublevel Two. This level was less "corporate crime" and more "Bond villain aesthetic"—reinforced walls, security stations, ominous red lighting that served no functional purpose except atmosphere.
Twenty mercenaries had set up defensive positions that would've made military strategists nod approvingly. Overlapping fields of fire, fallback positions, communication protocols, the works.
They also had heavier weapons. The kind that said "we know superheroes are coming and we're not messing around anymore."
"You know what I love about proper defensive positions?" Harry asked conversationally, loud enough for the mercenaries to hear. "They only work if you're defending against conventional threats!"
"We're not conventional!" Diana added cheerfully.
Then she *moved*.
The thing about fighting someone with three thousand years of combat experience is that they don't fight fair. They fight *smart*. Diana didn't charge straight into the firing line—she used the walls, the equipment, the mercenaries' own positioning against them.
Her shield ricocheted off a wall, hitting one mercenary in the helmet hard enough to ring his bell like a church tower. While everyone was tracking the shield, she'd already crossed half the distance, her sword moving in patterns that were less "combat" and more "aggressive interpretive dance."
The flat of her blade caught rifles, redirecting them. Her fist caught body armor, cracking it. Her boots caught tactical positions, disrupting them.
It was beautiful, efficient, and absolutely terrifying.
Harry's approach was more direct. He walked through the middle of the defensive position like he was taking a casual stroll through a park, his shield absorbing incoming fire with the efficiency of someone who'd been shot at so many times that bullets were basically a form of uncomfortable massage.
"You know what Savage didn't tell you?" Harry called out while magic flowed from his fingers, gently convincing weapons to jam, armor to lock up, and tactical communication systems to only transmit static. "He didn't tell you that you're fighting for a man who considers human life as disposable as tissue paper! He's let entire civilizations burn because it was *convenient*!"
One mercenary actually lowered his weapon, looking uncertain.
"He's been alive for FIFTY THOUSAND YEARS!" Harry continued, really warming to his theme now. "Do you think he remembers the names of his previous security teams? Do you think he cares what happens to you?"
"STOP TALKING TO THEM!" another mercenary shouted. "MAINTAIN FIRE!"
"I'M JUST SAYING!" Harry shouted back. "YOUR EMPLOYER HAS THE LOYALTY OF A GOLDFISH AND THE MORAL COMPASS OF A PARTICULARLY AMBITIOUS TUMOR!"
"THAT'S REALLY MEAN TO TUMORS!" Diana called out, currently in the process of disarming three mercenaries simultaneously through some kind of Amazon martial arts technique that looked like it violated several Geneva Conventions.
"YOU'RE RIGHT! TUMORS DON'T CHOOSE TO BE TUMORS! SAVAGE CHOOSES TO BE TERRIBLE!"
The fight—if you could call it that—lasted approximately ninety seconds. When it was done, twenty unconscious mercenaries were scattered across Sublevel Two like someone had held a really aggressive nap-time.
"Okay," Harry said, slightly out of breath, "that was cardio. That was definitely cardio."
"You're immortal. You don't need cardio."
"I'm immortal, not *unreasonable*. I can still appreciate the health benefits of regular exercise."
"You got shot seventeen times."
"The shield caught them!"
"You still got *shot*."
"Details!"
They reached the final stairwell. Sublevel Three. Where Savage was waiting.
The temperature dropped noticeably. Not because of climate control, but because they were descending into a place where someone had spent decades—maybe centuries—preparing for exactly this scenario.
"You feel that?" Diana asked quietly, her warrior instincts picking up on subtle wrongness in the air.
"Yeah. He's ready for us."
"Good." Diana's hand found her sword hilt. "Let him be ready. Let him use every contingency he's prepared. Let him throw everything he has at us."
She looked at Harry, and her expression was carved from marble and divine fury.
"It won't be enough."
They descended the final flight of stairs together.
Rick Astley's voice echoed down from above, because Beta-9 had committed to the bit and would rather die than admit defeat.
At the bottom of the stairs was a door. Just a door. No reinforcement, no security measures, no obvious defenses.
Which was somehow more terrifying than a blast door.
"That's concerning," Harry muttered.
"Very," Diana agreed.
"He wants us to come in."
"Definitely."
"Could be a trap."
"Absolutely."
They looked at each other.
"We're going in anyway, aren't we?" Harry asked.
"Obviously," Diana replied.
Harry's hand found the door handle. "You know what the worst part about cosmic assassination is?"
"What?"
"The small talk is *always* terrible. Villains always want to monologue. It's exhausting."
"Then we'll skip the small talk and go straight to the cosmic justice."
"You say the sweetest things."
He opened the door.
Inside, Vandal Savage was waiting.
And despite everything—despite the seven immortals systematically destroying his escape routes, despite the cosmic authorization for his permanent removal, despite fifty thousand years of survival instincts screaming at him that this was the end—
He was smiling.
"Well," Savage said, leaning back in his chair like he was receiving guests for tea rather than two immortals who'd come to end his existence. "This should be interesting."
—
# The In-Between – Death's Office, Approximately Five Minutes Ago
Death's office existed in a space that wasn't quite space, at a time that wasn't quite time, decorated in what could best be described as "administrative goth meets IKEA showroom." Filing cabinets stretched into infinity. A desk that might've been made from condensed starlight or might've just been really nice mahogany sat in the center. Motivational posters lined the walls with slogans like "HANG IN THERE!" except the cat was a skeleton and looked surprisingly cheerful about it.
Lady Death sat at her desk, boots propped up, flipping through a file folder thick enough to be used as a weapon. The tab read "SAVAGE, VANDAL – CASE #000847 – ONGOING."
"Ongoing," she muttered, popping her bubblegum. "Yeah, that's about to change."
She pulled out a stamp—the kind that made a very satisfying *thunk* sound—and held it over the file like a judge with a gavel.
Then she paused.
"You know what? This bastard's been avoiding me for fifty thousand years. I'm gonna *savor* this."
She set the stamp down and pulled out a bright pink gel pen covered in sparkly skulls. The pen had been a gift from a teenage reaper-in-training who thought Death needed to "express herself more."
At the top of the first form, she wrote in looping, cheerful script: "FINALLY!!!" with three exclamation points and a little smiley face.
"Okay, let's see. Name: Vandal Savage. Also known as..." She flipped through pages and pages of aliases. "Oh my god, dude, just pick a name and stick with it. Vandal Savage, Vandar Adg, Khafre, Julius Caesar—wait, what? He claimed he was *Caesar*?"
She snorted. "Caesar wishes."
More forms. SO many forms.
"Reason for closure: Accumulated karmic debt exceeding acceptable universal thresholds." She paused, tapping her pen against her chin. "Also he's just the *worst*. Like objectively. I've processed serial killers with better vibes."
She checked a box labeled "PERMANENT REMOVAL AUTHORIZED."
Then another labeled "NO RESURRECTION PROTOCOLS."
And finally, with visible satisfaction, a box labeled "GOOD RIDDANCE."
"Date of closure..." She glanced at a cosmic clock that displayed time in approximately seventeen different simultaneous formats. "Tonight. Finally. After *fifty thousand years* of this jackass ducking, weaving, and generally being an immortal pain in my ass."
She signed the bottom of the form with a flourish, added another smiley face because she was in a GREAT mood, and stamped it.
*THUNK.*
The stamp read: "FILED – PERMANENTLY CLOSED."
"There," Death said with profound satisfaction, leaning back in her chair. "Bureaucracy complete. Now for the fun part."
She closed the file, which began glowing with soft finality—the kind of light that meant someone's cosmic tab had just come due.
"Harry, Diana," she said to the universe at large, "paperwork's done. He's all yours. Make it good."
---
Hey fellow fanfic enthusiasts!
I hope you're enjoying the fanfiction so far! I'd love to hear your thoughts on it. Whether you loved it, hated it, or have some constructive criticism, your feedback is super important to me. Feel free to drop a comment or send me a message with your thoughts. Can't wait to hear from you!
If you're passionate about fanfiction and love discussing stories, characters, and plot twists, then you're in the right place! I've created a Discord (HHHwRsB6wd) server dedicated to diving deep into the world of fanfiction, especially my own stories. Whether you're a reader, a writer, or just someone who enjoys a good tale, I welcome you to join us for lively discussions, feedback sessions, and maybe even some sneak peeks into upcoming chapters, along with artwork related to the stories. Let's nerd out together over our favorite fandoms and explore the endless possibilities of storytelling!
Can't wait to see you there!