“So what do you think they’re gonna do?” said I.

“I figure they’ll have to quarantine that entire multiverse and then go through it universe by universe, galaxy by galaxy, until they find the last few sources of infection and eradicate them…” said my wife Primrose. Running a hand through her silver hair, her triangular feline ears twitching agitatedly.

“Damn that means those assholes are going to try and push the bulk of the work on us, doesn’t it?” I said. Facepalming. Feeling a migraine coming on.

“It...It might not be that bad. We’ve already roughly triangulated the critical zones, so its only a few million worlds we’d have to parse through…” said Primrose. Sounding as if she’d didn’t really believe a word she was saying and she really wished she did

“Ugh, that sounds awful...Why the hell don’t they just do a hard reset and fix the issue the easy way? Considering it’s ‘their’ fault to begin with for not taking the early warnings seriously, and they’ve exacerbated the issue by placing economic costs over the cost in lives, how about we do our best to NOT get suckered into working on that mess?” said I.

“I know...I know, but…” said Primrose. Looking conflicted. Like a cat lover at the pound, who couldn’t decide which kitten she wanted to rescue.

I was bamboozled and pestered into being the House of Antipodes’ Mister Gray. My wife was the current Miss Dark. Funny enough, despite her dark mantle, she wasn’t evil. Far from it. The girl was very much like her brother, a total girl scout. The only thing she was thankfully lacking, was the annoying exuberance.

Unlike me, she took her role seriously. Which meant most days when she got back home, if she got back home at all, she was just plainly exhausted, because she worked a whole hell of a lot harder. At first when I found out about this little arrangement I thought it was just another trick to try and trap me in the role of Mister Gray but I quickly realized I was just ego tripping.

There were two reasons Carter Seth was Terminus-Earth’s hero and not her, the first was that Carter was born first, the second was that Prim was just a tad too strong and just a tad too uncompromising when it came to her approach to things.

She was the kind of “hero” who’d quickly turn villain if enough things went wrong, and she was also no one near as good in social situations as her brother was, as was evidenced by the small amount of scandal and the high body count that accompanied her retirement from the Heroes Guild.

If you’ve ever wondered why I never bothered going into the matter of how Terminus-Earth ended up dealing with the corruption of its Heroes Guild, the answer is that I just never ended up having to. That particular situation sorted itself out.

Prim is the one who did most of the sorting. She was already the vice-chairman of the entire Heroes Guild by the time she was in her mid-twenties, but she ended up retiring due to burnout and guilt. The guilt due to the things perpetrated by those she’d considered friends, allies, and trusted peers.

During that particular year there were dozens of news reports about top-tier heroes being killed by an unknown assailant, who’d managed to take them down before the superhumans and demigods of the Heroes Guild’s senior leadership could even think about retaliating.

By the time she retired, the very worst of the false heroes were either dead, dying, or in hiding. The deaths of those too dangerous to put in prison, and the depowering and detainment of those who were at least sane enough and decent enough to go quietly, was her way of atoning.

Afterwards, she travelled for a bit to do some soul searching and find the spark that made her want to be a hero in the first place. She travelled through Terminus-Earth’s universe, and then she travelled through a few parallel universes. Then she eventually got scouted in the House of Antipodes as one of lower-ranked agents.

Naturally, since she’s now the current Miss Dark, it goes without saying that she made it up the ranks and did well enough to get promoted a bunch. Primrose became Miss Dark roughly around the time that dick-snake Mister Gray was tricking me into “earning” his mantle. So like I said, her becoming a leader in the HOA at the same time I did was just a coincidence.

“Come on, Prim...No,” I said. Giving my wife a stern look, because the woman was a little too hardworking for her own good sometimes, and the hero-complex that she’d gotten from her brother sometimes dipped unhealthily into martyr-complex territory, where she’d willingly sacrifice her well-being and happiness when it just wasn’t necessary.

“But, what if I could help make things go just a little bit faster?...Think of all the lives that could be saved,” said Primrose.

“No...First off, you’ve already agreed to go shopping for Tau, Harold, and Blair’s Pre-School with Henrietta and me...Second, that particular multiverse is already fucked...Ignoring a virus that turns reality into a bad acid trip, and spreads via thought, just for the sake of “getting the economy up and running” was a bad fucking idea. The fact that it was an older, higher-end multiverse, with a majority of its civilizations advanced enough to be capable of interdimensional travel, i.e, a multiverse filled with beings that all should have known better....honestly, is making me doubt the value of sapient life in the cosmos…” I said.

Primrose eventually sighed seeming to give up.

“Fine...You’re probably right...I’m actually kind of behind regarding my work on the other multiverse under my protection too...so if that one multiverse is really a wash, I’m probably better off focusing my energies elsewhere,” said Primrose. Sighing and quickly recentering herself.

“I’m gonna go take a shower...That last world stank of death warmed over, warmed over, and then bathed in a pool of never-ending vomit,” said Primrose. Stretching and yawning.

“....Want to join me?” she said. Smiling. Looking over her shoulder at me.

“Mhm...Yeah. Yeah, I’d like that,” I said happily trailing behind my fourth-wife.