Everything was black. Tony knew he didn't have eyelids or any other muscle for that matter. He was conscious, but with the lack of stimuli, he felt weirdly disconnected from reality in a completely foreign way. Still, his mind raced, thinking about the nothingness around him.

A glowing red blob was growing in the distance, heading in his direction. His stimuli deprived mind latching on to it as it slowly came into focus.

Do not panic. You are dead.

Tony panicked. Unfortunately, panicking did nothing, being just an unanchored soul after all. So Tony stared at the bright glowing red sign, wordlessly screaming, unable to even look away. When Tony finally stopped, he wasn't aware of just how much time had passed. For him, it felt like years. For the blank void he was in, it felt like a microsecond. In reality, it had been eight days, twenty-one hours, fourteen minutes, and thirty-six seconds since he had first seen the message, according to Earth's standard for measuring time.

Once he stopped screaming, he thought back to what he knew had happened.

I had just avoided being shot by those thugs and had smelled something funny. I was passing by that old ass thermostat… then nothing. I don't remember what happened next. Could I really be dead? It would explain what the hell is going on. Tony kept this sort of thinking up for the next week, time being a meaningless concept in the void, or at least so distorted that it might as well be.

After that, Tony just stared at the words. Mind blank as the truth finally sank in. He wasn't cold or hot, hungry or thirsty. In fact, was it not for the glowing red letters and lack of other stimuli, he would be happy with just existing. No one was around to judge him, look down on him for his body, life choices, or lack of hygiene. If he could sleep, the letters wouldn't even be that big a deal for him. As it was, he figured with time, he would get used to them too.

Two months, eight days, and twelve hours after Tony had arrived, Earth standard time, or EST, the red letters vanished. This sent Tony into a rage, angry at being abandoned by the only thing in his afterlife. What had once been an annoyance had come to be a constant reminder that he still existed. With the return of the black emptiness, Tony found himself once again, lost in the sensory-deprived void. This time it took only three weeks, EST, to learn to cope with his new reality.

Tony made stories in his head, once his sanity returned, of course, to pass the time. At first, they were almost incoherent, just the nonsensical ramblings of a tormented mind. That turned into meandering musing of his past that he used to distract his mind from the surrounding emptiness. After a time, he could go days without pausing his internal narration. Creating whole worlds that he could swear he could almost see out in the blackness of the void.

Seven years, two months, five days, and eight hours, EST, passed as Tony refined the worlds his imagination conjured. The planets, at some point, becoming actual physical things. His unnatural stubborn streak enabled him to learn magic at the soul level, allowing him to tap into the void’s natural mana. This made Tony's ability to use magic tied directly to his soul, bypassing any need to learn spells. Something every magic-user short of a god would be jealous of.

Three planets revolved around a glowing sun. A sun that was an exact match, excluding scale, of Earth's. He had been forced to limit his solar system to three planets. This was to keep them in a stable orbit within the habitable area of the sun's gravitational field.

Each world covered in life, the first an almost exact copy of earth right at the time of his death. The second a fantasy planet, complete with every fantastical race he could remember. Which led him to make his third planet into a cyber-punk sci-fi wasteland. Tony really only making it to include all the races and robots he didn't feel fit in a fantasy world. Initially, he made a horror planet, channeling his inner Lovecraft and King. Before deciding that it was just too bleak and scrapping it for the sci-fi planet instead.

Each life form on Tony's planets would go about their business on a sort of autopilot unless he took direct control over one of his creations. Letting Tony live vicariously through them, going out on grand adventures as an elf or any number of races he felt like being. Other times Tony would just hang out on Earth, doing anything he wanted. Freedom unknown in his now previous life. Still, he had no delusions of being a god or anything absurd like that. It was just an excellent way to pass the time and stay sane, in his opinion.

Tony was playing an ogre mage. Literally decimating the city, he was rampaging through. One out of every ten buildings, people, or whatever the mage came across would be laid to waste. The rest he ignored. The ones that refused to run got cut down mercilessly before he would spare someone else accordingly. It was Tony’s weekly dark lord night, and he was out to have fun. The day before, his hero character, an elf, had turned this city into a jump-off point for the war against his dark lord toon. Making the whole charade a game against the intelligence networks of both sides. Tony always tried his best to stay fair, doing everything in his power to disregard the knowledge he received from his opposing intelligence officers. Still, it was like playing a game of chess by yourself. It can be entertaining, but the reality is you know exactly what will happen and when. This was just on a much larger, grander scale than most.

An ear-piercing screech caused Tony to exit his toon. The people in the city going back to their artificial life as soon as his mind left the ogre's body like nothing had happened. A woman was standing over his solar system. Tony automatically adjusted his size to be on the same scale as her, causing the woman to raise an eyebrow at him.

Now that they were roughly the same size, Tony could see she was not just any woman. She had black horns that flowed away from her forehead’s hairline to the base of her neck behind her ears, raised an inch above her scalp. Her red hair braided in twists around them, one on either side of her head, like a weird demon version of pigtails. She had green eyes and a skin tone that reminded him of people that lived on the Mediterranean coast. She was stunning, with feminine assets that any male would get in trouble for staring at. Features that went unnoticed by Tony, however, as he took in the black reptilian wings on her back and the red-skinned tail complete with triangle point at the end.

"Hello, miss. Ah, you are a woman, right?" Tony asked, trying to be polite, before asking what the problem was.

The result was opposite Tony’s intentions as the woman started yelling. "What the fuck! Of course, I am a woman! What, the tits don't give it away?" She waved dismissively. "Look at you. You can't even manifest a body, yet you created a solar system! Do you have any idea the shitstrom you would have created had one of those puppets achieved sentience? Of course, your noob ass doesn't!" She finished, pointing at me with a raised eyebrow and a snarl on her face.

"Who you calling a noob," Tony asked, manifesting facial expressions to match her own, using the face he had during life, though he did so unconsciously. This caused the lady to lose the snarl for a second before spitting more venom, metaphorically that is.

"You. You noob ass bitch! The universe would have been a paradise without your father’s poor judgment and your mothers’ poor wiping skills. Seriously just a little better wipe, and your fuckup ass would never have cursed all of existence with your essence." This was the cleanest portion of the twenty-four-hour, forty-nine-minute, ten-second (EST) tirade of insults poor Tony was forced to endure.

"Who are you?" Tony asked, ignoring her latest insult for a moment. Curiosity about the thing insulting every ancestor he ever had, in the most creative ways he had ever heard getting the better of him.

"Who am I?" The woman asked back. Utterly shocked at his ignorance.

After another full day of creative vulgarity, Tony got bored. So he decided to go wandering down into his dark lord toon to blow off some steam until she had finished her non-sense. For another twenty-six hours, EST, the woman continued her rant. Tony, however, hadn't heard a word of it. Finally, the being stopped, causing him to notice the silence.

Tony manifested his whole body. His face with a light beard, without neck hair this time, scrunched up in a bitter, hateful glare. Tapping his foot as he struggled to maintain his control over his temper. Hands crossed over the man boobs he had during life. Again shock registered on the thing across from him.

Tony could no longer call that being a woman. The language it had used was so vulgar that even lady seamen would cringe in shock. During the entire session of insults, what he listened to anyway, Tony’s emotions went from rage to disgust, to admiration. Indeed the abuses were world-class, easily the most incredible showing of slanderous statements he had ever been exposed to. He even took notes now and again.

The thing's shock disappeared, as quick as a cobra strike. A peal of mocking laughter filled the void. "You have bitch tits. Why would you do that?" She struggled out, continuing to laugh. This was nothing new to Tony, his condition developed during puberty after all. Still, he had struggled to deal with the names and disgusted looks for twenty-eight years before he finally came to terms with himself. For Tony, it was just a part of who he was, a part he was comfortable with. Its laughter meant nothing to him. It did, however, present an opportunity.

An opportunity Tony was going to take full advantage of. "Yup, sure are. Nice and perky too. Not like those floppy ass things you call tits," he put tits in air quotes. "I don't need a bra thing. I bet that when you lay down, you get them caught in your armpits. I bet that without that ridiculous push-up number your wearing, they would fall halfway to the floor. Shit, I dare you to take it off, then jump up once so you can smack yourself in the face for me." What continued for the next two weeks, five days, sixteen hours, and twelve minutes, EST, was every insult that Tony had ever heard about his man boobs, mixed with every comeback he had held back. He honestly didn't give two shits about the thing’s feelings, and, in his opinion, it deserved it every word he said. Wait, that was a false statement. He, in fact, didn't give a single solitary shit about its feelings.

When he was done, the being was almost entirely transparent. Causing the two middle fingers and stuck out tongue to be ignored as the being stood there, slowly losing its form. The shine of her soul coming out from her center as its body continued to slowly fade away. Invisible tears traced the being’s face. Tears that moved Tony none at all. The field he had sown his emotions in was still barren; the man had zero fucks to give.