Degritone was standing on a square arena, 50 feet on each side. A man appeared in front of him.

"I can't let you do this," the man said.

"Oh, Lee! Maybe Axel? Regardless, didn't think I'd see you here."

"I knew this would happen and have been monitoring the earth for when it happened. You won't be taking it over."

Degritone tilted his head and thought for a while before saying, "Oh, you think I'm Od! Well, you're wrong. We're in a different pocket of creation. This pocket's energy's control method is different, still working it out. The people who made the System call it Stavch, so I have been, too. And someone sent me out of the multiverse for a while, I saw that I am the multiverse's MC, unlike in the RP.

"There is no Od, there is no Or, there are none of the original characters of the RP, at least not in the forms they were in the RP. Given how everything works, they have to exist somewhere, but blah. Not in our multiverse. How far have you gotten? Can't be a timeline hopper yet, or you wouldn't be following the rules."

"You'll see on the battlefield. Also, it's Axel," Axel said before taking the first of the four seats.

Degritone shrugged. His head exploded and instantly reformed. He looked in the direction the bullet came. When he found nothing, he used the empty teleportation structure to find the sniper, then crushed their gun with movement Stavch. "Follow the rules, please," he said in their direction.

The next person to show up was The One, falling like they'd jumped from over the horizon. "Huh, I thought you agreed with me."

The One offered a fist bump, and Degritone took it before crossing his arms again. "I do, but this wouldn't be right without the most powerful, well, I guess second most powerful, earthling getting involved in the fight. And if we do manage to win, I'll keep you alive for another try."

"Do give it your all during the fight, don't want people claiming I won because one of the participants wasn't trying, or worse, was actively sabotaging my opponents. Also, I can literally come back from the dead, so no need to worry about that."

The One gave a thumbs up and went to take a seat of their own. Two seats remained. A crowd began to gather around the arena. Degritone gave a disappointed, "Hm," and some of his other selves worked on making proper seating so everyone could see.

An old Englishman jumped from the stands and walked to a seat with his arms behind his back. Degritone tilted his head, but shrugged before his head fully reached its furthest tilt, and returned it to a neutral position. He heard the man say his name was George from the conversation in the seats.

For the next three hours, many tried to enter the arena, but none were able to get past the barrier. Some got angry at this and tried to threaten Degritone to let them in, others looked dejected and took a seat in the stands, and a small few looked content that the barrier was, in fact, working as advertised before taking their own seat in the stands.

Finally, a japanese girl cosplaying as a generic cat girl, with large cat paw gloves, got on the stage and walked over to Degritone. She took the stereotypical catgirl pose and said, "I'm Mimika! Please take good care of me!"

"That probably sounded cuter in Japanese," Degritone said. "Go take your seat." While she moved to her seat, he called out, "Take a few minutes to have a strategy meeting. Tell one of my other selves when you're done, I'll be away so you don't think I'm listening."

"I do have something that's guaranteed to kill him, but if he so much as sees what I'm doing, he will know exactly how to counter it, and replicate it. He'll become too powerful for any of us to even think about winning. I can fight without deploying it, but if it seems like we're going to lose, we need to have a backup plan for locking him down so I can get outside of his sight and hit him with it," Axel said.

"What are you talking about?" The One asked.

"There's a way to bypass the System in all ways, costless flight, costless teleportation, insanely powerful attacks, etc.. I know he's been searching for it, and his body and the fact there was so many of him made me think he found it from a distance, but up close, I know he's either received outside assistance to get where he's gotten, or found a false lead. He's capable of using the very basics of the basics, but the Degritone I know would have already gotten noticeably powerful if he knew what I know.

"I can hold my own under the System, but if I pull out the non-System stuff, he's going to almost instantly become a force we won't be able to so much as touch. I don't know if he can still hear us or not, so I won't say what it is until the battle is over."

"Should we spend our entire efforts on tying him down so you can use this on him?" Mimika asked.

"No, even if he's not exaggerating, if we do that, it just shows we're unable to beat him on our own merits and need to rely on this man's country to beat him," George said. "We need to actually try to defeat him normally. If it's a truly group effort, we can try to at least lessen the current wars by showing a united front. It won't last, but it should buy us a few years, at least, before wars break back out."

"Ok. Everyone, let's learn what each of us can do," Mimika said.

Degritone sat in Melena's garden, its owner sitting on his lap. He had his eyes closed while hugging her, his mouth against the back of her head, while he worked on making it easier to suppress the instincts he gained in the Horrid.

Bringing yet another person back from the dead would have annoyed him.

Melena pat his arm and said, "They are ready."

"Dang. Both too long and too short. Wish they took either like 3 minutes so we couldn't get comfortable or 20 more hours," Degritone commented while Melena stood. "3 hours was the perfect length to be annoying." They fist bumped, something Melena had learned over their extended research and planning break, and Degritone teleported to the arena.

Degritone flashed back to the arena, fully expecting to be attacked the instant he arrived.

"George, you're up," Axel said right before Degritone appeared.

The ground beneath the old Englishman turned to metal, which began to rapidly spread out. Turrets began to pop up as it got near the edge of what revealed itself to be a massive battleship. The ground outside the metal cracked and split open, revealing water far below the deck of the ship. It spread and spread, becoming larger than not only the island, but almost all that was visible from George's position.

Visible in the water were 10 battleships. As soon as Degritone appeared, they began to open fire. Degritone caught the shells with his cloak, causing them to stop like a wet piece of bread slamming against the floor, and returned them to sender with movement Stavch. They plinked uselessly off the armor of the battleships, having nowhere near the speed, and as such inertia, they did when sent at Degritone.

This continued for a few seconds before Axel appeared behind Degritone, gripping the cloak and preventing Degritone from moving it to intercept a shell. It plowed through Degritone's body like it weren't there and stopped on impact with the cloak on the far side. "Didn't expect you to know how to flash with this energy," Degritone said as his body instantly regenerated, sending the shell flying downward. His body had a metallic sheen as it came back.

Axel wordlessly flew back a few inches before pulling out two swords from the air, chains attaching them to his waist. Degritone blocked more shells as Axel flashed in with an upward slash already touching Degritone's body. Yellow bolts of electricity arced off the sword as it sliced through Degritone, ravaging his body as he was cut in half from left hip to right ear.

Another slash came toward his neck, but he grabbed his cloak to move and block the attack. When the sword impacted the cloak, it split into 10 bolts of electricity and bypassed his cloak to pierce his head, dealing damage as if they were still swords, rather than electrons.

Degritone moved to grab one of the electric swords, but was cut to pieces by cat claws as Mimika jumped from one battleship to another. While his body was nothing but ribbons, a wave of force flew through Degritone and blew his head away from the cloak. The sole of his left foot impacted the cloak while his body regenerated, coming back black. Degritone tried to yank the cloak back to himself using movement constructs, but Axel grabbed it and started moving to put it on.

Degritone flashed so he was wearing the cloak, his arms contorted uncomfortably to fit in its sleeves as they were. An arrow caught the back of Degritone's head the instant he appeared, ripping through it.

"Not using the suit?" Axel asked, seemingly casually slashing at Degritone. The impact ripped out a large chunk of Degritone's body as electricity exploded through him.

"Nah, don't know if it'd have the same drawback in this pocket. Haven't tested it, and if it does, I don't think I could survive it without being a timeline hopper," Degritone responded as his body reformed. "Can you survive without a head yet? Don't want to accidentally kill you, reviving people is really annoying."

Axel raised an eyebrow, but did not respond as Mimika jumped from another battleship. She first caught Degritone in the right temple, and Degritone reacted on instinct, his right arm separating back into fleshy tentacles, catching Mimika and moving to turn her into swiss cheese. He caught himself before he pierced her brain, having only bored through her torso in 3 places.

"Oh, woops, sorry, sorry," Degritone said as he blocked another arrow aimed for his head. He created a platform for her to stand on and plopped her down on it before returning his arm to normal with a bit of effort. He cast Revitalize on her, healing the bleeding puncture wounds, but leaving holes where he hit. "About killed you. Trying not to-"

Degritone blocked a stab at his stomach and used movement Stavch to send Axel flying, "-fall to my instincts. Avoid attacking my temples or using heat-based attacks, please. I've been able to suppress my instincts for retaliation against everything but those, and bringing you back from the dead would be annoying."

Mimika looked confused and tried to swipe through Degritone's torso, being blocked before jumping back to another battleship. "Might as well go on the offensive," Degritone said, catching an arrow with his hand. He noted the angle before flashing to the battleship it came from. A sword immediately pierced through Degritone and cut downward. "You think it would be more impressive if I destroyed all these ships directly before moving on to smashing faces or whittled you down over time?"

The One sent out a Shout, slamming Degritone against the hull of the ship, then another to zoom over to him and stab through his left eye before saying, "The former would probably instill more fear. The latter would probably make people less likely to rebel, having seen how useless it is to fight you."

"I can make people feel useless during the micro-war. I'll leave you for last, since you're probably already well known," Degritone said before flashing to the largest battleship, near where George was standing. He summoned his condensed sword and slashed downward toward his shoulder, increasing his slash force with movement Stavch.

Axel flashed between George and blocked with his swords, electricity arcing from them as the force impacted them. Degritone's swing was barely slowed down as the swords snapped, causing an explosive discharge of electricity that sent George and Axel flying and did enough damage to the battleship to begin sinking it.

Mimika jumped from her position and grabbed Degritone's head with her hand before slamming him into the water. A couple submarines became visible from under the water, and they unleashed torpedoes into Degritone, who reversed their direction, sinking them when they impacted their originators.

Another cat paw ran its claws down Degritone's front and he punched Mimika in the gut, sending her guts flying out into the ocean. She grit her teeth and pulled him close before bringing her mouth down on his neck. She turned into an actual house cat, but extremely over sized, roughly twice the size of a lion, as she did so, cutting through Degritone's neck with her sharp teeth.

She was seemingly pulled toward the sinking battleship along with Degritone, who was unable to release himself from her jaws without flashing. So, he flashed back onto the battleship, saw George standing up, and went over to him. Degritone wrapped the naval commander up in his cloak and flashed them both to the smallest battleship.

George tried to escape, but the cloak had zero give, not letting the old man even hope to escape. He watched on, helplessly, as Degritone used movement Stavch to slowly lift the entire battleship out of the water. "This is harder than I thought it'd be," Degritone said, rubbing his face with his eyes closed.

The One jumped over to Degritone and sunk a dagger into his chest, between what would have been two ribs if he'd have still had ribs. Degritone's body became stiff and he was unable to move, but his mind kept working, so he mentally threw the battleship through the nearest one, causing both to become nothing but scrap.

Axel flashed over and cut Degritone's body to steak his cloak before putting it on himself while Degritone was still paralyzed. He released George and flashed the old man over to the largest in tact battleship before flashing to stab straight through the position of Degritone's soul with his newly repaired swords, but Degritone flashed to George at the same time. Axel tried again, and Degritone caught the sword, having come out of paralysis.

"Wait your turn, holy cow," Degritone said before flashing Axel down to the depths of the image's ocean. Degritone grabbed George by the throat and squeezed while flying upward, inflicting Withered. Mimika tried to remove Degritone's arm, but on contact, he flashed her back to where she jumped from. He threw the old man out toward what would soon be the barrier of the arena, and a couple milliseconds before he reached the edge, the image faded as the old man's body rapidly deteriorated into flakes of black flesh.

He was caught by another Degritone and administered a blue potion that made his body return to normal before he was Revitalized back to full Health. The three remaining combatants looked over at Degritone as he slowly floated down to the ground, Axel having been forced back to ground level as the image faded and the sea no longer existed. As he hit the ground, they looked at each other and nodded.