The krak as the force field of the Crimson Tower of Khan shattered was far sharper than thunder, and more electric. The armored troops rushing out of the tower to subjugate the nearby city, their progress rather impeded by a hurricane-force storm raging about them inside said field, all stared at the white-hot gash sliced through a field which could defy the blasts of a Celestial, at least for a time.

A single point of light, like a burning torch, strode in through the gap in the distance, at the same time two field emitters on the edges of the tower blew out, and the split in the force field remained open.

It didn’t take much brains to realize that the tower had suddenly become very vulnerable with a five-kliks-high and half-klik-wide gap in its defenses. Furthermore, the link to the outside virtually exploded with a wall of solid snow. The air power hurriedly retasked towards the gap slammed right into a tornado-class wall of sleet, tons of the stuff accumulating on them inside seconds, sending every squadron spinning towards the ground out of control.

---

Sama ignored the troops, glancing over the dispersal of men trying to move in winds strong enough to send an unarmored human haplessly into the sky, filling the air with scree and rubble and letting them know just how unwanted they were.

Right there.

She took a few steps, covering a klik of ground, a few dozen soldiers sent hurtling out of her path as she did. She stopped right in front of a specific squad of soldiers, and her Null spread out around her.

The surrounding soldiers crouched and braced against the force of the wind and the deafening cracks of the lightning overhead looked up and around cautiously as all of that abruptly faded away. They gawked at the sudden quiet as they looked up, seeing that, yes, the storm was still ongoing, and some debris was falling on them from above, but there was no wind to speak of.

The very intimidating woman with the burning Sword out and pointed at the ground, staring very specifically at a member of the group, now, she was totally new.

“Lord Khan, you are a farthing idiot,” she stated in no uncertain terms. “Thank you for volunteering yourself, your Crimson Tower, and your army for the Quad-Galactic Alliance of Alternity 1832, we are happy to accept you.” Her Sword rose with an ominous ding, ting! that broke over the hearts of all the soldiers around, and they could not even bring their rifles up as it seemed to slice over and past them.

They had the distinct impression that if they started hostilities, that sound would cut apart their very souls!

The person she was looking at did manage to straighten, and slowly reached up to take off his helmet.

“My Khan!” a trooper over a head taller protested slightly, and was waved off as the helmet was lowered.

He looked much like a Kree, save with purple skin and white hair, staring at the woman before him with a mixture of confidence and trepidation. He could feel her spiritual presence like a great weight falling on them all from Heaven, and he knew that she was being polite. That weight could easily increase and send every man around her to the ground in trembling fear.

“This... is not 1697? TVA nomenclature, of course,” he asked carefully.

“It is not.” The blue eyes regarded him with the absolute confidence of someone who held all the cards, and an utter lack of fear of any sort. There were literally thousands of soldiers within weapon range of her, as was the artillery mounted on the tower itself, and Khan could tell that it was utterly inconsequential to her.

“May I verify that fact?” he asked politely.

“You may,” she replied coolly. “Stand down all your troops first, or Warlord Cleo is going to turn the air around your tower into a Class F tornado and pulp them all.”

“All troops stand down and begin returning to the tower at all speed,” Khan ordered into his coms, turning and chopping his hand. There was only a moment of hesitation from the troops around them, and then all but a handful with subtle badges on them turned and headed back towards the Tower.

Between one breath and the next, sunlight washed across them. The dark clouds didn’t fade away, they simply vanished as if they were never there. The winds were gone so suddenly that countless airborne objects began to plummet straight down out of the sky.

The snow and ice on the fliers didn’t evaporate, but it did slough off with remarkable speed. Appropriately chastised, the grounded fliers stayed low to the ground as they quickly withdrew back to the Crimson Tower.

“Get me an accurate dimensional read of our location, triple-check it through multiple channels, and,” he glanced at the woman with the dark hair, scarred face, and utterly lethal blue eyes, “the TVA file on Earth-1832.”

The TVA file arrived first, popping up on his holo display. His pupils went very small when he saw the violet stripes crisscrossed with magenta.

It wasn’t a Black File, which meant to go there was to die. It was a ‘Don’t Mess with This Dimension or Timeline, You Idiot’ indicator warning.

Safe for Travel. Safe for sightseeing. Mess with it and die.

Apparently the superhuman population of this planet had a terrifying degree of power, competency in using that power, and willingness to use that power, all very, very bad things for would-be conquerors and invaders of any type or stripe. So much so that the TVA itself was willing to bend over backwards not to offend them, and definitely did not consider them a timeline under its authority.

As a matter of fact, none of the temporal overseers had anything to do with this timeline, and it was inferred that whole chunks of the Kang Imperium had ceased to exist after messing with this timeline.

“Sir...” came the hesitant voice of Kili, the head of his Harem and most trusted and competent of his support staff over his coms, “We are not in Alternity-1697. We are in Alternity-1832.”

She was flushing badly, as this was a major screw-up, and given the circumstances now unfolding, could very possibly be terminal.

Khan dismissed the possibility of personnel error, tossing a glance at the calmly-waiting woman who no doubt could hear everything. “I want every technician and monitor going over the transfer process from beginning to end. I want to know when our course was diverted and how it happened.”

“Yes, my Khan!” she replied with fiery enthusiasm, her belief in her lord’s wisdom once again justified.

Khan sighed as he let the hologram fall. “Well, this certainly is most unexpected. I would offer my apologies for intruding upon your domain, but I have the feeling that is simply not going to be sufficient...”

“Indeed. You come here to conquer our world and believe there will be no penalty when you cannot?” Her voice was equal parts polite and totally in control of the situation. Nobody there doubted that they lived and died at her whim. Her confidence and presence were simply that overwhelming.

A totally ravishing woman in dark leathers and flowing cape descended from above, power hanging about her like a cosmic storm waiting to be unleashed. Her skin was the color of coffee, her long hair as white as silk, and her eyes glowing as blue as the sky after a fresh storm, almost the hue of the sky above if the reflection of the Crimson Tower hadn’t been staining it.

Khan felt his mouth go dry just looking at her. That she was the one who had commanded the lethal weather was obvious, just by her casual control of the breezes about. Her annoyance when she looked at him made his heart race.

She carried herself like a goddess, and all his instincts informed him that she had the power of one. He had the distinct impression that if the other woman had not arrived, this one still could have dealt with him, albeit in a much less overwhelming manner.

“I refuse to believe that my stirring up the ire of two goddesses was a mere coincidence,” he said smoothly, taking the situation as it was and seeing what he could make of it. “May I know who I have the honor of addressing?”

“I am Sama Rantha, sometimes called the Golden Hag. This is Warlord Cleo, who has been entertaining herself pulling the cesspool you set your Tower down next to out of the gutter and making it into something productive. I believe you crushed about fifty thousand of her citizens when you brought your Tower down.”

“I must claim lack of fault for our landing site.” He scanned their location again. “We intended initially to come down in the middle of the North American continent, not in a backwater island in the Pacific. There are sometimes irregularities in the transfer of a Tower, but not half a world, Lady Rantha.”

Sama’s eyes were absolutely unmoved by his argument. “She happens to rule most of North America,” the ravishing Cleo informed him helpfully, and Khan just sighed.

“My lord, can we not...?” Shaitan asked softly, still trembling despite himself at Sama’s presence, but asking the question regardless.

Khan sent his primary aide the TVA file, and Shaitan went silent as soon as he saw the colors on it.

That video of the Celestial getting chopped in two was pretty convincing, too.

“What, if I may ask, is the Quad-Galactic Alliance of Alternity-1832?” Khan asked diplomatically. That did not sound like too foreboding a title...

“Our reality is going to be invaded by its Negative Zone within the next two years. A multi-galactic force of techno-barbarians, ancient space empires, dying species, and fanatical survivalists are preparing to cross the Crunch and claim territory in this galaxy and a score of others nearby, starting with the Shi’ar, the Kree, and the Skrull Empires,” Sama replied, and just the mention of several of those facts made it plain she was definitely not from some Earth still at the bottom of the galactic well and ignorant of the rest of the universe.

Khan blinked. “I have alliances with the Shi’ar in several dimensions. I will be happy to contribute to their defense!” he promptly volunteered, assuming that was the correct course.

“All three Empires are expected to fall and be extinguished, with ninety-five percent military losses,” she continued coolly, and Khan swallowed despite himself. “That is your fate. You are bound to this dimension and may not leave until ninety-five percent of your people are dead in its defense. Welcome to the Quad-Galactic Alliance, Master Khan of 540-B12.”

Her smile was both damnably attractive and savagely mirthless, especially with the double canines looking ready to tear out his throat.

She knew his home alternity, too. Not even his closest allies had known that.

Ninety-five percent losses...

He had literally millions of soldiers in his Crimson Tower, fully able to sweep across an unprepared dimensional alternate of Earth (and other worlds), conquer it, and administer it in his name. Losses of ninety-five percent would be a crippling blow, a huge sacrifice and impediment to his plans of expansion.

It was not, however, a death penalty straight off. By the sound of it, the war that was coming was going to be utterly merciless, and the fate of his soldiers was going to be shared by billions, if not trillions.

He could tell it was going to happen, and he would not be able to prevent it. “Will I be allowed to see the tactical and strategic data?” he asked politely.

“Certainly.” She flicked a finger, and a rather large file was downloaded to his suit’s systems.

Without a thought he sent it off to his analysts, even as he opened it to peruse himself.

He had an empire stretching across nineteen different alternities, conquered and united under his command, never losing a world before this one... which had not deterred him, knowing he would lose at some point, only concerned with how he would recover and fend off any retribution.

Now, he was seeing a true cross-dimensional invasion at work...