The In Between.

In the realm where nothing truly is or ceases to be, laying between reality and imagination… A God on its own right exists. A being capable of twisting the very laws of the universe.

And this very own being was, in this moment…

“Haha! Paladin to Z-29, and that’s a check to your Shrine Maiden… Gah! You treacherous bastard, how dare you point your hammer against the fluffiness of a fox miko?! This is heresy! Were you not myself, I would hang you up by your testicles…!”

Playing an insane variant of chess… against himself?

“Bah, I’m bored.” Tired of pretending the game was entertaining, the God –Joe– waved his hand with a tired gesture. The game board, an impossible geometrical shape with countless subdivisions and appendixes, vanished into nothing at his will. With a snap of his fingers, the armchair that supported his frame deflated like a pricked balloon, and he stood up in the uncanny void as if invisible footsteps had popped up below his feet. The armchair fluttered around, before losing its inertia and falling… upwards. It was stopped by an invisible wall, and turned into a rainbow liquid. A big drop formed in the center of the multicolor puddle, but before it fell of the… ceiling (?) entirely, it froze in place.

“When I signed up for divinity, nobody told me about this! Who said having nothing to do for eons is funny? Boooh!” He pouted like a child, stomping the pitch black nothingness that made up his footing. The rainbow drop whistled like boiling water and grew bigger, still refusing to detach from its origin.

“Well… It’s also true I reached the world limit cap a little too fast… Should’ve I given each world a little more thought instead of just creating then all on a whim…? I mean, that could’ve fixed some things. Like mehedilians dying prematurely to that supernova, or humans trying to kill their own planet…”

Caressing an inexistent beard, he walked around, pondering.

“Though I could erase them all and start from zero. If your sand castle went wrong, you can always wipe the whole sandbox and make it again, right…?”

He jumped, landing a foot on a new bunch of nothing. This time, however, he was standing horizontally, as if stuck to a wall by a magical force. He had now grown a goatie. The quasi-drop had grown the size of a basketball.

“…Nah, I’m too fond of my children to kill them on a whim. Barry would be happy to have their souls, and I know how much of a good keeper he is… But! I don’t want to walk down that path. It’s boooring! Besides Ehit was a disgrace to most of our generation, It’d take being as crazy as him to follow his example. Not that I’m not crazy enough. Just not that kind of crazy.”

He took a ninety-degrees turn and kept walking and musing his own thoughts. He hadn’t realized he was now walking diagonally up to the sizzling ball of something, with his head pointing to the ‘floor’ where he had been originally standing.

As a matter of fact, sense of direction didn’t really matter for him. He could make anything go up, down, to the sides, even inside and outside at the same time without breaking it. Things like common sense did no longer apply to Joe.

“So let’s re-visit our favorite planet, Earth!” With a new snap of his fingers, the drop, which had now grown twice his height, popped off. Inside, a scaled real-time replica of the Earth was slowly spinning.

“These guys never cease to surprise me. They’re as good saving their own assess as dooming themselves to extinction. A bit like my lunatic facet, if I do say so myself… Ah, let’s put things into perspective!”

With a wave of his hand, all the remaining liquid flew somewhere near, compressed itself in a ball the size of a big potato and started getting redder and redder, smoke coming out. With the sound of meat frying in a pan, it swelled until it was considerably bigger than the Earth replica. Its consistence had changed, its surface now seemed like it was made out of lava and flames and bubbles popped out of it on intervals.

“Now take position” Joe ordered to the Sun replica, and it hurriedly moved to where the real Sun would be placed relative to Earth.

“Oh, I was looking at it all wrong!” Joe jumped and backflipped in the air. Instead of falling, he orbited around the smaller globe until he was in front of what should be the representation of the Pacific Ocean. Stretching out his feet, he stood up again, horizontal to his previous position and looking at the globe how he was supposed to.

“Let’s see… If I recall correctly, this one… is America? No, no no… This one is Africa, right…?” He poked the surface of the globe. A puff of smoke of undefined color came out of it, and quickly rearranged itself into a bigger version of Africa. He pinched and zoomed, and a pyramid materialized before him.

“Ah, yes, yes. Africa, cradle of civilization, home of many ancient cultures, and one of my favorite: ancient Egyptians!” His current clothes were replaced by a pharaoh’s garments. He waved his hand to clear out the model, which once again turned into smoke and seeped inside the smaller rotating orb.

“Now, if this one’s Africa that means… Aha! This one is Europe, and this one below is India… No, Asia. I always mistake those two. No, I guess they call themselves Eurasia now… So…” He walked around the globe, hand still caressing his goatie that had now grown into a full Viking beard. “This one is Oceania, right? And this one is… North and South America.”

Joe nodded to nobody in particular. “I see, I see…”

He caressed his beard, which turned white and withered away. He was left scratching the air, seamlessly unaware of his sudden loss of facial hair. A strong draft of wind blustered his head and his bob hat was blown away. The pharaoh’s tunic was replaced by a tuxedo.

He clapped his hands. “And now that I can tell France from Greece…”

Plucking a jet-black hair from his head and blowing away, Joe hummed a cheerful tune. The strand of darkness danced in the inexistent wing before blasting with a dull pop and turning into a somewhat bigger book than the previous one. This one was completely black, with no decorations, with the exception of a symbol embedded on its cover. It was a purple diamond with four spiral wing-like tribal patters in a darker black than the rest of the book. He scratched his cheek awkwardly at the sight of the sign.

“I always thought this inscription looked a little… eh, how did Japanese people call it? Chuuni for my taste…” He said as he took the book in his hands.

Blowing imaginary dust from the book’s cover, Joe snapped his fingers. In the blink of an eye, a blob of dark matter detached from the black space, shaping itself into a lounge chair. He dropped himself on it without even bothering looking away from the book. He squirmed and rolled in the cushions until he decided he was in the comfiest position, and the let go of the book, which instead of falling down floated in midair as if held by an invisible pair of hands.

“Show me where I quit reading” he commanded to no one in particular. The book shuddered slightly before snapping open, pages flapping against each other at vertigo speed. It stopped moving in a specific page, part of it highlighted with deep purple light.

“Hmmm…”

Joe’s amethyst eyes steered through the pages, their subtle glow intensified by the contrast against the black of the In Between.

“I see, I see…”

Silence fell upon the realm of darkness as he sank deeper and deeper into his reading. The bob hat that had been blown away so suddenly from its owner fell in what should have been the floor, at least relative to Joe’s position. With a puff of green smoke, it turned into a Siberian Husky puppy, left iris purple and the right one cyan blue. There was a collar around his neck, made of black leather with a purple pendant. The symbol in the pendant was the same that the one in the book’s cover.

The puppy ran towards Joe, settling down on his lap.

Joe ran his hand through the puppy’s fur, still focused in the book before him. The puppy laid his head between his legs and closed his eyes, enjoying the cuddling. This kept on for an indefinite amount of time, before Joe suddenly snapped the book closed, poking the Husky puppy which once again turned into the bob hat that he placed on his head. He groaned as he stretched his arms and legs, getting up from the lounge chair that had, at some point, turned into a giant bed. With a wave of his hand, the bed turned into a squeaky red armchair, in which he threw himself, making the cushions let out a deflating sound.

A vague smirk plastered itself on his face.

“It seems that my hunch of humans being the cure to my boredom wasn’t wrong at all…”

He gestured to the void, and the incomplete solar system replica rearranged itself before him. Or the other way around. It was hard to tell, as there were no reference points in the In Between.

“The Earth. A world where every single person has a chance to become special. Heroes and Villains, both faces of the same coin. And… a dark force, disguised as a light of hope, half the way to world domination.”

Joe laughed, though his laugh sounded cold and distant.

“But sadly, I can’t maintain the status quo.”

His eyes flickered with purple light at his statement.

“As entertaining as it would be to let that child carry on with his game, I don’t really think it would end up well in the long run…”

Joe closed his eyes, his half-smirk turning into a full grin.

“Besides, it’s no fun if baddies take over the world, is it?”

In a sudden motion, he jumped out of the armchair. He snapped his fingers once again, and the glorious seat was torn away by a giant giraffe with claws that appeared out of the darkness. Both the giraffe and the armchair’s remaining blended with the rest of the In Between, as if they had never existed in the first place.

“Alright, I’m settled! I know what I’ll muse myself with for the next couple of decades.”

To Joe, time flew so fast it would feel like no more than a couple of hours… but then again, good entertainment is just like that. Ephemeral moments that create eternal memories.

And boy, if God was involved, you could bet those memories would last a long while.

“Let’s pick the next savior of mankind, the next apostle of God…”

The red necktie of his tuxedo fluttered in the impossible wind of the realm of nothingness. Green bob hat wavered savagely, seemingly sharing its owner’s excitement.

“And let’s make sure both him and I have an excellent time while it lasts.”

Joe stretched out his hand, and issued a command.

“Access Administrator Profile”

His voice sounded cold and devoid of any emotions. The smile on his face completely contradicted his tone.

“Target ID = Random”

A true avatar of Chaos must be chosen in the most chaotic way possible, he reckoned.

“Boost Target Meta-Factor. Override Target Status.”

Somewhere in Earth, a very lucky person would be granted incommensurable power, and a chance to make a difference. Joe burned in anticipation. Who would his paladin be?

“Well, let us give him a decent welcome present, at the very least.” He said in jovial tone.

“Generate Meta-Ability. Filters = Rarity: Unique; Cathegory: Luck Manipulation.”

“And now, last, but not least… Let’s fight the evil Hero, with a rightful Villain!”

“Set Target Morality = Villain”

In the giant sphere that represented Earth in its full splendor, a deep purple dot appeared. It was Joe’s apostle.

His new temporary remedy for neverending monotony.

He raised both of his hands to the air…

He looked below him. At some point, without realizing, he had flipped upside down.

Rephrasing. He stretched both hands to the ground, took a deep, inspiring breath, and exhaled all the pessimism and dullness accumulated from previous decades.

At that moment, somewhere in the vastness of the world, a certain someone woke up from a restless nap, wondering just what reason he had to thank for the next few hours of insomnia this time.

Little did he know of the nightmares he would soon have to face…

“Alright, that was a lot of acting for today. I’m waaay too tired to keep it up now… Let’s put a hold on that topic for now.” the whole magnificence leaking from Joe since the beginning of his speech instantly faded away replaced by the pure simplicity aura typical of airheads.

He waved his hand in the air. A board similar to a chessboard, if chessboard had non-Euclidian shapes and impossible connections and ramifications, popped up in the ceiling. Humming a happy tone once again –you know the one that goes ‘Mary had a little lamb’– he sat in an invisible chair, snapped his fingers and was immediately taken to the board.

“Where were we now…? Oh, yes…”

Joe took a deep breath, and…

“THIS IS HERESY, I SAY!!! YOU UNDERDEVELOPED HAMMER-WIELDING SHIELD-CARRYING BRAINLESS PIG!!! ONE DOES NOT MESS WITH A FOXGIRL PRIESTESS!!! I WILL SEE YOU DEAD!!! DEAD, YOU HEAR ME?! DEAAAAAAD…!!!”

…

And so began the story of an average programmer who turned into the greatest criminal mastermind in the world…

And the demential, imbecile, multi-personality deity watching over him.