This will be the Fourth ‘side story’ of the Power of Ten, detailing the OTHER things that happen in the Power of Ten Creative Metaverse as a result of a video game’s rules turning into magical reality for a bunch of devoted gamers who just aren’t going to let horrific shit slide if they can do something about it now.

I’ve done kinda traditional fantasy, touching on grimdark; I’ve done the crapsack universe of the Far Future and helped set that straight; and I’ve done an urban fantasy world where no Power of Ten existed to help when the undead came calling, but when it did, things took a turn for the better quick.

This time we’re going into superheroics.

---

One of the biggest things you find in comic books about capes is artistic license. The power levels of heroes can vary widely depending on what the artist draws and the storyteller wants. Furthermore, the inevitable power creep of age as the hero improves keeps getting set back to get that new vibe back and young readers, and help the creators tell more stories (stories are easier to tell when the protagonist isn’t so strong).

A great example of this is Superman, whose Silver Age self could push planets around, vs. variants of the modern one who have problems lifting Saturn V-size rockets... unless he does a sundive and gets super-juiced back to the old level of power, all for the needs of the story.

I’ll be setting the story in the Marvel Universe, but not one that any of you have seen. After all, if you were in the Marvel Universe and knew stuff, the first thing you’d do is take advantage of and exploit it, right?

The Marvel Universe also has major problems vs Power of Ten: regular resets, a lot of time travel, and Power curves.

The Marvel Universe has ‘died’ at least seven times as of today, and then rebooted itself. Time Travel happens all the time, to the point where Dr. Doom has had a machine to use for it for decades.

Well, Power of Ten has Nulls. A universe with Nulls has no reset button, at least for the Nulls. If the universe dies, they die, and they aren’t coming back with it. It’s a totally new universe, not a reset for them.

Likewise, Nulls lock down time. You can’t change the past if that past crosses a Null’s timeline. All you’ve done is either created an alternate reality where they are not present, or a shadow reality that disappears as soon as you leave it.

Thus, as soon as a future person comes back to a Null’s time or earlier and interacts with them, they are locked into that timeline and can’t actually change anything. Likewise, the past can’t be changed if it would affect the Null’s present at all.

Alternate realities being created are always possible... but those possibilities will be the Normal Marvel universes, the ones that don’t have Nulls, Sources, and Voids.

Which, if Nulls, Sources, and Voids are supposed to be everywhere, should tell you what kind of places normal Marvel universes are, and why so much crazy stuff happens there.