Fib - Alternate Version (Patreon)

This story actually has two versions with significant differences between the two. The Original Version is more akin to the writer's wishes, while the Alternate Version is more akin to the commissioner's wishes. Enjoy!

Commissioned by Rjjt456

Written by 0neGenericWord and HikerAngel

Fib smiled in an empty hallway. In the adjacent rooms, the bustle of office life peered out as muffled noise. Papers being filed, files being shipped, shipments being sorted, sorted being processed, processes being revised, the whole cycle of office living circled around her. The serpent ate at its own tail. She probably looked the part. Her friend had lent her this business casual outfit. The white blouse was spotless, and the miniskirt-stockings combo really sold the cute but professional vibes she desperately needed to convey.

Confidence came from within, she knew. By simply smiling and sitting up straight, she could shift the universe towards the good vibes she needed. At least, she remembered somebody saying something like that to her at some point. Her back couldn’t correct itself any more, and her smile was glued on with cement. She fought the urge to twiddle with her hair, each loop just past her shoulders another tempting fidget. Twiddling looked antsy, and antsy looked unprofessional, and unprofessional didn’t get jobs. She shook around her disposable cup. Empty.

Any moment now she’d be called in through the door just there. Past it lay a critical interview at Seacrest, the latest startup to hit the Fortune 500 list. From there, she’d need to be downtown by 1:15 to meet up with Jeanne, her longtime bestie. They’d have a high-end boutique to hit up right where the finance district and the arts district meet. There she’d hopefully find something to wear to this night’s engagement, where she’d be heading down to the cultural district to this fancy-smancy restaurant whose name she could hardly pronounce for a date with her fabulously wealthy boyfriend Leo.

All this would be anxiety inducing as it were, but it was the additional catch that had Fib sweating bullets underneath her mask of barely controlled pseudo confidence. It was the catch that made the hallway walls narrow in just a bit more, that made the fans rotating above hang almost motionless in time. The catch being that Fib was not qualified. At all. For any of this. She was going into an interview off her resume of being an accomplished businesswoman coming back from successful internships at otp companies all along the East Coast, all fabricated. She was going there on a shopping trip with her fabulously successful bestie who was blissfully unaware that she was ludicrously broke, hence the need for the job interview. And then she’d be dressing in preparation for a dinner at an unimaginably expensive restaurant, while still being broke, to go to her second date with her boyfriend who was no doubt secure in the knowledge that his smart, polite, classy girlfriend would be great to present to his fabulously wealthy parents someday.

Fib, Fibee to her parents, sometimes wished she wasn’t so good at living up to her name.

Her heart beat louder and louder in her chest. The room was too quiet, the background blurred and blurred til it fell to white noise before fading to true silence. She needed to leave. She shouldn’t have come here. Her heart was a ping pong ball, swinging between self-assurance and dread, ego and insecurity. She’d taken these steps because she believed she had it in her to rise above petty things like “formal qualifications” and “basic competency”, but that hubris had locked itself in the closet three miniature panic attacks ago. She was left alone with herself, only herself, her own beating throbbing thumping heart, and…

And…

And.

And then the world fell out from under her. There was no office, no serpent, no tail. No rump-tump-thumping heart. No anxiety. Just dark. Blackness wrapped around her, sealing her mouth shut before she could do so much as open it to scream out. And then before her shone a million billion stars, points of light poking out through the curtain of space as everything came back into focus. Zooming outwards, the stars multiplied until she could see them forming the familiar shape of two beautiful eyes, decorated in the mascara of superclusters. The universe winked at her, and then everything went hot.

“Fuck!”

Fib nearly jumped off the bench. Her thighs stung, her ass was sore, and everything from the waist down was soaked of coffee. The disposable cup at her shoes was still spilling out on the floor. Steam emanated from the puddle. There was no one out in the hallway to hear her curse, but that wasn’t reassuring. She dared check her watch. 12:05.

“Fu-“ Fib started, before catching herself. “…frick. Frick frick frick frick frick!”

What’s with all this anxiety girl?

Fib wiped coffee off her skirt. The stains sank in.

You’re Fibee LeBlanc! You’re hot! You’re sexy!

She got up and approached the door, which was locked. Room 783B. She needed 785C. Why anyone would call a room 785C was beyond her.

You’re the star of the show! You’re anything you want to be!

“783C…. 784A… 784D?”

Her eyes caught on a plaque. 785C. Bingo.

Remember, it’s all in your control. Just fake it ‘til you make it, and you’ll be good.

Fib opened the door.

“Fake it ‘til you make it…” she muttered. “Fake it ‘til you make it…”

A stern man in a well to do suit sat at his desk. He wore the sort of show-nothing gaze that would do a man well in backroom politics or high stakes gambling. This served him well in corporate culture, which was a little bit of both. Mr. Bradshaw, Director of Sales at Seacrest. There was a little gold desk plaque with that name and title engraved into it. It was the only bit of decoration he would afford himself.

“Five minutes late, Ms. LeBlanc,” the man said.

He gestured towards the clock hanging over the door frame. If Fib was sweating under her clothes, it was lost amidst the coffee droplets.

“Oh, no, that’s not,” Fib started. “That clock’s just a little fast is all, I checked my watch just before I stepped in. Actually, I might be a little early!” Fib lied.

The man dryly checked his watch. 11:55.

“So it is. I’ll have to send someone to fix that.”

Fib moved to take her seat.

“And don’t worry about the wetness, I just spilled some water on myself before coming in here. It’ll dry off in, like, half a second. You won’t even notice it was ever there!”

Fib strained a smile, as if her pleasantness would sell the lie better. And yet, under her notice, the coffee staining her clothing seemed to vanish into thin air, traceless. If Mr. Bradshaw took note, he didn’t show it. Instead, he pulled a large folder from under his desk, with her name on it.

“You have a lot of accomplishments listed here, Ms. LeBlanc. Very strong resume. You don’t see many people your age with a portfolio like yours.”

“Why thank you,” Fib said, her smile strained.

“Now, I’ll be reviewing through this later but, why Seacrest? I’m sure plenty of companies would be more than eager to take someone of your talents onboard.”

“Oh, uh, well… I guess it’s because Seacrest was just, uh, such a strong up and coming company, with their… strong work ethic and production schedule.”

“I suppose Seacrest has been on the up and ups as of late. I’d like to say we’re proud here of what our company has already managed to accomplish in the short time we’ve been here.”

Fib de-tensed a small amount. First question down.

“Now, onto the next step: your resume says here that you got a… Masters in Macroeconomics at Harvard University? Now, I’m a Yale man myself so I know how non trivial that is. Is this all correct?”

Fib wordlessly nodded. The man’s eyebrows scrunched.

“Uh, yep, Harvard grad, that’s me! Harvard Harvard, ra ra ra!”

Somewhere in the fabric of space and time, there was an unraveling. What were at first slow and steady ripples of the sort common towards any bookkeeping of reality were fast becoming massive waves crashing against eternity’s holds. The invisible strings connecting concepts to places, particles to particles, laws to reason, were slowly but surely reshaping themselves as history slightly rewrote itself into a different world. In this one, Fib had sent out a few applications to various Ivy League schools on a whim at the end of high school. She now distantly remembered her wide-open shock seeing the single acceptance letter—from Harvard, of all places. She remembered her move in, and struggling through her classes, and meeting Jeanne there, and all these other moments that had already and had always happened, because she had verbally willed it to be so.

Fib was, herself, unaware of anything but a dim recollection of an awareness that sat on the tip of her tongue.

“Oh yes, you can probably check in the school’s register. It was, y’know, tough going but I’d say my work ethic really… really helped me stick through it. Yeah, I’d say I’ve always been a hard worker.”

“Yes, I checked that right before you came in here. So, you have a rigid understanding of macroeconomics?”

“Yes, I’d say I, uh, um,” Fib said, her thoughts losing her. She had gotten all the way up to a Master’s degree from Harvard, why was it so hard for her to keep her thoughts together? “I’d say I have a pretty solid background in the fundamentals of macroeconomics. Oh, and microeconomics too!”

“Hm, well, let’s go through some basic scenarios, help you jog your confidence back.”

Fib relaxed a bit in her chair. “Yes, I think I would like that.”

Elsewhere, the cosmos burned. The universe as it is known can perhaps best be considered less an actual location and more a spectrum of locations, dimensions and planes layered on top of each other like ancient rock formations. To each frequency one might be able to attune to, they would find an entire complete universe all its own, with its own strange rules and component parts working in tandem to keep the entirety of existence in harmony with itself. Some frequencies might be privy to forces so strange and foreign to human minds that they might be considered magic by themselves. And many beings connected to those fundamental forces have such an intimate grasp on their power that they might be considered what a human would call a god.

There were countless gods, as many as there were uncountable stars in the layered universe. Some might seem familiar, even uncannily humanlike save for their impossible strength. Others would seem like something out of a cosmic horror story, complete with tentacles reaching in and out of the ninth and tenth dimensions painted in colors too horrid to describe. And yet focusing on any particular individual world, or really any location a divinity might be found, it would be hard to tell that these beings were the same ultipotent forces of nature one would expect to find.

Whether they were divine pantheons high in the clouds or ethereal alien civilizations sealed away in closed dimensions, sane or insane, comprehensible or incomprehensible, what united all was a sense of chaotic discord. To mortals, such changes as were happening on the waters of reality were invisible, imperceptible even by all but the keenest of eyes. But to the gods, they could feel it. The forces that gave them strength were being twisted, ripped from their intended dimensions and tangled into each other. Time and space were subtly but notably being warped in ways that no entity could explain, and the greatest scholars of these innumerable godly worlds were fast at work on trying to uncover the source.

These outer dimensional forces naturally had no bearing on the interview Fib was currently embroiled in. She deftly answered question after question with expert timing, surprising even herself. She wasn’t even sure why she was so nervous about the interview. This was pretty simple stuff. Any questions she didn’t know she would confidently bluff through, and in subtle ways the universe would fit to rectify her errors. Already she’d mispronounced the name of several important technical concepts in business theory. Most were forgivable, but there were more than a few graves of a few famous economists who found their letters ever so slightly rearranged to fit their new reality. All this for an interview for a position Fib had not a few minutes been totally unprepared for. Uselessly, because this interview was a breeze for her, and was always destined to have been.

Her answers captivated her interviewer. He had plenty of decades of experience under his belt, but he couldn’t not be impressed by how casually this woman was answering his questions. He had expected her to defer at least a few questions, which would show how the candidates reacted to stress, but she hadn’t given him the chance. Fib’s nerves were evident still, even to the interviewer, and her social skills in formal situations needed some help, but she could definitely be an invaluable asset to the team. “… and that would pay 15% dividends each quarter,” Fib finished. “Any other scenarios?”

“No, no, that will be good for now. I must say, Ms. Leblanc, your grasp over this stuff far outclasses most interviewees. It’s clear you did your homework.”

“Thank you sir,” Fib beamed. “Oh, and it’s Fib. Weird nickname, I know.”

“Understood. Now, Fib, let’s move onto your prior work experience. Unsurprisingly considering your resume, it says here that… hm.”

“Hm?”

“Well, I don’t know, this might have been a misprint but… it says here you took an internship at Security Investings from 2015-2016, but that you also had a full time position at KenTech from 2014 well into 2019. And since you graduated in 2016, well… it was probably a misprint, I’m sure you just had a position from-“

“No!”

“Excuse me?”

“I mean, no, no it’s not a misprint. I was… I double timed at KenTech and Security Investings while finishing up my Senior year. I got special permission from both companies, uh, yeah. I mean it was, kind of di… well no I guess it was pretty simple, I’d say I’m a pretty organized person and my strong work ethic and teamwork skills made it possible for me to work like that.”

Mr. Bradshaw raised an eyebrow.

“Now, what positions did you hold there? I don’t see them written down here.”

Fib froze. She had forgotten to write her own positions down. How had her resume managed to get this far into the process without titles written down? In her stage fright, she’d forgotten what those positions had been. In reality she had never held those positions and as such hadn’t detailed what they would be, but that reality had long since been shunted out in favor of the new reality where she was an up and coming talented businesswoman making her way through sales.

“Oh, well, I was an intern… in…. sales,” Fib stammered out.

“Yes yes I get that but what position did you hold at KenTech?”

“Um…”

Fib’s eyes darted about the room. How did she forget her own position? She could barely remember any position at any company, despite all her years of intensive studying and hardline work experience she had seemingly neglected to take note of the titles for the positions she worked in, under, and with. It was mortifying. Finally, she caught a glimpse of the desk plaque again.

“I was… Executive… uh… Executive Director of Sales Tech- Tech sales! I was Executive Director of Tech Sales!”

The man’s face went pale.

“I.. ahem, I see your qualifications.”

“I know,” Fib beamed, oblivious.

“You’re, clearly, well.. yes… I think…”

Fib was already losing interest in the interview. Not because it was beneath her (though unbeknownst to her it now was), but because the coffee spill she’d retconned from existence had been her only food all day. Endless impossible productivity required quite the food intake. Mr. Bradshaw watched the disinterest in her gaze with growing horror.

“I, yes I see you’re a busy woman with a lot of important things to do, how about we cut the interview here. I think we’ve… seen more than enough. Thank you for your time. We'll be in contact in about a week or so. Feel free to contact us thank you for your time have a nice afternoon I’ll see you, um.”

Words failed the man as they sped up and became less focused. He remained silent as Fib mumbled out a goodbye and walked out. There was an email sitting in his inbox about to inform him of his forced departure from the company. He did not need to check it.

Fib strutted out of the building with the sort of power pose that supermodels would sacrifice a thousand virgins to summon. In her mind she felt she must have seemed like a mess. Every person she met in the hallways as she made her way back down to the ground floor seemed to deliberately avoid her direct gaze. She wondered if her coffee stain was still visible on her shirt.

It wasn’t until she left the building that she let herself slide out of businesswoman mode and back into her usual familiar self. Good ol’ frazzled Fibbie, one third of the way through her day. She took a deep breath in the open air, then squealed.

“Oh my god oh my god oh my god!” she cheered. “I totally kicked ass in that interview! That guy didn’t know what hit him. I’m so gonna get that position now!”

One trial down, two more to go. Now if only she could find the subway…

The subway trip was fairly uneventful all things considered—the train was slightly late but Jeanne wasn’t a snob about tardiness. Fib arrived just a bit after 1:20, stepping out from the crowded station into the busy midday downtown. The sea of people she climbed through calms her nerves a bit. There was something about the sheer density of the world that made her thoughts a bit easier to manage. Despite her clear breakout success at a young age, she had no qualms about taking public transportation. It calmed her, if anything, seeing everyone going about living their own little lives around her.

“Hey homegirl!” a familiar voice called. Fib got up on the tips of her toes a bit to spot Jeanne, a head taller than most of the crowd at her intimidating 5’11 stature.

Jeanne made her way through the noise of downtown and gave Fib a big hug. It was a kind gesture that only reminded Fib of how much she hated the size difference between them. Jeanne was tall, athletic, damn near glimmering. Her hair had no doubt been dyed crimson red that very morning. Fib barely knew what the girl did for a living. Not that it mattered. Jeanne’s parents were in urban real estate; she’d been well off for as long as Fib had known her. She had been raised on a steady diet of horse-riding lessons and private ballet classes. Her body was a natural well of all American girl charm that couldn’t help but amaze the senses. For all of Fib’s accomplishments, she couldn’t help but feel a little second fiddle to her.

“You look taller, girl,” Jeanne joked. “Did you take some leg enhancement surgeries or something?”

“Nah,” Fib jokingly responded. “I’ve always had that ‘amazon’ thing going on, just naturally above the curve.”

“Looks like somebody’s bragging.”

“It’s not a brag!” Fib said. “It’s hard picking up guys when you’re pretty much a walking telephone pole.”

“Telephone poll? Show me some telephone poles that have those kinda curves and we’ll talk, girl.”

The two stepped out from the crowd, which was easy considering how tall they both were. Even slouching a bit as she was Fib was easily the tallest person around, at a whopping 6’8. And true to Jeanne’s words, that wasn’t a drag at all on the rest of Fib’s figure- she was well-built, well-shaped, and just… well. If anything, there were guys in the room who found themselves averting their gaze just from the casually intimidating aura Fib’s height and build put out. Fib was familiar with this, given that she’d been this tall since freshman year of high school, obviously. It put her on the outs and outs at first, but not many freaks could bring their hometown team to two consecutive volleyball championships and stay freaks for long.

The two headed back into the station. Fib couldn’t help but stare a little at Jeanne as her friend casually swiped through her Instagram feed. Fib wasn’t gay—well, she might have been a little bi but that information would stay between herself, her therapist, her god, and some hundred thousand words of Winx Club fanfiction she’d written back in middle school—but there was something about Jeanne that seemed to call out.

Sure, her friend was tall, fit and curvy, but Jeanne seemed to shine in a way that surpassed all of that. People talked nicely to her, sincerely and not just out of slight fear and general politeness. Guys tripped over themselves to bask within her presence. While Fib had been out busting her ass dominating the corporate ladder while double timing college life, she’d been taking her life one step at a time and living so effortlessly for it. Also, her hair was softer than silk and smoother than polished glass. That didn’t hurt either.

The train arrived moments later. Jeanne grabbed Fib’s arm for support, and in that brief moment Fib’s brain was completely absolutely empty. This part of the city was slightly less crowded than downtown proper, more of a weekend destination than a weekday lunch spot. Which was for the better really, if Fib had to deal with any more traffic she felt ready to go absolutely apeshit.

“You wanna fuckin go, bro?” a rowdy masculine voice yelled out nearby. Fib cursed under her breath.

“Nah brah, I’m ready, you fuckin ready?” a second slightly deeper yet distinctly more pathetic voice responded.

Fib failed to fight the urge to stare directly at the trash fire. Two shirtless frat guys were currently circling each other like crustaceans, shamelessly shirtless in the midday spring sun. She did notice that one of them was carrying a pistol on their belt, which wasn’t helping her nerves.

“Hey, Fib, let’s keep moving,” Jeanne said, tugging at Fib’s arm slightly.

Fib wanted to. She really really wanted to. But there was a part of her that also didn’t want to, perhaps emboldened by her girlboss streak that felt very recent and foreign to her body despite having been the status quo of her life for five years by that point. She’d seen plenty of tough guys—advertising hotshots who thought they could charm their way into a bad sale, middle management who thought themselves too good to get into the nitty gritty of operation, older executives stuck in their old petty ways. She hadn’t gotten to where she was today by just standing around and letting shit happen to her. It was, but Fib had no way of knowing that. From her perspective at least, Fibee LeBlanc was a girl who got shit done, and god dammit if she wasn’t gonna get shit done right then and there.

Fib tugged her arm away from Jeanne, easily breaking out of her friend’s measly grip and nearly causing her to. She walked right over to the disturbance. Some eyes of passersby stared as she walked, but she didn’t care. She was Fib LeBlanc, she made more in a year than most of these people would see in five. She was gonna do what she was gonna do, whether they liked it or not. The two douchebags didn’t notice her until she was already right up and close to her, looming over them. First one of their voices piped down, then the other as the two men realized there was a 6’8 woman looking over both of them, the taller one easily half a foot shorter than her. Fib smiled. It was good to be looking down on someone for once. It was also just as good to be looking down on someone for always.

“Oh, sorry, was I interrupting something?” Fib beamed.

“Personal space lady,” the taller, more pathetic man said. He gave her a shove, pushing her back a step. “Learn about it.”

“Yeah bitch,” the other guy said, totally forgetting about the earlier alteration and joining on his former enemy’s side. “Get outta his fuckin face.”

A lightning shock ran through Fib’s head. For a second, a tinge of doubt—of fear—ran through Fib’s mind. She felt shaken, which was a feeling both foreign and all too familiar to her body. Fib took a deep breath in, followed by a calm, relaxing exhale to calm herself. It seemed to work flawlessly.

“No,” she answered. “No I think I’m right up and close as I wanna be.”

“What, you think because you’re such a fucking bean pole you can take two guys on at once? Come on, be my guest,” the first man answered.

“Easily,” she responded. She relaxed her muscles. “Go be a nuisance somewhere else, I’m fucking busy.”

Fib turned to walk away, only for a hand to grab around her wrist.

“Look me in the eye when I’m talking to you,” the guy said. “Don’t be such a skank.”

The slap came like a freight train, a quick heel pivot sending her hand square into the man’s cheek. It rang out loud and clear across the street.

“Fib!” Jeanne shouted, half indignant, half terrified on her behalf.

“What? He deserved it,” said Fib, which was not a lie.

“Oh you fuckin-“ came from the second man as he tried to jump on Fib. He seemed to have not been all that experienced with fighting, or maybe he was just really drunk, because it took little more than a side step for her to dodge his half-assed lunge. She suppressed a chuckle.

“What, really? That was your best shot? I could beat both your asses with one hand, hell, I could beat you both with five cents and my pinky, this is just sad!”

Fib didn’t notice the slightly toned musculature underneath her, nor did she notice the years of trained fighting experience she’d taken up as a hobby in the free time she somehow had while running a company and going to college. She definitely wouldn’t have noticed the trace amounts of superhuman strength now shooting through her veins, a necessity to give her the ability to fight off these guys with that much ease.

It just so happened that in the very same instance the first guy got up and threw another clumsily orchestrated punch, so sloppy that Fib felt it moving in something akin to slow mo. It was effortless for her to dodge around it, this time following up not with any of her endless actual combat techniques she’d learned in her life thus far, but with a simple slap that sent him hurtling out towards the curb—five yards away from the scuffle. He was still in midair when she saw the second guy coming up to grab her by the waist. She sent out an instinctual front kick that felt “right” even if every part of her consciously knew such a move had no place in any sort of real fighting environment. For whatever reason though, it still came out fast enough to hit him square in the chest. She heard an audible crack before he went flying out against the nearest building, slamming against the stone wall with a dull thud before flopping over.

And that was that. Both men were thoroughly incapacitated. Fib felt proud of herself, at least until she started to take in the rest of the world around her and realized there was a big crowd gathered, with a horrified Jeanne dead in the middle.

“What did you just do to them?” Jeanne asked, her voice soft and scared.

“I- I-“

Fib looked over at the guys. They were breathing, but that was the best she could say about them. The shorter guy was partially entombed in the wall, concrete chipped off around him from the sheer force she’d kicked with. The other guy had dented a metal mailbox. “They’re—those guys’ll live, they’ll be, uh, more or less fine!”

This was true, though it wasn’t like any of the people gathered would be able to tell that.

“Fib you- you can’t just… oh my god…”

“It’s fine! Seriously, Jeanne it’s- this is normal! Sometimes stuff like this just… happens! They deserved it, anyways. There’s no reason for you or anyone else here to fret over what just happened.”

The crowd started to filter out, as if all at once losing disinterest in the occasion. Jeanne sighed.

“Oh Fib, what am I gonna do with you? You’re such a headache to deal with.”

“Wait, are we seriously cool?”

“Why would I be mad at you? They were jackasses, you got in a little scuffle, whatever. My dad used to get into worse fights when he was my age and he’s like, mega uber super duper rich now. So it just goes to show. Are we still good for shopping?”

Fib stopped herself. A part of her was starting to ask some serious questions about the reality she was currently living in. Small minor inconsistencies in knowledge she instinctively took as true and fundamental were starting to build up in her mind, and it was bringing about some sort of horrible revelation she felt ever so slightly teetering on the cusp on. As if with just a little bit more thought, just a tiny bit more thinking she could realize… could realize…

“Hello? Earth to Fibonacci, you there?” Jeanne called out.

“Yep yep, let’s get going, a clothing shopping we will go!”

“… you must have gotten knocked on the head badly in that fight.”

“What makes you say that?”

“We’re already in the mall, girl. Look around you.”

Sure enough, Jeanne was right. A cursory glance around Fib overwhelmed her with the iconic American locale, though this was no time to be at awe of something totally normal and expected. Fake. It. Till. You. Make. It.

As it turns out, Willow’s Café was quite the walk from where Fib and Jeanne had found themselves. Fib herself found it was such a walk that she had in fact no actual idea where the store was located. Her eyes started to get sore as she continued hiking through the liminal spaces of the nebulous mall. Her newly acquired mastery of the realm of business proved fruitless for basic directional navigational skills, especially since Jeanne appeared to be following her. She faintly remembered that this dichotomy had been commented on before, though when and by who she couldn’t say for sure. The temperature inside the mall was hot, blisteringly so, and Fib found small beads of sweat running down her brow. At this rate, it wouldn’t be long before her fancy interview attire was drenched. She mumbled under her breath.

“Ugh, wow, the asshats running the air conditioning in this place must’ve worked overtime last night to make sure I felt comfortable. Perfect temperature for a patron to wear a full get up, really amazing considerations all around.”

The temperature dropped to a pleasant cool, occasional gusts of wind spawning from seemingly nowhere. Her mumbling died out just as quickly. Fib couldn’t remember what she’d been so worked up over, the temperature control within the mall was absolutely sublime.

“Wow, that really makes this whole trek bearable, huh? I really shouldn’t have taken the power of AC in a shopping mall for granite.”

“Granted, Fib,” Jeanne shot back.

“Huh?”

“It’s ‘take everything for granted,’ not ‘granite.’”

Not wanting to look stupid on top of lost, Fib did what she did best and doubled down. “No, it’s ‘taken for granite,’ I’m sure of it. Y’know, because the miners back in the day, uh, were quick to assume certain rocks were granite and, well, I’m sure you can figure out the rest.”

Jeanne whipped out her phone in disbelief and googled the term. Her jaw nearly dropped at the first links to headlines she saw and then fully dropped as she checked the next five pages of search results.

The two girls continued moving down the mall, Fib attracting more than a few eyeballs at her confident strut and stealing all would-be attention from her friend. Even outside of her full business poise, she was still quite the looker now. It was as if the confidence she had within was exuding out, like an overflowing, nearly seven-foot-tall bucket. People felt just a bit better about themselves as the girlboss extraordinaire came by, just a bit of her blessings upon them.

Fib was paying so little attention to the matter that she barely noticed the middle aged woman crashing head on into her bosom. She staggered back as the other woman caught her bearings again.

“Is something—”

“Get out of the way, lady!” the woman shouted. Fib was a little offended at the insult, but the woman was back running down the street before she could respond. She wasn’t alone, actually- several people were running back the way Fib and Jeanne had come, and if she followed her eyes down the litany of outlets she could almost make out the source. Fire. One of the old restaurant outlets neighboring Willow’s had seemingly caught aflame, and the gathered fire trucks, sirens wailing, were poorly equipped to handle its scope, especially since they were struggling to fit enough staff within the mall itself. How had she managed to zone this out before?

“Uhh, was that where we were going to go shop, exactly?”

Jeanne’s expression shrank into a regretful nod. “Sorry hon, looks like we’re gonna have to try somewhere else. Jenny’s is open for another hour at least. They’re pretty expensive, even compared to Willow’s Café, but…”

Jeanne’s words faded out into the back of Fib’s mind. In the 26 year old’s head, she was still the same broke recent graduate she’d been when the morning started. Fib couldn’t even have afforded Willow’s Café, and now that it was burning down in front of her she’d have to go to an even pricier locale? Her mind was buzzing in a thousand different directions, yet something continued dragging her to the scene of the accident, to where first responders were barking commands as onlookers gawked at the sight.

“…yeah and Jenny’s has those discounts too which—Fib? Fib, hon. Where are you going?”

“Fake it til you make it…” Fibee muttered to herself. “Fake it til you make it… Fake it til you—”

“Fib, you aren’t really thinking of walking in there, right? Look, if money’s an issue I can-“

Jeanne’s words didn’t register in Fib’s mind. All she could think about was taking one step, then the next, then the next, then the next. Some of the firemen immediately outside the steps leading into the burning store stopped her.

“Miss, I’m gonna have to ask you to step aside for your own safety.”

Fib looked up at the man, tall and broad shouldered. She smiled dryly. “It’s fine, I can handle it. I need to go in there to get something, I’ll only be there a minute.”

The man was struck immediately by her presence. She was calm, yet in her eyes burned a clear and present urgency, as though her need to be inside the building were, as a random hypothetical example, just then coded into reality as a universal constant.

“Well—I… once we get the fire under control, we can possibly talk further, but at the moment it’s far too dangerous for you to pass through the perimeter.”

“Look, I’m going to start running late for a date at this rate and—“

“Step aside or I will make you.”

The harshness of his words shocked her back into the moment. For a second she almost considered turning back, but the thought of facing Jeanne again empty handed stopped her. So instead, she laughed awkwardly.

“M’am? Are you doing alright?”

“It’s just, I have higher authorization than you from the uh, OBEV Fire… People… Guys. Them. Yeah. You might know me, Fibee LeBlanc? I’m sort of a big deal.”

The man stepped out of her way.

“Y-yes, I understand Ms. LeBlanc, anything you say.”

She ran on in. A few other rescue workers tried to run in after her, but the fireman stopped them. Her credentials, once faked, now canonical, more than spoke for themselves.

Fibee stepped into the burning shop, and then immediately wondered why she had done so in the first place. It was hot, impossibly hot. She felt a sort of calm and collectedness in heat, but the peace was only giving her the ability to more accurately reflect upon how truly fucked she was. If she went further into the two-story outlet, there was the risk it could collapse at any time. Then there was the issue of the heat, already she was too close to it as is, there was the matter of how much of the warehouse had already gone up in flames before she had even gone here, and then the…

Fibee took a deep breath, ignoring her burning lungs as smoke was inhaled into them.

“They built this mall too stable for it to fall, it’s not gonna fall, it’s not gonna fall,” she kept repeating to herself, like a mantra. With every iteration of the phrase, the building’s foundations grew stronger, more and more reinforced. What were once structural instabilities were now hardened sturdy steel columns. The fire began licking at her heels.

“It can’t touch you, it can’t touch you, the fire can’t hurt you, I can barely even feel the fire, right? It doesn’t even feel like it’s there!”

She opened her eyes slightly, and to her surprise though the fire still raged, it felt as though she’d never left outside. She was aware on some level of how unusual this whole situation was, but it was like the longer the day went on the further her mind seemed to drift into a sleep all its own. Everything felt less than totally real, and this was only the latest of many oddities she’d come upon already.

As she passed deeper into the once gorgeously modeled boutique now set aflame, her attention was pulled again by screaming. She followed the noise to a woman, seemingly a customer, who had fallen beneath a rack of clothes and was struggling to get up. Feeling a sudden tug of heroism, Fib ran over to her, and immediately went to try to pull the woman out.

“I’ve got you!” Fib shouted over the roar. It hardly felt like today was the same day that she’d been interviewed.

The woman screamed indiscriminately as she got to her feet.

“M-my daughter—” the woman stammered, looking out to a pile of other discarded racks.

“Oh my god—is that the discount pile?”

The woman stammered out something akin to a question but Fib was already busy zipping over to the pile to check the mess out. She began rifling through the different clothes within, most miraculously untouched by the flames, until a weak, soft voice cried out from underneath the collapse.

“H-hello?” the voice called.

A girl. There was a girl buried underneath the discount pile.

“Hold on, give me a second to try out all these clothes!” Fib selfishly stated—and then time stopped. Fib began flipping through one blouse, attempting it on, seeing if it fit, before discarding it to try on another, and another, and another, til she was little more than a blur trying on different clothes and styles in all sorts of assorted combinations. At the speeds she was traveling at, the very flames themselves seemed frozen, which barely concerned Fib. In Fib’s mind this was all little more than a pleasant dream, and she herself the recipient of it.

When she was done, true to her word, she had checked out every single item in the discount pile in a single second—unintentionally clearing it up—revealing the sputtering teenage girl underneath the metal. With what strength she could muster, she opened up the way through the pile, getting to her feet while Fib was still busy musing over the articles she’d decided to buy.

“Are you- what are you? Are you some sort of superhero?”

“What, like Superman?” Fib asked. “Nah, I’m like, way stronger than that guy.” She joked, before returning to her work. And all at once the strength of a billion men flooded into her, filling her with incalculable strength. A nearby dresser had fallen, and with a single finger she began to heft it up, up, up til it was back towards its rightful place. The girl began to run back to her mother, and the two left the store, surprised to see that only a minute had passed in the world, everything else seeming to pass in slow motion. In fact, the longer Fib stayed, the more time seemed to slow outside, til it was a near crawl as Fib’s long drawn out solo shopping spree had come to a close. When it was done, she’d nearly reorganized the entire store in no time at all. She picked out a few clothes, putting some money atop the flaming cash register—not that it could hurt her invulnerable skin anyways—and hoping the cameras didn’t catch her sneaking the rest of her catch in her bag—they couldn’t, she moved at speeds so quickly now that she moved between the camera’s frames.

Triumphantly, Fib stepped out with several bags full of freshly toasted high end clothing, a woman remade. As she did so, time resumed at once, the woman and the girl choking out smoke from their lungs while the firefighters sat in absent shock at how this OBEV authorized higher up had seemingly done so much work to prevent the fire from growing worse. The outlet, against all odds, had stood up against the fire despite its age, and there was hope for the premises to be saved after all.

This meant very little to Fib, who came back to a shell-shocked Jeanne bright as a spring feather. “Check it out Jeanne, made out with these like a bandit. In perfect condition too!”

A pitiful whimper that was really just a stuttered vowel was all Jeanne could muster. Fib’s lies simply did not match up enough with Jeanne’s current perception of reality. Her brain was like a microcosm of the greater universe struggling to make sense of Fib’s sheer hypocrisy.

“What? You’re still buggin’ about the fire?” Fib asked her friend, who still possessed a mile-wide stare. “Dude, c’mon, that was sooo long ago and it was literally no big deal.”

Time seemed to advance forward in a near instant, shadows on the walls from the skylight tracking a hyperfast movement of the sun. Jeanne was none the wiser, as she felt a remarkable calm wash over her body all of the sudden. However, this calm was short-lived as her wide-eyed gaze caught a glimpse of a detail far more pertinent to her friend.

“Uhh, Fib? I just saw the clock on the back wall.”

“Cool?”

“It’s a quarter to five.”

“…you’re losing me.”

“Bestie. Your date. It’s at five.”

“Oh. That’s not good.”

“His place is an hour up north.”

Fib nearly snapped her neck to spot the clock. Sure enough, it read 4:45. The time was actually 3:34, the outlet’s owners not having bothered to account for daylight savings time.

“Oh god it’s 4:45.”

And then it was 4:45 PM. At this point, Fib’s changes had gotten so large in scope that erasing an entire hour from a day was minor in comparison. Fib was far more concerned with running out of the mall in a hurry. Jeanne chased after, out into the late afternoon retail complex.

“Fib! Just call him and tell him you’ll be late!” Jeanne screamed. Her vocal cords strained against each other.

“I’ll be fine! I know a shortcut, I can get there in a minute!”

“It’s an hour away, hon, you can’t-“

Fib disappeared into the crowd. Literally. She winked out of existence between two passersby making their way up the escalator.

Let us return to the realms of the abstract and the divine. Or the realms formerly of the abstract and divine, currently of the shit and fuck with the degree of total nonsense that is rippling through every level of reality right now. Those beings capable of higher thought were at this point well aware of the source of the cause. On some lower plane of existence, in a three dimensional planetoid its inhabitants called “Earth”, some lower lifeform had somehow come into contact with… something that had allowed them to make such wide sweeping changes onto the fundamental nature of reality. The ambiguity unsettled them. They kept track of libraries of countably infinite size and shape with intellects powered by the energy of entire star systems. And yet even they, the intellectuals of the layered universe, could not even hope to fathom what accident of spacetime had allowed this benign mortal, less than a germ to their heights, could so easily bend reality to its breaking points.

Star systems winked in and out of existence. Spells cast in one realm would spray out into another. Gravity would start, stop, reverse, invert, then wrinkle to begin the cycle all over again. On some of the more abstract planes of existence, the changes were more drastic. Everything from history to time to conceptual understandings were being molded like clay to conform to this single woman’s demands. The universe was at its breaking point. Anymore and meaning itself might crumble to dust, reality itself could become a plaything for her to contort as she pleased.

So the thinkers and watchers and entities and abstracts pushed upon the impenetrable bubble that had been built upon the three dimensional universe and its strange little planetoid called earth. Like a wall, it held firm, but like an egg, it was not without cracks. And through one of those cracks, just a bit of the unknowable began to seep through, down into the mortal world below.

Fib exited the dimensional wormhole she’d created with her exaggeration in a single breathless motion. She stumbled a bit, before regaining her poise and composure. She looked around. She’d somehow crossed out from the middle of urbanity right into the middle of the backroads of the backroads. Leo’s family definitely liked their isolation. She’d only been there once before, when Leo had to go back to pick something up. She remembered the oak trees, so high and mighty as they seemed then. Perhaps it was how nicely her day had been going so far but, they didn’t seem nearly as high or mighty now. It gave her the inner confidence to push through the ritzy marble gates at the front of the manor. They were just for show, really, but it was one hell of an impressive show. She felt as though she were stepping into another realm entirely. And far along on that grassy path was the edifice itself. A striking colonial home, too small to be called anything but a mansion but somehow quainter, less artificial than the term might otherwise imply. It had a driveway, like most homes, and a front door with a wooden doorbell and a hanging lamplight, also like most homes. It was just larger. A lot larger.

The woman felt her will waver for the first time since waiting for the interview. She was about to actually meet her boyfriend’s parents, for realsies. What would they think about her? Sure she had nailed the interview and had a decent if weird time downtown, but this was different, way higher stakes. Everything Leo had told her about his parents had only raised her anxieties. Perhaps if she knew of all the accolades she’d given herself she’d feel more secure in her position, but as it was she couldn’t help but feel as though her earlier accomplishments during the day had been mere flukes.

“Fake it til you make it… fake it til you make it…” Fib repeated under her breath. It was part mantra, part ritual, as though she were casting a spell to manifest her confidence into outward reality. It wasn’t entirely far from the truth.

“I’m Fib LeBlanc. I’m cool. I’m smart. I’m like, so sexy that anybody else would be lucky to be around me. I’m super lovable, and talented, and I’m a strong independent woman. Did I say smart already?”

With every self-reassurance, she changed. Her height went up by nearly half a foot. Her bangs became immaculately kept, like those a celebrity might prepare before an interview. Her figure filled out til her curves seemed to almost define the outfit more than the outfit defined her curves. Her eyes became like deep almond pools, punctuated with pupils dark like space itself. Her face’s features came into vivid focus. Years of focused muscle training appeared on her in moments as hardened abs formed upon her stomach. And all this merely compounded her existing inhuman composure, that mastery of natural charisma and confidence she’d acquired from her business life. It was as though a storm of Fib had begun pushing towards the manor, down along the lengthy driveway up to the front doors, where two perfect knocks heralded the arrival of that which none could ever hope to prepare for.

There was a pause, and then the door opened.

“Well, I figure you must be,” an older man with the beginning whispers of gray hairs began. He didn’t finish, because the rest of his sentence was stuck in his throat as he took a quick look at the indescribably gorgeous sweetheart who was standing before him. His heartbeat shot up through the roof as he totally failed to contain his perversion. His mind clouded over. Those legs, that waist, those arms… oh god, the eyes. His own internal monologue seemed to trail off into infinity.

“Hey, I’m Fib. Um, I’m assuming you’re Mr. Montgomery? I’m Leo’s, um, girlfriend.”

The older man nodded, eying her down one more time. Fib wasn’t totally oblivious, she could tell he was creeping on her at least. She tried to shrug off the discomfort, chuckling as she walked in. Mr. Montgomery reached a single hand out to her, which she pushed away with only the barest of effort. She noticed that the gesture seemed to throw the man back a ways, shaking him from his Fib induced trance state.

“Huh, I must be stronger than I thought,” Fib mused to herself, eying her fingernails.

She was distracted long enough to crash headfirst into a certain young man, slender and lanky in a sleek sort of way. He fell flat on his ass, totally laid prone by Fib’s now definitely superhuman strength.

“Oh, Leo! Sorry babe, I got distracted, your dad let me in,” Fib explained.

Leo’s mind was blank. He saw one look at his date in this form and was instantly hypnotized. Every element of her that he loved physically seemed amplified to an almost painful degree. It was like staring at the sun, where the sun was also a black hole that his gaze was drawn to all the same. Every part of her body seemed to be so perfect, every inch of her pose so commanding that he couldn’t help but feel his heart and will totally bend. He wanted, no, he needed to serve her from now until the moment his breath gave in. He would—

And then he saw it. Well, he didn’t truly see it, because if he had he would have gone mad from just the glimpse and spent the rest of his days in an insane asylum. What he saw could more accurately be described as the shadow of the unseeable, just the echoes from the veil of reality peeling back just slightly, allowing the smallest fraction of the endless layered realms to make themselves known to him. And he didn’t truly comprehend that, either, but what the momentary connection did allow him was a moment of complete sobriety. Not knowledge, just the deep guttural understanding that something about the world as it was now was deeply, fundamentally wrong.

“Oh, you must be Leo’s little lady, you look absolutely gorgeous darling! Let me take you right in, dinner’s almost ready!”

Leo snapped back into focus as his mother pulled Fib away. His father came right up beside him, having just gotten back on his feet himself.

“You’ve got yourself one heck of a lucky lass around your arm, Leo.”

“Yeah…” Leo said, unsure of his own unsureness.

Dinner in the Montgomery household was a sacred affair, reserved mainly for guests and major events. Otherwise it was something best left shared alone in front of a tv with some reheated dish. Neither Mr. nor Mrs. Montgomery would admit this aloud, to do so would be to break the spell the meal had over them. And there truly was a powerful spell in the air that night. Fib’s mind melting beauty had calmed to a more reasonable impossible beauty that coupled with her effortless charisma had the Montgomeries eating out of her hand, Leo excepted. He had instead taken to silence, only chiming in when directly prompted. He seemed to be intently concentrated on something, but Fib couldn’t figure out what it was. She tried to not fret on the matter.

Fib poked at her air fried artisanal steak. She wasn’t sure in the slightest what that word meant, but it seemed interesting in any case. It was tasty as all hell. She jabbed Leo with her shoulder, hoping to catch him off guard with a witty line of some sort, but he only glanced up at her with a strange confused look.

“Something wrong?” she asked.

“Have you… always been this tall?” Leo asked.

Fib thought about that question. “Am I taller than usual?”

“No, it’s probably nothing,” Leo answered. “Just feeling weird.”

“Oh.”

The table went quiet again. Mr. Montgomery broke the silence with a heart laugh.

“So, Leo was telling us about you having an interview today? Quite the working woman, are you?”

“Oh, yeah, at Seacrest? They have some offices in the city.”

“Ooo, Seacrest. I hear they’re up and bustling,” Mrs. Montgomery chimed in.

“Yeah, they’re like, basically the richest company in America right now,” Fib exaggerated. Instantly, the company’s net worth shot up into the trillions of dollars, stacking it right as the richest company not only in America, but indeed in the world. “Kind of a big deal.”

Mr. Montgomery let out a polite whistle. “Ooo, impressive. One of my old business partners just landed some new deals with Seacrest, an absolutely wonderful place. Think you did well?”

“I mean, I basically already landed the job,” Fib bragged. It was functionally true already, but a bit of codification into the fundamental laws of reality never killed anyone who wouldn’t already be dead.

“I thought Seacrest was a new company,” said Leo. “How’d they climb to the status of wealthiest company in the world in just a few years since going public?”

Fib winced. “Well, um, actually they’ve been around like, forever. A lotta time to acquire capital or whatever, right?”

Leo’s parents nodded, suddenly recalling Seacrest’s long successful century in industry, spreading from one field to the next. They had long since become a household name. Even Leo remembered seeing ads for them on tv as a kid, which bothered him because he was also just as sure that he had barely even heard of the company before Fib had walked in today.

“Well yes, very very long running company,” Mr. Montgomery confirmed. “Cousin of mine worked there in HR for a… how long was Maggie there, dear?”

“Twenty years, give or take,” Mrs. Montgomery added.

“What? No, Aunt Maggie worked at Dynaplex, right?”

Mr. Montgomery chortled a bit. “Dynaplex? What on Earth’s a Dynaplex?”

“Well it’s… a…” Leo’s voice cut out. He realized suddenly he had no idea what he was saying. He looked to Fib, who only shrugged.

“But enough about work talk, let’s talk about you!” Mrs. Montgomery said. “Are you into any sports? More of a nature lover or a city girl at heart? No judgment, Hank here didn’t start jogging til he was 40!”

She chortled to herself.

“Hey, I think the proof’s in the putting. Look at those biceps, I think she’s been hitting the gym. You could take some tips from her, Leo. Don’t want your girlfriend to out bench you!”

“Yeah, with the amount I work out, I’m probably way stronger than your entire lineage combined!” Fib chimed in, a misspoken intention rapidly changing reality. She barely even noticed her fitness triple, the tendons in her muscles growing denser. She patted Leo on the back, slamming him against the table.

“Oh, sorry. I guess I don't know my own strength.”

“You’ve… never been into working out,” Leo responded.

“What?”

“You’ve never been into working out. Or big business.”

“Uh, I’ve… always been super into both of those things. Is your memory working alright?”

Leo shook his head as new memories flooded into his head.

“No, that’s the issue I think. I’m remembering all of this stuff but it feels like I’m seeing through someone else’s lenses. And like, the more stuff about that Fib I remember, the less I remember the Fib I, uh, actually know.”

Fib frowned. “Look babe if you weren’t feeling it, you could have just called out.”

“Come on, let me go into the kitchen,” Mrs. Montgomery began, “I can prep up some desert and-”

“You two should step out for a second,” Fib stated. The finality in her voice shut them both up. They silently nodded, pushing out their seats and leaving like two scolded children.

“What the…”

“What the fuck, Leo? I thought you were the one who wanted me to meet your parents!”

“What did you just do?”

“I… I said it'd be better for them to step out for a second.”

“No, you told them to leave. Just like you told them to like you and just like you’ve been saying all this crap all night that somehow keeps winding up to be true even though I know it isn’t.”

“How do you know? How do you know I’m not all the things I say I am if you even admit your memories agree with me?”

“Because I just know! Because when we went out for the first time, I wanted to hang out with someone who wasn’t so busy with deadlines and productivity and sales and money like everyone else in my life. Because you were you, the short lanky girl with the messy black hair who always had a quick comeback in the back of her mind, who could talk her way out of everything. It's not that I’m not happy for you but… this is…”

He put his head down in his hands, his mind torn by the countless conflicting truths bouncing around in his mind. Fib retreated into herself.

“I. I didn’t know you felt that way.”

“Sorry, look I fucked up dinner, let me just call my parents back and we can-“

“I lied!”

Leo looked up.

“What?”

“I lied! I’m not rich and successful, Seacrest is just a new tech company in the area, they aren’t the richest company in America. I’ve been wearing flats and holding my chest. Yeah I was getting into jogging but I’m not some kinda fitness junkie. I just, I’ve been going through today lying through my interview and through hanging with Jeanne in town because I thought, maybe if I could say enough good stuff about me, maybe I could lie to myself. And maybe I could believe it.”

With every sentence her form retreated back into itself as she reverted to her old, demure self. She wouldn’t meet Leo’s eyes.

“Fake it til you make it.”

Her eyes lit up. “Yeah, exactly.”

“I think you’re saying it too literally. It doesn’t mean lying until the lie becomes the truth. It’s more like, uh, hyping yourself up, and giving yourself that confidence you need to take on anything. I mean you impressed my parents, and you kinda shocked me with how good you looked when you came in. All that with just a bit of self confidence? I think you don’t even need to lie to yourself.”

Fib thought on those words for a moment.

“Yeah. Yeah, I think you’re right. I don’t need to be some sort of super businesswoman or fashion celebrity to be awesome. I’m Fib Fucking LeBlanc! I’m cool! I’m hot! I was basically destined for greatness!”

With every exclamation a radiant aura of beauty and grace burst outwards from her. Leo’s quiet joy in Fib’s self-actualization morphed into sudden delayed realization of exactly what was going on.

“Wait, Fib, you should-“

“Everyone everywhere should love me! I’m like, the best thing that ever happened! Anywhere!”

She was glowing, literally actually glowing so brightly that the reflection was glaring off every reflexive surface in the dining room.

“Fib, hold on, let’s just talk this through, okay?”

She turned to Leo with bright burning eyes of fire, growing up past six feet as her ego skyrocketed. “I’m bigger than Jesus! Bigger than Buddha! Bigger than John Lennon! I'm basically a goddess!”

And that was that. Leo dropped to his knees as Fib’s entire appearance transfigured itself. Her clothes burnt off with radiant light, no mortal fabric fit to conceal her form. Something akin to a robe cloaked her, but it flowed as though made of creams and honey. The young man stumbled back on all fours away from the new being that had once been his girlfriend.

“Fib! Fib you have to stop talking you—”

“I’m better than a goddess, I’m like a goddess’s goddess! I’m like, capital G God, wayyyyy above any existence possible or impossible. I’m like, the Divine Itself! Everything else exists only because I desire it! Only because I willed it to be so!”

“Fibee! I don’t need you to be something else to love you.”

Leo’s words cut through Fib’s grandstanding, causing her to pause and really consider the sentence spoken. While she couldn’t put it to words, it sort of changed her entire worldview up to that very moment without her even realizing. Then she put it to words, only the universe itself spoke it in her stead.

Wait. Really? You mean that I could’ve been an honest plain-jane this whole time and you would’ve stood by me?

Leo’s vocal chords had already been reduced to atoms for attempting to speak within the presence of a DivineGodQueen such as Fibee LeBlanc, but she could hear the verbal confirmation of ‘yes' from within his mind, which was good enough for her.

Leo then gave out a squeal as his eyes burst into tears and flame. Fib couldn’t see him. She couldn’t see anything but the splendor of Her own ascension. The layered universe collapsed in on itself. All levels pouring into the third dimension and stripped of any heights or titles they might have known. Fib’s words rambled on and on in endless tongues layered over each other, deeming Herself with every single status or position held. Everything from the lowliest prince to the most unfathomable elder horror found their abilities and glory stripped, to be fed to the endless fire that was Fib. The universe smiled upon her, and it loved her. And its eyes—her eyes—looked upon herself and deemed it good.

But Fib didn’t care about the universe right now, much as it desired to be noticed by her. She was still thinking about what her partner had said.

Uh, Leo? You good?

Leo was silent, backed against the wall as Her Radiance took a bearing of the surroundings.

Yeah, you’re good.

And then he was good.

“Wh—what just happened? What did You do?” Leo asked.

Dunno. Anyways, back to what you were saying earlier.

He writhed from just the feeling of Her attention on his form, even after becoming good. Before She could ask more painful questions, there was a ring at the doorbell. Her light was so powerful that it had seemingly drowned out the rest of the room, the dining room blurring into a mess of shapes.

Ugh, just ignore whoever that is and they’ll go away.

The doorbell stopped ringing.

Alright, tell me again.

“Fibee! I don’t need you to be something else to love you.” He repeated it perfectly with identical cadence, as if on loop.

Damn… I… I’ve never had anyone say that about me. Y’know?

Leo’s mind was suddenly flooded with memories of old, heavily biased ones that exaggerated disappointment from caricatures of Her mother and her father, all telling Fib that she wasn’t working hard enough and needed to do more. Moreover, Leo was relieved that this allowed his mind to process thoughts again. Something other than an endless shout of jubilation and praise for the One Final Ultimate Goddess.

“Well Fib, it’s true. I know my parents can be a bit snooty, seems like yours definitely were, but I didn’t need you to impress them or anything. I love you, and that’s that.”

Fib blushed bright gold. Her hair by this point had long since taken on the same radiant gold as Her aura, one fitting for an ascended being like Herself. She had become the pinnacle of perfection and grace, the apex of existence. Such was life.

Honestly, all this nonsense is making my head hurt a bit. You wanna just cuddle upstairs?

“I would like that very much,” Leo responded. It was unclear to even him if he meant that. But unlike all of Her lies, it simply felt right to say.

That would be the last time Fib took anyone’s beliefs for granite.