MARVEL: I CAN ADAPT TO ANYTHING EVEN DEATH

*Chapter 9: "The Hollow Sky"*

*Year: 4100 BC*

*Location: Andes Mountains – Prehistoric Peru*

The wind at this altitude could peel the skin from bone. Thin, dry, merciless. The mountains were jagged knives of stone, reaching toward a sky too cold to care. Nothing moved here. No beasts. No birds.

Only the dead.

And something beneath them.

Pluto walked where gods were said to fear—cloaked in a long robe made from shadows spun by his system. His illusion this time was faint. He had taken no new identity. His eyes were uncovered, silver and bright, and the wind did not dare touch them.

The people in the valleys below called this place *Cielo Hueco*—The Hollow Sky.

They believed it was cursed. They were right.

His system whispered with certainty.

*[SIGNATURE LOCKED – CLASS 5 DEVIANT DETECTED]*

*Designation: V'zal-Tor, "The Hollow God"*

*Type: Atmospheric Displacer / Celestial Mimicry Node*

*Function: Cloud Seeding, Genetic Light Manipulation, Atmospheric Subjugation*

*State: Dormant Core Fragment Reactivating*

*Threat Level: Critical – Dimensional Drift Active*

He had faced brute Deviants. Psionic beasts. Hive minds. But this?

This was a creature that had been designed not to kill—but to *replace the sky itself*.

***

The ruins of the old ones lay ahead—massive, circular stone platforms carved into mountaintops, long before men had tools to carve. Obelisks pointed skyward, etched with non-human glyphs that shimmered when Pluto stepped close.

There was no wind here. Not truly.

There was only the breath of *V'zal-Tor*.

In the open air above, the sky rippled—not visibly, but in energy. The sun fractured like broken glass, and colors began to bleed into impossible shades. Time warped subtly. Hours passed in minutes. Minutes stretched into eternities.

Pluto narrowed his eyes.

It had already begun to rewrite the laws of perception in this region.

He dropped his cloak.

His system activated a full scan.

*[EXPOSURE: COSMIC-LIGHT WARP FIELD DETECTED]*

*[ADAPTIVE MODE: STABILIZE TEMPORAL ANCHOR]*

*[Warning: Deviant Core Operating Across Three Planes Simultaneously]*

To destroy it, he'd have to face it on *all three planes*—physical, mental, and quantum.

He sighed.

"Of course."

***

The first layer hit like fire.

A storm of light crashed from the sky—white, gold, violet, then black. It wasn't lightning. It was *unrefined cosmic data*, meant to overwrite whatever it touched. A weaker being would be erased on a molecular level.

Pluto walked into it.

The pain would've killed gods.

He didn't feel pain anymore. He felt *evolution*.

His body adapted—his cells mimicked the distortion, absorbing fragments of the cosmic data without succumbing to it. The wind no longer tore at him. The colorless light bent around him.

Above, the "sky" blinked open—an *eye*, not metaphorical but real. Watching.

Then it *spoke*.

*"You are not part of this world."*

"No," Pluto said calmly. "But you won't be part of it much longer either."

The mountain exploded.

***

He was pulled upward—not by gravity, but by *dimensional displacement*. His body phased into the second plane, a place of raw geometry and shimmering emotion. No ground. No sky. Only concept.

There, *V'zal-Tor's true body* coiled through fractal clouds. A serpent of starlight and entropy, its face a sun, its body made of shifting equations.

It opened its mouth. Not to speak. To *calculate him out of existence*.

Pluto struck first.

His fists were concepts now—each blow coded with adaptive power. Where he struck, *constants broke*. V'zal-Tor tried to bend him into equations, but Pluto evolved into a variable it couldn't solve.

His system pulsed:

*[ADAPTATION: METACOGNITIVE RESISTANCE STABILIZED]*

*[ABSORBED: MINOR COSMIC EXPRESSION - STARLIGHT THREAD]*

*[NOTE: Exposure Time Approaching Quantum Burnout]*

The creature howled.

And dropped him into the third layer—*its heart*.

***

There was no time here.

No light. No dimension. Just pressure. A gravity of will.

This was *V'zal-Tor's Core*—a living thought so ancient it barely remembered its function. It had lived before the stars came, tasked with preparing worlds for harvesting.

Pluto stood within it.

And it *knew fear*.

"You are not born of Celestials," it said.

"You are *wrong*. A paradox."

"No," Pluto whispered. "I'm what happens when your rules break."

He extended his hand.

From it, a ripple of *self* poured out—not energy, not power, but *identity*.

And that was something V'zal-Tor had never adapted to.

It had killed billions.

But it had never been *recognized*.

It could not endure being seen.

Its core cracked.

Then collapsed inward, folding its three bodies into a single point.

And vanished.

***

Pluto stood alone again, back on the mountaintop.

The sun was normal. The sky, real.

The ruins were silent.

The threat was gone.

The wind returned.

He turned to leave—then paused, sensing a presence behind him.

A woman stood near the cliff's edge—barefoot, eyes blindfolded, dressed in white.

"You walk like a god," she said softly.

"I'm not."

"You're not a man either."

"No."

She smiled faintly. "Then what are you?"

He met her blank eyes.

"Still becoming."

And walked past her, never looking back.