The morning sun filtered through the waterfall in shifting patterns where each droplet caught light and threw it back in miniature rainbows. The cave smelled of maple syrup and coffee, domestic scents that still felt foreign even after months, while Luv sat at the kitchen table, legs swinging, fork stabbing at pancakes as he recounted his latest adventure with Bonk.

  "So Bonk bonked the tree, right? And all these fruits went BOOM and fell everywhere!" His blue eyes shone bright. "But they were super sour, so we gave them to the Mammoths, and they loved them!"

  Jay sipped his 'chai', watching his son with an expression that still caught him off guard when he noticed it in reflections: genuine and unguarded happiness while Domino leaned against the counter, her scarlet-tinted eye soft with affection.

  "That was very kind of you both," she said, setting down plates of Luv's favourite pancakes. "Sharing is important."

  "Grandma Yao says sharing's easy when you got lots." Luv stuffed a massive bite into his mouth, cheeks bulging. "And it's really hard when you don't got lots, and that's when it's super important!"

  Jay and Domino exchanged glances loaded with unspoken pride and wonder mixed with the constant low-grade terror that they were somehow screwing this up despite all evidence to the contrary.

  Their son was turning into a genuinely good kid despite being made by someone as vile as Sinister and raised by a paranoid transmigrator and a mercenary.

  At least they were doing something right.

  Breakfast dissolved into Luv demanding seconds while simultaneously describing Bonk's exploits in excruciating detail, complete with sound effects and dramatic reenactments involving his fork as Bonk and his cup as the tree.

  Finally, Jay caught Domino's eye and tilted his head toward the far side of the cave.

  She understood immediately and stood before ruffling Luv's hair. "Keep eating, sweetheart. Dad and I need to talk about boring grown-up stuff."

  They retreated to the far side of the cave where the waterfall's constant thunder swallowed sound while Jay's hand found Domino's waist automatically, a habit formed over months of stolen moments between parenting chaos.

  "So," Jay said quietly, his thumb tracing circles against her spine. "We're really doing this today?"

  Domino's expression shifted, the maternal softness hardening into something sharper, more familiar as the mercenary she'd been before Luv, before all of this emerged.

  "You've kept Eternity waiting long enough," she confirmed, her voice taking on an edge. "Like you've said, Cosmic entities don't appreciate being put on hold, even for good reasons. And I need to fulfill your promise to Gaea about the Tiamut situation."

  Jay's mouth twitched. "You sure you don't want backup? The Eternals aren't exactly pushovers, and Tiamut is a Celestial."

  "I fought FURY." Her voice was flat. "Barely survived, and you had to save me at the end, which I appreciate, but I've been itching for a rematch with something that won't die when I sneeze on it." She paused, her fingers curling into fists. "And I've been practising with my powers. A lot."

  The unspoken hung between them: she needed this, needed to prove to herself that the power Jay had given her wasn't just a safety net but a weapon she could wield since those months of changing diapers and making pancakes hadn't dulled the edge that had kept her alive through decades of mercenary work.

  Jay studied her face, reading the determination, the hunger for action that came from months of domestic peace. He understood it intimately since his own paranoia had been gnawing at him, demanding he move forward with plans, fulfill promises and stay ten steps ahead.

  "Alright." He kissed her, slow and deep, the kind of kiss that said things words couldn't. "But if things go sideways..."

  "I'll call." Domino's hand came up, cupped his jaw. "Promise. Scout's honor and all that."

  "You were never a scout."

  "Details."

  They took a pause and let the waterfall thunder fill it.

  Finally, Jay's hand tightened on her waist. "Be safe," he said quietly, and the words carried weight they'd never had before Luv or before this life they'd built.

  Domino's eye searched his face. "Always."

  Another kiss, though briefer.

  "Mom? Dad?" Luv's voice cut through from across the cave. "Can I go see Grandma Yao? Please? I really wanna show Uncle Wong what I learned!"

  They turned to find Luv crouched beside Bonk near the cave entrance where the juvenile Pachycephalosaurus, roughly the size of a large dog with a domed skull that gleamed slate-gray even in the cave's dim light, nuzzled the kid's shoulder with obvious affection. The creature's dusty green scales caught the light from the waterfall, and its yellow eyes tracked the adults with surprising intelligence.

  Jay approached, kneeling to eye level. "Actually, buddy, we need a favor. Dad and Mom have some really important work to do today. Boring adult stuff that'll take a while. Think you could hang out with Grandma Yao and Uncle Wong for a bit longer? Maybe show them your new magic and help them with... uh... monastery things?"

  Luv's face scrunched up, processing. "You mean babysitting? Bobby told me about babysitting. It's when grown-ups need someone to watch the kids so they can do stuff."

  Jay blinked. "Yeah. Basically that."

  "Okay! I can do that!" Then his expression shifted, uncertain. "But you're coming back, right? You're not going away forever?"

  The question hit Jay harder than it should have since the kid's voice carried an edge of real worry, probably picking up on the tension between his parents even if he didn't understand it.

  Jay pulled Luv into a hug. "We're coming back. Promise. Both of us. Mom and I just have to take care of some things, and then we'll be home before you know it."

  "Super promise?"

  "Super promise."

  Luv hugged back hard enough to make breathing difficult. "Okay. But if you're late, I'm telling Grandma Yao and she'll be mad at you."

  "That's fair," Domino said, joining the hug and making it a group effort. "We'll be on our best behavior."

  Luv's face brightened. "Can Bonk come too? He gets lonely when I'm gone."

  Jay opened his mouth to explain why bringing a dinosaur to a mystical monastery might be problematic, then closed it since the Ancient One had seen weirder things. Hell, she'd probably welcome the chaos.

  "Yeah, okay. Bonk can come."

  "Yes!" Luv pumped his fist. "Uncle Wong's gonna love him!"

  Domino snorted. "Wong's going to have an aneurysm."

  "Probably," Jay agreed. "But the mental image is worth it."

  Blue light began building around them as Jay activated his teleportation while Luv grabbed Bonk's neck and the dinosaur made a questioning chirp, then they all vanished in a flash.

  Kamar-Taj

  They materialized in Kamar-Taj's courtyard where students were running through morning drills when the appearance of a five-year-old, a Power Broker, and a dinosaur brought training to an immediate halt.

  Silence crashed over the courtyard as thirty students froze mid-gesture.

  Bonk looked around, sniffed the air with nostrils flaring, decided this was fine, and headbutted the nearest pillar experimentally while the impact resonated through stone with a hollow thunk.

  The Ancient One appeared from a portal that closed behind her like a closing eye while her expression remained serene even as she regarded the Pachycephalosaurus with mild interest.

  "Luv has brought a friend, I see."

  "Grandma Yao!" Luv sprinted to her, Bonk trotting behind. "This is Bonk! He's my best friend! Can he stay while I practice? He's really good boy, I promise!"

  The Ancient One's lips twitched as her gaze shifted to the dinosaur, to Luv and back to the dinosaur while something flickered in her eyes that might have been genuine amusement. "Of course. Although perhaps we should establish some ground rules. Ancient pillars are not for headbutting. They have stood for centuries and prefer to continue doing so."

  Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

  Bonk chirped, head tilting the other direction.

  "I don't think he understands English, Grandma Yao."

  "Then you will teach him through example. Discipline applies to all creatures, even giant lizards."

  Wong emerged from the library, his arms full of ancient texts, took one look at the scene, and his entire body went rigid as the books tumbled from his grip, landing in a heap at his feet while his eye twitched.

  "Of course there's a dinosaur. Why wouldn't there be a dinosaur."

  Luv beamed and held out his palm, his small face scrunching in concentration, tongue poking out slightly as golden light flickered, sputtered and then solidified into a multilayer circle, concentric rings rotating in opposite directions, runes blazing along each band. The construct held for three full seconds before collapsing.

  Wong's expression softened as he crouched, bringing himself to Luv's level, and his hands moved with precise gentleness to adjust the kid's fingers. "Your form has improved. The third and fourth circles maintained proper rotation. But your stance remains terrible, and your channeling is inefficient." He stood, gestured sharply. "Come. We will correct these flaws."

  As Wong led Luv away, Bonk following with the loyalty of a well-trained dog, the Ancient One turned to Jay.

  Her eyes, ancient and knowing, pinned him in place.

  "You're finally moving forward."

  Not a question since it was never a question with her.

  "Can't put it off forever," Jay said. "Eternity's been patient, but even cosmic abstracts have limits."

  "And Domino?"

  "Handling the Tiamut situation." Jay's voice carried confidence he mostly felt since months of watching her handle Luv's tantrums and midnight terrors had shown him a kind of strength he hadn't fully appreciated before. If she could manage a traumatized five-year-old reality warper, she could handle anything. "She's ready."

  The Ancient One nodded slowly. "Then go. Your son will be safe here. And entertained. Wong has grown... fond of him, though he would deny it strenuously."

  Jay nodded while smiling and vanished in another flash of blue light.

  The Ancient One watched him go, then turned to where Luv was attempting to recreate the multilayer circle under Wong's stern supervision while Bonk had fallen asleep by the fountain, occasionally snoring in a way that made several students jump.

  "This," she murmured to herself, "is going to be an interesting afternoon."

  Savage Land Base

  Domino stood alone in their cave where the silence felt almost oppressive after months of constant noise: Luv's chatter, Bonk's chirps, Jay's presence like gravity, always there even when he wasn't speaking.

  The quiet felt wrong and unnatural.

  She took a breath and centred herself the way she'd learned decades ago, back when survival meant being able to shift gears in an instant as the mercenary rose to fill the space.

  The mother went into a box in her mind.

  Her fingers flexed, and crimson strings flowed.

  Her clothes dissolved and reformed in seconds as the casual shorts and tank top were replaced by her mercenary gear: black tactical suit, white accents, the familiar weight of weapons at her hips and back. The sunglasses settled on her nose, and yeah, they were mostly for show, but they completed the image and made her feel like the woman who'd walked into impossible situations and walked out alive once again.

  The strings wove together beneath her feet, forming her favorite mode of transport called the Nimbus: a quantum cloud that pulsed with red light, solid enough to stand on but fluid enough to respond to her will.

  She rose through the cave, through the waterfall's cascade as droplets parted around her before she emerged into the open air.

  The Savage Land spread below her in prehistoric grandeur with tree ferns rising like green towers, and the air thick with moisture and the scent of vegetation so rich it was almost overwhelming. But her mind was already elsewhere, focused on the mission, on proving to herself that months of parenting hadn't dulled her edge.

  FURY had nearly killed her and would have killed her if Jay hadn't intervened.

  It didn't sting anymore, not like it had at first, but it sat there as a reminder that for all her power, she'd needed rescue.

  Time to fix that.

  The Nimbus shot forward and she covered distances as the Savage Land blurred, then South America and finally North America while the landscape scrolled beneath her like a map.

  Finally, she descended toward a suburban house in California, utterly unremarkable except for the faint energy signature her enhanced senses detected as Pym particles and channelling of quantum fluctuations that spoke of someone playing with forces they barely understood.

  She landed, dismissed her cloud, and casually approached the front door before pushing the doorbell.

  The house stood before her, utterly unremarkable except for what she could sense beneath with hidden labs and security systems as the paranoid preparations of a man who'd made enemies.

  She walked to the front door, pressed the doorbell and waited.

  Cameras swivelled and she could feel them tracking her while analysing and running facial recognition, probably.

  Before she could press the bell again, a voice crackled from the Ring doorbell.

  "I know I'm old, but I'm not senile enough to fall for an obvious scam." The voice was gravelly and carrying decades of suspicion. "If you're going to impersonate someone, at least make it believable. Domino of the Lightbringer's inner circle doesn't just show up at random houses. Try harder next time."

  Domino's lips twitched since she'd been going for subtlety but clearly failed spectacularly.

  "Well," she said to the camera, her voice carrying her mercenary amusement "since you already know who I am, this got a lot simpler. I'm here for Hank Pym. You can let me in, or I can let myself in. Your choice."

  She waited in silence for five seconds, then ten and finally a full minute.

  "Or not," Domino said, and kicked the door.

  The reinforced steel crumpled like aluminum foil as the entire door ripped free and crashed into the hallway beyond, skidding across hardwood with a screech of tortured metal while all the patience she'd learned from caring for Luv evaporated in an instant, replaced by the direct approach that had served her well for years.

  The response was immediate.

  Giant Ants poured from every crevice in the house, dozens of them, each the size of a Rottweiler, mandibles clicking with sounds like scissors cutting sheet metal, forming a living wall between her and the basement stairs.

  They moved with coordinated precision that spoke of deliberate control rather than natural insect behaviour.

  Domino didn't even blink.

  Crimson strings erupted from her hands, wrapping around individual ants faster than the eye could follow, dozens of strings per second, finding each insect as quantum manipulation touched them at the molecular level.

  The Pym particles flooding the ants, drawing power from the Quantum Realm to maintain their size, suddenly found themselves cut off as Domino overrode them, and in an instant, dozens of giant ants collapsed back to normal size.

  Carpenter ants, fire ants, black ants, all of them pint-sized and thoroughly confused, stumbling over each other in a pile of chitin and legs, their collective weight less than a pound instead of hundreds.

  Domino just overstepped the pile like it was a minor inconvenience.

  "Cute trick," Domino said. "Still holding on to your old tricks, Doctor? Size manipulation is so 1960s. You really should update your playbook."

  She paused, realized what she'd just said, and couldn't suppress a groan. "God, I'm making mom jokes now. Luv is rubbing off on me and Jay's going to be insufferable about this."

  Something small shot from deeper in the house, moving fast enough to actually be a threat for normal people, that is. It would have hit her square in the chest if not for the lattice of quantum strings that had become her passive defence over months of practice, invisible threads calculating optimal protection angles automatically.

  The object froze in mid-air, suspended in a web of now crimson light.

  Domino leaned closer, her eye tracking the tiny figure in red and black and examining it with the clinical assessment of someone evaluating a threat.

  A tiny humanoid figure in a red and black suit, complete with helmet.

  "Well well," she murmured, genuine amusement creeping into her voice. "Ant-Man makes his entrance. How adorable."

  More strings wove together in her hands, forming constructs with the ease of practice as a spray bottle materialized, oversized, with a logo of an ant in a crossed circle and the kind of thing you'd buy at a hardware store for pest control.

  The absurdity wasn't lost on her since Jay really had rubbed off on her.

  She aimed and sprayed the tiny man.

  Mist enveloped the tiny figure as the Pym particles maintaining his size reacted to quantum interference and destabilised.

  The figure expanded too fast as the transition became violent and disorienting.

  The helmet retracted, revealing a face twisted in confusion and nausea, coughing hard enough to double over with not the face she'd expected, but younger and less weathered.

  "Scott Lang?" Domino cocked her head, genuinely surprised. "Huh. Jay mentioned you, but I thought you were still a few years out from the suit. Guess Hank moved up his timeline."

  Scott coughed again, each hack wet and painful, his hands braced on his knees. "Who... hkk... what... how did you..." His head snapped up, eyes wide behind his mask of pain and confusion. "How do you know my name?! And what the hell was that? I feel like I inhaled a chemical plant!"

  Before Domino could answer, a buzzing sound screamed past her ear, close enough to feel the displacement of air.

  The buzzing sound near her ear made Domino swat reflexively but the object dodged with incredible agility.

  "Of course," Domino sighed. "Where there's an ant, there's usually a wasp."

  She created another construct, this one resembling an oversized electric bug zapper, complete with a glowing blue grid that crackled with electricity.

  She aimed and smashed the buzzing object right in the centre.

  Electricity crackled through the Wasp suit, overloading every system while the smell of ozone and burning components filled the air.

  Sparks fountained from joints and seams as the figure spasmed, as current overrode her nervous system.

  The suit's size regulators failed and Pym particles collapsed.

  Expansion happened too fast as the woman materialized already falling.

  She hit the wooden floor hard while the helmet retracted automatically as her emergency protocols kicked in.

  Hope van Dyne's face materialized, twisted in pain.

  "Hope!" Scott lunged forward, his earlier disorientation forgotten as he dropped beside her, hands hovering uncertainly, clearly wanting to help but not knowing how, his face a mask of genuine fear. "You hurt her! She could be..."

  "Relax, Romeo", Domino said, kneeling to check vitals. "Suit's fried and she's experiencing aftershocks, but she'll recover in... three minutes, give or take."

  A voice from the basement stairs, old and commanding: "Enough."

  Domino rose to her feet, her body language shifting subtly, weight redistributing, hands loose and ready.

  Hank Pym climbed the stairs slowly, each step deliberate, one hand on the rail for support as the man looked every bit his age, white hair thinning, face lined with decades of stress and secrets, but his eyes burned with intelligence and something else.

  "So the master mind appears," Domino said. "Took your sweet time. Now what? You gonna send your ant army? Become giant? Because I gotta tell you, I've fought beings you can't fathom. Your size tricks don't scare me."

  Hank studied her.

  Then he did something Domino didn't expect.

  He dropped to both knees.

  His head bowed while his hands came forward, palms pressing flat against the floor.

  A full prostration.

  Hope, recovering on the floor, stared at her father with utter shock written across her features as her mouth opened and closed while no words came. "Father... you never... not even for Mom when she..."

  "What the...Hank?!" Scott's voice cracked, shooting up an octave in pure confusion. "I know you love me, but you don't need to go so far for me!"

  Having not received enough reaction, Scott continued, "Wait, is this a trap?! I swear if this is another test..."

  "Shut up, Scott," Hank snapped without looking up. "And for once in your life, use your eyes. Don't you recognize her even after seeing her in action?"

  Hank raised his head, met Domino's eyes with awe.

  "Forgive my old eyes for not recognizing the Goddess of Life, Death, and Fortune sooner." His voice carried absolute conviction of a scientist confronting proof of the divine.

  "All hail Goddess Domino. All hail the Lightbringer."

  The words rang in the destroyed hallway like a prayer.

  He bowed again, pressing his forehead to the ground.

  Domino stood frozen, her mind going utterly and completely blank.

  Goddess? GODDESS?!

  "What the actual Fuck!" she managed finally.