(Keep calm and create.)

Chapter three:

What the hell just happened? Katie said as she tried to rationalize something anything to make sense of what had just occurred. One minute she was at the New York City Comic Con about to ask Stan Lee himself about the most enigmatic of characters in Marvel. And the next she was, well, she didn't exactly know where she was. It seemed as though she was... everywhere?

Well, maybe not everywhere... She could feel the boundaries of her existence, but within that boundary... it seemed as though everything existed. She couldn't wrap her mind over such a concept. So much information, every particle, every atom, quirk even.

Every subatomic reaction going through their natural processes was felt and understood by her. So then, she thought, if she can understand them and they're a part of her, than could she manipulate them?

She first started with something small, bonding hydrogen and oxygen with a little of the excess she found inside herself as well. Soon her whole... body was filled with water. That made her feel, well, for a lack of a better term, saturated. So she gradually increased the energy of the molecules and produced steam, and that made her feel bloated. Frustrated, she broke down the individual molecule's into their base part's and just let the matter exist for a while. She took the opportunity to relax and think over what she just learned.

So, as long as she can understand a chemical reaction, she can make it happen inside of herself. That's cool, but still what the hell happened to make this possible?

Calm down, calm down, it's okay, let's just take stock of the situation some more and see if I can figure things out.

This time, instead of finding herself looking inward, Katie observed her surroundings. And what she found made her figuratively cock her head to the side. It kind of reminded her of a mixture of the Skyrim loading screen and the Vincent Van Gogh painting. The Starry Night. Darkness and what seemed like white mist swirling around together endlessly. Hm, no... that's not quite right is it?

Seemingly, by instinct, she knew that this wasn't darkness or mist, but instead concepts of nothing and existence. The literal manifestations of the concepts of the numbers 0 and 1 were right before her eyes. And she started to get lost in them.

It raised so many questions. The forefront of which being, if 0 and 1 are in fact representations of nothingness and existence, than is all reality nothing more than that grade binary running pre-established algorithms?

Other questions were less pressing, even downright ridiculous. Is this the Matrix? Am I Neo? Is Jack Morpheus? And as fast as the questions were raised they were quickly dismissed as an impossibly.

However, there was one possibility that she overlooked until. Wait, Jack, Stan Lee... They acted like friends... no way... Jack Kirby? No, even more incredible, is he the Creator? Is this all real? Stunned at these thoughts she loses herself in the implications.

Excited about the prospect of meeting her heroes and supervillains, seeing the sights of the multiverse, with adventure and discovery around every corner. But the excitement quickly died down, replaced with questions. The most important question on her mind was.

Why me?

After what felt like hours of pondering and reflection, something started changing. Something was moving inside of her as her concentration lasped during her musings. After looking inside, she found slimly black tar like beings just writhing and oozing about. Pulsing and growing every second threatening to overwhelm and consume her. She felt sick to her stomach. But they were alive, and technically she did create them, at least, that's what she felt to be true. So she decided to bear it for now, only blocking their attempts to expand beyond herself. But she underestimated just how violate and aborrent this creation of her's was.

They consumed each other as well as ambient energy and mass in order to propagate. They were the very definition of life violently exploding without a care in the world. No emotions or morals to govern their actions. They just seemed driven to exist. And the more Katie watched, the more disgusted she felt.

I'm going to be sick! Katie, after many hours of observation, felt like she was at the proverbial brink.

That's it! I don't care if you are alive, this is my body and I want you gone!! Katie said to herself.

In her fury, she started breaking down this slimy nastiness into it's base components until matter and energy were back to their base forms again. Except, compared to the steam, this time it was much more difficult to accomplish. Because the ooze fought back. And it fought back hard.

Hour's she fought, weeks, years. Time seemed to flow differently here, if it even flowed at all. But she fought for what felt like eons, bringing her being back under her complete control right as she was about to collapse and lapse into what she presumed to be returning nothingness. Is that what entropy is?

Exhausted she tried to rest. However, after a while it became obvious that instead of recovering energy with rest she just... stagnated, and hungered.

The level Comic Entity can feel hunger? But what the hell am I supposed to even eat? Confused, she looked again to the black and white swirls surrounding her when an idea struck her. It doesn't exactly look appetizing but, for lack of better options what choice did she have?

Well, there's nothing else here. Might as well try. She thought as she extended herself and tried a few things to go about consuming it.

It was hard at first, but eventually she came to realize that she could will creation and destruction within herself, she could extend that will outside of herself to grab and take into herself the nothingness and existence. And as she did so, she felt the nature of the outside substance fundamentally change into mass and energy, as well as sleeping into what was already there. It was as if the energy and particulates within herself felt rejuvenated just by the duality's presence. After another, few hours she felt stated. It was with that satisfaction that she began to relax. But with a start, remembered that it was her not concentrating that allowed the proliferation of those things.

So, she kept up her concentration to keep the energy within herself from reacting with the mass of particles that also made up her new existence. She didn't know how long she could hold it though. It was as if it was inevitable. She could will it to do it herself, but if she let it run it's course without her input, she knew those things would be back.

Not bad. Stan Lee and I took a few relative trillion years each to figure that out. You figured it out only a few relative billion, color me impressed. Said Jack Kirby.