A Not So Brief History Of
— 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐏𝐎𝐋𝐀𝐑𝐈𝐒 𝐉𝐀𝐃𝐄 —

When I first arrived in this universe, I came to a pretty quick conclusion: This place is fucking weird.

Every universe has its quirks—its own rules, its own flavor of chaos—but this one? This one was just bizarre, especially in how it connected (or rather, didn't connect) to the rest of the multiverse.

It was still technically part of the grand, tangled thread of existence that stitches all realities together. But this universe—known locally as N-Space, and formally catalogued in the educated multiverse under the title Universal Dimensional Plane of Existence: Reality #5556—felt like a loose thread. Just sort of... dangling there, tied to only a few other nearby parallel universes. Familiar in some ways, but always a little off-kilter.

The "educated multiverse," by the way, is just a fancy term for the collection of realities that know what's really going on. Universes that understand there are others. That can perceive dimensional planes, alternate timelines, multiversal bleed, the Space Jam, et cetera. Basically, realities that have lost their multiversal virginity. Once you know, you know.

And then there's the time streams here. In N-Space.

Not linear. Not structured. Just a chaotic knot of timey-wimey nonsense that threatens to unravel every other day. I'm honestly amazed the place hasn't self-destructed. It probably should have.

It would have if the Doctor wasn't around.

Now, the TimeLords—the so-called keepers of time—liked to act like they've got it all under control. They used to puff themselves up with fancy talk about balance and order and the sanctity of time, like they're the great custodians of all reality. But in my very professional, totally unbiased opinion? They're kinda idiots.

All of them except the Doctor.

Arrogant, narrow-minded, and entirely too obsessed with their own status. They barely understand other universes, and they were absolutely terrible at maintaining their own. If you ask me, the time streams were a mess because of them, not in spite of them.

But hey, maybe that's why they're extinct now. Hard to say. The Doctor likes to claim he wiped them all out in something called the Time War—which, fun fact, I never bothered to verify. I could've went and watched what happened myself. Done more research. But honestly? I had bigger priorities.

Like, you know, finding the Nine Arbiters of All Existence.

Anyway, back to the point. Let's rewind—way back—before I crashed into this universe and signed up to become a Time Agent. I should probably explain how that even happened. Context matters... apparently.

But once upon a time, there was a lonely little girl—blah, blah, blah.

Wait—no. Not far enough.

I need to go back even further. Like, 393 years ago, in an entirely different universe that no longer exists.

God, I'm old. Sad times.

Right. Anyway. About 395 years ago, give or take... that's when a being who called himself Kairon first arrived in my home universe.

Oh, Kairon.

My father. My biological one—he's where the part of me that isn't human came from.

He is, what's known in the deeper corners of the multiverse, as a Celestial Titan—a species so rare and ancient, most universes forgot they even existed. Not gods, exactly. Not demons either. Just... something in between. Fundamental to things, in a weird way. Living embodiments of reality in motion.

There aren't many of them. They are relatively mysterious and scattered creatures. Sparsely seeded throughout all existence. You might find one floating through the chaos of pre-Big Bang energy, or strolling through the ruins of a dimension already collapsed. They don't build cities or claim planets—they just drift. From one universe to another. Not aimlessly, but not necessarily with purpose either. Just movement. Always movement.

They don't stay. There isn't a whole lot known or understood about them, but that's the one thing everyone agrees on with their functionality. Not because they can't—but because they won't. Even when they love something, someone—it doesn't matter. They move on. They have to.

Or, more accurately, they choose to. Because it's not in their nature to stay.

Alas, Kairon was no different from the typical Celestial Titan.

He was powerful. Ancient. Older than stars and quieter than silence. In his true form, he stood like a monument made of galaxies, lit from within by collapsing nebulae. A being stitched from the bones of dead universes, with a voice that could bend spacetime and eyes like black holes that watched without blinking. When he compressed himself into a humanoid form to be with her, my mother, Peony, he looked human enough.

I'd seen pictures of him a few times, when I was little.

My father, Kairon, had been tall and dark. Otherworldly. Handsome in that cold, terrifying way that only monsters can be.

But he was kind to her. Soft. Attentive. He loved her, I think. As much as someone like him could. And she loved him in return. Foolishly, ferociously. She knew it was never meant to last. But when you're held like that, looked at like that—when something eternal tells you that you're beautiful and important—you let yourself believe. You forget what they are.

Until one day, you wake up, and they're just... gone. And you're left with only memories—memories and a child growing within.

That's what happened to Mom.

He didn't say goodbye. He didn't leave a message. Kairon just disappeared. Like he'd never been there at all. Just dust in the sheets and fading heat on the pillow.

And she? Mom never stopped loving him. Not really. She told herself she hated him—she did—but she also hated herself for still wanting him to come back. Begging him to come back. She used to whisper his name like a curse, then like a prayer, and then she'd cry when she thought I couldn't hear. She would've followed him if she could. She would've left everything behind.

Maybe even me. I hope not, but I don't know—she certainly loved him a lot, so it wouldn't be shocking.

That's the risk with loving a Celestial Titan, getting too close to such a creature. They never love anything enough to stay.

So yeah, I hate Kairon.

I hate him for abandoning her. For knowing the risk she'd face carrying me—the first Celestial half-breed ever born—and still walking away. He knew what it would mean. The instability. The threats. The attention. And he left anyway. Didn't come back when she gave birth during that tornado. Didn't come back when we were hunted. Didn't come back when she was taken. When she screamed. When she bled. When she died.

He never came back.

And me? I was stolen twice—twice—by beings who wanted to rip me open and rebuild me, corrupt me, use me. He never came then either. He never even tried.

Hell, sometimes I think, no, I know that the Destroyer—the interdimensional horror that whispers in my blood and turned me into his Starfire—loves me more than Kairon ever did.

The Destroyer, who smiled as he taught me the right cords to pull to end the thread of reality, yes, but he never left me anywhere.

I only know my father's name because of my mother. I only know what he was—who he was because of her.

Is Kairon still alive? I don't know. I don't even care. I'm not even totally sure that he knows I exist.

But that is how the unloved little girl came to be. That is why I was so valuable to so many people once they learned what I am.

However, a little Celestial Titan and human half-breed isn't enough to save an entire universe. To open multiversal gateways or see through to other realities. But a Celestial Titan human half-breed has a lot of potential to be able to do that. To be rebuilt into a cosmic entity who can.

It's why I was taken. I don't die easily. My body—my biology—is tougher than most species could even comprehend. You can hurt me, sure. But you'd have to try really hard to kill me. A full-blooded Celestial Titan? Forget it. They are rare—so fucking rare to find, and they move on quickly, never staying in one spot.

Even if one does manage to encounter a Celestial Titan, they are impossible to catch, let alone contain. But a half-breed child? Still growing, still vulnerable? That's perfect.

They poured Aureum and Tenebris into my body—forces older than time itself, the two primal energies of existence—and rewrote me on a cellular, molecular, existential level. Those energies weren't meant to be carried by any one being, certainly not a half-human girl. It should've killed me. Honestly, it nearly did.

They insane part is that I still don't even know how they managed to capture and contain fucking Aureum and Tenebris in such a raw form.

In some outlandish way, like everything else about my existence, I fucking survived. Of course, I did. It's what I do, as I have come to learn throughout my life.

When I was little, shaking and sick after they'd succeeded, I used to pretend it was like something out of a story. Like when Avatar Wan bonded with Raava. Or when Jean Grey became the Phoenix. That helped. A little. Made the pain feel heroic, like there was a purpose behind it.

The truth of the matter was that it was not as awesome as a television show or comic book showcase. It was painful and lonely and cold and horrifying, and I wanted to die every second of it.

The aftermath was even worse. Because no one is meant to carry that much power, not even a Titan's child. Not the power to create. Not the power to destroy.

It hurts. It isolates. And it never shuts off.

That's why the Destroyer came.

I guess he heard about me, and he wanted me. He killed all the people who owned me. All the people who forced upon me the two energies that created existence. It's why I took his hand and allowed him to take me.

I didn't trust him. I didn't even understand him. But I was alone, hollowed out, desperate. And I had nothing to lose—all I knew was that I hated the people who killed my mother, who did this to me. I hated my own fucking universe, I didn't want to do what they intended of me; I didn't want to save anyone. I wanted them all to burn.

I watched the Destroyer reach toward the thread of my dying universe—just one finger—and it was so fragile, so unstable, that the whole thing unraveled at his touch.

That's all it took. One touch. The entire thing unraveled like and turned to ash.

That's the power he holds. The power that they made him into.

The Destroyer—though that's just the name most know him by now. His real name was Vincent Orro. Once, long ago, he was human. And not just human—he was a warlock. From a strange universe where magic was real, practiced, and most all, feared. He was brilliant, ruthless, and powerful in all the wrong ways.

But here's the thing about humans that most beings overlook: potential.

Humans can be broken and rebuilt like no other species. Their DNA, their essence—it's flexible. Adaptable. Moldable. You can twist them into anything if you push hard enough. Most other species? They'd die under that kind of pressure. Humans? Most can evolve.

That's why the Space Jam took notice of Vincent Orro. Because he evolved and thrived under the pressure like no other.

The Space Jam is many things—a game, a battlefield, a cosmic rigged casino—but above all, it's an interdimensional bloodsport orchestrated by the Arbiters: nine ancient, omnipotent entities who claim to maintain the balance of the multiverse, even though they thrive on its instability.

They created the game to test the champions of each universe. Or at least, that's what they tell everyone. That it's a noble test. That a universe is only as strong as its strongest player, and only the strong can survive.

In truth? It's all a lie. The Space Jam exists because the Arbiters are bored. Powerful. Dangerous. Nihilistic. They manipulate the game to serve their own purposes—to shape, collapse, or merge universes based on outcomes they pretend are "fair."

Vincent was one of their greatest players. Recruited, remade, and unleashed upon the game.

And eventually, he rose higher than any of them expected.

He became something new. Something terrifying. He became the Ninth Arbiter. He joined their ranks as the embodiment of Destruction itself. The others were ancient: Entropy, Time, Space, Will, Creation, Knowledge, Chaos, Unity. But he was the newest, the wild card, the monster who wasn't born of law but forged in war.

They called him the Destroyer.

By the time I met him, he'd long since retired from competing. He wasn't Vincent anymore. Just a title. A legend. A force of nature. An Arbiter. And somehow, he made me his protégé.

His lovely little Starfire, as he called me.

He trained me like I was a weapon. Because to him, I was. He broke me down further, sharpened every edge. Taught me how to win—not clean, but brutally. Every trick, every shortcut, every cruel rule of the game. He made sure I didn't just survive—I dominated.

And I did. I became a champion of the Space Jam. A legend in my own right. The Polaris Jade.

Nearly unbeatable.

Number two only to him.

The Space Jam is ever-changing, unpredictable by design. Sometimes it's a galactic war that spans centuries. Other times, it's a quiet chess match between two minds—except with universes hanging in the balance. Win, and your universe thrives. Lose, and it collapses into dust.

Let me say that again:

𝙏𝙝𝙚 𝙎𝙥𝙖𝙘𝙚 𝙅𝙖𝙢: 𝘼𝙣 𝙄𝙣𝙩𝙚𝙧𝙙𝙞𝙢𝙚𝙣𝙨𝙞𝙤𝙣𝙖𝙡 𝙂𝙖𝙢𝙚 𝙤𝙛 𝘾𝙝𝙖𝙤𝙨.

I didn't ask to play it. I didn't volunteer. I was taken. Created, in a sense—fused with Aureum and Tenebris, the primal forces of light and darkness. A walking anomaly. A hybrid of human and Celestial Titan, re-engineered into a living cheat code.

He forged me into a star. His star. The most brilliant, dangerous, terrifying wildcard to ever enter the arena. Apart from him.

But he's not my hero.

He's the reason I'm doing this.

Because the Space Jam isn't just a game. It's a system of control. It's how the Arbiters keep the multiverse pliable—how they crush weaker realities, bend stronger ones to their will, and amuse themselves with the destruction.

In all fairness, I was actually the one to name the Space Jam. Before it was just called the unspoken game—it really sucked. But anyway, onto how I copyrighted the name for the ultimate universal game.

So, in a bunch of universes, sometime around '96, this movie comes out, right?

And it's this totally awesome flick about basketball, aliens, and the multiverse—with MICHAEL JORDAN in it. Like, the Michael Jordan. Capital M, capital J. All-Star MVP, greatest-of-all-time, tongue-out-while-dunking Michael Jordan.

The movie he's in? It's called—get this—Space Jam.

Not THE Space Jam. Not the horrific bloodsport I'm forced to play across realities. Just... Space Jam. Simple. Fun. Harmless. A goofy movie about basketball and hope and Looney Tunes.

And I remember watching it for the first time—what, two hundred and fifty years ago? Time's weird in the multiverse. It's always been weird.

But I watched it, and something clicked. I thought: What if I named the Game? What if I took the old, unspoken name of that wretched multiversal tournament—yeah, it didn't even have a name back then—and gave it something easy? Something light?

Maybe, just maybe, by calling it something innocent... it'd become something better.

So I renamed it.

The Space Jam. Surprisingly, it caught on—really well. Everyone took to calling it the Space Jam.

But I was wrong.

And I came to realize that it didn't just need a better name or system or rules.

It just needs to end. I'm done playing. I'm done watching.

Over the years, I've hunted down the Nine Artifacts, one for each Arbiter. With every piece I've claimed, I've stolen a little more control from them. Those artifacts? They're keys. Not just to the game—but to the Arbiters themselves.

And with all nine, I can do what no one else ever dared.

End the game. Sever their hold on the multiverse. Shatter the consciousness they've bound themselves to and reduce them to what they once were: elemental forces. Dormant. Powerless.

Or in the Destroyer's case, a warlock.

And that's why I'm here.

In this universe.

The Doctor's universe—N-Space or Universal Dimensional Plane of Existence: Reality #5556—isn't like the others. It's a nexus point, where multiple threads of the multiverse naturally intersect. That makes it strong. Resilient. Nearly impossible to collapse from the outside. One of the few realities that the Arbiters can't touch.

It's on its own in a lot of ways, but also... not.

That's why it's safe. That's why it's one of the few places separated from the Space Jam. And it's why five out of the nine artifacts just so happen to be here.

Coincidence? No. Nothing about the Space Jam is a coincidence.

Everything is a move. Every decision is a play. Every life, every death, a shift on the board.

In the grand scheme of the multiverse, I am almost entirely unique. How many times has it been said? Half-breed children between a Celestial Titan and any other species aren't just rare—they're not supposed to exist. But if it were going to happen with any species, I suppose it would be humans.

There are other versions of me scattered throughout the multiverse. Variations of Cooper Starre. But none of them are half-breeds. Most are simply, painfully human.

Most die young—children, usually. Unfortunate. Random. Accidents, illness, violence. Most universes don't even give them a chance.

Others live. And those who survive older than 20 tend to spiral. Alcoholism. Gambling. Insanity. Dying by the time they're thirty. If they make it past fifty, it's a miracle.

A few live quiet lives. It's simple and boring. They marry, pop out children, hold steady jobs, and die peacefully in their eighties. But they're the happiest ones, the most fulfilled.

One version of Cooper even became a broadcast journalist! That version was pretty cool... she was sharp, brave, relentless. She never let anything hold her back, despite being painfully ordinary and painfully human. She was 34 when she died in Afghanistan, helping civilians after a bombing. She chose others over herself.

That Cooper Starre? She was one of the best ones.

Not every universe has a version of me. Out of all the infinite realities, most don't. This one—N-Space—actually did, surprisingly. But she died, too.

Still... out of all the Coopers that ever existed, not one was like me.

Not one was a half-breed. Until there was.

Out of all the infinite realities, out of the multitude of Obsidian Jax's, only one of them was like me.

There's a strange rule I've come to understand about our kind—about me and him, specifically. Across the infinite continuum of realities, you can either have a Polaris Jade or an Obsidian Jax—never both. Where one is born, the other simply... isn't. A strange balance. A weird continuity. A universal veto.

I used to call him Obi. His real name—not that it was ever used—was Jarrett Orion Novar. To me, he was just Obi, always just Obi. And he was the only other Celestial half-breed child in existene. He wasn't another version of me, rather a mirror version. There's a term for this phenomenon in multiversal theory—Reflective Selves. Not alternate selves from other realities, but similar.

Reflective Selves are not bound by shared timelines or origins; they just echo each other in composition, energy, or destiny. Think of them as cosmic twins—separate but connected, parallel in purpose, opposite in flow.

That's what Obi was to me. My reflection. My twin in everything but blood and name.

He had a similar origin to mine. Only reversed. Born of a Celestial Titan mother, who disappeared shortly after he came into the world. His father died protecting him.

And like me, Obi was taken. Experimented on. Altered.

Infused with Aureum and Tenebris.

But not completely like me.

His makeup was 49.9% Aureum, 51.1% Tenebris. Mine is the exact inverse—49.9% Tenebris, 51.1% Aureum.

Perfectly balanced opposites. Two sides of the same coin.

The Destroyer found him after he found me—only a few years later. He brought him to the Multiversal Glade, a pocket realm between realities, and introduced him to me. Not just as a brother or a companion, but as what he intended to be my match. My lover.

Gross—I know.

To the Destroyer's credit (surprisingly), his reasoning wasn't completely absurd. From a strategic, mythic perspective, it made sense.

We were the only two of our kind. The only two hybrid children ever created from Celestial Titans. Exact opposites. Perfect mirrors.

If I were ever meant to be with anyone, by every multiversal standard, it should've been Obi.

But it wasn't like that. It never really fell into place naturally. And trust me, we tried, for a very long time. He was too much of a brother... and a little bit of an enemy. Too much of a twin. It was weird to so much as kiss him, let alone anything else.

That doesn't mean that I didn't love Obi with all my heart, though. That he was not everything and more to me for a very long time. The only being to truly understand—to truly know what it meant to have everything and nothing all at once.

Obi and I were as sweet to each other as we were cruel. Allies as often as we were enemies. Perfectly mirrored—the same in all the ways that mattered, and opposite in every way that didn't.

Obsidian Jax was the only one who could truly stand against me in the Space Jam. And I was the only one who could stand against him. No one else ever came close. We were each other's limits, each other's undoing.

I had only ever lost to him. And he, only to me. Our win-to-loss records were practically identical. But neither of us ever killed the other—we never wanted to. Not really. Even in our most vicious matches, the rage never ran deep enough to wish for death.

Because at the end of the day, we still belonged to each other, in that weird, unspoken, broken mirror kind of way. We still loved each other.

When I was wrecked, it was Obi I went to. When he was spiraling, he found me. We calmed each other as often as we enraged one another. A lot like the Doctor and me, I suppose—except without all the theatrics and breathless emotional whiplash.

The Doctor and I are... different. It's more loving. Harder to explain.

Anyway—Obi and I played the Space Jam for decades. Which, by multiversal standards, stretched well past a century. We were the new stars of the show. The unstoppable champions. Individually, nothing could stand against us.

Together?

We can end everything.

Perfect balance. Perfect symmetry. Perfect opposition. Destruction and creation. We were both forged from the same elements—Aureum and Tenebris—and yet the 0.01% difference in composition was loud and constant.

He was 51.1% Tenebris to my 51.1% Aureum.

We both created. We both destroyed. I built things just so he could tear them down so that I could build them again. Over and over. Entire worlds—universes—caught in our game of balance.

It was... fun, as long as you weren't the one watching your world disappear.

The Destroyer loved it. He fed on it. I think—fuck—I think he was proud of us. Definitely proud.

In some twisted way, he saw us as his children. His masterpieces. His little cosmic disaster twins.

He was like a cracked-out Carlisle Cullen rooting for his adopted kids to get married.

Actually—no. No, definitely not like Carlisle.

I was the Deatroyer's Starfire, and Obsidian Jax was his Oblivion.

By the time I met Garren Zevon, and yes, he is as cool as his name suggests, I was running on fumes. I'd already begun considering a play of escape, not that there were many options. Death wasn't on the table. That kind of mercy doesn't come easily to people like me or Obsidian Jax.

All I had left was the idea of vanishing. Slipping into some quiet, stable universe and hiding there for a few thousand years. Just long enough to forget who I was. To rest. But the Destroyer could find me almost anywhere, even if it took him a while. He would find me and drag me back.

I hadn't even been in the game for long, not really. Some players had been there for millions of years. But the thought of surviving another hundred?

It made me want to claw my own eyes out.

If only I could die.

Garren Zevon. Garrennnn Zevonnnn. Cybernetic augmented multiversal human extraordinaire. Live. Laugh. Love that man.

He is the coolest of the cool! The hottest of the hot! The loveliest of the lovely—a true ride or die.

Interestingly enough, when we first met, he was trying to kill me. And by some miracle, he was decently close, well closer than anyone else has ever come. Hell, at the time, I hoped that he would succeed and take me out, wipe my existence from this loathsome place, and provide me with eternal slumber.

Sadly, it didn't happen.

Rather, I ended up saving his life, and somehow we became friends. Best friends who ran away together, who are currently in hiding together, and who agreed to end the Space Jam... no matter the cost.

That's the short version, at least.

And now, even separated as we are, for safety, to remain lowkey, we remain in the same universe. Hunting for the last Arbiters.

It's true, I was a Time Agent. For a while, at least.

Garren and I both technically are; we decided to join the Agency the moment we truly understood what it meant to be a Time Agent in this universe. It only seemed smart given that the Arbiters we searched for could be at any time in any corner of this universe. That's a lot of ground to try and search.

Besides, the saying of the Agency is pretty cool sounding:

"The Agents' purpose is to change without interfering, to leave an effect with no evidence of cause. To be untraceable, undetectable, invisible. To all intents and purposes, the Agents do not exist."

I thought about having it tattooed on my lower back, but I'm not dedicated to the cause that much. Hell, I'm not dedicated at all—it's just a cool saying!

Way cooler than the Space Jam: Fight for your life.

The only other Space Jam saying is when someone passes, and that verbiage is just depressing.

𝐋𝐞𝐚𝐯𝐞 𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐬𝐞 𝐬𝐡𝐨𝐫𝐞𝐬 𝐢𝐧 𝐩𝐞𝐚𝐜𝐞,
𝐟𝐢𝐧𝐝 𝐥𝐨𝐯𝐞 𝐢𝐧 𝐰𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐥𝐢𝐞𝐬 𝐚𝐡𝐞𝐚𝐝.
𝐌𝐚𝐲 𝐲𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝐣𝐨𝐮𝐫𝐧𝐞𝐲 𝐛𝐞 𝐬𝐚𝐟𝐞,
𝐲𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝐬𝐭𝐫𝐮𝐠𝐠𝐥𝐞𝐬 𝐧𝐨𝐰 𝐚𝐭 𝐫𝐞𝐬𝐭.
𝐌𝐢𝐠𝐡𝐭, 𝐨𝐧𝐞 𝐝𝐚𝐲, 𝐰𝐞 𝐟𝐢𝐧𝐝 𝐭𝐡𝐚𝐭
𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝐩𝐚𝐭𝐡𝐬 𝐜𝐫𝐨𝐬𝐬 𝐚𝐠𝐚𝐢𝐧.

So yeah, I was a Time Agent for a long while. Both Garren and I worked together, undercover. They never knew the truth about us, of course. They believed us to be 51st augmented humans.

Garren truly is a cybernetic human, his cybernetics are entirely muliversal; however. Extraordinarily advanced, even for the 51st-Century.

And yeah, I maybe—sorta—deserted the Agency. Not just deserted, but like full level betrayed my entire team, all in the name of stealing Arbiter Five.

It was worth it.

Besides, nobody died! People were just maimed. And it was kind of a group of shitty people anyway. Not to mention, all agents had cybernetic augmentations of some sort; being maimed is basically the futuristic equivalent of spraining your ankle. All limbs can be replaced.

I even faked my death to the Agency. To stay off their radar, I didn't need to be involved with them anymore. Garren helped. And he stayed inside the Agency, pretended to hate me, and had to act like a good operative from this universe. We stay in touch. Sparse but consistent. We agreed no reality jumping without the other.

No reality jumping at all until we have all Nine Arbiters—then we can blow this popsicle stand.

Apparently... the Time Agency found out I'm alive. I know this because they tend to send death robots capable of switching appearance at will after the people they are after. Mostly Agents that have gone rogue.

Thanks for the heads up, Garren, catch my sarcasm?