Matt woke up deep inside what he could only guess to be a castle. Where a castle had been hiding in the middle of Woodruck was beyond him, but he had to confess he’d never been to the bourgeois part of town before. Still, the gigantic room he was in, with ceilings higher than Kevin’s entire school, was admittedly beautiful. A massive gold and crystal chandelier hung in the center, and colonial crown molding lined the walls, ceiling, and midway point in-between. This must have been a ballroom at some point in time. Matt had to admit, he liked it a lot.
The thing Matt did not like as much was being quite literally beside himself. An army of Matts, all just slightly different in pose and expression, surrounded the spot on the hardwood floor where he lay. He wasn’t a math person, but he guessed there had to be between forty and sixty of them. Even if they were all just Matts, this was an impressive collection.
“Looks like sleeping beauty’s awake,” one of the Matts taunted.
“I wonder if variants snore harder than we do,” another sneered.
“You think that forehead eye can see my underwear?” joked a third.
“Probably further than that,” yet another crooned, biting his lips. This one sounded vaguely like Tim Curry
“Not like it matters, we’re all the same fuckin’ size down there,” a gruff one snapped.
“Maybe not if you’re a variant,” the Tim Curry one replied, lustily.
“Listen, dudes,” Matt shouted, rising dizzily to his feet, “I’m just like the rest of you, really. I’m flattered, but uh, can I get a little personal space?”
“Like the rest of us, my ass,” another scoffed. “The rest of us don’t count as fifty when we fuse.”
“Do you really have a secret, special, variant exclusive attack?” one squealed excitedly.
“Alright, alright,” a distinctly not-Matt voice boomed: it was the kid who’d dragged him here. Matt gritted his teeth and turned to face him. He was still dressed in his little Matrix Halloween costume, sadly. “Remember who runs the proverbial show here, friends.” The sea of Matts parted in the middle to make a clear path between the boy and Matt. “I am pleased to see you awake, Matthew. I’d feared that my Throckmorton went a bit too far. I would have cried if I’d accidentally killed a variant.”
“I’ll give you something to cry about,” Matt spat. If he wasn’t still so groggy, he’d have leapt right at the little prick, even with the Matt army standing there. “Who the hell are you, anyway, besides dead when I finish waking up?”
“I am Gerald Blackmore,” the boy replied with great implied fanfare, “son of William Blackmore, and heir to the Blackmore Enterprises throne.” No matter how theatrical he got, there was no way to make his horrible nasal voice and artificial accent sound cool.
“I guess I should be impressed,” Matt scoffed. He was trying to seem nonchalant, but he was deeply aware that he was outmatched if he had to face down an entire army of himselves and whatever else Gerald had up his sleeve. “So, what’s the game plan here? How is this supposed to work? Tell me your evil plan, Agent Shit.”
“It’s rather simple,” Gerald replied, crossing his arms and smirking. “I have fifty Matthews and then you. You, as a Legendary variant, are worth fifty entire Matthews as far as fusion is concerned.” Matt stared blankly at him like he was speaking Japanese. “Oh, come on, you--didn’t you read the manual?”
“I didn’t come with a manual,” Matt shrugged.
“Not you, the glove!”
“My kid never had a glove.”
Gerald sighed. “Alright, listen. You can fuse gacha to get more powerful ones, their evolved forms. Okay? I overheard my father speaking yesterday, and there is supposedly a secret Matthew evolution, but... nobody has ever possessed the rumored one hundred Matthews necessary to try it. I had fifty or so Matthews by simply getting bad pulls and, as you know, I had stopped even keeping all the ones I’d pulled until I heard about the variant, sadly. However, it was all a distant dream…” he narrowed his eyes and grinned maliciously, “...until you showed up. Variants are the very rarest gacha of all, versions of another gacha with some odd thing about their appearance to signal the difference, noticeable only after summoning it from its capsule. They have a 200% buff to their magic and attack stats and a unique ability only they can utilize. Euphorically, these modifiers also carry through if they are used as part of a fusion. They’re worth fifty ordinary examples for fusion, which is typically overkill, but I’ve been told that Matthews alone require one hundred to fuse into their ultimate form. It’s finally time--I will be the first human to see what comes after Matthew!”
“So, how does that work, exactly…? Do we just all screw each other, or…?”
“What? No, you… look, just observe, you wretched cur. Matthews, fuse!” The other Matts formed a circle around the outskirts of the room and held hands and, almost instantly, the room began to vibrate as a high-pitched frequency wailed through the room like a siren. The Matt’s eyes started to glow a bright red, growing more and more blinding until the entire room was just a flash of scarlet light.
When Matt’s vision recovered, he was looking up at a monstrous, demonic, twisted version of himself. Its upper torso looked like someone had taken a bootleg Incredible Hulk toy and painted it Matt colors, but its details were more bug-like and demonic than human. It had to be twenty feet tall at the very least. Its massive muscles rippled through its torn fishnet and leather clothing, and its jaw had become wide and square, lined with thousands of razor-sharp teeth. One hundred eyes of slightly different sizes littered its giant face, looking confusedly in all directions. Its bulging arms, all forty of them, lined its powerful torso on each side like the legs of a centipede. It didn’t appear to have any “legs,” actually, or at least no limbs with feet. It lifted several of its mighty fists to test its power, and the mahogany floor turned to splinters as they came crashing back down. It was a Matt: it was a Monster Matt!
“What the fuck is that?” Matt shrieked, all semblance of composure lost. Of all the days to not even have his guitar!His pulse went through the roof. His vision seemed to shift to slow motion. So, this was what true terror felt like… at least his wounds from earlier had already healed, one great perk of being a gacha.
“Didn’t you know?” Gerald giggled, excitedly jumping up and down, “it’s possible to fuse gacha to make them stronger even before you have enough to evolve them to their next form. It’s usually a subtle boost, taking a bit of power from all of them to become something slightly more deadly, but it’s usually not intended for more than a few to combine. The second highest number required to fuse a gacha into its next form is fifteen--the system was never intended to combine the abilities of fifty at once. I suppose they thought nobody could ever afford to try, so there’s no cap--I had no idea what was going to happen, but I could not be more excited! A Legendary Variant Matthew, with the worth of fifty Matts, against a Monster Matt made of fifty Matts! I simply can’t wait to see what happens!”
Gerald cackled hysterically as the Monster Matt slammed its right-front fist down at Matt, who barely rolled out of the way in time. “Since you won’t agree to fuse like a good boy, I’ll simply have my monster beat you to a bloody pulp and consume you through a straw! History in the making, ladies and gentlemen!” His laughter became even more maniacal as one of the thing’s arms grabbed Matt as effortlessly as King Kong scooping up Fay Wray and tossed him across the room. Matt was launched smashing through the wall behind him, the bathroom wall behind it, and then through the main wall of the dining room behind that before finally sliding to a stop across the seemingly endless, well-polished wooden dining table. Countless preset glasses, dishes, and pieces of silverware in his path went scattering to the floor, most shattering with the impact with either his flesh or the ground. Several shards stuck in the flesh of Matt’s back as he slid, and when he rose, he was dripping blood again. This was just not his day.
Between over-the-top portraits of the Blackmore family in business casual, ornamental crossed swords hung poshly along the dining room wall: this was the first convenient thing to happen to him all day. Matt grabbed one of the swords from the wall and paused a moment to charge it, and himself, with sonic energy. It was no Les Paul, but it would have to do. He leapt from the table by releasing powerful sonic magic from his heels, creating a small shockwave as he launched himself back through the holes he’d made from his previous unintentional flight. He didn’t realize it, but this ability was the one only variants possessed--normal Matts could not channel sonic magic through their own bodies as such, relying instead upon their guitars entirely and their singular “sonic blast” attack (typically with only half the strength or magic behind the same attack from Kevin’s variant Matt’s, of course). It’s the main reason why Matts were, generally, considered useless.
The mighty beast raised an arm to punch Matt back, but he swung with his sword and chopped its arm off at the elbow. The Monster wailed as hot blood erupted from its wound, but the dismembered arm turned to smoke when it hit the ground, as if it could no longer exist in this plane separated from its demonic owner. Four arms scrambled out of synch with each other to grab him again, but Matt quickly directed his magic to his heels and launched out of the way again.
The Monster Matt turned to face him and took a deep breath, its massive chest swelling with air as it charged up an earth-shattering sonic attack. Matt planted his feet and held the sword in front of him, long-ways facing out, hoping he could use it as a vessel to channel and redirect the sonic energy. Unfortunately, he could not. The beast roared, and a veritable beam of sonic shockwaves erupted from its mouth and sent Matt flying. He slammed into a beam in the wall this time, shrieking as his spine almost shattered with the impact against the solid wood.
Matt emerged from the cloud of drywall with another sonic-powered leap, going straight up this time and then kicking off the ceiling itself to bear down on the monster’s head. He came down hard on the Monster’s frosted red tips with his sword, stabbing it through the head and spreading the pent-up sonic energy directly into its brain. Bits of brain matter oozed out of the hole and from the corners of its eyes in response, but the beast was unfazed. It wasn’t using its brain to fight. It had no sense left anyway: fifty competing, terrified, confused souls and minds fighting for dominance was as mindless as it could get. As it shook its head, Matt gripped the hilt of his sword desperately, but the thrashing quickly became too much. Matt tumbled to the ground, sword thankfully still in tow.
“I can’t believe you’d actually do this to those poor Matts,” Matt spat, pausing to punk on Gerald. “I knew you were a spoiled little prick, dude, but god damn are you fucked up.”
“Those Matthews had a better life than you ever will, cretin,” Gerald hissed, “and they fused of their own will. If you and your peasant child had read the manual, you’d know the only way to force a fusion is if the target is dead--which is how things are going to end between you two!! Prepare to be consumed!”
The beast charged up another sonic roar, but this time Matt launched himself between its “legs” as it released the blast, harmlessly emerging on the other side and cutting off one of its back fists. As this fist fell to the ground and vanished with a poof, Matt noticed that the arm he’d cut off before had already grown back, as had the wound in its head. Its healing ability must be magnified by fifty, too!? Damn it! How could he even possibly kill this giant abomination in one hit? Its fucking brain wasn’t even a weak point!
The Monster spun round to face Matt again and lifted the entire front half of its serpentine body, smashing down at him with twenty of its fists. Matt almost dodged in time but was caught mid-air by its very front left fist. It slammed him into the hardwood full force, squeezing all the air from his lungs and cracking a rib. Matt had never experienced the sensation of having the wind knocked out of him before, and at first, he thought his lungs had exploded and assumed he was dead. Thankfully, this was not the case, but it did give Matt an idea.
Matt pulled himself up through the searing pain of his injury and kick-launched himself to the other side of the room, positioning himself in a straight line across from the Monster, right in the corner. Predictably, the thing quickly calculated the distance and realized the best attack would be another sonic roar. This time, though, when it reared back and took a deep breath to charge up for the blast, Matt mustered up all of his sonic energy to both heels and kicked off at full force and speed, heading right for it. The instant before it exhaled—that crucial moment when its lungs were most inflated, its chest expanded to its limit—Matt’s sword plunged in.
It was a 50/50 gamble. If the sword hit the rib cage, it was all over. If his sword slipped between the ribs and penetrated lungs… well, it was also all over, but not for Matt. Matt felt a twinge of guilt about killing something that was technically made up of other Matts just like him, but it was too far gone to be saved now, and he had to make it out of here alive. If not for himself, for Kevin.
Luck was indeed on Matt’s side this time. His sword sliced through the skin of the beast, scraped against the ribs it slid through, and stabbed deep into its massive, oversized, over-inflated lungs. With a sickening sound like a balloon submerged in Jell-O bursting, its entire chest exploded as the air and sonic energy erupted and rang deafeningly through the room. Dead instantly, the creature collapsed with a thud.
Gerald watched in horror as Matt slowly approached the Monster’s corpse, all three “eyes” on his own head glowing bright red at this point. If the Monster had killed Matt and fused with him, the Monster would have been the “core” of the fusion, and the resulting ultimate Matt would be forced to follow Gerald’s command as long as he wore the Gacha Glove. Since Matt was the one initiating the fusion on the dead abomination, it meant he would be the core, and would be totally independent of all demands, from Gerald or otherwise. The new being would be constructed of Matt’s own mind, still, and his own will, just with the power now of a variant in ultimate form. The thought was as horrific as it was exciting.
Matt placed a palm on the motionless thing and shed a single glowing tear, whispering, “thank you for your sacrifice, dudes.” He and the fallen Monster Matt were engulfed in a powerful sheath of red light, and a shockwave more powerful than any prior rocked through the entire estate, sending a screaming Gerald careening through the air and slamming into the wall. When the smoke cleared, a new being stood in the center of the ballroom where Matt once had. Longer hair now swept across his face, covering his still-glowing left eye, red highlights flickering brightly like powerful flames. He stood a solid six and a half feet tall now in his new black platform heels, a foot taller than before. His body went from narrow and skinny to broad and muscular, without a single bit of fat across his imposing form. Huge plastic cuffs, oversized versions of the twin reels on VHS cassettes, spun slowly clockwise around his wrists by magic. A brand new, double-necked guitar was strapped to his back, over his leather jacket but beneath the billowing black cape which had “ULTIMATT” emblazoned across the back in silver sequins. The air immediately surrounding his hands distorted like a desert highway’s pavement in the summer, crackling with sonic magic energy and with yet another, entirely new form of magic. His mind was the same, changed only by the knowledge of his startling new powers, but Matt was no more. For the first time, an Ultimatt had formed. As he took a deep breath and suppressed his incredible power, the glowing in his eyes and hair subsided.
“Incredible,” Gerald whispered breathlessly. This had the unintended side effect of reminding Ultimatt of his existence. Ultimatt spun round and locked eyes with the boy, who began trembling immediately as the godlike being took slow, powerful steps in his direction, his red, animal-like pupils focused and dilated.
“You made me kill them all,” Ultimatt said, an icy chill in his voice. This wasn’t the impulsive rage one usually heard in a Matt’s voice: this was the voice of an incredibly powerful being who had already made up his mind what he was going to do.
“I--I’m sorry,” Gerald wept, struggling to utter a single word around the panic attacks, which grew more intense and debilitating with each step that brought Ultimatt closer to him. “It-it’s… I’m-I’m not all, evil, I-I’m trying to, to put together an-an-an army, to… to k-kill my--”
But before Gerald could even finish his sentence, Ultimatt leaned over and effortlessly snapped his neck like a child breaking a pretzel. He slumped over lifeless, immediately: justice had been served.
“Gerald!” a terrified female voice suddenly called out from the doorway. Ultimatt glanced up to see Kevin, a very pretty other Matt, and that girl he thought was so hot running towards them, looking horrified.
“Don’t tell me you know this little prick,” Ultimatt mumbled, rubbing his forehead.
“He’s Cecilia’s brother,” Kevin told him quietly, immediately recognizing Matt despite his makeover. “Is he okay?”
“He’s dead,” Cecilia gasped, barely able to form the words, tears overcoming her.
“Oh, for the love of god,” Ultimatt sighed, “sometimes I don’t know what you want from me. Don’t freak, I’ve got this.” What nobody else had realized yet is that his new power came not from enhanced sonic ability, but from his backstory at Blockbuster. He placed his hands just over Gerald’s body and whispered, “Be Kind, Rewind.” With a satisfying mechanical whirr, the reels on his wrists began quickly spinning counterclockwise. Gerald flickered for a second, static surrounding him as reality struggled to accommodate what was happening, and then his body moved back through its past few actions: his neck un-snapped, he quickly mouthed the things he’d said before his death, he flew back across the room, and then he was standing where he was before the shockwave, looking very alive and very confused as the reels returned to their normal clockwise crawl. Nobody else was rewound--only Gerald, who had been specifically targeted. Cecilia’s tragic tears turned to tears of joy as she raced towards her shitty Matrix brother and embraced him. He just looked very confused. Kevin was silent as he tried to process how impossibly powerful his big brother must be now.
Cecilia’s Matt (Matthew) merely froze and swallowed hard at the sight. He’d heard Kevin rant the whole car ride about how amazing his Matt was, but this exceeded all expectations. Beneath his silk gloves, Matthew was sweating. His breathing heightened. Kevin’s Matt--Ultimatt--was incredible. He was like a god. A very attractive god. A very buff god. A very, very attractive and buff god.
Matthew was already smitten.