THE MOMENT
Tiffany felt warm and flushed, despite the cold, clinical room. She stood in a sealed white room held at a cool temperature with a woman she'd only met the previous day, and she was in utter awe. Melody Sharp had entirely shattered Tiffany's worldview over the span of a luxurious birthday dinner, and the revelations hadn't stopped coming even after they left the restaurant.
Tiffany was out celebrating her birthday and showed up at an upscale restaurant hoping to get in without reservations. By some magical miracle, Melody Sharp happened by, and after a brief conversation, she insisted that Tiffany join her for the meal. Melody revealed she was the owner of Sharp Development, a multiversal corporation, and Tiffany learned a lot about how things worked across the multiverse. She hung on Melody's every word and eagerly accompanied her home with the promise of learning more.
She hadn't slept at all yet, and even failed to register that. Melody spent the entire night giving Tiffany a tour of Sharp Development and its countless important locations across billions of alternate Earths. It wasn't the evening she expected when she agreed to go with her, but she was no less thrilled about how things had gone. Until finally, Melody led her into a white room through a door that disappeared as soon as they were inside.
"The multiverse is full of powerful, nosy people," Melody smiled. "That's why we use these white rooms for private conversations. They are functionally disconnected from the rest of the multiverse, and it's here I can show you something really special," she winked at Tiffany.
"I've told you about how brilliant Dana was...," she started by talking about her ex-wife again. Dana Sharp founded the company and built it up to a multiversal powerhouse before she passed away and left it to Melody. The first time Melody brought her up over dinner, Tiffany was worried she'd spend the whole night hearing about an ex, and she was glad it didn't work out that way. Melody did bring up Dana several times, but it was always in service of a large point, and quickly moved past. Over time, Tiffany found herself wishing she could've met Dana too. "She made me into a Unique Soul," she added as she held her hand out in front of herself with the palm facing upward. The palm glowed with brilliant blue light, and a wave of heat rushed past Tiffany. "#35, La Estrella. You already know I can see auras, Traverse universes, and I can also generate actual stellar plasma. But, that wasn't good enough for Dana."
The blue glow grew in intensity and shifted colors to become brilliant white, a harsh shade brighter than the soft glow of the white walls and floor of the room.
"She pushed it to the limit, then beyond," Melody added with a smile. The painful glare coming from her hand vanished instantly, and instead of all-consuming light, it became an empty, living flicker. A pitch-black void danced on her palm like flame, consuming and obscuring anything it covered. A shiver ran down Tiffany's spine, and it was then that she noticed all the heat had gone out of the room.
"As far as Sharp Development is aware, I am the only one capable of this feat. I'm trusting you with this knowledge as a deliberate welcome; I think you have a bright future here at Sharp Development," she said.
"You can make black fire!?" Tiffany was beyond astounded and thoroughly joyous at the invitation to join the company. "Can Estrellas control fire like that?" she asked. She'd taken in a lot of information, but she was more or less clever enough to keep up. The fact that she did keep up was what prompted Melody's offer to begin with. She'd initially wanted to do something nice for a stranger on their birthday, but Tiffany impressed Melody almost as much as Melody struck Tiffany.
"No," Melody shook her head. "It resembles fire, but it's the absence of everything. It behaves like fire, and can spread quite easily...," Melody turned her hand over and dropped the black blob onto the floor. It immediately began spreading with all the hunger of flames on dried grass. Tiffany stepped back as Melody waved her hand and pulled the black flames back to her. They'd left behind empty holes leading nowhere before the room self-healed to patch the damage. In seconds, the room was whole again as if nothing had happened, but Tiffany wasn't likely to forget how quickly it moved. Nor the chill it left behind; the room felt colder now, as if the living void consumed the ambient temperature as well. "... but it has nothing to do with heat," she made another gesture with her hand and opened a tall black portal. It was exactly like the ones she'd led Tiffany through all night. As she understood portals, they bypassed the void between alternate realities. "It's an evolution of portals," she said as she dismissed it again and blossomed the black flame in her hand to the size of a softball. Then, she tossed it and caught it in her hand for effect before squashing it out of existence by closing her hand. "You can think of it as a portal to nothing."