"What's good, bro?"
Abaddon blinked his eyes several times in a second.
Somehow, someway, he was no longer inside of hell.
Instead, he was standing in a downtown apartment building that looked like it was situated in a large city.
Sunlight was streaming through three big open windows into a decent-sized white bedroom.
A young man sat at a desk across the room.
At first glance, Abaddon mistook him for his old self.
He was a young black man in his early twenties with a short haircut and glasses.
The key differences were, this man had a short beard, his face had no acne, and his left arm was covered in tattoos; a komainu on his upper arm, and a beautiful woman with a split hannya mask on his forearm.
Abaddon waited and waited, but the young man just kept typing away on his computer after his initial greeting. Never bothering to say anything else.
"...What is this?"
"You died."
"What?!"
"Just fucking with you man, sit down."
Abaddon was understandably annoyed, and the young man seemed to know it.
"Jesus, brother. You're looking madder than a redneck with mixed grandkids."
"Yes, well my patience is extremely thin at the moment and I don't have time to sit around and listen to-"
"Huh. 'Don't have enough time' he says..." The young man chuckled.
"Something funny?"
"It's amazing that someone who lives inside of a realm where he molds time to his fingers everyday to match the school schedule of his adopted daughter, can't notice when time isn't actually passing around him."
Now that Abaddon stopped to pay attention, he finally noticed that the young man was right.
He usually only felt this level of stillness and nothingness when he isolated a space from time, or...
"I'm asleep?"
"Kinda." The young man shrugged. "It's more like I pulled your consciousness here and isolated it."
The young man suddenly looked up from his computer and looked Abaddon up and down.
"Boy, you are just like a supernatural Derrick Henry, ain't you? Just big as shit for no reason."
Abaddon felt a vein bulge against his forehead.
"...Why am I here? Who are you?"
"Which one should I answer first?"
"You can't multitask?"
"...Fair enough."
The young man leaned forward and Abaddon watched his eyes turn completely black.
"The human equivalent of twelve billion years spent together, and you can't even remember me. I'm insulted.... It's because I've gained weight, isn't it?"
The young man covered his stomach in annoyance.
"It's your fault I look like this. Your mind said that this was the easiest form, scenario, and personality for you to comprehend. I guess it's better than being animated. Or a dog."
The gears in Abaddon's mind got to turning, and it took him a few months back.
To when he first destroyed his body and soul, and spent an eternity fighting an entity who he never even saw, for a power he felt he desperately needed.
In the end, he absorbed it. And became the sole embodiment of...
"Oblivion." He realized.
"The oldest and the coldest." Oblivion grinned. "Not to mention the only-est..? ... That's not a word, is it? Don't matter, you know what I mean."
Abaddon began to feel like he was getting a migraine.
Enemies coming back from the dead was something that he absolutely did not need right now.
"...It expanded." Abaddon said.
"Sure did." Oblivion nodded. "And in the process, a bit more of the canvas has been dyed in it's color. Just like you and I."
Abaddon didn't understand. Oblivion found that amusing.
"I had no real personality before I miraculously came into contact with with you.
Everything that I learn, everything that I emulate, it is all because im being influenced by you.
It might take a few billion years, but eventually you will have overwritten me. I will be gone."
"...You don't seem to have many issues with that." Abaddon noted.
Oblivion shrugged while wearing a small smirk.
"You really... you don't understand just how little you come to care about things when you are the endpoint of all.
I'm just simple cog in her ever turning grand design, big man.
Maybe I was always fated to be the empty place holder until you were ready to assume the role permanently.
Either way, I'm curious about what's next for me.
Will I fully become you, or will my consciousness pass on to a new realm even I can't begin to perceive?
I'm eager to find out, but for now I'm here watching you ride down the street on a bike.
Just waiting for the day you ask me to take the training wheels off."
"...You're the reason I can't access all of my abilities." Abaddon realized. "Why I can only scratch the surface of oblivion."
"You can thank me for that too.
If I wasn't keeping our best cards in the deck, then you would tear apart this Aeon that you are so inexplicably fond of.
You're not comprehending how unfair of an existence I am."
The word aeon scratched something in Abaddon's mind, but he couldn't quite put a finger on it.
He shook his head hard to discard the thought since it wasn't nearly as important right now.
"I need you to send me back. I'm in the middle of something that I can't afford to distract myself from."
"Why the hell do you think you're here? You think I grabbed you in the middle of that super dramatic moment for shits and giggles?"
Abaddon was almost inclined to say yes.
"You're digging a little too far into my restrictions, dickhead. I put them up for a good fucking reason."
Abaddon briefly recalled everything that had happened before he was pulled here.
Lillian gave up everything for their child.
He watched her crumble and disappear before his eyes and he felt his grip on her slipping.
And it destroyed him in a way that nothing he'd ever known could.
His desperation made him reach deep. He fed Lillian's life force every bit of energy that he had, and even more than he meant to.
All with one singular thought in mind.
The woman I love can't die.
"...I don't regret anything that I did. You can't possibly understand how this day has tested me. I will do whatever I can to-"
"I understand exactly how you felt." Oblivion said seriously for the first time today. "I don't watch everything that you do, but I did feel that desperation. That... what do you call it? ...Fear."
"If you understand it, then why are you still holding me here?"
"Because I need to make sure you get this, brother-man.
You were about to use a power that would have torn your current self, and everything around you, apart.
And it was our antithesis too, can you believe that shit? Had me hotter than fish grease." Oblivion huffed.
"I don't understand. What power??"
Oblivion sighed in exhaustion.
He snapped his fingers and a white board with a dry erase marker appeared in his had.
Abaddon took another look down and he was sitting in a desk just like he was back in school.
"Open up your ears and listen, brother-man. I'm going to explain to you the fundamental principles behind Absolute Law, and True Abolishment."