Darkness. Complete and utter darkness. It practically engulfed everything – or rather the lack of objects in the void. A single soul existed within the primordial black ooze not because he wanted to, but because he had to. The injuries he had sustained just so others could harness and exploit his unworldly powers were deep and degrading. How could he, one with the ability to transcend and create dimensions, be beaten by such pests?

However, it still stood that he had fled in defeat, fled from capture and manipulation. He had come in to this world, no, this multiverse, seeking companionship. He had no idea how he had come to be, but now he knew he had been naïve to be so trusting of weaker and lower creatures than himself.

Corruption had scoured the lands he had built and even those that seemed to come before him. In an unnatural instinct he never knew he had, he had created semi-sentient creatures, made from all sorts of shapes and sizes, from triangles to squares to pentagons, even some you wouldn't be able to name.

They weren't enough. No, not nearly enough to stop the constant assaults. As the "fighting polygons", as he had dubbed them, fell like humans in a plague, he realized that perhaps his living and sentient constructs would need more care and thought to survive than his great land masses and dimensions. When the villains from various lands and worlds had descended upon him, he had been unprepared. Too unprepared.

The brutes had nearly overtaken him, but he had escaped to… here, wherever or whatever here was. Perhaps a universe that had not seen its first light? Maybe. A failed and forgotten creation of his? There was a chance.

Shivering, he tried to close in on himself, but found difficulty with his wounds. Still, he succeeded. A small triumph. He began to wonder if he could truly outlast and hide from his persecutors when suddenly light disrupted the everlasting night. Had his time finally come?

Squinting to the best of his ability, he peered through the unjust crack in the stream of time and space.

Was that… a plump man in red? And it looked as if he was in deep, heated combat with a familiar looking reptile. Wait, that was the same turtle – or Koopa, as it referred to itself as – that had tried to take his gifts! Another rift opened up, the light shining through a bit greenish in tinge.

This intrusion revealed an elven warrior dressed in a green cloak and vanilla pants, a majestic sword in one hand and a regal shield in the other. Intensity etched across his face, he countered a blow from what appeared to be a giant, dual-wielding boar. The isolated being jumped, or rather levitated gently in shock as eight more portals opened, showing the protagonist or protagonists of one tale facing their greatest threat yet.

The combatants were all diverse, ranging from a boy in a striped shirt fighting what seemed to be a distorted human fetus with three of his companions, a red, orange, and yellow titan taking on a dragon twice its size, two small creatures, a yellow mouse and a pink balloon with large eyes, taking commands from another human, another pink marshmallow wielding a rod of light to vanquish an entity that seemed to encompass nightmares itself to a small fleet of ships led by a young anthropomorphic vulpine, accompanied by a hot-headed avian, a clueless amphibian, and a wise old hare.

The creature suddenly smiled to himself as his mind formulated a plan. It was time to fight back. He might be able to wander each of these diverse worlds free and without fear of persecution. He might even be able to wear his artificial name proudly now: Master Hand, the true puppeteer.