It’s time to begin the story anew.
~~~
There was once a universe of seemingly endless grass. It wasn’t truly endless – nothing was – merely self-recursive. If one were to walk far enough along the grassland they would come out the other end. Not that they would easily be able to tell since most of the universe looked the same. Just grass, grass, grass.
When its time came to be forced into the collapse, its self-recursive shape simply couldn’t fit into the new design. So it needed to be adapted. It – and several universes like it – was forced to become pure three-dimensional squares of grass, soil, and earth. These squares were patched together like a quilt, forming a large ring. Planets began to appear in the middle of the ring. Every one of these planets unfolded as well, their crusts peeling off the molten cores so they could be melded with parts of the ring. Anywhere there was a hole, it was filled with material from a random universe, making the surface smooth.
Thousands of planets were folded out like this and affixed to the ring until a hollow sphere larger than many stars took form. A patchwork world.
About two diameters away from this behemoth of a world, normal-sized earthlike planets appeared, forming a spherical shell packed so densely that their atmospheres connected. About five diameters away from this, a much larger variety of planets took shape, including gas giants, planets made of solid materials, and a diminutive glowing object that couldn’t be classified by general astronomy.
This two-sphere system took its place alongside several other systems of varying size – some had dozens of spheres around the central conglomeration world, while others only had one. Most spheres were like this one, packed so densely that atmospheres were touching, but there were a few that had apparent empty space between them. Some even contained stars.
On the grassy conglomeration world, two figures stood, watching the new shape of reality take form. One could have been described as human, but this would have done her a disservice. Her skin was a pale orange and her hair a jarring red-yellow pattern. Two pointed ears poked out of the folds of her hair, twitching ever so slightly at the breeze passing through them, an action her grandiose wings were mimicking. A sharp horn jutted from her forehead, casting a shadow over her deep red eyes – a color that was only accentuated by her triangle-pointed crimson shades. She wore a white dress with red designs resembling circuitry. Matching this were her two white gloves, each with a red crystal on the back of them.
Her name was Corona “Sunset” Shimmer, and she was looking at the sky, her expression one of someone who felt something was wrong.
In stark contrast, her companion was decidedly inhuman. She was a purple equine lifeform with a horn and two large, majestic wings. She wore a golden tiara with a pink crystal embedded in it, a sharp contrast to the dark metallic spikes that lined each of her bloodied ears. Trails of blood had dried on the sides of her face, some of it mixing with her mane of swirling stars and magical sparks.
One of her eyes was a deep, intelligent purple. The other was a bright yellow-orange color with a sun-like symbol in place of her iris, helping her take everything in. She didn’t notice the yellow fade away as the world assembled itself, replaced with a completely normal eye. The pupils darted left and right, trying to absorb all the information suddenly available to her. Her name was Evening “Twilight” Sparkle, and she was so overwhelmed she couldn’t form a coherent thought.
They stood together for several minutes, trying to process. But their minds couldn’t grasp the reality of the situation, for its scope was simply too big.
Everything in every plane of existence had been changed. Planets had just been torn out of their universes and placed here, in this bizarre mesh of nested spheres.
Eve looked to Corona, checking to see if her mouth was moving. It wasn’t, but that was no indicator she hadn’t been talking earlier. It wasn’t like Eve could hear anything even if she wanted to right now, seeing as her hearing devices were broken.
She spoke first. “…It’s over.”
“This is wrong,” Corona breathed, beginning to tremble.
Eve’s expression became one of confusion. “Isn’t this what you wanted!?”
“This isn’t it!” Corona shouted. “This wasn’t how it was supposed to go! The planets are supposed to be fused, collapsed together, not arranged in a perfect lattice of spheres! I mean, maybe, maybe that lets more people survive, but that’s not what I planned for, and that means I was wrong, and… And look at us!”
“Us?”
“We still exist! The chances of both of us living through the collapse was astronomical! Even one of us was ridiculous! We shouldn’t be here – unless there’s still ka. And you know what else? Magic! It’s still around! The averaging of all worlds should have removed it or made it minimal but look at your stupid mane, sparkling just as much as ever, and th-” She stopped short, the blood draining out of her face in an instant.
Eve glowered. “Oh, by all means, don’t sto-”
Corona ignored her, turning to a crystal on the back of her hand. “Raging Sights! Raging Sights! Talk to me!”
There was no response from the crystal.
Corona lifted her hand, trying to cast a spell – but all that came off her fingers was a single spark of light. It did nothing to her Device. “N… No…”
Eve tried to light her horn. All she got was a similarly-sized spark of magic that did nothing. “Wh… That doesn’t make sense!” She tried to activate her eye of Light, but found she couldn’t. She tried to summon her Stand, Seraphim, but there was no luck there either. Checking her mane, she found it was definitely filled with magic. “Why can’t we use it!?”
“Raging Sights!” Corona yelled, pulling off her glove and staring at it. “COME ON!” She pressed her hand to the crystal, trying to force an empathic connection, but got nothing. She yelled, throwing the glove to the ground. She pointed a finger at a random place in the sky. “SO YOU LET ME SURVIVE BUT DO THIS!?”
There was no response.
“DAMN IT, ANSWER ME, YOU STUPID TOWER! I KNOW YOU’RE STILL HERE, ‘FESS UP!”
Nothing but a breeze through her hair.
She crumbled to the ground, tears falling from her face. “I killed them all… I did this… and it was all for nothing…” She pulled herself into a ball and started rocking back and forth.
Eve looked at Corona closely, expressionless. The alicorn closed her eyes tight and knitted her brow, a deep scowl crossing her face. When she opened her eyes they were narrow and menacing. She opened her mouth – but nothing came out, for she saw the trembling, broken form of Corona.
Eve took a sharp breath and held it in, shaking. Closing her eyes and swallowing hard, she put a hoof to her chest and then moved it away as she released a breath, spreading her wings at the same time. She opened her eyes and took a step forward – stopping and shaking her head. She took a few more breaths and continued moving forward, extending a single wing.
The wing shook over Corona’s form. Eve swallowed again, putting a soft smile on her face. She laid her wing on Corona’s back.
Corona reacted as if she were spring-loaded, pulling Eve into a tight, desperate hug. She made a few sputtering noises in her failed attempts to speak, eventually giving up on this and just sobbing.
Eve shuddered, struggling to keep her composure.
She needs this.
Some time later – it could have been seconds, it could have been minutes – the sharp sound of static met Corona’s ears. She pulled out of the embrace in an instant, on edge, the action confusing Eve considerably.
Corona’s ears swiveled around until they pinpointed the sound’s source. The crystal on the glove she had thrown to the ground.
“…ocal additions activated… …eport coming… …ease respond. Master, please respond.”
“Raging Sights!?” Corona shouted, grabbing the glove in a motion so desperate she tripped and fell to the ground. She held it up. “Are you there?”
“Affirmative. Systems are far below optimal. Cannot access our connection. Resorting to vocalizations. I apologize, it took significant time to activate.”
“It’s okay, you’re back, you’re back…” Tears poured down her face.
“I am unable to perform detailed scans right now, Master. Can you inform me what has happened?”
Corona’s smile vanished in an instant. She leaned looked to Eve. “…RS… Everything’s wrong.” She looked up at the slowly moving planets in the sky. “Everything’s wrong…”
~~~
When the New World was formed, Celestia City was certainly large enough to be treated as a planet. It was placed in a system of worlds swirling around a gas giant with a rainbow of colorful gasses intermingling with each other. On one side of Celestia City was a large asteroid placed just far enough away that it wouldn’t scrape against any of the city’s larger towers. On the other side there was a crystalline diamond shape lined with intricate caverns.
All three of these smaller celestial objects were uncomfortably close to a red Neptune-like planet.
From a window at the base of one of Celestia City’s larger protrusions, a white unicorn looked at the red planet with a curious eyebrow. She wore four tall, black leather boots and had two similarly colored whips hung on her back. Numerous scars lined her body, but her mane and face seemed not only untouched, but also beautiful.
“Well, balls,” she muttered in what could best be described as a comedic impression of an Australian accent. “This is right messed up.”
She was the only person in the room. This had not been the case a couple minutes ago. Looking at the tables of food and drink she could clearly remember that there had been a minor party going on, filled with people who were trying their best not to think about the war.
Then all of them had lit up like Christmas trees and burst into white sparkling dust. Dusted.
She hadn’t really known any of them – her sort of partying didn’t mix well with her actual close friends – but it did fill her with a deep sense of unease. It was happening again.
Glancing at the red planet one last time, she decided she was done wondering why the planet’s gravity hadn’t torn them apart already. She ran out of the room and into the streets of Celestia City.
She closed her eyes, tapping into what she had Seen. There was a bunch of flashing images… The dusting of a lot of people she knew – don’t think about that now, you’ve got things to do – an image of the Tower and some planet, then nothing. She had never been the best at Awareness, but the sharp dropoff of such a vivid image was very disconcerting.
Only one of the places she’d seen was actually in Celestia City, which meant she had to get there as fast as possible.
As she ran through the streets of the City, she was struck with how empty it was. Every few minutes she would see someone wandering around like a zombie or hear some enraged sobs coming from a nearby building, but for the most part all the bustling noises of the city were gone. She saw a few wrecked hovercars, a lot of doors ominously hanging open, and several purses and bags just left on the ground, abandoned.
Most of the public screens in the city displayed error messages. A few emitted a low drone, indicative that some automatic protocols had initiated, telling people to remain in their homes. However, there should have been a lot more happening even if everyone had been dusted to nothing. The drones of Celestia City should have been readying it for combat, the shield should have been up, and more detailed messages should have been going out.
The unicorn decided to worry about it later. She had somewhere to be.
She leaped into an elevator that had access to the lower levels, hoping the lift still functioned. There was an error message saying expect slower travel times, but it allowed her to select a destination.
At least I don’t have to find some stairs. I don’t even know where those would be.
The elevator took her down, slowly, through a clear shaft. She saw the inner workings of Celestia City laid bare to her eyes. What was usually a bustling city of bright colors, neon lights, and cheerful crowds was eerie. There were a few smoldering areas from car crashes, and one section of cubic buildings had something go so wrong they exploded in blue fire. During her trip, she only saw one hovercar move past her field of view, so fast she almost didn’t register it.
She eventually arrived at her selected level. She darted out of the elevator and ran down a winding street made of a ruby-like material. Once the road transferred to a more traditional asphalt-mimicking road, she skidded to a stop in front of her goal: the League of Sweetie Belles.
A hover car had crashed right through the walls of the building. The crash had dislodged the crusader shield of the league, leaving the plaque embedded in the ground.
The unicorn shook her head and ran past the shield into the League’s main lobby. The hovercar was there, sitting on top of a loose pile of metallic debris from the wall. There was no driver or passengers. Toward the edge of the pile, she saw a small white hoof sticking out.
“I’m coming!” she shouted, running to the hoof. She tried to lift the metal sheet with her telekinesis, but promptly found that her horn wasn’t working. She shook her head, switching from horn to hoof to remove the metal. The sheet was heavy, but she wasn’t a weak mare by any means. It only took a few seconds to reveal the other white unicorn beneath – one with deep red eyes and a jagged pastel pink-purple mane.
“Thrackerzod?”
Thrackerzod looked up, her red eyes blinking ever-so-slowly. “…Mattie…?” she asked with a deep, guttural voice.
“Yes, it’s me. Where are the others?”
“…Gone.”
“I mean those who weren’t dusted,” Mattie muttered, narrowing her eyes. “Please, Thrackerzod, we have to get them out of here.”
Thrackerzod blinked, looking at her horn for a moment. “Huh…” She pointed a lethargic hoof at a nearby piece of sheet metal. Mattie ran to it, peeling the metal off to reveal a human girl with white skin and hair of a similar color to Thrackerzod’s – another member of the League of Sweetie Belles. “Uh… Please don’t take offense to this, but which one are you?”
The girl quickly glanced at her with her pale, green irises. “I…” She said, suddenly caught off guard by the meek, girlish sound of her voice. “What…?” She stared at her arm, wiggling her fingers. “What fresh hell is…?”
“Burgerbelle,” Thrackerzod offered, not lifting her head. “It’s Burgerbelle.”
Mattie blinked. “…What?”
“She was dying. The universe wouldn’t accept her. I had to do what I could. She’s the last one.”
Mattie gulped. “S-surely there were other Sweeties here?”
“The others are ‘dusted’,” Thrackerzod said, voice finally ringing with an emotion – anger. “All three of them…”
Burgerbelle started crying. Mattie shook her head – she already knew about Allure, Bot, and Squeaky. It was one of the things she’d Seen. But the League had to have more Sweeties in it… She climbed onto the shrapnel, looking for any sign of life. Near the top, she found one of them – a small unicorn Sweetie with a metal spike jammed through her head.
“Lucky enough to make it five seconds…” Mattie muttered. She continued to look through the wreckage for other Sweeties. A few minutes later she found one alive – it was one of the younger ones with a deep black coat. She was unconscious. It wasn’t hard for Mattie to dig her out and set her next to Thrackerzod.
Something in Thrackerzod’s mind clicked. “You… found her?”
“Yeah, in the metal. You should help.”
Thrackerzod shook her head, blinking several times. Then she looked at the wreckage and tried to light her horn. Mattie felt the usual wave of unease she got whenever Thrackerzod tried to do something magical – but aside from that, there was no effect.
“…What in Azathoth’s name…?”
“I think magic is out,” Mattie said. “I can’t use mine either. My Awareness is spotty, to boot. So we’re right screwed here with just our hooves.” She glanced at Burgerbelle, the once-Flat being still unable to fully process her new body. “…This is going to take too long…”
“We can’t treat them even if we find them,” Thrackerzod said. “We need magic to do that. First aid isn’t going to help serious injuries.”
Mattie pointed at the black Sweetie. “She’s fine. But we can’t just leave them. W-”
Suddenly, the lights came on. A synthetic voice could be heard over the loudspeaker. “Please remain calm, citizens. Power is being restored to Celestia City. Medical stations are the next priority. Please be patient as we sort out this issue. Many of us are injured or lost, help everyone you see if you are able. Thank you.”
“…All the leadership must be gone,” Thrackerzod said. “The City AI wouldn’t need to speak itself, otherwise.”
“I’m surprised it’s still around,” Mattie commented, pulling off another sheet of metal.
“It… would have had hundreds of backups. Including one specifically designed to be soulless.”
Mattie shook her head, saying nothing. She peeled another piece of metal off the ground to find not a Sweetie Belle – but a naked woman with pure white skin and short white hair. Strange, ribbon-like tendrils flowed from her back. She had cuts and bruises all over her body, a few of them serious, but was still breathing.
“Who the devil i-”
“White Nettle…” Thrackerzod said in disbelief. “She must have transformed herself at the last minute…”
Mattie put her hoof under White Nettle’s body and hoisted her up. “Where’s the League’s medical unit?”
“Basement Two.”
“That AI better have it running. I’ve got questions and I bet Nettle here can answer them. Can I trust you to keep looking?”
Thrackerzod nodded slowly. “…It’s far from the first time I’ve been without my abilities. I’ll survive.”
“Not what I was concerned about.”
Thrackerzod looked at the ground, clearly struggling to maintain her composure. “We don’t have the luxury of being so concerned about each other. Go, heal her. I’ll keep working.”
Mattie nodded, carrying Nettle away.
~~~
“NOVA!”
The church sat on top of a large mountain overlooking a sea of pink water that churned with the chaos of being assembled onto a new planet. The church itself was completely unharmed, thanks no doubt to its protective enchantments, but that did nothing to alleviate the travesty that had just occurred. Within the church, there were sounds of screams and tears.
Flutterfree Asquall, for once in her life, didn’t give any thought to the screams and pain of others. She ran to where her lifelong friend had vanished into sparkling dust. She flailed around with her yellow hooves and marble-tipped wings, trying to grab onto something, anything, even though there was no longer anything there. Her pointed ears twitched in random directions, wanting anything that told them Nova was there, that Nova was fine. She let out a screech, baring her fangs and staring at the ground with her red eyes.
She tried to summon her Stand, Lolo, to Reveal everything around them. But she couldn’t. This threw her – Lolo’s entire power was to show things, including itself! How come it wasn’t!?
“What’s happened?!” Flutterfree wailed, demanding someone, anyone answer her. She looked to her team members. Vriska and Pidge, the cobalt troll and the diminutive woman, had their hands to their mouths, tears in their eyes. Even the usually stoic Jotaro looked vulnerable despite his gigantic masculine figure. Meanwhile, Pinkie, her once-Captain and other lifelong friend, was clearly trying to cry despite her lack of eyes.
“Rev!” Flutterfree called out, demanding support.
The pinkish unicorn Flutterfree called wasn't looking at her – she was looking at her church, listening to the screams and cries, holding her cross necklace tight. “It was a bunker… It was supposed to be safe…”
“Clearly the bunker idea was fucking pointless,” the dark Rina spat, ruffling her wings and adjusting her dress. “Great use of my magic. So glad we did that.”
“Shut the fuck up!” Vriska shouted, rushing to punch Rina across the face. The troll missed, falling to the ground in a heap.
Rina prepared a magic bolt – but only a tiny spark of purple came out. “What in-”
“Magic’s gone,” Pinkie said, her voice haggard, choking on her breaths. She didn’t bother turning her head away from where Nova had been. “It’s just… gone…”
“It can’t be gone!” Flutterfree shouted. “You saw what happened! You saw those sparks! Look at my mane, it’s still active!” She stomped her hooves on the ground. “GET HER B-” Her anger dropped off in an instant and she paled, a haunted expression crossing her face. “No… No Rage…”
“No Stands either…” Jotaro said, pulling his hat over his eyes.
“You’re really talking about powers at a time like this?” Vriska blurted. “Nova’s just been turned to dust! I don’t know about you but that seems pretty fucking permanent!”
“We won, Vriska!” Pidge shouted back. “That was the price of the collapse. None of us expected to survive!”
“Then why did only one of us die?”
“Get some perspective,” Rev spat, glowering at them. “Do none of you care about the church? It clearly got more of them.”
“Oh, that’s great, guess that means we’re still important,” Pidge muttered. “What was the whole point of the Collapse again? To destroy the Tower? Pinkie, how destroyed is the Tower?”
“…It has a crack,” Pinkie said. “…That’s all I saw. A crack.”
“Then the job isn’t done. We need to go to the Tower and take it down the rest of the way.”
“Agreed,” Jotaro said.
“Now is not the time to go rushing into action again!” Vriska shouted.
“Oh, that’s rich coming from you,” Pidge retorted.
“I happen to have enough emotional sense to know when everyone’s broken! You like to think you’re a robot!”
“I’m quiznakking outraged! The Tower’s played a trick on us! A trick!”
“Did we really think it wouldn’t?” Pinkie asked, angling her head at the sky. “I mean, really… That would have just been too predictable.” She let out a soft chuckle, her mane entering its flat state. “Gee, we’re really stupid aren’t we?”
“Of course you are, you wanted to collapse the multiverse!” Rina shouted. “And you won! You should all be fucking ecstatic.”
Pinkie tried to twist herself to appear behind Rina – but instead just fell to the ground. “Oh, look at that, Pinkie Powers are down as well, isn’t that great?” She giggled.
Flutterfree started sobbing. “Pinkie… Pinkie stop…”
Pinkie shivered. “I… I… I need to cry Flutterfree. I need to cry and I can’t.”
“Pinkie…”
“What is your problem!?” Rina shouted at Flutterfree. “They’re the ones who did all of this! They’re the ones who killed Nova!”
“F-fuck,” Vriska said, taking a few steps back.
“Oh, did you not register that, bitch? You are to blame for this! Listen to those screams!”
“We don’t take sides, Rina!” Rev shouted.
“Why don’t you get away from your high-and-mighty doctrine and tell us what you really think, Rev?” Rina glared at her.
“I think we’re all broken and we need to stop shouting at each other!”
“HAH!” Vriska blurted. “That’s a laugh! Us, stop arguing, after Nova fucking died. How naïve are you?”
Rev bit back her own tears. “She was my friend too you know! But th-”
“Rev…?” Flutterfree asked with a quiet voice that managed to draw everyone’s attention. “…Do you think there was any chance she believed? Any… Any at all?”
Rev froze like a deer in the headlights. She swallowed hard and opened her mouth to answer.
Instead she broke down into tears and crumpled to the ground, hooves over her face.
“Tell me there was a chance!” Flutterfree demanded.
Rev didn’t even open her eyes.
“TELL ME THERE WAS A CHANCE!”
“I CAN’T! IT WOULD BE A LIE!” Rev wailed, swinging one of her hooves around wildly. “EVE, MAYBE, BUT NOVA? SHE DIDN’T BELIEVE! SHE NEVER DID! SHE WAS SET IN HER WAYS!”
“SHE CAN’T BE THERE!”
“SHE IS! SHE IS AND WE HAVE TO LIVE WITH IT! BUT S-”
Flutterfree punched Rev across the face.
Everyone stared at Flutterfree in shock.
“Hell…” she muttered. “She… She was a good mare…”
“She didn’t want Him,” Rev said, struggling back to her hooves. “He… He gave her what she wan-”
Flutterfree screeched. “Don’t you give me any of that ‘He gave her what she wanted’ NONSENSE!”
“Flutterfree, I beli-”
“YOU ARE A BUNDLE OF PATHETIC WISHFUL THINKING!”
“I… I don’t, I think about it and I… I feel that…” She couldn’t complete her sentence, breaking down again. She pulled Flutterfree into a hug and the two of them bawled their eyes out.
Pinkie threw herself onto the pile. Without hesitation, Pidge, Jotaro, and Vriska threw their arms around each other as well.
Rina stood off to the side, awkwardly hoofing the ground. The anger had drained from her face, but she still wasn’t crying.
“Fuck, life is stupid,” she muttered under her breath.
A great golden lion by the name of Aslan walked out of the church, taking his position besides Rina. “…They have been reunited.”
“They’re stupid,” Rina echoed her earlier sentiment.
“He has chosen the weak and foolish to shame the strong and wise.”
Rina looked at the ground, ashamed.
“…They were together, all of them, for one last moment,” Aslan said.
“Why would He do that? Give them hope just… Just to take it away?”
“God’s plan is never something we can know for sure. …But I think if you ask that question about the Tower instead of Him, you will find an answer.”
Rina fell silent.
Aslan turned. “Let them commiserate. When they have completed, send them back in.”
“You can’t stay here…?”
“The church needs a powerful presence right now, most of us are gone.” He shook his head in sorrow. “Right now, Valentine is just making sure they don’t all leave in panic.”
Rina nodded, turning back to the pile of grieving people. Her frown deepened.
~~~
I stared at the broken Fourth Wall.
Through it, I could see the bedroom of GM – the GM, the Prophet GM, the source of the ideas that formed me and most of the events that had surrounded me for the last several decades. He lay, dead, because I acted too quickly.
You’re going to be the death of me.
“There’s no way… You couldn’t have done that… You wouldn’t have done that! You…” I let out a bitter, drawn out laugh. “Of course you would. You planned this all along…” I wiped a tear from my face with my wing. “Can I apologize for something you made me do? Or did I still do it? If it was planned that far back, could I have changed it? Would someone else have killed you?”
I did not get answers to my questions, could not. I would have asked more, but I was interrupted by a kick to the face from Roxy Lalonde, Rogue of Void, a blonde woman in a dark blue roguish outfit. “You’re done.”
She tried to erase me from existence. I tried to defend myself with magic.
It will not surprise you that neither of our attempted uses of esoteric ability had any effect whatsoever.
Roxy took one look at her Void powers not working, shrugged, and kicked me in the stomach.
I bounced back and flared my purple wings. I padded my hoof on the ground. If I was just a normal alicorn right now, I could easily take a Gem - all it would take was a carefully placed horn into her side to poof her.
She reached into the air, trying to pull a weapon out of her inventory, but found that was out of her access as well. “Fuck…”
“Don’t do this, Roxy,” I warned.
“You killed him!”
“I didn’t want to! I was trying to destroy the wall!” I shouted. “He was my Prophet! I knew him! Why would I want him dead!?”
“To keep us from stopping you, duh. Tell me you wouldn’t have killed him if you thought it would have ensured your collapse happened.”
I couldn’t tell her that. She nodded to herself and charged again. I slipped behind her and kicked her in the back.
“HEAVEN’S DOOR!” Rohan, eccentric manga artist, shouted, trying to summon his Stand. Realizing his only weapon was useless, he decided to take cover behind the largest thing around, the Fourth Wall. He was the first to discover that the room on the other side of the Fourth Wall was physically on the other side, no longer connected by an esoteric wormhole of some sort. He did not feel the need to comment on this.
A tall woman with long, flowing coral brown hair shrugged. “Can’t access character files either, sooo…” She rushed me driving her foot into my cheek bone.
“Monika!” I shouted. “You don’t have to do this!”
“I’ve wanted to do this since before the war,” Monika muttered, kicking me again. I caught it with a hoof, but Roxy punched it out.
“Jade’s dead. John’s dead. Fuck, even Hussie’s dead, and I bet all the ghosts are, too!” Roxy shouted, pulling one of my hooves and slamming me against the ground. She was not expecting me to be so heavy, so she fell over in the process. Monika continued to kick me.
She shattered a rib. I screamed. “We don’t have magic! We can’t heal injuries!”
They ignored me. Roxy had let rage consume her, and Monika had never had much in the way of a moral compass.
“JUST STOP!” a young man with oversized glasses shouted.
Monika and Roxy looked up from what they were doing to stare at GM – little more than a boy who had been lured into this mess by a Prophet who wanted to remain hidden.
He was crying. “Just… There’s been enough… Stop…”
Roxy’s expression softened for a moment, but it quickly returned to rage. “You’re part of this too. You’re part of his story.”
GM’s fear heightened considerably. “B-w-sh-i-jis…” He couldn’t formulate a word.
Monika glared. “You’re just like him. A copy designed to throw us off. You’re the one who brought this all on us…”
Rohan muttered a curse before leaping out between Monika and GM. “No. You don’t get to blame him for this.”
“Get out of the way, Rohan.”
“I refuse.”
Monika’s left eye twitched. “Don’t think I can’t see your stupid meme. I’m powerless, not unAware. You’ve never actually fought anything.”
“He’s still right,” Rohan said, narrowing his eyes. “The fight is over. We don’t need to continue it.”
“They’re dead, Rohan!” Roxy shouted.
“Yes. They are. And this kid, if he had anything to do with it, had no idea.” He pointed a drawing pen at them. “Prophets cannot be held accountable for what they write if they do not know their nature! Not even the GM behind the window knew – he was just writing what he thought was a clever story!”
GM looked up at Rohan in wonder. “Th… thank you.”
“A version of him probably made you say that,” Monika pointed out.
“Made me say?” Rohan raised an eyebrow. “Made me say? If he truly made me say it, then everything you say was predetermined as well. But he himself admits we ‘characters’ surprise him. He did not expect me to come out and defend him. Yet I did it anyway. I refuse to be a predictable character, and the same goes for you. I am not a one-off asshole manga artist whose only goals in life are furthering my art. I have goals. People I love and care about. Experiences that no one here but myself can completely understand. I am Rohan Kishibe – you are Roxy Lalonde, you are Monika, and you are Twilence. You’re all people.”
Roxy blinked. “…Good speech. What does it have to do with you stopping us?”
Rohan put his pen away. “I’ve calmed you down enough to where you won’t want to hurt some poor defenseless kid for daring to point out you were being cruel.”
“I don’t have to listen to this,” Monika muttered, curling her fingers into a fist.
“You’re right…” Roxy said, expression softening again. “But so is Rohan… We can’t just kill them. That… That wouldn’t be right. Wouldn’t be in good memory…. Wouldn’t be…” She put a hand to her mouth. “Oh my god I was going to beat someone to death with my fists…”
I stood up, hoof to my ribs. “Its’… fine, I understan-”
“Don’t you start, bitch,” Roxy glowered, “The thickness of the ice you are standing on can be measured by my hair.”
I recoiled. “U-understood.”
“So, Rohan, since for some reason you seem to be the one who has their shit the closest to together, how about you give a report or… something.” She took in a breath, wiping her face. “…Please.”
Rohan nodded. “Sure. To put it simply, we failed, the collapse happened. Since most of us are still alive I’m willing to bet it didn’t go as planned.”
I looked up at the sky, seeing the large round shapes shifting in the bizarre twilight. “…You’d be safe to assume that.”
“And since Monika’s still Aware, the Tower still exists.”
“Yep,” Monika said. “Me and Twilence saw 130. The Tower’s here, because of something Flowers and that stupid Renee bitch.”
I furrowed my brow. “I… Am I allowed to ask what happened to Renee? She looked… wrong.”
“She’s dead. Came Back Wrong,” Monika deadpanned. “After she was killed by Allure during the destruction of Raven Hotel.”
“W-what!? She’s a hyper-intelligent?!”
“I don’t know, probably?” Monika shrugged. “Everything but that scene with her in it was hidden. So I’m only slightly less clueless than you. And we can’t see anything now, so it’s not like we have a way to get any more information.”
“That’s not true,” Rohan said, pointing at the ground.
Black Thirteen sat there, just where they had left it. It called to all of them, still clearly brimming with magic.
“…Well,” Monika said, blinking. “…I completely forgot about that thing.”
“Anyone here able to touch it without going mad?” Rohan asked.
I raised my hoof.
“Nope, you don’t get it,” Monika said.
“I’m the only one who can hold it and get any information from it. I thought you wanted to know things?”
“Let’s finish talking about what’s happening before we get into a stupid argument about the most powerful artifact in the multiverse,” Roxy muttered, putting a hand to the bridge of her nose. “I mean since Joh…” She stopped talking, arm covering her eyes.
Rohan shook his head. “I’ll… take that order. The Prophet GM is dead, and the last thing I saw on his computer before it exploded was one-fifty-seven. He’s already completed the story. We can’t do anything to change that now. Black Thirteen’s right there, calling to us. All the ghosts vanished, John was ‘Purified’ by that batter…” They all heard Roxy’s pained sob. “And Magane vanished in a cloud of sparkles.”
“The Tower letting us know there’s no escape,” Monika muttered.
“It is a very cruel construct,” I added.
“I can break another rib,” Monika threatened.
I turned away, head sagging.
“And now we’re on this plain of roses,” Rohan said. “The Dark Tower doesn’t appear to be anywhere near here anymore, and there are planets spinning above us in ways that don’t make sense. I don’t think I missed anything.” He glanced at GM. “Oh, right, we have GM with us. He’s been decidedly traumatized.”
GM let out a bitter snort and nodded distantly.
“Anyway, that’s basically all we know. Suggestions for what to do?”
“Access Black Thirteen and get information out of it,” I said. “It will know.”
“And you don’t have a voice in this team,” Monika pointed out. “You’re a prisoner. Actually, I should use a capture device on you… Should work fine with just a few more kicks…”
“Look, let’s talk about this like civilized people and come to a rational conc-”
A man in black appeared in the air with a ZAP! He unceremoniously fell to the ground with a thud, the roses scraping him. He grunted, stood up, and dusted himself off.
Randall Flagg.
“So, it’s been a couple hours, I guess?” Flagg cracked his knuckles. “That retcon was both the worst and last mistake of your pathetic lives.”
~~~
The Source was the well from which all ka flowed. It represented itself as a white Spirograph shape that twirled, slowly, in the room at the top of the Dark Tower. This room was usually empty, devoid of all objects save for a clock tied to the fate of the multiverse itself.
That clock was gone now. But the room was not empty. There were five people there, plus a partial artificial intelligence that took the form of a purple sugar-skull lying motionlessly on the ground. Four of the people were looking accusatory at the fifth – a white unicorn in a stylish gray hat lined with a pink ribbon. One of her eyes was clearly fake and featured a large crack along it, while the other seemed menacing. Once, she had been a mare by the name of Renee, though she clearly wasn’t this mare anymore.
“What. Did. You. DO!?” Nanoha Takamachi, Chief Sovereign of the Time Space Administration Bureau, demanded. She struck a powerful pose, her long orange hair flipping around, pointing the Device Raising Heart at Renee menacingly. Her normally soft, understanding features were harsh and brutal.
“You know that toy of yours can’t do anything right now,” Renee said, rolling her eyes. “Don’t even try to bluff.”
Nanoha twitched, refusing to lower Raising Heart.
“I know my gun works,” a deep, gruff voice said. Everyone turned their attention to the newcomer to the room: Roland of Gilead, a gruff man with uneven stubble, a hat ripped straight out of a western, eyes that had seen far too much, and a very even grip on the handle of his pistol.
“Gunslinger…” Renee said, a wiry scowl crawling up her mouth. “How does it feel to be free and finally enter the room you have sought for so, so long?”
“It tells me something’s wrong. Of all the characters in this room, you are the closest to him.”
“Oh, do be more specific darling. We talking Randall Flagg? The Crimson King? Or perhaps you still have some resentment toward Stephen King?”
“Like you don’t already know,” a short woman with teal hair and red gloves said. She wore a sleek form-fitting outfit with a segmented skirt and pronounced yellow collar. She was Jenny of the Red Gloves, and she was ready to punch the unicorn in the face and across the room at a moment’s notice. “Stop toying with him.”
Renee shrugged. “If you insist, I shall stop toying with him.”
“Then how about you answer the dame’s question?” Roland asked, narrowing his eyes.
“I think we all want to know what you did,” the last person in the room – a gray skinned humanoid with long, orange ram horns that complimented her own robes. She was the representative chosen from all versions of Aradia, Maid of Time, to be here at this momentous time. “I might object to torturing you for more information, but I think all the others are indifferent.”
“She said, thinking she could actually torture me,” Renee laughed. “But I’m in a helpful mood, so I’ll give you at least a little taste. I initiated the collapse with some… edits.”
“At the behest of the Flowers?” Nanoha asked.
“Ah ah ah, one question at a time, dearie. Looks like being Chief Sovereign has made you lose your patience, White Devil.”
Jenny flexed her wrist. “One more remark like that out of you and your brains will be against the wall.”
Renee rolled her eyes. “Everyone else in this room has checked their magic already. Have you?”
Jenny’s pupils dilated. “Frick…”
“That’s what I thought. Resuming my answers, I initiated the collapse. It wasn’t the collapse they wanted. Yes, that’s right, look around – there are no pro-collapse individuals left in this room. Isn’t. That. Something?”
“I get it, poetic justice or apropos or whatever.”
“Learning ever so slowly,” Renee chuckled. “As always. Regardless, the original collapse wanted completely natural fusion and averaging out of all the universes in the multiverse. This simply wouldn’t do – the sheer scale of death would be unimaginable, the physics of the New World would be near-Mundane, and above all, the story would end so abruptly at the climax without a resolution! Simply horrendous.”
“The whole point of the collapse was to end the story,” Aradia said. “To keep Prophets from dictating our actions.”
Roland furrowed his brow in contemplation at this revelation, but said nothing.
“It certainly was the point. But it was a point that just wouldn’t be satisfying.” Renee twirled a hoof in the air. “So here I am, changing the collapse. Made a few adjustments. Namely, the universe outside isn’t Mundane, far from it! You can be rest assured it’s a single universe but oh is it so delightfully varied. A perfect tessellation machinated by the highest patterns imaginable in ever-increasing spheres…” Her eyes sparkled. “It’s beautiful. And to top it all off, the story gets to continue!” She tapped the wall of the room. “The Dark Tower is still here, after all. If it had been destroyed we would all be dead. Well, re-dead in my case, but that’s just semantics.”
“Then why’d they vanish?” Jenny shouted. “Alushy, Blumiere… They’re just gone!”
“Ah, dusted.” Renee smirked. “It simply wouldn’t do to have the collapse come without punishment. The vast majority of people in existence have been dusted in a similar way. Of course, the actual death toll is significantly less than it would be if a true collapse were initiated – somewhere around seven orders of magnitude – but it still had to be large enough for everyone to feel it. You can’t just change the multiverse and not suffer the consequences you were prepared to deal with. That’d just be cheap.”
Roland lowered his gun. “So you saved lives.”
“At the expense of making the lives that were lost not even close to worth it,” Aradia added.
“The foolishness of you people astounds me sometimes…” She picked Sai up off the ground and tossed her to Roland. He caught the AI in his free hand, though he knew not what it was, and Sai wasn’t saying anything. “Why don’t we go outside and take a look at what this New World is actually like, hmm? Stretch our legs a bit and get a better understanding of the complete picture.”
“Nobody can see the complete picture,” Aradia pointed out.
“Doesn’t really matter, does it?” Jenny asked.
Renee laughed and shook her head. “Assumptions, assumptions, assumptions! Tsk tsk tsk.” She trotted toward the door that led to the Tower’s staircase. “Let’s clear up some of those.”
“We didn’t agree to go outside,” Jenny pointed out.
“And you don’t have your powers so you can’t exactly stop me. You’re ‘free’ to stay in this room if you want, but none of you will.” She trotted out the door.
Nanoha sighed. “She’s right…” She followed Renee. The rest followed her.
Roland took one last look at the room. The room he had sought for so long, just to get some answers.
The answer?
A machine. All of this up here, everything, it was a machine. The Source told him that much. All he had experienced – the endless repeating story, the conflict with the Crimson King, his close ka-tet of friends – all dictated by this machine. There was no god in the room, no mind.
For whatever reason it had ‘decided’ he no longer needed to be on his endless journey.
He turned and left. There were more answers to be sought. But he knew they lay outside the Dark Tower.
For the first time since the beginning era of the multiverse, Roland of Gilead did not have a singular quest defining his life.
~~~
“Report!” Military Overhead Jack O’Neill barked, pulling himself back onto his captain’s chair and holding his head.
At first, nobody responded.
O’Neill looked around the bridge of his ship, the Austraeoh, and found only one other person – a fit blue unicorn by the name of Clandestine. She was holding her head, trying to focus. “What just…”
“They collapsed, I think,” O’Neill said, trying to press some buttons on his console. Most of them came up as error messages, but a few of the most mundane backup systems were coming through. They reported a planet proximity danger. “We’re too close…”
“Visual cameras are working,” Clandestine reported, trying not to think too hard about the rest of the bridge crew’s disappearance. She tried to press a button with her magic, but found that didn’t work. “My magic is gone.” She resorted to using hooves to put the planet on the screen.
What she ended up doing was displaying several planets at once, all in a mostly even plane, barely not touching each other.
“…What kind of universe is this?” O’Neill asked.
“I don’t know,” Clandestine reported. “What instruments we do have are saying this is a black hole universe. No outward connections. That’s what we’d expect from a collapse.”
“Can you maneuver us somewhere safe?”
“I think so… reaction-based thrusters are still working.”
O’Neill allowed himself to smirk. “They always said it wasn’t worth designing to function in all universes…”
“One can never have too many backups, sir.”
O’Neill nodded. “Status of the crew?”
“…Before most systems went offline, there were… nineteen remaining life signs.” She gulped. Despite her extensive military experience, she was struggling to keep her composure.
“…Out of a thousand seven hundred…” O’Neill said, shaking his head. He pressed a few buttons on his console, trying to get more readings, but only getting detailed reports for a short time after the collapse was initiated. “How far away are we from the planet now?”
“Far enough away to be safe… But not where we should have been. I… I don’t have access to advanced trajectory calculations, but the planet’s gravity should have done something to us…”
“Something to figure out later. What else is out there besides a bunch of planets all in a line?”
Clandestine bit her lip and started sending camera feeds to various screens around the bridge, replacing the error messages with shaking pictures of planets, planets, and more planets. One image found a tremendous rocky planet two hundred times larger than normal composed of several biomes stitched together like a quilt while another showed a star in the distance, which was being ‘orbited’ by a sphere of asteroid debris, making it look more like a melting rock than a planetary system.
“…The hell?”
“I have no idea either, sir. The physics scanners aren’t functioning. I’ve been able to determine that most of our thaumic components function and are currently trying to reroute themselves. Dimensional drive, reality anchor… anything that does any sort of reality manipulation is completely dead.”
“How much is the damage from the battle hindering us?”
“I think a lot?” Clandestine said, clearly not happy with the amount of uncertainty in her voice. “The Austraeoh is still designed to operate in Mundane space if need be, it shouldn’t take this long to reroute itself. There are probably several things blown out and… hold on, I just found something that isn’t a planet.” She put it onscreen.
Amidst a bunch of shattered metallic debris, there was the Starjammer. The ship they had been fighting just before reality had decided to collapse in on itself. It was a large black behemoth lined with several light-blue glowing Runes. There was a large hole blown out of its aft section.
“Hail them.”
“Radio only,” Clandestine reported, following the order. “No response. Chances are good their communications are down and they aren’t screening for radio.”
“What do we know about the state of their ship?”
“What you see on screen. Heavily damaged – not by us, we didn’t blow that much off of it. Runes appear to still be operational, so I don’t exactly see why they can’t move…”
“The crew could be gone,” O’Neill observed.
“…Yeah…” she glanced at an empty seat beside her. “What could do this?”
“I have no idea. It wasn’t in Corona’s plan. I intend to find out what’s actually responsible.”
Clandestine nodded, looking back at the Starjammer. “Wait, something’s happening…”
One of the Runes of the Starjammer had begun to glow brightly. A few seconds later, it exploded in a shower of blue sparks, taking a chunk of the ship with it.
“Now we know what took out their aft section…” Clandestine said, blinking. “Power failure of some kind…”
“Any sign of survivors?”
Clandestine scanned the image with her eyes. “…There. A handful of escape pods, a fighter, and a carrier. They’re… heavily damaged, but drifting away from the explosions.”
“Let’s get them.”
“All I’ve got is tethers and manual aiming.”
“Then that’ll have to work.”
Clandestine took in a sharp breath. “Yes, sir.” She pressed some buttons and activated the tethers. She aimed one at a time at each of the five crafts.
Outside, the Austraeoh angled its starboard side toward the Starjammer. The Austraeoh was a pristine ship. It was a slender craft formed of a white metal that all came to a single, pointed tip. Usually the central rod glowed with numerous lights and had an engine that shone with every color of the rainbow, but today most of the lights were dark. Six other, smaller rods were arranged around the central shaft, each of them having a single large fin angled toward each other. A ring circled through each of these fins, connecting the entire ship together into a slender beast that resembled a deep sea creature.
The tethers aiming at the larger targets – the fighter and the carrier – latched onto the hulls of the ships with ease. The three directed at the escape pods had different luck. One latched on perfectly, pulling it in. The other two bounced off the Runic hulls, throwing the escape pods in random directions. One went far from either the Starjammer or Austraeoh, but the last pod went flying right back to the Starjammer.
“Sassafras,” Clandestine swore, aiming two tethers at the escape pod drifting toward the Starjammer. Since it was moving much faster now, it was harder to hit. The first missed completely, and the second only nudged it closer to the Starjammer.
Sweating, Clandestine prepared another tether by turning the Austraeoh slightly. She aimed and fired.
The claw latched right onto the escape pod.
“YES!” O’Neill shouted, grinning.
Clandestine let out a sigh of relief and started reeling the tether in.
The Starjammer let loose another explosion, this one enough to disintegrate the nanofiber tether attaching the claw to the Austraeoh.
For a moment, Clandestine moved to launch another claw – but she quickly saw that the escape pod had been ripped in two by the explosion. She sagged in her chair.
Wordlessly, she fired a claw at the escape pod well out of the blast range, hitting it on the first try. She brought it in.
“Clandestine…”
“Sir, I failed. Don’t try to comfort me.”
O’Neill obliged, falling into silence. He put his hand to his chin and looked around the empty bridge once again.
Whoever’s responsible for this… He didn’t finish the thought.
A small beep rang out in the bridge. Clandestine blinked. “…We’re being hailed from the carrier.”
“…Can we put it onscreen?”
“Quality might be low, but yes.” She pressed a button with her hoof, pulling up the image of a familiar woman with pale skin, white hair, and purple eyes. She wore a uniform nearly identical to that of O’Neill.
Her irises dilated when she recognized O’Neill. The two of them stared at each other for a second.
She put her hand to her forehead in a salute. “High Commander Minna Belle reporting for duty, Sir.”
The war’s over. We don’t have to fight anymore. We need each other. He found himself shaking his head and smirking. Then he saluted. “Welcome aboard, High Commander. You’ll be glad to know your court-martial has been postponed indefinitely.”
“Thank you, sir.”
“Now get in here, we need to figure out what the hell we’re dealing with.”
“I couldn’t agree more.”
~~~
Sherlock Holmes had asked the Merodi and the multiverse to keep their shenanigans out of his life. He had decided it was not something he needed to make part of his routine, though he certainly learned everything he could about the multiverse. Curiosity and all.
This had gone pretty well for about thirty years from his perspective, until Corona had made the announcement. He had tried to ignore it, since most of the people in his world had decided it was too much for their puny minds to handle, but he simply couldn’t. So he had to live with knowing there was a war happening for the fate of the entire multiverse.
Still, he had managed to keep himself out of the war. His Earth didn’t care, and likely never would. He continued on with his detective work, always solving the most impossible of cases.
Then the multiverse collapsed and his planet was unfolded like some child had taken a knife to a tennis ball and stomped on it. He happened to be on one of the edges when it happened, witnessing as his world was sewn together with several others. He saw everyone in the town near him vanish in puffs of magic dust.
A normal person would have been horrified and terrified first and foremost, and he certainly felt those things. But his primary emotions were ones of annoyance and dejected acceptance. He had ignored the call for long enough, he supposed the other worlds finally needed him.
Funny how that happened when there was only one world now. Couldn’t really be called the multiverse anymore.
So, technically, he didn’t have to deal with the multiverse again. Technically. Of course, he could also argue that the elements from the other worlds present in the New World constituted interference, but the thought experiment was already boring him.
He looked around. He stood at the fusion point of three separate worlds. One was his city, the other was a city with larger buildings and decidedly brighter colors but an equal lack of people, and the third was a rural area with trees that he had never seen before. Where the three of these worlds met, there was a small section of desert.
In the middle of the desert was a bunch of smoldering wreckage, all of it white and unusually flat. A quick set of observations told him how the pieces of the white material fit together to form a house.
The House Juju, he thought, remembering what he had read. The prison of Lord English. …For Pete’s sake, why do I have to be the one to see this?
As the dust and smog cleared, Sherlock was able to make out a being unlike any he had ever encountered. Pictures didn’t do the sickly green behemoth justice. He was at least three times as tall as any human man and was far more muscular. Every inch of him was absolutely ripped, to the point at which the shapes of muscles pushed through his sleeves. His outfit was equal parts ugly and distracting. There was a Cairo Overcoat whose seams flashed seemingly random colors that Sherlock quickly realized were the standard shades for pool balls. His shorts were white, simple, and torn at the bottom, but one of his legs had been replaced with a solid gold peg strobing with the same colors as the overcoat.
And then there were his eyes. They were embedded in his skull-like face, refusing to keep a consistent color. These eyes were clearly what dictated the rest of his outfit, for they were literal pool balls, shifting from one to fifteen in quick succession. It was hypnotic.
Lord English looked right at Sherlock Holmes and proceeded to let out the deepest, most guttural Honk the man had ever heard. It was the sound that heralded the end of universes. Sherlock stood his ground, but he knew he was dead if English so much as decided he would be vaguely interesting to kill.
Luckily for the detective, English had other business to attend to. He meticulously went about destroying every single shard of the House Juju, crushing the pieces under his massive foot and peg. The Juju was completely powerless now, and English was not bothering to demolish every segment – but he was clearly looking for something.
And he eventually found it. When he stomped on one of the larger sections, three sparks of energy rose from the ground. Red, black, and yellow, corresponding to the Time, Space, and Light aspects.
There should be a Breath in there. Something happened to John. If he died in the war and couldn’t retcon back to imprison English…
English opened his mouth to vaporize the three sparks of energy – but nothing came out of his mouth.
Sherlock grinned. His powers have been changed in this New World! He may not be as unstoppable as before!
English furrowed his brow, glaring at the sparks. He focused, opened his mouth, and tried again. This time the beam of light came out with ease, vaporizing the three essences into nothingness.
Sherlock grimaced. That didn’t take long… He looked around, performing a deduction. English had destroyed the ‘essences’ of what had imprisoned him, what would he do now? He wanted nothing more than control, destruction, and power… In this New World, where would he get it?
Sherlock didn’t know enough about the world to be sure yet, but he was certain English would need to leave to find it. He was proven right when English snapped his fingers, transforming is coat into a sarcophagus shimmering much like his eyes. He entered the sarcophagus and floated into the air, leaving the conglomeration world.
Sherlock waited about fifteen seconds before rushing into the desert circle, looking for anything he could use to tell someone about this, or at least some information to make a deduction. He held the pieces of the House Juju in his hands – as expected, the texture was smooth and not quite like any substance he had seen before. He didn’t get much further, because someone came out of the larger city section – a bearded man in a red cape and blue robes.
“Doctor Strange!” Sherlock said with a smirk.
“Do I… know you?” Strange asked, raising an eyebrow.
“Doubt it, I’m Sherlock Holmes. Judging by your deviation from the general comic appearance and those Merodi-made boots, I’m guessing you're Strange of Earth-MC?”
Strange nodded, taking Sherlock’s deduction in stride. “I take it you saw the monster?”
“Lord English, the multiversal threat prior to Corona’s little message.” Sherlock put his hands behind his back and began pacing. “Clearly a menace to this New World, and one that must be stopped.”
“I couldn’t agree more,” a woman’s voice said. Walking up to them was a woman with pale amethyst hair, an eyepatch, a large white trenchcoat-skirt hybrid, a gunblade, and an Infinity Gauntlet on one hand. “Lord English must be stopped.”
“Lightning of the Collection!” Sherlock deduced. “So, you survived. And now you want to go face off against the most dangerous thing in existence?”
Lightning nodded. “If Lord English gains power – of any kind – no matter what it is it will be bad for everyone.”
Strange furrowed his brow. “How do you expect to follow him? My magic is gone, I deduce yours is as well. Only English’s seems to work.”
“She’s got a ship,” Sherlock said. “It’s behind those alien trees.”
Lightning looked at Sherlock. “…I can see why you were led here. You will be instrumental…”
“This means the Tower still exists,” Strange pointed out.
“English is more important than that. He was able to easily destroy universes with a roar before. If he did that again, everything would be gone.”
“Even he doesn’t want complete Nihilism, he wants power,” Sherlock observed. “He will seek a way to attain it. To be the master over everyone. Annoyingly simple motivation.”
Lightning nodded. “Come, to my ship. We don’t want to lose his sarcophagus.” She turned away. Sherlock and Strange followed her into the forest, forming three of only five individuals who knew of English’s existence.
After all, nobody Watched beyond the credits.
~~~
Elsewhere in the New World, there was another green-skinned being with pool balls for eyes and a golden peg leg. Unlike Lord English, he wasn’t anything close to ripped and he wore the red robes of Time instead of a Cairo Overcoat. He was a being called a cherub. In his hand he held a golden staff tipped with a spark of green energy. He twisted this staff in his hand and transformed it into a solid gold rifle, pointing it at the computer screen in front of him. “ALL RIGHT! THAT WAS PRETTY FUNNY! GIVE THEM BACK NOW!” he shouted in the most obnoxious, grating voice imaginable.
No black letters appeared on the screen.
“NARRATING FUCKTARD, I KNOW YOU’RE THERE!”
“Man, I don’t think he’s motherfuckin’ there,” a purple troll in the robes of the Bard of Rage said.
“He’s always there. He just acts fucking mysterious. All the time.” The cherub grabbed his gun and gnashed his teeth.
“Well if he’s not gonna respond, he’s not gonna fuckin’ respond, not much we can do about that. Maybe we should try… somethin’ else.”
“FUCK ME. Something else? Your genius astound me at times.” With his flashing eyes, the cherub typed a message.
UndyingUmbridge: HEY. EGBERT. THINGS HAVE CHANGED. LOOK OUTSIDE. THE ENTIRITY OF EXISTENCE HAS BEEN UNCOVERED. YOU SHOULD COME FACE ME NOW. YOU’LL DEFINITELY WIN.
No response.
“He’s been playing hard to get for days…”
“Could be a lot more days than that… time, and all.”
“I control Time! I get it! I see that it’s all screwed up the whazoo, but the program seeks his present self! He’s the retconner and I can always find him!”
His screen popped up an error message. Message not sent. Servers not found.
“Since when does Paradox Space not have servers available!?”
“Since motherfuckin’ now.”
“Gamzee, I will remove your leg and beat you with it again if you don’t stop being captain ‘motherfuckin’’ obvious!”
“Ay man, no need for that, we’re all friends here,” Gamzee said.
“Hmph,” the green being muttered. “All the leprechauns are gone, our powers have been severely weakened... It feels so fucking unnatural for me to say this… But we need to learn more.”
“Woah…” Gamzee said, blinking slowly. “Honk.”
“Shut the fuck up.” The flashy gremlin walked across the room to a hole he had created in the floor, ignoring the mess of candy, poorly-drawn manga, and bicycle horns that had been left around. He jumped into the hole, entering a long, dark, metallic hallway. Usually he would accelerate time at this point to get to the edge, but he couldn’t exactly do that right now, so he grumbled the entire trip of fifty-two seconds.
They arrived at a door, so chosen because they had been tired of climbing up a ladder every time to leave the building. The green being reached out to open the door.
Before he even reached it, there was a loud knock from the other side.
“Woah… we’re bein’ haunted, bro,” Gamzee said. “Like, motherfuckin’ ghosts!”
“Go take your bone bulge and fuck yourself through the skull.” The cherub grabbed the door, threw it open, and pointed his gun out the door. “WHO WANTS THEIR HEADS BLOWN OFF TODAY!?”
A pinkish-purple unicorn with goggles on her face put a hoof on the barrel of the gun and lowered it. “Calm down, geez. We’re not here to steal anything or do anything to you. We just saw this place and decided to check it out. We’ll leave if that’s what you want.” Her companion – a light blue unicorn in a stage outfit – was hiding behind her.
“…I’m not hearing any good reasons not to fill you bitches with bullets.”
“We can tell you why there are planets in the sky swirling in bizarre spherical patterns?”
The cherub looked outside, blinking. The outside didn’t look as cold or desolate as usual. The sky was a pristine purple twilight; in the distance he could see forests, a city, and a mountain covered in trees; and there were in fact planets in the sky. Filling up most of it, in fact.
“…Shit. Fine. I won’t shoot you bitches if you tell me who you two are.”
“Starbeat Glimmer, ka researcher. This is Trixie Lulamoon… Internet ‘celebrity’.”
“I heard those air quotes!” Trixie shouted indignantly.
“Right…”
The cherub glared. “And how’d you get here?”
“We followed the winds of ka – fate, if you will.”
“There’s a yellow brick road leading right to your house,” Trixie deadpanned, gesturing at the yellow brick road they were standing on.
“…Woah, that’s mutherfuckin’ trippy,” Gamzee said.
“Right, so…” Starbeat grinned. “Who are you?”
“I’m just Gamzee Makara, Bard of Rage.”
“CALIBORN!” Caliborn shouted, laughing maniacally. “THE LORD OF TIME!”
Starbeat raised an eyebrow. “Ooookay. Can we get to explanations then?”
“We better, or bullets start flying.”
Starbeat sighed; clearly not thrilled this was the first person they had run into. But it was who they had to deal with it.
If only she had remembered what Lord English looked like…