The Void occupied two thirds of the sky, looming large over the sprawling city of Ba Sing Se. There was no panic—for there were very few people still in the city, or the entire planet, for that matter. Diqiu was perhaps the most successful evacuation story in the entire multiverse; the only large group that had elected to stay in the universe were the majority of the spirits, and they patiently waited for the end in their own realm. In the physical world, there were a handful of families here and there who’d refused to give up their land. They were prepared to stare death in the eye rather than give up their homes.
It was in this mostly deserted world that the heroes of the Light Prognosticus appeared.
“Wh-what!?” Toph stammered. “This is… home! How on earth did we get here?”
“That was a Dimentio warp,” Twilight said. “He… he just ejected us from the castle! We have to call Flipside, tell them what happened. We have to regroup…”
Data pressed his communicator. “Data to Flipsi—”
The dimensional warp came again, and they were gone.
~~~
Flat, white, nothingness with the occasional colorless tree or junked robot slowly being absorbed into the absolute emptiness. Mobius evacuation of the main planet had been rather successful… but the rest of the galaxy was not so lucky. Colorless pillars and rubble in the far distance were all that remained of those many vast and varying civilizations.
Cosmo recognized where they were immediately. “No… no…”
“They got their forest…” Caspian growled. “Empty white nothingness.”
“Eggman to Data,” Eggman’s voice came in from the communicator. “Where the heck are you?”
Data tapped his communicator. “Dimentio appears to be zapping us across dimensions. We were in Diqiu, and now we’re in the blank Mobius. I do not know his intent.”
“Just stay there, we’ll get you.”
“I don’t think we have a choice in the matter,” Vivian said. Her words turned out to be prophetic.
~~~
Starfleet Command was located in San Francisco, and what had been a scrambling panic of yells and screams about half an hour ago was now nothing more than a bunch of people staring at the sky. Completely, utterly, absolutely covered in the Void. It would not be much longer until Terra was consumed.
It was in the midst of this solemn, quiet observance that the heroes appeared, standing atop one of Starfleet Command’s many tall, white, elegant buildings. Below them was a world of peace, a world of prosperity, and a world with great potential for peace and progress and acceptance.
“...It’s so quiet,” Toph said, grimacing.
“The end has come for them,” Twilight said as she felt the entire world start to shake and break much like Equis itself had. “We’re too late…”
“They stand dignified,” was Data’s only comment.
“Twilight!” Sunset shouted, appearing before them in a flash of light. She looked pained, as if something was trying to drag her away. “Don’t let hi—” She let out a screech of pain, but remained in place.
“I’m not sure we can…” Twilight frowned. “Dimentio… can keep us away as long as he likes.”
“Not that! Discord has completed his purpose! Don’t let him und—” In a flash of white light, she was gone.
The heroes were whisked away as the final end came. Terra, the world that “suffered” the curse of interdimensional mimicry, was wiped from existence.
~~~
The sky was nine-tenths full of the Void. It was so large it was already starting to eat away at the edge of Narnia, devouring bits and pieces of the ocean as it expanded. In the midst of this world, however, the lamp post still stood in its forest, shining bright.
The talking animals of the forest had come to gather around it, seeing it and the green Flipside door as some kind of beacon of hope, of stability—a reminder that there were other worlds, and that those worlds were fighting too.
The seven appeared around the lamp post.
A badger stared in shock. “What are you doing here?”
“Being toyed with,” Toph growled.
“I’ve had enough of this,” Caspian declared. He marched to the door to Flipside and pushed it open, walking onto the platform. He stood there for no more than a second before they were whisked away yet again.
But he still got to see the explosions in the Void’s sky, and the Void itself eating away at Castle Bleck’s edge.
~~~
Lumash was nothing as well. A wide plane of white extending for everywhere, with the occasional small, colorless mini-planet dissolving into nothing.
“Why are you doing this!?” Twilight shouted to Dimentio. “What’s the point of showing us all these worlds again!? We already know they’re dying!”
“Or dead…” Vivian said, unable to stop from tearing up at the sight of her home, gone. Lifeless. Lumash’s evacuation was one that had not gone well, since space was big and the physics confused the evacuation team. A lot of people had been there when it fell. People she knew…
“Dimentio is trying to get into our heads,” Tippi said. “We can’t let him. Stand strong.”
Reality opened up and took them elsewhere.
~~~
Nobody said anything in Equis. It was just as white and empty as last time they were there. They refused to give Dimentio the satisfaction.
We’re bringing it back, Twilight thought. We’re bringing it BACK.
After sitting in silence for about a minute, they were taken to the next world.
~~~
They appeared just outside the Beanstalk, looking at the sky above, almost entirely filled with the Void.
“Ah. You guys,” Ivan said. He was sitting outside the Beanstalk, leaning against one of the walls. “Guess saving the worlds isn’t going well, huh?”
“Not… really.” Vivian admitted.
“Shame.” He shook his head. “I did like them a little bit.”
“Me too,” Vivian said.
“Been a lot of looting and crazed panic, y’know. If you listen closely you might be able to hear Jenny shout at the sky to bring her more ships to throw at the battle.” He shrugged. “I don’t think it will make much difference if she gets more.”
“We all must do what we can,” Twilight encouraged. “Even in the face of such horror.”
“I always do that,” Ivan said. “I’m just not happy about it.”
Twilight managed a soft smile. “All right. That’s good.”
With a burst, they were taken elsewhere.
~~~
Earth—the real Earth—sat in a void of stars, the sun shining down on it and the moon orbiting a fair distance away. There was no visible sign of the Void anywhere.
Twilight and company appeared on the moon, and Twilight was fast enough to cast an air-breathing spell before anyone suffocated. “...Everyone okay?”
“Y-yes…” Vivian said, looking around. “Wait… where’s the Void?”
Data held up his tricorder, pointing it at the Earth. “It is manifesting inside the planet. I do not know how big it is… but it is threatening to tear apart this reality. From these scans, I believe Earth will go last, out of all the worlds.”
“I always said I wanted to visit their world,” Caspian said, hands on his hips. “I still want to. This… this is a joke, meant to gain a response from us.”
“I wonder what his game is…?” Tippi thought aloud.
With one last shimmer, they were moved once more.
~~~
They appeared not in Castle Bleck or Flipside, but on top of a crystal platform sitting in a sky that was half the cream color of Flipside’s original location, a fourth an empty black expanse, and the rest covered in the Void.
“Where… where is this?” Tippi asked.
“This is the Void Control Node!” Dimentio answered, appearing behind them, a fair distance off the edge of the crystal platform. “Completely useless now that Gaia itself is shredded like highly classified documents in the midst of a change of power, but it serves as a reminder—a reminder that Enuo built the great Void to control his world. He built it… because of the Dark Prognosticus.”
“Cease these games, harlequin!” Caspian demanded.
“Cease? My my, you really don’t understand me at all, do you, servant King? Games are all I know!” Suddenly, he was behind them. “Today’s game is to show you all creation and make you feel it. How does it feel? To see such death and destruction? To stand in the remnant of a world that doesn’t know how to die? To know that I have the power to end you in an instant and you’d never be able to do anything about it?”
“Why don’t you?” Tippi asked.
“You want answers? You’ll have to jump like a tap dancer learning his craft by way of a gun shooting the floor where he stands!”
“We won’t play your games!” Twilight shouted.
“It’s funny how you think you have a choice.” He snapped his fingers.
~~~
Vivian opened her eyes to see a monstrous, twisted thing of chaos staring down at her.
“No! You’re gone!” Vivian shouted.
“You can’t be rid of me that easily,” Tzeentch said. “I had been hoping to remain hidden within your subconscious until well after this business with the Void was dealt with… but this Dimentio fellow has removed that plan” He traced a twisted, shifting finger under her chin. “You have to face me now.”
“I was protected!” Vivian shrieked. “I was saved, and you were just a simulation!”
“Jenny did tell you I was still around, little shadow.” Tzeentch laughed like a sink made of cockroaches being thrown into five-dimensional space. “I just adapted to new circumstances. And I shall adapt again, and again, and again! Your protection is never absolute. Your actions have consequences…”
“I won’t serve you,” Vivian said, looking away from his impossible shape. “I won’t!”
“But you are a creature of darkness, of chaos. We share a source, Vivian… and united, the world could change.”
“Yeah! Change into your hands!”
“Change for the better!” Tzeentch twisted around her like a donut. “I am not evil, just as you are not. I represent change. Not war, pestilence, or mad revelry—change! And you can be the catalyst! Already, by defying Bleck, you bring change. With me at your side, your vision of the future could come to pass!” Images of a future where everyone was smiling surrounded her. Confetti flew everywhere, those thought dead were alive, and even the evilest were given a shot at a new life. Vivian sat in the midst of her friends, laughing underneath a smiling sun.
“I don’t want that!” Vivian shouted.
“It’s funny you think you have a choice…”
“Unfortunately, she does,” Dimentio said, appearing behind Tzeentch. “She doesn't want you. So like an unwanted orphan, I must give you the boot!”
Tzeentch’s form twisted into a mix of geometric shapes and piles of rotting flesh. “You have no power, harlequin!”
“Ciao!”
Vivian could only wail at the inhuman screech that met her ears. Tzeentch clawed at reality, refusing to be nonchalantly ejected. “Harlequin, you overextend yourself! You play with powers you do not understand!”
“Wow! How amazing! LIke a rock adrift in open space… you know nothing!”
“You f—”
Tzeentch was removed without so much as a noise, leaving only the mad laughter of Dimentio behind.
~~~
Caspian was gifted with a very different scene. There were two chairs—one for him, and one for Dimentio.
“I think I’m going to talk to you directly,” Dimentio said, smirking. “Since I have a more… personal relation to your particular bent. Or maybe I just can’t resist, like a moth to a flame.”
Caspian realized he had no weapons, so he didn’t even try to attack. “What is your game?”
“Let’s talk about your loyalty—no, your faith—in that golden lion of yours. He is your protector, the source of all that is good in your eyes, and you would give him your all, yes?”
“In a heartbeat.”
“And you speak the truth. Ah ha ha ha!” Dimentio adjusted his mask. “Let me ask you a question. He created Narnia. Why is there suffering?”
“It was not always that way. Jadis—”
“He could have removed Jadis. It would have been easy. He could have done it all with a simple roar. Not even that, a blink, a thought. That is… if he is who you think he is.”
“Your words will not dent my loyalty.”
“I suppose not…” Dimentio clasped his hands together. “I suppose I just want to plant a seed for the dramatic reveal that’s coming later. Borrowing a line from a distant cousin of mine, it’s going to be a doozy.”
~~~
Data felt something… new in his mind. Performing a self-diagnostic, he was shocked to find that someone had installed the emotion chip into his neural net.
“N-now is not a good time!” he stammered, standing bolt upright with a slight shiver. “Focus on the mission.” He tried to turn it off, but it wouldn’t let him. “Ah. Well. I suppose this is part of the game. This fills me with… with…”
“What’s the problem, Data?” a woman with blonde hair in a yellow Starfleet uniform asked. “Are you… upset?”
“Ah. Tasha. More illusions.” Data smiled awkwardly. “You’re dead and thus you don’t exist.”
“What kind of thing is that to say to a woman?”
Data shook his head. “You are just a figment generated by Dimentio or some force.”
“Feel me, Data!” Tasha grabbed his hand and lifted it up. “I’m real!”
“A-all evidence to the contrary, y-you are not real.” Data pushed back, slapping her to the side. “I did not—no, I am—”
“Data?” Twilight asked. “What have you done?”
Data looked down. Tasha’s neck was snapped. “I… I did not hit her that hard! I just…”
“You were emotionally compromised!” Twilight shouted. “You can’t deal with this! You’ve become a monster, like your brother!”
“I never mentioned Lore!” Data spat back. “I am not… him. I will never be him. I will be… Starfleet.”
“It’s amazing how knowing the truth doesn’t change your emotions at all, isn’t it?” Dimentio asked. “Such trouble.”
“I…” Data turned to punch Dimentio. He just vanished.
“Well well well, this has been most fascinating…” Dimentio chuckled.
~~~
Cosmo saw herself as a massive, beautiful tree. But… it wasn’t in the gauntlet. It was back in Mobius, a world that didn’t exist anymore.
“You know,” Dimentio said from all around her. “I once knew someone, and I knew him very well. He said that those like us are never told what would have happened.”
Cosmo watched as the Blue Typhoon lifted into the sky, pointing its main cannon at the tree that was herself.
“I disagree. Here is what would have happened, Cosmo. Here is where your original heroic journey led you…”
Tails pressed a button, firing the weapon. It hit the tree of Cosmo dead on. Cosmo felt the pain in her very soul.
“Your treachery destroyed everything in that world, too. Except, you had to sacrifice yourself to make up for it. Worse still… you made him do it to you.”
“N-no…” Cosmo stammered.
“Who are we to say we know who we are? That was you. That is you. And it may be you yet.”
“It… it must have been for a good… cause…”
“Who cares if it was? Imagine the pain. I’m sure you can…”
“I…”
“Or there’s the alternative.” Dimentio snapped his fingers, showing Cosmo all her friends walking to the gallows like the one in Rogueport. “That you are a very, very successful Metarex spy.”
“Stop!”
There was a sickening crunch.
Cosmo fell to her knees. “What kind of cruel monster are you who does this for his own amusement?”
“Who said it was just for my own amusement?”
~~~
“You’re a—”
Toph plugged her fingers into her ears. “Nope! I’m not going through this! I’ve had enough of having my mind scrambled, turned into a pulp, manipulated, and thrown to the curb! I get it, I’m a runaway but I’m learning to accept responsibility, I’m not a monster, I’m not the biggest liability in the group, I’ve gone through it all already, okay!? So just shut up!”
Dimentio dropped the illusion he had of her fighting a million clones of herself, all with murder in their eyes. “Ah ha ha ha! You truly have been through a lot, even more than I realized!”
“Can it, jester face.”
“Threats?”
“No. A request. Backed up by rage.”
Dimentio shrugged. “Fair enough. Since you saw my game before it happened, you get a pass. Congratulations, you win!”
Toph didn’t know a party blower could be sarcastic sounding until she heard the noise he made next.
~~~
Twilight saw Applejack, Rainbow Dash, Fluttershy, Pinkie Pie, and Rarity lying on the ground, dead as doornails. It was not hard for her to discern that it was all fake, but that didn’t stop her from bursting into tears.
“You’re so cruel…” Twilight said, kneeling down to stroke Rarity’s head with a gentle wing. “What purpose does this serve?”
“To get you to let them go,” Tippi said, leading the rest of the chosen alongside her. “They’re from your life before, Twilight. We’re your friends now.”
“W-what!?” Twilight stammered.
“We’re their replacements,” Toph said. “Get used to it.”
“I’m sorry… but it’s true,” Cosmo shook her head. “We were given to you so you could let them go.”
“You could have replaced me with Rarity,” Vivian added. “But you chose to keep me instead of her. That was your choice.”
“You want us more, too,” Data said, extending a hand to her.
“I… I do like all of you,” Twilight admitted. “Love, even. Perhaps we have made a stronger bond that I’m refusing to see. But that does not mean I will abandon my old friends or my new friends.”
“Really?” Cosmo looked about ready to cry.
“Also you aren’t even my friends, your apparitions, trying to get an emotional rise out of me.” She turned to the sky. “This isn’t going to fly, Dimentio!”
“Oh, but it already has!” Dimentio appeared in front of her. “And you won!”
~~~
Tippi fluttered in an expanse of darkness. Count Bleck stood in front of her, flipping through the pages of the Dark Prognosticus. He didn’t see her.
“I have brought you here to end him,” Dimentio said, delivering a knife to Tippi. “He is about to uncover a new prophecy that will accelerate the Void.”
Tippi was baffled for a moment as to how she was holding the knife.
“It has to be you,” Dimentio said. “The tragedy surrounding you is the only thing strong enough to break through it all at once. For the sake of all that remains, you must kill him.”
“I… I…” Tippi could only see the kind face of Blumiere.
“Now! Or all dies!”
With a scream, Tippi drove the knife forward.
The noise was sickening.
~~~
Twilight was the first to appear back in Castle Bleck in an abandoned square room that definitely wasn’t on the main spearhead path the Resistance had cut through to the central chamber. It was… somewhere she didn’t even know.
Toph appeared next, landing flat on her face. “Well, that was fun.”
“What happened to you?” Twilight asked.
“I told Dimentio I already knew everything wrong with myself and it got him to shut up.”
“Oh. ...I got to watch all of you tell me to abandon my old friends for dead.”
“That’s messed up.”
“I almost feel as though it were some kind of test.”
Cosmo appeared, flopping onto the ground. She was crying profusely. “I… I… I got you all killed. But it wasn’t real it…” She pulled Toph into a hug. “Don’t go anywhere.”
“Not planning on it.”
“Why was he putting us through those trials?” Twilight wondered. “Why not just… disintegrate us? Snap fingers, send us to the vacuum of space, let us suffocate?”
“You made air on the moon,” Toph said.
“There are other ways to quickly take care of us.”
Data appeared next, dropping right in front of Twilight. Shakily, his face formed into a wavering smile. “Y-you’re beautiful.”
Twilight flushed. “You… have emotions? How did h—”
Data, not fully understanding what he was doing, pulled Twilight’s face to his and kissed her. Twilight, for her part, didn’t make any efforts to stop him.
Toph whistled. “Nice.”
Data broke it off. “Oh, sorry. That was a glitch in the system and not part of th—”
“It was nice,” Twilight said, putting a calming hoof on Data’s shoulder. “But I think we have more pressing things right now. Can you…?”
“I do not believe I have the capacity to put these feelings down entirely. I… cannot turn the chip off. But I shall make the attempt.”
“Thank you, Data. For… a lot of things. Hopefully, now you can really feel my gratitude.”
“There is a… sensation in my chest.”
“Wow you really have never experienced emotions,” Toph snorted. “This is going to be great!”
“Toph, you’ll need to tread carefully around Data,” Cosmo said. “He’s never had any emotions before. What if you were offended for the first time in your life?”
“I… oh. Crud. I’m going to have t—”
Caspian dropped onto the ground, landing awkwardly on his shield. “Ow.”
“I swear, Dimentio’s dropping us down at convenient times just for his amusement,” Toph said, folding her arms.
“It is a reasonable deduction,” Data said. “What do you think he is going to do to us? Will we stay in his game? Will w—”
“Data, breathe,” Twilight said. “What you’re feeling now is panic brought on by fear. Take deep breaths in, and deep breaths out. It will force your body to relax your mind.”
“But I do not need to br—”
“This is an emotional diagnosis, not a technical one, just start breathing.”
Data did as was asked, taking a moment to calm himself with the breaths. It was working—though he did jump when Vivian was deposited.
“I… I…” Vivian shivered. “I… the chaos was still in me.” She held her head, rocking back into the wall. “I can’t…”
Twilight trotted over to her, putting a wing around her. “Vivian… it’s okay, you’re here now.”
“I don’t understand why…” Vivian used a shaky hand to adjust her hat. “Why’d he do that? Why’d he let me know?”
“He had a… chat with me,” Caspian grumbled. “He’s utterly and completely mad.”
“No surprises there,” Toph said.
“What do you think he did to Tippi?” Cosmo asked. “I can’t imagine…”
“It was terrible,” Tippi said, having just appeared. “And it—”
“Was all an elaborate test!” Dimentio shouted, appearing before them in a twist of dimensional energy. To their shock, Gilgamesh appeared at his side. “And you’ve passed! ...Though some of you just barely.”
“A test!?” Twilight snorted. “What was it a test for!?”
“A test of your mettle,” Dimentio said. “Dark Oak informed you of Count Bleck’s true goal, yes? Yes, of course, there’s no reason for me to pretend I haven’t been watching you from the shadows this entire time.” He snapped his fingers, though this time it didn’t seem to do anything. “The explanation is simple, really. I needed to know you had the willpower to withstand the Count. Because, I don’t know about you, but when I signed up for this I wanted to make a world in my image, not to be reduced to absolute nothingness.”
“...You want us to defeat him?” Toph asked.
“Precisely!” Dimentio clapped his hands together. “Like a third-grade teacher’s pet, you have jumped on the answer! Yes, I need you to defeat him. The Chaos Heart makes him utterly invulnerable to my attacks, so despite my mastery of all dimensions, he is beyond my power. But you… you have the Pure Hearts, and you have each other. If we team up, we will be more than enough to take him on!”
“I don’t exactly trust you,” Twilight said.
“You shouldn’t. I’m a psychotic man who wanted to recreate reality in his own image. However, this is self-preservation we’re talking about here.” Dimentio said. “If you don’t believe me, how about some examples? When we ‘fought’ before, I never ended it in an instant by dumping you into a nearby volcano. I’ve given the Resistance many opportunities to fight back—even fed them some information a few times through Gilgamesh here, my little buddy. He was stuck here because of the Chaos Heart and had an innate connection to the original Void construction, so he already hated Bleck. I also permitted Starlight to take the statue back to Flipside.”
“How can we be sure you really did those things?” Cosmo asked.
“Cosmo, you are incapable of seeding your life without the genetic material from a male of your species.” Dimentio summoned a stick and threw it at her feet. “I harvested that and gave it to you while you were empowered in Lumash. Consider it my gift: the continuation of your species. ...And yes, I know you have some seeds in Flipside.”
Cosmo put her hand to her mouth. “That… that really was you.”
“The best part? You’d still be stuck there, as an immobile tree, if it wasn’t for me. I’ve been guiding you to this point the entire time. Hoping that you would be able to aid me in my quest to keep from dying a horrible death.”
“I also don’t want to die,” Gilgamesh added.
“As you can see, Gilgamesh is a few screws short of a toaster, and he’s already gotten himself mortally wounded today, but he does well enough.”
“I don’t want to work with Dimentio,” Tippi told the others. “Let’s take Count Bleck on ourselves. We can do it.”
“We have no idea where we are or how to get to him,” Caspian pointed out. “I don’t believe we have any choice, Tippi. Dimentio is the only one who can take us there.”
“And even if we did get back, there’s an army in the way…” Vivian said.
Twilight nodded. “I’m sorry Tippi, but we have to. And… I might have let him help anyway.” She extended a hoof to Dimentio, smiling. “I’ll accept your hand as an ally… and as a friend.”
“Ah ha ha ha ah!” Dimentio shook her hoof. “Thank you, Twilight Sparkle! You won’t regret this!”
“Now can you let Data deactivate his emotion chip?”
“I’m afraid your Federation scientists will have to do that, I may have overstepped when I put it in him. It fused to his matrix—I’m sure he’ll be fine.”
Data nodded slowly. “I shall… attempt to remain adequate. I will be fine.”
“All right,” Twilight said to Dimentio. “I’ll trust you.”
Dimentio clapped his hands. “Now, if you’re all ready, I can warp us directly to the Coun—”
There was a thud on the other side of one of the doors. With a pointed finger, Dimentio threw the doors open, revealing a very confused-looking Luigi.
“...Luigi, what are you doing here?” Vivian asked.
“That is a very good question,” Dimentio said, hand to his chin.
“I, uh, have no idea. At all.” He scratched the back of his head. “Can I… stick with you guys?”
“We’re about to go face Count Bleck,” Caspian said. “Are you sure you want to do that, old friend?”
“It is terrifying,” Data added.
“...What kind of hero would I be if I turned that offer down?” Luigi asked. “Of course I’m in!”
“Then we have our plus one!” Dimentio declared. “Now is everyone ready?”
Twilight looked around at the group. Dimentio, Gilgamesh, Luigi, Vivian, Caspian, Data, Cosmo, Toph… and Tippi. Some were uncertain, some were afraid, and some were tired.
But everyone was ready.
With a coy smile, Twilight quoted one of her other friends.
“Make it so.”