• Published 29th Oct 2017
  • 14,901 Views, 3,188 Comments

Songs of the Spheres - GMBlackjack

  • ...
47
 3,188
 14,901

PreviousChapters Next
128 - Collapse, Part 1

Nanoha popped out of her capture device. She – like all other captured combatants from the other side – had been healed while within the machine, not that she was aware of this fact at first. She shook, her mind still believing she was exhausted despite her body telling her otherwise. This discontinuity kept her from focusing for a moment.

In that moment, Blumiere encased her limbs in darkness and surrounded Raising Heart in a bubble of similar magic. The two of them were pressed to the trunk of an oak tree.

Nanoha winced as she felt the bark cut into her hands. “What’s this about?”

Blumiere opened his mouth to respond, but he was cut off by a devious giggle. Nanoha focused her eyes on a white unicorn that definitely wasn’t Renee. It wasn’t just the cracked eye, or the psychotic smile – it was her aura. It wasn’t right. “You know something~! Blumiere here would like it!”

Blumiere closed the pages of the Prognosticus. “I have been able to determine that you know of a ritual that is of great importance to us. The Prognosticus is purposefully not revealing the specifics to me, beyond confirming that you do know it.”

Nanoha ignored him. “Why do you have a husk walking around?”

“Because I know things!” ‘Renee’ took out the capture device containing Alushy and started juggling it. “Isn’t that something?

“Blumiere, this is idiotic.”

“I believe she is important,” Blumiere said, taking a few steps toward Nanoha. “As I believe you are. Your role is not over, mage. Tell us of the Ritual of Purity.”

Nanoha shook her head. “I will do no such thing.”

Vivian sighed. “Told you.”

“Listen to Dimentio. Oh wait, you can’t!” Renee smacked herself in the side of the head hard enough to bruise.

Blumiere put a hand to the bridge of his nose. “Dimentio – or the Prognosticus, I’m not sure at this point – has pointed out we do have some leverage.” Blumiere removed Raising Heart from the shield and laid his hand on the crystal. “I will shatter your device if you do not comply.”

Nanoha’s confident smile vanished. “…Raising Heart is ready to be sacrificed for the fate of the multiverse.”

“Stand by ready,” Raising Heart declared.

“Oh, we’re not going that easy!” Renee slipped past Blumiere and pulled a capture device out of his cloak. She threw it on the ground, releasing Jenny of the Red Gloves.

“Wh…?” Jenny said, looking at her gloves.

“Hey you! Yes you! You have mental powers, right?”

Jenny looked at Renee, a bit overwhelmed by her change in appearance. “…Did something happen to you…?”

“No time!” Renee grabbed Jenny by the shoulder and pointed her at Nanoha. “Her mind needs to be popped open like a book!” The power of Mind flashed through Renee’s eyes as she worked on Jenny’s unsuspecting self, smoothing out her brainwaves. This had the healing effect of making her calm – but also the side effect of being more suggestible. “The fate of the multiverse depends on it! Trust me on this, I may be on the other side, but her secret is going to bring about the Apocalypse of Nihilists!”

Jenny nodded and acted on Nanoha’s mind. Renee jumped through the air, levitating herself right next to Nanoha’s head.

“Don’t listen to her!” Nanoha shouted. “She’s d-”

Renee put a hoof over Nanoha’s mouth. “Shhhh… It’ll all be over soon.” She began to work on Nanoha’s mind, forcing it into a calm state. Nanoha had impressive mental defenses, but her inner turmoil about Raising Heart’s impending destruction combined with the strain of Jenny was just enough to let Renee in. Renee lowered Nanoha’s defenses, careful not to touch the connection to Raising Heart, allowing Jenny to force the doors open.

“Raising Heart!” Nanoha shouted. “Clearance X-Z-11-5-Omega-Ret, override personal reservations! Access file RP1.” She screamed, wanting to put her hands to her head, but couldn’t.

“…Acknowledged,” Raising Heart said after realizing there was no way it could disobey the order. Blumiere was granted access to the file. He held up Sai, allowing her to scan it into her own systems.

“…What file is that? How can it save the multiverse?” Jenny asked frantically.

“Oh, that?” Renee laughed. “I lied.”

Jenny stared at her in disbelief.

“…That’s not Renee, that’s a husk,” Timpani explained. “One of the hyper-intelligent ones.”

“I was duped by a zombie.” Jenny said, hand to her chin. “Huh. That’s pretty cool, actually.”

Timpani looked down at her. “…That’s hardly the appropriate response.”

“What? I’m a billion years old, things get boring after a while.”

“I thought your memories were scrambled?” Vivian asked.

“Doesn’t help with the boredom!” Jenny said, holding out a hand dramatically.

Renee ran past her and cut the hand off, taking the glove with her.

“WHAT THE HECK!?” Jenny shouted, holding her bloody stump as it regrew the hand.

“I needed to ‘cut loose’ as it were,” Renee said, removing the hand from the red glove and twirling both around as if they were toys. “Surely you understand. You’ve done it before, after all.”

“Give me my glove back!”

“What is Jenny of the Red Gloves without both Gloves? Jenny of the Red Glove?”

Jenny pulled back her fist – but Blumiere caught her in his magic. “Renee, re-capture her.”

“Mmm, no,” Renee said with a chuckle. “I was just very useful to you, perhaps I could be given a bone? Plus, it’s not like she’s with us.”

“Dimentio tells me we could have gotten the ritual eventually without you.”

“When are you going to realize time is of the essence? Look at me, I ran out of time, and I’m this monster.” She shrugged, flinging blood from the hand onto Timpani’s dress. “We’ve got Nanoha, Jenny, and Alushy, they get to be our little witnesses!”

“Alushy’s not out.”

Alushy raised a hoof. “Yes I am.”

Vivian jumped up. “When did…?”

“About a minute ago,” Alushy said, stretching her wings.

“…There’s four of you and three of us,” Jenny realized. “And one of you is absolute crap at fighting. No offense.”

“None taken,” Timpani said.

“Nanoha has been bound with the knowledge of the Prognosticus,” Blumiere said. “She won’t be doing anything under her own power until I release it.” He lifted up Raising Heart. “…And it appears we actually need you for the ritual.”

“…Yeah, like I’m helping you this time,” Jenny said, folding her arms. With a snap of her fingers she teleported the glove onto her hand.

“Someone doesn’t know how to have fun…” Renee pouted.

Blumiere ignored Renee. “Not you, Jenny. Alushy.” Blumiere turned to her. “We need your souls.”

Alushy laughed. “Hey, Blecky-boy, let’s play a game here. It’s called ‘Don’t Be Dumb’ with Alushy. More of a show than a game, really, but this time you get a chance to prove yourself not to be dumb! Isn’t that something? Now, when you hear yourself say ‘we need your souls’ to the simultaneously studly and sexy Alushy, do you think A: she’ll help us! B: she’ll totally give us those souls! C: Wow, this is foolproof! or D: I’m a fucking idiot.”

“E: I can take them from you by force,” Blumiere said, flipping open the pages of the Prognosticus. “The secrets of the multiverse are at my fingertips. I have plenty of power within myself to cast a spell to extract souls from a master of them.”

“Looks like you failed your own show!” Renee said, clapping her hooves. “Great going, genius!”

“…And the dead girl is the only one who gets it.” Alushy smiled and shook her head. “Welp, looks like I’m royally fucked, let’s do this ritual! What is it?”

“The Ritual of Purity…” Vivian said. “It… Well I don’t really know.”

“It will be instrumental in the final moments,” Blumiere said, tracing a finger across a page near the back of the Prognosticus.

Sai beeped. “Vivian, we’ll need you to bring up some dark fire!”

~~~

The new base of the Collapse Movement was housed completely within the borders of the Void realms. The vast majority of remaining forces had entered a defensive state, devoting most of their resources to simply keeping the Void from falling. Because if the Void fell, the collapse would have no more higher societies with the capacity to fight. The other side still had the Combine, those ever-resilient conquerors that, unlike everyone else, showed no signs of giving out anytime soon.

Corona had taken up her command in Empress “Empy” Twilight’s Castle, overseeing the Tangleglade of the Void. Even with all the war going on, the mish-mashed ‘nexus’ of activity for Empy’s civilization was still a bustling near-utopia. The people didn’t seem anywhere near as worried about the war as the people Corona had seen elsewhere.

“They have too much faith in the Void,” Empy said, walking up to Corona.

“…Shouldn’t you be at the Void?”

“If something appears that will demand a reaction time that fast, the Void will burn out,” Empy said, grimacing. “The next time I use it outside the realms will have to be worth risking all my worlds.”

Corona folded her hands together. “…I’m sorry.”

“What for?”

“Well, failing, for one. We had the edge for a moment, then they destroyed us, the Starcross Society’s in the trash, and we’re barely keeping it together.”

“You know as well as I do that the retaliation against the Combine is nearing the end of preparations.”

Corona furrowed her brow, saying nothing. Empy bowed to Corona and walked away, leaving her to her brooding.

“Heeeeey Corona!” Pinkie said, appearing next to Corona. “You look like you need a Pinkie.”

Corona put her arm around Pinkie. “Yeah… Yeah, I do.”

“What’s up?”

“Oh, the fate of everything, but that’s just par for the course these days.” She looked down at the peaceful activities of the Void’s citizens. “I just haven’t seen people living their lives normally in a while. With all the stuff that’s happening… I don’t know anymore.”

“Don’t know if you want to go through with it?”

Corona shook her head. “I’m still sure about that. What I don’t know is if this war can be allowed to go on for much longer.” She looked up at the sky, seeing the sparkling stars. Were they part of this universe or another one? The Void made that difficult to discern. “The push to stop using capture devices is strong on both sides.”

“So we just end it before then!”

“There’s another issue…” Corona said, gesturing at the people. “You need a certain level of society to be able to build a Tower Ring. If we keep fighting until all society of that level is destroyed… this war would have amounted to nothing but a testament to our indecisiveness and stubbornness.” She frowned. “It has to end soon, or it’ll end without anyone winning.”

Pinkie nodded slowly. “You know what I think? I don’t think it’ll come to that. Someone’s going to win. I don’t exactly know that, but I feel it in my gut. All these threads, lives, arcs, moments… they have to lead to something. It may not be what we’re expecting, but it won’t be nothing.”

“Well put,” I said, walking onto the scene.

“You feel the same way?” Corona asked.

I nodded. “It’s how things work. The Tower has gone above and beyond to craft this into a well-balanced story. It may provide a twist – but it won’t make it all amount to nothing. Though, again, I can’t know for certain. So much of what I see has been scrambled.”

Corona let herself smile. “Thanks, you two. I needed some reassurance.”

“We didn’t say we’d win,” Pinkie pointed out.

“I’d be happier losing than destroying everything this war has led up to,” Corona said.

“Wow, Corona laying down some wisdom!” Pinkie said with a chuckle.

Corona shrugged. “I try. So, Twilence, do you have any plan? The Void’s ability to create a new Tower Ring is limited. Have you found Blumiere?”

I shook my head. “I can’t see him. But I did get the next best thing.” I held up a capture device with an amused smile. “Do you know who’s in here?”

“Did you find Nanoha?”

“Hm? No. I went on a stealth mission to get this just a few hours ago. This device contains G. M. Blackjack.”

Corona and Pinkie blinked.

“Monika’s going to sense that,” Pinkie pointed out.

I smirked. “She’s welcome to try and take him back. We’re in the most secure place in the multiverse right now. We’ll get what we need out of him.”

“But he’s behind us!” Pinkie pointed out. “How – oooooh he’s caught up hasn’t he?”

“He’s written parts of the beginning of the war,” I said. “Knowing him, he should have some idea where he’s going at this point.” She gave the ball to Corona. “I want to start the interrogation as soon as possible, with your approval.”

Corona nodded. “Do it.”

I looked at the ball and smiled. “He should be cooperative – he trusts me. But just in case, I want it clear that nobody’s to hurt him during the interrogation.”

“I’ll keep Thanos out of the room.”

“Ooooh, he’s not gonna be happy about that!” Pinkie said.

“He can bite me,” Corona muttered.

“Hey, at least he’s not Phage!”

“I don’t think it’s a contest of ‘which one of our allies is the worst’,” Corona pointed out. Then she shrugged. “We’re dilly-dallying. We should question him before something inconvenient happens.”

~~~

Eve walked out of a meeting. After checking to make sure none of the people she was supposed to impress were around, she allowed herself to fall into Flutterfree’s hooves. “We won’t win the vote next time.”

Flutterfree frowned. “That close?”

“Only a 5% vote margin,” Eve said, shaking her head. “The Combine are swaying more and more to their side. The capture devices are going to be abolished in favor of… I don’t even know; whatever anyone wants at any given time.”

“Not yet though.”

“Not yet. But I don’t see this war ending before then. Sure, the Combine say they’re building a Tower Ring, but I don’t think they’re in a hurry to finish it. I think they’re going the way of the Gallifreyans and setting things up for their ‘dominance’.”

“That’s risky of them…”

“And I can’t call them out on it because if they leave, or if we start shooting at each other, we lose. So I just have to let it happen.”

“You think they’re actually able to do it?”

Eve shook her head. “They’re not handling the war as well as they’d like us to believe. Their infrastructure, sturdy as it is, has cracks. And unlike the Gallifreyans they haven’t been planning this from the start.” She shook her head. “Plus, there’s a good chance the other side is planning a major assault on them. Then where will we be?”

Flutterfree shrugged. “We’ll keep trying.”

Eve nodded. “I just… I’d hoped the war would end before it came to this.”

Flutterfree nodded slowly. “I hoped as well. I prayed. I guess it’s just not meant to be.”

“How long are we going to be like this? Stuck in eternal fighting?”

“I don’t know. I don’t even know how long it’s been for me. We move around so much time is spaghetti.”

Eve smiled. “Spaghetti. I don’t know why I find that so funny…”

Monika appeared in front of the two of them. “We have a problem.”

“I hate it when you say that,” Eve groaned. “What happened this time? Did the Combine just fall? Did the other side find a superweapon?”

“Close. GM’s been snatched from his location. Three guesses who took him.”

“Twilence,” Eve and Flutterfree said at the same time.

“And there we have it, proof I’m not crazy,” Monika leaned against a wall and filed her fingernails together. “So, here’s the deal. We can’t let them have that kind of power.”

“Didn’t we have him guarded?” Flutterfree asked.

Eve held out a hoof and rocked it side to side. “Sorta? We had eyes on him – like Monika – but we wanted to avoid doing anything with him. It’d just be asking for trouble, like with John. I wonder what Twilence hopes to gain from this…”

Monika snapped her fingers. “Does it matter, really?”

“If we want to defend against it? Yes.”

“What if we get him back before she can really do anything?” Monika asked.

“How? He’ll be in the Void, and we aren’t scheduled to fully break through that for weeks.”

“I’m just thinking, if they grabbed someone we were avoiding using, why don’t we do the same?”

“I don’t like where this is going,” Flutterfree said.

“John can get us there, surpassing all barriers,” Monika said. “We still have his Master Ball, and there are no Gallifreyans left to control him. Let me pop him out, and we can zap right to GM!”

“Yeah, no,” Eve said, shaking her head. “We have John locked away for a reason Monika. A very important reason.”

“Yeah yeah, backfire potential, too powerful, I know – the point is they’re already doing it, we should do it too.”

“Actually, if they’re using GM, that gives us an advantage,” Flutterfree pointed out. “They’re tempting fate, we’re not.”

Monika twitched. “Right, ka-based argument? I may be a little lacking in the ‘understanding’ department, but Twilence isn’t. Why would she do something that put them at a disadvantage?”

“She knows GM ‘personally’,” Flutterfree suggested. “She could just want to see him.”

“Or she wants to trigger a reaction from us,” Eve added. “Say, letting John out of his device.”

Monika held up a finger, then lowered it. “Great. What’s the plan if it’s not John?”

“Rohan, as always,” Eve said with a smile. “Plus whatever Prophets the TSAB can offer. GM may be the one writing this story, but he’s still just one person. I’ll make the arrangements.”

“Oh, I’ll leave you to that,” Flutterfree said. “Rev’s asked for my help again. It’s probably tomorrow already, so…”

“Don’t worry, I can handle things for a day. Or whatever the equivalent of an Earth Vitis day is here.” She rubbed her head. “Thanks for the info, Monika.”

“…Sure,” Monika said, glitching herself away. She appeared in another universe, seamlessly transmitting the point of view with her. “She didn’t go for it.”

“Told you,” Roxy said, trying to lounge in a folding chair. “I was like ‘hey, Monika, she’s totally got a thing against John’ and then you went ‘ah bu bu bu I can convince her, I’m like her advisor or some shit’ and then Jade was all ‘bark bark’.”

Jade the “office dog” raised an eyebrow. “…I was not.”

“It’s all part of the story, Jadey.” Roxy attempted to make a finger guns gesture but instead fell out of her chair. She stood up and dusted herself off, absent-mindedly scratching the gemstone on the back of her neck. “Welp, looks like we’re goin’ for plan B then.”

Monika stretched her arms and grinned. “You have the files?”

Roxy produced a data pad from nowhere. “I always have the files.”

“All of them?” Jade asked.

“Don’t Serket me,” Roxy retorted, scrolling through the data on the pad. “Let’s see here… Yep, got John’s location and security. We can go right now.” She put the pad down. “Uh, just so everyone knows, this is probably high treason and while I doubt Eve will kill us for this she’s going to be angrier than a moose in mating season.”

“And I don’t care!” Monika declared. “I’m not letting Twilence get away with this one.” Her left eye twitched. “I’m going to show that pony…”

Jade barked.

“Exactly.”

~~~

Allure stood at the front door of her sister’s house.

…Or, what had been her sister’s house.

She held her hoof over her chest and leaned forward. You’re already about to break into tears. You can’t do that. She took a deep breath and rang the doorbell.

“Door’s unlocked,” Daniel said, talking to her from a comm system. “Come on in.”

He didn’t even check to see who I was. Did he just know, or does he not care?

Allure opened the door with her magic and walked in. The interior of the house was a mess – not only was Renee no longer around to clean it, but all the lights were off. The only ilumination came from the windows, a handful of magical appliances, and a soft flicker coming from up the stairs. All around Allure could see dust, cobwebs, and a large pile of unwashed dishes.

She wanted to believe all of this was due to Daniel being exceptionally busy. But he had stepped down as Expeditions Overhead the day after he got the news. It was now Overhead Storm in charge, not that Allure particularly cared about him.

She walked up the stairs carefully, her small hooves making little noise. He heard her coming anyway and was looking out the doorway of the bedroom long before she actually arrived.

He was lying in bed, covered in blankets, a gaunt look to his face. The only light was from a fake fireplace at the back wall of the room. Aside from the blankets on the bed and his glasses, everything in the room was in disorder.

Allure gulped. “D-Daniel?”

Daniel forced a smile. Allure could tell it was fake, but she humored him with a smile of her own. “Allure. Come in. Let me look at you.”

Allure obliged, walking in and sitting down. Daniel moved slowly, taking out his hand and running it across the edge of Allure’s ear. She tensed, but made sure not to recoil. Her discomfort wasn’t a consideration right now.

“You look so much like her…”

A Rarity would look better, if that’s what you wanted.

“…you have that look of hers. The gaze.”

Daniel started scratching her behind the ears – but stopped himself after about a second. He retracted his hand into the sheets.

“Y-you don’t have to stop. If y-”

“It meant something very different when I did that to her,” Daniel said, looking up at the ceiling.

“O-oh.” She looked down at the ground. “I, I ca-”

“Allure, don’t finish that sentence.”

Allure gulped. “Daniel… I can’t just leave you here.”

“Yes you can,” Daniel said.

“But I did this to you!”

Daniel didn’t correct her. He turned back to her with soft eyes. “I’m not angry.”

“That’s the problem!” Allure blurted. “You’re putting so much effort into not being angry at me you’re wasting away! It’s not right! Be mad!”

“She gave herself,” Daniel said with a sigh. “It would destroy what she wanted.”

“I’ll survive. Please. She wouldn’t want you to waste away.”

Daniel didn’t look like he believed her.

“She told me to watch out for you.”

Daniel looked ahead, blank. “She always planned to come back. In her heart, she thought she would be able to. She knew I’d let her in after it was over. She felt immortal. So did I.”

“Daniel…”

“I know you blame yourself,” Daniel said.

“It is my fault!” Allure wailed.

“You were sick.”

“That doesn’t excuse all of it!”

“…Maybe not,” Daniel admitted. “But it was still her choice. You should hold that close.”

“What about this!?” Allure blurted, holding a hoof at Daniel. “Is this your choice?”

“No. It was hers.”

Allure’s mind split into two wildly different opinions on that statement, derailing her entire thought process.

Daniel went on. “She didn’t think of it – she only had a few seconds. But by giving herself up for you, she was leaving me.” He looked at the far nightstand, at a picture of him and Renee under a tree.

“Daniel…”

“When she left me to join Corona, she planned on coming back. When she left me to help you… she didn’t.”

“Revival was an option!”

“She knew. She knew.”

“How can you know that? I don’t know that!”

Daniel looked right at her. “Listen to what you just said.”

Allure’s breath caught in her throat. “Daniel, I didn’t me-”

“Of course you didn’t. But that’s the point. She chose you.”

“She loved you, Daniel!”

“She did. She never stopped.” Tears finally started running down his face. “But you were the one she gave her life for.”

“She would have given her life for you!”

“Allure! I’m not angry, I’m not even jealous. You don’t need to lie to me.”

“You’re sad! I’d prefer angry! I’d prefer jealous! Those things get you up!” She stamped her hoof on the ground. “You’re not getting up! You’re not doing anything!”

Daniel had nothing to say to this.

Allure twitched, changing tactics. “I stole her from you! I did that! Me. Dammit Daniel, get up!”

Daniel looked at her with the eyes of an old man looking at a young, rebellious child.

Allure melted. She hung her head. “I’m sorry.”

Daniel nodded slowly. “I understand. I can’t do what you want. I can’t do what she wanted. I’m sorry.”

Allure gulped. She opened her mouth to say something, but nothing came out.

“You don’t have to stay here with me, you know. I see you still have the fighting spirit in you.”

“I have to watch you.”

“I’m not going to waste away to nothing in a couple hours,” Daniel said, the first hint of a real smile appearing on his face. “Just drop by every now and then.”

Allure glanced at the door, then back at Daniel. “…I’ll get back to them when I feel we’re actually done talking. We… we haven’t remembered her yet.” Allure thought for a moment. “I’ll start from the beginning. My first solid memory I have of her is a birthday party…”

~~~

Blumiere put the Prognosticus away – it would not help him perform the ritual. The tome only told him the ritual existed, that it was important, and also gave a vague impression of how it would affect things to come. It was horrendous, but he agreed it needed to happen.

Agreeing with the thing that was in Renee felt horrible. But he had been mayor of Celestia City dozens of times; he was not one to let his feelings get in the way of things that needed to be done.

“Vivian, light the fire,” he ordered.

Vivian clasped her hands together, focused for a moment, and let out a sharp breath. She spread her hands apart and pointed in two different directions, making arc motions with one hand. Black-purple fire appeared on the ground in a ring formation large enough to hold about ten people, but they were sure to keep it empty.

“Alushy, the souls.”

Alushy smirked. “What if I’ve changed my mind?”

“Everyone can be hacked,” Sai chirped. “I will have fun, amiga, and you’ll eventually do it regardless.”

Alushy shrugged with her wings. “Eh, screw it. This better be interesting.”

From her position next to Nanoha, Jenny scratched the back of her head. “Y’know, I’m kind of interested to see what this thing is. I still have no idea. Purity of what?”

Neither Blumiere nor Nanoha were forthcoming with answers.

“More anticipation!” Alushy said with a wink. Then she flapped her wings and released the souls she had accumulated over the course of the war. Dark, screaming beings that wanted nothing more than to die and take someone else with them flooded the ritual, absorbing into the flames themselves. Alushy didn’t need to spend all of them, stopping the moment Sai let out a loud airhorn noise.

“Ow…” Vivian muttered, holding her ears.

“There’s enough power, nature, and will,” Blumiere said. “Sai, trace the magic ley lines using my essence.”

Sai did as instructed, taking the purple power of Blumiere and lacing it along the ground in a complex geometric pattern. After the floor was laid out, she began to build a three dimensional lattice within the ring of fire, forming a complex ball with a shape in the middle that appeared different depending on the angle.

Renee grinned. “Yes…”

“A spark of purity,” Timpani said, tossing some of her white magic into the nexus. It was captured in the center, levitated like a star amidst the void of space.

“The final ingredient,” Blumiere said, narrowing his eyes. “A touch of saturated ka. Dimentio, as the spirit of the Prognosticus…”

Dimentio chuckled. “Aha! But I don’t have to do anything, for we have a special guest with us!”

“You flatter me,” Renee said. She flexed her real eye, expanding and contracting the pupil several times in rapid succession. The magical wires and flame absorbed the white color of Timpani’s light, beginning to shine themselves like a holy beacon. The darkness became Pure.

The fire died out, becoming a solid white impression in the ground. The lattice condensed into a single white sphere that rippled a moment before falling like a drop of water. The holy sludge absorbed the power of the ring around it, leaving only a charred section of earth.

Slowly, a form began to emerge from the whiteness. As the liquid shifted to a solid form, they could make out arms, legs, and a head. Black lines began to form on the humanoid figure, giving him a face, a baseball cap, and a shirt with vertical stripes on it. No color ever came to his features, leaving him a black-and-white being.

A baseball bat appeared in his hand. It looked normal aside from its monochromatic nature, but the metal implement made everyone present recoil in fear.

Except Jenny and Renee.

“What the heck!?” Jenny blurted. “All that ritual and show and weirdness for a guy?

“I am the Batter,” the Batter said. He turned to Renee.

“I am… Renee.” Renee smirked. “You know your purpose.”

“I am on a sacred mission to Purify the undoing.”

“Is someone going to start explaining!?” Jenny blurted, waving her hands around.

Blumiere ignored Jenny, staring intently at Renee.

What are you? The Prognosticus has nothing about you in its prophecies…

~~~

When you want to keep something hidden, you give it to Roxy. She’ll just erase its existence and most often nobody will be able to find it unless she wills them to. Such is the power of the Rogue of Void. There’s a reason she made it to Intelligence Second.

When you want to keep something hidden that Roxy might want to find, things become trickier. She can steal the ‘nothingness’ away from empty space and create even complex objects. She has access to almost every file and secret in the Intelligence Division through this ability, having honed her Void powers expertly over the years.

The key here is almost. Giorno knew he would have to keep some things secret from even his Second. Though they were few and far between, he knew they existed. The simplest way to do this was to make sure she never saw or heard about them, because she couldn’t make what she didn’t know existed somewhere.

This was not the case with John’s capture device. She knew exactly what it was, who was in it, and even where it was. The only thing Giorno had going for him in keeping it from her was that it was unduplicatable. John’s retcon power could never be replicated, not even by the likes of Insipid, and the Master Ball was notorious for not letting too many devices of its kind exist through meta effects. So she couldn’t just erase the ball from existence and appear it later. She would have to physically grab it somehow.

The answer Giorno came up with to deter Roxy – and any other potential thieves – was to place the ball in a universe with physics specifically tailored to erase all abilities except the ones required to keep John captured in the purple-marked ball.

The ball in question was also inside a box laced with a tremendous number of alarms, weapons, and sensors. It would know the moment anything unauthorized approached and destroy it. It was nearly foolproof.

Nearly.

Because Monika existed.

Roxy and Jade stood at opposite sides of a room in one of the Intelligence Divisions’ offices. The Intelligence buildings were always the only things in the universes they occupied and often held the only direct connections to universes holding valuable secrets.

Between Roxy and Jade stood Monika, who had her eyes narrowed in focus. “Ready.”

“You sure?” Roxy asked. “The moment we open the portal, all hell breaks loose on both sides.”

Monika rolled her eyes and opened the portal with her own power.

“MONIK-”

The box fired a deadly laser at Monika, vaporizing her – but she just rewrote her character file to reform her body. She did this several times a second to keep herself alive and well. She reached out a hand, grasping for the universe on the other side.

The Intelligence Agents showed up and started shooting. It would be seconds before they started using reality-suppression technology on Monika.

Roxy and Jade were there to buy her those seconds. Roxy created bombs out of nothing and threw them while Jade shrunk the agents down to tiny sizes. Tiny people can fly really far, it turns out.

Monika adjusted the rules of the universe on the other side, forcing the box to disable. She pulled her hand out, John’s master ball in her grasp. “Got it!”

Roxy Voided all of them to almost perfect invisibility – Giorno would be able to detect them, but he wouldn’t be fast enough to do anything. Jade opened a portal and they all jumped out. They scrambled through a few more universes before taking a break in some version of Bangladesh.

Jade let out a sigh of relief. “We did it.”

“And now we’re wanted criminals,” Monika said, chuckling.

“They’ll thank us later,” Roxy said, swiping John’s ball from Monika. She pressed the button, freeing the Heir of Breath.

“…Where am I?” John asked. “Wh-”

Roxy pulled him into a hug. “…I missed you.”

“Uh, have I been gone?”

Roxy laughed, rolled her eyes, and struck a sassy pose. “Same ol’ John, clueless as ever. We’ll explain everything – we’ve got a mission, and only you can help us do it!”

“Sweet! Sounds awesome!”

“I know, right!?”

Monika blinked. “I know I never really interacted with John but…”

“Yes, he’s always like this,” Jade said.

“Okay. Strange character file…”

“Get out of his head! Bark!”

“Fiiiiiine,” she closed it.

~~~

“…Do you understand your situation?” I asked.

GM blinked. “Yeah. Quick question, are you using magic to keep me from freaking out? Because I’m pretty sure I’d be freaking out right about now. Actually… definitely sure, since the last two times I wrote with me, I did.”

Corona answered for me, folding her hands. “Yeah, we are. We’re not probing your mind though.”

GM looked at Corona. “Yet. But if you think you have to, you will.”

I blinked. I realized that, aside from the few times I had examined him from a distance or through a facilitated ‘wall’, every time I had encountered my Prophet had been when he was undergoing a breakdown over what he was and what was going on. I’d never talked to him while he was calm and accepting of who he was.

Maybe Seskii was right, maybe I didn’t know him as well as I’d thought.

“You know we won’t hurt you.”

“You don’t want to,” GM emphasized. “If I’m not cooperative, you will. Don’t worry, I’ll be cooperative. I have no interest in being brainwashed, tortured, or… anything else.” He looked at the table. “I just wanted to write a story.”

“A story that we’re in,” Corona said. “Twilence tells me you’re finally writing about the war.”

GM nodded. “I just wrote the Gallifreyan’s defeat. That was hard, let me tell you – with all the Class 1s it was easy to just have them take each other out one by one, but with them I had to deal with John and the Doctor and…” He paused, frowning. “I killed so many.”

He would have broken into tears if I weren’t calming him, I thought. I maintained my calm demeanor. “You didn’t know. You were just writing a story. A story that still needs you to write it.”

“You sure?” GM asked. “Stories get left incomplete.”

“I see words appearing on a screen,” I said. “Which means you must go back at some point and write out the rest. I may end up locking you in a simulation to accomplish that since it isn’t safe to return you home anymore, but you’ll be given the opportunity.”

“And I’ll have a third set of memories I won’t remember. And my world will be fake. Yay for existentialism.” He started rubbing his fists together nervously.

“All we want to know is what you have planned,” Corona asked. “I know you write without knowing what’s ahead and like being surprised, but surely you have plans?”

GM nodded slowly. “…The war was always going to be a thing. There was a question I wanted to ask.” He looked me in the eyes. “Do we really want stories to be true?”

Corona and I had no response to that.

“I didn’t have an answer. Back when Songs was first forming, I knew there would be a war over the question, but I didn’t know the outcome. Would the multiverse collapse and become a single world free of story? Or would the multiverse be preserved and allowed to evolve into infinity?”

“The Downstreamers are gone,” I said. “Nobody can make infinity.”

“The Spline is gone too. If the multiverse continues, it will eventually spread to Infinity. …Unless someone on the side of preservation locks it out of the Tower with their Tower Ring. I actually don’t know if that can be done. Haven’t thought about it before now.” He shook his head. “The point is, it was always going to be a fight between those two sides. I eventually decided Corona would be the one to lead the charge of change, and naturally Eve would be the one to oppose her.”

“And who wins?” Corona asked.

“You do,” GM said. “I decided it would make a better story.” Despite my magic calming him, his arms were starting to shake. “It’d be surprising, a subversion. A great devastation that brought about something new. No one would see it coming.”

“But you’re clearly writing this scene in the future,” I said.

“Sure it’s not another Prophet?”

“Positive. It’s G. M. Blackjack – you.”

“Well, I have no plans to have a conversation like this. I’m important in the end, sure – being tossed back and forth between the sides as an endgame weapon in the outline I have now – but I wouldn’t reveal the twist of the story before it happened. Unless I got a clever idea, a special twist…”

“Or you just wanted to say it to make people think you would do it,” Corona pointed out.

GM nodded. “That… does sound like me. Constantly thinking of ways to play with audience expectations, subverting tropes, playing them straight, analyzing the Awareness of everyone involved... You and Monika are a pain to write together, by the way.”

“Forgive me for not apologizing,” I deadpanned.

GM let out a nervous chuckle. “My struggles as a writer are nothing compared to what you’re going through. I’m like a cruel, idiot god to you. Those things you wrote during the Creators chapter? I meant most of what I said there.”

“An idiot god is little different from an evil one.”

“Yeah. Naturally I should try to change myself now, to become a good Prophet, undo the damage I’ve done, but you won’t let me do that. You need to keep the purity of what’s happening. I’m too important of a voice to mess with. I’m directly responsible for this plotline. Though, fun fact, I’ve always believed Hussie and you have more ‘application’ power than me. I’m just a loose unaware.”

Corona looked at GM with concerned eyes. “You’re right. We can’t ask you to change things. We just want to know what you think is going to happen.”

“Right now, Giorno builds the final Tower Ring,” GM said. “I don’t know how, and I don’t know when. I will get brought into the story and be tossed back and forth, as I already mentioned – but the fact that I’m here now brings that into question. There’ll be a tremendous fight around the Dark Tower and everyone will meet together in a climax. And John, oh boy, John’s had a role here since the very beginning.”

“GM, focus,” I said.

“Oh, right.” GM shook his head. “John wi-”

ZAP.

John appeared in the interrogation room.

“Uh, hey,” he said, waving. “I need this guy.” He laid a hand on GM.

I shot a magic laser at John, but Roxy revealed herself and it vanished into the Void. “Nuh-uh!”

With a ZAP Roxy, GM, and John were gone.

I twitched. I purposefully waited a few seconds, though now I have no idea what part of me was compelled to wait for the dramatic timing.

“WHAT THE F-”

~~~

“Geez, stop crying,” Monika said, hands on her hips.

“Monika!” Jade chided. “Have some tact, he’s having a breakdown!”

GM was curled into a ball on top of a Drama Couch Monika had created the moment she saw the disturbed Prophet. He was shivering uncontrollably, muttering under his breath about his dream being a lie.

“That’s it, I’m altering his file,” Monika muttered.

“Don’t you dare,” Roxy scolded. “We need his Prophet powers! And you should know that mind manipulation doesn’t always work!” She created a file out of midair. “Or have you forgotten the incident on Earth Creators?”

“That worked pretty well!”

“You made a Mary Sue.”

“Well, I, uh…” Monika stamped a foot, closing GM’s file. “Fine. But someone has to calm him down.”

“Don’t look at me!” John said, waving his hands. “I barely know what’s going on!”

That I can fix,” Monika said.

“Monika…” Roxy said, tapping her foot.

“What? He got GM back already, I can do whatever I want, so long as he lets me in.”

“John don-” she saw Monika twirl her finger in midair. “John you already let her in, didn’t you?”

John blinked. “Uh, yeah?”

Roxy facepalmed.

“And update sent!” Monika said, clapping her hands. “Now he’s up to speed about what he did.”

John sat down on the couch next to GM, one of his hands on his head. “Holy shit…”

GM glared at him, sniveling. “Oh, you think you have it bad!?”

“My friends are dead, I was enslaved to kill trillions of people, and then I was trapped in a ball while existence exploded!”

“And I was the guy who made those things happen!”

John recoiled. “Shit.

“No kidding,” GM muttered through his panic. Jade laid a hand on his shoulder – making him tense up a moment. But he quickly allowed himself to relax, looking right at her.

She opened her mouth to give some words of encouragement – but a bark came out instead. She shut it and blushed.

GM was silent for a moment – then laughed.

Monika cocked her head. “…What?”

“It’s ridiculous to actually hear it!” GM blurted, a hand fiddling with his hair. “I mean… It’s… I don’t know,” he snorted in amusement. “It doesn’t sound like a thing that would actually happen!”

Jade smiled. “It is a little silly.”

GM continued laughing, his mind deciding laughter was much preferable to panic. But, slowly, he ran out of steam, falling into a burnt out state. His expression became lethargic, and his movements sluggish. He stretched his neck. “…I think I’m out, for now,” he said, looking very unsure of himself.

Roxy leaned in, hands on her hips. “We need you to do something.”

“Win you the war, I know.” GM furrowed his brow. “The way I’d written it, Corona’s side was going to win.”

Monika blinked. “What!?”

GM shook his head. “I… I can’t do that anymore. I can’t be re… re…” Despite already running on empty, he choked, hand to his mouth. It took him a minute to regain control of his voice. “I don’t care about the story anymore. It’s… not okay for me to write it if I know. I can save it all.” He blinked. “…But infinity scares me just as much.”

“…Infinity?” Roxy asked. “Infinity doesn’t exist.”

“Downstreamers,” GM said, rubbing his knuckles past each other. “They tried it. Someone will try again. I don’t want to give you meaningless Infinity. If I can stop that and the collapse…” He looked into the distance. “Collapse first. I’m already getting an idea about how to do it. Just one little seed…” He turned to Roxy. “You’ve been built up. You can work with John. I can change it, I haven’t written it yet.” He turned to Monika. “I need my writing room.”

Monika searched GM’s files and found the memory of the writing room. It had changed since he had last been in the larger multiverse – it now had a much smaller glass desk with a laptop and a large monitor on it. To one side was a case of many colored pens, and on the other was a stack of books with The Three-Body Problem on top. On the leftmost wall was a large black shelf covered in knick-knacks, books, little crochet things made by his mother and sister, a handful of his brother’s little crafts, and his own gemstone collection.

He sat down in the folding chair and put his hands on the keyboard. He took a breath. “I… I’ll need some time. I need to work through this.”

“Need anyone in there?” Jade asked, concern in her voice

“I need… to be alone and think,” GM said.

“I’ll put you in a time acceleration field,” Monika said, moving her fingers around. “You’ll find snacks on that shelf if you need them.”

GM nodded but didn’t say anything; he had already retreated into a world inside his mind. A world that was both just in his imagination and very, very real.

Monika adjusted the time-flow, allowing his work to continue.

John looked to Jade. “…Only one of you now?”

Jade nodded. “You and Roxy are the only ones left from the Alpha Timeline. I’m just… a ghost.” She rubbed her arm. “I’m sorry.”

“Aw, geez, I didn’t mean it like that…”

“We are different people,” Jade said, her hollow eyes moist. “I miss her too. Even if she was a bit… promiscuous.”

John looked at his hands, unable to formulate a coherent response. He had so much to think about, and he wasn’t in the time-sink GM was.

A handful of seconds later, GM came out. His face was red and he looked like he had seen a ghost. He looked somewhat frail. “I did it. I wrote the scene at the interrogation, and the one we’re in now.” He focused his eyes, trying to remember the exact words of what came next. “Roxy, there’s an entity called the Batter. He should appear the moment I finish the next sentence. He is a powerful entity of purity and you need to kill him and take his powers – how, I won’t tell you, it needs to be suspenseful.”

He turned to his left, looking at a large, red tree that Roxy was sure hadn’t been there a moment before. They all tensed, looking at the red tree, ready for someone to appear…

The B円´®æß µˆß߈ø˜ ˜´´∂ß †ø ∫´ çøµπ¬´†´∂ ¥ø¨ ƒøø¬≤ ˜ø† ∂´ß†®ø¥´∂.

¥ø¨® ¨ß´ƒ¨¬˜´ßß åß å ∂´çø¥ ˙åß ´˜∂´∂onika sensed a change in ka around GM.

She turned to look at him, eyes wide. “Something’s wrong.”

GM glanced back at the writing room. “That… That should have worked! By my own rules when writing the other Prophets… I created an inciting incident, made sure it played off previously established lore, and crafted it so it would be suspenseful and not a simple way out! I did it all!” He started hyperventilating. “What went wrong!?”

“I don’t know, but whatever happened, the fire of ka on you just vanished,” Monika said.

“What!?” GM said, mouth agape. “That doesn’t make any sense! I can’t be overwritten!”

“Sure there’s no-one who could?” Monika asked.

“The only Prophets who could try would be Twilence and Hussie, and I’m a step above Twilence so that won’t work…”

“Hussie?”

“I don’t think so…”

“Worth a shot,” Roxy said. “John, find Hussie.”

“Uh… how?” John asked, cocking his head.

“Right, Monika, John, you two are with me, we’re going to combine our powers and find the Huss.”

~~~

“WHAT!?” I blurted. “WHAT!?”

“What do you mean what?” Corona asked. “What’s going on in there?”

“There was a heavy ka shift,” I said, starting to pace around the interrogation table. “It got through Monika’s obfuscation. And I just… WHAT!?” I twitched. “GM just lost his Prophet abilities!”

“That’s possible!?”

“APPARENTLY!” I said, already feeling my eyes twitch and my mane shift out of its natural shape. “And they think Hussie did it, but I don’t see why he would or even how, he may be a Major Prophet but there’s no way he could, unless, and then… But maybe…”

Corona was taken aback by this new side of me.

I summoned a whiteboard from the aether and pulled out several dozen different colors of marker, scribbling some diagrams on the board. “Hussie hasn’t been involved in the story as a plot point for a long time, and most of the times usually just as a background element or joke, he hasn’t been foreshadowed at all! Unless there’s been parts in the last arc I haven’t seen – oooh, that’s a clever trick. But that couldn’t be a trick from GM, at least not the early chapters… AHA! Nihilists! – Wait, no, that’s wrong.” I scribbled out an equation Corona couldn’t even wrap her mind around – which wasn’t surprising, because I was using the ka equations I had invented, not the insufficient outlines of Starbeat. “Ack, no no… Could the Tower have done it? Yes, but it wouldn’t have looked like that, it would have just been a failed story…” I threw my markers onto the ground. “AAAAAAAGH! This doesn’t make any sense!”

Corona started laughing.

“What’s so funny!?”

Corona was clearly embarrassed. “I’m sorry! I just never saw you go Twily-nanas! I didn’t think you could!”

“I’M NOT GOING TWILY-NANAS!” I blinked. “…Tower’s Height, I am going Twily-nanas.” I snorted. “That’s… I haven’t done that in decades! I…” I laughed and put a hoof to my head. “I forgot I had the capacity to do that!”

“You’re still a Twilight, it seems.”

I smiled despite myself. “Yep! Totally a Twilight! Twilighting is what we do! Guess I needed to be reminded. Now, let’s stop laughing and get back to this, it’s actually important.”

“Maybe we don’t need to know how he did it – just what we’re going to do now that GM’s Prophet-ness is gone.”

“We’ll have to deal with John somehow…” I said, scratching my chin.

“We’ll have to find him to do that.”

“They are going to look for Hussie.” I clapped my hooves together. “That’s it! We can get them there!”

“…I thought we were done with the Twily-nanas.”

“Eh, it might give me determination or something. Get the Alliance on the phone, we need to find Hussie!”

~~~

“WHAT!?” Eve blurted. “WHAT?”

Giorno let out a sigh.

“SHE DID…! But why…? How? WHAT!?”

“She freed John, presumably to grab GM.” Giorno said. “Since they haven’t come back yet, we can assume they either failed or just don’t want to give him to us.”

“I told her not to!”

“Did you really think she’d listen to you?”

“Yes! She’s been my assistant for most of the war!” Eve held out a hoof and shook it wildly as if that would get her point across better. “I trusted her!”

“Mistake.”

“You trusted Roxy!”

“No, I didn’t, I just failed to take Monika into account.”

Eve clearly wanted to keep arguing, but she stopped herself. “Fine, fine, what do we do about it?”

Giorno folded his arms. “Do you think there’s anything we can do? They have Roxy, John, Monika, and probably GM with them. If they aren’t captured – which I doubt they are – then we’re not going to be able to do anything to them.”

“…And we wouldn’t want to waste resources since they’ll probably try to help us…” Eve put a hoof to her head. “But with GM and John? They’re going to mess something up! Just think of all the ways their abilities can ruin everything and produce unexpected and terrible results! Rewriting, overwriting, control, the possibilities are nearly endless! Wait, maybe they are endless, who knows, maybe we get sent back to the time of the Downstreamers or something!?”

“Did you think we’d get to a resolution without either of them mattering in some way?”

“Well, I…” Eve shook her head. “I let Monika worry about that stuff!”

“Which may be why we have a problem now.”

Eve performed a breathing exercise to calm herself down. “Okay, okay, we need to think this through. Since both John and GM are now on the playing field, that probably means we’re nearing the end, right?”

“Probably,” Starbeat said, walking into the room.

“When did you get here?! Why are you here!?” Eve blurted. “…Sorry, I’m stressed.”

“I have a Twily-nanas sensor.”

“I AM NOT GOING TWILY-NANAS!” Eve blurted. “…Tower’s Height, I am going Twily-nanas.”

Starbeat looked down at her ka sensor. “…Haven’t seen a ka-signature that strong for a joke in a while.”

“Joke!?” Eve shook her head. “Nevermind, so you just sensed me, right. So we are nearing the end?”

Starbeat nodded. “Best I can tell. Or, well, maybe not the end, but a hefty resolution. Or climax. Ka has been so tangled lately I can’t really tell. There was recently a big shift I haven’t identified yet. I was actually here to talk to Monika about it, but that’s apparently not an option. Scooter might work…”

“Scooter’s not here right now,” Giorno said. “And we don’t have time. If the ‘end’ is really approaching, we need to move now.”

“How? We have no idea where their Tower Ring is!”

Giorno furrowed his brow. “You two, I have something to show you. Follow me.”

~~~

“I need a portal to complete my sacred mission,” the Batter said, addressing Blumiere. “My spirit is tied to the coordinates. Use that.”

“I’m getting sick of this!” Jenny complained. “What. Is. Happening?!”

Blumiere opened up the portal the Batter requested, leading to a very familiar-looking realm.

A field of roses.

The Batter nodded curtly to Blumiere and walked through the portal, wading through the roses. Blumiere knew the roses were cutting the Batter’s legs, but he saw no blood.

Go, complete your mission, Blumiere thought. We are depending on it.

“Looks like he’s giving you the silent treatment, dear!” Renee told Jenny with a cocky smile. “Oh, how that must break your heart!”

Blumiere glared at the white unicorn. Filled with an immense desire to show her up, he cleared his throat. “…Now’s as good a time as any to explain. Everyone needs to be on the same page.” He glanced at Vivian – ashamed he had been leaving her in the dark as well.

As he began his explanation, he noticed that Renee wasn’t upset or even surprised that he was talking. She had the expression of a mastermind who had wanted him to do what he did. Why would she want me to explain?

“It all starts with this book,” Blumiere said, holding up the Prognosticus. “It is an ancient book written by one Dimentio, once known as Dimitri. He ascended the Tower and, much like the Horrorterrors who created SBURB, used the knowledge within the Source to create. And like SBURB, this book is both a blessing and a monstrous curse. It holds within it vague words that describe the secrets of the multiverse. How connections can be formed, how universes can be destroyed with little effort, how time, space, and fate itself can be manipulated. But it also tells of unavoidable things – prophecies, futures, and the ultimate destiny of all things. It is a book of contradictions and tangled messes that is tied into the Dark Tower itself.

“It was split into two books over its long history, a Light and Dark view of reality. Some would say Hope and Rage, others, Hope and Doom. I would say the dichotomy is a false one – that both sides of the book are true in some way or another. Especially if you consider that the Tower’s Testament discusses a Choice. The Light and Dark, they talk about the two different choices. Preservation, or collapse? That is the choice all must make.

“When I first came into possession of the Dark Prognosticus, I encountered its author, though I did not know Dimentio for what he was at the time. I wanted to destroy all worlds with the knowledge found within, and believed I was the one spoken of in its pages. While I was there, in that part of my life, I was enacting a lesser prophecy. I wanted to destroy for the sake of my lost love.” He held Timpani’s hand close. “I never threatened the entire multiverse, merely the area of the Tribe of Ancients. I realized the error of my ways before I could fall completely to the Dark Prognosticus, reclaiming Timpani, but Dimentio betrayed me and tried to take control himself. He claimed he wanted to make a new, perfect world – but I believe he wanted more than that, now. It was just the first part in a long plan.”

Blumiere saw Dimentio chuckle, but chose to ignore him. “Dimentio died in the battle. Timpani and myself were sent to the Nexus with the Dark Prognosticus, where we lived our new lives in peace. Eventually, through some trick of fate, the Light Prognosticus fell into the Nexus as well, where it eventually made its way to us. I locked the two books away, knowing I had to keep them with me, but refusing to ever use them… Until the war began.

“Within them were secrets to end everything. Now that the real end was there, and now that I knew more about the true scale of the multiverse, I saw how they could apply on a much larger scale. And I started to see Dimentio again. I am under no illusions – the man I knew, the traitor, the mad harlequin, is dead. The thing talking to me now is part of his essence fused into the books, appearing only now because the Prognosticus’ true time is at hand. Serving as its voice. Through this apparition, I have learned much.

“I was able to complete the Tower Ring, even though it is now broken. I have seen much of what is to come. I know that all of us here play a role, though I cannot say specifically what all the roles are.” He glanced at the portal. “I know that we need to go to the Dark Tower. And the Batter has conveniently given us a portal to a universe where it manifests.”

“We need to go to the Tower? And do what?” Vivian asked.

Blumiere held out the Prognosticus. “Return this book to the Source it came from.”

“That’s nice,” Jenny said. “But what was the deal with the Batter?”

“That is an insurance policy,” Blumire said, looking at the path the Batter had traced through the roses. “He is on a sacred mission of purity. There exists a force in this multiverse that can undo every action. He is here to make sure the choice that is made is final.”

Jenny raised her eyebrow. “What force?”

“The Batter’s only purpose in this incarnation is to kill John Egbert,” Nanoha said, expression dark. “The one power that can wind back the clock of metatime: retcon.”

Everyone was moved to stunned silence – except Renee, who just chortled. “It’s so delightful to see when they understand.”

“That’s pretty fucked up,” Alushy admitted.

“Alushy, darling, you’re looking at the textbook definition right now!”

Blumiere turned to Renee. “You are the only thing here that isn’t mentioned in the Prognosticus. I’m not even sure Dimentio knows what you are.”

Renee smiled innocently. “I wonder if there’s a reason for that?”

“I’m sure there is. And when I discover that re-”

Renee laughed. “Oh, you sweet summer child. So strong, and yet, so fragile. You have the knowledge of the multiverse in your hands and you still make grandiose assumptions! Have a little hint from good ol’ Renee – you have no idea how wrong you are about what’s coming.”

Blumiere narrowed his eyes. Then he turned his back to her, stepping through the portal into the roses. “We need to get to the Dark Tower.” He snapped his fingers, teleporting everyone through, and allowing the portal to close behind them. Wordlessly, he set off.

After a bit of shrugging, they all followed him – though Nanoha had to be carried.

~~~

-> ANDREW HUSSIE: Punch Monika in the face.

“Sweet, this is going to be awesome!” Hussie said, standing up from his chair and holding out his fist. “She’ll appear right… here!

The group appeared in a ZAP, Monika in just the right position to get punched in the face.

“Score one for the Huss!”

Monika wiped her nose, realizing it was bleeding. She wasn’t quite sure what to make of this.

Roxy grabbed Hussie by the collar and glared at him. “All right Major Prophet, what did you do to GM?”

“Absolutely fuckall!” Hussie said with a grin.

“Fuck,” Roxy muttered, dropping Hussie. “That was a quick dead end.”

“He could be lying,” John pointed out. “From what I heard he sounds like he’d do that.”

Roxy glared at Hussie. “…Hrm… how would we find that out…?”

“He’s got me locked out,” Monika said – having fixed her nosebleed a moment ago. “Just like most Aware beings can do.”

Hussie grinned. “Damn straight! The Huss’s mind is all firewalls and no entry points!”

Roxy generated a scary wolf head out of the Void.

“FUCK!” Hussie said, jumping back in fear. “I’M SERIOUS, I DIDN’T DO ANYTHING TO GM! LOOK AT MY COMPUTER, I’M INNOCENT!”

Roxy glanced at what he was looking at. “...Homestuck Squared? Hussie, what the fu-”

“Past-oriented, that’s not your story! Please don’t bring the wolf back.”

GM rubbed his knuckles together and gulped hard, trying and failing to keep a straight expression. “He didn’t do it, he didn’t do it… Then who did? How?”

“Uh, Monika, aren’t you the ka expert?” John asked.

Hussie laughed. “Her? She’s just a Lord, no finesse in there at all. It’s just brute force.”

“Hey!” Monika shouted indignantly. “Well you’re a Waste. What kind of class even is that?”

“A stupid one,” Hussie said with pride.

Monika twitched. “Well, if you’re going to boast like that, why don’t you tell us what’s going on?”

“Gladly!” Hussie said, rubbing his hands together. “I even have a flowchart for you! Roxy, be a good pink cat and create a projector for me wouldya?”

Roxy glared at him but made the projector anyway. Hussie started loading it with slides he’d had in his back pockets for the last few minutes.

“I feel so overwhelmed,” John said, blinking.

GM let out a nervous laugh. “We’re in this boat together…”

“I feel like I should ask my Creator some questions…”

“Trust me, he’s not a guy who likes giving answers.”

Hussie glared at GM.

“Oh for the – I’m not going to ask about the Epilogue!”

“THERE IT IS! I KNEW IT!” Hussie shouted.

GM put his hands to his head, refusing to engage with Hussie.

“Bah, fuck it, he’ll do whatever. Ahem, TODAY in MSPaintAdventures, we have a little story entitled Thinking About Writing a Meta-Narrative Story. ROLL IT!” He pressed a button on the projector, displaying the first slide. This showed a Homestuck-style drawing that looked a lot like GM. “This is… G-something M-something Surname, a college student with a dream of writing a huge story. Well, he’s about to be a college student, but whatever, let’s not worry about the specifics, this is just to get those little hamster wheels in your heads to work.”

He put in another slide, showing a complex chart behind the GM-lookalike. “This particular Prophet likes to plan. He purposefully leaves some things blank, but other things he codes like a robot on crack. Generally, the character choices and emotions are left to be decided, but things like the rules and the way things work need to be predetermined. And because he’s absolutely certain he needs to make his story super-meta, he has to deal with how that’s going to work.”

He slipped to the next slide, with a gif of the GM-lookalike banging his head against the wall. “Naturally, this is difficult. Not as difficult as reconciling the differing rules of time travel from various universes, but a close second.” He switched the slide again, showing a complex diagram of the Dark Tower and a lot of words relating to it – Prophet, Aware, Creation – all circled with many colored lines. “It was a nightmare, to say the least. Like a wolf head, if you will. See, even if he didn’t believe what he was writing was true, he knew he had to put himself into the story, or a character that represented himself. The true Prophet, at least.”

He switched the slide again, showing a nervous GM-lookalike imagining skulls, explosions, and angry pony faces. “Naturally, the characters would eventually find him. And knowing where he wanted to go, terrible things would happen to him or his lookalike or whatever. And given the way his Prophet rules worked, it would mean he could have knowledge of the story’s true outcome or he would be kept from writing down the end of the story as it happened. A true poser, wouldn’t you say?”

Roxy, Monika, and GM were the only ones listening. GM’s eyes widened in realization. “Holy potatoes on pizza…”

Hussie grinned. “So, he asked himself what the solution was.” He switched the slide again, this time showing two GM-lookalikes, one with a red arrow pointing to another. “The answer? Create a fake to throw his characters off the trail.”

Monika and Roxy’s jaws dropped.

GM blinked. “That… That does sound like something I would do… Why didn’t I do it?”

“Because you were written not to,” Hussie said, snopping his fingers and rendering the poor projector into a rigid jpeg artifact. “You were a Prophet created to take them off the trail. There’s another GM somewhere that wrote you to write the story in the perfect way, complete with Prophet powers, until you became useless.”

Monika snapped her fingers. “That’s why White Nettle’s plan to take over the Tower didn’t work! He wasn’t the real GM – he was a fake!”

“DING DING DING!” Hussie said.

“Holy shit,” Roxy said. “Holy shit. Monika, if this is true, you should be able to find the real GM through this GM.”

Monika cracked her knuckles. “On it.” She vanished, following GM’s line of ka to its source.

She laid her hand on the shoulder of an identical-looking man. “Hi.”

He screamed.

~~~

Giorno led Starbeat and Eve through a dark hallway.

“We’re being watched?” Giorno asked.

Starbeat looked at her readings. “Yep,” she said, adjusting her goggles. “Should we do this later?”

“We don’t have a way to block Twilence’s sight without Monika here, and I doubt this can happen ‘offscreen’.” He adjusted his suit. “If we want to keep up with everything else, we should do this now. It shouldn’t matter that they can see us.”

“Are you sure?” Eve asked.

“No,” Giorno admitted.

“I think he’s right though,” Starbeat said. “My readings… I don’t think the scene can just end here. We have to keep going.”

Eve nodded. “All right. What’s at the end of this tunnel Giorno?”

“You recall that we destroyed a Tower Ring when we raided the Raven Hotel?”

“Yeah. Blumiere’s right? Made with the Prognosticus.”

“It wasn’t completely destroyed,” Giorno said, leading them into the Intelligence Division’s deepest sector – a door that led to a universe holding only one thing. A fully-complete Tower Ring in the shape of a black spirograph. The lines of the swirling symbol itself were a bright, welcoming purple.

“We repaired it. Unlike other designs, this one was easy to reprogram for the purposes of preservation. We didn’t tell anyone with a high narrative importance – aside from myself – to be sure the salvage was kept a secret.” He held out a hand. “It is ready to launch.”

Eve’s jaw dropped.

This is it. This is how the war ends. This Tower Ring. At the moment before we pass a point of no return… this gift falls into our laps. Eve smiled, a small tear rolling down her cheek. “Thanks,” she said, looking off into space.

Then her face became serious. “Twilence knows now. We have to launch immediately.”

“I sent O’Neill and the other commanders orders the moment we walked in here. I hope you’ll forgive me for falsifying your endorsement.”

“I don’t mind at all,” Eve said. “We don’t have time to go through that channel. We need to move.” She held out a wing at the Tower Ring. “This war ends today.

Author's Note:

The week of Doom has begun. The next chapter will come out Thursday, while the arc finale will come out Saturday.

In case you missed the announcement, Chapter 130 will be a video that is released at a specific time: 7:00 PM UTC or 1:00 PM Central Time. A post will go up a few hours before we start, to give people time and to watch random videos for fun.

I highly suggest you read 128 and 129 before then.

Hope to see you there where we put an end to this arc!

We ran a bracket to see who's 127 story was the best! The final results are here: https://www.fimfiction.net/blog/879349/127-results-and-more

Also, for those curious, I made a lore post about the pony show itself, (not SotS). Check it out!

FURTHERMORE, Songs of the Spheres is now the ninth longest story on the site! WOOHOO!

-GM, master of CLIMAX.

PreviousChapters Next