Dimensionality
Mr. L stood up. He was somewhere in an endless expanse of white. He didn’t know where.
“Oh no…” He said, trying to find something or someone to talk to. Lulu. Brobot. Anything. But there was nothing. “This… this is bad. Very bad. Down in the pits of snake trap city, bad!” He started pacing in a circle. “Where did I go wrong? Was it letting Lulu on the mission? No, no, we got some good hits off. What was it…”
“Aha ha ha…” Mr. L knew that laugh. Dimentio. Apparently he’d snuck out as well.
“Oi, Dimentio…”
“Did they wound your fragile pride, Mr. L?” Dimentio asked, appearing behind him. “Did they demolish your robot again?”
“Hey! First time didn’t count! They cheated! And Brobot was fine!” Mr. L folded his arms.
“I recall you running away.”
“That was a freak lion!”
“Yes…” Dimentio chuckled. “He sure was…”
Mr. L suddenly wanted to change the topic more than he’d wanted anything ever before, something about the way Dimentio said those words terrified him. “Uh, er, yeah. I’m stumped, Dimentio. You’d think a giant robot with missiles and magic would be enough to crush these heroes.” He sighed, looking at the empty ground. “I’m a disgrace… There’s no way I can show my face to Count Bleck after this.”
“Perhaps that is for the best,” Dimentio said. He pointed a finger at Mr. L, triggering an explosion just under his feet. Mr. L was quick enough to jump well out of the explosion’s reach.
Mr. L took a combative posture. “Woah now! Hey! What are you doing?”
Dimentio shrugged. “You said it yourself. You can’t go back to the Count now. So get lost.”
“Not a funny joke, Dimentio. If I wanted to laugh, your face is inspiration enough!”
“Such temper!” Dimentio appeared behind him, tapping the back of his neck. “Your nostrils, they flare out like the hood of a hissing cobra!”
Mr. L threw a punch, but Dimentio was already on the other side. The jester kept laughing. “See, I can’t have you around the Count. If I am rid of you here, I won’t be found out. And the others will never find you. Yes, this is my moment to grasp.” He was suddenly in Mr. L’s face. “It’s time for you to take your final bow, Mr. L!”
Mr. L swung his hammer, only to find that Dimentio wasn’t there, but a rippling box of white energy. “Huh!?” Mr. L glanced around, realizing he was confined in one of Dimentio’s attacks. “Wait… What’s this? Y-you’ve lost our mind, Dimentio!”
“Ah ha ha ha! Shhhh…” Dimentio traced his finger around the edge of the box, chuckling to himself. “Don’t worry. It won’t be so bad, I promise. In fact…” He spread his arms wide, laughing maniacally. “I’ll send those heroes your way soon, just so you’ll have someone to play with!”
“Dimenti—”
Dimentio snapped his fingers, engulfing everything within the box in fire. When it was complete, nothing remained within. Mr. L was gone.
“Ciao… Mr. L.” Dimentio chuckled. “Now… to find that other pest…”
~~~
Lulu sat on a destroyed chunk of some poor pony’s house, glaring at the ground like it had offended her. In reality, it was what was going on inside of her that offended her. The thoughts she was having.
We can’t stop them, can we?
She looked up at the endless white expanse before her. It seemed like the heroes should have lost. One of the eight worlds were gone, and others would soon follow. A Pure Heart was drained of all its power, effectively dead. There was no way for them to move on to the other worlds to continue their search, and even if they did, seven out of eight Pure Hearts was not enough to defeat the Count.
But Lulu couldn’t shake the feeling that this wouldn’t stop them. They’d bash through every defense the Count had, trounce all his minions multiple times, and craft a little path to victory, keeping the worlds as they were.
Unacceptable.
Why is that unacceptable?
Something in the back of Lulu’s mind twitched, forcing her to shove that thought away. Instead, all she did was light a small fire on the tip of her fingers and played with it. It entertained her for all of a minute before she let it go out with a despondent sigh.
She didn’t want to go back to the Castle. She wanted to stay here. Stay here and look at nothing until she became part of the nothing. It would be a fitting end, because she was nothing now that she’d completely failed the Count and herself and… and someone else. Who else had she failed?
For some reason she didn’t fully understand, she looked over her shoulder. There, far in the distance, stood what could not be mistaken for anything other than a brilliant, golden lion.
“No…” Lulu said, standing up.
The lion didn’t move, it just stared at her from miles away.
She took a step toward it. Her mind screamed. The glint of glasses plunged into her brain, demanding she turn around. It demanded she leave.
“No…” Tears began to well up in Lulu’s eyes. She let out a wailing cry, creating a Void portal in front of herself and walking into it, leaving the empty world behind. Empty. Motionless.
Dimentio arrived precisely three seconds later. “Hmm… She appears to have fled. Disappointing. Oh well, one target down isn’t bad.” He lifted his hands, preparing to leave… but then he saw the lion.
He grinned. “Oh, save her, did you? Can’t let your precious little children make their own choices and face their own consequences anymore? Funny, for someone who claims they’re unchanging.”
The lion simply stared at him with sad eyes.
“Like a weasel caught in his own den, you feign ignorance. But then again, what do I know? I’m just a lowly jester! Not a champion, not a precious son, not a prophet.” He spat the last word as though it tasted like dung. “Go on then. End me. Put a stop to this whole charade.”
The lion didn’t move.
Dimentio cackled. “Oh, I do wonder why you gave yourself so many rules. Why do you even play by them? If anyone had the right to break a few here and there, it’d be you. But you won’t.” He clenched his hands into fists. “You never will… and so it falls to me to clean up your mess.”
Silence filled the expanse of nothing.
“I grow tired of this.” Dimentio waved a dismissive hand. “Ciao!” And he was gone.
The lion remained for a long, long time after that, staring intently into the endless whiteness.
~~~
For the first time in a long while, Cosmo woke up without somewhere to go or something to do. Slowly, she got out of bed and walked out of Ty Lee’s Inn. Everyone but Twilight was already up, sitting just outside at a table. Vivian was still holding the stone Heart tightly while the others looked into their smoothies, somber. Even Data didn’t seem like himself as he stared off into nothing.
Cosmo sat down at the table, pleased to find that they’d set aside a smoothie for her. She took a sip, finding a soft blueberry taste.
“G’mornin,” Toph said, lazily leaning back in her chair.
“So…” Vivian said, tracing her finger around the edge of the stone heart. “Now what?”
“I don’t know,” Tippi said. “I’m not sure there’s anything we can do.”
“Eggman is working on a way to access the next world without the Heart,” Data said.
“Yes… but what do we do without the one we have? And…” Tippi glanced at the Inn. “What about Twilight’s world?”
The table fell silent.
Data was the first to speak. “Do we not keep forging on anyway for the sake of what remains?”
“We do, my friend,” Caspian said, shaking his head. “But how can we live with ourselves? A world is gone. We were not fast enough.”
“Let’s all become Data,” Toph said. “Emotionless. Then we could just keep marching until this was done.”
“And then what?” Cosmo asked.
“Dunno. Does it matter?”
“I…” Cosmo shifted uncomfortably. “I know I don’t want to forget the feelings I have for Tails, or all of you, and those wouldn’t exist without terrible feelings.”
Vivian let out a barely audible “mhm.”
“We do need them,” Caspian added. “They are what make us… us. But the heart aches.”
“...I think that’s part of Bleck’s problem,” Tippi said. “The heart aches. Something happened to him, and he couldn’t move past it. He… hmm…”
“We can’t be like him,” Toph grunted. “You don’t just blow up the world because somebody hurt you.”
Cosmo nodded. “Instead…”
“You try to be their friend,” Vivian finished, her soft smile returning. “It’s… the way to change them.”
“Not sure we’re going to get the opportunity with Blecky-boy,” Toph grumbled.
“Maybe not… but with each other?” Vivian lifted the stone heart up slightly. “I don’t know what I’m saying…”
“You know exactly what you’re saying,” Twilight said, walking up to the table with a confident smile on her face.
“T-twilight!” Cosmo stammered. “Are you…?”
“I’m fine,” Twilight said. “Because… I have all of you. And because I have hope.” She put a hoof on Cosmo’s shoulder, assuring her. “Everyone, Vivian’s right. We hold each other up. No matter what happens, no matter what destruction comes our way, no matter what the Count does, we are still here. We have a special bond, beyond the Count’s comprehension. When we suffer loss, we don’t turn inward and fester until we blame everything. We come to each other. And we don’t go down the dark path he has.”
Toph smiled. “Nice speech.”
“Oh, did you think I was done?” Twilight smirked. “I also have an order for everyone. Until we learn otherwise, we are to assume Equis—and any other wiped worlds—will be restored with the destruction of the Chaos Heart. We are not going to let ourselves fall to hopelessness. We are not just fighting for what remains—we fight to restore what is lost. Does everyone understand me?”
“Yes ma’am!” everyone responded in unison.
“Good. Now. We need to restore the Heart,” Twilight gestured at Vivian. “Any ideas?”
Toph frowned. “If Aang wasn’t in the Castle right now, he might do some of his spirit mumbo-jumbo on it.”
“The Master Emerald?” Cosmo suggested. “Maybe it can transfer its power into it… though it probably isn’t enough. ...The Metarex were stealing life-force from planets for their master plan. It… would doom life on a lot of planets, but maybe we could use those?”
“Time travel is impossible, the timestream is disconnected,” Data reported. “However, temporal manipulation may be able to revert the Heart to a previous time state.”
Caspian scratched his chin. “Perhaps we can use Lucy’s cordial on it? Restore it through healing? Or just request aid from Aslan.”
“There are artifacts called the Crystal Stars in my world,” Vivian said. “And Rosalina.”
“All good ideas,” Twilight said, nodding. “I’m going to try to use several at once. Gather all the artifacts and try to rejuvenate the Pure Heart that way.”
“You guys…” Tippi giggled. “You really do know how to turn things around, don’t you?”
“What else are we gonna do?” Toph asked. “Mope? Does that sound like us?”
“Do you not remember what we did in the gauntlet?” Vivian asked.
“Shhhhhhhh,” Toph hissed, trying not to smile.
“I’ll talk to Merlon,” Tippi said. “See if we ca—”
“Greetings, my heroic individuals!” Suddenly, there was a shimmering box surrounding the table, atop which stood Dimentio.
“Dimentio!” Twilight glared at him. “How did you get into Flipside without tripping the alarms? We know your dimensional signature!”
“I can walk right in with the proper costume and demeanor. You’d be surprised how a sad shy guy is easy to sell! Ah ha ha ha ha! But now, people are going to notice me, so I can’t gloat as much as I would like. Remember… I am your enemy. And I only do this because you are getting close.” He snapped his fingers, consuming everything within the box in flames. Twilight raised a shield and the heroes performed several attacks… but when the box vanished, there was nothing inside. Not even the table. The Flipside alarms started going off.
Tippi, however, had been outside the box. “Wh… wh…”
“You seem surprised, Pixl.” Dimentio chuckled. “Really, you shouldn’t be.” He saw some Federation officers running to him out of the corner of his eyes. “Alas, I must be off. Ciao! Enjoy your loneliness!” He vanished in a warp of reality just as a phaser blast passed him.
Tippi could only stare at the smoking spot where her best friends had been just seconds ago. “What just… that didn’t make any sense!” She slowly lost her elevation, coming to a resting position on the ground. “That’s not… possible…”
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I am concerned by the italics on 'was'. Nobody should talk about literal Jesus in the past tense like that, it's disconcerting as hell.
Oh shit, Mr. L is gone. Dimentio straight up sent him to the Shadow Realm. Brutal.
Oh, never mind, he's fine. And he's here. Meaning... could he have just popped over and warned Equis this whole time? Or, at least, told them to get ready for evac?
There's a religious analysis to be made here, but I'm not the girl to make it.
How do plant based life forms feel about eating other plants?
I mean, there are still universes to be saved, so... yes, yes it does.
I mean... at the very least, we know that a new world could bloom where the old one was, as proven by Narnia. So... at least there's that? (Gen 5, anyone?)
Oh. Okay then. He just straight up killed them all. Neat. Game over, then.
Dimentio is a filthy cheat.
Well then, today on Worlds Apart, Dimentio kills everyone! The heroes and Mr. L. At least Tippi is still here... Not much more to say, to be honest. Everyone was sad and now everyone is dead. RIP.
So Lulu is from Narnia I see. Still not too sure who she could be though. Caspian didn't seem to recognize her when he face her in that chapter.
Looks like Dimentio just sent our heroes to the Underwhere.
Hello, Aslan. Thanks for nothing as usual.