Wow! So, it's been a while, huh? My name's Shingo Tsukino, by the way. I'm
certain you've heard of me. I assure you, everything you've heard about me is a
pack of lies. Unless you're cool with it, then it's all true. heh, just kidding.
Anyway, this isn't about me, this is about me letting you guys know what
happened. So...

Everybody fought each other.

A lot.

For one hundred and thirty thousand words.

I don't think I've even read one hundred and thirty thousand words, put
together, in the last seven years. I mean, sweet merciful gods, these guys need
to learn brevity. Look, I'll show them how it's done. So here we have the
entirety of Chapter 28 of Hybrid Theory, Reanimation... Shingo Style!

Akane angsts. Chris is in a tube. Washuu is a bitch. Kalia is fucking crazy.
Angel kills Washuu. Chris might be god! Or not!

Usagi fights Gyro. Gets owned. Yeah, whatever.

Akio is an asshole. Like, really. I'm totally going to punch his face in for
what he did to sis.

Gyro causes, like, massive propety damage. Massive. Everybody goes to fight him.
I mean everybody. Some guy who appeared for like three pages ten chapters ago?
He fights Gyro.

Gyro summons giant tentacle-rape planet from... uh, place that might or might
not be the soul of everyone.

Ukyou fights Alucard. She kills him.

Everyone fights Gyro. They kill him.

Everyone fights the giant tentacle monster planet. They kill it.

See, was that so hard?

Fucking writers, man. I just don't understand 'em. Anybody have a beer?



                             C&A Productions Presents

                          A Work of Blatant Self-Insertion


                                   Hybrid Theory


                                 Chapter 29: Faint


	"Momiji, I have to go."
	She wasn't looking at him. Kusanagi grimaced and walked to stand by her.
"It's not over yet. Maybe that bastard Gyro's dead, but..." he trailed off, not
willing to look up at the monstrosity overhead. "I have to go. We've gotta beat
this thing somehow."
	"They're all dead," Momiji said softly. She still hadn't looked at him.
	"Who?"
	"The people of Japan." She clutched at her chest, where beneath her
shirt the mitama, the soul of a plant creature inextricably linked with the soil
of Japan, was buried. "I felt them dying. All through the fight. Japan itself
was ripped apart, I felt it."
	She had three souls in her now, Kusanagi suddenly realised. An aragami,
a human, a youma.
	She finally turned to him. Her skin had turned the colour of the first
pale spring grass, and her hair had become longer, the locks tipped with lilies,
marigolds and lilacs. Her eyes were narrower, and the whites had turned a
dark fern-green. But as he looked into those eyes, he knew she was still the
same Momiji he'd come to love. No matter how many souls were in there with her.
	"I know how you feel," she said. "But you know there's nothing you can
do, Kusanagi."
	He gritted his teeth, and now he did look up. The giant floating planet
above had become quiescent, its enormous cyclopean eye seeming almost to look
inward at some amusement. The great tendrils that had smashed Japan now moved
only idly. Small comfort.
	Kusanagi could see the others, around him. The survivors of the battle
with Gyro. They were gathered in twos and threes, youma-hybrids and a couple of
martial artists who had refused or not needed the bargain, coupled with a few
stranger creatures that had apparently been serving Tethys. Of the queen
herself, there was no sign. She'd vanished somewhere after Gyro had exploded.
Not that he blamed her, really, but he couldn't help resenting it. They all
needed that kind of power. Of course, against the impossible bulk of the
monstrosity above, even the Dark Queen looked small.
	"Yeah, I know," he finally said. "But I want to do something anyway." He
wasn't alone. Slowly, the remnants of the army were gathering to fight the next
battle. He saw a few of the more alert and authoritative people talking to
others, gathering the ones that couldn't fly near others that looked like they
could carry them.
	It was a joke, of course. What could any of them do against something
like that? They'd all seen when Tethys had hurled Gyro's blast into the thing's
eye. It had screamed, sure. But it hadn't been HURT, even after taking the best
Gyro could dish out. True, somebody, somehow, had cut off one of those huge
tentacles. But whoever or whatever had done that, they didn't seem to be around
now.
	It was hopeless. Ludicrous. The tattered remnants of Tethys' army would
be lucky if they could even get its attention.
	But what could you do, but fight?
	"I guess I know how you feel now, Momiji," he said with a rueful grin.
"I guess I gotta apologise. I really don't want to do the sensible thing and run
away no matter how much sense it makes. I'm gonna go fight that thing. So I
guess if you and, uh... whatshername..."
	"Meliai," Momiji said, and she smiled a bit too. "She's saying I should
stop feeling so sorry for myself. She also wants us to, uh..." She laughed a bit
nervously, her face colouring. "Run off and celebrate. She says she wants to
know what it's like."
	"She can wait," Kusanagi growled. He wasn't happy about that situation,
at all. But what could he do? All his protests weren't enough to stop Momiji
from jumping at the offer to merge with one of Tethys' servants. She'd wanted to
help. She wanted to DO something. Kusanagi understood, but that didn't make him
any happier about it. The youma had said it was irreversible, but he'd see about
that. He just bet the Dark Queen could do it if she really wanted to. He'd just
have to persuade her. He heard she didn't like electricity. "Anyway, if you
and... Meliai want to come along, you can."
	"No, doing that would be pointless," Momiji said, and laughed a little
again, though there wasn't much humour in it. She looked around at the ruins of
Tokyo. The water was receding now, but still about ankle-deep. Chunks of debris
floated around them. Thankfully, the sheer force of the water had rendered the
millions of bodies mostly unrecognisable. "I guess it's strange that it's only
now that I've figured that out. I remember Mr. Kunikida talking about how he was
scared normal people were going to become sideshows, how they would never be
able to even control their own lives anymore."
	"So... what are you going to do?" Kusanagi asked quietly. For a moment,
he wanted her to agree with Meliai, to give them an excuse to run, away from
this doomed struggle, away to somewhere safe and far away. He clenched his fist
until his nails bit into his palm. That was a selfish thought. Plenty of good
people had given up their lives fighting. Old man Kunikida. That loud-mouthed
gun freak Koume. Even Matsudaira. He wasn't going to let down their memories by
running away. Besides, where was 'safe' if that thing wasn't stopped?
	"No," Momiji said, shaking her head. "You don't get it. Mr. Kunikida was
wrong. You remember when Akane told us how he died? He saved Akane from Ms.
Matsudaira, and he saved Ms. Matsudaira from herself. He made a difference. He
saved Akane and Matsudaira, and they helped save the world. One ordinary man
helped save the world." She turned back to him again, and her eyes were clear
and determined. "Maybe we can't fight directly. Maybe you can't just blast or
punch it. But we can do something if we work together. All of us." She stood up.
"I think I have an idea. We need to find-"
	Kusanagi had been about to interrupt, to ask what this idea was before
she went running off. But then suddenly, far above, they heard the scream. It
was greater than any mere voice. It surrounded them, enveloped them, ringing
inside their heads and through the city. It was a scream of horror and despair.
It was a scream that didn't come from a mouth, but rather from a soul.
	Then they both stared up, watching a planet die.

*

	The world was coming to an end.
	Ranma grabbed onto the shoulders of Akira. She was just standing there,
staring. Her hand was still clutched around mid-air. The body of the dread witch
Neherenia had vapourised. Akira was just standing there, her eyes wide. For a
moment, Ranma had been truly afraid of her.
	He had looked into Akira's eyes, at that last moment, just before she
made the killing blow. He had seen nothing. Nothing at all. Then, as the body
had dissolved into mist, Akira's eyes had slowly changed. Her pupils had begun
to quiver. She had begun to cry. Tears of blood rolled down her cheek. And she
stood there.
	The world was coming to an end.
	The inside of Pharaoh 90 was dying. The whole planet was dying. The
inside of this mansion/castle thing had been dimly lit, by some sort of weird
glow. Now that glow was dying. Ranma was surprised the entire place wasn't
shaking and exploding. Wasn't it supposed to explode at this point?
	But it was dying, and they had to get out of here. Except Akira wasn't
moving. The moment his hand clasped onto her shoulder Akira screamed, throwing
herself away from him,
	"Get away from me!"
	"Akira, we have to go!" he shouted back.
	"Hurry!" one of the girls said. They were standing at the entrance.
Ranma looked at them. He motioned for them to get running. There was no need for
them to risk anything here. They had given up their powers to help save the
world. Ranma respected them a lot for that. He wasn't certain he would have had
the same courage.
	"Keep away!" Akira shouted, backing up. "I don't know... I don't know
what I'll do!"
	"What are you blathering about?" Ranma growled. He grabbed her wrist.
"You saved the world, now isn't the time to have a mental breakdown!"
	"I couldn't control it..." Akira gasped. "It just..."
	Ranma slapped her. Her head snapped to the side. For a moment there was
a terrible silence in the room. The darkness was becoming thicker by the moment.
Akira stared at the floor for a long moment. Then she coughed and clutched her
stomach. She was bleeding again.
	"I.. I'm fine," she said, pulling her hand free. "Let's go."
	Ranma nodded.

*

	Pluto collapsed against the side of the tunnel. The remains of the glass
mannequin were dissolving at her feet. She reached up and rubbed her neck. She
could feel warm blood on her palm. Another centimeter and she would be breathing
through her neck. She looked around.
	They were all dead. The entire army of them. Gone. Like the one that had
pinned Pluto to the wall, they had dissolved into dust. Pluto hesitantly reached
over and grabbed the Time Key Staff.
	Nanami did the same thing with her right hand. She held it against her
bloody stump for a moment. Pluto averted her eyes as the flesh regenerated. The
yellow-clad vampire looked at Pluto, her red eyes flashing.
	"They won," she said needlessly.
	"Y-yes..." Pluto said, still out of breath.
	"We have to hurry," the girl said, and ran along. Pluto hesitated. Then
she firmed up her grip on the Time Key Staff. It was time to see this through to
the end.
	Whatever that was.

*

	Cologne was amazed when she realised she wasn't dead.
	She hurt like hell. Then again, after collapsing a tunnel of mostly dead
giant planet-eating behemoth onto herself and an army of glass monsters, it made
sense she should hurt. Digging herself free had only placed her in the
middle of another army of them. She had looked up and grimly set to work,
striking with her village's secret techniques in what was really a hopeless
battle.
	Still, it had been almost liberating. Somehow she had known that she was
doing the right thing. That as long as the Quartet made it safely to the centre
of the behemoth, everything would work out. Cologne had been so certain, so
absolute in her conviction.
	Of course, now she was more than a little curious where that conviction
had come from. JunJun was half-carrying her as the group made their way rapidly
to the surface. Everyone was alive. She felt... wrong, somehow. Like that wasn't
supposed to have happened.
	Her eyes settled on Akira as the dark-haired girl took up the rear. The
girls had been chattering and praising her, almost as excited by whatever Akira
had done to take out the 'soul' of this place as they were by the fact that
Cologne was not, in fact, dead. Again that strange certainty came to here; the
thought that the girl had somehow done something... wrong. From the way Akira
kept avoiding eye contact with everyone, Cologne guessed she shared that view.
	"Hey, old hag, you okay to walk yet?" JunJun complained.
	"Shush girl, we don't have a handy healing mag..." Cologne trailed off.
	"What was that?" JunJun asked, frowning.
	"I..." Cologne shook her head. That girl... Nanami? Had that been it?
Cologne was certain that until the point where the girl had healed her of the
injuries ZX-Tole had inflicted, she hadn't felt the strange... certainty. Yes,
after that was when she had begun to feel as if she were walking along some
path. Or was it?
	Cologne rubbed a hand over her eyes. "Nothing. If you're tired, I'm
certain someone else can help me..."
	"No!" JunJun protested too quickly. She tightened her grip a little.
"Come on, old hag, if I let you go you're just going to end up getting yourself
killed."
	Cologne smiled.  Then she looked back at Akira, her eyes narrowing
slightly. Something had happened here, in this place. Something larger than she
could understand. She was fairly certain that she was supposed to be dead now,
her and perhaps most of the others. But somebody had changed that.
	Well, she pulled JunJun a little tighter. She smiled at Akira, causing
the girl to start. She chuckled. It didn't matter, in the end. She was alive
now. She would just be thankful for that.

*

	"It's not going back in."
	Fevrier released Mamoru and turned to look upward.
	The mood among the ruins of Tokyo worsened. For a short time, there had
been jubilation. The moment Gyro had exploded, a cheer had rung out across the
city. Then, slowly, reality had settled in.
	The city was still destroyed. The entire island was destroyed. Mount
Fuji, once the majestic symbol of the nation of Japan, was now nothing but a
torn and blasted ruin. The entire east slope of it had been torn free; one of
the massive tendrils of the planet-devouring monster was still buried into it.
	It had stopped moving. The great feminine eye of the planet had opened
up in shock. Then everyone had felt it. The death rattle of a dying planet. It
was something Fevrier never wanted to experience again. Then the eye had closed,
slowly and finally.
	But it was not vanishing. It hung there, defying all their triumphant
yells. The force of its mass was still tearing apart the Earth. Fevrier didn't
know much about physics beyond what she needed to understand about guns, but she
figured that there was no reason they should all be alive right now. The planet
should have smashed into the Earth with a force greater than anything seen since
life had started swimming in the ocean epochs ago.
	"It's the dreamscape," Marz explained, looking at Fevrier. Fevrier
grimaced. That was going to take getting used to. Back under Bison, she had been
aware that her thoughts and emotions were an open book to her former master. But
she had grown used to having her thoughts be private in the last seven years.
Now with her youma partner, Marz still hadn't learned basic telepathic
etiquette.
	"Elysium?" Mamoru asked.
	"Yes, Mamoru dear," Marz replied. "The presence of the portal is still
altering the local laws of physics. Without it, Pharaoh 90 would smash into the
planet itself. I believe the technical term for that is an ELE."
	"Extinction level event..." Purgstall murmured. He was staring up at the
planet, his body tense. From the way he was looking, Fevrier suspected that he
had something more personal involved up there than just a planet-eating
behemoth.
	"Of all the times for Tethys to fall unconscious..." Fevrier growled.
	"I don't think even she has the power to fix this," Rose said. She was
bent over the Dark Queen. The youma queen was laid out in a basin full of thick
blue water. Rose looked up from her, her expression worried. "She's already
pushed herself to her limits."
	"We have to fix this..." Mamoru said. "It can't end now. Not after that
battle."
	"I think I can help."
	Fevrier turned. The woman she saw was vaguely familiar to her. She had
long brown hair and green eyes. Her flesh was the colour of freshly cut grass
and there was a single blue seed-like object on her chest. A large man with
orange skin stood over her. His long red coat was torn and shredded. Fevrier had
seen him in the fight. He had toppled an office tower onto Gyro.
	Ganymede piped up quickly, telling Fevrier that this girl was one of the
hybrids. Her companion, however, was not.
	"Help?" Rose asked.
	"Yes..." the girl swallowed. "That is, I think we can all do it." Her
eyes narrowed. "If we all work together, that is."

*

	"Stupid..." Minako groaned. She knelt on the dirt. All around them the
world was coming apart. The force of the planet hanging above them was ripping
apart the Earth.
	"We.. we have to go..." Ami said, rising slowly to her feet. Makoto was
leaning heavily on the smaller girl. "It's not safe here."
	"Where is it safe?" Rei asked. She looked around them. In the distance,
a chunk of land ripped free of the Earth. It was the size of a large house. It
simply tore free and began to float up and up. It got maybe twenty meters before
it was torn apart by the howling winds of the storm. Lightning rained down upon
the land from all directions.
	Minako closed her eyes. "Tokyo."
	"That's the centre of all this!" Ami gasped.
	"We have to go to Tokyo," Minako said simply. She rose to her feet as
well. "We'll be safe there."
	"Why bother?" Makoto asked. "Everyone is dead!" she screamed. "Usagi is
gone! Jur... Jur- j-" She just broke down at that point. Ami clutched her. Her
eyes looked down. Minako remembered that she had a husband out there.
	Had a husband. No normal human could survive this. If the storm didn't
tear them apart, the chaos infusing the air would. Nobody was alive anywhere
near Japan.
	Ranma...
	No. He was alive. She had to believe that.
	"We have to keep going," Minako said."It's what SHE would have wanted."
	It felt easy and natural to do this. To fall into the role of leader
here. The others all looked at her. She had hit just the right chord. They all
nodded. They would survive. Then Minako turned to look at the other people.
	Anthy was lying on the ground, arms spread. Her expression was that of a
woman startled. Not by something frightening; by something wonderful. Looking up
into the darkness and destruction, Anthy looked like a woman who had just walked
out of the desert only to stumble upon a beautiful blue glacier.
	Then there was Akio. He was laughing. His head was thrown back. His
lavender hair was blowing freely behind him. His arms were thrown to the side.
He was just laughing and laughing.
	"Is that all you have?!" Akio shouted into the storm. "Is that it? You
threw everything at me, and I'm still here!" He ran a hand over his face. "Your
puppet failed, you miserable bastard! In the end, none of them could kill me!"
	"Akio, we're leaving," Minako shouted at him.
	"Go!" He waved her aside. "Take... that with you." He gestured towards
Anthy. Minako looked down at the stunned woman.
	"Usagi wanted you to have a second chance," Minako growled out between
clenched teeth.
	"Usagi was a fool."
	There were a few things Minako would consider the best experiences of
her life. When she had first become Sailor V and saved her friends from evil.
When she and Ranma had first kissed, and first made love. The look on a little
girl's face as Minako saved her and her entire family from a gang of vampires. A
single perfect day on the shores of a lake, with the rain gently falling all
around her.
	And punching Akio Ohtori in the face so hard she could feel his jaw
break.
	The man was sprawled on the ground beneath her as Minako took deep
breaths. She snarled. "You ungrateful bastard. Usagi is a saint, if she can
forgive you for everything you did. To honour her memory, I'm not going to kill
you. But you would be surprised what you can live through."
	Akio somehow managed to laugh again, despite his broken jaw. Minako
started away from him. She heard Akio rising to his feet. The fallen prince
continued laughing, dancing amidst the destruction.
	And Minako felt it. The build up. Her eyes widened. She turned to Akio
and Anthy. The man's eyes widened. He felt it, too.
	"LOVE ME CHAIN!"
	Minako snapped her chain around Anthy and pulled. The other Sailor
Senshi grabbed her and jumped back. They could feel it too. The overwhelming
presence of it.
	And the world was torn apart. Minako could only stare in shock as the
full force of God finally made itself known. Her mind shied back from it. Her
eyes refused to see. She imagined it as lightning from the sky. She imagined it
as a meteor. She imagined it as anything but what it was.
	She collapsed to the ground, clutching Anthy in her arms. She couldn't
stop shaking. Anthy was crying. She was saying something, over and over again.
But Minako couldn't hear it. She could only stare at the place she and Akio had
been only a fraction of a second ago.
	Akio Ohtori was no more. The same could be said for a large section of
the world. The world there was broken. Not just physically broken, like the
storm had done. Not just spiritually broken, like Elysium's unreality had done.
For a moment, Minako could see the cracks in reality itself. The great gaping
wounds of God's wrath, and leaking between those cracks was something more
awesome and terrible than anything she had ever imagined.
	And in an eyeblink it was gone.
	Minako didn't know what had happened to it. She didn't want to know. She
rose to her feet, the surviving Sailor Senshi rising with her. She clenched
Anthy tightly. She could hear what the girl was saying now.
	"Why for me... why for me..."

*

	Ukyou snapped her head around, staring. The curve of the dead planet
vanished out beyond her. Past that there was the Earth. It looked so small from
up here, small and fragile. And she could feel it, out there.
	The Third Circle. And the Paradox.
	"The Nameless..." Ukyou mouthed. It was called God by most, but Ukyou
refused to call it that name. But there was no mistaking it. She had felt the
strike like it had happened right next to her. There had been no subtle touch,
no elaborate game that time. It had simply lashed out and destroyed.
	Ukyou collapsed to her knees. Her legs simply couldn't bear her weight
any longer. She gripped the Silence Glaive like a lifepole, using it to prop
herself up. She had never felt anything like it. She had fought so many things
that called themselves "god". She had struggled against mad psychics and power-
hungry genetic weapons and vampires and demons. But none of it compared to this.
	There was simply no way to compare it to anything else. The presence of
it, even so far away, had echoed across the entire universe. It was like Ukyou
had just now had her eyes opened. Like she had finally seen. Up until now, the
world had been shadows on a wall. Images and reflections that she tried to piece
together into something called reality. But the world had just been peeled back
a bit, and she had seen what was really underneath. What made it all work.
	The Nameless.
	And she was planning on fighting that? On struggling against it? For a
single human soul? She was insane. There was no way.
	Ukyou snapped her head up. She could feel the Paradox retreating. The
Nameless cleaning up its mess, before it got out of hand. She could feel it
siphoning through the portal. No, it wasn't being sent, it was being drawn to...
	To Hotaru.
	Ukyou clenched her teeth.
	"Leave her alone," she growled out. "Leave her alone, you bastard!"
	She reached out. The portal to Elysium was there, right in front of her.
She could feel it, the place where the real ended and the unreal began. The red
sky rippled as her fingers touched it. The green sun swirled. The world seemed
to shake, as if a heartbeat had echoed out across it.
	"Well," she said, smiling thinly. "You've done everything for this. You
almost destroyed the world, just to get me to this threshold. But you can't make
me cross, can you? You can't really force me. I don't know why, but you can't."
She chuckled. "But as a wise man once said, 'Ask, and ye shall receive'. So here
I come, you bastard."
	And with that, she let herself enter the portal.

*

	"And we go live in five, four, three..." Marz held out two fingers, than
one. She dropped her hand.
	Rose felt like an idiot. She clenched her hands tightly, hoping it
didn't show in her face. If Marz was to be believed, millions of people, maybe
even billions were seeing her now. Every single person in Thailand, and many
from beyond. All the denizens of the Dark Kingdom who had not marched to war.
And anyone else who could see this broadcast, which was being beamed out across
most of the world.
	Momiji nodded to her. She was standing to Rose's left. Enero, the pink-
haired Doll who had the most experience with this, stood to her right. Rose
realised that she wasn't talking. She was supposed to be talking.
	She was never good at this.
	"My name is Rose..." she began slowly. She took a deep breath. They had
kept telling her that she had to sound confident. She had to be appear strong.
Everyone had to believe this was going to work. They had to believe she was
going to make it work. "My name is Rose, and this is the most important message
you will ever hear." She pointed upward.
	The massive bulk of Pharaoh 90's corpse still hung in the sky. But it
hung a little lower now. Slowly but surely it was coming down, or they were
going up. The difference was trivial at this point. In a few minutes, everything
here would be wiped out and the shockwave would likely end all life on Earth.
	"A short time ago, the zoalord Reichmann Gyro opened up a rift that
summoned this monster planet to Earth. The earthquakes and storms that are
sweeping the globe are caused by it." She lowered her hands. "Working with Queen
Tethys of the Dark Kingdom, zoalord Frederick von Purgstall and myself have
helped destroy Gyro and put an end to his madness. But as you can see, Gyro's
deadly legacy remains."
	She took a deep breath. She hated this. She hated the idea of it. She
didn't want to be the only one they could turn to. She felt her rage rising. The
nearly uncontrollable anger. Bison's legacy. The part of her that was him.
	"We must push this behemoth back through the rift. We have to get rid of
it before it crashes into the Earth and destroys everything. But no single one
of us has the power to do so."
	What if, when she felt it, she couldn't give it up? That was what had
tempted Bison, all those years ago. The purity of the power was intoxicating.
Rose knew that. The body she was in had been bought at the life of an innocent
child, because Bison had grown so absorbed by the power he could steal from
other's souls. Didn't they realise how much they were asking of her?
	"Ironically, it may be the legacy of the man I helped kill that saves
us." She spread out her hands. "The psychopower. Bison invested all those in his
lands with it, slowly and surely. Like an infection. His life force was
connected to that of thousands of human beings. When he died, I took up that
mantle. Our souls are connected."
	Rose closed her eyes. Was this how Ukyou felt? To have the power to
change the world, to save it and be afraid of it... it was staggering. Rose had
never liked Ukyou. She had always been a threat to everything that was. It was
only Rose's friendship with Sailor Pluto that had kept her from striking the
woman down. Then, after she had... died... Ukyou had revived her inside the body
of her own daughter.
	Rose had never forgiven her for that. She had hated this, this body with
all its foreign feelings. All its potential power and all its temptations. Her
life had always been one of absolute control. Certainly she was nothing more
than half a soul, but she was a logical, calm and ordered half. Ukyou had turned
her life into chaos. She had destroyed everything Rose held dear.
	"And all the people of the Dark Kingdom, all the youma and the humans
still there. Tethys' power is with you too. Every youma was created by Metallia
and carries a bit of the dread god within them, and that part of you connects
you all." Rose looked at Momiji. The girl smiled at her. "And your power will be
needed too."
	She hated being here. But what choice did she have?
	"Every zoanoid within the power of my voice, you are all connected as
well. The power of the zoacrystals held by your zoalords connects you together."
Rose looked over her shoulder to where Purgstall stood. He was human once more,
except for a small sliver of yellow crystal that emerged from his forehead.
Within that crystal a tiny silver light gleamed.
	What did he feel? His eyes were locked on the planet above them. His
mouth was moving silently. Was he praying? If so, to what god?
	"All of you. Every creature that lives of this green and beautiful
Earth. We are all connected. We all need to work together." Rose brought her
arms up, clenching her fists in front of her face. She was beginning to feel it
now. The excitement, the energy. The passion of the moment.
	"We can push back the darkness, if you try! You have to trust me! But
only together!"
	And as she finished her plea, her words echoing out across the entire
world, the song started. It was wordless. Momiji and Enero started off, in
perfect counterpoint. It was a melody with no name. It was as primal as the
beating of a heart.
	Then Purgstall joined in. He had a strong and powerful tenor, and sang
with surprising skill. Slowly the wordless, nameless song spread. The Dolls took
it up next, their voices rising in perfect unison all at once, a dramatic swell
that was the signal for everyone else to join in. The song spread by individuals
and by groups. Many sang with more enthusiasm than skill, and some sang so
softly their voices were drowned out by the growing chorus.
	Momiji grabbed her left hand. Enero her right. Rose closed her eyes and
opened her mouth. The passion of the moment was overwhelming. She felt tears
forming in her eyes. She could feel them all. Her own psychic powers resonated
as the power of all these people rose like mist. Then Momiji and Enero and
Purgstall began to channel it, all of it. Into her.
	And she could feel them. All across the world. Their voices raising. In
Thailand and the North Pole they began. But she could feel it spreading. Her
eyes snapped open. She could feel it all. A hundred became a thousand. A
thousand became a million.
	And still the power swelled as the song grew.

*

	Nabiki reached out her hand. She could feel it. The power gathering
beneath them. For a moment she was confused. Then Marz was there. Her telepathic
voice was still unpractised, but it was powerful enough to grab Nabiki's
attention. Rapidly, the girl unfolded her plan.
	Nabiki frowned. She looked 'down'. They had made their way out of
Pharaoh 90 and now they stood on the underside of the planet-sized corpse. It
was too big, even with all the power Rose and the others were gathering. They
couldn't hope to shift that much bulk.
	"Nabiki, what is it?"
	Ryouga's hand on her shoulder startled her. She turned and faced him,
her face flushing. She was almost sorry that she had reacted so nervously. The
feel of his hand against her, it had been... gentle. Maybe...
	No. There were other things to do now.
	"I have to do something," she said. "I need all of you to trust me."
	Cologne looked up wearily. Ranma looked up from the still mostly-out-of-
it Akira. The Quartet smiled, their faces full of hope. Nabiki didn't envy them.
She had felt it when the girls had sacrificed their powers inside the core.
She had also felt something else, something growing inside them even as they
shattered the orbs that had gifted them with magic, while at the same time tying
their life force to Neherenia.
	But before whatever had been growing inside of them could blossom
outward, Akira had killed the behemoth. Nabiki still wasn't certain how the girl
had done that. She hadn't even thought it was possible. But when Nabiki had
asked, Akira had just stared at her, her face full of anguish.
	"Hey," Shingo said, giving her a thumbs up. "Whatever you need, babe."
	Nabiki tore her mind away from wondering about what had happened inside
the core. A miracle, she told herself. She didn't need to concern herself with
it beyond that. Because of it, they had all survived.
	"Good..." She looked at them all. Her mind was already working,
stretching outward. Rose's words were spreading across the entire globe. Nabiki
could feel it, the swell of emotion. Not everyone, but most of them. And those
that the message hadn't reached, Nabiki made certain it reached. From the rudest
hut to the largest skyscraper, no one would miss this message.
	Nabiki reached out and gathered her friends, all her friends together.
She could feel them now. Feel their power. Weak and depleted as it was, it
still burned across the Oversoul like St. Elmo's Fire across the ocean.
Understanding spread across them, and one by one they all gave up that power.
Everyone except Akira.
	Then Nabiki began to gather it all. She clenched her teeth and moaned.
Her head was throbbing. She had never spread herself this far before. She had
never contacted so many people at once. But she had to do it. Every single drop
of chi, every bit of psychic force, every drop of magic she could gather might
be critical. She had no idea what the tipping point was, but she was not about
to let everyone down because she hadn't been willing to risk it all.
	Then Ryouga's hand settled on her shoulder again. She looked up at him
in surprise. He didn't smile. She could almost feel the hurt radiating off of
him. But he nodded. She smiled.
	Then, all at once the flood poured down through her and into Rose. She
gasped. It was... it was so beautiful!

*

	"He's not here!" Marz shouted suddenly, stumbling. Mamoru caught her.
	"Marz!" he called. He looked around; the song was continuing without
them for the moment. But Marz was one of the key pieces, one of the lynchpins.
She and that Momiji girl and the American psychic who claimed her boyfriend had
cut off Pharaoh 90's tentacle and all the other psychics and mages. They needed
to be strong.
	Rose raised her hands and gently placed her palms against thin air. With
a visible effort, she began to push. Slowly, ever so slowly, her hands began to
inch forward. And he saw it move. The planet. A mass bigger than China, just
moving. Under her power.
	Under their power.
	He clutched Marz tighter. Her face was going white. The girl, Momiji,
had fallen to her knees. A man with orange skin was standing behind her, holding
her hand. He was singing too; badly, but with a desperate passion. The pink-
haired Doll was also trembling, but two of her fellows were holding her up.
Purgstall wasn't bowing, but his face was covered in sweat. His knees were
shaking. There was no one to offer him strength.
	"Marz, we have to do this!" Mamoru whispered.
	"No..." Marz' face was still white. "He's gone, Mamoru! GONE! He's
abandoned this world!"
	"Who?"
	"GOD! He's abandoned us all..."
	Then a figure was standing next to them. It was Fevrier. She came in to
Marz's right, and Satsuki appeared at her left. They didn't say anything. Their
voices were still raised in song. He looked at them, pleading for help with his
eyes. They each took one of the girl's hands and pulled her to her feet.
	Mamoru rose as well, holding her around the waist. He closed his eyes
and sang into her ears. He knew that she had come back, back from that Other
Place, with something more. Some connection to whatever was beyond. But right
now he didn't care.
	Please, Mamoru thought as he stood there with his family. He could feel
the connection between them. Forged seven years ago by Ukyou, it was still
there, still strong. Usagi's healing had not destroyed it. He just hadn't
realised it was there, because they didn't need it anymore. But he needed it
now, to reach Marz. In this rush of voices, in this song of millions of souls,
he needed her to hear just him.
	Don't falter. Don't stop believing. We can do this. Together. All of us.
Its our only hope. It must work. It has to work. Please. Understand.
	And Marz looked up. The tiny dot of light on Pharaoh 90 was so small.
The creature was trembling. The force they had created was just enough to hold
it up. It was just enough to counteract gravity. Mamoru sang into her ear.
	"If God has abandoned us..." Marz murmured. "Then let's make our own
hope." She closed her eyes. Mamoru could feel her reaching out. Who? The thought
was answered instantly. Nabiki. Yes. Of course.
	Mamoru gave Marz all his strength. She reached out and found the girl,
far above.
	A moment later, the small dot of purple light exploded. The corpse
planet became a purple star, bathed in a corona of radiance. Then, unbearably
slowly at first but with increasing speed, the massive world-killer was pushed
back. Back into the blood red sky. Back towards the mad green sun of Elysium.
	And Marz raised her voice in song. Ancient and primal, a wordless song
of defiance. She would live, dammit. It didn't matter if God didn't exist to
save them. They would survive. The sun would rise tomorrow.
	Mamoru laughed as he and his family sang. And up above them, the black
planet shrank away and away.

*

	Akira was aware of everything that was happening. She knew that there
was a struggle going on. That they needed to deal with what was left of Pharaoh
90 before the world was destroyed... again. It just seemed all so shallow and
pointless.
	"No..." She moaned, clutching her head. It wasn't pointless. It. Was.
Not.
	But a part of herself thought that. She had felt it awaken inside that
throne room. She had felt it seep out from inside her and just take her over.
All the petty pointless drama of it had just suddenly become meaningless. She
had killed Neherenia-Pharoah 90, not because it was the right thing to do... but
because it had struck her as more amusing than listening to the woman talk.
	A part of her had known that they would win. She could sense it, in a
fraction of an instant. She had seen the entire event play out before her. She
and Ranma had been battered around by the shade of Neherenia, while she taunted
the girls. While she ranted about her revenge on Ukyou. Then the Quartet had
shattered their spheres, cutting their life forces from Neherenia.
	And they had stepped forward, powerless little girls, and stepped
between Neherenia and her victims. Neherenia had laughed. That had been just
what she wanted. She taunted them as well, told them the person they had come to
care for was dead, relishing in their pain.
	And the girls had found that it had been THEM with the power all along.
That Neherenia had stolen it from them. And with that discovery they had found
within them the power to become...
	And at that point, all Akira could think was 'Bored now.' Then she had
attacked before any of that had happened.
	She had no idea how she had done it, how she had seen it. But she had.
And it scared her more than anything. It scared her more than the idea of the
dead planet crashing into the Earth. It scared her more than Chris. It scared
her more than the feelings she had for Tethys.  It scared her more than the
thought of Ukyou dying.
	"It's working!" Ranma cried out in triumph.
	Akira slowly looked up. For a moment, she wasn't certain what she was
seeing. It was like the world was blazing with purple fire. Then she realised
what it was. It was the planet. The planet was glowing.
	A nimbus of bluish-purple right had coated the entire thing. Akira felt
her perspective beginning to shift again. It was like she was seeing the event
from far away, someplace hovering between the two worlds. She could almost see
the dead planet beginning to inch up and up. She could see Rose, her body bowed
as if by a great weight. She could see the people around her, their voices
raised in hopeful song. It was like she was standing with them. She could see
the people, all across the world. Billions of human souls, joined together for
one brief instant. For just one instant she saw the world without hatred,
without politics or money or religion or any of the million things they killed
each other for.
	And she was afraid.
	"We're going up?!" Shingo shouted in fear and suddenly Akira's
perspective snapped back to the here and now. She blinked owlishly, and fell to
her knees.
	"That's a bad thing?" Ranma asked.
	"Only if we're still on this thing when it enters Elysium," one of the
Quartet said simply. PallaPalla, Akira's mind provided.
	"How do we get off?" Cologne asked. She looked at Nabiki. The girl was
still kneeling on the ground, her face upturned so she was looking straight
down. Her expression was rapturous. Ryouga stood behind her, looking worried.
	"Cologne..." Akira looked up at her. "All of this power, it's produced
from passion. The heart and souls of billions of people, channelled right here,
right now. Their passion to live. Their passion to survive. All of their desire
and strength, directed at this place."
	Ranma looked at her. "Akira..."
	"Think about it, Ranma." Akira stood up. "It's Fire, Ranma. The heat of
human life. Perhaps the greatest concentration of fire chakra ever created.
Heat."
	"You're not suggesting..." Cologne's face paled. "There's no way I can
control that! It's too big!"
	"You'll have to," Akira said solemnly. "You have to make it to the
planet again."
	Cologne looked down at the Earth. She was a mess. Her body was covered
in a massive burn. Cuts and gashes ran up her limbs and across her face. She was
coated in a thick layer of blood. It was a wonder she was still alive. Akira
suspected she was not entirely human.
	Cologne's eyes opened wide. "Okay. Everyone gather close. I'm only going
to get one chance at this."
	Akira stepped back.
	"Akira?" Ranma looked at her. 'What are you doing?"
	"I can't go with you." She lowered her head. "I have..."
	"Don't start with that 'you can't be trusted' crap," Ranma growled.
	"No." Akira shook her head. "The portal has to be closed, Ranma. Someone
has to do it." She clenched her fists. "Ukyou told me how to do it. That I'm the
only one who can."
	"You can absorb Paradox," Ryouga said softly. Akira nodded.
	Ranma looked at her a long moment. Then he grinned. "Okay. Go. Just make
certain that you and Ukyou finish this!"
	Akira smiled back, a smile she didn't feel. She walked away from them as
Cologne slowly began to explain to Ranma and Ryouga and Shingo how she would
need their help.
	Akira had almost reached the very bottom of the beast when she heard it.
The snap and roar of the Hiryuushotenha. She looked out at the column of
swirling wind lifted off from the dead planet. In one of those increasingly
frightening flashes of insight, Akira knew they would be okay. It would be a
rough ride, but somehow they would make it down in one piece. She shook her
head, banishing the strange thoughts.
	She needed to focus. Pharaoh 90's corpse was accelerating with each
second. She ran, sprinting to the bottom of the behemoth. She needed to be in
just the right position. She couldn't afford to flake out now.
	Maybe a part of it was the dream reality, but she made it despite the
size of the body. She knew that she was exactly at the very bottom of the
planet. Already it was most of the way through the portal. Akira took a deep
breath and braced herself.
	She spread her arms out. Her mind flashed back to an icy cavern far
beneath the North Pole. She had had no idea what she was doing when she'd
reached into that wound in Alucard's chest. She still had no idea how she had
actually pulled it off. But she didn't care. She needed this to work, so it
would.
	Her fingers flexed out, and she felt it. The portal was too huge for her
to possibly feel the edges of it. It had been big enough for Pharaoh 90 to pass
through and had been growing since. But she could feel it, at the edge of her
fingers. It was like millions of little pins, jamming themselves into her skin.
Paradox.
	Her eyes narrowed. With a snarl she snapped her fingers closed, pulling
on the edges of the gaping wound in reality. The pain flashed into her hands,
and travelled down her arms right into her chest. It was tearing her apart, but
she refused to let it. She clamped down her mind on it. She needed to control
it. Slowly, ever so slowly, she began to bring her hands together.
	She was doing it! She couldn't believe it. Her body felt like it was
going to explode, but she was doing it. The portal was sealing up. As she
drained the Paradox from it, the laws of nature began to reassert themselves.
Elysium and reality were not supposed to meet, so the natural barrier was
restoring itself. Akira began to laugh. She was doing it!
	In a few seconds the tip of the planet would vanish into the land of
dreams. Then Akira could safely snap the portal shut behind her. And from there-
	"ACCESS DENIED!"
	Akira's head rocked back as a fist slammed into it. The 'ground' of
Pharaoh 90 exploded up around her as a figure blasted through it. Akira caught a
glimpse of her. Kalia.
	The puppet-girl laughed. Her hand snapped out again. Akira wanted to
block, but she couldn't release the edges of the portal. The girl's hand curled
around Akira's neck.
	"This is where I say something witty and cryptic," Kalia told her, her
face splitting in a mockery of a smile. "But I don't have to be cryptic anymore,
Ahura Mazda. He made a mistake. He struck out at Akio, and he's paying for it.
He can no more see what's happening here than a man who has just torn his own
eyes out could!"
	"Kalia... what do you want?" Akira gasped.
	"I told you what I wanted, sister," Kalia said with a hurt voice. "I
can't do it. I'm not a part of it. I'm outside. I'm empty. But you're not. You
have it in you. And you have me in you too. You have the same powers I do. You
KNOW that now!"
	"Not... like... you..." Akira gasped out.
	"No..." Kalia sighed. "Not yet. But soon, and for the rest of your
life." Kalia laughed. "Soon everyone will be like me!"
	Kalia pushed her up harder and Akira lost contact with the planet. She
realised that the woman was preventing her from entering Elysium. "I see by your
expression you figured it out." Kalia giggled. "God can see better in there. No,
I have to make certain what we do, we do in a place he can't see anymore."
Kalia's eyes narrowed. "But later, when you're finally ready."
	"Ready?" Akira managed to say.
	"To help me kill it," Kalia whispered into her ear. "The Oversoul."
	Then with a final shove Kalia tossed her away from the portal and into
the sky. Akira screamed as she realised she was nearly in orbit, with nothing
beneath her except open sky and kilometers and kilometers away the hard
unforgiving Earth. Her fingers lost touch with the portal as she fell out.
	Kalia laughed and reached out. Akira saw the flash of something
squirming underneath her skin. She was absorbing the Paradox, Akira realised.
Just like Akira had. The portal slid closed with a pop, and then Kalia was gone.
	Akira looked down at the Earth.
	She was afraid.

*

	Tokyo was a wasteland. The once proud city was a ruin, every building
having been smashed and torn apart by the forces brought to bear. The
floodwaters Tethys had summoned were slowly beginning to recede, revealing the
full extent of the damage her tidal wave had done.
	And people were celebrating.
	The islands of Japan were destroyed. The mainland of Honshu had
literally been torn to ribbons by the fury of the demon-planet, splitting it
into a dozen smaller islands between the new straits the rushing sea was roaring
to fill. The smaller islands had fared little better. Volcanoes, earthquakes and
gravitic storms had swept them clean of life.
	And in the centre of it all, the people were celebrating.
	The world would be lucky to recover from the destruction. Tidal waves
and earthquakes would be the immediate repercussions. Volcanoes all along the
Pacific Ring of Fire would be more active over the next few years than in the
last thousand combined. The weather might never return to normal. Hurricanes and
tornados and worse would rock the world for decades.
	But still, in this place, they were celebrating.
	Because they had won. They had somehow stood up to the devil himself,
and prevailed. Maybe tomorrow they would have to face the reality of the damage,
but for today they knew that they had prevailed. They had brought the world at
least one more day. The universe had tried its best to wipe humanity from the
face of the Earth, and it had failed.
	So if there was a crisis tomorrow, they would deal with it. But today,
they would celebrate.
	Tethys didn't begrudge them this. They had earned such a brief respite,
and much more besides. She very carefully vanished as the heroes began their
self-congratulations. She had awakened shortly after they had managed to push
Pharaoh 90's corpse through the closing portal. She realised as she slowly
climbed to her feet that she had missed something fairly profound. She could
sense the lingering traces of it on everyone there. Whatever they had done to
save the world had left them all feeling very much connected and together.
	Tethys found herself feeling oddly regretful. The more cynical part of
her nature insisted that she was annoyed because she had become excluded from
the unity that was fairly quickly growing among the heroes here. That it would
make her more of an outsider. But she realised that was not actually a bad
thing. A queen was not the same as a comrade in arms. A queen commanded. By
necessity, she had to be above and beyond those beneath her. So really, it
wasn't that big a deal.
	She just felt... oddly unfulfilled.
	She had slipped away from the festivities shortly after they had begun.
She had complained that she still needed to recover from the damage her physical
form had taken in the final strike against Gyro. That was technically true. Her
integrity was at its lowest. She probably couldn't risk taking much in the way
of physical damage at this point. If her body was pushed to assume a more liquid
state before she absorbed a considerable amount of energy to repair the damage
she had taken, she doubted she would be able to return to a humanoid form at
all.
	Maybe that was what had happened to beings like Metallia and Pharaoh 90?
Maybe they had started out almost human, like her. Then as they expended and
pushed themselves, they lost the ability to simply become humanoid again. They
had to exist as clouds of darkness or inhabit increasingly larger vessels to
contain their slowly dispersing power. Then they just forgot they were ever
human at all...
	Or maybe she was just feeling sorry for herself. She walked into the one
part of the city where no-one else was. The water had completely drained from
this street. In the centre of the intersection was the Sword of Sealing.
Apparently when Gyro had been destroyed, the sword had plummeted and set itself
in the pavement here. No one was willing to touch it. Nobody wanted to be near
it.
	Tethys sat down against a huge wall of rubble that had been torn from
the earth. She curled her legs up to her chest and rested her chin between her
knees. She shivered. The black sword stood in the centre of an improbable pool
of shadows in the moonlight.
	That was what she had done all this for? For seven years she had plotted
and schemed for... this? It looked so small. Just a sword. Albeit, it was
probably one of the most powerful weapons in all the universe. With it, Gyro had
been able to tame Paradox. He had rent asunder the world. With this sword,
Sailor Galaxia had sealed away Chaos itself.
	But it just looked like a sword. Her great enemy? The evil creature that
had brought her into existence, that had made her as a tool in an endless
pointless game... this was its weapon? Just another sword.
	All those lives lost. All the damage done. And it still wasn't over. The
real confrontation was still to come. The real war was just starting. How many
billions would Tethys kill in her quest to unseat the avatar of war? How many
worlds would she shatter? How many friends would she sacrifice?
	"It's not like you to be this introspective."
	Tethys snapped her eyes up. Akira sat on top of the wall Tethys had
chosen as her shelter. Tethys opened and closed her mouth, unable to believe
what she was seeing. Her friends had leapt from the vanishing planet, using some
martial arts technique to control the wind and keep them safe for most of their
plummet. Then they'd been safely escorted to the ground by some of Tethys' new
hybrids.
	Tethys had heard from Nabiki that Akira was among those who had stayed
on the planet. Ukyou was apparently running full steam into Elysium. She was
running to save the soul of a child. Tethys stood up slowly, unable to stop the
smile from growing across her features.
	"I thought... I thought you had gone..."
	"Into Elysium?" Akira shook her head. "No. Apparently, my destiny
doesn't lie there." Tethys felt something inside her quicken, but she ruthlessly
crushed that feeling.
	"I see..." Tethys looked away, forcing a frown across her face. "So why
did you come here?"
	"I wasn't looking for you." Akira leapt down, landing in the middle of
the intersection. "I was looking for this."
	"The Sword of Sealing?"
	"Yes. I can sense the Paradox in it..." Akira held out her hand, curling
her fingers so they drifted around the hilt of the weapon. "It has its own
voice, you know. I can hear it. I can hear the pain. All the souls crying out in
torment, forever separated from the Oversoul..."
	"Akira?" Tethys didn't like the sound of the woman's voice. It sounded
oddly detached.
	"They cry out inside me..." Akira mused. "Just like in this sword." She
smiled. "They have no voice, but I can hear them."
	"Akira, you should back away from that sword," Tethys warned. "It's a
tool of destruction. No good can come from it."
	"It's a fetich."
	"A what?" Tethys frowned.
	"The Paradox is bound into it, you see. It was bound into it a long time
ago. Someone defied the world, and billions of souls suffered. Their screams
were sealed inside this sword." Akira laughed. Tethys felt her skin crawl. "It
makes a perfect weapon. Don't you think?"
	"Akira!" Tethys grabbed the woman's shoulder and pulled her back. "This
isn't you!"
	Akira looked at her. Her eyes lacked any real emotion, any real presence
to them. It was like looking into the eyes of a doll. "It won't stop. They won't
stop. For them, I am a weapon, just like this sword... an instrument of
vengeance."
	Tethys had no idea what to do. There was something profoundly wrong
about this. This was not the Akira she knew. The Akira she had known was a
source of quiet strength. The Akira she knew never gave up. The Akira she knew
struggled on even when all hope had been lost. But this person here, with her
empty eyes and fatalistic words... this was not the Akira she knew.
	Tethys thought that having all the power of Purgstall's energy forced
through her had been painful. But somehow it was nothing next to the fear she
felt now. She was losing Akira. Right before her eyes. Whatever was inside her,
whatever UKYOU had put inside her, it was eating her up. And there was nothing
Tethys could do.
	So she kissed her.
	At first Akira just stood there, stiff as a statue. Tethys pulled the
unresisting woman closer-
	And was thrown violently across the road. She smashed into the remains
of a building and groaned. Akira was sputtering and flushing and flailing her
arms. Her eyes were full of disgust and loathing and lots of anger directed at
Tethys.
	But they were full of SOMETHING.
	"What the hell do you think you're doing?" Akira roared.
	"I..." Tethys considered how to phrase it. Then she gave up. "It doesn't
matter."
	"What are you smiling for?"
	"I have no idea," Tethys lied and chuckled.
	Akira glared at her. Then she walked over and offered her hand. "Get up,
you make me feel like a bully if I keep yelling at a woman lying sprawled on the
ground."
	Tethys allowed herself to be pulled to her feet. She looked away from
Akira. The girl started to leave. "Akira..."
	Akira looked back.
	"That time... what happened between us..." Tethys struggled with the
words again. "That ship I made you destroy. The refugees on it, they were
already..."
	Akira held up her hand. "Stop."
	"But I wanted you to-!"
	"No, Tethys. Whatever you're about to say doesn't change anything. I
acted that day based on what I thought was the truth. It doesn't take away that
decision, whatever you're about to say. I blamed you for it, because you tricked
me... but that was unfair." Akira crossed her arms. "It was my decision, Tethys.
It always was. I have to live with it. So whatever you're about to say, forget
it."
	"I..." Tethys looked at the young woman. "Yes, you're right," she
admitted. A sudden sharp pain bloomed up inside her. "What's done is done..."
She looked down. She screwed her eyes shut. She would NOT cry. She was Queen
Tethys, master of the Dark Kingdom. She had saved the world. She had defied
Fate, all by her own will. She would NOT cry! "Goodbye, Akira."
	"I trust I'm not interrupting anything?"

*

	Akira looked at Tethys for a long time. She had no idea how the woman
had done it, but she had knocked Akira out of... whatever it was. The strange
fugue that had settled over her had burned away in a flash of anger and disgust.
But it had vanished.
	For now. Akira could still feel it inside her. But it seemed dormant
now. Akira was about to open her mouth and say something else when she heard it,
the soft clack of metal-shod heels touching down behind the Dark Queen. She
looked up, and felt the blood drain from her face.
	"I trust I'm not interrupting anything?" Sailor Galaxia said simply. She
was standing next to the Sword of Sealing, her posture sure and confident. She
was tall and beautiful, with skin the colour of burned wood and eyes the colour
of blood. She wore an outfit of golden plates. It resembled the costume of a
Sailor Senshi the same way a wolf resembled a dog. On her, it was armour and
glory.
	Tethys gasped and started turning. Akira flashed forward, extending a
hand in front of the blue-skinned woman. Galaxia stared at the two of them, her
expression somewhere between annoyed and bored.
	"Galaxia," Tethys hissed. "So, we're out of time so quickly..." Akira
raised her hands in a martial arts stance.
	"Don't be foolish," Galaxia said, her voice dismissive and sharp. "I
could slay you with a thought."
	"That's what Metallia believed," Tethys replied.
	"I just came to reclaim my sword," Galaxia informed them. Her hand
reached out and wrapped around the hilt of the black-bladed weapon. She lifted
it easily from the concrete. Akira tensed. She could feel the power building up
around the woman. She was doing a very good job of concealing it, however. "I
have no intention of fighting you. It would be a waste of my time."
	"You're going to leave?" Akira asked slowly.
	"Of course." Galaxia dragged her sword in front of her and balanced her
palms on the pommel of the weapon, letting its tip sink slightly into the broken
pavement. "Then I plan on destroying this entire world from orbit."
	"What?" Akira gasped.
	"This planet has served its purpose," Galaxia said simply. "Up until
now, I have been forced to keep away from it. But now that Ukyou is gone, the
God that protected this world has lost all interest in its future. I can safely
dispose of it."
	"Damn you!" Akira shouted and rushed forward. There was a black flash
and she flew backward, clutching her arm. She landed on her feet, holding the
gash in her forearm. "I won't stand back and let you do this!"
	"I see..." Galaxia chuckled. "You plan on releasing all that Paradox
inside you as a weapon against me, is that it?" Akira was silent. "Please, girl,
I was taming the Third Circle long before you were even born."
	"You... control the Third Circle?" Tethys chuckled. "Gyro made the same
claim."
	"Gyro was a fool," Galaxia sneered. "A useful fool, but a fool
nonetheless." She waved her hand. "No, I have no control over the Third Circle.
It is beyond my ability, now." There was a wistful quality to her voice. "Not
that it matters. Very soon, this universe will be rendered to nothing."
	"What are you talking about?" Akira said.
	"You know full well, Akira Kazama," Galaxia said, tilting her head
slightly. "The confrontation between your mistress and the being she calls the
Nameless. It will happen. I have no idea what a being of such power could want
with a mortal girl, no matter how many souls she has, but I am certain that
Ukyou will not give it what it wants.
	"In its rage, we shall all be destroyed."
	"Ukyou will stop it," Akira said softly.
	"You really believe that, don't you?" Galaxia said, and smiled for the
first time. It was actually a very pleasant, if slightly condescending,
expression. "And that is why she will fail."
	"What?" Tethys blurted out.
	"Reaching the Third Circle is impossible," Galaxia informed them. "A
long, long time ago, I did it. I..." She trailed off, and looked away. "It was a
time of great conflict. They called it the Sailor Wars. Champions, chosen by the
stars and planets, fought tooth and nail against the evil that lies in men's
hearts. No sooner had we defeated some wizard or monster than another rose in
its place.
	"I was the greatest of them. Gifted with the star seed of the entire
galaxy, my power dwarfed all others. No evil could stand against me. And so I
wandered from world to world, ending darkness wherever it could be found." She
waved a hand across her brow, as if dismissing some persistent fly. Akira
shifted forward, hoping to take advantage of her distraction, but Tethys caught
her arm. She shook her head softly.
	"Well chosen, Tethys. Your good sense has carried you far." Galaxia
looked at them again. "But I will tell you what you are up against." She held
out her sword, levelling the tip at Akira's heart. "I grew tired of the endless
fighting. For centuries I struggled, a struggle that would never end. I sought
out the source of all the evil. I sought out the heart of darkness. I scoured
the far corners of existence, from the most distant planet to the smallest
pocket reality.
	"I found nothing."
	She chuckled. "Imagine my shock. There was no source of darkness. There
was no first evil. All my power, all my magical might, and I could do nothing.
There was no enemy I could fight to end the pointless, ceaseless wars."
	Her expression grew grim. "So I made one."
	"Chaos," Tethys said darkly.
	Galaxia nodded. "I was in my moment of greatest despair. I was
convinced, thoroughly convinced that my quest was impossible. I had set out to
change the nature of the cosmos, and I had discovered that it was beyond me.
Beyond anyone. I could no more put an end to war with my strength than I could
make space a colour or laughter the opposite of gravity.
	"And yet I could not stop. It was hopeless. It was impossible. But I
needed to do it. I needed to find the source of evil. So, I threw all of myself
at it. It was pointless, a waste. I knew I would fail. At the same time, I knew
I had to succeed. That I had to find a way. And so I did. I attained the Third
Circle, and I created Chaos."
	Akira stood there, her heart beating slowly. She wasn't picturing
Galaxia's battle. She barely heard her words. In her mind, she saw herself,
somewhere in the depths of what had once been Ukyou's mind. She saw the awful
void that Ukyou had created, the Paradox-fuelled hole she had erased herself
with. She remembered walking into it, knowing it would consume her. That Ukyou
was gone. She knew that, at the time. But she knew she needed to find Ukyou, to
save her somehow...
	"The rest, as they say, is history." Galaxia bowed slightly. "I created
Chaos, and in doing so created a monster even I could not destroy. So I sealed
him away, inside my own body." Her face was grim as she spoke. "Now, I am its
instrument. The penance for my hubris. I look back at the peace I tried to
achieve, and find myself hating the idealistic fool I was then.
	"That is why I will kill you now," Galaxia said apologetically. "You and
all the other people of this world. You deserve some small mercy before the
end."
	"Wait," Tethys said, stepping in front of Akira. "What makes you think
that Ukyou can't do the same thing? Why can't she achieve the Third Circle? I
have seen her do many things..."
	"You've seen parlour tricks." Galaxia informed them. "Ukyou has never
touched the Third Circle. She is borrowing a bit of the Nameless' power. You
think that could defeat Him? She has nothing."
	"She can do it," Akira said sternly.
	"You don't see, do you?" Galaxia replied softly. "That support is
exactly what will destroy Ukyou, and the rest of you. The Third Circle can only
be achieved, truly achieved, when a human soul is pushed up against the utterly
impossible. When they see the end of the universe and know they can do nothing
against it. It is in that moment of understanding that there is nothing you can
do, combined with that once-in-an-eon will to do something anyway, in spite of
your own limits. That is what it takes to achieve the Third Circle. To truly
command it. Ukyou will never surpass the powers the Nameless has given to her,
until she believes she has already failed."
	Galaxia pulled her sword down. "As long as she can sense the love and
support of her friends, as long as she knows that you believe in her, she will
never feel pushed into that corner. And so, she will die."
	"No..." Akira hissed.
	"The truth is often difficult to accept," Galaxia said, her voice
sounding oddly regretful. "It was hard for me to learn that lesson as well." She
stepped back, and as she did her body began to fade.
	"NO!" Tethys roared, jumping forward with her arm outstretched. "Give us
more time!"
	"There is no more time, spawn of my spawn," Galaxia informed her. "I
will destroy this planet, and bring you peace."
	"I..." Tethys grit her teeth. "Give Ukyou a chance."
	Galaxia raised an eyebrow. "Why?"
	"Because if you do, you lose nothing. What do you gain from destroying
us? Nothing. It's like crushing an ant. Worth a second's amusement and then,
what? Waiting to die at the hands of the nameless god Ukyou is off to fight?"
Tethys lowered her hand. "Is that the end you want, Galaxia? Is that the way you
want Chaos to go? Quietly into that good night?"
	Galaxia said nothing, but she did not move either. Tethys took a deep
breath and continued, "But what if Ukyou does it? What if she wins? What if she
defeats the Nameless and saves everything? Then you and I, we can have a
fantastic war."
	"Ah yes, your petty revenge," Galaxia mused. "To be frank, you are
hardly worth my time."
	"Alone? No." Tethys' eyes hardened. "But I am not alone. You watched
today's battle. The people who stand with me destroyed Gyro, they destroyed
Neherenia and Pharaoh 90... And in time, I will forge them into a weapon. In
time I will come for you. I will put an end to war." Akira glanced at Tethys,
then back at Galaxia. "Picture it, Galaxia. A grand conflict, played out across
a galactic stage. What is the personification of war, without a suitable
opponent to fight? Admit it, the Juraians aren't the enemies you want. They're
too defensive. They don't want conquest. They don't want to destroy you, except
to survive." Tethys smirked. "But you know me. You know my hatred. You know how
much I loathe you for creating me and my kind, for making us nothing but
weapons. You know that I will not stop. I will keep coming and coming. It will
be a struggle that makes all others look like playground scuffles."
	Galaxia looked at Tethys for a long moment. Then her lips quirked up in
a vicious little smile. "Very well. As you say, Tethys, I have nothing to lose.
I doubt we will ever meet again. But if we do... I look forward to your war."
	And with that, she was gone.

*

	Frederick Von Purgstall looked out on the city and wept. Just a few days
ago, he would not have been willing to show that much emotion. But now, after
almost dying and barely scraping through by the skin of his teeth, after
agonising over the survival of his family, and being joyfully reunited with
them, he was allowing himself to cry. The reason was very simple, actually. He
wept because he had failed.
	It had been... July? Only five months? Had it really been only that
long? How much could change in such a short time. Five months ago he had stood
at this very spot and promised Japan a bright future. He had promised them
safety and strength and unity.
	He turned and looked back at the shattered remains of the Pillars of
Heaven. The battle with Gyro had ripped the tops from them. Huge holes gaped in
the buildings' superstructures. He was amazed they were even still standing. It
had only been five months since the construction of these monuments to Chronos'
hubris had been completed, and already they had been toppled.
	He had failed. He may have helped save the world, but he had failed the
country he had adopted as his homeland. "So much loss..."
	"You better not let the girls catch you moping out here," Cologne said.
Purgstall didn't even start as the woman slid up next to him. He was used to
her being able to appear where she wished with him none the wiser.
	"Yes..." He mused. "How are they?"
	"Better than I ever thought they could be, considering they've lost
almost all their powers."
	"Hmmm..." Purgstall nodded.
	"They're coming, aren't they?" Cologne asked.
	"Yes," he admitted. "I'm not even certain why he waited this long."
	"It's not fair," Cologne hissed. "We shouldn't have to fight anymore."
	"I'm afraid Arkanphel will not see it that way," Purgstall informed her.
He wrapped his arm around her shoulder. "Look at it from his point of view. All
his enemies, gathered in one place. And exhausted to boot. How could any sane
commander not take advantage of that situation?"
	"Yes... Frederick, do you think we can beat him?" Cologne asked softly.
	"Not a chance." He smiled. "But then, I thought the same thing about
Gyro."
	They waited in silence as the power in the air slowly built and built.
Then, in a flash of blinding light, they arrived. Purgstall lowered his arm from
in front of his face as the glare died down. They were all there, the remaining
ten members of the Zoalord Council. At their head stood Arkanphel, perhaps the
most powerful being on Earth.
	He wasn't toying around. The ultimate zoalord had already transformed
into his battleform. It was an almost angelic figure, with skin of pale yellow
and black. His slender form was covered by thin armour. His shoulders and head
had flaring extensions that almost resembled feathered wings as beaten from soft
gold. His face was strangely human, crowned by a single perfect yellow
zoacrystal.
	"Lord Arkanphel," Purgstall said, nodding his head slightly. It wasn't a
gesture of fealty, but an admission of respect.
	"Purgstall, I have come to give you one last chance to submit,"
Arkanphel said, his voice oddly distorted by his transformation. "If you kneel
at my feet, I may still allow you to live."
	"I'm afraid I can't do that," Purgstall replied, gripping Cologne more
tightly. "I made my choice."
	"Very well." The first zoalord raised one hand, cupping his fingers as
if he were holding a champagne flute. "Understand that it is with a heavy heart
that I do this."
	Purgstall tensed. Cologne squeezed his hand.
	"Is that all he gets for everything he has done? An ignominious death?"
	Arkanphel looked to the right. Tethys was walking up the street towards
them. At her side strode the man whose bullet had allowed them to defeat Gyro.
Behind him were three young women. At her other side was Rose, her long brown
hair flowing out behind her. Behind her walked a dozen others.
	And all around them, they began to pour into the plaza in front of the
Pillars of Heaven. Humans and hybrids, youma and soldiers that had remained out
of the final battle. Dozens of them. They slowly surrounded the Zoalord Council.
But Arkanphel gave them one look and dismissed them all. Purgstall didn't blame
him. They all looked half dead. They had just barely won. They were not ready
for another fight.
	"Is that the way you treat your saviour, Arkanphel? I see living for
longer than the rest of us has not given you common courtesy."
	"I will deal with you in a moment, Tethys," Arkanphel said evenly. "This
is between me and the one who has dishonoured me."
	Tethys glanced at Purgstall. Their eyes met. It was time. He closed his
eyes and opened his mind. He let his mental barriers down, one by one. It was an
act of profound trust, to open himself so much. But if Tethys' plan was going to
work, then he could do nothing himself.
	He felt Nabiki's will slid safely into his mind. He could feel his
zoacrystal vibrating slightly in his skull as the girl's inhumanly strong
psychic power wrapped around it. Then he felt the others joining her, one by
one. Rose and Marz and Momiji and all the other psychics in Tethys' little army.
	And he felt them slowly spread their power out, like a great wave. It
lapped across the land, flashed across the seas with the speed of a thunderclap.
Within moments, it had reached across the entire globe. It was time. He opened
his eyes and gave Tethys the barest of nods.
	"So you're going to kill us, Arkanphel?" Tethys asked.
	"Of course," Arkanphel declared. "You have all been a thorn in my side
too long."
	Tethys considered that for a moment. Then she nodded. "Very well."
	The crowd went silent. The zoalords behind Arkanphel stopped in place.
They had formed a defensive ring around their liege. They all stared at Tethys.
	"You can kill us. Really, there is nothing that I, or anyone else can do
to stop you." She shrugged. "I just have one question before we all get
slaughtered, if you don't mind?"
	"Very well..." He gestured to her. "Make it quick."
	"Where were you?" Her voice was a sharp snap, like the sound of ice
cracking.
	"Where was I?" Arkanphel looked confused.
	"You would never fight me at my full strength. You know the only reason
you can defeat me is because I've worn out all I have. The fight we just had,
the struggle against Reichmann Gyro, your former lieutenant, drained all I had."
She stepped closer. "I fought and I bled. I struggled and screamed here, today.
I sacrificed everything so that I could save this world." She clenched her
hands into fists. "Where. Were. You?"
	"I was..." Arkanphel trailed off.
	"Hiding, in the shadows, like you always have." Tethys snarled. "Was it
fear, Arkanphel? Was that why you cowered behind your... servants, while we
fought?"
	"You presume too much," Arkanphel informed her. He turned to face her.
"I did not come here to be insulted by you, Queen of Darkness." He raised his
hand again.
	"Then strike me down, and prove to the whole world what a coward you
really are," Tethys roared and threw her arms to the side. Arkanphel frowned.
Then Purgstall felt it, the gentle touch of the man's massive psychic presence
as it probed the world...
	And the man gasped. He backed up a step, realising what Tethys had done.
	"Why don't you attack, Arkanphel?" Tethys asked simply. "Certainly you
aren't afraid of a little bad press?" She chuckled. Purgstall frowned. She was
playing too much to the audience. Nabiki and the others may have been able to
transmit this confrontation to the billions of humans across the globe, but that
didn't mean that Arkanphel couldn't do something about it.
	"Did you know that there are people who came to this fight that had no
powers at all? They had no martial arts training. They weren't magically or
genetically enhanced. They had no genius, no talents at all to raise them above
the common man. But they came, and died, here because they wanted to fight to
save this world. They struggled against a god, knowing they would die. They had
courage that I can hardly dream of.
	"So, where were you?"
	Tethys took another step forward. "Where were you when your servant was
plotting to destroy this world for his own ambition? Where were you when he
turned an entire city into monsters? Where were you when he destroyed entire
countries? Where were you when he ripped open the sky? Where were you when a
monster from beyond space started to eat our world? WHERE WERE YOU?"
	The crowd went silent. Arkanphel was staring at her, his face flushed
with rage.
	"You're a coward, Arkanphel. You could have crushed America years ago,
but you were afraid to. You could have stamped out Millennium, but you feared
reprisal. You could have liberated Thailand, but you feared driving Bison to
desperation. You hate risk. That is why we'll beat you."
	"I've had enough of this..." Arkanphel growled.
	"You can strike me down, and everyone who stands with me. We saved the
world, and because of our sacrifices we are easy targets. You can attack and
win. But everyone will see what kind of a monster you are.
	"You don't really care about this world. All you want to do is run
crying from it, to find the parents who abandoned you at the dawn of time. You
don't care about anything except your selfish goal. And people can see that now.
If you kill us, who struggled to save you and everyone else, you'll just prove
it to the entire world.
	"You want to leave? Fine. Do it. Your fleet is gone, but I can get you
another one. I have connections to Jurai. I can get you fleets of ships for your
odyssey. I'll give it to you, no questions asked. I just want you to leave.
Leave OUR planet.
	"Or strike us down. Do that and realise that every other living soul on
this planet will know what a monster you are. That every man, woman and child
will rise up against you. That you will never have peace again. Your precious
hegemony? Gone. Your mastery of this world? Burnt away. We will die here and
thousands will rise up to take our place.
	"So make your decision."
	Arkanphel looked at the assembled crowd. He turned his eyes back to
Purgstall. Purgstall looked away, refusing to meet his gaze. He lowered his
hand, slowly.
	"Your eloquent words have softened my heart," Arkanphel informed the
Dark Queen. "In acknowledgement of your sacrifice and struggles for this world
that has given birth to us all, I will allow you all to live." He waved his arm
magnanimously. "We shall speak again, Tethys."
	Then in another blinding flash, he and his entourage were gone.
Purgstall saw Tethys smile as the ultimate zoalord vanished. It was a smile of
triumph. For a moment, Purgstall wondered if the world had traded one tyrant for
another.

*

	The first indication Ryouga had that they had won was when Nabiki
slumped against the wall. She didn't fall over in utter exhaustion. Instead she
just sort of crumpled against it, the tension draining out of her. He watched
her closely as she took a couple of calming breaths to clear out her head.
	When had he become her bodyguard again? He remembered standing up on
that giant floating monster, holding up her body as she helped channel the power
to save the Earth. Then when Cologne had pulled her insane stunt with the wind
vortex to get them safely off the planet, he had ended up holding her close as
they plummeted through the space between worlds. Then, when Purgstall had
informed everyone that Arkanphel was coming...
	He had just ended up here, standing with her.
	"Ryouga..." Nabiki looked at him, her eyes heavy-lidded. She looked so
serene there, more like a kid trying to stay up way past her bedtime than the
Queen of the Underworld. Ryouga grunted and turned his face away.
	"It's over, isn't it?" he asked.
	"No..." Nabiki sighed. "Not entirely. I don't think it ever ends,
Ryouga. But for today, for today we've won."
	Ryouga nodded and took a step away. "I guess this is goodbye then."
	"You're leaving?" Nabiki gasped, trying to hold back her disappointment.
	"There's nothing for me here," he informed her. "The battle is over.
We've won. The world was saved." He really wished he had his backpack. He would
need to find some new supplies...
	"Don't..." Nabiki placed a hand on his shoulder.
	"Nabiki, please let me go," he said slowly.
	"No, Ryouga, I'm not going to." He turned towards her, surprised by the
steel in her voice. She was staring at him, her eyes warm but hard. "I love you,
Ryouga. I've loved you for years. I can't let you go. I just... I can't. It
hurts. It hurts too much inside to think of the world without you."
	"Nabiki, this isn't going to change anything..." he trailed off slowly.
She was... crying? The tears rolled down her cheeks one and two at a time.
	"Why can't it?!" she hissed. "Why can't it change things? What do I have
to do to make things better?" She put her other hand on his other shoulder.
"I've tried so hard, Ryouga. I've tried so hard to be a better person."
	Ryouga raised his arms, his fingers hovering just above Nabiki's wrists.
He could pull her away so easily. But he couldn't bring himself to touch her.
Nabiki's body shook and she ducked her head, looking down at the ground. "I know
what I did to you was wrong. I know I was a horrible person. I know I don't
deserve forgiveness. But please... please!" She fell against him, burying her
face in his chest. "Please, Ryouga! I can't stand the thought of you leaving
again. I want you to hold me, I want you to look at me without hatred in your
eyes, I want you to love me, too."
	"Nabiki..." Ryouga said, his voice choking up.
	"I can be a good person, Ryouga. I'm not perfect, I'm not. I know that.
But I can try... you have to give me credit for trying, right? Isn't that how it
works? What do I have to say to make you forgive me? I'm sorry? I'm so sorry. I
want to take it all back. I want to make it all have not happened. I want you to
sit over me while I sleep again. I want to feel safe. I want to feel your eyes
on me. I was such an idiot... such a fool... I'm so sorry. Please, please
forgive me... please..."
	Ryouga gently wrapped his fingers around her wrists and with great care
he pushed her back and away. Her eyes were a red mess. Her body was heaving with
great gasping sobs. Oh god, why did she have to look like that? In all his
memories all he saw was her cunning smirk, her proud sneer.
	"Nabiki, I can't... I just can't..."
	She looked up at him with those stricken eyes and Ryouga felt something
inside him twist. Something painful and deep. Something he had buried so far
down, he had forgotten it even existed.
	"Please..."
	Ryouga released her wrists and stepped back. "I don't love you, Nabiki."
Oh, that had been so much harder to say than he had ever imagined it being.
Still, he forced himself to turn away and begin walking again.

*

	"Who are you?"
	Ukyou was dreaming again. She and Aaron had started the dream as they
always did, in the phantom remembrance of his last moments in life. But as they
had cruised along in the back of Rob's phantom car, suddenly they had become
aware of it. Aware of the dream.
	It wasn't just Aaron in the back of that car now. Chris sat across from
them, but he seemed far away. It was like the backseat of the car was a thousand
miles wide, and they were just seeing him through a fisheye lens that made him
appear much closer than he was. Rob and Jenn still sat in the front seats, but
they had faded away to smoke and shadows, not really people.
	Still Ukyou had waited. Despite knowing what was going to happen she,
they, felt a need to wait. Then it happened, they entered the intersection.
Aaron looked over and saw it, the massive form of the transport truck that had
stopped at the red light.
	Then it was moving. Just sitting there one moment, then running the red
light the next. And she FELT it. Felt the world change. Felt everything change.
Not just the truck, she felt like the entire world was suddenly in a fisheye
lens. It was distorted, bending around itself, until finally it snapped into
place.
	"That was it," Aaron whispered. "That was when this all started."
	The collision ripped the side of the car apart, flipping it end over
end. Chris was torn apart in the impact, his body disintegrating in a shower of
blood and viscera. The world was revolving, but it was also shrinking. She could
feel IT. It was reaching for them, for Aaron. The shrapnel was floating through
the air towards them. Aaron imagined he saw a hand behind it, he saw the world
rippling behind it. The shadows snapped into focus, the world behind those
lethal projectiles was being defined by them. It was real. It was true.
	And it swept over Chris and reached towards him, and just as the
shrapnel started to pierce his flesh-
	A flash of light.
	"It all began then, the pain of this world," a voice said into their
ear.
	Ukyou and Aaron were standing on a flat plain, a featureless grey floor
that stretched out until it vanished in the mist beyond. Above them was a wound,
a wound in reality. It was a hole, an emptiness so profound that it hurt to
conceive of it. It was the abyss, it was the end of all things. Oblivion.
Suddenly, smoke swirled in front of it, obscuring it from sight.
	"That is YOUR wound, Ukyou." The voice next to her ear was soft, warm,
full of compassion. "But we need not focus on it, if you do not wish to." Ukyou
recalled a time she (or had it been Aaron?) was in the hospital. There had been
a kind-voiced nurse they couldn't see, because they had a bandage over their
eyes. A rock had struck them in the eye. The nurse was calmly explaining the
reality of the situation to him, to her, despite the fact that he was all of
twelve years old. It trusted him to understand, and that very act set his heart
at ease.
	"Who are you?"
	"The messenger," the voice continued. "You know who I am, but who I am
isn't important. You have to hear my message, Ukyou. You must listen to me,
Aaron."
	"I'll listen," they agreed.
	"You just saw it, the pain that is this world. You saw the truth, the
one that you have been denying." A small hand fit itself into hers. It was so
small, and so cold. Ukyou clutched it reflexively and it squeezed back. It was
so weak, so faint.
	"Wh-what are you trying to say?" Ukyou asked, her voice catching.
	"You're dead, Aaron," the voice continued. The hand squeezed again. "I
know. It's hard. It's hard to let go. But you have to. The more you struggle to
hold on, the more pain you cause."
	"No, that can't be true," Aaron gasped.
	"Why not?"
	Suddenly they were not on a featureless plain, but instead in a bus full
of collapsing people. Ranma was falling against her, and a monster was stepping
forward. They felt their strength fading. If that thing reached them, they would
die.
	"NO!"
	Pain raced up their body, pain erupting from that empty wound in her
soul. Overhead the dark clouds stirred, swirling slightly. Ukyou roared and
charged. She would not die!
	"You're a very strong person. You do not just crumble. You fight."
	They were on the street, facing down Sailor Pluto. She was raising her
key staff. They were bleeding from mouth and nose and eyes. The pain was
unbearable, there was no way they could win. Ukyou turned and ran.
	"And when you can not fight, you run."
	She was floating above a black tarmac, the burning ruin of a airliner
beneath her. She was held like a marionette with invisible strings, her body
crucified in mid-air. Jadeite floated before her, his face was madness. His eyes
burned with rage. Strips of cloth flapped from the stump of the arm she had
taken from him. He reached out and with his good hand crushed her arm, burning
his fingers into her flesh. She screamed.
	"When you can do neither, you persevere."
	The scene changed again and Ukyou stumbled forward, clutching her arm.
It throbbed. The pain of the Third Circle backlash raced through her body. The
small, cold hands wrapped around her waist from the front. A hug, a childish
embrace. Small comfort.
	It was enough.
	"But the stronger you hold onto your life, your pride, the more pain you
cause."
	Hayato lay in front of her, spitting blood into the dust. The shattered
remains of his mask lay around him. He was clutching feebly at her leg,
promising her that this wasn't over. She lifted up her leg and drove it down at
his spine.
	Akane's face was a mask of shock and pain. Ukyou turned away and walked
from her.
	Pluto lay in a heap on the ground as Ukyou screamed at her. Her staff
lay nearby. The woman was defeated, and Ukyou found herself curling her fist up.
It would be so easy.
	"And pain begets pain. The vicious cycle continues."
	Ukyou was running backwards, barely evading Rose's attacks as she tore
up the street. Even with the Third Circle singing through her body, tearing her
apart inside in exchange for power, she was still no match for her.
	Ukyou floated in a pillar of water, it swirled and roared around her.
She was being crushed and torn. She couldn't breathe. Tethys laughed as she
gestured, controlling the column. Ukyou scratched at her throat. And the power
beckoned, just within reach. The power to defeat Tethys.
	The power to destroy.
	"Think of all the people in your life, Aaron. Think of them."
	Akane, proud and strong, held aloft in the grip of a monstrous man. Her
body was a mass of bruises and cuts. Her arms dangled limply, one eye was
swollen shut. The monster-man laughed and dropped her, but also brought up his
hand and a wave of energy tore into her-
	Hotaru had gone deathly silent. She had been silent but sullen until
now, demanding to be sent home to her father. But when the door opened all the
anger drained out of the child. Ukyou stepped forward, her eyes widening. There
was so much blood. The body on the floor was lying in a pool of it. It flecked
her brown hair. A drop had settled in the centre of one of her open, staring,
accusing eyes-
	"Ran..." Aaron choked.
	Mamoru stood in the centre of the street, dressed in a tuxedo and cape.
He clutched a single rose, which had pricked his fingers. Three young woman
clustered around him. The city was burning. He crushed the rose in his hand, and
turned away to walk into the darkness-
	Kunikida screamed as his daughter's soul was torn from her chest right
in front of him-
	Ranma floated in Bison's psychic grasp. His body was broken. He was
barely breathing. The madman was laughing. He was taunting her. The Silence
Glaive shuddered in her hands. Integra's corpse was laid against the wall,
staring at her. It had Ran's accusing eyes. So many people had died... so many
had died-
	Nabiki and Ryouga stood in the centre of the street, surrounded by a
monster. It had the faces of the two Sailor Senshi it had murdered. The monster
laughed with theirs and a hundred other voices. Ryouga walked towards them, his
eyes empty. He was going to kill himself. He had nothing left to live for, he
had already lost everything. Nabiki was crying, and as Ryouga began to vanish in
a flare of light she raised her sword and screamed-
	Matsudaira shrieked as Akane touched her. She raised her hand, the demon
in her soul forcing her to attack. Vicious acid splashed out, but it struck the
form of an old man who threw Akane to the side at the last instant-
	Kusanagi stood over the cooling body, his blade slowly withdrawing. The
soul of the woman he loved was dead and he was empty inside. Revenge had not
relieved the pain in his heart-
	Minako flew backward, her eyes opening in shock. Blood geysered from her
back as Rip Van Winkle's magic bullet tore her nearly in two. Ukyou was
screaming, screaming and running but she knew she'd be too late-
	Akira huddled against a wall, biting her tongue to keep from screaming.
It was tearing her up inside. It hurt like nothing else. It poured into her
soul, ripped her apart from the inside out. She coughed and blood splattered
against the ground. She needed to move. Somewhere out there Ukyou was fighting
Rip Van Winkle. She needed to move, but the pain was too much-
	Angel stepped through the shower of blood. Rose's body landed on two
separate parts of the room. Sailor Pluto was screaming. Akira looked up at
Angel, and their eyes met. Trust, friendship, loyalty: they hadn't been asked
for, but they had been freely given. Now, now there was nothing but the taste of
ashes in her mouth-
	The woman looked so much like Ukyou. She was laughing with madness, the
glowing eyes of Bison looking out from her face. Ukyou ran towards her, the
Silence Glaive humming as it prepared to deal out death. Death would be
preferable than to let that thing inhabit her daughter's body for one more
second-
	"Is there one person, Aaron, one person in all the world whose life you
have touched that has not led to pain? How many lives have you ruined? How many
dreams have you destroyed, just because you refuse to let go of this broken,
pitiful world?"
	Ukyou was back on the plain. Her arms wrapped around the little girl in
front of her. She was crying. She looked up at the sky. The clouds were
swirling. In a few moments they would part and Ukyou would see it. The wound.
HER wound. It was the same as the thing inside her, the place from which the
Third Circle came. It was exactly the same. She KNEW it.
	"You know it has to end. All of it has to end. You're already dead,
Aaron."
	"But... but..."
	"You've known the truth all along. This world is a fantasy. Constructed
of your dreams and memories. It is everything you cling to."
	"But Ukyou, she's real..."
	"Yes. She's as real as you, or me, or anyone else. But we are all
figments, living in a dying universe. She is the thing you cling to hardest of
all. The denial of the very unreality of this place, this shadow existence."
	"No. All my friends, all the people I've helped and hurt... That's
REAL!"
	"You want so hard to believe that, don't you? But which is more likely?
Are you really a profoundly deadly, beautiful, bisexual ex-assassin with magic
powers? Have you really fought wizards and martial arts masters and madmen? Have
you saved the world, all by yourself? Everyone you meet is either your greatest
enemy or your dearest ally, or both at once. There is no in between, is there?
Is that likely, is that possible?
	"Or are you a dying man? Are you just the shadow of Aaron Peori, a
delusion created as neurons fire randomly and slowly die from lack of oxygen?
Are you just falling towards the end, the abyss of death, and denying it every
step of the way?
	"Which makes more sense, Aaron? You are a man of logic. What does that
tell you to believe?"
	Aaron felt his body shuddering. Tears rolled down his cheeks. He could
feel pain, all over his body. It was torn apart, he was bleeding. He was always
bleeding. He had been torn up, beaten, tortured... always there was the pain.
Every battle, every victory and defeat and stalemate ended in blood and pain.
	The same blood. The same pain.
	It was so deliciously simple. So absolutely CORRECT. How could he have
not seen it?
	"No."
	The body pressed against him stirred.
	"No. Fuck logic. Fuck what is likely or possible." Aaron pushed the body
away. "Fuck reality. This is real. I am real! Ukyou is real. We are the same,
two parts of a whole. I accept that now. Ranma is really my friend. I really
love Akira. Their hopes, their dreams, their pain and their failures, all these
things matter. I will not deny them. I will not debase them by accepting this.
	"Even if it is the truth. Even if it is correct. I will fight it, I will
struggle against destiny and death and god himself if it comes to that."
	Aaron and Ukyou looked down at the slim pale figure before them.
	"If you're a messenger, deliver a message for me. Tell the nameless
thing beyond you that I will not lie down and die. I will not submit. I will
struggle on even when I don't have any strength left, even when all hope is
lost. Because I have to. Because I have to believe in this world."
	Hotaru raised her head and looked at Ukyou. Blood ran down between her
bronze eyes.
	"So be it."
	And Ukyou woke up.

*

	Pluto helped Ukyou to her feet. The girl was still shaking off the
cobwebs of sleep, her eyes vaguely unfocused. "What... what happened?"
	"You had a vision," Nanami explained. She was standing nearby, holding
her swords idly as she looked out over the landscape of Elysium. Pluto tried not
to look. She had been to Elysium once, thousands of years ago back when the
Silver Millennium had ruled the Solar System, and at that time it had been a
place of beauty and reflection. A dangerous beauty, but beauty nonetheless.
	Now it was a wasteland. It was like someone had taken the shattered
wastes of a million civilisations and dropped them into a desert. Huge,
partially shattered Buddha statues were drowning in the shifting dunes next to
toppled nineteenth-century ocean liners and the ruins of Greek temples. Out and
out the wasteland stretched, into infinity. And nowhere was there a single thing
that looked vital or alive... with one exception.
	Everywhere you looked, there were fireflies. They drifted between the
ruins and along the avenues. They alighted on crumbled stone and rusted metal.
They fluttered weakly across the sandy ground, or floated high in the air. Aside
from the mad green sun swirling and dancing overhead, they were the only light
in this place.
	"A vision..." Ukyou rubbed her temples.  The symbol of Neptune flared
briefly on her forehead before fading away into invisibility. "A dream."
	"This place IS dream, Ukyou," Nanami said. "There is no difference
between it and the reality of what you see."
	"Indeed..." Ukyou shrugged out of Pluto's gasp. "I... well, this isn't
what I expected." Ukyou glanced around the ruins.
	"It wasn't always like this," Pluto offered. "Once, it was a place of
beauty and harmony."
	"It reflects the world," Nanami explained. "During the Silver
Millennium, when there was near universal peace, Elysium was a paradise full of
verdant forests and soft music. Now, when the world is falling apart, this is
what it is. The souls of all the people in the world is what shapes this
landscape."
	"Wonderful," Ukyou deadpanned. She dusted the sand of the endless desert
off her lapels. "Which way?"
	Pluto looked at Nanami. Nanami, for her part, was standing on top of a
streetlamp that had begun to lean dangerously over. Her slight form didn't seem
to disturb it in the slightest. Her hand was extended, and as Pluto watched a
few of the fireflies swirled around her fingertips.
	"Souls..." Ukyou murmured. Her own hand was extended. She held her
cupped hands around one of the flickering motes. "They're souls..."
	"Yes. Every soul on Earth, and all the other countless planets of the
cosmos, can be found here."
	"They're so small..." Ukyou continued, her voice trembling.
	"Yes..." Nanami pointed at one light. It was flickering erratically, the
mote spiralling slowly downward. "And very fragile."
	"It's dying!" Pluto realised.
	"Is there anything we can do?" Ukyou snapped, jumping to her feet again.
	"Not if we want to get where we're going."
	"What?" Pluto looked at the girl. "What are you saying..."
	"She's saying that it's going to lead us to Hotaru," Ukyou said, her
voice suddenly cold. The mote was flickering faster now, and began to drift like
a feather blown on the wind. "Oblivion. The soul is being drawn to Oblivion as
it dies. Hotaru is drawing them to her. My god, that's how she plans to do it."
	"I don't understand," Pluto pointed out.
	"Hotaru doesn't plan to end the world by blowing it up, or by ripping
the universe in two or anything spectacular." Ukyou started forward, following
the glimmering soul-mote. "She just plans on destroying it slowly and
effectively. By ending the cycle of reincarnation."
	Ending the cycle? Pluto stared at Ukyou's back, then ran to catch up
with her and Nanami. It made a perverse sort of sense. In the real world, there
was only so much Hotaru could do. Even with the Silence Glaive she was limited
to one planet at a time. There were billions of inhabited worlds in the cosmos.
Hotaru couldn't have destroyed them all except over the course of hundreds of
thousands of years.
	But if she was in Elysium itself, she had access to the Oversoul. All
she had to do was capture the souls of the dying as they exited the world, and
then prevent the Oversoul from seeding any more into the universe at the same
time. Pluto tried to imagine it.
	A world with no more children. Rank after rank of cribs full of
stillborn babies. Empty nurseries. Empty playgrounds. A population that just
grew older and older with no hope, no future in sight. Eventually only the
ageless, like herself, would remain. And then, one by one, they would die.
Brought low by infighting or accident or simple despair. How many years would it
take? A hundred? A thousand?
	Pluto choked back a sob. She grabbed hold of the Time Key Staff. That
was what they were going to prevent.
	The light in front of them vanished. "Is it..." Pluto asked.
	"No," Nanami shook her head. "It died before it could be drawn fully
into Hotaru's realm." She began to look around. "It returned to the Oversoul.
Now, we must find another."
	"A trail of corpses..." Ukyou growled. "So that's why you're here. You
can sense the dying ones, can't you?"
	"Yes." Nanami nodded. "I carry a part of Hotaru's power inside me. I can
feel the whispers of Oblivion. Not as strongly as she can, thankfully, but still
enough to sense which souls are on the verge of dying." Her hand was extended
again, and more soul lights had gathered around it. One of them began to pulse
weaker than the others. "Like this one."
	And so they followed that one for a time. Pluto looked over at Ukyou.
The woman was looking anywhere but at Nanami. Her eyes scanned over the
landscape of ruins and relics. The colour had bled mostly out of the area,
leaving everything a shade of brown and grey. And the sand was everywhere. But
there was no wind, just a sort of stale, oppressive air that lacked real warmth
or cold.
	"Ukyou..." Pluto began. The girl looked at her. "I... I just wanted to
know one thing."
	"I'll try to answer your question," Ukyou replied.
	"Why you?"
	"Why me what?" Ukyou asked.
	"Why... you?" Pluto gestured helplessly. "All this, all this fighting
and torment. I realise now that I've been a tool of all this all along. That
God..."
	"The Nameless," Ukyou growled. "I refuse to call it God."
	"The Nameless, then. I realise that it used me. The prophecy, the vision
I and the other psychics shared. That cane from it, didn't it? It wanted me to
provoke you, to push you." She trailed off. "And all the people I lost along the
way. Chizuru, Uranus and Neptune..." She glanced at Ukyou's forehead, but the
girl merely looked away slightly. "Even Rose, after a fashion." Pluto chuckled
bitterly. "She certainly isn't the same person who was my friend for seven
years."
	"I'm sorry," Ukyou murmured.
	"No, that isn't what I meant!" Pluto said hastily. "I'm not blaming you.
I was just wondering... why all this trouble over you? Is it because of the
Third Circle?"
	"No, I don't think so," Ukyou mused, as she gazed out across the empty,
ruin-strewn landscape.
	"Of course," Pluto said with a nod. "After all, Chris has the Third
Circle as well. So he would be just as important as you, in that case."
	"Oh, you'd think so, wouldn't you?" a new voice broke in. Pluto gasped
and spun. There was someone else walking with them now, a short Chinese woman
wearing a green labcoat, her hair tied back in a slightly messy bun. "Oh, Chris.
So powerful. So important. The chosen one. That's what he calls himself. Not
that he's ever bothered to sort out in his mind what chose him or why, but he's
never had to. Chris. The... 'master of the Third Circle'. He who would be our
god and guide us all to a new golden age." Ukyou seemed to recognise the woman,
since she had turned quickly, spinning with inhuman speed as the Silence Glaive
materialised in her hands. The blade came to a rest under the Chinese woman's
chin. She stopped walking, craning her neck slightly and looking at Ukyou with
an annoyed expression. "Do you mind?"
	"Link," Ukyou hissed. "What are you doing here?"
	Pluto tightened her grip on her staff. Link was one of Chris' minions.
One who had killed thousands of people in the Dark Kingdom when the boy had
invaded. The fact that most people didn't remember that - and in most cases were
no longer dead - because the boy had erased it all from the flow of time didn't
make Pluto any more inclined to trust her.
	"You can put down your weapon," Nanami said, landing beside Ukyou. "It's
just a figment."
	"A figment?"
	"Like all of Elysium, she was shaped by your memories and dreams."
Nanami looked at the Chinese girl for a moment. "Obviously the topic of
conversation reminded you of this person for some reason."
	"Just a memory," Ukyou mused, slowly lowering her blade. The phantom
Link rubbed her neck. "She's acting so real..."
	"Dreams often seem real, until we begin to notice the tiny details."
Nanami shrugged.
	"Can I get rid of it?" Ukyou asked, frowning.
	"I suppose." Nanami leapt back up to start looking for another dying
soul. "The question you should be asking, though, is why did you summon up such
a figment in the first place?"
	"Obviously because she's too much of an idiot to figure this out on her
own," the phantom Link snorted. "She needs someone intelligent to remind her
what is happening."
	"Is the real version always so... distasteful?" Pluto asked.
	"Hey, I'm being portrayed by a person who is very biased against me,"
the phantom shot back. "You can't take her perceptions at face value."
	"Right..." Pluto ignored the woman and looked at Ukyou. "So why did you
start thinking of her?"
	"This is... a conversation Link and I had," Ukyou explained. "After I
freed her from Tethys' dungeon, she wanted to tell me about the Third Circle,
the Nameless and Chris."
	"Ah..." Pluto glanced at the woman, who was tapping her foot
impatiently. "I suppose that makes sense. Perhaps we should let it continue
to speak, then?"
	"I guess," Ukyou shrugged. "Maybe if someone else hears what she has to
say, they can help prove why she has to be wrong."
	"Oh, don't be stupid," Link replied with another snort. "You know I'm
right. You just don't want to admit it. As I was saying before I was rudely
interrupted... I've been saving Chris for last, since it's the best. I told you
I could absolutely guarantee that with what I know, you could deal with Chris.
And that's true. Why? Because you didn't need to know anything to deal with him.
	"Chris," she declared triumphantly, "is nothing."
	"What?" Pluto gaped. "That's absurd! I've seen what Chris can do. He
rewrote TIME!"
	"So what?" Link retorted. "Yes, he's powerful. So are you," she said,
indicating Ukyou. "So is Tethys. So is Galaxia. So was Washuu. You'll notice the
universe in no way revolves around those three. So what makes you think it
rotates around Chris?"
	Pluto glanced at Ukyou, who was just looking at Link with an odd
expression on her face. Of course, for Ukyou this was the second time she'd
heard this response. It appeared that the figment was independent enough that it
could react to other people and incorporate them into Ukyou's memories of the
conversation.
	"I'll tell you why," Link continued. "Because he's got you fooled into
thinking he MUST somehow be important. He's got everyone around him fooled to
believe it too. Most of all, he's got himself fooled, because it would
absolutely destroy him to realise how pathetically unimportant he is in the
grand scheme of things. But Chris, just like everything else in this universe,
exists only because you are here."
	"Ukyou..." Pluto looked at the girl.
	"I didn't believe her," Ukyou said. "I didn't want to. How could I
believe that. Do you understand what she's suggesting, Pluto? What it MEANS?"
Her eyes hardened. "You should listen to the rest of it. Because it makes too
much sense to me." She turned her attention to the phantom Link. "I don't
believe that. I'm not that important."
	"I understand it's hard for you to believe." Link's expression lost its
triumphal arrogance, becoming more reflective. "I was fooled too. I stayed with
him because I was sure he had to be important, crucial somehow. But then I
fought Hotaru-" She trailed off suddenly.
	"Huh?" Pluto blinked. Nanami looked back over her shoulder, attracted by
the sudden lack of noise. Ukyou coughed.
	"Uh, at this point Link and I had a... discussion about Hotaru," she
said.
	"Discussion, right." Link grunted. "You were an overly emotional idiot
looking for an excuse to..."
	"I think we should just skip this part," Ukyou growled to the figment.
"And get to the important bits."
	"Fine." Link adjusted her collar. "I only wish you were this reasonable
the first time." She cleared her throat. "As I was saying, when I... encountered
Hotaru, I realised the truth. Hotaru talks to the Nameless. Hotaru is the chosen
tool of the Nameless, the executor of his will, and the recipient of all his
Paradox. Hotaru, you must realise whether you like it or not, is an important
piece in the game the Nameless is playing. And she DOESN'T GIVE A DAMN ABOUT
CHRIS. She didn't care that I accosted her. She's never interfered in his
operations or made a move in response to him. And, you will notice, his attack
upon her in the Dark Kingdom made not one whit of difference to her. She
survived, and is moving on with her real plans. Plans that involve you, not
Chris.
	"Think about it, Ukyou. The world's psychics all experienced a prophecy
that you would end the world. But nobody knows about Chris. Heroes, villains,
psychopaths and good samaritans beat a path to your door. People you never would
have met suddenly became interested in you. You were hounded, never able to
rest, and often through no fault of your own. Chris? If he'd sat at the bottom
of the sea, he would have stayed there. Nobody is pushing him into action, and
the only person hunting him is a pathetic old woman in Tokyo... and he had to
kill her great-granddaughter to provoke even that much reaction. Nobody cares
about Chris, Ukyou. Nobody makes Chris their top priority. Not even you. In the
seven years you vanished from the world, an equilibrium formed. Now, less than
seven months after you've returned, everything has descended into chaos. Do you
think that was a coincidence? It's not. It's chance pushing you forward again,
and chance is the tool of the Nameless. Chris is a thousand times more powerful
than you, yes. And it doesn't make a whit of difference. He's not the focus of
the Nameless' plan. He's not the fulcrum around which the universe revolves. You
are. Only you."
	"Then why did Chris come to this world, if he's so unimportant?"
	"Oh, an intelligent question," Link mused aloud. "I only wish someone
had thought to ask it," she glared at Ukyou, "so that I could actually have an
answer for her. I'm certain my answer is brilliant."
	"I believe that is my subconscious's snide way of saying I don't know
what Link thought the answer to that question was," Ukyou said, rubbing her
face. "Though I have my own theories."
	"Such as?"
	"...maybe later." She looked through her fingers at Link and, in the
melodic tone of someone repeating something memorised, asked: "But Link, he has
the Third Circle, just like me. In fact, he has far more control over it than I
do."
	"The Third Circle?" Link actually laughed. "Yes, he certainly thinks he
has it. Tell me, Ukyou, what has Chris done that used this amazing Third
Circle?"
	Ukyou looked at Pluto and Nanami. "I just started listing things off at
random here. You know, like altering time and coming back from the dead and so
on. I think only you," she said, looking at Nanami, "aren't really aware of what
he can do."
	"The first time I met Chris, he ripped out my soul with his bare hands,"
Nanami replied in a dry tone. "Since then, in addition to being caught on the
edge of the well of Oblivion, I've also been trapped inside the remains of the
Golden Crystal, which were etched into the body of one of his servants. While I
didn't experience everything she did, I was aware of a lot of it." She looked
away. "If anything, I probably know more about Chris than either of you at this
point."
	"Wait..." Pluto held up one hand. "If what Link is saying is true...
then perhaps if Link hadn't told you this information about Chris, it was Nanami
who was supposed to tell you?"
	"But I got there first!" Link crowed, pointing at Nanami. "First come,
first served, bitch! I stole your thunder!" She laughed, throwing back her head
as she did so, the laugh promptly descending into coughing. Finally she stopped
and glared at Ukyou. "Damnit, Ukyou, stop projecting what you think I'd say.
It's undignified."
	"Uh... sorry?"
	Link waved it away. "S'okay. Now, where was I... oh yes, ranting about
how much I hate Chris." She cleared her throat. "Time manipulation? Sailor Pluto
could do that... does she have the almighty Third Circle? Coming back from the
dead? Well, I guess Sailor Moon's silver crystal must be some amazing font of
the Third Circle... except it isn't. In fact, can you think of anything Chris
has ever done that could not be accomplished by, say, Nabiki's Wishing Sword?
I'll answer for you," the figment added primly, "since you've wasted so much of
my time making me unfairly act like an idiot. The answer is no. Chris has never
done any particular thing that that sword couldn't do, except exist, and I'll
get to that in a moment.
	"That's all the Second Circle, Ukyou. Just like you have only used the
Second Circle. You both think like the difference is power, as if only you got
ENOUGH power somehow, you'd reach the Third Circle. What nonsense. If you punch
hard enough, does that mean you can use magic? No. The Third Circle isn't the
power to do things like that, Ukyou. It's the power of God - by whatever name
you call him. The Third Circle can create a universe and people it with a
teeming population, each with their own life and past. But even that is nothing.
The Third Circle, Ukyou, makes this universe work. I know you come from a world
where nobody has such powers. Why do they exist here, then? Because someone with
the Third Circle declared it so. The Third Circle isn't the power of 'let me win
a battle or do a thing'. The Third Circle is the power of 'let me declare, "This
is what a battle is", or "This thing now exists", and make it so'. You can't
compare it to the pitifully limited power you've wielded, Ukyou. It's as
different as the power to hit something is from the ability to control time.
More so, even."
	Ukyou stopped in place. She looked down, refusing to meet the phantom's
eyes. Pluto looked at her. Ukyou was clenching her hands. The figment looked at
her in exasperation. Then she turned to Pluto.
	"She doesn't want to ask it," Link explained. "She doesn't like thinking
about it. But I can't just go on. Someone has to prompt me." Pluto opened her
mouth, then closed it.
	"What about the Paradox?" Pluto turned to Nanami with a start. "If all
Ukyou is doing is using magic, using Second or First Circle effects, why is she
producing so much Paradox? Where is it all coming from?"
	"THANK you," Link said with satisfaction. "Really, I'm surprised you
couldn't figure this out yourself. Yes, you and Chris produce Paradox, the
residue of the Third Circle. But just who told you it was YOU using the Third
Circle? No, don't answer, whoever did was clearly a dunce. Consider this, Ukyou
- did YOU bring yourself here? Chris most certainly did not say "I AM" and
materialise himself into existence from nothing. The two of you were dragged
here from elsewhere. Who was the true user of the Third Circle? Just WHOSE
Paradox are you suffering from?
	"Oh, and that's another bit of proof for you, as if you needed more.
Look at your 'Third Circle' powers. Though I've not met you before today, I've
studied your exploits quite carefully. When you use the power you so quaintly
refer to as the 'Third Circle', you obtain a temporary boost of physical
prowess, accompanied by a quantum leap in your proficiency in certain talents,
notably your sensory prowess. How... limited. Structured, you might say.
Planned. Look at Chris, however. He just does whatever he wants. Leaps from body
to body gaining any power he chooses, leapfrogging past you in power and ego.
And now he is just wielding raw Second Circle, causing any effect he wants with
brute force. There's no chains on him, no limitations.
	"You might think that makes him powerful, but it also shows how little
planning went into him compared to you. He suffers from far more Paradox than
you as well, accordingly. And all that power he's so proud of means nothing,
Ukyou. That is why you will inevitably triumph over him. Because you're
important, and he's not. He's just an idiot who, if you'll permit the metaphor,
was given a magical sword and is now running around screaming 'I am Magic!'.
Powerful, maybe. Dangerous, perhaps. But he's not the one that made the magic
sword that gives him such power, and the day he runs up against the person who
did, he will be in for an extremely rude awakening." She smiled, for the first
time since appearing. "I wish I could see the look on his face."
	The phantom took two more steps, then vanished. Pluto didn't even blink.
The girl was just gone.
	"That's... it?" she asked.
	"Indeed." Ukyou looked up. "I was too stunned at the time by what she
said. She just... left."
	"Too bad, I would have liked to ask her a few more questions."
	"No, you really wouldn't have," Ukyou replied. "Because the answers you
would get are ones you wouldn't want to hear."
	"That's the problem with truth," Nanami said. "Trust me. I'm very
familiar with how much having your delusions shattered can hurt."
	"Yes, I suppose you are." Ukyou turned back to Pluto. "The thing is, I
can't disprove anything she said. It all makes too much sense." She looked down
at her hands. "I can't even remember all the times my life was saved by...
coincidence. Just suddenly out of nowhere. I'd be facing a situation I couldn't
overcome and one of my friends would show up to protect me..."
	Pluto nodded. She was very familiar with that, having been stymied by
those last minute rescues on more than one occasion. Of course, she had always
known that it was the Prophecy. She had just never, until this point, really
stopped to think WHAT had written that Prophecy. What made certain it happened.
What was fate?
	"Chris says that he exists outside of that fate," Nanami pointed out.
"He may be right. He's never lost when he really wanted to win-"
	"Bullshit," Ukyou snarled. "When I first was told all this, I thought
back. I thought hard. And I remembered something. Something that destroys Chris'
entire argument." She took a deep breath. "Seven years ago, Chris and I fought a
few times. The first time, I was more powerful than him and scared him off. The
second time he did beat me, but he never went in for the kill. That's the key,
you see. Surviving. I've lost plenty of times. I'm not incapable of losing, I
was just incapable of DYING." She shook a little. "Then, one time he was really
going insane. I was almost dead from fighting Tethys, and he caught me at my
weakest. It wasn't a fight. It was a beating, a slaughter. He smashed me around
like a grown man would a child. And just when I was on my last legs, when he was
so far gone he couldn't even hear reason anymore, when he was about to finish me
off for good... I was saved."
	The silence was thick.
	"Ryouga showed up and defeated him. With ease."
	"Fate," Pluto gasped.
	"Fate." Ukyou looked at her. "Chris thinks he's escaped it, but he
hasn't. If this is all about me, if the entire universe was created for me, then
the one time when he was close to changing fate, he was stopped. Just like
everybody else.
	"And everything I see makes me think Link was right. The way chi works,
the five chakras. I imagined that, Pluto. I IMAGINED it. It was a wild theory,
based on a GAME! I made it up!" She threw up her hands. "Yet that's how it works
here. Not just for me, but for Ranma and Akira and Shingo... Because that meant
that I KNEW it."
	"And your power?" Nanami said. "That too, was part of Fate?"
	"Yes." Ukyou turned her head away. "I don't have the Third Circle. It
does. The Nameless. It MADE me. It forged me, for one specific purpose. It gave
me data I would need. It gave me friends and enemies. It gave me challenges.
It's been guiding me. It's been pushing my development." She chuckled.
"Every time I used the 'Third Circle', I would suddenly get this learning spurt
afterwards, like I'd been training for years. But always in a certain
direction." She closed her eyes. "I thought it was me, but it wasn't. It was the
Nameless. You see, when I use that Third Circle or whatever you call it, I'm not
tapping into MY power. I'm tapping into ITS."
	"But... but you plan on fighting it!" Pluto stood there, astonished.
"How can you do that, without the Third Circle?"
	"I don't know." Ukyou bowed her head. "Maybe I can't. Maybe there is no
way to win." Her eyes snapped open and she jerked her head up. "But that doesn't
matter. Because I'm going to win this."
	"Win against what?" Pluto asked. "What does the Nameless even want from
you?"
	"I don't know. I don't know why I was chosen, and I don't care." She
looked at the two of them. "Because it doesn't matter. All I know is this. This
Nameless, this asshole who can do anything... he choose to make my life hell. He
tortured my friends. He killed them. He twisted the heart and soul of an ELEVEN-
YEAR-OLD GIRL just to get at me. Just because I cared about her. If Link is
right, and I fear that she is, then all the suffering that's happened in the
last seven years is because of me, for me.
	"So no, Pluto, it doesn't matter why I was chosen. I was. Now, I have to
decide what to do about it. And I've decided I'm not going to let him win.
	"I just wish I had the faintest idea how."

*

	"Minako, we have to stop."
	Artemis felt himself being laid down. Grass, he realised. They had found
a bit of grass. A small section of the islands that hadn't been destroyed by the
monster planet. Ami leaned down over him, her face mostly hidden behind the blue
visor. But he could read her expression nonetheless.
	"Is it...?" Minako was standing near the front of the small group. Rei
and Makoto had been following just behind her, with Ami picking up the rear.
They had been forced to set a sedate pace because of Artemis' injuries. He would
have laughed, if it didn't hurt to breathe.
	"He's... not doing well," Ami answered.
	"Oh. Artemis..." Luna murmured softly. She sat on her haunches near him.
"Why did you have to be such a damn fool?"
	"Helped..." He wheezed. "Save the world..." Ami was a magnificent
doctor. She had managed to track down some supplies from a few broken buildings
in a city they had passed through. He was bandaged and splinted and drugged to
the gills. He barely even felt the pain anymore. Just when he breathed.
	"Do you need more supplies?" Minako asked Ami as she walked over. "I can
get more supplies. I can find drugs, if you need them. I can find something,
something to help. He needs help. Why aren't you helping him?"
	"Minako, you're babbling," Ami said softly.
	"Why aren't you helping him?!" Minako shouted, grabbing the smaller
blue-haired Senshi by the collar. "You're a doctor! Do something!"
	"I'm not a veterinarian, Minako. Even if I was, I don't think-"
	"Don't say it!" Minako shouted. "He's going to live!"
	"Minako..." Artemis hissed.
	"I didn't go through all this just to lose him, too!" Minako shrieked.
"If I had been there from the beginning, he wouldn't... he wouldn't..."
	"Minako, please.... look at me..."
	The girl slowly, jerkily, shifted her gaze down to him. He tried to
smile, but a flare of pain in his lungs turned it into a grimace and cough. "I
don't... blame you..."
	"Artemis, don't say anything." She released Ami and knelt next to him.
Her hand hovered over him, afraid to touch him. "You need to conserve your
strength. We'll get you to Tokyo. There'll be help there..."
	Artemis did smile this time. She never gave up, did she? He was so
proud. When he had first met her, she was nothing but another ditz; just a
schoolgirl more interested in flirting and fashion than homework and fighting.
But over the years he had watched her grow.
	She had experienced tragedy the like of which no one was supposed to.
Her family had been taken from her in the most brutal way imaginable. She had
been forced to live and fight while everyone around her died and fled. But she
had survived, and thrived. She had stepped away from the brink of despair and
regained her spark.
	"Magic, or maybe chi healing..." Minako was saying. "Come on, don't you
want to freak out Ranma again? Don't you want to berate me for something?"
	Ranma. Yes, the boy had been good for her. He had a spark too, an energy
that could not be suppressed. He had watched the two fall in love. Not a
childish crush. Not even teenage hormones. He had seen their feelings mature the
way real adults' did.
	"Min-"  His word turned into a cough. He grimaced and forced his leg to
move. Minako's eyes shimmered and she took his tiny white paw in her large
hand. Larger still than it had been when he'd first met her. She had grown up.
She was an adult now. A grown woman.
	"Artemis..."
	She had experienced pain and love, loss and joy. He had been with her
every step of the way. He would continue being strong for her. He needed to let
her know how much he was proud of her. He needed to let her know how much he
loved her. He wanted her to know that she should be happy. That she should never
lose that attitude. That he would be there with her forever.
	"Artemis?"
	This was important. He needed to say something right, something noble.
Something inspiring. Something that said everything he wanted to say. He closed
his eyes and took a deep, painful breath, trying to think of what to say.
	"ARTEMIS!"
	And while he was thinking, he died.

*

	"...and then Chris told me to go to Sweden, which is where I met Akira,"
Angel said somewhat wistfully. She and Akane were sitting in a pair of chairs
next to a long curved window that overlooked the sweep of Chris' flying
fortress. Akane was nodding along quietly. The girl had been going through her
life story for nearly fifteen minutes now.
	Akane wasn't certain what to think about it. To be fair, she had only
been half listening. Her eyes kept straying down to the planet far below. There
was a layer of sharp white clouds, obscuring most of the world from sight except
for a few blue patches. There was no way to tell what was happening down there.
	Akane turned slightly to look at the white-haired girl. Girl? Akane
masked an amused grunt, not wanting to interrupt Angel. According to her story,
Angel was nineteen years old. Akane was just five years older than her. And here
she was, referring to the battle-hardened assassin as a 'girl', as a 'kid' in
her mind.
	Frankly, the life Angel had led must have forced her to grow up very
fast. Akane had never lost her family like Angel had. She had never been
shuttled from remote location to location like her, learning all she could and
never really having a home. She had never been groomed for nearly seven years to
be a fighter. Akane's father had barely taught her. Ukyou had tried to give her
a few pointers, but soon they became too busy to train and then they parted
ways. Shampoo had actually been one of the only people to have ever really
trained with Akane, and even that had been cut tragically short.
	No, Akane had been forced to learn what she could when she could as she
needed it. Angel, in contrast, had been... molded. Chris had been very careful
to make certain that the girl would learn all the skills she would need to
survive as his servant. Of course, that made Akane realise something.
	"...we spent a little time in Southtown but then that vampire chick
showed up with undead Gam-"
	"Wait a minute," Akane said, holding up her hand to cut Angel off.
"Don't get me wrong, Angel. This is all fascinating. Especially learning about
what happened with Akira and Ukyou. But what about before?"
	"Before I met Akira?" Angel blinked. "Well, like I said, I was mainly
just training. I didn't have much time to live here at the compound before all
this..."
	"No. Before that." Akane frowned. "I asked to know about you. I want to
know more about... the kind of person who would choose to follow Chris' ideals.
But you just started with the day Chris saved you."
	"Well... yeah." Angel shrugged. "That's basically when my life began."
	"No," Akane snapped. "It isn't."
	Angel stared at Akane for a long moment. Akane struggled to find the
right words to say. She took a deep breath and stood up. "You're nineteen years
old, Angel. You've known Chris for what... seven of those? You had a life before
then. A family. Friends."
	"They're all dead," Angel returned with exaggerated nonchalance.
	Akane winced. "I'm sorry." She took a deep breath. "My own mother died
when I was very young-"
	"It's not important," Angel interrupted dismissively.
	"Not important?" Akane snapped, turning on her with a snarl. "Did you
really just say that?"
	"I..." Angel stared up at Akane.
	"Don't you ever, EVER say that again!" Akane leaned forward. "Don't ever
call my mother, or your parents, unimportant!"
	"Who are you to tell me I shouldn't?" Angel growled back gamely. "They
AREN'T important. Face facts. Yes, I loved them. Yes, I still think about them.
They were insurgents, fighting against the Chronos forces, and I hope they'd be
proud I'm fighting for a better world. But they're dead, and nothing from that
time matters to what you asked, because until Chris saved me, I would never have
done anything even if I'd survived!"
	Akane had learned, as a matter of simple necessity, to control her
temper over the years. She had learned that at times, she needed to reign in her
anger. She had developed techniques she could employ to restrain herself, remain
clear-headed and force herself to think rationally. At those times, she could
deal with the most infuriating things in a diplomatic fashion. This, she
decided, was not one of those times.
	"So that's it, is it? They're nothing. Just because they had the
audacity to fail? Everything they fought for, fought to protect and preserve, is
just wasted time because they couldn't kill enough people?" Akane snapped back.
It felt good, to be yelling again. It was comfortable.
	"Don't like it?" Angel yelled back. "Tough