My name? Call me Nabiki. Pull up a stool and have a drink with me. Your treat,
of course.

My story? No, I don't think so. My story is... painful. I'd rather not talk
about my life. I made a mistake. I was stupid and young. I tried to make up for
it. Damn, now I'm getting depressed...

I should tell you about my sister instead. Akane is younger than me by about a
year. Some people call her a hero. Some people call her a terrorist. Just a
matter of perspective, I guess. I mean, when you look at her life, it could have
been mine. It was just a matter of luck and timing.

We have something in common: it all went wrong when Ukyou showed up. Ukyou is
this... person. She's actually two people. Don't ask me to describe it. Ukyou
walked into our lives and nothing was ever the same. Ukyou has a destiny. You
can feel it. The world, it spins in her wake. It orbits around her and leaves
everything changed. Not necessarily bad, just changed.

Akane was drawn into Ukyou's world pretty quickly. She became her friend. And
though I didn't realise it, I was drawn in too. We all were. People either
became Ukyou's friends, or her enemies.

But then Akane did something that none of us did. She got to know Chris. Chris
is... you could say he's Ukyou's nemesis. The yin to her yang, so to speak.
Chris was a creature, a man who lived in the corpses of murder victims. He and
Ukyou used to be friends, but then they - pretty understandably, huh? - started
to hate each other.

Chris liked Akane. I don't know why. I don't WANT to know why. And when Akane
got burned by Ukyou, it was Chris who came to her. She became his friend. She
did so by making him promise that he would never kill anyone again. This, by the
way, worked extremely well, by which I mean it didn't work at all. Sure, Chris
never killed anyone... he just later got flunkies to do it for him.

And then Akane died.

Damn. Have you ever seen a loved one die? Now try picturing that, but this time
you get to experience the moment of death from their point of view. I swear,
telepathy is a curse. I need another drink.

...

Don't worry, there's a happy ending here. Akane was brought back to life, except
she came back... different. She was still Akane, but she had been touched,
altered in some way. She could sense the flow of destiny now. She could see the
path set out before her.

She fought it, tooth and nail. In the process, she may just have saved the
world.

Akane became her own person. Ukyou went off to England. She was trying to help
this girl Hotaru. But she failed. Hotaru died, and came back as something
twisted and hungry and hateful. Ukyou vanished, and didn't return for seven
years. Chris... Chris killed Akane's best friend by making her commit suicide.
He did this in front of her. He then offered her a place by his side while he
made the perfect possible future.

I believe she politely told him to go fuck himself.

And so here we are, seven years later. Ukyou's come back, and she's still
chasing that girl she let down in England. Chris has emerged and now he has the
power to make himself a god. And Akane? Akane's just a mortal, still.

Damn. That wasn't as cheerful a story as I had hoped. Let's wash the bad taste
out of our mouths, shall we?



                             C&A Productions Presents

                          A Work of Blatant Self-Insertion


                                   Hybrid Theory


                            Chapter 29: Faint: B Side



	It was amazing how easy it was to remain unnoticed. True, the city was
almost depopulated, and the few remaining stragglers were mostly resting from
the apocalyptic struggles of the day before. But the survivors were one and all
superhuman in some manner, many with naturally or magically enhanced senses, and
after surviving no less than three virtually all-powerful foes in the span of a
day, were understandably extremely wary.
	Angel slipped by them all. It was nearly effortless, almost
frighteningly so. Of course, she'd always been good at sneaking around. As a
child, she'd once filched the key to her cabinet where her parents had kept all
the liquor, slipped a half-full bottle into her coat, and replaced the key as
she'd sauntered out the door to greatly impress all the other kids on the
street, all without being noticed.
	Of course, the lack of any other candidates for the theft when it had
inevitably been discovered had been a flaw in her otherwise brilliant plan.
	As a martial artist, Angel had taken to stealth like a duck to water.
She understood how to make use of the space in an area, what areas would be
hidden from the eye level of a passerby, how to breathe and move evenly, calmly
and soundlessly. As she'd grown older and learned more from her many different
masters, she'd grown further in ability; learning to guess which way a person
would turn by the subtle tells of their muscles, becoming so comfortable with
using other shadows to hide her own that by now it was second nature. She'd
snuck through a chaotic Dark Kingdom with ease before her unfortunate run-in
with Ranma.
	All of that was nothing, however, compared to the mastery her void
chakra was imparting to her. She was no longer even looking for any possible
watchers, except out of ingrained habit. Walking onto a street, she was
instantly aware of everyone on it. She could tell their height to within
millimeters, whether they were excited, angry, happy or sleeping, their hair
colour, and a thousand other things, even if they were inside a partially
reconstructed building. And that was without even paying attention.
	She flitted like a ghost between the people in the ruins in Tokyo. The
glowing golden wings that hovered just away from her back slightly outshone the
morning sunlight, but it made no difference. She hid in the shadows of the
people she was slipping by, she passed soundlessly over or behind or through
them, she blended seamlessly as a chameleon into a momentary interplay of light
and shadow as eyes unknowingly slid over her. And it was so easy. Some of these
people had magical senses, yes; Second Circle effects that would pierce her
stealth like a boot smashing through a spiderweb, but they needed first to know
where to look. None of them even felt anything out of place, no-one even glanced
around with puzzlement. They might as well have been on another world.
	She hadn't even had this new applicability for her tattoos for a week.
This was only the second time she'd seriously used it, and the first time she
had done so deliberately. Not that it was any more powerful than anything else
she did, she supposed, but it was so much less... intuitive. Or maybe it was
just that she wasn't used to it.
	She reached the point where Chris had told her to wait. Any number of
good vantage points presented themselves; Angel chose a small alcove on the far
side of a half-tumbled wall. The smell here, close to the ground, was atrocious.
The ground here was only mildly damp, but Tokyo was a long way from recovering
from the horrific flood of the day before. She didn't look to see what was what
amongst the unidentifiable detritus that lay scattered around, but her head was
instantly filled with the unwanted information anyway. Not every aspect of an
enhanced void chakra was helpful.
	She took a deep breath - through her mouth - and shifted the focus of
her power. Void to water. She'd been walking since the night before, trekking
across the broken landscape of Japan. Chris had told her that due to the high
number of powerful beings in or watching Tokyo, he preferred not to risk
transporting her directly there. By now she was quite tired, but she felt the
fatigue wash away as the healing, transforming chakra flooded her body with
energy.
	If Chris could raise a mountain of earth and technology into the sky
without anyone in the world noticing, why couldn't he have just as easily put
whatever he wanted in Tokyo?
	The question had suddenly occurred to her during the long walk. She'd
tried to put it aside, but it kept flitting back at quiet moments. Angel sighed.
	She'd ask when she returned. Right now, she had a job to do.
	It had been a minute precisely. She shifted her focus back to void, and
felt her instantly, just like Chris had said she would.
	Cologne wasn't nearly as injured as she should have been. Her body
showed the signs of massive recent trauma, but they were fading swiftly. She had
undergone a remarkable recovery in the last twelve hours. This was not merely
due to water chakra, though her body fairly hummed with it, but due to more
technologically-based enhancements. Her body had been altered, rebuilt from the
genetic level. The effects of age had been reversed, obviously, but many other
subtle changes had been made as well. Angel lacked the knowledge to determine
exactly what the changes did, but their effects on her physical condition were
easy to determine. Cologne would survive many injuries that would kill an
ordinary fighter.
	But not all of them.
	She was about to look. Angel slid from her secluded spot, slipping away
before the woman's eyes brushed over it. She was looking for something, but she
was wary, too. Her mood was a mixture of surprised hopefulness and tense fear.
She suspected she was walking into a trap. Her fear wasn't just for herself,
though. She constantly glanced behind her, as if wondering if she'd been
followed. Angel could have told her that so far, she hadn't been.
	She didn't look like a threat. She didn't look like a person with a
vendetta, or even like the powerful martial artist who had humbled Angel months
ago in Stockholm. She looked like a scared young woman with old, old eyes.
	Angel hadn't pried into Chris's reasons for why Cologne had to be killed
now, though he had dismissed the woman after their encounter in France. She
hadn't wanted to know. She had wanted to go out, get away from Akane and her own
thoughts, and accomplish something concrete. She'd wanted to feel useful and
needed again, erase all the thoughts that kept flashing through her head as
unwantedly as the composition of the detritus on the ground.
	She was hesitating.
	This was stupid. Void chakra or no void chakra, Cologne had proven
herself no opponent to be trifled with. Angel had already been taught the harsh
lesson of her limits by people like her, and Ranma, and Akira. She could
outmatch anyone in raw ability in any field, but raw ability wouldn't always win
the day against greater skill and experience. Angel knew Cologne could easily
thrash even Akira in a fight; Angel's only chance was to take advantage of the
surprise of her new power, strike decisively before the woman noticed her.
	If she was discovered before she attacked, or if Cologne could call for
help, Angel would need a miracle to escape Tokyo. Every moment she delayed was
risking catastrophic failure.
	But she still hesitated.
	She slid into the shadow of a ledge just as Cologne's eyes passed above
it. Her nervous, excited hope was fading now - she was finding no trace of
whatever she was looking for. Soon she'd turn back. Angel swore at herself. What
was she doing? This was the path she'd chosen for herself. She believed in the
perfect possible future. She believed in Chris. The questions in her head were
just that, questions. But right now, she had a duty to fulfill.
	Cologne glanced backward one last time. Then she looked forward,
searching for something she missed. She opened her mouth as if to call out for
someone, and that was when Angel slipped behind her and drove her sword through
the woman's heart.

*

	Akira stepped into the hospital, and immediately wondered why she had
done so. She knew a lot about human anatomy, that was true. However, her
knowledge consisted almost solely of ways to make the body break, bleed and
explode. She looked around, taking in the walking wounded and those less
fortunate.
	Her first thought was that there were surprisingly few injuries. Then
she realised why. She closed her eyes. Those killed by Gyro had been killed very
thoroughly. Wherever the Sealing Sword had gone, it tended to leave corpses.
Then there were the millions killed in the opening actions of the battle. Plus
tens of millions more killed by Pharaoh 90.
	Akira's hand twitched. She could still feel Neherenia's neck snapping.
The feedback of the shattered spine sending a tingle up her palm. She could feel
the woman's body pressed against her own. She grimaced and staggered to the
side, feeling suddenly nauseous. Damnit. She smacked her palm against the wall.
So many people had died, and she was still focusing on that? What was wrong with
her?
	"Please don't do that."
	Akira looked around. There was a girl with blue hair there. She was
wearing a nurse's uniform, though it had been retailored so that it looked more
like a circus outfit than anything from an emergency room. It had also been
altered to show off the assets the girl mostly didn't have. It took Akira a
moment to recognise her.
	"PallaPalla?"
	"Yes, Miss Akira. But could you keep it down? The patients are trying to
sleep." The girl glanced over her shoulder at the people moving about. There
were a lot of other nurse-like uniforms. Most of them had the telltale signs of
new hybrids, though a few, like a catgirl Akira recognised, had auras that
weren't youma in the slightest.
	Akira nodded her head. Really, the hospital wasn't much. It was one of
the few buildings restored by the more industrially-inclined people here. It was
just going to serve as a temporary base, a stable and safe location for the
wounded to be taken to for treatment. Unlike the other buildings, here all of
the rubble had been cleared out and the entire first floor restored to almost
perfection. Akira had to hand it to Tethys, her people were efficient.
	"What are you doing here?" Akira asked. She wasn't sure what prompted
her to ask it. She did feel something towards the girl, and her sisters. It was
a strange sense of obligation. Akira realised she'd done something up there,
altered their destiny in some way.
	"Just trying to help..." She leaned in and whispered conspiratorially,
"But between you and me, all these injured people are kind of downers."
	Akira smiled a little. "Why hang around then?"
	"Cologne asked us to." The new girl that showed up turned out to be the
red-head of the quartet, VesVes. Akira nodded.
	"Where is she, then?" Akira frowned. "I would have thought she'd be with
Purgstall and Tethys..." Of course, Akira could see why Cologne had the four of
them here. Considering the delicate nature of the negotiations between Tethys
and Arkanphel, it was understandable that she'd want them... elsewhere.
	"She was actually helping out here," VesVes said. "Then she ran off to
chase somebody."
	Akira looked at her sharply. "Who?" Akira knew there was one person that
Cologne might be interested in enough to leave her 'family' behind to chase.
	"Some guy in a white cloak," PallaPalla supplied. She turned towards the
rest of the room. "Hey JunJun!" she screamed at the top of her lungs. "Who was
that dork Cologne was after again?"
	Akira winced. So much for peace and quiet.
	"Shut up, you idiot!" JunJun yelled back, her green hair... things
bobbing up and down as she did. "People are trying to sleep!"
	"Sorry!" PallaPalla yelled back.
	"Don't apologise to me!" JunJun roared. "Do it to them!"
	"Sorry, everyone! Go back to bleeding to death and stuff in peace now,
okay?" she yelled at them all, then winked and gave them a thumbs up.
	Akira rubbed the back of her neck and tried to look like she wasn't
involved. The other two members of the Quartet arrived shortly thereafter.
	"What did you want to know again?" JunJun said to Akira, her voice surly
as she gave the girl a half-lidded glare. Akira stared back, slightly offended.
She had saved her life and... No. Bad thoughts. Akira shook her head clear.
	"I was asking about the boy Cologne went after."
	"Oh, him." JunJun paused. "Some guy showed up, said he spotted a guy
with long black hair in the fight. White robe, thick glasses, Chinese-looking."
She shrugged. "Said he was talking about the Joketsuzoku. When Cologne heard
that, she told us to stay put and ran off."
	"Joketsuzoku? What a ridiculously undignified name." CereCere said with
a snort.
	Says the girl who calls herself an 'Amazoness', Akira thought but
didn't say. "That... sounds awfully suspicious."
	"Huh?" JunJun looked at her.
	"Well, it's obviously someone Cologne knows..." Akira nodded to herself.
"But if that's the case, why wouldn't he stop by to see her? No... something
isn't right." She narrowed her eyes. "I'm going to go find her."
	"We're coming, too!" VesVes declared.
	"I..." Akira frowned. "Whatever. Let's go."

*

	Angel realised her mistake instantly. Cologne had no awareness, no way
to react to Angel stepping behind her. But a sword sliding into her back was
quite another thing altogether. She reacted with the instinctive reflexes of a
trained warrior, jerking herself to the side to avoid the fatal blow. But Angel
had attacked slightly from the left, and thus her sword still drove through the
woman's chest. If Angel had struck again, she probably would have finished her
off, but before she could decide if it was safe to do so, Cologne had literally
leaped off the blade piercing her, twisting in mid-air to land in a crouch.
	There was a long moment of silence.
	Cologne's eyes, despite the pained grimace on her features, were bright
and sharp. They took in Angel with a single glance, and a resigned understanding
filled them. "Ahhh," she said softly. "Karma."
	The woman was clutching her chest as a bloom of red stained the white
silk cheongsam she was wearing. Her body was trembling slightly as she attempted
to stay still and hide the extent of the damage, but her efforts were in vain.
Angel could tell at a glance every bit of injury she had done to the woman, from
the smallest ruptured capillary to the lung that had very nearly been torn in
two. Terrible injuries, but not fatal yet, Angel was certain.
	What Angel wasn't so certain of was what her best option now was. How
much had Cologne's fighting ability been diminished? Could she risk a shift to
air chakra to try and finish her off? For the moment, she would be able to tell
anything Cologne tried to do before she even moved, but she'd just been reminded
that the void chakra didn't physically enhance her ability to react to what she
noticed.
	"I don't suppose telling you that I am no longer trying to destroy Chris
would make a difference at this point?" Cologne said slowly. Her voice was dry
and controlled, but Angel could hear the pain in it. She knew that the woman was
spending a great deal of energy keeping up appearances. The tactical part of
Angel's mind, the one honed by Chris and her various masters over the years,
knew this was an advantage. Cologne had no idea how much Angel knew. She was
spending most of her energy on a bluff that wasn't working. "Ah... I see not so
much," Cologne coughed.
	Angel ignored her for the moment, weighing the odds of her options. She
didn't have time to waste talking to her target. Not only did every moment raise
the chance they would be discovered, but it was giving Cologne precious moments
to heal and regain combat effectiveness. Since running wasn't an option, that
left attack, risky though it was.
	"Wait," Cologne said, shifting position slightly. "I don't know how you
got so close to me without my noticing, child. You have more abilities than I
gave you credit for. But I hope you can sense this."
	Angel switched to a defensive stance as fire chi suddenly built up in
Cologne's body. Then she blinked. That was...
	"Ah, I see you understand," Cologne chuckled. "I concede defeat, child.
I am not even attempting to heal myself. You may kill me at your pleasure. But
if you strike, I will release a flare of energy that will bring everyone in this
city running. Do you think yourself able to escape Tethys or Frederick, if they
see what you have done?"
	Angel shifted from foot to foot. She knew that Cologne was telling the
truth. She didn't think, at this point, that Cologne could convert all that fire
chi to something more offensive before Angel could strike, either. "So I guess
we have a stalemate," she said slowly. Until someone else comes along, her mind
unhelpfully added. But she could still finish the woman off before anyone else
could interfere, if it came to that.
	"So, child, have you made your decision?"
	"No," Angel admitted. This was not really going at all like it ought to.
	"Then... if you do not mind, I'm going to sit." Cologne settled back
with a grimace of pain. "And while you are deciding if I am to live or die, I
think I would like to know more about you, child."
	"I already gave my life story out yesterday, if you don't mind," Angel
growled.
	"Mmm," Cologne wheezed. Her fingers twitched and lips pursed as if she
almost wanted to pull out a pipe... which, Angel's senses informed her, she in
fact had on her person. Probably hard to smoke on only one lung, Angel reasoned.
"That will be unnecessary," she finally said. "I used all the resources I had,
both of Chronos and otherwise, to research Chris for years. I know all about
your past, girl. You were held in a Chronos facility, which was suddenly and
mysteriously destroyed with no known survivors. Since the forensic examinations
revealed that the Chronos personnel there were by and large killed by some sort
of plant-based creatures, it was written off as some remnant aragami incident,
but I think we both know better." She paused, breathing slowly and shallowly for
a moment. "Sit down, child. I told you I surrendered to you, and I meant it. If
you doubt my word, I can end this and make the point moot." Her chi flared just
the tiniest bit, not enough to make anyone more than a few feet away take notice
but more than enough to convince Angel of the woman's continuing tight control.
	Angel growled. The damn woman was bluffing her into a corner. She had to
regain at least a little bit of the initiative. "Fine," she said, suddenly
smiling. "I'll sit." She abruptly leaped, spinning over Cologne's head and
landing behind her. She relaxed back into a sitting position, gesturing broadly
with her sword so that a shadow of the blade briefly fell in front of Cologne.
"So you know about how Chris saved me from the monsters that you've been working
for for years. That's a rotten anecdote to try and convince me to disobey him."
	Cologne chuckled. She hadn't moved, but Angel could feel her tense up,
just a little bit. Nobody liked having an enemy at their back, but the woman
wasn't going to push the issue. Angel slowly shifted her focus from void to air.
Cologne would probably notice, and Angel wouldn't be able to read the subtle
tells of the woman's chi anymore, but there would still be no way for her to let
off her 'warning signal' without Angel noticing, and now she could react far
faster if Cologne tried to attack.
	"I acknowledge your point. But then, neither of us could rightly be
called saints, could we?"
	"Cut to the chase already," Angel snapped.
	"I thought you'd be used to circuitous conversation, given the company
you keep," Cologne replied, then coughed. "But it does hurt somewhat to speak.
So I'll ask you a question. I know how you met Chris. But I do not know what
drives you. Is it mere gratitude? Or something more, some greater ideal?"
	"Chris intends to empower humanity to fight off what threatens it."
	"Does he?" Cologne said noncommittally.
	"Yes," Angel replied, considering how best to phrase it without giving
away specifics of Chris's plan. "This world, this universe we were thrown into
without any safety net. Look around you. You may have won the fight yesterday,
but that's hardly any consolation to the people in Japan, is it? To say nothing
of the consequences the destruction here will have elsewhere. To say nothing of
the fact that... ZOALORD Gyro," she deliberately emphasised the title,
"destroyed half the Middle East. Hundreds of millions of people, Cologne.
The biggest disaster in history. In a single day, despite everything all you
heroes tried to do about it. And there's bigger threats out there, as I'm sure
you know."
	"It's not something I've given a lot of thought to," Cologne replied.
"But there may be something to what you say. Still, it doesn't reveal your
ideal."
	"I figured you'd realise," Angel said. "You were in France when Chris
destroyed Millennium."
	"Indeed I was. So is Chris going to save us from Galaxia and her ilk?"
	"No, not like that. Even there, he let the French do it themselves,
just... making sure the wrong people didn't profit by it."
	"And who chooses-"
	"Oh, don't even start with that," Angel interrupted. "Would you have
chosen Agito Makashima to inherit the power of any empire?"
	"Point taken." Cologne chuckled a little, then coughed again.
	Angel was feeling more comfortable now. Though she still didn't really
have a good idea on how to get out of this, at least she felt more in control of
the situation. "Chris isn't trying to rule the world, though he could. He wants
to get us to fight off our own problems, without horrible disasters like this
happening. So he's going to encourage people, let victories like that one
inspire them. He'll protect us until we're ready, then let us defeat Galaxia or
whomever by ourselves."
	"Like children," Cologne mused.
	"Yes, like children, if you want to put it that way," Angel snapped. "I
suppose you'd prefer if we were all dead, instead of our dignity theoretically
marred by someone most people won't even realise exists. Or maybe you'd prefer
if he just took over everything and killed everyone bad for us. That'd make you
feel all grown up and independent?"
	"Calm yourself," Cologne said. "I never said I disagreed with your
philosophy. You make a strong case, particularly after these recent events. I
will have to think on it. But, I wonder... is Chris truly the saviour you
declare is necessary?"
	"Who else could be?" Angel said. "If he isn't, then nobody is."
	"Is that so? What makes him so special, then?"
	"He's... the chosen one, of course!" Angel replied. "Nobody can do what
he does."
	"Mmm, so is it his power? That none are greater than him?"
	"Not just that. He's... different. Unique. He's..."
	"Perhaps," Cologne interrupted, brushing at her lips. "He is powerful,
though I know others who are powerful. He is dead yet alive, though we are all
aware of others that fit that description. He appears to come from beyond this
world, though who among us has not felt that some in the last seven years did
that? But for the sake of argument, let us say he is uniquely powerful. But that
does that make him not human, Angel?"
	"Well, why wouldn't it?" Angel snapped. "You're arguing just for the
sake of arguing. Just because you don't want to admit you're wrong."
	"Perhaps," the woman repeated. "But we met him at different times, and
my impression of him does not match yours. Do you feel he is not human, Angel?
Does he not have human wants, desires, weaknesses?"
	"Well..." Angel hesitated. "No... I mean, he cares about me, he's always
treated me well..." she trailed off. Damn it. It was that girl. That not-Link
girl. And Akane. What was that all about? He'd never acted like that before...
but that was the point. He never had. Chris shouldn't just change how he acted
because some person was around...
	"Cares about you? Oh, girl, I thought you knew better." And there her
voice regained the same sharp edge Angel had seen in her eyes. It reminded her
of Link taunting her.
	"And just what's that supposed to mean?" she growled. "Don't play games
with me."
	"How many others survived along with you, Angel, in that Chronos camp?"
Cologne said. "Actually, it's not necessary to answer. All bodies were
identified and catalogued as the prisoners, since the records were not
destroyed. All except yours, of course."
	"He saved me-"
	"Indeed he did," Cologne said. "Saved you. You, silver-haired girl with
a family history of rebellion and idealism, who had exceptional talent for
martial arts, who would prove willing to kill or die for his cause."
	"So what?" Angel retorted. "He's CHRIS. He knows things, things about
people. I've seen him tell other people's secrets the first time he met them, so
maybe he just knew about me..." she trailed off.
	She had been trained, Chris had trained her, to make educated guesses
very well.
	She'd never thought about it like this before.
	But...
	"Was the great Chris, with all his knowledge, merely lucky?" Cologne
continued relentlessly. "Did he simply stumble upon you on a routine trip to
Chronos-occupied Mexico? No, of course not. He was searching, wasn't he?"
	"Wait-"
	"You were his chosen one. You knew that, I'll wager he even told you so.
But did Chris merely find you at the last possible moment? He may know the
secrets of the heart, but he has never claimed to know the future. Was it luck?
Unlikely."
	"Shut up." But the details were coming back to her now. When she'd left
the building, the zoanoids were already dead. Link had killed them with her
monstrous plants. But that couldn't have happened in a few seconds. By the time
she had seen Chris, he must have already...
	"Chris is a consummate planner. I find it unlikely he merely stumbled
across that camp in time to save you and only you. I find it questionable that
the zoanoids there breached Chronos protocol during a time of great tension in
the area and engaged in a bloody, senseless massacre in broad daylight. Monsters
they may be, but they are not usually all such fools as that. I find it unlikely
that you merely happened to be the last child alive, Angel. But I do find it
likely that none of that would have occurred to you when you were ten years old,
Angel, merely happy to be saved, to be the chosen one of somebody who seemed
all-powerful to you-"
	"SHUT UP!" Angel roared, leaping to her feet. "You're lying!"
	"No," Cologne said calmly. "If I was, you would be easily dismissing
this. But your own memories are backing me up. Kill me if you wish, but you'll
know you're the one hiding from the truth." Angel stared at the back of her
neck, but couldn't move her sword. The woman kept talking. "I think Chris knew
where you were long before you met him. I think Chris wanted a companion whose
loyalty he could trust, who felt herself chosen for a great task. Who knows the
power of that belief better than he, after all? Those other children, those
prisoners who lacked your talents and history and special qualities, they would
only interfere in the scenario he had planned. They might give you attachments,
make you wonder why he was only interested in you. Perhaps he even delivered the
anonymous tip that led Chronos to your parents' organisation-"
	This time Angel's arm moved, and Cologne finally fell silent as she felt
the edge dig into the skin on the back of her neck. "I told you to shut up," she
hissed. "Doing any of that would have been pointless. He's not some-"
	"Pointless?" Cologne continued, infuriatingly ignoring Angel's warning.
Her knuckles turned white around the sword hilt. "For a god, yes, although I'm
certain we can both think of times Chris has allowed people to die when his
reasoning was not so soundly justified as with Agito Makashima. However, for a
man, the train of thought is clear. A child taken from her family or rescued
along with an entire camp of prisoners might be convinced of the importance of
Chris's mission, but the whole scenario lacks the mythic resonance of being the
sole survivor, doesn't it? With no attachments, having seen the brutal cruelty
of the world close up, and instantly convinced this must have happened for a
profound reason, who could expect you to do anything but follow your saviour
willingly and loyally? Indeed, to be happy to do so? To give him worship, to
hang on his every word. Not like Link, eh? I can't speak of gods, but every sane
person craves someone who will comfort them, who will reassure them that their
path is right. And the Chris I knew, a dead man forced to prey on the living to
continue his own existence, certainly seemed to be seeking out that reassurance.
Have you seen him search for it as well, Angel? Do you think he would allow
some... inconvenient people to perish for it?"
	Angel began to laugh. She couldn't help it. It was a burning that
started in the pit of her stomach and spread up. She felt her eyes were flowing
over, and the squeezed them shut, but it did no good. She felt the salty tears
reach her mouth, and that made her laugh harder.
	Now it made sense, didn't it? The girl, and Akane, and everything.
	Angel had been trained to make educated guesses very well. Except when
she didn't want to. Anyone but Chris, it would have been obvious. He loved that
girl in the tube. He loved Akane. He wanted them to love him back. He wanted to
know someone would understand and accept him, after all he'd done. Angel had
seen the same thing in a dozen different people of power, some of whom had done
the most horrific things imaginable. The desire for love, friendship, support...
even loyalty. Just something to prove someone else was on your side.
	But it had to come from an equal. Not a dog, unless you convinced
yourself a dog was as good as a person.
	Angel was just a child to him. Sure, she'd made her own decisions. She'd
thought about his ideas, about the perfect possible future, and decided she
believed in it and Chris. Meeting Ukyou and Akira had caused her to doubt,
knowing he'd lost had made her wonder, but she had always decided he was still
right. She'd come back to believing in him.
	She'd assumed he knew that.
	But his attention was already elsewhere. On an equal. Not a child.
	Angel stopped laughing. Though her whole body had shook, the hand
holding her sword remained utterly steady.
	"You're right," she said softly. "Or close enough. You're right, it
makes complete sense. But so what? What kind of hypocrite do you take me for?
I've killed... I've killed lots of people. I've stopped counting. How can I get
upset just because some more people died to make me just a little more likely to
do what I'm told? If I, if I just STOP, what does it say? What's the difference
between them and me and anyone else? You asked me for my ideal. That's what
matters. There's more dead people around us than anyone him or I or you or Link
ever killed, Cologne."
	"And he didn't stop it," she said simply.
	"You don't know that yet," Angel replied. "If he does, you'll never even
know it happened. Nobody will. Maybe he's just waiting for someone to ask him.
Maybe I will."
	"No, you won't, Angel."
	Angel looked up.

*

	Nabiki woke up and instantly regretted it. There was a small gorilla in
her head and he had begun to play bongo drums. She tried to open her eyes only
to have snakes made out of light begin to bite the inside of her eyelids. Her
mouth was dry. Her nose ached.
	Well, Nabiki hadn't had a hangover like this in... she had never really
had a hangover like this before. Oh, she had gotten drunk and regretted it in
the morning. But last night she had gotten drunk in a way that defied sense. She
was fairly certain that she had drunk her own body weight in alcohol, not
counting the liquid the alcohol was mixed with. This was physically impossible,
but what did she care about that? Yesterday she had fought a horrific dread
queen who was also a nihilistic planet the size of the moon underneath a sky
made out of blood and a green sun while a madman ripped the souls out of
everybody in Tokyo.
	The important thing here was to... to... something. There was something
you were supposed to do with a hangover. Nabiki dearly wished it was to lie on
the ground moaning in pain until the magic hangover fairy came along and made
your problems go away. Unfortunately, she was pretty sure that wasn't it.
	"Water!" she rasped, and regretted it as her ear and throat protested.
	Right, water. You were supposed to drink water.
	That sounded like it might involve getting up. Or moving. Or remaining
conscious. None of these were things Nabiki looked forward to. Damn. She was
the most powerful psychic on Earth! She had a brain that was magically evolved
or something! It wasn't supposed to... oh, fuck it.
	Nabiki managed to open her eyes. She was in... an alley. The remains of
an alley anyway. She remembered... a girl with white hair, who provided booze.
She also kept talking about her boss, and how she didn't want to go back to
work. She also said 'chuu' a lot. Other than that, and booze, Nabiki didn't
remember much.
	But then again, forgetting had been the point. Ryouga-
	Damn. Not even two minutes.
	With a groan Nabiki forced herself to her knees. She immediately began
to heave, but thankfully her stomach was empty.
	"Wow, boss, you look like shit."
	Nabiki snapped her head up. That was the plan. What she ended up doing
was sort of tilting her head randomly, squeezing her eyes shut, overbalancing
and tumbling back to the alley floor with a muffled grunt. She moaned there for
a few seconds before a hand rested on her shoulder.
	"You okay?"
	"Yang?" Nabiki asked, recognizing the voice. She opened her eye a sliver
and looked up. If that wasn't Yang, someone had stolen his hairstyle. That
seemed unlikely. He nodded.
	His brother appeared over Yang's shoulder. Yun was wearing his
traditional baseball cap and equally traditional grin. He knelt down and slipped
around his brother a bit.
	"Geez, boss, the one time you could have used bodyguards, and you leave
us behind?"
	"Not my job..." Nabiki muttered. "Bodyguards supposed to protect me..."
She trailed off.
	Yun laughed. Yang frowned but didn't say anything. "No, seriously, why
didn't you tell us you were having a giant showdown in Tokyo?"
	"Rose...?" Nabiki groaned out.
	"She..." Yang's frown deepened and he looked down. "...forgot."
	"Forgot?" Nabiki gasped.
	"Yeah, what a stupid thing!" Yun groused. "We just barely get settled in
Bangkok to help her with settling down the country and she keeps forgetting
to give us any assignments!" He threw up his hands. "At least you used to give
us busywork so we felt less useless." He slapped his knees. "And then, when
there's this big apocalyptic battle and everything, she rushes off and leaves us
behind. We had to swim here from Thailand." He pulled out his long braid and
twisted it, letting water drip to the ground. "Just got here this morning."
	"You... swam?" Nabiki looked at the water. She resisted the urge to
start wringing Yun's braid out into her mouth.
	"It was..." Yang looked up at her. His eyes narrowed. "...very cold."
	"But we're here now, boss," Yun laughed. "So if you need someone to
vomit on or something... Yang's here for you."
	"...idiot." Yang grunted.
	"Help me up," Nabiki grunted. Yang gently lifted her up to her feet. She
realised as they began to walk down the alley that it was not so much 'they'
walking as Yang doing so while allowing her the polite fiction of moving her
legs.
	"What happened?" Yang asked.
	Let's see, I ran into Ryouga at the North Pole and he's doing well
except for that whole having been alone with a nihilist all-powerful little girl
for the last few years. We hit it off well, by which I mean while I was being
tortured to death by my most hated enemy he decided to defend me but only got
even more tortured for his trouble. Oh, we defeated her, only to have Ukyou let
the bitch go for reasons she refused to talk to me about. And then an insane
madman that nearly blew up the entire City of Black Ice fixed it with a snap of
his fingers and kidnapped my sister who might be being brainwashed as we speak
but that's okay because we were too busy with the other megalomaniac who had
just blown up the entire Middle East. Then we fought him and nearly died except
we then had to fight an ancient evil vampire god-thing that forced Ukyou to use
her evil powers to save us and then we all fought a giant god-monster planet and
Akira was forced to use HER evil powers to save us and Ukyou has gone off to
fight the insane nihilist little girl who is in the centre of the soul of
everyone in the universe threatening to blow it up.
	Oh, and Ryouga still hates me.
	"A lot," Nabiki croaked.
	"Need to talk about it?" Yang asked in his usual quiet tone.
	Nabiki felt a flash of memory. Sitting against the alley wall passing
back and forth a bottle of... green... something... She remembered the white-
haired girl asking Nabiki why she was being so mopey. "After all," Nabiki
remembered her saying. "You have these magic psychic powers, chuu. Just MAKE him
love you."
	Nabiki didn't remember how she responded, but given the surge of disgust
and anger rising up in her she figured it wasn't agreement.
	"Whoa," Yun moaned, placing a hand against the wall. "Ow, my head." He
clutched it. Nabiki looked at him. Yang cleared his voice.
	"You..." He closed his mouth and pursed his lips."...projected."
	Nabiki sighed. "Being a psychic with a hangover sucks," she muttered.
	"I'll say..." Yun moaned.
	"For pretty much everyone," Nabiki said. "How much have I... projected?"
	"Let's just say I learned more about your sex life in the last few
minutes than in the last five years," Yun pointed out.
	Yang stared at him. "She didn't HAVE a sex life."
	"I know! Like all my fantasies were just ruined AND I have a headache."
	"You two..." Nabiki looked around. They had arrived at one of the
stations set up by the survivors of the fight. There were a few people here, and
they looked over idly but none of them were paying much attention. There had
been a lot of partying last night. The kind of unrestrained revel that only the
survivors of such a disaster could participate in. "...keep that to yourselves."
	"My lips are sealed," Yun promised. Yang smiled and nodded. He put her
down in one of the scavenged chairs before leaving to fetch her something.
"So... struck out, huh?"
	"You make it sound so petty," Nabiki hissed. "It's only the... the
moment I've been working towards for seven years. Everything I did, all the
scheming... just so that I could prove to him that I've changed.
	"And it didn't work."
	"Yeah, that sucks," Yun mused, leaning back and wringing out his hair
some more.
	"What, that's it?" Nabiki asked.
	"Who needs that idiot anyway?" Nabiki suddenly remembered the white-
haired girl saying. The girl had leaned in, smiling in a devious manner. "Let's
just leave this place. Go pick up some strippers or something. What you need, is
a good bout of break-up sex, chuu!"
	Nabiki shivered. She noticed Yun was as well. "Oh... sorry," Nabiki
said.
	"Gah, not that you aren't hot or anything, boss, but wasn't that girl
you were with, like, twelve? That's probably illegal even in Japan, you know."
	"Thanks for the tip," Nabiki said dryly. She frowned and looked down.
The last thing she wanted was to think about sex. That was why she hadn't sought
out Ranma last night. The fact was, she had intended to get brain-meltingly
drunk and... and Ranma was Ranma. There had been something between them, these
last few weeks. She wasn't certain where it came from, and she was certain it
wasn't him doing anything... it was just there. She would never think of him
that way. But... two young adults, scared and alone and drunk and...
	Yeah. That could have been a mess.
	So Nabiki had wandered the city, looking for someone to drink with.
Someone who she could safely feel wasn't going to hit on her, and who she could
also stand. She'd been forced to settle on some white-haired kid she didn't
recognise from Eve but...
	"If he doesn't appreciate what you've done, chuu, then screw him." The
girl's smile glittered in the darkness. "It isn't worth it, being good.
Chuchuchu. Just stop thinking about what other people think!"
	"Did you...?" she looked up at Yun. He shook his head. Well, her control
was coming back. But Nabiki frowned.
	That girl, what she could remember. She had reminded Nabiki a lot of...
herself. Before she had made her wish. Before she had... seen what she had done
to Ryouga. Caring about nothing but her own skin and her own pleasure. And...
Nabiki patted her pants. That bitch had stolen her wallet! Oh, just great. Just
another thing the old Nabiki would have done.
	Except she had changed! She wasn't that person anymore. She had fought
to save the world. She had risked her life! How much more did Ryouga want?
	"He..." Yang said, sticking a glass of water out to her. She looked up
at him, mortified. He met her gaze, letting her know she had indeed projected
the last few thoughts to him. "...doesn't want anything from you."
	"He doesn't?" Nabiki took a long drink. "I suppose you're right."
	"So, the question you got to ask yourself, boss..." Yun said, as he
stood up. "Did you do all that to win him back?" He looked at her and tossed
his braid over his shoulder. "Or did you do it... because it's right?"
	With a smile and a wave he left, his twin brother walking out behind
him. Nabiki was left alone.
	She looked at the glass in her hand. She thought back to everything that
had happened. All the near-death fights... and all the laughter. The latter was
much less common than the former. But she remembered watching Ukyou and Akira
dance and just smiling to herself. She remembered watching Ranma and Minako
embrace on the dock. Little moments.
	Little moments worth more than all the money in the world.
	She hissed and took a drink. Damn hangover was filling her head with
crazy thoughts. Still...
	She looked around at the devastation around her. The shattered shells of
buildings. The empty streets. The people there, desperately trying to look like
they had won a victory. This had been her home. Why was she letting this
continue? Why was she not fixing this?
	What, did she need to save it for... for a bigger disaster? Anything
bigger than this and she wouldn't be around afterward. Shaking her head at
herself, she pulled the Wishbringer from its sheath. She hesitated. This was it.
One last time. She cleared her throat and took another drink. Better make this
count.
	"I wish..."

*

	JunJun wanted to jump forward. She wanted to kick that white-haired
tramp in the face and get her away from Cologne. But the moment the five of them
had walked around the corner to see Cologne at the mercy of some tattooed freak-
girl, Akira had stopped in place and thrown out her hand in front of the
quartet. Somehow that one gesture had stopped the four of them from rushing
forward with violent intent.
	Which JunJun had to admit was probably a good thing, considering they
had no more powers.
	Instead the white-haired girl had looked up as Akira had spoken. She had
been crying and laughing at the same time, the tears running down along the
tracks of her glowing facial tattoos. Lightning and rain, JunJun thought
suddenly, struck by the imagery.
	"Akira..." she said. There was a sullen resignation in her tone.
	"Angel, you don't want to do this," Akira said, stepping away from the
quartet.
	"Don't!" Angel warned. Her blade shifted and a red drop appeared along
Cologne's neck. She hissed. VesVes snarled and stepped forward.
	"NO!" Cologne gasped. "Girls, stay back!"
	Akira held up her hands and took a step back. "Okay, let's just stay
calm..."
	"CALM!" Angel snapped. She gasped and held in a sob. "Damn you! I don't
want to be calm!" Akira didn't respond. JunJun held her tongue, as did the rest
of her sisters. Cologne cleared her throat, painfully. JunJun did not fail to
see the red stain spreading across her chest. Her hands clenched into fists.
	"It's already too late, child. You've lost. Please..." Cologne sighed.
"This city has seen enough bloodshed."
	"Maybe it hasn't," Angel said with a growl. "Maybe there's going to be
at least one more person."
	"So, is that your solution?" Akira said slowly.
	"Shut up, Akira," Angel snarled.
	"Go ahead and do it then, Angel." Akira lowered her hand and relaxed her
stance. "Kill Cologne."
	"What?!" CereCere screamed.
	"No, don't listen to her!" PallaPalla shouted.
	Angel stared at Akira. Her fingers tightened on the hilt of her sword.
Akira just stared back.
	"Cologne, drop the flare," Akira said.
	"But..." Cologne blinked.
	"Just do it."
	"What are you..." Angel trailed off.
	"It's just us now, Angel," Akira said softly. "Just the seven of us. No
angry zoalords or dark queens or anyone else. Just you and me and them." Akira
stepped forward again. Angel tensed. "And I'm not going to kill you."
	"Then I can just kill her," Angel said, gritting her teeth. Tears still
ran down her face.
	"You can do that," Akira agreed. "You can make that choice. Or you can
not do it. You can choose not to kill her."
	"I can't do that!" Angel shouted, her voice cracking.
	"Yes you can. It's easy. You just... put down the sword." Akira crouched
and gestured to the ground.
	"It's not that simple," Angel protested.
	"Why not?" Akira looked up at her.
	"I..." Angel opened and closed her mouth a few times. "It has to be,"
she said finally. "It has to! All the people I've killed, all the blood I've
shed! IT HAS TO MEAN SOMETHING!" She stood up, pulling Cologne with her. "I've
gone too far, Akira. There's no going back!"
	"Bullshit!" Akira roared, so ferociously JunJun found herself
involuntarily taking a step back.
	"There's no such thing as a point of no return," Akira said as she rose
to her feet again. "As long as we're alive, there is always a chance to make a
different choice. There is always a moment when we can look at our life and
decide to change it. There is always the choice. And it's now. This second. This
second and every other moment of your life." Akira held out her hand. "This is
when we make the choice."
	"I wish I lived in your world, Akira," Angel said, her voice full of
regret. "But I don't. I live in the real world. I killed people, Akira. I killed
them all. I butchered them for him. I killed them for no other reason than that
Chris told me they had to die. I killed my best friend!" she screamed. "And what
are you saying, that I can just make that all go away? That if I really,
sincerely say I'm sorry then I'm not suddenly a murderer?" Angel was
shaking. "I've killed more people than most serial killers," she whispered.
	"Angel..." Akira frowned and sighed. "You were a child-"
	"A child?" Angel cut her off, her face hardening. "Is that it? I'm just
too stupid to realise that I'm evil, is that it?"
	"I didn't mean..."
	"Yes you did," Angel snarled. "Just stupid kid Angel, too naive to
see what she is doing. Isn't that right, Akira?"
	JunJun had to do something. She couldn't just stand there watching. She
wasn't very good with all this talking. In fact, she had never liked it one bit.
But even she could see things were taking a dangerous turn. So she took a deep
breath and stepped forward.
	"I don't want to grow up," JunJun said, much more softly than she had
intended. "I never did. Because growing up is scary. It means that you have to
make hard decisions, and sometimes you make the wrong ones." She looked off to
the side. Her sisters were glancing at her and then back to Cologne. "Once, I
made a deal with a very powerful woman and she let me stay a child forever, and
never grow up. It was just like you. I could just let someone else decide what
was right and wrong for me."
	"And we were happy," CereCere stepped in smoothly, picking up the line
of thought. "Sometimes we hurt people. Sometimes we did terrible things for this
woman as part of our deal." She looked at her hand. "Sometimes we questioned it.
But whenever we did, we went to her. And she spoke so... beautifully." She
looked up at the sky, wistfully. "She told us beautiful things, and they made us
feel better. No matter how much we doubted, she just managed to keep us feeling
like innocent children for a long, long time."
	"But then we lost her," VesVes slipped into the conversation. "And we
had to live on our own. We tried to replace her, with Cologne and the old man...
but it wasn't the same." VesVes looked down, her cheeks darkening. "I... the
first time we met you, I accidentally killed a bunch of people. I collapsed that
roof on all those people who were just there to watch you fight. I... I hadn't
even thought about them. But Mr. Purgstall did. He... he told me it was wrong.
I..." She trailed off. "I... I've never been unable to sleep before that day.
When he just told me that I had killed all those people, and that they would
never be able to laugh or cry or sing or do anything else ever again..." Her
voice began to hitch. "I..." She clenched her fists. "I..."
	CereCere wrapped her arms around VesVes. JunJun looked away. She hadn't
done it herself, but she had also thought about it a few times. Before today,
she had just sort of... forgotten about it. She had pushed it away. The other
three hadn't seemed affected by the old man's speech to them about the reality
of death. She had thought she was a freak, and just forgotten about it. She
looked at PallaPalla. In fact, everyone was looking at the blue-haired girl. She
looked so young, even compared to her sisters. She took a step forward.
	"Please don't kill my Mama."
	Angel looked at the blue-haired girl for a long moment. Then, without
fanfare, she pulled the blade away from Cologne's neck and dropped it to the
ground. It clattered against the cracked pavement. Akira smiled. Cologne sighed
in relief. The Amazoness Quartet cheered.
	Angel fell to her knees.
	PallaPalla snapped her head around, looking back towards the heart of
the city. A moment later, JunJun felt it. She may have lost her powers, but she
recognised magic when she felt it. To her surprise, Cologne's eyes widened as
well. Whatever it was, it was powerful enough that even dabblers like Cologne
could feel it at this distance. Then JunJun felt it crest outward, and for a
moment the world dissolved away under a torrent of pure power.
	When her senses returned JunJun was kneeling in the centre of the
street... which was whole again. There were no cracks in it. The buildings rose
up on either side, pristine and undamaged. There was a noise all around them and
it took JunJun a moment to realise that it was people. Hundreds of them,
thousands of them...
	She rose to her feet. The city was... alive. Akira was staring around,
her mouth agape. Cologne rose to her feet as well, the blood on her dress having
vanished. Angel blinked.
	"I'm fairly certain I didn't do that," Angel said, breaking the silence.
	For some reason, JunJun found that intensely funny. She broke out
laughing, not even trying to hold it back. Her sisters joined her a few seconds
later, after they got over their surprise. Akira just stared around a bit.
	"Nabiki..." she whispered.
	"She fixed it?" VesVes asked.
	"Yeah..." Akira said, but she was frowning. "Still..."
	Angel chuckled dryly. "So what now, Akira?" She slowly rose to her feet.
"I... I can't go back to Chris, can I?"
	"I..." Akira shook off her distraction. "No. I guess you can't."
	"I can't fight him, Akira," she said. "I can't help you..."
	"I don't think we're going to fight Chris," Akira said. "I'm more
worried about-"
	"ME!"
	JunJun was certain she saw the woman walk up behind Akira. She had seen
her detach from the crowd and walk forward on tip-toe. She had recognised her as
the same not-right girl who had hurt the old man. She had known that she was up
to something bad, but she hadn't reacted. She hadn't even wondered what was
happening until the woman sucker-punched Akira so hard the girl went flying into
and through a building, vanishing from sight behind a cloud of expanding glass
shards and dust.
	The crowd cried out in surprise and shock, diving for cover from the
sudden explosion. JunJun leapt to her feet. VesVes dived at the girl. Only she
wasn't there anymore, she was behind Cologne now, holding the woman in place by
the shoulders.
	"Kalia!" Angel gasped.
	"You made a bad choice, Angel," Kalia said, her smile widening in a way
that almost distorted her entire face. "But that's okay. I call do-over."
	Angel stumbled back a step-
	JunJun cried out in horror as Cologne's choked gasp brought her
attention back to the situation at hand. Angel was stepping backward, her eyes
red and tears on her cheeks. She was screaming at them. Blood fell from her
blade. Cologne slumped to her knees. There was a neat hole where her heart
should have been.
	They had been distracted. Why had she let the restoration of Tokyo take
their eyes off Cologne?	JunJun took in a deep breath-
	-and screamed.
	Angel's eyes were wide. Cologne tried to gasp, but only a wet choking
sound came out. She began to teeter over. Angel looked down at her hands, which
were empty. Her sword was still where she had dropped it, untouched by the blood
flowing from Cologne's wound. Angel made a sound that was both meaningless and
filled with confusion and horror.
	"I told you what would happen to you," Kalia sneered, grabbing Cologne's
arm again to stop her from moving. "Nobody tries to hurt Chris." Her eyes
narrowed. "Nobody," she repeated in a deadly cold tone. Her hand reached up,
hovering over the wound in Cologne's heart. "Say hello to hell, you worthless
old hag!"

*

	So much can happen between one breath and the next.
	A battle can be won or lost in that instant. An idea can spring to mind
that will change the world. You can first see the face of the person you'll love
for the rest of your life. You can say the words that will cut you off from
someone you cared for forever.
	You can be turned into a murderer.
	"Don't flatter me, little Angel. I'm far too late for that." Angel could
only nod at the truth of the words. Kalia grinned. She was also shouting, and
doing something around Cologne. But all of that was far away, happening to
someone else. Kalia was also whispering, and her words came directly to Angel's
ears.
	"You were so right, and you let them convince you you were wrong. Stupid
girl. There's no going back for you. Do you remember Dail, little Angel? Do you
remember the zoanoid, the commander of the camp where you were captured, little
orphan? He was going to torture you to death, and when Chris gave you the
chance, you killed him for it. Good. He deserved it.
	"You are worse than him. You have killed more people than he could have
dreamed of. You've left more families broken. You've taken the kindness of
people who trusted you and spit on it. In fact, you've never done anything else,
have you, little Angel? You betrayed Akira, and you tried to kill her. Katsuhito
and Washuu and Rei and Mihoshi took you in, and you repaid them with a
treacherous, cowardly murder and ran off in the night. You took what Katsuhito
taught you and turned it to monstrous ends. And now he's dead, and I've ripped
apart his soul. He would never even have been involved with Chris if you hadn't
forced him. He could still be alive. Rei is right to hate you. You two are the
only survivors of that time, do you realise that? That house lies empty now,
nothing left but blood and memories. And it's your fault."
	"You're right," Angel said. "But I thought-"
	Kalia sneered. "You thought you'd found something to believe in? But now
you've even turned on that. What life is left for you, Angel? What evil can you
oppose that's even greater than your own? Or will you face punishment instead?
Will you seek out the families in France you bereaved and say 'Yes, I killed
them', and ask for their justice? It will never be enough. You will never find
them all. You didn't even know the names of everyone you slaughtered. You just
knew it was for Chris. And now you've turned even on him. You are nothing but
murder and betrayal. And nobody forced you to do a single bit of it. It's you.
All you. Nothing but you."
	"I didn't choose to kill Cologne."
	The not-girl cackled. "Yes you did. Don't you remember?"
	"Yes, I remember." She had... she couldn't face it. She couldn't admit
that Chris had been wrong, destroy everything she'd built up. She knew, no
matter what Akira said, if she killed Cologne she wouldn't leave Tokyo alive.
Zoalord Purgstall, if no-one else, would see to that. It would be a quick death.
Clean. She wouldn't have to betray herself.
	And all it would take is a single breath. A single strike. She'd done it
a... a...
	How many times?
	A hundred? No, more than that.
	A thousand?
	It would have been so easy. Just to act, not think, for one moment. And
then to know there was no going back. No escape. No reason to think any longer.
It WAS so easy. It had been so easy...
	"That isn't what I did," Angel said. "That isn't..."
	"Isn't it?" Kalia laughed. "Then why do you remember doing it?"
	"You did it-"
	"Which did you do? Which is reality? You're a smart girl, Angel. Turning
against everything you've believed in or killing one more person so you don't
have to make the really hard choices... What do you think the Angel we all know
and love would do?"
	"...I don't know."
	"It doesn't matter," Kalia laughed and clapped her hands, despite the
fact that they were already holding somebody.   "Either way you're a traitor to
the people who trusted you. Just like always. Either way you're a murderer. Just
like always. Either way you're a coward - whoops! Time's almost up."
	Something intruded between Angel and Kalia. It was an object. A fist,
Angel realised dimly after a moment, covered by a black glove. It was strange,
because up until then, the only truly real things had been the two of them. But
now the fist had intruded and it was... reestablishing the outside universe,
reality flowing from it as if it was the centre of a reverse vortex. Suddenly,
time was flowing again, first one one part of the street, then the next.
Suddenly, they were surrounded by people, some screaming, some running, some
staring in horror. A few of them were increasingly recognisable. A sword lay at
Angel's feet.
	"If I were you, I'd kill myself," a Kalia sneered to her.
	"Nobody tries to hurt Chris," a Kalia said to someone else.
	"But I'd never be you. I'm faithful to Daddy always!" Kalia said, her
tone happy.
	"Nobody," another Kalia said, her voice cold as ice. Angel suddenly
realised it was Cologne the not-girl was holding.
	"If I see you again, I'm going to eat your soul." Kalia smiled.
	"Say hello to hell, you worthless old hag!" Kalia snarled.
	Then Akira was there. It was her fist that Angel had seen. All of
reality had just reasserted itself when it crashed into Kalia's face. Suddenly
Kalia was only snarling, not happy. And then, just as suddenly, her face nearly
caved in. She flew backwards, smashing into a fire hydrant and causing a plume
of water to erupt across the street. Akira was already stepping forward to
follow her when Cologne began to topple.
	Akira turned and grabbed Cologne, placing her hand over the woman's
heart. Blue light pulsed from her hands.
	"Heheh..." Kalia giggled. "Bad choice, Ahura Mazda!" she called,
floating up over the waterspout.
	"You..." Akira snarled, her voice full of malice.
	"Don't shoot the messenger," Kalia said, waving her finger. "Chris said
she had to die, and that Angel had to kill her. I was just supervising."
	"You psychotic..." Akira growled, closing her eyes and releasing
another pulse of energy into Cologne.
	Angel's knees buckled under her. Her mouth was dry. She couldn't
breathe. She could see Cologne, staring up at Akira. Her eyes said what Angel
and Akira already knew - that Akira's efforts were futile.
	"I bet you really want to kill me," Kalia said, floating backward.
"Well, you can't do it as you are now." She giggled again. "So, once you know
what to do, come and find me, Ahura Mazda!" She waved and stuck out her tongue
before vanishing in a flare of light that did not belong to her.
	Akira tensed up. Her eyes shut and she began to pull in more energy.
Then Cologne grabbed her wrist.
	"Y-you'll need that..." she said, her voice coming out in a gurgle.
	"No!" one of the girls screamed. They all rushed up to her. The smallest
was just staring at the gaping wound in Cologne's chest with wide eyes. The red-
haired girl was the one who had shouted angrily. "We could fix this if we had
our powers!" she yelled, and then the anger seemed to drain out of her. She
grabbed Cologne's arm and her eyes filled. "This would be so ea-" her voice
hitched, "...so easy, if... if we just had our powers!"
	"Girls, please, take care of Frederick... he needs you, as much as you
need..." Cologne coughed, tried to regain her voice, failed. Then, with a long
sigh she slumped back. Her eyes lost their focus.
	"Mama..." PallaPalla said.
	"No!" CereCere screamed, throwing herself over the woman. "It was all
going to be okay! It was all going to be okay! It was all, all going to, it was,
was going to be..." She choked off.
	"COLOGNE!" VesVes screamed.
	JunJun just cried.
	Angel looked at her sword. It was still clean, which it had no right
being. The sun gleamed almost mockingly on the polished blade. She'd felt it
slide into Cologne. Once before, and once after...
	"I killed her," she whispered. What HAD she done? And did it matter,
anyway? Maybe Kalia was right. Maybe...
	"It wasn't you," Akira said, her voice hoarse. "Kalia... changed
you. She made you do it."
	Angel stared at her. She wanted to explain how Akira was wrong, but
couldn't find the words. "No," she finally said. "I remember everything."
	"It's..." Akira trailed off. She looked away.
	"NO!" VesVes screamed again, but this time at Angel. Angel was sent
sprawling on her back by the girl's surprisingly strong punch. The girl stood
over her, firsts clenched, tears streaking down her face. "I won't forgive you!
I'll pay you back for this!"
	All the girls had turned to her now. None of their expressions were
forgiving. "We trusted you," PallaPalla said, stepping forward. She was still
crying, but she was angry as well. Not a childish rage, but a deeper, colder
anger. "That was you. You can't say it wasn't you!"
	"That's right!" CereCere snapped. She drew herself up from the body, and
pointed accusingly at Angel. Her red-rimmed eyes were flashing with hate. "She
couldn't have made you do that if it wasn't in you to do it. That was YOU, not
her!"
	"Stop it, all of you," Akira said. "I realise how you feel, but this
isn't going to help-"
	"No," Angel said, cutting her off. She sat up, her cheek still aching
from where VesVes had hit her. "They're right, Akira. I did this. It was in me
to do it. I remember it perfectly. It wasn't someone invading me. It was ME."
	"If you let her go with you, she'll probably just kill you too!"
CereCere snarled.
	"That's ridiculous!" Akira snapped.
	"No it's not," Angel said softly. "You know better than anyone that I
could have killed you, Akira. You think I won't be used against you? It'd be the
easiest thing in the world for Kalia." She turned her head away, not wanting to
look Akira in the eyes. "That's what I was raised to be. Just because I don't
want to kill for him doesn't mean I won't. Hell, I didn't want to kill Rose. But
I did. I didn't want to kill those people in France. But I did. I didn't..." she
broke off. "I can't stop myself. You have to stop me, Akira."
	Akira paled. "Don't be stupid."
	"You can't trust her!" CereCere snapped. "If you won't do it... we
will!"
	"No!" PallaPalla gasped. "Mr. Purgstall-"
	"You know he'd do the same thing!" VesVes said. "For us, or for... C...
you know he'd do it!" She tossed a glance back at JunJun. "What are you doing?
Back us up here!"
	All three of the girls glanced behind them. The last, the green-haired
one, had hung back with an unreadable expression for the last few moments.
Abruptly, however, her expression firmed. Her eyes were red-rimmed, but her face
and posture were angry. She stomped forward, shoving past the others until she
was face to face with Angel. Her green hair bobs shook comically as she came to
a halt.
	"You..." she said after a moment. "You make me SO MAD."
	Angel stared up at her blankly. The absurdity of it - a girl who looked
no older than twelve, with that ridiculous hair and costume saying something
like that - left her speechless.
	"You know why?" JunJun continued. Angel silently shook her head. "I want
to be angry. I want to hurt you, like they want to hurt you. I want to hurt you
for what you did. But I can't, because everytime I started to think that way, I
remembered what I said to you, about growing up and hard choices. Hating you is
one of those easy choices." She paused. "I want to forgive you, I want to say
'you didn't really do it'. But I can't do that either, because you're right. You
could have done it. You did other things, lots of bad things, and I just can't
forgive you that easily. I guess I'm not grown-up enough to do that. So I
couldn't figure out what to do, and it made me mad."
	Without warning, she grabbed Angel by the lapels of her jacket. Angel
was jerked half-upright as the girl hauled her up - she was stronger than she
looked. JunJun continued talking very quietly. "And then I looked at you, and
you made me even more mad. You make me mad because you were just sitting there,
and I could tell you were giving up. And maybe I don't know if I can forgive you
for everything else, but I KNOW I can't forgive you if you give up, because if
you do, you're letting that girl win!"
	"Y-you mean Kalia?" Angel said, but the green-haired girl didn't reply
for a moment. She licked her lips as if she was thinking of something, and again
Angel just hung there, unsure of what to do.
	"Cologne did bad things, too," JunJun said suddenly. Her voice almost
cracked on the name, but her eyes were hard and focused again. "She did bad
things to us. She did bad things to Mr. Purgstall. She did bad things to
herself. And she gave up too. But you know what? She kept going and she found
something else. You know what I didn't tell you about Neherenia before? She was
someone who had lots, but there was something that was more precious to her than
anything else. When she lost that, she lost everything. She hid away so she'd
never have to face it. I thought everyone did that. I thought that was all you
could do. You just went on. But Cologne didn't do that. She found something new.
She said so. She found something new to live for."
	Angel turned her head to the side. She couldn't meet the girl's gaze
anymore. "But I can't just-"
	"Awwww, damn it!" JunJun shouted. "I hate this!" Startled, Angel looked
back up. The girl was crying again; she let Angel slump back to the ground and
furiously wiped the tears from her face with the back of a hand. "I hate
this," she repeated. "This isn't me. All this talking, it just isn't... Look,
just stop it. Stop it. I'm not telling you to find something else. I don't know
you or what's important to you. But I know something - if you give up, if you
just stay here or die or whatever, you're being stupid. You're just letting that
not-girl hurt you more."
	"What else can I do!" Angel burst out. "I'm a killer! That's all I've
ever been! Anytime she wants, she'll just-" She cut off. What was she doing,
yelling at a kid? Whose mother she had just killed, at that.
	"You're wrong!" JunJun said just as fiercely. "You're so stupid. You're
so caught up in what you've DONE. Who cares?"
	"But you said-"
	"I don't know you!" JunJun roared. "I can be mad at you for what you do
all I want! But you know you. If you don't know if it's you who would have
killed Cologne, why don't YOU ask yourself who I'm talking to - the you who
wanted to kill Cologne, or the you who didn't?" Angel stared as JunJun grabbed
her by the collar again. "That not-girl can change what you DO. She can find
another you that does what she wants. But she can't change who you ARE. Don't
you get it? She can't break what you are as a person unless you let her. It's
you who decides if you're the kind of person who just sits down and cries
because someone hurts them." She let Angel go and stood back, rubbing a hand
across her eyes and then ungracefully wiping her nose. "This isn't who I am. I
can't go fight her, so I'm gonna see if there's still hurt people at the
hospital who need help, and go find Mr. Purgstall." She turned, looking at the
body, and though Angel couldn't see her face, her posture straightened. "C'mon,
guys. We should go."
	"N-no fair!" PallaPalla said. "You got to give the cool speech again!
All by yourself!"
	"I didn't want it!" JunJun growled.
	"I'm just kidding," PallaPalla said with a little laugh. She was still
teary, but her cold, dangerous anger had vanished. She looked over at Angel, but
didn't say anything. Slowly, the other two turned away as well. They gathered
around Cologne. CereCere gently closed the woman's eyes.
	"And to think I came to stop you," Akira said. "I should have just sent
them." She smiled, but it was that preculiar tiny little sad smile of hers.
Angel remembered that smile; Akira had always had it whenever she talked about
Ukyou. "Are you going to be all right, Angel?" She extended a hand.
	Angel looked down. "I dunno." Akira paused uncertainly, then Angel
looked up and smiled back at her. "That's something I'm going to wait till
tomorrow to find out. But for right now..." She grasped Akira's hand, and let
herself be pulled to her feet. "...I was wondering if you wanted some help with
a certain little monster."

*

	Purgstall did not rub his temples. He did not produce a blast of
lightning that would vapourise everything in a fifty meter radius, either. Both
of these things were very tempting ideas, but probably wouldn't be very
productive. Instead, he decided to get up and grab a drink.
	Tethys had actually been able to produce quite a serviceable conference
room on such short notice. The entire structure was constructed merely out of
glimmering ice, yet was undeniably elegant. She had also provided food;
largely dishes that involved more water than normal, true, but she had an
impressive ability to just will such things into existence. In a way, Purgstall
found that ability far more intimidating than her combat prowess. He had seen
beings with the ability to match (or exceed) Tethys' destructive powers. But he
had yet to meet a being who could create like she did. With her powers, she
could rebuild Tokyo in a week.
	"A staged withdrawal of Chronos resources is the only logical solution,"
Arkanphel said. "And that can not begin until after I have the Jurai
biotechnology."
	"What guarantee do I have that your staged withdrawal won't turn into a
staged invasion the moment I turn over the Jurai ship to you?"
	"You have my word," Arkanphel snapped. He had assumed his battle-form
for this negotiation. The golden warrior form looked angelic, in an alien way.
It fairly radiated power. More than either Purgstall or Tethys could produce. A
few weeks ago Purgstall might have believed that he had assumed that form as a
show of his vast might.
	Now he knew better. Arkanphel was in that form because he was afraid. He
was here on Tethys' territory. He wanted to be ready in case she tried anything.
Purgstall stood next to the table of refreshments as he considered his ex-
master.
	Oh, how quickly the mighty fall in our minds, he thought to himself.
Until recently, he would never have dared to question Arkanphel's motives or his
purpose. He would have not seen the ultimate zoalord's shifting eyes or his
uneasy posture. If he had seen them, he would have interpreted them differently.
Whenever he looked at the man now, it was like looking at a completely different
person from the one he had served faithfully for centuries.
	Except it wasn't. It was Purgstall who had changed. He smiled at the
bitter irony of it all. What was he now? His life had been defined by Chronos.
When he had thrown in his lot with the motley band, he honestly hadn't expected
to survive. Now, now he would have to forge a new life for Cologne and the
girls.
	He looked out the window at the devastation. Tethys had made certain
that there was a nice panoramic view of the fallen city. Perhaps she wanted to
remind Arkanphel of what kind of power he was up against, since she had caused
much of the destruction. Or perhaps she wished to remind herself what was at
stake. How much everyone had to lose by drawing this into a war that nobody
really wanted.
	He considered the ruined city, the ruined country, for a few moments. He
had been in charge of it, and had ruled it with what he still believed was an
even hand. He did not regret his actions. He believed that the steps he had
taken were largely just, even if they had been commanded by a man who was
unjust. He had helped rebuild this country after the last devastating battle and
environmental collapse. He had learned to love it.
	That was why he had been chosen to mediate the talks between Arkanphel
and Tethys. The American fleet was also parked off the coast, and that Yamazaki
girl was sitting nearby, throwing in her two cents every now and then. None of
the three powers sitting at the table could be considered his allies, but none
of them could think of anyone else they trusted not to betray them, nor who had
the experience to handle these kinds of negotiations.
	"We don't have to rush into this," Purgstall suddenly pointed out. He
took a drink of his coffee, enjoying the slight bitterness. The three of them
looked at him. "The exact mechanics of the treaty is something that can be
hammered out by lawyers. They love to do that. We'll have them argue for a few
weeks over the definitions of words like 'are' and 'henceforth' and once they
are all satisfied that the documents make everyone equally angry, you can all
review and sign it."
	He placed the cup down. "The important thing here is that we come to a
decision as to what form that treaty will take." He looked at Arkanphel and
Tethys in turn. "Earth can not afford another war. Period. We have to put an end
to the fighting, at least for a time."
	"I agree..." Arkanphel waved his hand. "And I couldn't care less. This
planet is nothing more than a stepping stone. If this 'treeship' is everything
it is claimed to be, I will be able to move off planet to humanity's true
birthplace soon enough." He looked at Tethys. "However, I plan on bringing my
armies with me, and that means I will need time."
	"What you're forgetting is that those armies will strip resources from
Earth," Sakura said, standing up and banging her hands into the table.
"Resources we can't afford to lose! The planet itself is reeling after you lost
control of your minion."
	"They are mine by right of conquest," Arkanphel informed her coolly.
	"Are you forgetting which of us has a fleet full of highly trained
fighters sitting outside?" Sakura snarled.
	"Are you forgetting which of us-"
	"Enough!" Purgstall shouted. "This is exactly what we need to avoid!" He
smashed his fist into the table, causing the ice to quiver. Tethys frowned and
placed her palm on the surface, stabilising it.
	"There are a large number of expatriates in America," Sakura pointed
out. "And they will not like hearing that Chronos is going to strip their
homelands raw, even as they are abandoning them."
	"Perhaps a more staggered approach has merit, then," Tethys mused. "If
Chronos forces leave Earth over the course of say... a decade, they will have
more time to develop resources they will need." She nodded. "I would also be
willing to assist them in setting up stations on the other planets."
	Everyone looked at her in surprise. "The ice within Mars, and on Io is
just more water. Despite what modern science says, there are a lot of untapped
resources on the planets out there. The Moon Kingdom spanned the solar system.
Entire ecosystems full of flora and fauna that died out when the Silver
Millennium collapsed... but that have since decayed into more useful resources."
	"Oil?" Sakura asked in astonishment. "There's oil on other planets?"
	"With suitable processing, yes; a surprising amount, according to my
research. Also large quantities of rare metals and elements. The Silver
Millennium could manufacture materials out of raw mana and forge types of matter
that we can't dream of now. All of that is out there, buried under ten thousand
years of debris, but easily mined and salvaged if you know where to look."
	"And you know where to look?" Purgstall asked.
	"Of course," Tethys smiled.
	"Very well," Arkanphel said. "Chronos will agree to non-aggression for
now. You will help us develop these extraplanetary colonies for our fleet
construction, and in exhange we shall leave terrestrial resources untouched." He
paused. "Chronos will retain control over the areas it currently administers. We
will cease hostile actions in Europe, America and... on these devastated
islands." He stood up. "Then you will turn over the Jurai ships for us to study
and replicate. The rest..." he turned to Purgstall and sneered, just a little.
"...I will leave to lawyers."
	Purgstall didn't let the hurt show on his features. It should not have
hurt. It was a minor insult. His respect for the man who had given it had fallen
a great deal. But that was an intellectual respect. He had served Arkanphel for
hundreds of years. The man was... was a father to him. Even thought he knew it
would come to this, the rejection in those words still burned.
	He turned away and looked at the shattered remains of Tokyo.
	And as he watched, the city changed.
	For a moment, he thought he was seeing double. The entire city seemed to
be superimposed on an image of itself... then the image was gone and the city
was back. It was restored, entirely.
	His breath caught in his throat.
	He had spent seven years rebuilding the great city of Tokyo. He had
overseen the construction of many of its buildings in the wake of the
destruction the aragami had brought upon it. He had personally broken the ground
on the rebuilding of the Diet buildings and cut the ribbon on the reopening of
the Tokyo train station. The only neglected landmark was the Tokyo Tower, which
had been cleared away to make room for the Pillars of Heaven.
	It was all back. He could see the Pillars, rising pristine and undamaged
in the center of the city. Taller than any buildings ever built, they had
managed to survive Gyro's rampage still mostly structurally intact. But even
they had been left hollow shells. Now... he could feel them.
	Zoanoids. Thousands of them. All of them alive again. The suddenness of
it left him speechless. He looked over at Arkanphel, and could see that the
prime zoalord felt it too. Tethys was staring, and Sakura Yamazaki was gaping in
wonder.
	"They're... all alive..." Sakura said, her voice catching.
	"The city?" Purgstall asked. He looked out, and he could see the people
of the city milling about in confusion down below. The heroes of the battle were
beginning to wander out amongst them, obviously just as confused.
	"Not just the city," Sakura said, a smile blooming on her face. "The
entire country! All of it! It's back!"
	Arkanphel frowned and looked away. Tethys walked up to the window,
leaning out of it. She paused, then smiled in a surprisingly gentle manner.
	"Not a bad wish," she said.
	"What happened?" Purgstall asked.
	Tethys shook her head.
	"Hmmm..." Arkanphel frowned. "It appears that only these islands were
affected."
	"Oh?" Tethys turned to face him.
	"For a moment, I had hoped that all of Gyro's damage had been undone,
but the damage in the Middle East remains." He frowned. "More's the pity." He
looked out at the city.
	"Don't think this changes anything," Tethys said. "You're withdrawing
from Japan, still."
	Arkanphel looked at her. Then he closed his eyes and smiled. "You can
have this tainted land, Dark Queen."
	"Tainted?" Tethys asked. But Arkanphel only chuckled and vanished in a
swirl of light. Tethys turned to Purgstall, and he frowned.
	Then he felt it. He looked back towards the Pillars of Heaven. All those
zoanoids, those thousands of souls suddenly returned to life. There was
something... something off about them. He sensed confusion and relief and a
swirl of other emotions, which had served well to hide it. But deep down inside
them all he felt something else.
	Something... strange.
	"What is it?"
	"I don't know," Purgstall admitted. "I think... I think something else
came back with all those people."
	"Gyro?" Sakura asked, her eyes widening.
	"No..." Purgstall shuddered. "Something... empty."
	"Hotaru," Tethys hissed. She looked up at the sky. "Ukyou... what have
you let happen?"

*

	"So, Angel, you have to defeat Kalia."
	Angel paused in her stride for a moment. "You're kidding, right?"
	Akira was looking straight ahead, her expression grim. "Kalia... I know
what she wants. She's going to use me... somehow... to destroy the Oversoul."
	Angel nodded. "Well, that sure sounds bad. What's an Oversoul?"
	"Oh... well, it's a... it's the very core of every soul. We're all
connected, and the connection is the Oversoul... I think. Nabiki explained it to
me once, but it was a little confusing."
	"And you're going to destroy it?"
	"Well, that's what she keeps saying. Along with stuff that doesn't make
any sense. And she keeps trying to bring out something... bad in me. The
Paradox."
	Angel considered that for a long moment. "Okay... what's Paradox?"
	This time Akira did turn and look at her for a moment. They dodged
around a crowd of people and ducked through an alley. "Umm, you don't know,
right. Okay, so Paradox is like... bad stuff."
	"I knew it!"
	"Don't be a smartass. It's anti... good, I guess. It's souls which have
been destroyed, except they're not totally destroyed, so they're Paradox
instead. It's created when the Third Circle is used, so whenever Ukyou does
certain things, it gets made."
	"Hey, I do know what the Third Circle is! Well," Angel amended, "I've at
least heard of it. So, if Ukyou makes it, what's it got to do with you? I know
you two were friends and all, but..."
	"Well, you see, what happened was that... when I was truly, absolutely
sure Ukyou was gone, my love for her made it so I couldn't accept it and so I
brought her back... somehow... and became the repository for all her Paradox...
stuff."
	Angel blinked. "Pure love? What?"
	"Well, yeah, you know, I love Ukyou..."
	"Seriously? I thought she was just your old friend!"
	"Oh, for crying out loud," Akira growled. "I can't catch you up on
everything, Angel!"
	"Geez, it's not my fault," Angel mumbled. "Hey, how do you know where
you're going, anyway?"
	They leapt up the side of a recently restored skyscraper. Akira looked
grim again. "I know. She wants me to find her."
	"Gotcha. So, hmm... you and Ukyou do it yet?"
	Akira missed a step and flailed her arms wildly in freefall before Angel
flipped upside down, dangling from a flagpole, to catch her. "None of your
business," she muttered, flushing. "And thanks."
	"No problem," Angel grinned, tossing Akira up to the roof. "So, now that
I'm kinda all caught up, want to tell me again just why I, me, personally have
to defeat Kalia? You know she beat the crap out of zoalord Purgstall, right?"
	"And Tethys," Akira admitted.
	"Oh, riiiiight, I forgot! So first Lotus Infinite, then Kalia? I'm
seriously going to have to reconsider the benefits of being your friend at this
rate, taka taka."
	Angel landed beside Akira on the roof in a crouch. Akira was looking
apologetic, but serious. "I'm sorry. I'll do what I can, but... I'm sure she's
trying to goad me into something. Something that will help her destroy the
Oversoul. I can't let her do that. I'll help as much as I can, but..."
	"Okay, okay," Angel said. She sighed. "Let me think about this for a
sec, alright?"
	In fact, she'd been thinking about it all along. The problem was that
she hadn't come up with much. She shivered a bit as she remembered their
encounter a few minutes before. It was just like every other meeting with Kalia
- dreamlike, where it almost felt like you were simultaneously doing a million
things at once and yet also standing far away watching it. She remembered
clearly making the decision, the choice, that she couldn't do it anymore, that
she couldn't kill Cologne for Chris. But she also remembered...
	No. That wasn't her. It wasn't.
	But it reminded her of something. "Wait, Akira. You punched her. How'd
you do that?"
	"Well, first I clenched my fist-"
	"Now who's being a smartass?"
	Akira chuckled, but then looked serious again. "I don't know. At first I
couldn't hit her. She was like a ghost, she'd always be somewhere other than
where I was. But over time, especially after I took Ukyou's Paradox, she's been
getting more... real to me. I think it's because we're the same, me and her.
She's full of Paradox too. I think she's trying to make it even more so, even
more like her..." She shuddered.
	Something about what Akira said tickled at Angel's mind, but she ignored
it for the moment as she thought furiously. "So... when you're looking at her,
she can't slip away? You make her more real?"
	"I think so, yeah..."
	Angel smiled. "Then maybe I've got a plan, taka taka."
	"What?"
	"Yeah, yeah, what?"
	Angel swung around at the sound of the new voice. Kalia grinned.
"Actually," she said with a giggle, "I don't really care."
	Angel was suddenly flipping end over end. She had just enough time to
realise that her cheek was throbbing from impact before she slammed into the
unyielding concrete, at which point she also remembered she was on top of a very
tall building. Orienting, she slammed a hand into the roof, flipping herself
back upright and digging five gouges with her fingers as she tried to stop
herself from plummeting over the edge. She felt her back gently bump into the
guardrail.
	At that point, Akira's shout of "Angel!" reached her ears. The woman was
rushing at Kalia, heedless of her earlier reservations. Leaping into the air,
she bore the laughing not-girl to the ground. The first punch smashed Kalia's
head back into the concrete, leaving a visible dent.
	"So aggressive, Ahura Mazda!" Kalia laughed. "Now what did I ever do to
you?"
	After her initial rage, Akira seemed to hesitate. She pinned Kalia's
arms to the ground as she tried to escape, but otherwise made no further
offensive move. "You... you monster..."
	"With your combined power, I'm surely doomed! Or I would be..." Kalia
jerked one hand free that was suddenly - had always been holding a pocket watch.
She made an elaborate show of looking at it. "...if Ukyou weren't encountering
Hotaru... right... about..." A splash of dark liquid appeared on Kalia's face,
quickly followed by another. And another. She smiled. "Now."
	Akira suddenly slumped, but only for an instant before Kalia casually
kicked her off. The not-girl sat up, hovering in the air, and casually drew two
fingers across the blood splattered across her face. She stuck them in her mouth
with a giggle.
	"Akira, are you all right?" Angel cried, rushing to her friend's side.
She couldn't keep the gasp from escaping her mouth. She was covered in blood. It
was leaking from everywhere, from her nose and eyes and ears and pores... her
eyes were unfocused. Her body twitched spasmodically.
	"Oh, she'll be fine!" Kalia called. "Zurvan won't let her die just yet,
that would spoil all his fun and we certainly can't have THAT, nosiree."
	Angel found herself turning, not sure whether it was her own choice or
not. "Who's Zurvan?"
	Kalia smiled sweetly. "Time. Inevitability. The true wielder of the
Third Circle. According to some, God. But that's a latter-day interpretation,
forced upon us by a self-serving state religion. I don't buy it, you see. We may
all be his children, Ahura Mazda and I, but who's to say he's really greater
than us? I'd bring up the precedent of Kronos, but that would just be confusing
in light of political events, wouldn't it?"
	"I have no idea what you're talking about."
	"Of course you don't," Kalia purred. "You're just a stupid little
ungrateful girl."
	"So what are you, Kalia?" she countered. Akira was still bleeding, but
her reactions weren't as violent as before. Angel hoped she came out of it soon,
because she couldn't hope to take out Kalia without her.
	Luckily, Kalia seemed quite happy to keep talking. "I'm a beautiful and
unique snowflake. I'm a dream of a girl who never existed. I'm a skin stretched
over infinity. I am the one true and faithful daughter." She smiled a dark,
secret little smile. "I was born to protect Chris. And I will do it."
	"How-" Angel began, but Kalia interrupted her with a dismissive wave.
	"Oh, silly little girl, you don't know even now? Zurvan is god here, you
see. Not Chris. Right now, Ukyou and my dear sister fetich Hotaru are meeting in
the climax of God's plan. Seven years in the making, or all eternity, which is
only seven years anyway. You see why Zurvan thinks he is so important? Making
seven years all eternity is a trick even I can't do." She sighed happily. "But
he's blind. Blind and arrogant. He thinks I can't do anything to stop him. Of
course, he's completely right. I'm a nothing. Being nothing gives me power, but
keeps me from the ultimate power. He thinks I'm strange, but not worrisome
enough to terminate the game." She giggled. "I'm confusing you, but you're
easily confused, little Angel. So simple and direct. I'll explain for you:
	"God hates Chris. Chris wasn't part of his plan. When God wins, or even
if Ukyou wins, or whatever it is that is supposed to happen - I don't really
care, you see - they will destroy Chris for all his power. When I was not-born,
I saw this, because I can see all possibilities and this was the only one. The
only way it could end. How could I save Chris, when he was doomed? Well, I
couldn't. That was the problem. I would have killed Ukyou, but then God would
have just ended the experiment and destroyed Chris. I wouldn't let that happen.
So I had to find a way to do the impossible. Except I can't, so I found someone
else to do it for me."
	"And that's me." Akira's eyes snapped open. She pushed herself up,
seemingly unmindful of the mask of blood that covered her face. "That's what
you've done all this for, Kalia? To save Chris?"
	"Of course. That is why I am. And am not." Kalia smiled. "I'm not going
to hide my intentions from you, Ahura Mazda. I don't want you to mess this up.
So I'll tell you what we're going to do." Uncrossing her legs, she flipped over
in the air to stare at them upside down, ticking off points on her fingers.
"You're going to attack me. Not with fists or sword or anything else, because
you can't defeat me the way you are. You will use the power Ukyou granted you,
the Paradox, because it is your only effective weapon. It will work! Isn't it
wonderful to know you will win? You'll destroy me utterly, because I'm just a
poor little skin without a soul. But you have all that Paradox, all that lovely
detritus of destroyed souls. When you use it, I will take it all into my hands
even as it destroys me, and I will whisper to it, whisper such wonderful and
beautiful lies." She brought her hands together in a surprisingly loud clap. "I
couldn't do it myself. Sure, I can let some of it spill out of me into the
world, but a nothing can't command the Paradox within itself. But I can whisper
to the Paradox that YOU direct, Ahura Mazda. I can tell it that God hides in the
Oversoul as it devours me. I am Oblivion, and Oblivion is me. The Oversoul is
there, and I will let it pass through me and into the Oversoul, where they will
seize upon it and devour it with their mindless rage. The Oversoul is sick with
Paradox already, you know. It rots and festers within. Of course, it is
infinite, but so are they. Your Paradox is the Paradox of this universe, and the
one before, and the next, and all that is or was or was not or can be or shall
never be. When it attacks, the soul of everything will shatter."
	"And how will that help you?" Angel asked. "Or save Chris?"
	"Help me? I will be gone, little Angel. I will be less than nothing. But
everyone else will be like me." Kalia laughed. "Ahura Mazda knows. She's almost
felt it. It's the Paradox eating at your soul, dear sister, and you're right to
be afraid. But don't worry - if you live through the battle, you'll survive. So
will most people, at least at first. You don't NEED your soul... it just
separates you from everyone else. Without it, you will be defined by your will
and identity, not your piddly little perceptions and causality."
	"So that's it," Akira said. She was crouching now, looking strangely
calm under the mask of blood that covered her face. "That's why you let Chris
get defeated by Sailor Moon, isn't it?"
	"Of course!" Kalia clapped her hands again in delight. "Aren't I a good
little girl? Poor Chris, he wasn't convinced he was God yet. He needed to be
taught better. Now I've prepared his belief in himself for the new world where
he will survive and thrive. He will think this was his mission all along.
Whereas Zurvan is nothing. He gave up his identity to hide from the Paradox, and
without it, he will fall apart when he experiences true freedom. He can't handle
it. I will be destroyed, but I will have given Daddy a new world, the world he
can rule just like he wanted. Aren't I good? Aren't I?" She smiled again, and
the smile was suddenly wistful. "Isn't that true love? Dying to save the one I
love? I wouldn't know. I don't have a soul. He can't know what I'm doing, of
course, so he probably won't remember me. But maybe he'll name a planet after me
sometime. Planet Lovely-Faithful-Daughter-Saviour-Of-The-Universe; wouldn't that
be nice?"
	Akira rose to her feet, followed almost instantly by Angel. "You know I
won't let this happen, Kalia," she said.
	"And why not?" she pouted. "You know this will save Ukyou too. She has
TONS of identity! Two of them, even! It'll get rid of that obnoxious little
frump Hotaru, of course, but I'm sure she'll get over it. Ukyou, that is." She
suddenly grinned, rising to her feet as she continued to stand in mid-air. "You
just don't want to try anything different, do you? You 'real' people and your
attachment to 'real' things. I've had all your real things, and they bore me.
You need to do some impossible things. You haven't musicsexdancevomitkilled with
me, Ahura Mazda. How can you know being like me is so bad when you haven't
even musicsexdancevomitkilled yet?"
	She looked between them, and pouted again. "I knew you wouldn't listen
to reason, Ahura Mazda. Luckily, I never intended you to!" She looked over at
Angel. "That's why you're still alive, after all, you filthy harlot traitor.
What's your wonderful plan for fighting me? I'm so curious!"
	"You'll find out," Angel said cheerfully. She drew her sword; it felt
easy and light in her hands. "Are we finished talking now? I'm ready to get rid
of you."
	"Oh, you're not convinced to help me either?" Kalia smiled. "I guess you
really do hate Chris. And after all he's done for you."
	"No, I don't," Angel said. "If God or whoever is fighting Ukyou, then I
know who I'm cheering for. And I don't think she'll destroy Chris. Maybe he was
wrong. Maybe he's not God. But I want to save him too-"
	"Wrong wrong wrong!" Kalia cackled. "Ahura Mazda never told you this,
did she? I hold the Paradox that seeks Chris. I am the identity that keeps it
trapped, writhing inside me. Just like Akira does for Ukyou. And just like
Akira, if you kill me, it will find him all at once and destroy him."
	Angel stared.
	And then she slowly looked over at Akira. "Is that...?"
	Akira looked her directly in the eyes. "She's probably right. I'm sorry,
Angel. Please believe me: I didn't even think of that."
	A heartbeat passed.
	Angel smiled. "I believe you. Good thing she told us, huh?" She turned.
"I guess we'll just have to beat you up without killing you or using that
Paradox."
	"Well, if you do, that will certainly ruin all my plans!" laughed Kalia,
drifting backwards. "Let's see if you can! But not here, this place is boring.
Think fast - I'm going to kill one person a second until you come down to join
me!"
	And then she vanished, dropping past the guardrail. Akira swore and was
in motion. Angel hesitated a moment longer. This was it. Would it work? No time
to wonder. She switched chakras once more. She'd healed the damage from Kalia's
earlier hit with water, now it became void. Before she even took a step, she
felt every motion of Akira's body, knew without even looking how the woman dived
after Kalia. Felt them clash, bodies twisting and striking as they hurtled down
the floors of the building. By the time she'd reached the guardrail, Akira had
already lost the clash. She was too weak, too slow, too injured. Kalia batted
her around a few times, and kicked her back up in the air.
	Angel smiled as she flipped over the railway, placed her feet against
it, and propelled herself downward. Perfect.
	She closed her eyes. She felt the world around her spread just as the
golden wings spread from her back. She felt Akira hurtling towards her. And she
felt Kalia below. She was slowing slightly, invitingly, waiting for Angel to
overtake her. She slipped in and out of Angel's perceptions, one moment here,
there, subtle differences from moment to moment that were still always the same.
	But Akira never moved. Akira was solid and real and always there. She
was already regaining control of her fall, thankfully. Angel pushed past her
gently, spinning around and tapping off the building. Kalia was laughing. Or
giggling. Or whispering. Or saying nothing at all. Or all at the same time.
	But Akira was always there. Akira was real. So Angel ignored Kalia, and
focused on Akira. Where her head moved, her eyes focused, how every bit of air
struck her. Nothing existed without impacting something else.
	So Angel opened her eyes, and found Kalia right in front of her, just
like she knew she would be. The not-girl's eyes widened as she realised the
truth and she... Angel ignored what was in front of her, but the air was
suddenly disturbed just like Kalia had tried to flip away. She slashed out.
	Kalia's severed arm hit the ground just as Angel did. Akira did a moment
later. Kalia slowed to a gentle stop above the ground, scowling. Aside from
losing her left arm, a long slash was now cut into her side. "How do you like
that?" Angel grinned.
	Kalia held up her remaining arm speculatively. The air writhed and
screamed as it touched her wounds. "Well, well... I'd applaud your cleverness,
but I apparently can't."
	Angel didn't wait for another response. A breeze striking Akira was
altered by something two-point-three meters in front of her, and Angel attacked
it. Kalia skittered backwards out of the way; something pushed the air back at
Akira with a strike which Angel easily avoided.
	"Wait!" Akira yelled. "We can't fight her around all these people!"
	"What, THOSE people?" Kalia laughed. "Don't worry about them, Ahura
Mazda. They're not even paying attention."
	Angel stared. The street wasn't exactly crowded; most people seemed to
have rushed away. But there were a few walking on the sidewalk. Up the road was
a cluster of half a dozen people, apparently a family that were tearfully
reuniting. A man in a business suit was climbing into a parked car. Several more
cars were on the street.
	But nobody noticed the three figures at the side of the road. Nobody
even glanced at the severed arm.
	"Maybe you can see me, and Angel can oh-so-cleverly see me through you.
But these little people? Oh no, they don't get to scream and run away, Ahura
Mazda." Kalia laughed. "You'd better be caaaaaaaaareful, hadn't you? But don't
worry, I'm hoping that torturing Angel to death and then torturing her soul into
nonexistence will be enough to motivate you, so I'll only start killing random
people if you make me mad or I feel like it or they're there - whoops!" She
flipped out of the way again, dodging a strike. "Of course, I do appear to be
kind of at a disadvantage now. I guess I need to be ar... no, the bad puns are
someone else's shtick." She grinned. "But I could use a weapon."
	Angel blinked. It wasn't a blink of surprise, just an ordinary blink,
the type you do ten or so times a minute. Normally she wouldn't even have
noticed; she'd learned to compensate for the milliseconds of sightlessness it
caused years ago. But when her eyes opened again...
	It was dark. The sun was dark. It wasn't eclipsed, or dimmer, but
suddenly it was warped and dark. The street was straight and curved and twisted
and narrow and wide and stretched into infinity and ended behind her and rose
into the sky. And Kalia was...
	Kalia was...
	It was no bigger. It was the size and shape of a girl. And it was made
of swords. Billions of billions of swords in the shape of a girl. They writhed
and twisted in their impossible confinement, twisting around each other. A thin,
pale skin stretched over them which they prodded and scratched and pressed
against, causing it to distort and bulge like maggots and insects in the flesh
of a rotting carcass.
	They were whispering, the swords, whispering hateful and horrible
things, but Angel couldn't make out the words, even with her void chakra. She
was grateful. The cacophony of the whispering swords rose around them. They
strained at their confinement, blades and hilts and guards pouring through the
holes in the overstretched, impossibly delicate skin. They blocked each other in
their rush to escape, entangling and whispering and hating.
	The head of the creature was nothing human. It was nothing Angel could
even describe. Blades sprang from its eyes, and as it opened its mouth, more
spewed forth from that, and it spoke with the voice of a girl.
	"Now, which shall I pick? So many likely candidates!" It raised its arm.
"I've got a good idea! I'll show you something really special." In the palm of a
hand, fingers jerkily writhing as swords wriggled in it like worms, there was a
golden glow. "Are you the one Hotaru spoke of, Angel? Are you the traitor that
brings Chris down, filthy little girl? But I am a nothing. Zurvan can write
Chris's destiny, but I have nothing to write. And I will use nothing and his own
tool to thwart him. I hope he appreciates the irony, Ahura Mazda, when you and I
cast him shrieking into the abyss he's been hiding from the gaze of for so
long." The glow grew and grew, and Angel reflexively shut her eyes.
	When she opened them, the world was sane again.
	And Kalia held a sword. It was not an impressive sword, truthfully. It
looked almost like a child's plaything, short and golden and covered with
jewels. But it had power. Stolen, holy power. It writhed in Kalia's grip, but
she merely laughed.
	"Now we're standing at the end of the world, Ahura Mazda. It's too bad
you're not good for much but to sit and watch." She reversed her grip on the
sword, pointing it at Angel. "Let's start the final boss music, shall we?"

*

	The ruins gave way gradually. At first Ukyou noticed the strange hollow
quality of it. It was like walking through a movie set. She was convinced that
if she looked behind the walls and pillars, she would discover there was nothing
but cardboard and cheap wooden slats holding it all up. It was a facade. As they
walked further, moving in uneasy silence, bits and pieces of everything began to
be.. not there anymore.
	 It wasn't like the shattered ruins of before. Entire sections of
buildings were just gone, like they had never been. But the buildings didn't
seem to mind. Roofs floated in mid-air, held up by a Swiss cheese of walls that
had no right supporting them. Columns leaned here and there, sometimes with
entire middle sections gone entirely. But even this would not have bothered
Ukyou much.
	What bothered her was how her eyes kept drifting over them like there
was nothing wrong. She would see a streetlamp flickering and buzzing overhead,
the metal pole in which it should have been set missing entirely. Yet she didn't
see anything wrong. It was only by focusing, by forcing herself to really
consider it, that she noticed the increasingly more common gaps in the world.
	Breaking down, Ukyou finally asked Pluto if she noticed it too. The
green-haired woman gave her a long look, then asked what she meant. Ukyou didn't
ask her again.
	Then, the half-forgotten ruins gave way to dunes of dust, and from there
to an empty waste. The fireflies were less common here, and those that floated
did so listlessly and dimly. The air drained of warmth, drained of cold. It took
Ukyou a moment to realise that the air drained of all sensation. A few dozen
steps later she realised there was no air. Not even the memory of it.
	And yet they continued walking.
	Ukyou felt her mouth dry up and her palms grow damp. She ran a hand
nervously through her bangs. The sound of her footfalls had ceased. Not just
dulled to inaudibility, but ceased entirely. There was no feeling to the ground,
not even the feedback of her feet falling against it. She had no idea how she
continued walking, but the unnerving quality of the strangely sensationless
environment had her on edge. She had to bite her tongue to keep from whistling
nervously.
	Then she heard it.
	Ukyou held up her hand, calling a halt. Nanami and Pluto paused, looking
at her strangely. Ukyou closed her eyes and focused her chi, allowing Aaron to
take control of it all. He stretched out and... there. The sound. The sound was
an incoherent buzz. It was a whine that rose and dropped erratically, sweeping
back and forth in front of them. As she struggled to make sense of it, to try
and identify it, she felt an eerie familiarity rise up inside her.
	"There's something..." Ukyou trailed off. Her voice had cut through the
empty land like a knife. It left behind no echo. In fact, the words died off far
more quickly than she had guessed they would. They seemed to travel no further
than her companion's ears. "There is something ahead," she said, trying to
ignore the echoless, airless quality of her speech.
	"Hotaru?" Pluto asked. Her voice was like a harsh whisper by the time it
reached Ukyou.
	"No," Ukyou frowned. "Something..." She shook her head and continued
walking. There was little they could do to prepare. No use wasting time.
	The noise grew stronger as Ukyou approached. Occasionally it rose so
high that even Pluto and Nanami could hear its wordless shriek. Ukyou could tell
because Pluto started, then all the colour drained from her face. Ukyou grabbed
the woman's arm, steadying her.
	"By all that's holy, what was that?" Pluto gasped.
	"Something is wrong," Nanami replied. She was gazing out into the empty
wastes. There was no real horizon here anymore. Things just faded away into the
distance, getting more and more vague as your eyes lost the ability to
distinguish masses from each other until eventually it all became a muted beige
blur. Not that there was much to see. Ukyou guessed that the fog-like masses
that floated in the distance were the ruins of Elysium on the other side of
this wasteland.
	Ukyou grunted and continued walking. She could hear the sound more
clearly now. She was beginning to realise it was not a single noise, but many.
Uncountable noises. All running together and over each other. And it wasn't some
insectile buzz or some alien whine either. It was... it was...
	"Look!" Pluto said, pointing. A dark shape rose in the distance, like a
cloud of locusts. It swirled up and around itself, curling into a vortex then
smashed down again. Ukyou shivered. The sound roared up. Babbling, screaming.
	"Voices," Ukyou croaked, her voice suddenly dry. "They're voices."
	Nanami glanced at her, then at the cloud. It hung low to the ground now,
spinning round and round a single point. As they watched a pale light rose from
the wasteland, flickering. Ukyou stared at it.
	The firefly soul shuddered in the air. It pulsed, a sound like a
heartbeat echoing out from it. It began to jerk back and forth, another beat
echoing from it. There was a soft gasp and Ukyou realised it came from her. The
light seemed to sense them. Its erratic flight drifted in their direction.
There was a silent desperation to it.
	Ukyou stepped forward, her hand reaching out. Nanami caught her wrist.
"There is nothing you can do," she whispered softly.
	"No..." Ukyou groaned.
	The light was pulsing more frequently now, its core flickering on and
off like a strobe light. Ukyou could see something inside it, something
terrible.
	"There is nothing anyone can do," Nanami ground out between her clenched
teeth. Her fangs had grown out, giving her face a monstrous character. "It's too
far gone. IT has this soul now."
	Then, with a suddenness that startled Ukyou even though she had been
expecting it, the light was gone. In its place was something like a hole. A gash
in space where once there had been something beautiful. From that gash came a
noise, a wordless, meaningless noise. It was hate. It was anger. A glint came
from the hole, which grew into a blade. It was a swordpoint, pushing itself
through the hole. It was tearing into this world through the wound.
	With a final heart-rending shriek it burst free. It was a simple sword,
short-bladed and flat with a dull leather grip. It hovered in the air before
them, the tip hesitating. Ukyou wanted to reach out, but Nanami pulled her hand
back quickly.
	"NO!" she barked. "It's gone! Don't touch it!"
	"But I..."
	"Do you want Akira to suffer more?"
	Ukyou lowered her eyes. She felt the blade shift a few more times, then
with a meaningless babble of hate it sped off, floating quickly through the air
to join its brother and sister blades.
	"Is that... is that..."
	"The price of the Third Circle," Nanami hissed. "That's where Paradox
comes from, Ukyou."
	"Where is it going?" Pluto asked dully. Her eyes were flat. She was
probably in shock, Ukyou realised dimly.
	"Where else?" Nanami released Ukyou. "It's looking for more like it.
It's looking for something it can understand. It will run to the nearest thing
that it can sense and touch..."
	"Hotaru!" Ukyou gasped. She didn't wait for a response, she just ran.
Her legs burned as she pushed far more wind chakra into them than was healthy.
The endless wastes didn't blur. There was no sensation of movement. But the
drone of the swords grew louder. The cloud grew more and more distinct.
	Then finally Ukyou was standing before it. Her mind backed away from
what she saw. It wasn't a cloud. It was a galaxy. Billions and billions of
swords, orbiting each other around and around. Yet they never touched, not even
long enough to rebound accidentally. It spread up and out in all directions,
filling up the world with nothing but the endless, screeching Swords of Hate.
	And in the centre of it was Hotaru. She was so small. Ukyou had
forgotten how small she was. The girl was pinned to the ground, blades rammed
through her shoulders and hips. And as Ukyou watched, the infinite cloud was
tearing her apart, ripping her inside out. Somehow, the girl was surviving.
Somehow, her body had not been reduced to a fine red mist.
	Ukyou felt powerful arms wrap around her shoulder. Somebody was
screaming. She struggled, fighting to get free. A figure appeared in front of
her, swinging something.
	Ukyou's head cracked to the side. She felt the sting in her cheeks.
Slapped? By... Pluto? Ukyou's eyes focused on the Senshi of Time. Nanami was
holding her in a full nelson, screaming in her ear.
	"You idiot, you'll be torn apart!" Nanami roared. "You won't do her any
good if you're dead!"
	"I..." Ukyou watched as one of the blades flashed by just behind Pluto.
The woman dove forward, rolling behind Ukyou and Nanami. She was very close to
the edge of it now. She must have broken into a run, losing all thought.
	What had she been thinking? Had she been thinking? She couldn't
remember. Ukyou took a deep breath and relaxed. Without being asked, Nanami
slowly released her.
	"This wasn't supposed to have happened," Nanami informed her.
	"No shit," Ukyou growled.
	"No, I mean, this wasn't the plan. G.... the Nameless didn't want this."
Ukyou looked at the girl, not trusting herself to speak. "There is too much of
it. Too much for any one fetich soul to contain..."
	"Where did it all come from?" Pluto groaned.
	"She has a good point," Ukyou moaned. She looked through the galaxy of
Paradox to the little girl trapped within. "I can feel the magnitude of this.
It's... it's so much more than... than anything I've ever produced. Not even
Chris at his worst had this much Paradox inside him. Where did all this come
from?"
	"The beginning," Nanami said softly. Ukyou looked at her sharply. "The
Nameless made this world, Ukyou. He constructed it, raw and unyielding from the
very stuff of the Oversoul. He willed it to be, just so you could have a place
to stand. And he did it with the Third Circle."
	Pluto closed her eyes and whispered something that sounded like a
prayer. Ukyou needed no more hints. What she and Chris had done, had MADE to be
done, had been nothing. A tiny miracle here, a small impossibility there. It was
nothing compared to the scope of this. This was the Paradox of an entire
universe, created by act of raw will.  But something didn't add up.
	"But... where has it been all this time?" Ukyou asked, her eyes
narrowing.
	"I suspect..." Nanami closed her eyes. "A woman named Anthy Himemiya.
She is also a fetich soul. She believed that all the Paradox inside her was from
Akio... but Akio never existed until seven years ago. The same as me and Pluto
and everyone else. And he hasn't touched the Third Circle since then. So...
where did all that Paradox come from?"
	"He hid it," Ukyou growled. "He hid it in plain sight. That fucking
bastard."
	"Something went wrong," Nanami said. "This was never supposed to
happen."
	"No." Ukyou narrowed her eyes. "This should NOT be happening."
	Then, moving faster than either of them could react, she charged into
the maelstrom.

*

	The air was thick and cold. The people moved through the streets with
agonising slowness. Everybody but Angel and Kalia. They danced across the plaza,
their swords flashing back and forth, sparks erupting whenever the blades
touched. Nobody noticed them, not even when they paused directly in front of
pedestrians for a furious exchange of blows. The people would just slowly begin
to adjust their course, their footfalls seeming to take five times as long as
normal.
	Except that wasn't what was happening. Akira was just seeing things
taking place at a much more rapid pace. Even without her air chakra overcharged
by her tattoos, Angel was very, very quick. She shifted stances with lightning
speed and laser precision. Her sword moved from attack to defence to counter in
short, sharp movements. There was a dreadful economy to her style. She had
improved, Akira reflected.
	And she was going to lose.
	Kalia did not fight with any specific style. One moment she was
aggressive as a berserker, the next as passive as a tai chi master. She didn't
so much move between styles as use them all at the same time, switching which
one was real constantly. Akira could almost see them, the million-billion
possible Kalias all striking in a different manner. But her mind retreated from
that. She had to focus on the now. If she let herself go, if she let herself
see... she might never get back.
	Angel stepped back, her blade deflecting a blow aimed at her head.
Kalia's ridiculous-looking sword bounced back, and swept easily through the body
of a businessman. Angel's eyes widened, but she was already running back as
Kalia pushed the offensive. They were ten meters away before the man's torso
began to slide apart. Blood spurted out along the path of the blow, spraying
across a few people nearby. Kalia grinned, her empty mad eyes widening even as
her pupils narrowed to pinpricks.
	Another exchange later and two more people, a woman and her boyfriend,
began to fall away from each other, hideous wounds appearing in their chests.
Angel screamed and slid forward, kicking up into Kalia's stomach and launching
the not-girl skyward. The two traded blows in mid-air for a few seconds.
	The crowd was just beginning to notice what was happening. People were
starting to scream. To Akira's sped-up senses, the screams were drawn out,
dulled. The image of those three people suddenly dying for no apparent reason,
their gore splattering across the crowd, suddenly struck Akira as tragically
comic.
	She groaned and tried to push herself up. She needed to do something. If
she just sat here, she was going to lose it. Her throat was on fire. She could
feel blood in her lungs. She was being crushed and ripped apart at the same
time. But it was just pain. She could move. She. Could. Move.
	"No, no," Kalia laughed. "That isn't how you do it, Ahura Mazda!" The
girl-shaped thing giggled as she landed next to Akira.
	"Get away from her!" Angel shouted as she plunged to the ground. Kalia
slipped backwards, allowing Angel's sword to cut a new trench into the sidewalk.
Angel didn't pause, she pulled the sword up and through the concrete, sending up
a spray of debris. The ethereal wings on her back flared with golden light as
she pushed forward, striking again and again.
	"You know how to use it," Kalia said, directing her words around Angel.
"You just have to let go."
	Akira staggered forward, trying to push her body. She felt a sudden pain
slam into her side. It was like a sword being pushed through her guts. Another
stabbed into her left biceps. She cried out, stumbling to a stop. Kalia laughed
and another man beside her exploded into pieces as she retreated from Angel. The
crowd was beginning to panic, their bodies moving in slow motion.
	They had no idea what was happening. They couldn't see it. They couldn't
predict it.
	"You monster!" Angel screamed, chasing Kalia through the crowd. She
flipped and spun around them, passing by the slowly shifting bodies with
centimeters to spare. Kalia led her around, striking out with impunity.
Wherever she passed, people died. "Damn you!"
	"Leave them out of it!" Akira screamed, and coughed, slumping to one
knee again.
	"But they're already part of it," Kalia said, laughing. She reached the
street and began to move among the car. They were beginning to speed up, trying
to peel away from the danger zone. "Can't you see? These people are already
doomed. I'm doing them a favour!"
	"What are you...?" Angel trailed off as she leapt up on top of a
speeding car to catch up with Kalia. Kalia bounced from roof to roof, forcing
the girl to rush to keep up. But Akira could see it in Angel's face. She had
spotted something. Something that even Akira hadn't detected yet.
	What was it?
	The girl's eyes kept flicking over the crowd. Except she wasn't looking
angry, or concerned like she had a moment ago. She looked afraid. Not afraid of
Kalia, afraid of the crowd.
	Why would she...?
	Then Akira felt it. The revelation hit her like a truck and for a moment
she lost her iron grip on the pain. She fell to the ground, screaming and with
one thought playing in her mind.
	The people. They were... infected. Each of them. They carried a piece of
Paradox inside them. Everyone in the crowd. Everyone in the city. Everyone in
the country. Everyone that Nabiki had wished back. They were infected with
Paradox. Akira could see it, she could feel it. It was eating them away, slowly,
from the inside out.
	"You see?" Kalia called out. "Zurvan's plan is at its climax." She
turned to Angel. "I'd like to continue playing, but we're almost out of time.
Forgive me."
	Angel braced herself. "I can defeat your tricks."
	"Maybe you can," Kalia agreed. She held up the silly-looking sword. "But
this, this isn't a trick. This is real." She drew it back. Akira felt energy
gathering along its edge.
	"Angel!" Akira cried.
	"SPACE SWORD BLASTER!"
	"YAAAH!" Angel cried, pulling her sword in to defend herself as Kalia
streaked forward. Her sword glowed brilliant orange for a fraction of a
second... and then it smashed right through Angel's sword like a hot knife
through butter. The blade separated cleanly. Angel had an instant to realise
what had happened before the leading edge of the magic sword cleaved into her
shoulder. Her shout of defiance turned into a scream of pain.
	Somehow Angel managed to throw herself back. What should have cleaved
her in two instead only opened her up to her shoulder bones. She landed badly,
tumbling and sliding through the crowd. Three people were unlucky enough to be
in her path and they flew like tenpins. The blade of Angel's sword descended
into the forehead of a woman who was crouched over her screaming child.
	Kalia flourished her blade. "And with one blow of my magical ginsu
sword, I have once again saved the day," she said with a hollow laugh. "I'd tell
you to pray, Angel, but there is no god who would listen to your pitiful
traitorous whining." She held back the blade in ready position again. Angel was
trying to pull herself to her feet. "SPACE SWORD BLASTER!"
	"ENOUGH!"
	Angel did not die. She was not beheaded by the magical blade. Her body
was not nearly atomised by the magical forces. Instead, Akira caught the blade
in her hand. It did not blow through her fingers. It did not tear her apart. All
the million bad things that could have happened did not happen. Akira stood over
Angel, holding the magic sword with one hand, her fist having struck Kalia.
	The girl flew back. She did not smash into a child. She did not crash
into the side of a moving car. She did smash against a lamppost with enough
force that the entire thing bent. Akira took a deep breath.
	Kalia lay on the ground for a long moment. Her mouth began to twitch.
The sound of her empty, sickening giggle filled the air. "That's the stuff,
Ahura Mazda," she said, slowly rising to her feet. Her one good hand massaged
her face. "That's it, let it all go!"

*
	Ukyou wasn't certain what she was planning when she ran into the storm.
She knew that the swords would tear her apart, would flay her alive, but she
didn't care. She had to do something. She couldn't just sit there and watch. So
she had plunged into it headlong.
	The storm welcomed her with fury. Ukyou moved quickly. The Silence
Glaive materialised in her hand and she spun it around her. There was no sound
as her weapon struck all the swords in front of her. Blades rebounded off blades
sent flying by her sweep, opening up a small vacuum in the cloud. Ukyou charged
in.
	She lost track of time. She lost track of everything. Everything but the
swords. She dodged and sidestepped, flipped and leapt and rolled and slid. The
Silence Glaive spun and parried, twisted and darted and blocked. Like their
battle with Alucard, Aaron took on the part of their eyes and Ukyou became their
body. They moved in seamless unison. They moved with preternatural speed and
skill.
	They got three meters. Then the first blade sunk into Ukyou's chest,
followed quickly by three more striking her in the side, her thigh and one
through her forehead. Ukyou stopped, stunned. There was no pain.
	The swords vanished. There was no pop. No displaced air or flare of
magic or anything fancy. They just vanished. Thirty more embedded themselves in
Ukyou in the time it took her to realise what was happening.
	"Akira..." she mouthed. They weren't striking her. She had a perfect
defence against the Paradox. It couldn't strike her. She was defended by Akira.
	Her head snapped up. With a snarl she continued forward. She did not
focus less on defending herself. If anything, she redoubled her efforts. She
needed to. Akira didn't deserve this.
	Some part of Ukyou suggested that she should go full out. She could amp
up the Third Circle, move much faster than she possibly could now. Aaron would
sense far more. But it was too dangerous. The blades striking Ukyou now were
doing so almost incidentally. They hit her because she just happened to be in a
place full of them. They couldn't NOT hit her.
	If she allowed herself to use the Nameless' power, it would be like
setting off a flare. She would stop being a passive victim, and become a target.
Ukyou suspected Akira would not long survive the focused attention of all this
Paradox. She was in no mood to find out for certain.
	Finally Ukyou got to within earshot of Hotaru. The girl was sitting on
the ground. The swords orbited her, falling like rain. One would sink into her
flesh, causing her to cry out. Then the sword would burrow into her. For a
moment the flesh around the wound would bulge and throb as the sword crawled
under the girl's skin. Then its handle would vanish, and the skin would settle
down... only to have another sword take its place. Dozens at a time.
	"Hotaru..." Ukyou gasped.
	"Ukyou." Hotaru looked up.  The skin on her face was being distorted
grotesquely. Points and bulges would throb into place, pushing at her cheeks and
forehead. A wound in the shape of Saturn's symbol was oozing blood. Her eyes
were bronze and venomous. There was nothing of the girl Ukyou had known in this
face. "We weren't supposed to meet like this."
	"Oh... oh god..." Ukyou slumped forward. Perversely, now that she was
this close to Hotaru, the storm was no longer striking her as much. The Paradox
swords had a more tempting target. Blades still slid across her limbs, some
vanishing as Akira absorbed the hate-filled energy before it could harm Ukyou,
but most passed by her harmlessly.
	"There was... going to be a battle..." Hotaru coughed. She was sitting
against something. A huge blade, faded and cracked, served to prop her up. The
shape was vaguely familiar to Aaron. "I was going... to push you... past your
limits..." Hotaru moaned as a blade struck her in the side of the neck. The
continuous strikes were forcing her to cut in and out as she tried to talk
around the moans and shrieks of pain.
	Ukyou stepped forward, her hand outstretched.
	"If you touch me, I'll kill you," Hotaru said. There was no threat in
her voice, just a statement of fact.
	Ukyou's hand lowered. "Hotaru, I'm here to help you."
	Hotaru stared at her. "I don't...  want to... ohh... be saved."
	"You're not thinking straight..." Ukyou began. "You're in too much pain.
You've been kidnapped and brainwashed and tortured for seven years. I can help
you. I can make it all right."
	"Yes... I know."
	Ukyou stopped. She hadn't been expecting that. Hotaru looked up, just in
time to receive a sword straight into the eye. Ukyou winced in sympathy. Hotaru
didn't even seem to notice.
	"You don't know...  what you were chosen for... do you?"
	"Hotaru!" Ukyou stepped closer.
	"God wants you," Hotaru gasped and panted, her body convulsing as the
swords kept digging into her. Her entire body was pulsing now. She wouldn't be
able to hold much more. "To exceed him."
	"Exceed...?" Ukyou trailed off.
	"You have to... aah!... achieve the Third Circle... Ukyou." Hotaru
jerked. "That... was God's plan..."
	"Why?" Ukyou snapped. "What can I do that he couldn't?"
	"End it," Hotaru said, her hand reached out and began to claw at the
empty, dirty ground of the abyss. "End it." She coughed as another three swords
entered her shoulders.
	Ukyou recoiled. "No." She slammed her hands into the ground. "I won't
kill you."
	"If you won't..." Hotaru raised her hand and the huge blade behind her
began to rise out of the earth. Lifeless earth fell like waterfalls from the
edges of the demonic weapon. The sword rose up over the girl's head, and now
Aaron recognised it at last. Ukyou leapt to her feet, drawing the Silence Glaive
up in front of her. "I will give you a battle."
	"I don't want to fight you!" Ukyou shouted. "There has to be another
way..."
	"No, Ukyou," Hotaru croaked. For a moment, her face seemed to have
returned to its old appearance. Her lips turned down in a slight frown. "It has
to end. God's sick little plan, his perverse game... it has to end. All the pain
and sacrifice and meaningless babble, it has to end." With a gesture, Dylek flew
over Hotaru's shoulder at Ukyou.
	There was a crack and a shower of black sparks as the Silence Glaive
parried the demon sword, knocking it back. Ukyou stepped further away from
Hotaru. Her eyes narrowed. There was something wrong. Aaron could feel it,
crawling at the back of his awareness.
	The demon blade swept in again and Ukyou was forced to concentrate on
defending herself. Again and again she parried as the weapon swung through the
air. It didn't have to obey the limits of a wielder. It could pivot and spin in
mid-air, hampered only by its own bulk. Ukyou slipped between the strikes,
applying the Glaive like a surgeon's scalpel, with just enough precision to
force the blade away from her.
	"Haven't you ever wondered how you were going to destroy the world,
Ukyou?" Hotaru asked.
	"Yeah," Ukyou grunted. "But I stopped worrying about that a few days
ago." The blade came in again, forcing her to leap and tumble to avoid it.
	"Too bad..." Hotaru sighed. "You don't, if it helps you any."
	"What?"
	"I am going to destroy the world," Hotaru said. "Oh, it'll be your blow
that will kill me, was going to kill me... but I am the one who ends it all."
	Ukyou ran sideways, parrying a dozen blows from Dylek as she tried to
circle around closer to Hotaru. She had to think of some way to reach the girl.
She had to find some way to reach the girl who Ukyou had known seven years ago.
She was there, under all that pain and hate. All Ukyou had to do was reach her.
	"You still think you can save me?" Hotaru said, laughing. Her laughter
was bitter. "It's too late for me, Ukyou." Hotaru coughed. "I've absorbed too
much Paradox. My soul can't take it. It's already dissolving. Soon... I will be
nothing but another Sword of Hate. Just another mindless part of Oblivion. Like
everyone else."
	"I won't let that happen!" Ukyou shouted. She grabbed the Glaive with
both hands and swung it as hard as she could. It smashed into Dylek, sending the
weapon spinning away to clatter against the ground.
	"You can't stop me. That's why I came here, Ukyou." Hotaru looked down
at her hand. It had returned to normal. "When I die... all the Paradox within me
will explode outward. It will explode in the very heart of the Oversoul."
	"You... you're going to destroy it all?" Ukyou gasped.
	"No, not the whole Oversoul, Ukyou." Hotaru smiled. "I'm not cruel, or
vicious. There are places, places far beyond this universe. Worlds where people
are happy. Worlds where there is hope. But this world, it is a sick joke played
on everyone within it. It was designed for one purpose. It was designed to make
your life unbearable, Ukyou."
	Ukyou spun, parrying Dylek again. The demon blade pushed against the
edge of the Silence Glaive. Ukyou grunted and braced herself, her feet digging
into the lifeless soil.
	"So I'll end it." Hotaru smiled. "It's like giving a terminally ill
patient release, Ukyou. This universe is full of cancer. And when the Paradox
explodes out of me, it will spin through the world, seeking out the cells it can
detect and spreading, ripping everything apart..."
	Aaron's eyes widened. "That's it. That's why you came here."
	"Oh?"
	"You don't want to prevent new life from being born. You want to mark it
all. You want to touch each soul with a bit of Paradox." Ukyou looked at Hotaru
in horror. "And like will draw to like. When the Swords burst free, they'll seek
out all the tainted souls and destroy them. Then those souls will seek out the
souls connected to them... and on and on. A chain reaction that will destroy
every living thing in the universe."
	"Very good," Hotaru said. "You always were a bright one, Ukyou."
	"I'll stop you!" Ukyou shouted.
	"Stop me?" Hotaru chuckled again. "Ukyou, I've already done it." Ukyou
looked around. The swarm wasn't attacking anymore. It was swirling around them,
a perfect circle. It was like they... were torn between two targets. They kept
shifting to attack Hotaru, and then shifting back to attack whatever else it was
they sensed out there. Chris? Akira? No...
	 "Your friend Nabiki just wished back all the people of Japan. It would
have taken me years to taint a sufficient number of souls through simple births.
But Nabiki dragged back millions of them all at once. Millions that were already
here, caught in the taint of this place." Hotaru slowly rose to her feet. "All
that's left, is for me to die."
	"No..." Ukyou stepped back. Dylek hovered in front of her. "I don't
believe you."
	"I told you, you can't stop me. It's already over. You lost."
	"Then why?" Ukyou growled. "Why this charade? Why fight me?"
	"Why?" Hotaru's eyes narrowed. "Haven't you figured it out?"
	"No, damnit! What more do you want from me?"
	"I'm not fighting you because it's necessary for my plan," Hotaru said.
"God wants me to, but I don't care what God wants."
	"You... don't... care?" Ukyou stared.
	"Of course not," Hotaru said, her voice cold. "I obeyed God because I
had no other choice. Because he would give me the chance to end the suffering,
and to do the one other thing I wanted. If I didn't obey, the torment would just
continue forever. So, just like you, I played his game to allow us to be here,
now."
	"Hotaru... why me? Why this?"
	"Because I hate you!" Hotaru roared. Her little hands curled into fists.
"And my one selfish wish before the world dissolves, is to see you die!"
	Hotaru screamed and pulled her hand down. Ukyou turned as Dylek came
towards her. She ground her teeth and focused. She pulled the blade down,
striking the leading edge of Dylek straight on. Dylek went flying right past
her... in two pieces. The halves of Dylek slammed into the ground. One cracked,
shattering into pieces. The other quivered for a moment, then fell lifelessly.
	Ukyou took a deep breath. "Not today..."
	Hotaru collapsed to her knees. "I see God is not so easily defied,"
Hotaru sighed. "No matter." She held up her hands. "I'm not the only one who
hates you, Ukyou. We will all have our revenge."
	Ukyou tensed. The cloud of swords had stopped. Slowly, it settled down.
The blades dipped until they were hovering not far above the ground. They formed
rank upon rank, stretching out as far as the eye could see. Points towards the
sky, the Swords of Hate hovered and waited.
	"I cannot fight you, Ukyou," Hotaru said. "My body can't endure it. But
I can watch while you are destroyed." Ukyou stared as the swords began to
flicker. No, not the swords, the air around them. Figures were appearing.
Hundreds of thousands of them. They faded in and out like ghosts. Each held the
grip of one of the Paradox blades. With a final crack, the world suddenly became
filled with an army.
	Ukyou spun slowly. There were millions of them. They were of every race
and creed, human and inhuman. Housewives stood next to soldiers, zoanoids stood
next to humans, and they were legion.
	"Kill her," Hotaru commanded, and the army charged.

*


	Akane opened her eyes. Yup, same ceiling. She shifted on the bed. It was
disturbingly comfortable. It wasn't overstuffed, nor was it too hard. She
clamped her arms around the pillow, which was just a tad too perfect to be
natural. She squirmed under the blankets.
	She couldn't sleep. She wanted to sleep. To just sleep and, for a few
blissful hours, forget about all this. Of course, she couldn't. When was the
last time she had really slept? Before going to the North Pole with Rei, wasn't
it? Except she hadn't really gotten any sleep before then either.
	She hadn't been able to sleep since she had gone to Ohtori. She had
rested, but her sleep had been fitful. She kept remembered the destruction that
had flooded the city. She had caused that. Because she had done the 'right
thing'.
	She clenched her teeth and tried to think of something else. She
wondered, for a brief moment, how her friends were doing. Were they okay? Were
they thinking of her? Were they going to try and rescue her?
	Rescue her... Akane closed her eyes at that thought. That would be nice.
Just have someone burst in the door, stretch out their hand and say, 'I'm here
to rescue you!' Then she wouldn't have to get up and face him.
	She opened her eyes. The ceiling looked down at her.
	She was running away, she realised. She was afraid of him. He hadn't
raised a hand to her. He hadn't even threatened her. She wasn't certain he could
bring himself to hurt her. But Chris frightened her more than the thought of
facing Reichmann Gyro did. After all, Gyro had just killed her.
	Chris had smiled and talked, and politely destroyed everything she
believed in.
	Akane sat up, gripping the side of the bed. Her thoughts kept going back
to what had happened yesterday. Chris had, casually and easily, ordered Angel to
kill someone. He had done it right in front of Akane. It should have been a
damning moment. It should have been the ultimate damning moment.
	She picked up her hairband from the nighttable and carefully put it in
place. She had charged into that room, so full of vigour. She had thought she
had him dead to rights. She had thought of a perfect hole in his logic. And then
he had just calmly ordered Angel to kill someone.
	Akane walked over to the wardrobe. There were dozens of outfits inside.
It hadn't just been anyone. It had been Cologne. Akane and Cologne had never
been friends, especially since Cologne had started living and working with
Chronos. But Cologne was Shampoo's great grandmother. Shampoo had died trying to
show Akane that Chris was beyond saving.
	Each outfit was tailored just for her. She ran her fingers along an
outfit done in yellows and blacks. She would probably look good in it. Heroic.
Epic. There was even a belt with two hooks for her to attach her traditional
dual swords.
	Akane was standing here, fondling fabric while Chris sent a girl to kill
Cologne. Shampoo had died to give Akane a message, and she was sitting here
contemplating... contemplating turning her back on that message. Because Chris
had done with words what Chronos and Akio could not. He had made her doubt
herself.
	She let the suit slip from her fingers. It would have been easier if she
couldn't remember it so clearly. If the argument had been so fast and heated
that Akane could only remember a blur, she might have been able to convince
herself that it was just a... a trick, a hallucination, or maybe some form of
magical mind control. But it hadn't been.
	Akane looked down at herself. She was in the same outfit she had been
wearing when she went to the North Pole. She hadn't changed in... a long time.
Chris had just dismantled her arguments.  Her accusations of murder were met
with replies about how she had killed people for her cause as well. When she
claimed that his godhood rendered her choices irrelevent, he countered with the
fact that he was going out of his way to make them relevent. He wanted a world
that didn't need a god. He then went on to prove that only a god, namely him,
could provide that future.
	She grabbed the bokken from where it was leaning against the wall.
Katsuhito's last gift to her. Every position she took, Chris undermined. Every
argument she made, Chris answered. Every challenge she made, he responded. It
left her speechless.
	So she had run away.
	She had begged that she needed to sleep. That she needed to think.
Chris, as always, seemed more than happy to give her time. He was always willing
to give her more time. His smile seemed to say, 'Take all the time you want,
Akane. Come up with all the perfectly logical denials you want. I'll be here,
waiting. I have the truth. I can wait.'
	Akane walked open to the door and palmed it open. The corridor outside
was empty. She knew it would be. She took a deep breath.
	She had to face it. There was no good reason to reject Chris' offer.
There was no valid excuse to deny him. There was no logical, rational argument
she could think of to counter him. Maybe smarter people than her could. But she
wasn't a philosopher.
	She started down the halls. It wasn't a long walk. She didn't meet
anybody along the way. The door to his chamber opened up as she approached.
Chris was hovering with his back to her, his head bowed slightly and his arms
crossed. There was a large crystal screen floating before him. Akane paused as
she watched it for a second.
	Angel was there, and so was Akira. It took a moment for Akane to
recognize the woman, even though they'd saved the world together seven years
ago. She looked... different, somehow, then when Akane had last seen her. But,
from what Akane knew, Akira and Angel had experienced a falling out. Why would
they be running anywhere, together?
	Chris waved his hand, banishing the image on the screen and turned to
face her. He turned around, his expression uncharacteristically dark, but his
tone was light and even. "Ah, Akane. Did you sleep well?"
	"Frankly? No," Akane replied, frowning to herself. "What's happening
with Angel? I thought she and Akira were... not exactly friends anymore."
	"Well, Angel is very gregarious," Chris said lightly. "So they've made
up, it seems."
	"That isn't what I meant," Akane responded, annoyed. "Angel told me
about their fights. Akira would never let her kill people."
	"No, you're right. Angel's instead decided to leave my service, at least
for the moment." Chris shrugged nonchalantly. "That's her right, of course.
Truthfully, I don't have a lot of use for her now, so I hope she'll be happy."
	"That's... it?" Akane asked in disbelief. She paused. "What about
Cologne?" she forced herself to say.
	"What, should I be raging?" Chris said. "I care for Angel. I wouldn't
want to force her to do something she doesn't want. I saved her life, and she
gave me many years of loyalty, so neither of us truly owes the other anything.
If she no longer feels comfortable working for me, so be it." He paused. "As for
Cologne, that mission was completed."
	Akane felt something cold settle in her stomach. Of course, she had
known that was going to happen. She closed her eyes. Damnit. She hadn't expected
it to hit this hard. Cologne was... had been working with the enemy for years,
after all. But Akane could have done something. She could have forced him to...
	To what?
	"So... I guess you win. Cologne is dead," Akane hissed out.
	Chris sighed. "It wasn't winning. We discussed this yesterday, Akane. I
know you don't like it, but it was self-defence. Cologne had dedicated her life
to destroying me. And she'd so adamantly refused to let Chronos mentally
manipulate her that simply making her forget about me would have been a worse
crime. I didn't hate her, and it's unfortunate she could not forgive me."
	There it was. That simple, reasonable argument that he had for
everything. She grabbed onto the handle of Katsuhito's sword, squeezing until
her knuckles hurt. "You have an answer for everything, don't you?" Akane asked,
feeling her temper fraying. Cologne was dead, and she had done nothing. How
could she not have done something?
	"What would you have done, Akane?" Chris asked. "You've had enemies. Not
all of them were black-hearted villains. You're certainly aware of this now, if
you ever really weren't. But sometimes, for an important enough cause, you will
have to do things you don't like. Things that make you uneasy. You killed men
and women who had families and children. Did you want to kill them? Of course
not. You simply had no choice. And I had no choice but to stop Cologne. The life
lost here was tragic, but nothing compared to the consequences of my stepping in
this room one morning and seeing the armies of Tethys raised against me, or
Chronos, or even Jurai." He raised one hand, tapping his cheek. "I would win, of
course. I could send them back where they came from, I could erase their
memories, I could even make them my allies. But is that right? To simply use my
power to force everyone in the world to do whatever I want? I don't think so.
What do you think?"
	"It doesn't matter," Akane said sharply. She opened her eyes, and rubbed
the back of her free hand against them. "It's done. You did it. I didn't stop
you."
	"Akane, you didn't want to stop me."
	"What?"
	"Just what I said," Chris said calmly. "We discussed this last night.
You argued against it, and I told you my reasons. You went to bed knowing I had
sent Angel to kill Cologne. You are not to blame, but true, you didn't stop it."
He raised one hand, pressing his middle finger and thumb together. "However, you
could have. And you know it. All you had to do is ask. Yes, you can't come up
with a good reason why I'm wrong, but nonetheless I'm willing to trust your
judgement. If you still think what I did was wrong, then ask, and I will take it
back." He glanced up at his hand. "A snap of my fingers, and I'll bring Cologne
back and none of this will have ever happened. And then we'll see what she does.
Perhaps I was wrong, and you were right. So if you're still so adamant, just ask
me, and we'll see where the dice fall."
	Akane stared for a long few seconds. There it was again, the floor
collapsing out underneath all her anger and justifications. "So... you just snap
your fingers and that's it? It never happened?"
	"Yes, Akane, it will never have happened. Isn't that what you want? That
Cologne isn't dead? Or am I misunderstanding you?"
	Akane felt her stomach twisting. Of course she didn't want Cologne to be
dead. She didn't want anyone to be dead. Except maybe Gyro. But if she told him
to do this... to just wave his hand and fix the problem... what did that say
about her? Would it be so wrong? She could just ask him this one favor. Maybe...
	Maybe if he listened to her...
	"What do you want out of me, Chris?" Akane asked. "I mean, why me? Why
do you need my permission to save Cologne? Or anybody?"
	"Why NOT you?" Chris said, and smiled with genuine humour. "You think so
poorly of yourself sometimes. Akane, I want to help save the world. Why wouldn't
I trust the advice of the person who did it first?"
	Then it hit Akane. She remembered that time, seven years ago. She
remembered what it had felt like. How she had kept being pushed and pushed.
Pushed by what? She still didn't know. Whatever it was that she had met on the
other side of death, it had changed her. It had sent her back a slightly
different person than she had been before. It had given her a purpose. It had
wanted her to fufill that purpose. It too had needed her.
	And she had refused. She had refused and risked everything. She had
known, at the time, that what that nameless thing offered her might well have
been the only way to save the entire world. It had pushed and pushed... but in
the end, it had backed off.
	Just like Chris was now. He wanted her to agree with him. And he kept
giving her deadlines and ultimatums, and then pulling back from them. He kept
giving her second chances.
	"...more seriously," Chris was saying, "I don't think of myself as
infallible. I want someone else who I can trust, who will give me a sober second
thought on things, and I think you will be-"
	"No," Akane cut him off. Chris paused, obviously confused, then quickly
recovered, arching his good eyebrow.
	"No to what, precisely? No to saving Cologne, or...?"
	"No to all of it, Chris," Akane replied. Strangely, she didn't feel
angry. She felt tired. But she forced passion into her voice. She forced herself
to sound hard. She had learned to do that, over the years. Sometimes people
didn't need a shoulder to cry on. Sometimes they needed a bitch to order them
into action, even when it meant risking your head. She used that voice now. "I'm
not talking about this anymore."
	Chris paused again. "So, if I understand you correctly, you're saying
you think I should just do as I see fit? And therefore, Cologne remains dead?"
	"I'm not saying that," Akane snapped. "I just refuse to participate in
this anymore." She kept her voice level, barely. "If you want some sort of
response out of me, you're not going to get it. I'm not going to forgive what
you did, just because you can make it better. I'm not going to ask you to fix
it. I'm not going to tell you anything."
	Chris lowered the hand that he had been holding up to snap. The good
humour had evaporated from his voice. "And what exactly has you so upset?"
	"No, Chris. No more words. No more arguments. This is it. This is my
choice. I'll defy you, in the only way I can." Akane stiffened her posture.
"Even if that's just doing nothing."
	"That doesn't make any sense," Chris snapped. "You're no coward, Akane.
You don't shirk decisions just because they're tough. You're just going to sit
there like an angry child refusing to talk, because of... what? Because you know
that if I bring Cologne back, everything I said will happen, and you don't
want-"
	"Believe what you want," Akane interrupted. "You have the only answer
I'm going to give you, Chris. Now, I would like to leave."
	"Don't be ridiculous, you won't even explain-"
	"No. I won't. Now, I would like to leave."
	"You-" Chris started to shout, then swallowed the words with an audible
effort. When he continued, his voice was controlled again, but terse. "Akane,
whatever this is about, there is a more reasonable way to work through it. This
is too important to just have you walk away from it. I need your help, all of
humanity needs it."
	Akane didn't answer this time. She just stared at him. She had to force
herself to stare directly into that awful empty socket of his eye, but she
didn't let that show on her face. In fact, she let nothing show on her face.
	And Chris looked away first. "Damn it," he growled, turning with an
irritated sweep of his arm. "You won't talk? Fine, we don't need to talk." He
whirled in place, and suddenly his face contorted with rage. A dark red light
sprang into life in his eyesocket. "I don't need to talk, Akane. But you're
going to understand what's at stake here. I will MAKE you understand!"
	Akane had just recently remembered what it was like seven years ago. She
had remembered what it was like to find herself being pushed by god. That was
nothing like this. That had just been pressure. That had just been a feeling
of... expectation, such an overwhelming feeling of need that turning her back on
it had been near-impossible.
	This was a violation. Her body rebelled against her. She couldn't even
scream. She couldn't even whimper. Her eyes refused to look away. Her nose
refused to twitch. Her entire body ceased to be her own.
	Fast on its heels, her mind went away too. She tried to focus on
something else, but it was impossible. She didn't want to focus on anything
else. She wanted to listen to him. She wanted to nod along. He was only telling
the truth. She remembered things in her life, things that made him seem more
sympathetic. She remembered-
	"No," Akane said.
	The word shocked Chris, and it let up for a moment. Then his face
twisted into a scowl and it returned. There was no crushing weight. There was no
sense of invasion. There was no feeling of horror. The hatred in her bubbled
away, as naturally and easily as it had when Akane had first learned that Nabiki
had invaded her mind without permission. After all, if she could forgive Nabiki,
how could she hold anything against Chris? She felt her image of Chris
softening. She felt her opposition evaporate.
	She opened her mouth, for a moment unable to understand why she had
opposed him. Then Chris frowned slightly, and she remembered. She had been
confused. Petulant. She had been forced into a corner. But it was okay. He would
forgive her childishness. She cleared her throat and spoke.
	"No," she said.
	Chris' eyes narrowed. Akane felt a thrill of fear run through her. She
had no idea where that word had come from. When she had spoken, she had meant to
ask him to forgive her for being childish. She had meant to apologise. She had
meant to explain that she was tired and stressed out. She wanted to explain.
	"I... won't..." Akane said.
	She reached up and clutched the sides of her head. That wasn't supposed
to happen! What was wrong with her? She could feel something inside her. It
filled her with disgust and rage. It was dark and pulsing. It was angry. She
tried to force it back down. She looked up at Chris, to draw strength from him.
	He was snarling now. His hands were curled into claws. The deadlight in
his ruined eye flared. She could see the air rippling around him. Her mind
retreated from it. But she knew she shouldn't be afraid. He was fighting for
her. He was helping her.
	"Leave..." Akane gasped, collapsing to one knee. "Me..." The word came
out as a shriek. The awful, hateful thing inside her pulsed again. She couldn't
make it go away! "Alone!"
	"Stop fighting me!" Chris yelled. "You have to stop!" His face was
twisted, but not with rage. It was twisted with confusion and fear. Of course,
Akane realised. He was God. Nothing she should have been able to do should have
stopped him. "How can you fight me?!" Chris shrieked.
	Then Akane suddenly remembered. She remembered the Oversoul and the
void. She remembered herself slowly fading away, as she drifted back into the
familiar, peaceful All. And she remembered being ripped rudely out. She
remembered being sawed out. She remembered something huge, pulling her free from
the All. She remembered being pulled past... an emptiness that was full of
blades that screamed. She remembered encountering something.
	No, not something. It was nothing. It had no name. It had no face. It
was just immensity. It was just power. It had no voice, so it borrowed hers. 'I
have died,' Akane remembered herself saying in a non-voice. 'Because Chris loves
me. I will return, because I will be his undoing. And I shall have the tools
needed to do this.'
	The words, spoken by her and that awful, immense nameless thing beyond
the edge of the All, hidden amongst the screaming swords, had burned themselves
deep inside her. She had been given Purpose.
	Chris staggered back and Akane collapsed. Her hands shot out, preventing
her from smashing facefirst into the floor. Her breathing came in shaky gasps.
Her skin crawled. Her mind recoiled in horror. Chris had... he had...
	"You... fucking... BASTARD!" Akane leapt to her feet.
	"No," Chris growled. "I won't let you ignore me!" And he held out his
hand and this time Akane could feel it. The weight of his power. All that
immense power. There were no more subtle tricks, no more games. Just raw brute
force smashing against her psyche.
	Akane held her ground.
	"Why?" Chris shrieked. "How can you do this?"
	"Because someone has to," Akane replied.
	Chris clenched his hands and Akane felt something deeper draw out of
him. He wasn't just using stolen power now, Akane realised. He was tapping
whatever well of power he had. She could feel something awful rushing out of it.
She couldn't help but picture that abyss of shrieking swords. And with a
wordless scream, he tried to smash it into her.
	Something inside Akane immediately knew what he was doing. He was trying
to forge a connection between them. He was trying to funnel all the shrieking,
horrible energy inside him into her. To erase her, and make her part of him. He
had done it before, she knew. He did it without desperation. He had created this
channel before.
	It was like the swords were pushing into Akane's skin from every angle.
Whatever thing the nameless force had left her with, it too was buckling under
this assault. She snarled and took a step forward. She could feel herself
fraying with every step. She could feel the flow from him double with every
heartbeat. He was pushing himself to the edge. The wound in his face darkened
and began to putrefy, only to stop suddenly as he pushed the consequences onto
Akane. She could feel it burning at her eye.
	The sound of her slap broke the tension in the room. Chris, who could
face down gods, staggered back. The pressure broke. Akane could feel the
horrible energy retreating towards him... then begin to vanish. It was heading
somewhere else.
	"No, Chris. Never."
	"Akane..." Chris gasped. Then his head twisted to the side suddenly.
"Kalia?"

*

	The mob came forward, screaming silently in the void. Ukyou tensed
herself, allowing her eyes to track around the circle. There was no escape, of
course. Her hands slid along the length of the Silence Glaive. Hotaru watched
her, her bronze eyes narrowed with hate. Ukyou took a deep breath.
	The first rank reached her.
	"Forgive me, Akira," Ukyou said softly and opened herself to the Third
Circle.
	There was an explosion of sound as Ukyou swung the Silence Glaive
through them. They scattered like tenpins, blasted away in all directions.
Hundreds of the ghostly figures went tumbling away.
	Then the second rank reached her. A half dozen swung at her, their
movements coordinated in eerie unison. Ukyou managed to deflect all the strikes,
and Aaron kept her a fraction of a second ahead of the next half-dozen, and the
next. As the ghosts struck they moved aside, letting the next ones have their
shot, and the next and the next.
	And the ghosts rose to their feet, showing no signs of injury. She had
withheld using the Silence against them, but they refused to go down from just
normal blows. She couldn't defend against them all. Eventually, she would make a
mistake. With a frown, she shifted from defence to offence.
	The Silence Glaive sung in her hands. A dozen ghosts were scattered by
the first blow. Ukyou moved into the gap, avoiding the Paradox swords that fell
from the ghosts' limp hands. Without pausing, she struck again, the Glaive
exploding with near-silence. Even as the gap she had created was filled by more
silent ghosts, she moved into the next gap, and the next.
	She and Aaron recoiled from the thought of killing these ghosts. They
were innocent souls, Ukyou was certain. Hotaru was doing something to control
them, using the Paradox blades to command them. However, each soul she cut down
with the Silence Glaive would be annihilated, and all that would be left was
another Sword of Hate.
	Ukyou ran up the side of a largish man, and suddenly she was on top of
the army of ghosts. She moved across it, her legs moving from shoulder to head
as she flitted across the field. The ghosts' mouths opened in silent screams as
they swung up at her, some leaping to get better opportunities to strike. They
didn't care about each other. The swords passed through their ghostly flesh
without pause.
	In other words, she was trapped in a no-win situation. If she fought
back at full effectiveness, she would be doing Hotaru's job for her. If she held
back, it would only be a matter of time before they wore her down.
	Ukyou frowned and dropped, her body flaring with purple sparks as she
phased down through the body of a ghost. She avoided the blade and sidestepped
through another ghost. The glaive parried three swordstrokes at once, and
ghosted down and to the left, passing through a few startled spirits.
	Hotaru was in charge of this. She was using the swords to control the
spirits. Aaron was certain of it. Which meant that this army was nothing but
window dressing. It was Hotaru she had to reach. It was Hotaru who could end
this.
	Ukyou hissed as a blade slid along her arm, drawing a red line through
the fabric of her coat. It appeared that her absolute defence was gone. Two more
strikes slipped through her guard while she was getting over the surprise of
being hurt by the Paradox. The first scored a shallow wound along her calf, the
second cut her cheek. She leapt up and back, putting all the power she could
into the leap.
	She sailed out and over the army. It turned en masse, following her. The
mass of them stretched out around her, seemingly forever. The souls of the dead,
enslaved by Paradox to give Hotaru her vengeance. The place Ukyou was going to
land was just as crowded as everyhere else. The shades braced themselves, swords
held high to pierce her as she landed among them. The Glaive came around...
	"Dead Scream!"
	A blast of purple light exploded among the crowd, sending them flying in
all directions. Ukyou landed in the gap, panting slightly. She caught a flash of
green hair as Pluto landed beside her, followed shortly thereafter by a yellow
streak as Nanami landed nearby.
	"You shouldn't be here," Ukyou said as she stood up, placing her back to
Pluto. Pluto chuckled as she placed her back to Ukyou's. The army circled them
warily, apparently confused by this arrangement.
	"If you lose, we're all doomed," Pluto explained. "So... even if it's
meaningless, I'll help you."
	"You should listen to her, Pluto," Hotaru's voice came from the crowd.
It parted slightly to reveal the girl as she limped forward, clutching her side.
"I have nothing against you. Your death could be quick and painless."
	"Maybe," Pluto agreed. "But I've chosen not to die. And so has everyone
else back on Earth." Her eyes locked on Hotaru. "No matter how much pain the
world is filled with, they keep fighting on. We all do. That is our nature." She
took a deep breath. "So remember that, Ukyou. If your friends were here, every
one of them would stand with you against this."
	Ukyou glanced at Pluto out of the corner of her eye, and smiled. "Yeah.
They would."
	Nanami said nothing as she drew her blades with sharp rasps. Hotaru
sighed. "You think that makes it okay, Ukyou?" Hotaru growled. "Let me remind
you of what kind of pain your presence causes!"
	A figure burst from the crowd, shooting forward. Ukyou tensed, then
realised too late the attack wasn't directed at her. Pluto barely got her staff
up in time, deflecting the sword that almost took her head off. A figure in a
grey coat and pants stood with his blade locked against her staff.
	"Jadeite?" Pluto gasped.
	"That's right," the dead Dark General snarled, one sleeve of his jacket
flapping emptily behind him as he pressed her. "This is revenge, for destroying
me!"
	"Pluto, duck," Ukyou called as she swung the Silence Glaive. Jadeite
leapt back, managing to parry the attack with the Sword of Hate he carried in
his remaining hand. Ukyou growled and stepped in front of Pluto. The scars the
Dark General had burned into her arm ached as she clenched the glaive tighter.
"Is this supposed to impress me, Hotaru?"
	"You destroyed me, the both of you!" Jadeite screamed, his face twisting
with rage.
	"You kidnapped my friend, threatened my homeland, tortured me and tried
to kill me," Ukyou replied sharply.
	"And what about me, Ukyou?"
	Ukyou snapped her head around just in time to parry a blow meant to
skewer her back. A blonde-haired woman wearing round glasses pressed the sword
forward, causing Ukyou to stumble back. The woman was dressed in a conservative
suit that concealed her curves, and her face was full of righteous fury.
	"Did I deserve to die for you?" the woman snarled, striking twice more.
Ukyou could hear Pluto struggling with Jadeite nearby.
	"Integra... I didn't..." Ukyou paused.
	"You let me die! You were right there, you could have destroyed Bison,
but you let him kill me!" Integra shouted, suddenly switching her style. Ukyou
was going to reply, when Aaron suddenly warned her.
	They barely phased in time as white darts flashed through their body.
Purple sparks flew as Ukyou leapt up and back, landing just outside of sword
range of the wall of ghosts that had encircled her Pluto and Nanami. Integra was
running towards her, holding the Sword of Hate like a sabre as she closed. And
behind her came another bespectacled woman, this one with long black hair and
uncombed hair. Her eyes were clear, and full of hate.
	"Yomiko..." Ukyou gasped. The dead paper-master held a sword in one hand
and was producing a sheath of papers with the other. "Hotaru! Stop this! She did
nothing to deserve..."
	"Deserve has nothing to do with it," Yomiko replied, sending the papers
in her hands at Ukyou like missiles. Ukyou parried with the Glaive, as Integra
slid to the side to strike with her sword. "I died because of you, Ukyou. All I
wanted was peace. But you abandoned me and Hotaru. You went off to kill
yourself, because you couldn't face the thought of actually being responsible."
	The glaive sang as it parried two simultaneous thrusts from the two
women. Ukyou's feet dug into the ground as she was pushed back. The crowd at her
back screamed and surged forward, blades flashing. Ukyou released the glaive,
banishing it and tumbling forward between the two suddenly off-balance ghosts.
	She came up near Pluto, conjuring up the glaive with a thought. Jadeite
took an offhand swing in the temple, toppling forward. Pluto gasped and
staggered away a bit. But Jadeite wouldn't be down long. All three of them were
more than they had been in life.
	"Hotaru, please, just stop this!" Ukyou shouted.
	"There is no stopping it," Integra cried, leaping at Ukyou.
	"You destroyed us, Ukyou," Yomiko snapped as she swung a whip of folded
paper at her. Ukyou phased through it, and parried the downward swing from
Integra. Jadeite thrust at her back.
	"All of the lives you've touched," he snarled, "have ended in tragedy."
	"That isn't true!" Ukyou shouted, and with a heave she tossed Integra
back. Her leg came up, catching Jadeite in the stomach and knocking him back.
Yomiko closed, her blade flashing out. Her swordplay was weak, but her off-hand
held a weapon that changed and moved by her will alone.
	A blast of purple light took Yomiko in the side, sending her tumbling
away. Pluto grit her teeth as she turned the focus of her staff towards Integra.
"Ukyou, you can't keep holding back against them!"
	"But..." Ukyou paused as she struck at the rising Jadeite, sending him
sprawling. "I can't..."
	"Ukyou, you have to-ARGH!" Pluto toppled forward, her eyes widening in
pain. Three lines of red had torn through the back of her costume, A tall figure
stood behind her, his face hidden behind a white mask. He stepped forward,
chuckling under his breath.
	"No..." Ukyou breathed.
	"What's the problem, Ukyou?" Vega asked, his smile audible in his smooth
voice. "You didn't hesitate to murder me. How can destroying my soul be any
worse? Come now, give me a battle to end all battles!"
	Ukyou didn't react as the claw came in. Thankully, Aaron seized control
long enough to parry the three blades. He could feel the Paradox in them. The
blades touched the side of her cheek, drawing more blood. The shock brought
Ukyou back to her senses. With a cry she smashed Vega away. He landed on his
feet.
	"No..." Ukyou breathed. "I've made my peace with that." She pointed her
blade at Vega. "I'm not afraid of you." She turned to the other three shades.
"I'm not afraid of any of you. So try again, Hotaru." She turned to face the
girl. "No matter what you do, you won't drive me away."
	"Drive you away?" Nanami said. She was crouching over Pluto. Her eyes
flashed yellow. She ran her fingers over the wounds, pulling lines of blood
across her fingers. "Is that what you think this is about, Ukyou?"
	"Yes," Ukyou replied.
	"You really are a fool," Nanami said, rising to her feet. "You can't
see beyond your delusions." She licked her fingers as she stood up.
	"Nanami?" Ukyou backed away from her. The other four figures silently
circled her, swords at the ready. "What's going on?"
	"I had thought, that maybe you would have the strength to do it,"
Nanami said with a snarl. "That you could look past that weakness in your heart
and actually do what needed to be done. But I was wrong." She drew her swords.
	Ukyou's eyes narrowed. "You... you're on the Nameless' side?"
	"Of course I am!" Nanami snarled. "We all are. Your delusion is that
there is any other side, Ukyou." She stepped forward. "This is His game. I saw
Him, in that hellish experience. I know. This world is an experiment, designed
to test you. To see if you have what it takes."
	"What it takes?"
	"To fix it, you idiot!" Nanami struck, her blades flashing out. Ukyou
parried, but barely. Damn, the girl was fast. Suddenly the other four struck.
Ukyou dodged and slid, phasing past one strike and blocking another. "Do you
think any of us want this? This is hell, Ukyou! I live in hell, dead yet not
allowed to die!"
	"And you left us," Yomiko said. Ukyou just barely flipped over her
strike, parrying two more at the same time. "You abandoned Hotaru to that fate.
You KNEW she had been taken, and still you left her! You left her to suffer!"
	"But you've always been good at that," Jadeite accused. Ukyou landed
behind him as he swung to face her. She ducked his strike.  "You shattered my
body, took my arm and... spared me? You left me broken and beaten! You didn't
have the mercy to kill me!"
	"You've never had the conviction to do what needs to be done," Integra
said as she thrust around Jadeite. Ukyou rolled away, phasing through Yomiko.
"Or maybe you just didn't care enough? Maybe you never wanted to do the right
thing?"
	"No!" Ukyou denied, deflecting a pair of attacks.
	"Oh please, Ukyou," Vega said as he flipped over her. She thrust her
glaive up, their blades meeting three times in a flare of sparks. "You knew what
would happen when you took Hotaru from me. You knew what I was." He laughed.
"Everything that happened after that, is on your head."
	"NO!" Ukyou roared and with a snarl she ran Vega through the chest. He
stiffened. Then with a shriek he dissolved away, leaving nothing but his claws.
They fell with a clatter to the ground. Ukyou stared.
	"So much for your morals of convenience," Integra snarled, sliding her
sword into Ukyou's shoulder. Ukyou screamed in pain and clutched the blade.
"That's perhaps the most annoying thing about you. You speak so well, but when
push comes to shove... you don't have the strength of your own convictions."
	"You're nothing, Ukyou," Yomiko accused, stabbing her through the thigh.
Ukyou stumbled, falling to one knee as she cried out. "At least Chris had the
willingness to commit to his delusions. You can't even do that. You are nothing
but doubt and weakness."
	"Shut up!" Ukyou growled, biting back the pain. She brought up her free
hand. "DEEP SUBMERGE!"
	The blast of water caught the two off-guard, sending them both tumbling
back. Unfortunately, they left their blades embedded in Ukyou's body. She hissed
as she slowly rose to her feet, blinking away tears. "Enough, Hotaru!" Ukyou
shouted. "I will NOT give up!"
	"I don't want you to give up," Hotaru explained. "I want you to suffer.
I want you to die, realising that you could have done something to save us. But
you chose not to. You always choose not to." Hotaru quirked her head over
Ukyou's shoulder. "Isn't that right?" she asked the person behind her.
	Ukyou already knew who it was going to be before she turned. But, like
a victim in a horror movie, she couldn't stop herself from looking. The
girl who stood there had black hair in a ponytail and wore a blue vest over her
school uniform. Her freckled face was twisted with rage.
	The blade that she held slammed into Ukyou's back, piercing her straight
through the stomach. Ukyou screamed in pain and collapsed.
	"You could have saved me," Ran said, her voice full of hate. "You could
have taken the Wishing Sword and made me live again. But you didn't. Because you
are afraid. You're afraid of what you'll become if you have too much power." Ran
twisted the sword, causing Ukyou to scream again. "Well, guess what, Ukyou? You
can't save anyone without sacrifice. Everything has a price. And if you aren't
willing to pay that price, none of your good intentions matter one bit!"
	"Ran... you don't... understand..." Ukyou gasped.
	"I understand perfectly," Ran said. Nanami walked up next to her, and
Hotaru came up on the other side. "You could end this at any time. You choose
not to."
	"H-how... I don't..." Ukyou coughed.
	"You can't do it, Ukyou," Hotaru explained. She knelt beside her. "Your
soul is too weak. You can't make the sacrifice." The girl reached out and her
fingers wrapped around the Silence Glaive. "But my soul is strong. I know what
needs to be done." She rose up, holding the Silence Glaive up almost wistfully.
"You know, I've dreamed of this moment for seven years. I always thought I would
enjoy it more." She looked down at Ukyou. "Except you haven't lost everything
yet, have you?"
	"What do you...?" Ukyou paused. She felt something inside her shift,
then break. It was like a part of her vanished entirely. The sudden emptiness
left her cold. "No... Akira..." she breathed.
	"Yes... that's better," Hotaru said with a smile. "Now, you really are
alone, Ukyou." She lifted the Silence Glaive up over her head. "Goodbye."

*

	Akira sprinted forward, drawing her fist back. Kalia slid sideways, past
a pair of people that were still running in slow motion. Akira thrust, her fist
passing through the space between them and striking the not-girl in the stomach
as she moved. She could have missed. Any number of a million things could have
gone wrong. They didn't.
	Kalia grinned as she crumbled around the blow. Her hand snaked out and
latched onto Akira's elbow. "Good, but not there yet," Kalia said. "You're too
caught up in what isn't happening."
	The two people ran away from each other, parting just enough for Akira
to drive her leg up and into Kalia's chin. The girl's head snapped back, and
right and left and-
	Akira went flying backward, the air exploding from her lungs. Except
she didn't. She caught the knee at the last second with her free hand-
	Her arm snapped like a matchstick as Kalia twisted in her grip, pulling
on Akira's arm. Akira grit her teeth and suddenly her arm was fine, Kalia having
missed the grab and only gotten a hold of her forearm. The twist she did was
painful, but not enough-
	Kalia's fist slammed into her face. Akira tumbled to the ground,
coughing. She looked up. "You... already lost that arm..." Akira gasped.
	"You don't expect me to fight fair, do you?" Kalia giggled as she
floated backward. She was flexing her arms, curling and uncurling her fingers.
	Akira pushed herself to her knees. She coughed. The pain was weakening.
She could feel it, the flow of Paradox from Ukyou was tapering off. Had she won?
	"Eye of the storm, Ahura Mazda," Kalia called out.
	"Akira," Angel said as she walked closer, clutching her shoulder. The
tattoos on her chest were blazing as the girl tried to channel enough water
chakra to heal the wound. Blood seeped between her fingers. "Did you just... I
could swear I saw you..."
	"Yes..." Akira gasped.
	"No, not good enough!" Kalia called out, suddenly appearing behind
Angel. The girl cried out as the girl-shaped thing wrapped both hands around her
throat. "You have to go further, Akira!"
	"Let her go!" Akira shouted, leaping to her feet. The pain didn't stop
her. Angel managed to twist just right so that Akira's punch would catch Kalia
without harming her. Kalia's face caved in under the blow. Akira' fist exited
the back of her head. A thrill of pleasure ran up Akira's spine and she grinned.
	Then Kalia kicked her, sending her flying back. She flew into a group of
running children, scattering them-
	She landed hard on the asphalt, skimming across it harshly and tearing
some of the skin off her elbows. She hissed as she kicked to her feet. Kalia
grinned at her as she floated up into the sky. Grinned with her perfectly intact
face.
	"I... your face..." Akira groaned.
	"And I gave you such a nice soft landing," Kalia pointed out. She
tightened her grip on Angel's throat. The girl was clawing uselessly at Kalia's
fingers with her one working arm. Her face was going blue.
	"You... changed time..." Akira admitted slowly.
	"Ding! Ding! Ding!" Kalia giggled. "Give the woman a cigar!" She smiled.
"And read into that all the Freudian things you want."
	"You can't do that, my presence..."
	"Ukyou's presence," Kalia pointed out, leaning down and licking Angel's
ear. The girl shuddered even as she redoubled her efforts to escape. "Ukyou. Not
you. A nice plan, using you to force context on me... but you don't really do
that, Akira. Ukyou does. Chris does. But you... you're like me. We CREATE
whatever context we want."
	Akira screamed, suddenly feeling the Paradox inside her spike again. She
placed a hand on the ground, ground her teeth and cursed. Not now, damn it.
	"For instance, you can choose to be crippled by Ukyou's waste," Kalia
said, floating lower. "Or you can make a whole new context for yourself."
	Akira closed her eyes. Kalia had shifted time. She had literally altered
herself so that Akira's punch had not hurt her. She had altered herself so that
Angel's attack hadn't chopped off her arm. She hadn't just made something not
happen, she'd made something else have happened.
	"For example, I could just be here, holding Angel in a deathgrip while
she struggles..." Kalia said, her grin obvious in her voice. "Or maybe I broke
her leg before I grabbed her neck?" Angel whimpered. "Or maybe I snapped her
thumb?" Angel's hissing scream was loud in Akira's ears. "Or maybe I..."
	"Stop it!" Akira stood up, forcing her eyes open. Angel was clawing at
Kalia, the thumb on her good hand bent back at an unnatural angle. But her
chakra was different. She wasn't using water to try and heal her wounds, or
earth to resist Kalia's attacks. Instead she was using void, the chakra of
stealth and sensory input, the ethereal wings on her back flaring almost through
Kalia. Akira wondered why, then suddenly realised that void chakra would give
Angel the greatest sensitivity to pain.
	"Do you want to stop me, Ahura Mazda?" Kalia smiled. "All you have to do
is let go. Let go of that fragile little soul thing that keeps you so limited.
Open your eyes and see; look across the great barriers of time and space. Look
across all the worlds. Pick the destiny that suits your fancy!" Kalia's smile
widened and her voice became dark and cold. "But act fast, offer expires while
you wait."
	Akira looked at Angel's eyes. She saw the girl pleading for... for
release? For Akira to fight on? For salvation? It was impossible to say. Akira
looked away.
	"I'm sorry."
	She let go.
	Akira's body twitched. She was surprised. Surprised by how little seemed
to have changed. The pain she was familiar with. Ever since she had rescued
Ukyou from Bison's prison in her mind, she had been familiar with the pain. The
way it felt like every pain at once. That was familiar. What was surprising was
the pleasure. She felt like her body was being wrapped in fresh silk, or touched
by warm skin or lathered with cold ice. Her form shuddered as erotic impulses
flooded her system. Her stomach churned as a million delights ran down her
tongue.
	And there was more than pleasure and pain. There was heat and cold. She
felt rain on her skin. She felt arid air blowing across her cheeks. There was so
many sensations, so many emotions all churning inside her. She felt anger at
Kalia. She felt anger at Ukyou. She felt lust. She felt sadness. All at once,
all blazing so strongly and barely at all...
	It just suddenly didn't matter. All the feelings, all the emotions, all
the sensations just sort of cancelled each other out. There was none that was
more real, more important than the others. She could feel a burning desire to
kill Angel, every bit as strong and driving as her desire to save her, as her
desire to kiss her and no less real than her utter apathy towards this girl she
both knew very well and not at all.
	Kalia's face was laughing, crying, smiling, frowning, growling and a
million other expressions at once. Angel was dead in her hands. She was
uninjured. She was naked and moaning, or nothing but a charred corpse. She
wasn't even Angel. She was Nabiki, or Sailor Mars, or female Ranma, or male
Ranma, or Shingo...
	Akira looked down at her hands. They were covered in blood. Or they
weren't. It didn't matter. She began to giggle. What a meaningless choice.
Bloody or not? How trivial! How small! She stretched out her hand. She could
grab it all, or none of it.
	"Why did I ever resist this?" Akira whispered. It was heaven. It was
hell. It was whatever she wanted and everything she didn't want and all the
things she had never thought of. It was all so meaningless.
	"I can change the past, the future..." Akira hissed out, giggling
softly. "I can make it all happen, or make it have never existed. I can kill
Angel, or save her or just have never met her..."
	"Yes!" Kalia cried out. Akira twisted her head to see her. For some
reason, she thought she saw a man in green hair there for a moment. But it faded
into the background. He was still there, but less... real than Kalia.
	No, that was wrong. She tilted her head sideways. It wasn't that Kalia
was more real than him. Just the opposite. She was less there than him. He was
there, and Kalia was not. She was... like a cut-out. A hole that wasn't there.
	"What you see is your past, and your future," Kalia informed her.
"Backwards and forwards in time." Kalia held out her hand. "Little baby Akira,
suckling at her mother's teat and little girl Akira at her brother's bedside
while he lies bleeding from the hole that used to be his eye and your meeting
with Ukyou and all that... every moment of your life." She chuckled. "Except you
don't see much of a future, because you don't have one."
	"Z, I see Z." Akira said. "Why? I don't care about the war he fights, so
why? I can make it all go away, right?"
	"If you want," Kalia said, floating backward, an emptiness in the past
that shouldn't be there. "But you should look to the future, Akira. Because
soon, it's going to end. All the possibilities will collapse when Ukyou finally
confronts her destiny.
	"Unless you change that."
	"When it gets to that point, Ukyou will die," Akira pointed out. She
could feel it, the crush of inevitability. In fact, she could feel that with
everything related to Ukyou. As the world seemed to cycle through her entire
past and future - how little of the latter! - the only constant was Ukyou. Her
life didn't seem to spread out in every direction like the rest of the universe.
"When she goes, so do we all." Akira felt sadness and envy and hatred and joy
at the thought. "It's hopeless. I can't change her life... not at any cost."
	Except it seemed to keep coming back to that moment. Akira vaguely
remembered it. Her first mission in space. She had been caught up in the war
between Jurai and Galaxia, had almost been killed by a madman named Z who had
enough power to give Gyro and Pharaoh 90 and Alucard combined a run for their
money. And she had... how had she survived that?
	"This is the moment you can change it, Akira," Kalia whispered into her
ear. She stroked Akira's back. Akira tilted her head again, indicated she was
listening. "That man is changing time. He's summoning you, this moment, into the
past. It gives you a break. A break no-one else has. The chance to change the
future. To change now. Even for Ukyou. Even for Chris."
	Kalia ran her fingers along Akira's flesh, teasing her. "It's not that
long in. You can go back. You can change the now. You know where Ukyou is. You
can save her from Bison. You know where Angel is. You can save her from Chris
before he gets his hooks into her too deep. You can keep him from ever making
me. You can prevent Ryouga from ever meeting Hotaru. You can prevent the whole
chain of events.
	"And nothing can stop you." Kalia breathed into her ear. "Not with the
power you have now. You choose your destiny, Akira. Choose to make it all go
right this time. All the things you wanted." Kalia giggled. "Or not. Choose to
kill Ukyou. Choose to fuck Angel. Choose to burn the world. The choice is yours.
All the choices." Kalia pressed herself against Akira's back. "Are you really
going to turn down this chance?"
	"No." Akira said simply.
	Suddenly she was back there. She was standing in a cosmos of stars. They
swirled around her. Z, the monster, stood before her. Kalia floated behind her.
There were other figures, but they faded in and out. Was Angel here? She
shouldn't be. But the girl was there, on the ground, crawling towards Akira. For
some reason that seemed important. Something about what was in her hand. But it
wasn't important. It was just another thing that Akira could discard or focus on
at her leisure.
	"I have your Star Seed..." Z said. He was holding something in his hand.
Had he taken it? When had he done that? Oh well, it didn't matter. It was just
her soul. She could make herself a new one.
	"Z..." Akira said. "I don't care about the Star Seed, I can make it all
go away, and I will." Akira giggled. She could feel the past coming into more
focus now. She could see the others around. They were dead or alive or neither
at her pleasure, all at once.
	"I control your power," Z informed Akira. "You will serve me."
	"In a few seconds, Ukyou will die. Your hopeless quest won't matter
then. But I can pay any cost to make it not happen."
	"That's right," Kalia crowed. "And when you burst through, break the
chain of fate forever, you'll create more Paradox than ever before. And
together, we'll destroy God!" Kalia laughed. "Oh, if only he could see you now!
We'll teach that bastard to mess with the people we love!"
	Kalia danced among the stars. For some reason, Angel was still there,
she had almost reached Akira. "So are you going to hesitate now?"
	"No."
	Z narrowed his eyes. Of course, he couldn't hear most of the
conversation. He was only aware of the parts taking place in his past. In
Akira's past. But Akira was also here, in the now. With Kalia and Angel.
"Woman, you think you can resist me? I have your soul..." He brandished the
little thing.
	"Keep it," Akira said, her twisting face breaking out into a smile. "Not
gonna need it no more."
	Z suddenly looked apprehensive. He backed up a step. Akira appeared
beside him, in front of him, behind him and all around. She began to laugh and
tease. She could see his life running out in all directions. His pathetic life.
What a useless being.
	"...you should have died, too..."
	"...betrayed your family..."
	"...failure..."
	"...abandoned..."
	"...unloved..."
	"SHUT UP!" Z roared, stepping forward as he flared all five of his Wings
of the Light Hawk. They spread out across the sky, huge ribbons of pure white
light. Akira smiled, reached out, and curled her fingers around the edge of the
white ribbon-blade.
	What happened next was impossible, but why should Akira care? She
grabbed the edge of the wing and, with a snort and a flick of her
wrist, bent it like wet taffy. A sound escaped Z's throat. A scared, small,
pitiful sound. Something dropped from his hand to the 'ground' with a clink.
Akira reached out and grabbed another nearby wing. Then she proceeded to wrap
the wings around his body, tying his arms to his chest with them. She grabbed
two more and hogtied his legs behind his back. The fifth she balled up like a
wad of putty and shoved into his mouth. Z could only stare, nearly crying in
naked fear as Akira disassembled his ultimate defence with ease.
	Akira looked down at her handiwork. It would do. "Bye bye." She waved a
little wave and pushed him out into space. He slowly drifted back and Akira lost
interest in him. He vanished from her perceptions,
	"Now to fix it all..." Akira said, her face widening in a smile.
	"Akira, stop!"
	Akira looked around suddenly. Angel was on her knees. She had something
in her hands. It glowed yellow. It flared with light. Except it wasn't just
Angel. It was another girl. It was Ayeka, princess of Jurai. She was holding a
blackened and cracked star seed. No, she was Angel. Both of them, at once.
	"Don't stop now!" Kalia hissed. "Just ignore them. They'll both be fine,
if you want them to be." Kalia grabbed her shoulder. "Change time. Do it! Change
fate! Destroy all his work! Destroy him!"
	"If you do that," Angel gasped. "There won't be a future, or a past.
You'll destroy it all."
	"So?" Kalia stuck her tongue out at Angel. "Who needs context, anyway?
Akira feels much better without it. All those little worries. Won't it be so
much better when everyone is like us? When we all can experience whatever we
want? When we'll all be together and apart and everything else all at once.
	Ayeka/Angel was talking again. "I don't know what terrible choice you're
making. But you can't do this. I can tell, in my heart, that what you are about
to do is wrong. You're changing time..."
	"I can fix it,"  Akira informed them both. "Angel won't have to grow up
with him. Ukyou doesn't have to be tortured. I don't have to kill all those
people..." Akira moaned. She felt herself swaying. "I can fix it? But if I make
it not real, how can I? Just shadows..." She grabbed her head.
	"Do it, Ahura Mazda! It's the only solution!"
	"Come on, you damn taka taka! Even you can't be this stupid!"
	That wasn't all they said. They said much more. A million and one
variations on a theme. Every argument, every speech, all playing out at once.
	"...too many voices... too many... can't hear..."
	"There's no going back," Kalia hissed. "Not for you. Not now. It's too
late. The Paradox has you. You can ride it, or you can be consumed."
	"You don't need it, Akira," Angel hissed. "There is another way. We can
beat her without this!" She held out her hand. There was a glowing yellow
diamond in her palm.
	"AKIRA!" Ayeka screamed. "You don't have to listen to me, but listen to
yourself!" Ayeka held up the star seed in her hand. "Listen to the voice inside
you!"
	Akira's eyes focused on the gem in Ayeka's hand. "My... soul..." The
thing that gave her focus. The thing that gave her perspective, the thing that
made her human. Resting in Ayeka's palm. She had let it go. She had become just
like Kalia. "Of course..."
	She reached out and grabbed the gem in Angel/Ayeka's hand.
	"What are you doing?" Kalia shrieked.
	"Sorry, Ukyou... I can't do this for you, anymore."
	She wasn't certain how she did it. Then again, she had never been
certain how she had made it happen in the first place. All she knew was that she
could feel the connection between her and Ukyou. She could feel the Paradox
flowing through it. So, while she still had the power, she just reversed the
flow. Kalia's eyes widened.
	"You'll kill her," she gasped.
	"Maybe," Akira said. The past was gone. The world was collapsing. She
could feel ground under her feet, not water or lava or space. She could feel
cold Tokyo air on her cheek, not dry desert wind or fire or perfumed sweat. She
was surrounded by people running from the fight they couldn't even see. Angel
was kneeling on the ground, clutching the one wound in her shoulder. She had to
act fast, before she lost it all.
	The Paradox was draining out of her faster than she had expected. And
with it went all the power. She could see less and less of Kalia's 'world', and
more and more of her own. She had to do this before it was all gone.
	"You... you stupid little whore!" Kalia shrieked, her hands raising up
curled like claws. "Do you realise what you've done?! It still ends! She loses!
Now she just loses faster! You cow! You bitch! I'll do so many things to you...
so many torments..."
	Akira didn't dodge as Kalia grabbed her by the arms. She needed to be in
close. "I think what you need, Kalia..." Then Akira flared her aura and burst
free all at once. She pulled up her hand and smashed her palm into Kalia's
forehead. "...is a little perspective."
	Akira staggered back. It had worked. Kalia, rightfully, hadn't cared
about Akira hitting her. Why should she? Nothing she would have done could have
hurt Kalia. Kalia stood there, her mouth opening slowly.
	Then a gold light sprouted on her forehead. Akira opened her palm. The
star seed of Sailor Uranus was gone. The soul of a dead warrior had finally
found a new incarnation. Akira whispered a prayer for it. The light resolved
into a flaring symbol. Kalia's mouth finished opening. Her eyes focused. They
focused on Akira.
	They saw her. They were there. There was something behind them now.
	Kalia screamed.
	She fell to her knees and screamed and screamed. Akira fell back.
Everyone in the plaza turned towards them, caught off-guard by the scream. It
was nerve-wracking. Kalia grabbed the side of her head, squeezed her eyes shut
and screamed.
	"She has a soul now," Akira said, smiling. "Maybe we don't have to..."
	Angel appeared in front of her, and drove the remains of her sword into
Kalia's forehead. The blunt tip of the broken blade smashed right through the
symbol, and Kalia's scream cut off. Something orange and runny leaked from the
girl's mouth.
	"Angel?" Akira gasped.
	Kalia collapsed to the ground, like a puppet with its strings cut.
	"We... we had about..." Angel took a staggering step back. "We had a
few seconds, before she figured out that... that she was part of the Oversoul
now. That she didn't need you. We had a few seconds while she was still human...
to..." She began to shudder.
	Akira couldn't help it. The thought formed in her mind and reached her
mouth before she could stop it. "But... now Chris will..."
	"I KNOW!" Angel blurted. There were tears now, running down her cheeks.
"I know, I know, but if she had... I couldn't risk it, we couldn't risk it. I
couldn't..." she choked off.
	Akira looked down at Kalia. For the first time, there was peace on her
face. She realised she couldn't feel it anymore. The Paradox was gone. Just
like Akira had sent it away, now Kalia could no longer hold hers.
	Angel had slumped to her knees. Akira knelt beside her and wrapped her
arms around the girl. She could feel Angel's body shaking, but she returned the
embrace. The blood of her torn hands mixed with the blood covering Akira, and
neither moved for a long moment.
	"We just have to believe..." Akira said softly. "There's nothing else we
can do, for either of them. Now... their fate is in their own hands."

*

	Akane shivered. The hairs on the back of her neck rose, and her stomach
clenched. Her gaze followed Chris's. The crystal viewscreens hung there,
innocent and unremarkable. But Akane could feel something beyond them. It was
approaching fast.
	It felt just like the pressure Chris had used against her at the end.
The hideous wrongness. It felt just like the emptiness she remembered from her
death, the emptiness beyond which the nameless force had lived. It felt like the
utter absence of sanity. It was approaching fast.
	Chris could sense it too. He took a step back from the wall, his eyes
narrowing. "So, this is my thanks?" he muttered. His voice sounded... resentful,
like a jilted lover. He swung around and affixed her with his gaze. "Akane.
Listen to me."
	Akane looked away from the crystal screens. She opened her mouth, but
didn't say anything. Whatever was coming, it was horrifying. She wanted to tell
Chris to run, but she didn't.
	"Akane, I'm sorry. I shouldn't have done that. I don't know why... well,
it doesn't matter why anything happened or didn't happen. But listen to me,
please." There was strain around his voice. She suddenly had the sense he was
trying not to look over his shoulder. "Angel killed Kalia. No, I don't know why,
I wasn't paying attention. But this is something I may not survive alone. All
the Paradox within her has escaped. It's coming, Akane. I'm sure you can feel
it."
	"Yes..." Akane breathed. She looked around and realised with a shudder
that it was already too late. The walls... the walls were pulsing. It looked
like raindrops falling against glass. First, a tiny little bulge would appear in
the wall, then it would shrink back. A fraction of a second later another bulge
would appear near it, and then it was gone. Then two more, further apart. Then
more, and more. Hundreds of them, thousands of them. More every second. And some
of them were growing. They'd get just a bit larger, each time the same section
bulged outward.
	And there was a sound. It was muffled, which Akane was thankful for. But
soon they would break through, and the sound would fill the room. Akane knew
what that sound would be. She knew what was pushing at the edges of the walls.
She wanted to throw her hands over her ears and close her eyes, but she was
frozen.
	"I need your help, Akane. Look, it's not forever. I can make another
artificial fetich, but I need more time than I have right now. But until then, I
need you to draw it away from me. It won't kill you. You see, you're not who
it's looking for, which makes you able to actually tolerate much more of it-"
	"No," Akane said, firmly. The bulges in the wall had grown larger now.
In one or two places the... realness of the walls was begining to strain. It was
thinning out. Something was pushing through.
	"Akane!" Chris barked. "This isn't a moral game, this is a matter of
life or death!"
	"No."
	"Akane," Chris said, more calmly, but the strain was still in his voice.
His eye kept darting past her, to the walls. "I apologised. What do you want
from me? Yes, yes, 'nothing', okay, but you can't possibly be... willing..." he
faltered at something he saw behind her, then continued at a faster pace,
"...you can't possibly be willing to just let me... to just abandon me to this!
It's only temporary! I promise you, I will free you as soon as I can! You know I
keep my promises!"
	The walls were fraying. They were made of clear crystal, and Akane could
see clearly out to the horizon. But whatever was pushing at them wasn't outside
those crystal walls. It was outside reality. It was pushing its way in, seeking
Chris. Chris, who had defied the world for so long...
	And she could save him. She had thrown off his compulsion once, she
realised. Whatever nameless force existed beyond the vast gulf of nothingness,
it had sent her back changed. It had made her so she could defy Chris, and he
could force her to do nothing she did not want to do.
	So... if she saved him, he would... he would have to listen to her.
Because she would hold all the cards then.
	"Maybe there's nothing I can promise you that you'll believe," Chris
said softly. "But you have to realise the choice you're making here. Whatever
you think of me, whatever you think I've done, hell, whatever I HAVE done,
you've never been the person that would abandon somebody. You've never been the
sort of person who wouldn't show mercy. Akane, I'm just asking for your help.
Help me. Please."
	There was a sound, and Chris winced. Akane snapped her head behind her
and saw it. There was a hole. A tear through the crystal wall and it led...
somewhere else. Someplace that was nowhere. A long thin blade was worrying its
way free of the hole, slowly but surely. A sword.
	Akane grabbed the hilt at her side again. It was going to tear Chris
apart. She couldn't just stand there and watch that. Chris was right. No matter
what he had done, he was still a human being. He could change. He could learn.
Nobody really deserved death. Not to say that Akane hadn't killed, but she had
always done so in... in the heat of the moment.
	No. That was a lie. She had ordered people be killed before. She had
casually signed people's death warrants. But, if she saved Chris, she could put
an end to that. She could make him not kill anyone, and it would stick this
time. Because she would be in charge.
	There was another sound, and another. More of them were coming through.
She could hear them. They were whispering. There was no real words to it, just
sound. But it was so disturbingly close to words. She swore, if she just focused
enough, that she could understand it. She didn't try. She didn't want to know
what would happen if she tried.
	"Akane, please!" Chris cried out, stretching his hand towards her.
	Akane closed her eyes and remembered. She remembered the moment she had
been taken beyond Oblivion and the Nameless had changed her. It had left her
with not just the strength to fight off Chris, but also... something else. A
message.
	Chris, the Nameless had written into her soul, was not out to save the
world. He was not trying to create any future. He was just trying to... to
justify himself. He had been an accident. The Nameless had pulled Ukyou, or a
part of what was now Ukyou, from elsewhere and Chris had just been caught up
like a leaf in the wind. He had found himself dead yet alive in this world.
	He had become a monster. The Nameless had watched him, like it watched
all things. It had considered wiping out this anamoly in its plan, but that
carried more risks than Chris created, so it had refrained. So the Nameless had
left him to his own devices, except when he got caught up in Ukyou's Destiny.
	And Chris had been ignored. Ignored as he slew the living and stole
their power and identities to stay one step ahead of Paradox. And Chris had
become a monster. But he couldn't admit this to himself.
	Akane looked at Chris now. He was turning slowly in place. The Swords of
Hate were beginning to slide into the room. There were hundreds of holes in the
walls now. The swords were creating more every second. They slid through the air
like sharks, gliding around the periphery as they hunted. Chris was being
stalked, and he knew it. He had finally been caught, and couldn't run away
anymore.
	Chris was doomed, Akane realised. He had always been doomed. The
Nameless had only let him live because it would be too much bother to kill him.
It might backlash on its experiment with Ukyou. But the Nameless had never
planned on letting Chris live.
	And Chris didn't know this. He had slowly convinced himself that there
must be a plan for him. That just like Ukyou, Chris was important in his own
way. No, not just as important, more important. It had been Pink who gave him
the idea, Akane realised. The idea that he was God.
	God didn't have to feel guilty, after all. God didn't have to feel
worry. God didn't have to look back at all the people he had killed, all the
lives he had destroyed and justify them to himself. He was God. The world needed
him. So, if one person had to die so that Chris could live and fulfill his
destiny, so what? Without him, the world was doomed.
	That was how she could destroy Chris, she realised. She could tell him
this, and destroy him. Tell him that he wasn't God. That he was an accident.
That all the necessity he had argued himself into believing didn't exist. And
he would lose himself, and the swords would take him.
	Or...
	Or she could tell him that, and save him. She could break him down, and
protect him from the swords. She could shatter all his arrogance, all his
delusions and then he would be...
	He would be hers. She could mold him into whatever she wanted. She could
make him whatever god she wanted to make him. She might even be able to help
Ukyou, or whoever, fight the Nameless itself. And it wasn't like she would be
corrupted by the power. She would be one step removed. Chris was the godlike
being, she would just be his advisor. She would be a human voice to guide his
actions.
	She could...
	"No," Akane said slowly. Chris turned and stared at her. She wrapped one
hand around the sword hilt and clenched the other into a fist. A Sword of Hate
slid past her, the blade almost touching her cheek. "No. I can't save you,
Chris."
	"Yes you can!" he snapped. "Just let me-"
	"You're right, I can," Akane amended. "But I won't."
	Chris stared. His mouth opened and closed, once. "You won't," he said,
tasting the words. "You won't save me." A sword came too close to him, and he
snarled and lashed out with a fist. To Akane's slight surprise, it actually spun
away, crashing back into the wall. But the rest of the wall suddenly redoubled
in its seething and whispering. More points began emerging. "Not me." And
suddenly he snarled. "Damn you! What more evidence do you need, Akane?" Heedless
of the swords, he strode to the crystal wall. "I'm right! I've always been
right! There's whole countries lying in ruins below because you trusted them to
the likes of Ukyou! Is it so easy to forget that, just because Japan was saved?"
Akane blinked, but Chris didn't stop to clarify himself. "I have become
everything I ever thought or said I was! There is no power beyond me. With a
snap of my fingers, I could turn the sun purple or resurrect your mother or
destroy the entire Juraian empire! I have defeated Ukyou, destroyed Millennium,
survived every effort of Washuu to destroy me! And still you stand there, not
believing me?"
	He spun to her again, still ignoring the swords. But they were not
ignoring him. With every word of his rant, they had redoubled in whispering, in
writhing. Whatever Chris saw in her face seemed to enrage him even further. "I
have done everything I said I would do, outlasted every opponent, seen every
prediction fulfilled! And you STILL abandon me? You, and Link, and Angel, every
one of you abandons me! You ungrateful... None of you would even be alive if it
weren't for me!	What would you have been without me, Akane? Sitting in America
as one of their jackbooted thugs? A monster of Chronos? A vampire? Tagging
around after Ukyou, still letting her shove you around and decide everything for
you, like you were before I told you the truth about her and let you find your
own destiny? But of course, you all turn on me. It doesn't matter what I did for
you, just what's convenient for you right now, right?"
	A sword started drifting toward him, lazily at first but starting to
gain momentum and speed and... certainty. Chris sneered at it. "Fine. Then I'll
show you all again. I don't need any of you. I am the most powerful being in the
universe, Akane. You think Paradox can destroy ME? I beat it years ago." He
raised his hand and snapped his fingers. The sword quivered like the string of a
harp, and then shattered. Its pieces fell to the floor, suddenly dead and
unmoving.
	For an instant, Akane was frightened that he had actually done it. That
he had finally gone beyond. Chris grinned at her. Akane took a deep breath. "It
won't work, Chris," she said, with more confidence than she felt.
	"It won't, will it?" Chris snarled. He reached out with both hands and
made a clawing motion. Akane gasped as the crystal walls shattered. There were
thousands of them. They screamed, suddenly able to sense their target. They dove
towards him like birds of prey. He held up his palms to both sides and they
stopped. "Paradox is nothing to me!" Chris roared, and with a pulse of light he
shattered them, all of them. A thousand, a million Paradox blades simply
snapped, blasting apart into dust. The sound around them ceased.
	And Chris screamed. He stared down at his hands. The flesh was sloughing
off them like water. The smell hit Akane and she gagged. Jagged bones emerged
from his fingers, muscles and blood melting together as they decayed faster and
faster. The ends of the fingers began to crumble, falling inward. The fingertip
bone of one hand fell down, turning grey and black as it did. When it hit the
ground it puffed into dust.
	"This can't be happening!" Chris shrieked. But the decay was spreading,
up his arms, inexorably. Faster than Akane had thought it would. Akane wanted to
turn her eyes away, but couldn't. She had to watch. She wouldn't let herself
turn away from what she was doing.
	With a cry Chris clutched his hands and suddenly they were whole again.
Perfectly fine. Then a black spot appeared on them. And more appeared. Akane
heard a sickeningly wet gushing sound as Chris's left foot detached from his leg
and tumbled to the ground. "NO! I won't let this happen! Not again!"
	And Chris concentrated and his leg was back. The black spot on his hand
was gone. Except this time the decay came back faster. His left hand literally
imploded, collapsing in on itself. His shirt was torn open as a geyser of
putrescence spilled out of his gut. "Why isn't it working? WHY?"
	Akane knew. She could tell him. The swords had not been destroyed. They
had just... gone inside him, where they belonged. They didn't need blades to
tear him apart. And the more he struggled, the more he drew on his power to
fight them, the more and more he summoned. Eventually, they would eat him away
faster than he could regenerate himself.
	Chris seemed to reach the same conclusion. He snarled and gestured. A
circle opened in the floor and a tube shot out of it. The tube was glass, filled
with some sort of green fluid. There was a man's body in it. Akane didn't
recognise it. Chris took a step toward it, even as the rotting reached the
bottom of his jaw. Then, he collapsed in a boneless heap, the body falling to
the ground in a puddle of black and green ooze.
	The body in the tube jerked. His eyes snapped open. He screamed, his
words drowned out by the liquid. The flesh of the body simply exploded, rot
tearing it apart in seconds. Chris gurgled and gestured again. Dozens of tubes
emerged, probably close to a hundred, containing men and women, old and young.
The one Chris was in tore itself apart violently, becoming a cloud of gore in
the green liquid. Then Akane looked over as another body exploded, and another.
It was happening too fast for her to follow. Before long, the entire room was
filled with sickening clouds of rotting meat.
	Then there was a crash. Akane leapt. The tube had been right beside her.
Glass sprayed across her body, cutting a few tears in her clothes. She staggered
away as something fell out. It was barely human. It was impossible to tell if it
had once been male or female, much less its features. Black ooze was slipping
off its skull, but its eyes were still intact. Akane stared at those human,
untouched eyes.
	They would burn themselves into her mind forever. The stark, naked pain
in them. The need to know why, the pleading for mercy. She felt her gut clench
as the thing reached for her. Its arm fell off with a wet splat before it could
fully extend. The mouth opened and out came a sound that was just barely a
voice.
	"Akane... please..."
	Akane forced herself to watch. This was what she had chosen. Damn her to
hell, this was what she had chosen. She did not look away. She did not close her
eyes. She did not ask him to understand. She didn't explain why. She could have.
She could have told him that she had made her decision. That she would not save
him because... the world did not need gods. It did not need things like that
Nameless force, or Chris or anyone else. She wouldn't trust anybody with that
power. Not Chris, not Ukyou, and not herself. She could have, but the words
would have been empty, meaningless.
	So she did nothing. And it was the hardest thing she had ever done.
	The eyes held her for another moment. Everything had been stripped away
from them. They were utterly human now. Then they looked away, frantically
searching for something else, some salvation. The rotted flesh at the throat
worked, and even though the jawbone had fallen off or melted in the moments
since it had last spoken, a half-understandable voice emerged.
	"...ink... sav..."
	Then the eyes rotted out of the skull and the head bobbed back and forth
for a moment. With a sound somewhere between a sigh and a gurgle it fell to the
ground, the skull splitting across the ground like an overripe melon.
	Akane staggered away, and emptied her stomach.
	She wasn't certain how long she knelt there, shuddering and cold.
Eventually she felt the danger retreat. She felt the Paradox retreat. The swords
vanished like they had come, disappearing back into Oblivion. With a final
shudder she rose to her feet and made her way to the door. The wind up here was
thin and cold, and she could feel her breath escaping her. Whatever magic Chris
had used to make this room habitable had been weakened precipitously when he'd
torn the walls away.
	She fumbled with the door and it finally opened. She fell inside, spots
dancing across her vision. The door slid shut with a hiss and she gasped for
air. She curled up, crying softly.

*

	This is the way the world ends.
	Ukyou looked up into Hotaru's eyes. They were bronze and inhuman, shaded
by the blood pouring down her forehead. There was emotion in those eyes, hatred
and pain and satisfaction of revenge. The girl was bringing down the Silence
Glaive, to kill Ukyou.
	It does not end in fire or ice.
	Ukyou had fought a great deal to get to this moment. She had struggled
past a vampire king and a mad planet. She had abandoned her friends and walked
across the decaying dreamscape of humanity's collective soul. She had done a lot
to try and save this girl.
	It ends with silence.
	But Hotaru did not want to be saved. She saw a world filled only with
misery. The Nameless had brought her back from death, showed her its plans. It
had whispered into her mind about how this was all a game. That all the struggle
of the world was nothing but an excuse to test Ukyou.
	When you die, Hotaru will let go, and the Paradox will leave the world a
soulless husk.
	Ukyou couldn't move. The swords of the ghosts Hotaru had summoned pinned
her to the ground. Nanami had her swords pierced through Ukyou's shoulders. The
vampire girl, like Hotaru, had been tortured by the Nameless to prepare her for
this moment.
	Unless you stop it.
	For all Ukyou knew, the one person who had believed in her was dead. The
light that Akira had given her, the support she had been since coming back to
the world, was gone. Hotaru had spit her offer of salvation in her face.
Everyone was going to die. She had to do something.
	The blade of the Silence Glaive plunged towards her heart. She closed
her eyes. She could feel the Paradox, building up inside her again. She was
absorbing it-
	Her eyes snapped open. Her palms clapped together. The blade halted just
above her. Hotaru's eyes widened.
	"How?"
	Ukyou began to push back. The girl stumbled. The ghosts backed away,
looking confused. Their hands were empty. Nanami fell back, opening and closing
her fists. Ukyou coughed, blood running down her jaw.
	"You absorbed the Paradox," Hotaru said, frowning.
	"Yes..." Ukyou hissed.
	Hotaru smiled. "It will destroy you." Ukyou looked around. The crowds of
ghosts were shifting. The swords in their hands were vibrating, trying to escape
their phantom grips. If they broke free, it wouldn't be Hotaru they came after.
"You have no more fetich soul, Ukyou. No more shield."
	"I don't need a shield," Ukyou informed her. She pushed the blade up and
back and the girl grunted as she was forced back. Ukyou rose to her knees.
	"But you do," Integra said. She appeared at Ukyou's side, grabbing one
arm.
	"You can't fight Oblivion," Yomiko said, grabbing her other arm.
	"This is the way the world ends," Ran said, wrapping her arms around
Ukyou's neck and squeezing.
	Ukyou choked. Then she pushed again.
	"You... aren't... real!"
	The shades wavered slightly.
	"They are real," Hotaru informed her. "I dragged their souls out of the
Oversoul, and gave them shape so that they could fight you."
	"They would never do this," Ukyou snarled. "Integra may hate me, but she
would hate you more." The shade of Integra began to fade. "Yomiko is one of the
most gentle souls I have ever met." The ghost of Yomiko was transparent, her
grip was like mist. "Ran..." The phantom pulled its grip tighter as Ukyou felt
doubt bloom in her heart. Maybe Ran really could hate her, for not saving her
when she had the chance. "Ran may hate me..." Ukyou choked out, her breath
coming in gasps. "But deep down inside, she was a hero! She fought to help
people, and she would never stand for this!"
	Suddenly the phantoms were gone. Hotaru was thrown backward, barely
keeping her grip on the glaive. The weapon hummed between Ukyou's hands. She
rose, getting her feet under her. She could feel the paradox churning inside
her, eating her up inside.
	"What about me, Ukyou?" Nanami said, suddenly appearing beside her. Her
fist rocketed out and struck Ukyou in the chin. Ukyou's head snapped to the side
and she gasped. "I'm not a phantom! I'm real. I've never even met you until
today, and I hate you! I hate everything you've done to this universe. All the
death and destruction just-urk!"
	Nanami was cut off as a silver rod was placed against her throat. Pluto
snarled, pulling the Time Key Staff tighter as she dragged Nanami back. Her eyes
met Ukyou's. She nodded, then went back to struggling with the vampire. In the
end, she would likely be overpowered, but Ukyou would not need that much time.
	"I'm not going to let you stop me, Hotaru," Ukyou said. "I won't give
up."
	"You can't save me!" Hotaru screamed. She pulled one hand free and
gestured. The phantom army vanished, and suddenly the swords came in. It was a
tornado of steel, a hellstorm that would tear all four of them apart. Hotaru
smiled beatifically.
	Ukyou took a deep breath and focused, pulling on as much of the Third
Circle as she could. The blades paused for a fraction of an instant. They
stopped, the edge of one kissing the side of Hotaru's neck. The sword wavered
for a moment, then flew back and slammed into Ukyou. She gasped, but bit back
the worst of the scream. Then another blade hit her, and another. The entire
storm swept in at her, and only her.
	"You're not..." Ukyou gasped. "Going to get away from me like that."
	"How do you think this is going to end, Ukyou?" Hotaru roared. "That if
you just don't give up long enough, it will make everything better? That all you
have to do to save me is just not fall down?"
	"I'm not giving up on you," Ukyou said. "I'm not giving up on me. I'm
not giving up on anything. I'm through surrendering. So... let the Nameless do
his worst."
	"This is it, Ukyou!" Hotaru screamed. "Nobody is going to save you, this
time. There won't be any last minute heroics. There is no more hidden talents.
No more fate. No more destiny.
	"Even Chris is dead," Hotaru hissed.
	And as she said it, Ukyou felt it. She saw the number of swords
increasing, as if a huge number had come into existence all at once. Chris... a
part of her was sad. He had been Aaron's friend. Even if he had become their
enemy, it was still a blow. And now there would be no-one else. There was no one
who had enough connection to the Third Circle to stop this if Ukyou fell.
	"Yes, that's right..." Hotaru whispered. "Do you really think that you
have it, Ukyou? Do you really think you can resist Oblivion?" Ukyou twitched,
her body spasming as the Paradox began to burn her up. Cracks were appearing on
her skin. "You can't win."
	"This is the way the world ends!"
	"No." Ukyou grit her teeth.
	"You can't just deny it away, Ukyou!"
	It wasn't real, a part of her whispered. It was all a dream. This entire
universe, all its pain and misery. It was a fantasy.
	"All the death, all the hatred... you can't just make it go away!"
	Except it wasn't. It was real. It was as real as her feelings made it.
As real as anything Aaron had ever done. It was true. The pain, the joy, the
hate and the love of it was all real.
	"The Nameless created this world for you, to be your crucible... so this
world is yours, Ukyou."
	The Paradox was inside her, and it was outside, spinning through the
heart of Oblivion. She was inside the soul of every living being. She was in a
wound in reality. She was a dream. She was real.
	"So own it! Own all the misery! This is your world, Ukyou, made in your
image. Are you proud of it? Do you love it?"
	She was Ukyou Kuonji. She was Aaron Peori. They were two people. They
were one. They were real. They were a fantasy. Her eyes snapped open. Hotaru's
bronze eyes stared into hers.
	"Take a look at me, Ukyou. Take a good long look at the child of your
world! I am the Paradox, the consequence, the contradiction that can not be
solved."
	"No," Ukyou whispered. She released her grip and stepped back. Hotaru
cried out in triumph and thrust the Silence Glaive forward. Ukyou and Aaron took
one last breath.
	There was no way they could do this. It was impossible. If that blade
struck home, they would die. Every instinct they had told them to fight, to
parry, to dodge. To do something.
	The blade slammed into her chest. The pain was worse than they had
imagined. They gurgled as the blade twisted through their heart.
	Except that was the problem. They couldn't solve this with words, or
fighting, or naked resistance. There was nothing they could do.
	Except change the world.
	The Silence Glaive shimmered for a moment. Then, it began to dissolve.
Not flaking away into nothing, like so many of its victims had. Motes of light
rose from its surface, each one carrying away a small part of its substance. In
no time at all, the dread weapon had become a cloud of firefly lights. Hotaru's
eyes widened.
	Ukyou collapsed to her knees, smiling. The swords around her stopped.
She reached out with one hand and touched the nearest one. It seemed to shimmer
for a moment, then with a pop it was replaced with a mote of light. Ukyou smiled
wider.
	"What... what are you..." Hotaru gasped.
	"I'm going to fix it..." Ukyou said. "The Paradox... it was born when we
destroyed souls. It was born when all those other worlds were destroyed to save
this one." Ukyou spread her hands wide, and every sword within a meter flickered
out, replaced by a mote of light. "Leaving nothing behind but the pain. Because
souls are sacrosanct. They can not be created or destroyed. Only separated from
each other. And that separation, that is pain. But if something can be broken,
it can be repaired..."
	"You can't!" Hotaru roared, and charged. Her hand slammed into Ukyou's
chest, knocking her down. The lights around them flickered again, screaming as
the points of blades began to emerge. "You idiot! You're using the Third Circle
to fix them? You'll just create more!"
	"No..." Ukyou stood up. She looked at Hotaru. She looked over at Nanami,
who had sent Pluto sprawling. The vampire was looking at her in mixed awe and
fear. "I can't..." Ukyou closed her eyes. She let her heart beat once. "But WE
can!"
	Her eyes snapped open and she leapt forward, her hand extended.
Suddenly, the entire galaxy of blades spun in place, trying to place itself
between her and Hotaru. As she ran through them, the blades vanished into sparks
of light. Hotaru could only stare as Ukyou placed her palm against her forehead.
	"This is not the end!" she screamed, and changed the world.



				To Be Concluded...

Blade: Holy shit! It's almost over!

Epsilon: Meh.

Blade: Meh? MEH! How can you be MEH about this?! One more chapter and it's over!
Three years of our lives went into this! Heck, three and a half years!

Epsilon: (shrug)

Blade: Be excited, you bastard!

Epsilon: Don't mistake me, I understand the grvaity of the situation, it just...
hasn't hit me yet.

Blade: Huh?

Epsilon: It's too big. I won't be able to appreciate this until it's over. Right
now, I'm standing on the mountain, looking around at the view, and it's great.
But I won't realise what it means until I can be far enough away to look back
and see... how large it is.

Blade: Hey, no fair! You went serious without me!

Epsilon: Sorry. But this is probably the last author's note that will be posted
in a chapter. I felt it should have more gravitas.

Blade: Okay, okay. Usually, you wait until the last chapter to thank everybody
for reading through everything, but this is the end of chapter 29, well over a
million words from Ukyou first walking into Nerima. What, you're going to quit
now? So thanks everyone, for sticking with us this long!

Epsilon: Yes. I want to especially thank all our pre-readers: Chris's
girlfriend, our Super Swedish Prereader, Ran Mace, Rob Kelk, Lathis, Rebecca and
Ben.

Blade: And all of you who were kind enough to leave a review. Though you'll
forigive us if we don't list all your names.

Epsilon: Also, we commissioned fifteen commemorative artwork pieces based on
Hybrid Theory, and we will be writing an accompanying huge "what the hell were
they thinking?" essay after the fanfic is completed. Mainly because, uh... we're
attention-starved egomaniacs.

Blade: So much for being serious.

Epsilon: Well, this should get us back in the mood!

*

	"It never ends.
	"I guess, I never really thought about it before. But it really never
ends. It just goes on and on. This boundless thing we call 'existence' never
stops. It stretches out into infinity. We all move along it, and not everyone
makes it, but it never ends
	"One moment becomes the next. One challenge gives way to the next
battle. One life ends, and another begins. Each decision leads to the next, and
the next, and the next. There is no final state. We're not traveling towards
anything, because no matter what destination we reach there is always somewhere
else to go from there.
	"That's a lot to accept. Most people never have to. But I touched it. I
felt it. I saw the whole thing, stretched out forever in front of me. It's a
heavy thing. It can break you. It can make you despair.
	"But it also means one thing you didn't count on.
	"It means that even if I lose this battle, it will go on. Even if can't
win, this fight will go on. If I fall, someone will stand up in my place. So
don't think this is the end. One day, you will pay for this. One day, someone
will take you down. And life will go on.
	"Because I am sure that while existence is eternal, you are not. So come
on, you self-righteous son of a bitch! Give me everything you got!"


 		Hybrid Theory Chapter 30: In The End