Disclaimer: I own nothing. If I did, I would have the money to buy all the bacon I wanted. But I don't. So, no bacon.
There is one man in the universe who understands me.
One. One amongst the billions, the untold billions, of monkeys.
And he's not even a monkey, he's a shark... cat... whatever. He's the one man who understands what it means to be me.
Do I sound whiny yet?
I certainly hope so.
No matter how brightly a spirit burns, no matter how strong the power of hope is, even the brightest spirit burns out in time.
Ha. Time.
I have so much of it now.
But let me tell you of "yon olden times", as you people call it.
I had friends. Friends that accompanied me to hell. Friends that died in the closest thing to hell that I have seen. Friends that survived and helped me punch hell in the face until it gave up.
Yes, literally. We went to hell and punched it. That's how awesome we were.
What? You don't believe me? Don't you know wh...
No, you wouldn't.
Not after all this time.
Anyways, bear with an old man, please. We punched hell in the face, we won the war to save the universe, we were that awesome.
That was when I took my leave. I left my friends to live their lives, to let them live their lives without the constant forward motion my very presence inspired.
Sounding angsty? Hopefully. I'm a bitter old man these days.
But I learned one thing: The brighter you burn, the greater your Destiny, the greater the consequences.
The woman I loved, the woman I fought hell for, died, and there was nothing that she would have allowed me to do to bring her back.
So I didn't. I was content with that decision. Still am. We had our moment of joy, and it was a perfect moment.
Loner or not, I was always there. Always. When my friends needed me, I was there for them, just as my Bro was there in my greatest time of need.
And they grew old. I did not. Remember the thing about consequences? Yes. That was my last sacrifice. To guard what I had freed, forever.
One didn't grow old. He married. He adopted. For a while, I was an uncle.
Then his wife grew old, then his children grew old, and the last of our friends grew old and we left to wander.
Oh yes. I'm bitter. I think I said so in the past.
My spirit burned out. Time does this to a man. It changes the nature of a man.
I was the brightest, the most headstrong. Time changed me.
No human is meant to live forever.
But now, the universe is in danger.
Too much energy. Too much matter. If nothing is done, everything will collapse into a supermassive black hole.
This can not be, will not come to pass.
Time can change the nature of a man.
Duty can defy even time itself.
Don't you know who the hell I am?
No?
I'm just Simon. Simon the Digger.
And now, excuse me. Viral and I have to go to punch a hole into reality to prevent the end of everything.
Just remember... even if you lose everything, even if you become bitter, old and jaded... there is always someone who could lose even more than you have if you don't protect them.
Don't worry if you don't understand it.
I still don't.
This is a sort-of TTGL postseries BAD END continuation, where Simon, eventually, grows old and bitter as the Spiral-using people, over thousands of years, do to the universe what the Anti-Spirals always feared.
But he's still Simon. And so he'll fight and fight and fight until his body has given out and even beyond that.