"Okay," Roxy began, rolling what she was about to say around in her mouth, tasting like a bittersweet candy (she'd never had one until she met Jane in person for the first time, and they ate Jane's entire birthday stash in her room and talked), "So we have no other options but to put Callisprite at risk?"
Callisprite floated into view at the mention of her name. "Oh, darling you're being far too concerned about me! I entered this game knowing I would die. I'm not worried about it again!"
Roxy swallowed. "You sure know how to comfort a gal, Calliope."
The cherub smiled, blithe.
Dirk, Jake, and Jane looked between her and Roxy and decided they didn't wish to know.
Being the only four who effectively knew the secret of Serenity, upon meeting up with the various meteor and dream bubble crews, the "Alphas," a label everyone had taken to calling them to differentiate them from the other human group, the "Betas," had taken it upon themselves to come up with a plan to save everyone's collective asses.
Jane had a blank kernelsprite free for the prototyping, and the clown had Calliope's dead dream self free for the...well, whatever he'd planned to use it for didn't matter, because into the sprite it went. And out came Callisprite, glorious and jovial and fuckin' adorable.
"Roxy?" she'd said when they first met, in a voice that was strange and unlike her namesake, but Roxy just stared at her in awe. "Oh, oh my, it's me, isn't it?" She covered her face. "I'm sorry, let me fix that." And Callisprite had begun searching around her as if she could spirit a wig or some cake makeup out of nowhere.
"Naw, Calli, you're..." Thinking quickly, Roxy gave Callisprite a devastating double pistols and a wink that made Jake give a low whistle at her technical skill. "You're easily the prettiest gal here, ha."
Calli brought her hands away from her face, and saw that Roxy was smiling at her, and then, hesitant and precious, returned it.
But this had been days ago, and now the Alphas had gathered in Casa de (Alpha) Lalonde to figure out their plan from here.
"Okay, so Part A, hereby dubbed "Fuck Yeah, Calliope" was a success, as we can all see from the floating cherub sprite with us," Roxy paused to sip a soda (straight and narrow Lalonde, that's what she was gonna be - after meeting her teenage mom, somebody had to be the sober Lalonde around here). "So I propose we move onto Part B, which is, uh...Calli what's Part B?"
"Well, love!" Callisprite notably perked up at the chance to be of aid to Roxy. She was always floating around spouting riddles, fanfic excerpts, and her ideas about how humans and trolls worked. Weird sprite stuff. Weird Calli stuff. Whatever. "My brother, great idiot that he always will be, in addition to wanting to destroy all creation, is looking for something of mine."
"What?"
"My quest bed."
"It wasn't in the center of Prospit?"
"Well, my other quest bed. In the Furthest Ring. Being his typical slow self, he's having difficulty finding the thing! And he wants to destroy is so there's no way I could find it first and ascend to a higher plane of being."
"So the God Tiers or whatever?"
"Yes, that whatever. He's probably afraid if I was on his level again I could defeat him."
"Could you?"
She shrugged. "I don't know. I'd have to find it to find out."
"So we're gonna make you a goddess and then we're gonna knock your brother's skull off."
Callisprite tented her fingers and gave a small smile. "It sounds agreeable."
So Callisprite became their precious charge, and Roxy developed some pretty severe caffeine headaches from her efforts to stay sober.
But she was a little happy for the clear head. It meant she could spend more time talking to Calli, enjoy her friends' company, and it allowed her to become the skilled general of this plan, usurping any former alien or human leaders with a skilled, "Fuck you, Calli is my friend and she made me the leader."
Thus did Roxy Lalonde find herself the befuddled (but not boozing) leader of "Operation Fuckhuge Lunacy," riding a meteor as a makeshift ship, shoved onto it an entire dreambubble's worth of dead aliens, their ancestors, some more aliens, humans, and themselves, the Alphas.
One of the fishy trolls (the one who apparently remembered Roxy and had pointed a trident in her direction with a wink when she saw her) was still insistent that her army would work, despite its numbers fluctuating depending on who she could bully into or out of agreeing to work with her. Roxy ignored them.
One of the spidery trolls (why all these animal dames?) was still insistent that her mapping would work, and she was slightly more useful. Jane's Pop-Pop was their liaison between her group and Roxy's, as spider troll took a good look at them and called them wet losers. Her maps were starting to form a picture of everywhere English ihadn't/i been, and that was a clue.
They found it suddenly, when the cracks in space on the map formed a perfect circle, which seemed as small as their chances of success, and when she saw it Roxy's heart leaped in her chest in awe and terror.
"With all the space we've covered here, it's a wonder we haven't seen him," Callisprite remarked to her while they were working in their shared fanwork journal - Calli drew, Roxy wrote. "When I try to look into the void, though, I'm not worried. I think it's protecting us, shielding us from his eyes. They can see almost everything - except us."
"I don't understand all this voidy shit, but that's good, I guess." Roxy paused, unsure how to continue the tale of their wizard/troll crossover, and set down her pen. "Calli, you're still gonna be you when you turn into a space goddess, right? Like you won't turn into the good monster fairy version of your brother?"
"Of course not, love."
Calli looked at her, glowing slightly green with a sprite's aura, her skull face stretched into a smile.
Roxy kissed the corner of her mouth, gently.
She tried to believe in her.
Callisprite felt her brother's arrival like the suddent onset of a bad stomachache.
She lifted her head, froze, and Roxy touched her shoulder. "Calli?"
"It's him," she said, serious as the very real chances of failure they were staring down.
"Positions!" Roxy bellowed, and heard it called down the line as people took their places in the plan of attack.
To get the witless army out of the way, Roxy had assigned them perimeter duty, to slow him down while they got into position. The humans were the second wave, first the Beta gods, then the mortal Alphas, closest to the bed and to Callisprite.
"What's going to stop him from vaporizing them like he's done to all the others?" Dirk called over his shoulder, holding his sword out before him.
"His ego. He wants to kill what's left of me personally. He won't do it easily. And he's still too stupid to realize he might be walking into a trap. Look at how he's brutalized his way here so far."
Roxy swallowed, and watched the flashing lights that announced his presence approach.
The army put up a decent fight - except for the funny schoolgirl troll, who upon seeing him ran to his side and seemed to be offering her help, until he put her down with a blast of bullets - until he saw Callisprite, hovering over her bed. Then they were nothing, and he mowed them down easily, and plowed forward, batting the Betas aside effortlessly when they attacked.
"He's coming!"
"Hold, it'll be fine!"
"Say it, Roxy!"
"Not until he's on the bed!"
The other three pressed forward to meet him, protecting each other and trying to attack, and were flattened.
And then he was in front of Roxy, who was between him and Callisprite.
Roxy stepped back onto the Quest Bed, holding her gun poised to strike him, until he grabbed her by the neck and began to squeeze.
"Roxy!" Callisprite gasped.
She tried to say 'Calliope' but the air came out of her throat in a hiss, under pressure she'd never felt in her life, crushing.
"Let go of my friend, you brute!"
Dimly, she saw Callisprite floating around his head, whapping him with a large book - their journal - and dodging the other hand he tried to use to bat her away. Frustrated, he lost his grip on Roxy -
And she fell -
Her back hit the stone slab hard, shaking her -
And she opened her mouth -
And she screamed -
"Calliope! Calliope, Calliope, Calliope!"
His body seized, and Callisprite seized, before they abosrbed into each other, and Roxy looked into their eyes as the cruelty and lunacy faded from them briefly to show understanding, and kindness, and -
She raised her gun and shot the newly re-bodied Calliope through the heart.
Roxy rolled off the slab just in time for Calliope to fall onto it, bleeding out, and Roxy held herself, shaking, and waited for her to die.
She watched as Calliope ascended, the Muse of Space reborn.
"Hmm, it appears these new garments did little to improve my exterior," Calliope said, picking at herself, and looked away.
Roxy climbed back onto the slab, as they stood beside the remnants of her old, limited body, and grabbed Calliope's new hands.
"You are the most beautiful gal I've ever seen," she said, and kissed her.
Calliope held her for a long time, and when they stepped down together, they were reinvigorated and ready to heal the universe.