Disclaimer: Check the previous chapters, and if you have any queries, don't hesitate to contact me at the e-mail address provided in my profile. Stealing any of these ideas is punishable in ways that you can't possibly imagine.

A/N: Whoa, it's been a while hasn't it? Nothing much to comment on really, just enjoy.


Chapter 8: Apocalypse

I laid back in my warm comforting body, thinking about what I had just seen. Some of the horrors Styx had witnessed where indescribable, events that would haunt my sleep for the rest of my life. It was no wonder that he had become such a monster, after learning from such a young age that he'd been created, not born. It was much worse than as it had been with me, at least I had known that my parents had existed, one of them was now sat comforting me. The only influence he'd had on his life had been Lazarus, and he hadn't exactly been a perfect role model.

My mind kept flicking back to his last words. My ruthlessness had shocked even me, even after he begged for mercy I had continued to torture him. I had shown him no remorse whatsoever, killing him in cold blood after dragging him through a horrific amount of pain and suffering. Were we really so different?

Then again, the scars he inflicted on me would never heal, scenes from my ordeal were still fresh in my mind, vague memories from the years I had spent under his watch still haunted me. What about my powers? Would I have the strength to use them for the right reasons, or would I end up killing indiscriminately?

"We have to get moving." Melissa hugged me a little, breaking my line of thought. "The others will be waiting for us." I nodded reluctantly, before climbing to my feet and taking one last look at the silent corpses that lay before us, and moved on down towards the other stairwell.

---

"Do you fancy waking up any time soon?" Joachim could faintly here Rin's voice as his body slowly awoke, with a groan.

"Jeez, it feels like someone rammed an arrow into my heart." He muttered, slowly coming around.

"Close enough. It was a bullet, not an arrow, and it was your left lung, not your heart." Rin smiled as Joachim climbed to his feet, wiping his hands on his coat to remove some of the blood.

"Oh that felt good." Firenze commented cheerily. Joachim had to agree, he'd finally claimed vengeance on the man who had destroyed his chance at a happy life. Now all that remained was to continue towards the control room, and hope to the powers-that-be that the others were safe.

Suddenly, the immense light coming from the central shaft of the chamber flickered alarmingly, casting eerie shadows across the metallic room.

"It looks like we haven't got long left." Rin gazed at the failing light worriedly.

---

Neil sat dejectedly by the window in the living room, the house bathed in total darkness. Mikoto knelt by the fireplace, trying to light it in puzzlement. There was a deep chill in the air, one that seemed to sap the life out of any fire she managed to actually light, killing it instantly.

Suddenly, Neil noticed a wounded man in the street outside the house, struggling along visibly in pain. He swooped out of the door quickly, the temperature dropping even further as it opened, his rapid breath billowing out as a fine white mist before him.

The man was wearing pretty old-looking armour, crafted expertly from what seemed to be deep black dragon-hide, slashes desecrated the beauty of the armour. It was lined with some other form of animal skin, this time it was a bright scarlet red, blending in with the colour of the blood that practically covered every inch of his body. His gingery auburn hair was plastered to his head, and his face was splattered with drying crusty deep brown-ish red blood, his eyes flickering as he teetered on the thin line between conciousness and unconsciousness. It was with a jolt that Neil realised he recognised this person.

"Calum? Christ, what happened to you?" The man grinned weakly.

"I picked a bad day to pay a visit, didn't I?" He coughed. Neil helped him up, Calum's feet dragging along the damp cobbles behind them. He sat him down on a chair inside and set to work on his wounds. Most of them weren't that bad, only a few cut deeper than an inch into flesh. The dragon-hide could stand up to practically anything human and monster alike could throw at it.

"So, what have you been up to then?" Mikoto asked, and Calum laughed.

"Not as much as you two, just the same old stuff really. Trade's been booming with the re-appearance of all those old monsters. You can sell those Marlboro tentacles for a ton these days, they're good for protection against disease when treated in the right chemicals." He looked at the small half-genome child you was staring in a combination of horror and awe at the wounded warrior in front of him. "I don't think I need to ask what you two have been up to." He grinned at Sal, who looked a little confused at how to react, taking to peering nervously out from behind the sofa instead.

"What brings you here then? I take it that it wasn't for a nice neighbourly chat?"

"Nah, I noticed what was going on out there. I was heading here to see whether you knew anything about those shadow creatures stalking the plains now." He looked up at the ceiling, wincing as Neil pinched together one of the deeper slashes. "I saw one a few months ago, but they've been multiplying like rabbits since then. I came back to Alexandria to see what was being done about it, since it was kinda wrecking my trade a little, and I find the whole place overrun with them." Neil and Mikoto looked at each other in worry.

"How bad is it out there?" Mikoto asked, her brow creased anxiously.

"Like a graveyard, there's barely anyone left alive. Those monsters have painted the city red with the blood of the innocent." He looked directly at Neil. "You know something, don't you?"

"I have my suspicions, but if I'm right, none of this will matter anytime soon. The whole universe is going to go shebang on us." He explained to Calum and Mikoto about the crystals, and what effect it would have. The entire room fell into a ghastly silence.

"Mum, what does that mean?" Mikoto took her son in her arms, comforting him.

"It just means that we're all going to have to move to a safe place." Neil and Calum looked at each other worriedly. They both knew exactly what was going to happen. There would nothing but Oblivion left once the Universe collapsed, and that would be it for them. Neither of them had the heart to tell the small child before them that they were all about to die.

---

I resisted the urge to vomit as we entered the control room, the flickering panels and terminals were smeared with blood, dismembered corpses of technicians and staff lay strewn across the place, their lifeless eyes staring blankly at the ceiling. Some of them didn't even have a discernible head left, nothing but a mashed pulp of what their bodies used to be. The stench was revolting, the sickly scent of copper wafted through the air, a fragrance that would have a vampire grinning with joy.

Melissa didn't seem as affected, idly watching as a globule of blood slowly dribbled down the main screen at the centre of the room, cracks making their way across it like an out-of-control spider web.

"I'm glad to see you made it." I heard a small quivering voice from the other side of the morbid chamber, as Rin stood up and revealed himself, his crumpled lab coat spattered with millions of tiny specks of blood, looking more like a spotted handkerchief than a person. Joachim stood next to him, now shirtless, a small red mark on his chest just beneath his heart. My heart jumping with glee, I ran over to give him a hug, only to end up upside down on the floor after slipping on the slick coat of blood on the ground. He shook his head and laughed warmly, stretching out his hand to help me to my feet. I took it, but the instant we made contact, a searing flash of light burst into my head, shocking me for an instant.

I stared at the young woman lying prone on the blood-soaked bed, her clothes a complete mess. It seemed that the horrific wound in her body had been healed slightly, just enough so it didn't kill her, yet enough to keep her too weak to fight back. Her eyes twinkled, her face wet with tears. It didn't take a rocket scientist to realise what had just happened, and a deep sense of bitterness and sadness swelled up deep inside me, closely followed by an intense burning hatred and anger for whoever had done this to her.

As soon as it had begun, it stopped, leaving me highly confused, my hand in his. I allowed him to pick me up, my mind concentrating on what I had just witnessed. I knew from my intense search through Styx's mind that the woman in that memory had been Samantha, Joachim's mother. However, how had that memory got into Joachim's body? I remembered something that Alex had said, about our souls being made up by parts of our parents spiritual essence. Could it be possible that I had just witnessed a memory from Joachim's father?

"Something wrong?" He seemed to notice the quick change in my expression, but I gave him a smile.

"Nah, just thinking about what a mess we're all in." It was then that I noticed the thoughtful expression on Rin's face as he walked over to one of the terminals.

"I wonder..." He muttered, and I felt my hopes rise. He was an intelligent man, and he knew more about this situation than the rest of us put together. Perhaps he'd thought of something?

"Onto something Rin?" Joachim asked, and there was a dejected sigh from the wise scientist.

"I'm just checking how long with have left until a UEF occurs."

"A UEF?"

"Universal Existence Failure. It's the final product of a catastrophic imbalance between the crystals." He tapped a few more buttons. "Fire, Earth, Water, Ice, Lightning, Wind, Light and Shadow. All of them will fail, causing the universe to collapse back into it's orginal form. We call it Oblivion. Nothing exists, absolutely nothing."

"How long do we have?"

"Two hours...at maximum...In an hour we'll start to notice the beginning of the energy reaction that will destroy everything." He smiled. "However, I have an idea." He turned back to the monitor, groaning in revulsion as he wiped some of the blood away. "Basically, we were doing some investigation into the dimensions that govern our existence. We all know the tri-lateral dimensions that we live in, right? Well, we found away to access the so-called "Fourth Dimension", otherwise known as..."

"...Time." Joachim finished.

"Exactly. So we started work on finding a way to access this time stream that flows through our universe, and we came up with the Chronos. The basic rules of time and space show that the faster something is going, the less time affects it. Moving at the speed of light, time completely stops for the object that is moving." He pointed to the diagram on the screen, a complex-looking device that looked like a glass ball mounted on three insect legs. "If we give the molecules in an object enough energy, it can exceed the amount of energy need to travel at the speed of light. We've tested it, and managed to send several subjects back in time by several hours."

"Hold on a second. If you sent them back by several hours, wouldn't they have turned up before you sent them back?" Melissa looked a little puzzled.

"Confusing, isn't it? While we were analysing the results of this, we came up with something startling. It seemed that every time we sent something back, we registered a massive feedback of energy from some unknown point. Turns out, we were opening up a different time stream. Each and every time we did it, we created a separate turn of events. Obviously, with the objects we were sending back, it wasn't changing anything much."

"I think I get it." I replied, my brain whirling with thought. "It's the same as the Parallel World Theory. Every time something happens, there's a whole set of worlds created in which something different happened." Rin nodded.

"What I was thinking is that if we could transport something twenty years into the past, to some how warn the Spiritseers of impending doom, then maybe we would could stop any of this from ever happening. Perhaps we could alter the course of the universe, so it would go down a different path."

I pondered this. Could it be possible? Could we somehow change the course of history? Melissa shrugged.

"It's pretty much all we've got at the moment, isn't it? We're all going to die anyway, so we may as well try and help out in some way before we go." She looked down, an odd look on her face. "I know there's a heck of a lot we'd need to change, but it all stems from one person."

"Lazarus." Both Joachim and myself muttered. She nodded in agreement.

"Putting Lazarus out of action, along with a few other key events should be enough to change things for the better." She finished. When I thought of all the things that we could change, I actually grew quite excited. Maybe we could stop our parents from dying too, to have the life we never had?

"So what are we going to send back?" I asked. Rin looked a little nervous as he turned to us.

"I know this sounds a little crazy, but it might be better if we send someone back instead." I blinked a few times in shock.

"You want to send one of us back in time?"

"Well, if it was a person, then they would know what was about to happen, and could hopefully do something to stop it." He looked a little nervous however. "It's just...I don't know whether or not it will work. We registered huge energy bursts in the cells of the objects we sent back. It's possible that the process could completely destroy the person traveling through time. It's an incredible risk."

"I'll do it." Melissa answered, but Rin shook his head.

"That could be even worse. How would you react to meeting yourself? It's possible that the mere action would cause a time paradox and blow apart the space-time continuum. I wouldn't be able to go back either, I was still around then too."

"Then that just leaves..." I trailed off when I realised what was about to happen.

"I'll go." Joachim replied, but I slapped my hand on his shoulder.

"Hold on just a cotton-picking second here, you're not going anywhere without me."

"But it'll be dangerous. I can't risk putting you through anything else." I looked at him in mild anger.

"So you'd rather leave me here to blow up with the rest of the universe? What makes you think you're the only one who wants things to be different?" He floundered speechlessly.

"You both realise that this will be a suicide mission? Once we've sent you back, there'll be no chance of return." Rin explained, before smiling. "Like you'd actually want to though."

"So what will happen when we sort things out?"

"Well, this turn of events will cease to exist, along with anything else that came from it. That means both of you will cease to exist in your current forms. However, as long as you manage to sort things out correctly, there'll be a different version of you two that will exist later on."

"Hopefully, they'll get a better life than we did." Joachim muttered. Rin looked back at the screen, frowning.

"We'd better get moving, there's only one hour and fifty minutes before this place vanishes." With a rapid agreement, we followed him back towards the Chronos Lab, leaving the horrifying chamber of the dead behind.

When we arrived, the forlorn laboratory was completely deserted, an unbearable silence engulfed the entire room. Rin quickly set to work, sitting down at a plain-looking white desk with a computer sat on top of it. The flickering lights in the room signaled that time was running out, casting dark shadows across the eerie chamber. Fortunately, no monsters appeared, it almost seemed as if they'd given up trying to heal the wound the Shadow Crystal was causing, leaving the world to it's own devices. I walked over to the panoramic window along one side of the room, showing the ruins of Zion. The lab was situated on a pretty low level in the headquarters, so I could see the very tops of the shattered buildings at eye level. However, this wasn't the most captivating sight available.

It was the sky.

The sky was a boiling mass of deep brown and black, massive clouds and cracks of lightning illuminated it, rolling around each other in a tangled mess of horror. Both moons had now vanished, the distant twinkling lights of the stars were long dead. All that remained was a sight that would have disfigured the very depths of Hell. It was almost as if the sky was boiling away in an agonising turmoil as the universe entered it's death throes.

"That's just scary..." I muttered, entranced by this shocking event that was unfolding. I felt Melissa draw up beside me, also observing the horror outside.

"Good god..." I suddenly noticed someone else beside her, a young black haired man, his emerald eyes transfixed on the scene unfolding before us. He was wearing a long black cotton coat of some sort, a small white streak through his hair, and the coat he wore also bore white streaks at certain points.

"Who are you?" I asked, and he turned his gaze on me, looking somewhat familiar as he did. His complexion and facial features bore more than a passing resemblance to Melissa's, almost as if he was a sibling.

"The name's Nova, I'm her guardian." He indicated to my mother, who nodded in agreement.

"You did a fat lot of good helping us out earlier." She raised an eyebrow at him.

"Sorry, but that anesthetic had a much stronger effect on me than it did on you."

"Erm, where did you just come from?" I asked, puzzled. It seemed as though he had just popped out of thin air next to her. I hadn't heard the door open at all for the past few minutes either. He rolled his eyes and looked at Melissa.

"Are you going to explain, or shall I?"

"Spiritseers are assigned with a guardian at birth, a creature that their very soul is linked to. They can transform into any creature that takes their fancy, but they tend to stick to certain forms more than others. Kirjava, Chris's guardian, preferred a dragon form to others, much like Nova here." She explained.

"But...why don't I have one then?"

"It must have been because of the way you came into the world." She stopped to think for a few seconds, before moving her hands around her neck, revealing a beautiful pendant, with a twinkling sapphire mounted directly in the centre of an eye. She slowly removed it, took one final look at it, and put her hand out towards me.

"No, I can't..." I tried to reason with her.

"Normally, you would have been given one of your own when you came of age, but as you can see, there aren't many of us left to ensure that traditions are kept. Just make sure nobody sees it when you go back in time, I'm sure it would look a little suspicious if we saw you wearing an exact copy of my pendant." I nodded, before carefully taking it from her. It was wonderfully light, and my hand tingled gently as I held it, the chain dangling loosely from my hand, glittering in the flickering light.

"Alright, that should do it." I heard Rin announce. "Time for you two to get in." I looked at my mother.

"I guess this is it then." She smiled, before kissing me lightly on the cheek and embracing me warmly. "Good luck." I turned away, taking one last look at her before Rin lead Joachim and myself down into the Chronos chamber.

Tenderly, we stepped along the thin metal walkway that lead into the large shining glass sphere. My heart was pumping away at top speed in my chest as Rin stopped me, pulling out a small metallic device from his coat pocket.

"You two may need this. I uploaded all the data I could find in the data banks about what happened back then, so if you need to know anything, you just need to consult that little gadget for aid. Just make sure no-one apart from the two of you see this. If it was to fall into the wrong hands, it could spell the end for us all." Joachim nodded in understanding. I smiled at the little scientist, and leaned forwards to kiss him gently on the cheek.

"Thanks." I whispered. His cheeks quickly became the exact same shade as a cherry, and he shuffled uncomfortably from foot to foot.

"Ah, it's nothing. Just sort everything out will you?" I nodded and carried on up the ramp into the Chronos.

The whole room seemed to resonate with a powerful aura, almost as if I could brush the very fabric of space and time if I moved my hand. It was a glaring white, shaped like a massive dome with the Chronos squatting silently and benevolently in the centre, like a wise old master waiting to teach the world his skills.

Once we were inside, the feeling intensified, and I began to feel quite nervous, the gentle butterflies in my stomach now transforming into a swarm of wasps, stinging my insides. I watched in curiosity as Rin retreated back to the control room, which I could faintly see through the giant glass window that showed the operators what was happening. I felt Joachim's hand grasp mine gently, reassuring me that nothing was about to go wrong.

"Nervous?" He asked, and I nodded weakly. We were about to go where no human being had gone before, into the very depths of time itself.

"This may feel slightly uncomfortable." Rin's voice sounded over the loudspeaker, his tiny voice being amplified into a bounding mass of noise that boomed across the Chronos chamber. I watched as the three lithe metallic limbs out on the sides of the machine slowly started to rotate around the glass sphere we were stood in, a faint humming sound coming from beneath our feet. Gradually, it grew faster and faster, and I became aware of a buzzing sound, like that of a trapped fly, in my ears. Joachim seemed to notice this too, as he looked around uncertainly. The shining whirring legs were getting faster, now nothing but a silvery blur that enveloped us in it's humming whirlwind. I watched outside, and my heart almost stopped, my brain deciding to perform a parachute jump out of the back of my skull.

There was a fly outside the glass sphere, making it's way across the room as flies do. However, as it progressed further and further, it began to get slower and slower. I pressed my face up against the glass, ignoring the intense vibrations being emitted, watching every single beat of it's wings in a surreal sort of slow-motion. After about a minute, it completely stopped, perfectly suspended in the air, unmoving like a photo.

Suddenly, there I felt a dull ache across my entire body. I'd barely noticed it before, but it was growing more and more apparent as time went by. The buzzing in my ears intensified, becoming a insane consistent droning. I looked at the fly, which had now started moving again, but this time it was slightly different. It's tiny black form slowly began to move backwards, it's wings beating faster and faster until I could no longer detect the individual beats.

"Whoa." Joachim muttered, one hand on his head, his face pale. A few seconds later he lay unconscious on the hard metal floor of the chamber. The dull ache was now growing into a intense burning pain, unlike anything I'd experienced before. Every inch of my body hurt, every cell, every individual molecule was in agony. I began to feel dizzy, and I struggled to stay conscious as I hit the floor, vaguely sensing the chilling cold of the metal surface, before blacking out.

---

Rin watched in amazement as Eve and Joachim's forms completely vanished from sight, and the Chronos's stabilisers slowly ground to a halt, leaving the chamber completely silent. He gazed intently at the panel in front of him, detecting a powerful burst of energy from a point of unknown origin. It had succeeded, he'd accomplished what was previously thought to be impossible, and yet what did it mean? He'd spent his whole life on a quest to recover the lost knowledge of the Spiritseers, and he'd finally achieved the end result, five minutes before the entire universe ground to a halt. He closed his eyes. He could have gone out and found love, but instead he'd spent his life up to his neck in diagrams, wires, and gadgets. It almost seemed like a waste.

But then he remembered why he had just done this. It was for the sake of the future, and he'd played his part in the story of life. Now it was time to bow out for the final curtain.

He turned away from his final creation, and stood by the vast window besides Melissa. He noticed that there was a single tear running down her cheek, glistening in the disfiguring light from the skies above. Quite frankly, he didn't know whether or not to comfort her, or even how he could possibly help in any way.

"Alert! Sixty seconds remaining until catastrophic crystallic energy overload!" A harsh computer-generated voice sounded over the tower's loudspeaker system, and Rin felt the ground slowly start to vibrate. The skies began to grow more and more violent, lightning streaking across the sky in a terrifying fashion, it's long slender fingers of light arcing out in every direction, the deafening roar of thunder seemed to shake the entire building.

In Alexandria, those who were still alive watched in a mixture of amazement and terror as the maelstrom above them grew stronger and stronger. A vicious wind whipped up, the ground heaved and trembled, and for the first time in the history of creation, a sound was heard, a sound so chilling and terrifying that everyone alive knew what it was the instant they heard it.

The universe screamed.

It was a horrific wail of agony and sadness, the combined voices of countless billions of souls, all screaming in terror and unbridled pain, in bitterness and in anger. Thousands of emotions, billions of voices, all whirling together to form the most horrifying cry of suffering anyone had ever heard.

Neil and the others clasped their hands over their ears in agony, the sound ranking higher than someone putting a pneumatic drill next to your face and turning it on. Windows shattered, buildings fell to pieces, the world itself almost seemed to tear at the seams as the final seconds of existence started to draw to a close. Calum shouted something, but it was lost over the noise of apocalyptic doom.

To describe this event would warp the untrained mind. To first comprehend what was happening, you would have to first comprehend how mind-paralysingly big the universe is. Countless billions of worlds, endless amounts of space and vacuum, stretching into infinity. Now, imagine this infinite mass coming together, folding in on one point in the centre of the universe. The actual process of this took less than a second, uncountable amounts of mass crushing together into a microscopic point a nothingth wide and a nothingth long. Rin, Melissa, Neil, Calum, Sal, Mikoto, Garnet, Zidane, and all of others would have experienced an incredible crushing sensation for a millionth of a second, before simply ceasing to exist.

This event was so destructive, it had repercussions across the parallel universes nearby, but none of these were noticeable to human-kind, or Gaians alike. The only people who did feel anything were the Spiritseers, and even they barely picked up on it, just feeling an unexplainable sense of loss and sadness for less than a few seconds.

All that remained was oblivion, absolutely nothing...