A/N: It's time for the climax. Lucas, fully maddened, versus a being that claims to neither live nor die. Shadow has proven himself to be powerful, manipulative and devoid of sympathy for other people. Who will prevail in this showdown? Read on…
Note: I've decided that this will be the last official chapter of this arc, and there will be some things pertaining to the next arc that can't be explained through Lucas' POV alone. There will also be events from Shadow's and "someone else's" perspective. While I'd prefer just to keep it with one person per chapter, I simply can't do that without spitting out several more chapters at once. So, it's all being put in here.
Epilogue: Full Circle
-Lucas-
She lays on the ground at my feet, motionless…
Why… why… why…
Her blood is pouring out from the wound she inflicted upon herself…
Why… why… why…
Why did she of all people have to die…?
Why… why… why…
Why does this happen to everyone around me…!
Why… Why… Why…
Lyn…!
WHY! WHY! WHY!
"I take it from your standing over her that you're having trouble coping with her death." Shadow… "Get used to it, kid. When your purpose is to be a tool of destruction, this is what happens to everything around you eventually."
Kill…
I turn to face him. He hovers over me with that maddening smile. If this man didn't exist… she'd still be here with me…!
I'M GOING TO KILL HIM!
It's like my body moves on its own, acting solely on my desire to tear this miserable excuse for a person apart. I roar like a wild animal and leap at him, ready to grab and rip into him with my claws.
VENGEANCE!
He flies upward and out of the way, and I claw into the rock wall instead. I pay the new crater I've dug into no mind, looking for my target.
There, higher up the wall. "Come and get me…"
He and the hoverchair then fly into the wall… and disappear into it. "DON'T YOU DARE RUN FROM ME!" I roar, climbing up the wall to where he flew into. My hand goes through it like air… I go through it, to find a tunnel hidden behind the apparent illusion. He's flying backward in his chair, motioning with his hand for me to give chase.
RIP…
And I do, running on the pure intent of ripping him apart as I run as fast as my transformed legs can move. Physical strength mocks technology as I slowly gain on him. This tunnel seems endless… as long as I can keep up this pace. He won't get away… he won't get away!
TEAR…
He stops suddenly, and I'm dashing headlong at him. "I'll tear you to pieces!" I shout at him, about to sink both my claws into his chest and pull him apart…
I strike the rock behind him… I missed! Where did he go! I look around and see nothing but wall. "Up here, doofus." My head cocks upward… the tunnel extends upward into a shaft, and he's flying up there. No… he won't get away! I dig my claws into the rock and climb up after him. Again, he disappears from view, hovering out of my line of sight to the left… I climb quickly so I don't lose him.
"Stop running from me, you damned coward!" I cry as I reach the top of the shaft, my claws scraping on a metal floor while I look in the direction I saw him fly off to. There, to my left, is the hoverchair with the back facing me… oh, that was a big mistake…
KILL!
I let out a primal scream as I leap out from the hole and pounce with all of my might onto the chair, running it into the ground and turning it into scrap metal, tearing into it… but Shadow isn't here! Where is he!
I hear him whistle behind me. I spin around ready to ram my hand into the nearest part of his body I can see, but what I see is his boot flying into my face. I don't feel the ground for a brief moment before I land on my back, but I quickly get up. I'm much further away from him now, and he's smiling his wicked, maddening smile. I roar at him… I hate him… I HATE HIM! I'LL KILL HIM! I leap up into the air… I'll crush him and grind him to a pulp! I WILL MAKE HIM PAY!
My fists dent the metal floor, but there's no pulp… "STOP MOVING AROUND!" I shriek at him, swinging my claw with the intent to rip the flesh from his bones. He just sidesteps out of the way. I attack with my other claw… same thing. I try again and again and again and again and again… WHY CAN'T I HIT HIM!
"Slow, you're much too slow." he taunts me. I scream and try to bury both my hands into his skull, but again I only strike the floor. Then his hand covers my face… it lifts me up and then slams me back down. The back of my head hurts… NO! I won't stop now! He has to die… HE HAS TO—
Suddenly, I feel so cold… and then I only know pain… TOO MUCH PAIN! IT HURTS! What did he just do! I see red… red all over me! Red spikes are coming out of me! Red spikes like out of that alien at Mute City… my… MY BLOOD! IT'S MY BLOOD! My scream is so loud that it hurts my own ears! He stands over me… smiling, with droplets of my blood staining his face. No… NO! I won't stop! I won't stop! I won't stop until he's DEAD! I… I can't move! WHY CAN'T I MOVE!
"How does it feel… not to get the revenge you want so badly…?"
Then I'm flying through the air again, for longer this time… I hit something, but I can't tell what it is from the sheer amount of pain in my body… I'm already starting to go numb from it, and my head is getting… woozy… no… I… I can't stop now… I have to… I have to kill him…! I feel something touching me… touching me all over… but it's not Shadow, he's walking up to me with a hand on his hip…
"Come on now… what would dear Lyndis think if she knew you were giving into the pain?"
Rage. Pure rage. As much as my body protests, I can't hold back my rage. I make one final attempt to lunge at him and rip his head off… but I'm held in place… I… I feel so… weak all of the sudden… I lurch forward… I can see my arms… something is sticking out of them, it looks like… some kind of wires… my body… it keeps twitching, like something's getting sucked out… it's… not blue anymore… I… my head is… going blank…
I… I couldn't do it… I couldn't… kill him…
I… I couldn't do anything… I… I… I'm so weak…
Everything is going white…
…I… I can see her… Lyn… she's… crying…
I try to reach my hand out to her… to dry her tears… but… I can't… she's too far away… she's… moving away… no… no… don't… don't leave me…
The darkness is coming… I… I can't see… anymore…
…
"…Lyn…"
0000000000
-Shadow-
It's a gruesome sight to put it lightly. A young child, reaching out to the air, blood dripping out of the dozens of wounds I made and the wires now lodged in most of them. Eventually though, his body goes lax. He's lost consciousness… and his body is starting to revert back into human form. It's kind of ironic… I'm sure in any other situation he'd be happy that I'm taking back the "curse" I put on him… but he'd see no joy in it after losing the one he wanted not to lose most, even muttering her name before he goes under…
I cackle. I'm such a dick, aren't I?
Thump, thump.
I can feel the floor reverberate underneath my feet… the metal, almost flesh-like cables that made up the ground, and most of the walls, leading into a central cluster embedded in the wall, connected to a human-sized, ball-like capsule that he was now hooked into… I wonder if he even noticed it when he was chasing me, that he'd been running right to this huge part of the Devil's Machine?
Thump, thump.
Like the beat of a monster's heart, it's coming to life. I'd left it on stand-by this whole time, waiting for someone to end up in the capsule to provide it with fuel… but I made a few tweaks. Of course, this wasn't the real Devil's Machine, I wouldn't risk having the genuine article in the Smasher's presence. They might invoke some desperate, last-ditch effort and nuke the place for all I know. No, this piece of the Devil's Machine that coincidentally fills the whole room is nothing but a test platform meant to do two things.
Thump, thump.
The first is simply to take a life form and see if it's compatible, and if so, begin startup procedures. And it's pulsing tells me that it's working beautifully… Lucas' mental degrading and the transformation formula I injected into him took hold and evolved exactly according to plan. The Devil's Machine had no apparent hiccups or malfunctions, it's working like a charm.
Thump, thump.
The second task is to give me two things: the first is a scan of his mind and thought patterns, and the second is a sample of his DNA from before, during and after his transformation from monster to human. And it finishes performing all of these tasks now, the ball ejecting a flat disk and three vials filled with blood. I take every item and pocket them. More than likely I'm going to have to create a stand-in for Lucas, since now that the fourth rule of the oath is broken on him, the Gods will use it as an excuse to erase him.
And there's the ultimate kick in the pants for him. I said he'd be the fuel of the Devil's Machine… but I neglected to mention it would just be for a few minutes, just long enough to get what I need. Ahh… misleading is so much more effective and fun than lying.
Thump, thump.
Thinking back, this would've been so much easier if I could just create a maddened human from scratch and throw it in the machine… but the tweaked Devil's Machine just wouldn't accept blank slates for some reason. I needed to practically grow the fuel out of a pre-existing, powerful psychic and put him in. It just so happened that with his traumatic past and the added benefit of taking down those interdimensional do-gooders, plus his God-given purpose, that Lucas just so happened to be perfect for the job. Now that I have his genetic and mental data in the palm of my hand, I can recreate this successful ingredient infinitely… and damnit, it took long enough to get to this point. Oh well, no rest for the wicked…
Suddenly, the room gets a lot brighter… that's strange… I look up at the dangling mine lights in the room, and it's not them… I quickly realize it's coming from behind me. I turn in my heel to see something strange indeed: Lucas is starting to glow with an eerie, rainbow light... shit, what is this? Is his mind still conscious enough to perform one last PSI skill? Which one, I wonder, involves light like that…? I open my mind to sense it…
I step back in surprise; that's not PSI, that's magic! Divine magic! Bloody hell, are the Gods already taking action? That was quick! Any quicker and they might've screwed up the DNA extraction! It's a seriously close call… but I'm amazed that they're pulling a stunt like this while I'm still here. Usually they're so afraid of me that they wouldn't dare be in the same dimension as me… why such a bold move then?
Thump thump! Thump thump! Thump thump!
The light is glowing brighter, so bright I can't even see him anymore. And whatever the Gods are doing, it's making the Devil's Machine throw a huge fit… looks like catastrophic failure is imminent. Staying here doesn't seem like a good idea… just because I revive whenever I'm killed doesn't mean I particularly enjoy being killed.
THUMP THUMP! THUMP THUMP! THUMP THUMP!
Yeah, that's it, I'm outta here.
0000000000
-?-
Is this the end…?
The Eternal calling himself "Shadow" has wrought the Super Smash Brothers Organization horribly in the last dark hour… he has exposed the existence of the Gods to them, leaving them scared and vulnerable… one of them has died, by her own hand, because of his cruelty… and now, a young, once-innocent child has been corrupted and lost everything according to his will…
And the worst has only just begun… who remains now, to stop this vile creation that even the Gods fear…?
Is there nothing between him and his desires for complete and total erasure of everything…?
…
…?
What is this strange energy I feel…?
Somewhere from deep within the bowels of the enemy stronghold, power is building up… divine power… but whose? I have never felt this strain of magic before… it is almost preposterous. A form of divine magic that a God cannot identify? It was a rule of thumb that every God knew the energy wavelength of every God. New Gods would even have their wavelengths memorized the moment they were initiated. There should not be a divine energy I do not know of…
And yet here it was…
It gives me a dim, yet very-present hope. A newly-created divine power, one that neither the Gods nor Shadow know about… it is a slim chance, but it is the only one the multiverse has. So where is it coming from…?
…
…The boy…?
No… not the boy directly… but he is connected to it somehow… this is amazing indeed. Never have I heard of a mortal with ties to divine magic… but how is this possible? This strain of magic is not natural, of that I am certain… is this… a sign of hope…?
The boy cannot be erased here. If this new power is capable of what I believe it to be, then its source must live on. But without his reason for living, will he even want to…?
No, saving only the boy from this grim fate is not enough. They must all survive this ordeal. To cause this to happen will be dangerous, however it may be the only chance the multiverse has… I must act now.
The organization first… within their battleship, they still brainstorm what their next action will be. Understandable that they do not want to be separated… but this cannot be so. In this state, they are nothing but a large target for the Gods intent on erasing them… as much as it pains me to do so, they must be separated and sent to places where the Gods will not take action. I access my power… this must be done quickly. Now that I am using it, it is only a matter of time before they notice and take actions against me.
In moments, it is done. The battleship tears itself asunder as if constructed from a child's toy set and dropped to the floor, and in quick and almost imperceptible dimensional events, they all disappear. I am deeply sorry to have to do this to them… I can only pray that they will understand, and that one day they will be reunited…
The captives next. Those brought here by Shadow so that he may enact his plan. They are in no less danger than the organization, so I am forced to send them away as well.
The girl next. She is the one who stands at Death's door, awaiting judgment… this cannot happen. She may well be the only hope that the boy can retain reason. I see her now, impaled on her own weapon… such a cruel fate to befall someone, to take their own life simply because there is no more peaceful solution.
If memory serves, this blade cannot be touched by hands other than her own when drawn. Whether she is still alive or not I do not know, however I hope that she cannot feel pain. I must levitate her body off of the ground and have her limp arms pull the katana out with the help of gravity. It is agonizing to watch, however it does eventually work. With no time to spare, I reverse the self-inflicted wound.
CRACK!
The sound of cracking class precedes my body freezing up… my power is starting to ebb… they have taken notice… no! Not yet! Wasting none of the time I have left, I send her away through another dimensional event. I only wish I had been able to repair the full extent of her injuries…
My power is quickly disappearing from my grasp. I fear I will not be able to save the boy… but as I try to sense him, I find that I cannot. In his place, I instead sense traces of a dimensional event. Someone or something has already whisked him away… it was not through the will of a God however, this I know for certain. Did the strange power he was helping to produce have something to do with it…? I do not know…
So they have all been spared from the wrath of the Gods for now… as my power disappears completely and I feel my conscious fade, I understand that there is nothing else I can do. I know that I have violated our laws, and will accept the consequences. I can only hope that one day soon, they can reunite and overturn the fate that Shadow has imposed…
I cannot help but wonder, however, if I am the only one among us who still believes that our worlds are not beyond saving…
0000000000
-Shadow-
Something had happened here, that was obvious. And I'm not just talking about the massive, smoking crater that used to be the mountaintop. Yeah, I'm glad I didn't stay in there.
I could feel it everywhere. Strains of residual divine magic lingered in the air that I'm now floating through… how long had it been since I used my ability to hover? Not since… when I antagonized the Link who used the Four Sword, I believe. But that's beside the point. Rather than get sidetracked, I should be piecing together what happened before the inhabitants of this world start wondering what the fuck happened to their mountain. Let's see now… there's smoke lingering in the air a few hundred metres or so away from the mountain. The only thing I knew capable of creating smoke in this area was the Halberd… so where did it go? Giant flying battleships don't just vanish into thin air.
Or do they…? I focus my mind's eye on the area with the smoke, scanning it for any residual magic… I do sense one, but to my surprise, only one. Along with a shit-ton of dimensional events. Now, this is strange… with all the different strains of divine magic I feel, I thought that they all just went to town on the Halberd. But not so… it looks like a single God whisked them all away to other dimensions. Now why in the world…?
Instead of jumping to conclusions again, I decide to track the other strains. They're coming from… the mountain crater? Curious I fly down there, and sense more dimensional events from that same God. My captives are gone… but strangest of all is that Lyndis is also gone. Where she used to lay, I can detect the faintest hint of restorative magic… okay, this is just getting weird now. This God I have yet to identify not only split everyone up, but revived one of them? Not that it bothers my plans at all since I already have what I need, but for the life of me I can't imagine why a God would resurrect a direct threat to their secrecy, or send them all away instead of just erasing them.
The other strains of divine magic also converge on this point… in the form of energy-draining spells. Now this I understand; this is basic punishment for a God who violates the Oath. Strip them of their power and take them away to stand "trial." And I use the term loosely, as when Gods are punished, there is no actual trial per se, more like an execution. I guess I won't have to worry about the rebellious idiot, then. But I'm still curious as to his or her intentions…
Oh well, it's a mystery I'll solve later. Right now I have a doomsday device to work on…
0000000000
-Lucas-
What… happened…?
I failed, as usual.
My body… hurts…
A miracle, all things considered.
Where… am I…? My eyes slowly open… I can't open them fast, they sting too much… I'm staring at the sky… or at least what looks like the sky: the sky and its darker clouds are as red as my blood… as red as Lyn's blood…
Lyn…
"LYN!"
The memory rips my heart in two, perhaps something akin to what she felt… I barely recognize the tears welling up in my eyes.
Stop crying. She chose her fate.
Why… why did she die…?
Because I couldn't save her.
Why did this all happen…?
Because I'm weak.
Why can't I ever save anyone…!
Because I'm a weapon… meant to destroy, not to save.
My swimming mind only just notices the sound of approaching footsteps crunching against dead grass. I see someone looming over me… my vision is too blurry from tears and disorientation to make out any details.
"Oh my goodness! Are you alright, kid?"
It's a man, and old man I think… asking me if…
IF I'M OKAY!
My best friend is dead… all of my friends are going to die… my entire body feels like it's been through hell and back… of course I'm not okay…! I want to just shout that into his face, but I don't have the strength to get up off of my back… I can picture myself ripping this silhouette of a human being apart for asking me something like that…
Then why don't I just go ahead and do it?
I'm… a tool of destruction… it's my purpose to destroy things… it doesn't matter what, just as long as I'm facing it…
Doesn't it make me happy?
It… it does make me happy… thinking back on it now, as much as I can… the only time I've ever experience and real happiness lately was… when I was in the act of destroying things… when I was ending lives…
Then why not go ahead and be happy?
Why not…? There's nothing left for me now… the only homes I've known are gone, and my friends are doomed… and Lyn… she's already gone because of what I am…
"I have nothing left…"
The man blinks at me. "Eh?"
But to destroy…
Destroy…
DESTROY!
I throw my hand up to crush the man's throat.
"GYAG-"
SPLAT.
…The scent of blood fills the air…
…I like it… it makes me… happy…
So… h… a… p… p… y…
A/N: And so it ends. But as you might be able to tell, not quite… this was only the first arc.
There are still many mysteries left to be solved. What was the strange power that emerged at the last second? Who was the unnamed God who felt pity for the Super Smash Brothers Organization? What purpose did he or she have in trying to protect them? What is the full scope of Shadow's plan, if the Devil's Machine is, in the end, only part of a bigger scheme?
And what of Lucas, who has given into the fate imposed upon him?
There are many questions that need to be addressed. But for now, the story has come to a close.
Now, I'm going to post up one more thing for this story: a big blurb of author's notes pertaining to what questions you may have about the story, as well as some I feel should be addressed. So for those of you who have something to ask, now is the time; leave it in a review and I will answer it. Or if you're not comfortable with having the question for public view, you can PM it to me instead.
In any case, thank you for reading and keep an eye out for the next arc of the story… whenever I get around to it. In the meantime I have other stories ongoing that I should work on.
Cheers.
