Chapter 50: Loss

The Daylight Singularity had been destroyed. Without the balance provided by the eternal war inside his daughter, Midnight could easily flood reality with the malicious intent and apathy to the suffering of others.

Hatred roared through the universe, filling the void that kindness had left, smothering the calm acceptance of the different.

Fear filled the hearts of the living, filling the void that joy had left, smothering all unafraid connections between life.

Love left the largest void but there was nothing in the Dark that could fill it. The deep void festered, turning hearts hard and forcing them to desperately search for something to fill it.

Nothing ever would.

Reality itself became malleable as an infinite number of souls cried out in sudden agony, their pain warping the very fabric of the universe, twisting it and tearing it until it was as malleable as dough.

The pocket universe where the scattered remnants of the Rangers home dimension had landed, fell through eternity, crashing into and through realities. The Earth where the Rangers had Arthur and his collection of plastic villains flickered in and out of existence, pulsing like a slowing heart, trying to decide if it existed anymore.

The worlds began to melt together, mass oozing through light and time like they were the same thing. The laws of physics were found wanting and vetoed by popular indifference, physical shapes themselves became optional and unfashionable. The three known directional dimensions (height, width, depth) looked around and found they had suddenly become a family of thousands.

In this chaos, hearts seeking what had been taken tore through each other, desperate, angry, lost.

Only high above the constantly shifting pandemonium, was there some semblance of order. In a small pocket of the old reality, the Shadow Lady and her father looked out over their new world and found it good.

Behind them, ignored and forgotten by the two new rulers of Everything in Existence, a collection of motionless action figures lay scattered on the ground, their plastic faces contorted with the ghosts of disbelief and pain. Only four of the figures stood upright, hunched over and shaking. Mesogog looked at Ransik, "Ransik…did…"

Ransik nodded, his hand clutched near his heart, face twisted in loss, "Yes. They lost. They finally lost."

Lord Zedd and Rita were staring at each other in confusion. Rita poked him with her moon staff, "What did I ever see in you, you big ugly behemoth? What in the world could have driven me to…" She paused, searching for the word. She couldn't find it.

Lord Zedd scowled and crossed his arms, "I am the Emperor of all Evil, he looked over at the floating masses of pure darkness and coughed, "present company excluded of course, so why would I need another person around? Aren't I all I need?"

Mesogog walked over to a sprawled figure and kicked it. The frozen, disbelieving face of Psycho Red rolled into view. Mesogog shook his head, "You fool. If I had known this was what you intended…" He looked up at the Shadow Lady, "Ah well, best laid plans and all that." He sighed, taking stock of himself. He had never been a very emotional dinosaur but even he could feel a giant hole where hope, love and laughter had once been. He felt cold, and not in the good cold that cold-blooded dinosaurs enjoyed, but the deep cold of an ice age, inescapable, boundless, deadly. It was a cold that wanted to devour him, take his existence and freeze it away until it was an empty, white landscape. He shivered. He had felt that cold before, had been frozen in that way before, but even then it had never felt so…final. So absolute. So eternal. He felt his own soul weeping for those rarely employed emotions and knew that the hairless apes around him would be even more affected. He looked over at Ransik, who almost looked like he wanted to throw up, his loss so much more, with family and friends that no longer mattered even in the slightest. He shivered again, both grateful for being so much less human and oddly jealous.

"Beautiful, isn't it," Midnight said with a pleased sigh. "Perfect and beautiful."

Shady nodded happily, "It's everything you promised it would be father. I just wish mother could have been around to see this."

Midnight looked at her sharply, "What do you mean?" If all of the love in the world had been destroyed, she shouldn't be wishing her mother alive for her personal benefit.

Shady gestured at the scene below, "So that she would know that she failed in the end. That our way is the true and only way."

Midnight nodded, in a way only a shapeless blob of darkness can, "Indeed."


*AN*

So…. dead fics do come back to life. More on the way!