p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;" align="center"Chapter 59/p
p class="MsoNormal"It had taken him a little while to find the right gate, but Kurloz eventually found the one that led to Damara's world from the Battlefield. He arrived just in time to see a tadpole creature being stabbed in the gills by Damara and Meenah. From where he was, on a separate floating time piece far from the others, he knew he'd have to either hitch a ride on an enemy creature flying around or parkour his way across the gaps to reach them. One of them would have to detonate the tumor, and as he squinted at the sight in the distance he realized it would have to be Damara, as Meenah was unconscious. A twinge of joy and satisfaction stirred in his heart at the sight of a fellow believer defeating such an arrogant girl./p
p class="MsoNormal"Damara, meanwhile, was continuously stabbing the tadpole, waiting for all of its blood to seep out of it. At some point it had been incapacitated, but now she was simply stabbing it to vent out all of her frustrations with her current lot in life. Hopefully the Scratch would change her circumstances—better still if it ended her./p
p class="MsoNormal"She took the needles and resumed the scratching she had started on before, running in a circle around the golden cube. She heard a gentle, chime-like music play from it, and she realized it was a music box. There was something about that fact that made her slow down. What was the rush in doing this? It had to be done, sure, but Meenah was out cold thanks to her poison. She could take all the time she needed, right?/p
p class="MsoNormal"strongMAKE HASTE./strong/p
p class="MsoNormal""No," she thought to herself. "Why should I? The danger is over. Everything depends on me doing this one thing. But it doesn't really matter to me, at all. It's what emyou /emwant, isn't it?"/p
p class="MsoNormal"strongGO QUICKLY OR I WILL PUT YOU TO DEATH./strong/p
p class="MsoNormal""So? I'll be back again. For all your omnipotence and foresight you don't have any real power over me."/p
p class="MsoNormal"strongIS THAT SO? DO THIS FOR ME, AND I WILL SET YOU FREE. FREEDOM FROM SORROW. FREEDOM FROM PAIN. A HARDENED HEART THAT CANNOT BE SCRATCHED BY EVEN THE CRUELEST BLADES. OR THE MOST TRAITOROUS OF LOVERS. AFTER THIS, I WILL MOVE ON FROM YOU. I HAVE MORE LOYAL HENCHMEN THAN YOU, ANYWAY./strong/p
p class="MsoNormal"She knew she had to concede there. Her Lord was possibly lying to her. But the promise of freedom was too much. She had to take that chance./p
p class="MsoNormal"She went around the music box as fast as she could. She pushed aside the thoughts and feelings she could feel emanating from it—feelings of warmth and happiness as an innocent child. It was a defense mechanism, a plea to stop destroying it, a plea for life. Life would be hers, soon, once this act of "death" was over./p
p class="MsoNormal"strongGOOD, /strongsaid her Lord. strongIT'S ALMOST OVER NOW./strong/p
p class="MsoNormal"When she had finished she saw Kurloz in the distance, leaping from floating clock to floating clock, trying to reach her. She knew she needed to meet up with him, although she wasn't sure why./p
p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center; text-indent: 0in;" align="center" style="mso-tab-count: 1;" style="mso-tab-count: 1;" style="mso-tab-count: 1;" style="mso-tab-count: 1;" style="mso-tab-count: 1;" /span./strong/p
p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0in;"Somewhere and nowhere in time and space, Mituna was reaching out towards the darkness for the HorrorTerrors./p
p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0in;""Please…get them all over to the Cardinal Movement. The tumor is about to go off, and they don't even know what that means!"/p
p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0in;""This we can grant, but not without a price."/p
p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0in;""What is it?"/p
p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0in;""The absence of your consciousness. It is too much of a difficult variable for the laws of causality. It is too great of an unknown to us. You fought one of our weakest, and yet you retained a small portion of your mind. We cannot have that. Pledge yourself to the abyss, and we will do as you ask."/p
p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0in;"Mituna knew there were outcomes that seemed more favorable, but none of these favorable outcomes seemed "correct" to him. What determined a timeline's correctness, he couldn't say, not even with his new knowledge. But the one where he did as these HorrorTerrors asked was one in which everything was right./p
p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0in;""I'll do it. It's not the first time I've made a deal with your kind, anyway. But please, grant my heir some peace."/p
p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0in;""It is a deal sealed in eternity."/p
p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center; text-indent: 0in;" align="center" style="mso-tab-count: 1;" style="mso-tab-count: 1;" style="mso-tab-count: 1;" style="mso-tab-count: 1;" style="mso-tab-count: 1;" style="mso-tab-count: 1;" style="mso-tab-count: 1;" /span./strong/p
p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0in;"Meenah woke up to see Damara and Kurloz meet. She groaned in agony and frustration as she saw them make contact on a floating style="mso-spacerun: yes;" /spanAs she stood to her feet, she could make out with blurred vision Kurloz handing Damara something black and white./p
p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0in;""It is the tumor. Take it for yourself and detonate it."/p
p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0in;""It is what you need to win the game."/p
p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0in;""We, the Felt, command you!"/p
p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0in;""Where the shell do you think you get off, commandin' an empress?!" Meenah shouted, this time full of fury and resolve. She'd grab that tumor all right, but of her own free will. NOT because some weird exiles told her to. Although she could recall dimly that last time one of them had talked to her, he had sounded a lot more nasally, and he had been alone. Oh whale./p
p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0in;"She took a step forward, only to nearly stumble. She managed to brace herself just in time before falling, and something fell forward out of her pocket, almost to the edge of the platform. It was a dirty, lint-covered marshmallow given to her by Aranea./p
p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0in;""MARSH POWE-R!" she cried. She refused to say "Marshemmallow/em power" out of a desire to make an aquatic pun. Marshes could, after all, be on a coastline, thereby being saltwater coastal marshes!/p
p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0in;"Nevertheless, the power she had unleashed, entrusted to her by Aranea and Clover, worked as intended, despite the fact that Clover probably would have been miffed to find out that Meenah didn't actually say "marshmallow power" properly. The hourglass marshmallow gave Meenah the power of time at her fingertips, and she acquired the abilities that Damara had already. Now they were equals in the realm of time, but for, well, a time. Meenah sensed within her an internal time limit that she had to work with, which didn't seem to be affected no matter where in time she went or what she did. But time flowed around her like a river, and she could "swim" upstream or downstream to wherever she wished./p
p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0in;"Damara, meanwhile, in the present, was about to receive the Tumor from Kurloz, only for it to have disappeared. They looked at each other, eyes widened in realization about what had just happened. And their Lord, instead of helping them, simply sat back and laughed, enjoying the show before his meal. None of this was his doing, but he'd enjoy it nonetheless./p
p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0in;"And so, just like a protagonist in the numerous animes that Rufioh had forced her to watch with him, Damara had to somehow inexplicably tap into her own time powers Sgrub had given her to match Meenah, despite the fact that she wasn't god tier and Meenah was. Damara had no idea where her opponent had traveled back in time to, or even where she had been—all she knew was that she had to have gone in the past to acquire the Tumor retroactively before Kurloz could. The Battlefield, then, was likely where she had gone. Damara quickly used her own abilities to travel backwards in time, following Meenah's past trail, although Damara herself had not actually been to the Battlefield in the past. In this way, a skilled time player could follow another player in the event that the other player got some time powers due to some Nitram-shit plot devices or deus ex machinae. It was her only way to counteract strange and rushed writing, and she suspected this would be utilized later in the story if the author could help it. Of course, she had thought her Lord was the author, so what was going on now?/p
p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0in;" /p
p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0in;"Regardless, Meenah found herself in the Battlefield and quickly explained to her past self what was going on. Past Meenah immediately understood and joined present Meenah to go retrieve the Tumor, only to find Damara waiting for them. The two Meenahs were easily able to overpower Damara, grab the Tumor and get out./p
p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0in;""Oh, so emthat's /emwhat that weird-ass marsh-thing Serket gave me is supposed to do!" Past Meenah remarked as present Meenah was about to leave./p
p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0in;""You just fucked us all up, past-me," present Meenah warned cryptically before leaving to go elsewhere in time. Damara, who was of course right there to hear the whole thing, grinned wickedly, realizing exactly whose past to go into and who to take what from in order to retroactively stop Meenah from screwing with the timeline in her favor./p
p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0in;"It didn't take Damara much effort to go back to her past with the Felt, snatch Clover's hourglass marshmallow, much to the latter's chagrin, and ensure that he never gave it to Aranea./p
p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0in;""You'll pay dearly for dabbling with marshmallow power without my permission!" Clover warned her, but obviously Damara wasn't going to pay attention to a little green leprechaun puppet creature./p
p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0in;"Present Meenah suddenly found herself back in the present with plenty of time on her marshmallow left to spare, although now she had the Tumor./p
p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0in;""Water I supposed to do to make it go off?" she asked her exile aloud, now that it seemed like he had gained multiple, non-nasally voices and was able to listen to her./p
p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0in;""We will bring your teammates with you," her exile (or was it plural?) explained. "Although we have command of space, we do not have command of time. We apologize for the inconvenience."/p
p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0in;"Meenah cursed under her breath. She didn't have much time to wait, considering that her actual time was running out and Kurloz was trying to fight her right now, brandishing his Cringe Inducer. Suddenly, Damara appeared in front of her, and Meenah felt as if her marshmallow was no longer being digested in her stomach./p
p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0in;"Damara was ready to begin battling Meenah alongside Kurloz "fair and square", but Meenah remembered that she had still had an ace up her sleeve, another ability not bound to marshmallows or time. It helped especially that another time iteration of herself appeared in front of her and said, "Use your god-tier powers, dumb bass!" and vanished, evidently another Meenah from another timeline or something. Meenah immediately realized what she could do as the Thief of Life./p
p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0in;""God-tier?" Damara asked. She had been so busy doing what Lord English wanted, she had forgotten about that whole game mechanic entirely! She was helpless as Meenah instantaneously sapped her life force away from her, draining it from herself to make herself stronger. Because Kurloz was aware of her powers, she could not steal his as well, but the simple shock of it all gave him a hard time as she fought him with her own melee weapon. Their blades clashed, and Kurloz briefly grew relieved when he realized that he had help from another Damara who had appeared just now. But Meenah killed her instantly as well, as every past Damara was completely ignorant of her God-tier powers, only knowing that a future iteration of themselves had been destroyed. And so various Damaras piled up, all trying to get at Meenah and failing, as each one had their life sapped away instantaneously. Kurloz would have liked to tell one of them what was going on, but since he was mute and incapable of sending telepathic thoughts to anyone besides Meulin with relative ease, nothing could be done. Dead Damaras piled up on the clock platforms around them, as Meenah cackled wickedly, drunk on her own power./p
p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0in;" /p
p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0in;"Gradually, as the Damara pileup increased, various iterations of Damara stopped being an influence in the past, and it wasn't long before a future Meenah appeared, making sure to give her an important message./p
p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0in;""Yo, past me," she stated calmly as a clam. "Hate to burst your bubble, but you gotta krill your own fronds, too. Them whore-tears will take care of the main shelves, but you gotta krill the dreamshelves, too."/p
p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0in;""Kay, thanks!" Meenah replied as she killed the last couple of Damaras that were left./p
p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0in;""Ayo, don't mention it!" future Meenah replied, going back to her own timeline of a couple of minutes in the future./p
p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0in;"Kurloz, utterly helpless, prayed fervently to Lord English for assistance. But all he got in reply was:/p
p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0in;"IT DOES NOT MATTER WHO DETONATES THE TUMOR IN THE FIRST PLACE. THE THIEF IS ONLY DOING THIS TO MAKE HERSELF GREAT. FOR YOUR LOYALTY, YOU WILL BE SPARED, PRINCE, AND SO WILL THE OTHERS WHO WERE DISLOYAL TO ME. BUT YOU HAVE NEARLY OUTLIVED YOUR USEFULNESS. YOU WERE A LOYAL SERVANT, TO BE SURE. BUT YOUR TIME IS OVER, AND I HUNGER FOR A UNIVRESE TO DEVOUR. THAT IS THE NATURE OF THE SCRATCH./p
p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0in;"Kurloz should have been disillusioned by all this, now that his god was explicitly telling him he'd leave him alone. He should have just put on a fedora and become a neckbearded atheist. But alas, trolls could not grow facial hair and Kurloz didn't have a fedora. Meanwhile, the much-older gods who looked like cephalopods appearified all of the other trolls to the location of himself, Meenah and all of the dead Damaras. Noticeably absent was a living Damara./p
p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0in;""Now is the time, Witch. Congratulations. You have successfully failed your session and pulled your players out of your doomed game."/p
p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0in;""Aw, shell, yeah!" Meenah cried out. Aranea, assuming that Meenah was glad to see her and everyone else, walked up to give her friend a hug before realizing that there were dozens of dead Damara's everywhere./p
p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0in;""Meenah, you—G88D G8G, WH8T D8D Y88 D8?!" Aranea gasped at all of the dead Damaras littered everywhere. "I thought I said no killing!"/p
p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0in;""Whale, 'bout that…" Meenah muttered awkwardly, before slamming her 2X3dent into the Tumor. This made it explode before anyone could protest. Needless to say, everyone was horrified, even Mituna, except for Rufioh, who felt a sense of closure at all of the dead Damaras lying around./p
p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0in;"Amidst the explosion of dead troll bodies, another Meenah abruptly appeared from the past, ready to detonate another copy of the Tumor she had taken with her as the HorrorTerrors pulled the remaining dreamselves that had not died earlier in as well. They all screamed in horror at the realization that Meenah was evidently a mass slaughterer./p
p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0in;""Meenah…why?" Aranea whispered, nearly frozen with fear and a sense of tragic betrayal./p
p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0in;""Hey, it wasn't me!" Meenah insisted. "That was the other me!" Technically, this Meenah iteration was correct, but it didn't change the fact that she still had to kill all of the dreamselves with another Tumor. She quickly did so "again", making sure that everyone was close enough. Even a Damara, clad in Dersite pajamas, was caught in the blast./p
p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0in;" /p
p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0in;"And so, the A1 session of Sgrub went out with a bang—technically two bangs, and both very literal. All of the trolls were killed by the Tumor were spared, but all of the Damaras Meenah had killed earlier remained dead, to be devoured by Lord English as the universe crumbled around the corpses. The ectobiologized clones, some of which became what we know as the trolls of Alternia, as well as the ones that would later become the adult versions of themselves that would play key roles in the story of the Signless Sufferer, were also preserved, as they were out beyond the Furthest Ring and therefore outside of the universe./p
p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0in;" /p
p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0in;"The one Damara from Derse who remained looked upon all of this and was filled with hatred and resignation. She would never serve Lord English again, that much was true. And she vowed to hate all of the other trolls for the rest of her life. She would do whatever she could to, at the very least, make them uncomfortable. Looking to Horuss and realizing what he could do to Rufioh with his mere presence, Damara got an idea…/p
p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0in;"Rufioh looked on and was satisfied at the closure he got from seeing his girlfriend eaten numerous times over. Still, a twinge of guilt was in his heart as he thought about how this could be looked at as all his fault./p
p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0in;"Mituna looked on with fear and held Latula close in the Dream Bubbles they were now all preserved in. The last vestiges of his old mind had been given up in order to save his friends, but Meenah would take all of the credit for it. The omniscient Mituna, now long gone, would have realized with sadness that Meenah had never actually needed to be the one to detonate the Tumor—anyone could have done it, and indeed there were timelines where that had happened. But all of those timelines were not the correct one, and in this one Meenah had done it to give glory to herself, as if she was the most powerful being in the universe. Mituna knew all too well the way that absolute power corrupts and isolates its wielders. But it all didn't matter, as the Mituna capable of thinking all of this was long gone, and the Mituna who remained could only look on with the sense that something was very wrong with the multiverse. And it made him very sad, and only Latula could make it better. He too felt guilt, as he felt that things were not meant to be this way. He should be able to help her, too, but he could not./p
p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0in;"Meulin looked on and felt her innocence crumble away. The deaths of so many sailor cats had been one thing, but the numerous dead Damaras eaten by Lord English was another thing entirely. She turned to Kurloz and saw him give her a thumbs-up. It gave her comfort that there was something stable out there./p
p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0in;"Kankri looked on and was extremely triggered by all the violence Meenah had done. So much so he decided it wasn't even worth addressing./p
p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0in;"Porrim observed quietly and pondered all of the misogyny she was seeing in her heart, deciding that Meenah clearly had internalized misogyny, no matter what she said to justify killing Damara multiple times later on. She decided to do the best and most empowering thing that a feminist could do—she wasn't thinking big enough, but she didn't find that out until afterwards./p
p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0in;"Latula looked on and shook her head. This game had sucked. If all of those reviewing websites had still been around on Beforus, she would have definitely given this game a bad review. But she looked at Mituna and realized no amount of bad scores was enough to fully condemn what this game had done to them./p
p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0in;"Something broke inside Aranea as she looked on. But she did her best to hold it all in. Remembering that Nelly was now dead left her in tears./p
p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0in;"Horuss didn't really know what to make of all of the chaos, only having the vague understanding that he could have brought it about if he had done things differently. Perhaps he not had spent his session wisely, having been too distracted by other things./p
p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0in;"Kurloz put on a brave face for Meulin, which was easy to do due to his mouth being sewn shut and not having to worry about making a frowny face. Such a thing was not fitting for one who served a mirthful messiah. Because his god had in fact spared him, he had no choice but to concede that he was in fact a messiah after all. He would continue to follow his god, regardless of what happened next. Perhaps he could still make himself useful after all./p
p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0in;"Cronus looked on with peace and hope in his heart, thinking of all of the death and destruction around him as a chance for a new start. The HorrorTerrors had told him that Mituna had died, although he didn't know if he could believe that, considering Mituna was technically right with him also. In his selfishness, Cronus did not share that hope with any of the other trolls, though they would gain it in time, without his efforts./p
p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0in;"Meenah grinned with satisfaction as she looked on with admiration at her achievement. She wasn't quite sure how she had done it, but she had won the game, and been most active with their session. If this game had had a list of achievements, she would have unlocked the most. Now it was time to enjoy the post-game, and let the credits roll./p
p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0in;"Although her session was over, what she didn't realize was that her story, and the story of the game itself, a game that altered time and space, was far from over. In fact, this was just the beginning—the end of the beginning./p
p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center; text-indent: 0in;" align="center"END OF ACT 4/p
p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center; text-indent: 0in;" align="center"END OF A1/p
p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center; text-indent: 0in;" align="center"THE END/p
p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0in;"strongAN: An epilogue remains, but this is truly the end of the fanfic. It was quite a ride, and several years in the making./strong/p
p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0in;"strongI'd like to apologize to anyone who genuinely waited for this long. I'd assume by this point you'd have forgotten all about this fanfiction. But hey, if you're just reading for the first time now, then you can read the whole thing from start to finish./strong/p
p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0in;"strongObviously, the writing style, plot, plot holes, and themes will change throughout the story, but I am proud to have finished it. I lost interest in Homestuck long ago, as it has taken numerous twists and turns that I don't agree with, on a personal level, as a former fan, and as an aspiring writer. My personal life, my various mental health issues, and other factors got in the way of me finishing this much earlier. But such is life—stories often take a long time to complete even if they seem short to read and consume./strong/p
p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0in;"strongNevertheless, this quite an adventure. I enjoyed the easygoing sense of freedom I had with this fanfic—I could write it with humor and non-seriousness when I wanted to, or I could wax philosophical and be very serious with it. I'd like to think I did a little bit of both in this final chapter, deus ex machinae aside. I had planned it all out as I wrote, and for the most part it was not spontaneous at all. Nevertheless, given that Homestuck itself had some deus ex machinae in it, in addition to time shenanigans, perhaps it is fitting that this story end this way, with time shenanigans I can't quite keep track of. /strong/p
p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0in;"strong /strong/p
p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0in;"strongIf you find yourself reading this and see anything that contradicts anything else or any serious plothole, let me know and I will likely attempt to fix it if it contradicts what I've established here. If it contradicts more recently-established canon, however—anything being established in Homestuck post Act 7 by the new team of writers, who, like I said, I don't prefer—then I'll most likely not be able to conform my fanfic to that to keep in harmony with current canon, especially since I started writing this WAY before a lot of that. I believe Act 7 hadn't even come out yet when I started writing this. And I never did finish the "meat" or "candy" epilogues, which I understand have also been retconned in favor of making a bunch of characters transgender? I don't know anymore. I'm satisfied with the way this fanfiction has turned out. The world has long since moved on from Homestuck and its fandom, including myself, but I'm happy to finally have finished my contribution to it. As always, reviews and feedback are appreciated./strong/p
p class="MsoNormal"It had taken him a little while to find the right gate, but Kurloz eventually found the one that led to Damara's world from the Battlefield. He arrived just in time to see a tadpole creature being stabbed in the gills by Damara and Meenah. From where he was, on a separate floating time piece far from the others, he knew he'd have to either hitch a ride on an enemy creature flying around or parkour his way across the gaps to reach them. One of them would have to detonate the tumor, and as he squinted at the sight in the distance he realized it would have to be Damara, as Meenah was unconscious. A twinge of joy and satisfaction stirred in his heart at the sight of a fellow believer defeating such an arrogant girl./p
p class="MsoNormal"Damara, meanwhile, was continuously stabbing the tadpole, waiting for all of its blood to seep out of it. At some point it had been incapacitated, but now she was simply stabbing it to vent out all of her frustrations with her current lot in life. Hopefully the Scratch would change her circumstances—better still if it ended her./p
p class="MsoNormal"She took the needles and resumed the scratching she had started on before, running in a circle around the golden cube. She heard a gentle, chime-like music play from it, and she realized it was a music box. There was something about that fact that made her slow down. What was the rush in doing this? It had to be done, sure, but Meenah was out cold thanks to her poison. She could take all the time she needed, right?/p
p class="MsoNormal"strongMAKE HASTE./strong/p
p class="MsoNormal""No," she thought to herself. "Why should I? The danger is over. Everything depends on me doing this one thing. But it doesn't really matter to me, at all. It's what emyou /emwant, isn't it?"/p
p class="MsoNormal"strongGO QUICKLY OR I WILL PUT YOU TO DEATH./strong/p
p class="MsoNormal""So? I'll be back again. For all your omnipotence and foresight you don't have any real power over me."/p
p class="MsoNormal"strongIS THAT SO? DO THIS FOR ME, AND I WILL SET YOU FREE. FREEDOM FROM SORROW. FREEDOM FROM PAIN. A HARDENED HEART THAT CANNOT BE SCRATCHED BY EVEN THE CRUELEST BLADES. OR THE MOST TRAITOROUS OF LOVERS. AFTER THIS, I WILL MOVE ON FROM YOU. I HAVE MORE LOYAL HENCHMEN THAN YOU, ANYWAY./strong/p
p class="MsoNormal"She knew she had to concede there. Her Lord was possibly lying to her. But the promise of freedom was too much. She had to take that chance./p
p class="MsoNormal"She went around the music box as fast as she could. She pushed aside the thoughts and feelings she could feel emanating from it—feelings of warmth and happiness as an innocent child. It was a defense mechanism, a plea to stop destroying it, a plea for life. Life would be hers, soon, once this act of "death" was over./p
p class="MsoNormal"strongGOOD, /strongsaid her Lord. strongIT'S ALMOST OVER NOW./strong/p
p class="MsoNormal"When she had finished she saw Kurloz in the distance, leaping from floating clock to floating clock, trying to reach her. She knew she needed to meet up with him, although she wasn't sure why./p
p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center; text-indent: 0in;" align="center" style="mso-tab-count: 1;" style="mso-tab-count: 1;" style="mso-tab-count: 1;" style="mso-tab-count: 1;" style="mso-tab-count: 1;" /span./strong/p
p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0in;"Somewhere and nowhere in time and space, Mituna was reaching out towards the darkness for the HorrorTerrors./p
p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0in;""Please…get them all over to the Cardinal Movement. The tumor is about to go off, and they don't even know what that means!"/p
p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0in;""This we can grant, but not without a price."/p
p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0in;""What is it?"/p
p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0in;""The absence of your consciousness. It is too much of a difficult variable for the laws of causality. It is too great of an unknown to us. You fought one of our weakest, and yet you retained a small portion of your mind. We cannot have that. Pledge yourself to the abyss, and we will do as you ask."/p
p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0in;"Mituna knew there were outcomes that seemed more favorable, but none of these favorable outcomes seemed "correct" to him. What determined a timeline's correctness, he couldn't say, not even with his new knowledge. But the one where he did as these HorrorTerrors asked was one in which everything was right./p
p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0in;""I'll do it. It's not the first time I've made a deal with your kind, anyway. But please, grant my heir some peace."/p
p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0in;""It is a deal sealed in eternity."/p
p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center; text-indent: 0in;" align="center" style="mso-tab-count: 1;" style="mso-tab-count: 1;" style="mso-tab-count: 1;" style="mso-tab-count: 1;" style="mso-tab-count: 1;" style="mso-tab-count: 1;" style="mso-tab-count: 1;" /span./strong/p
p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0in;"Meenah woke up to see Damara and Kurloz meet. She groaned in agony and frustration as she saw them make contact on a floating style="mso-spacerun: yes;" /spanAs she stood to her feet, she could make out with blurred vision Kurloz handing Damara something black and white./p
p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0in;""It is the tumor. Take it for yourself and detonate it."/p
p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0in;""It is what you need to win the game."/p
p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0in;""We, the Felt, command you!"/p
p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0in;""Where the shell do you think you get off, commandin' an empress?!" Meenah shouted, this time full of fury and resolve. She'd grab that tumor all right, but of her own free will. NOT because some weird exiles told her to. Although she could recall dimly that last time one of them had talked to her, he had sounded a lot more nasally, and he had been alone. Oh whale./p
p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0in;"She took a step forward, only to nearly stumble. She managed to brace herself just in time before falling, and something fell forward out of her pocket, almost to the edge of the platform. It was a dirty, lint-covered marshmallow given to her by Aranea./p
p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0in;""MARSH POWE-R!" she cried. She refused to say "Marshemmallow/em power" out of a desire to make an aquatic pun. Marshes could, after all, be on a coastline, thereby being saltwater coastal marshes!/p
p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0in;"Nevertheless, the power she had unleashed, entrusted to her by Aranea and Clover, worked as intended, despite the fact that Clover probably would have been miffed to find out that Meenah didn't actually say "marshmallow power" properly. The hourglass marshmallow gave Meenah the power of time at her fingertips, and she acquired the abilities that Damara had already. Now they were equals in the realm of time, but for, well, a time. Meenah sensed within her an internal time limit that she had to work with, which didn't seem to be affected no matter where in time she went or what she did. But time flowed around her like a river, and she could "swim" upstream or downstream to wherever she wished./p
p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0in;"Damara, meanwhile, in the present, was about to receive the Tumor from Kurloz, only for it to have disappeared. They looked at each other, eyes widened in realization about what had just happened. And their Lord, instead of helping them, simply sat back and laughed, enjoying the show before his meal. None of this was his doing, but he'd enjoy it nonetheless./p
p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0in;"And so, just like a protagonist in the numerous animes that Rufioh had forced her to watch with him, Damara had to somehow inexplicably tap into her own time powers Sgrub had given her to match Meenah, despite the fact that she wasn't god tier and Meenah was. Damara had no idea where her opponent had traveled back in time to, or even where she had been—all she knew was that she had to have gone in the past to acquire the Tumor retroactively before Kurloz could. The Battlefield, then, was likely where she had gone. Damara quickly used her own abilities to travel backwards in time, following Meenah's past trail, although Damara herself had not actually been to the Battlefield in the past. In this way, a skilled time player could follow another player in the event that the other player got some time powers due to some Nitram-shit plot devices or deus ex machinae. It was her only way to counteract strange and rushed writing, and she suspected this would be utilized later in the story if the author could help it. Of course, she had thought her Lord was the author, so what was going on now?/p
p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0in;" /p
p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0in;"Regardless, Meenah found herself in the Battlefield and quickly explained to her past self what was going on. Past Meenah immediately understood and joined present Meenah to go retrieve the Tumor, only to find Damara waiting for them. The two Meenahs were easily able to overpower Damara, grab the Tumor and get out./p
p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0in;""Oh, so emthat's /emwhat that weird-ass marsh-thing Serket gave me is supposed to do!" Past Meenah remarked as present Meenah was about to leave./p
p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0in;""You just fucked us all up, past-me," present Meenah warned cryptically before leaving to go elsewhere in time. Damara, who was of course right there to hear the whole thing, grinned wickedly, realizing exactly whose past to go into and who to take what from in order to retroactively stop Meenah from screwing with the timeline in her favor./p
p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0in;"It didn't take Damara much effort to go back to her past with the Felt, snatch Clover's hourglass marshmallow, much to the latter's chagrin, and ensure that he never gave it to Aranea./p
p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0in;""You'll pay dearly for dabbling with marshmallow power without my permission!" Clover warned her, but obviously Damara wasn't going to pay attention to a little green leprechaun puppet creature./p
p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0in;"Present Meenah suddenly found herself back in the present with plenty of time on her marshmallow left to spare, although now she had the Tumor./p
p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0in;""Water I supposed to do to make it go off?" she asked her exile aloud, now that it seemed like he had gained multiple, non-nasally voices and was able to listen to her./p
p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0in;""We will bring your teammates with you," her exile (or was it plural?) explained. "Although we have command of space, we do not have command of time. We apologize for the inconvenience."/p
p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0in;"Meenah cursed under her breath. She didn't have much time to wait, considering that her actual time was running out and Kurloz was trying to fight her right now, brandishing his Cringe Inducer. Suddenly, Damara appeared in front of her, and Meenah felt as if her marshmallow was no longer being digested in her stomach./p
p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0in;"Damara was ready to begin battling Meenah alongside Kurloz "fair and square", but Meenah remembered that she had still had an ace up her sleeve, another ability not bound to marshmallows or time. It helped especially that another time iteration of herself appeared in front of her and said, "Use your god-tier powers, dumb bass!" and vanished, evidently another Meenah from another timeline or something. Meenah immediately realized what she could do as the Thief of Life./p
p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0in;""God-tier?" Damara asked. She had been so busy doing what Lord English wanted, she had forgotten about that whole game mechanic entirely! She was helpless as Meenah instantaneously sapped her life force away from her, draining it from herself to make herself stronger. Because Kurloz was aware of her powers, she could not steal his as well, but the simple shock of it all gave him a hard time as she fought him with her own melee weapon. Their blades clashed, and Kurloz briefly grew relieved when he realized that he had help from another Damara who had appeared just now. But Meenah killed her instantly as well, as every past Damara was completely ignorant of her God-tier powers, only knowing that a future iteration of themselves had been destroyed. And so various Damaras piled up, all trying to get at Meenah and failing, as each one had their life sapped away instantaneously. Kurloz would have liked to tell one of them what was going on, but since he was mute and incapable of sending telepathic thoughts to anyone besides Meulin with relative ease, nothing could be done. Dead Damaras piled up on the clock platforms around them, as Meenah cackled wickedly, drunk on her own power./p
p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0in;" /p
p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0in;"Gradually, as the Damara pileup increased, various iterations of Damara stopped being an influence in the past, and it wasn't long before a future Meenah appeared, making sure to give her an important message./p
p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0in;""Yo, past me," she stated calmly as a clam. "Hate to burst your bubble, but you gotta krill your own fronds, too. Them whore-tears will take care of the main shelves, but you gotta krill the dreamshelves, too."/p
p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0in;""Kay, thanks!" Meenah replied as she killed the last couple of Damaras that were left./p
p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0in;""Ayo, don't mention it!" future Meenah replied, going back to her own timeline of a couple of minutes in the future./p
p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0in;"Kurloz, utterly helpless, prayed fervently to Lord English for assistance. But all he got in reply was:/p
p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0in;"IT DOES NOT MATTER WHO DETONATES THE TUMOR IN THE FIRST PLACE. THE THIEF IS ONLY DOING THIS TO MAKE HERSELF GREAT. FOR YOUR LOYALTY, YOU WILL BE SPARED, PRINCE, AND SO WILL THE OTHERS WHO WERE DISLOYAL TO ME. BUT YOU HAVE NEARLY OUTLIVED YOUR USEFULNESS. YOU WERE A LOYAL SERVANT, TO BE SURE. BUT YOUR TIME IS OVER, AND I HUNGER FOR A UNIVRESE TO DEVOUR. THAT IS THE NATURE OF THE SCRATCH./p
p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0in;"Kurloz should have been disillusioned by all this, now that his god was explicitly telling him he'd leave him alone. He should have just put on a fedora and become a neckbearded atheist. But alas, trolls could not grow facial hair and Kurloz didn't have a fedora. Meanwhile, the much-older gods who looked like cephalopods appearified all of the other trolls to the location of himself, Meenah and all of the dead Damaras. Noticeably absent was a living Damara./p
p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0in;""Now is the time, Witch. Congratulations. You have successfully failed your session and pulled your players out of your doomed game."/p
p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0in;""Aw, shell, yeah!" Meenah cried out. Aranea, assuming that Meenah was glad to see her and everyone else, walked up to give her friend a hug before realizing that there were dozens of dead Damara's everywhere./p
p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0in;""Meenah, you—G88D G8G, WH8T D8D Y88 D8?!" Aranea gasped at all of the dead Damaras littered everywhere. "I thought I said no killing!"/p
p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0in;""Whale, 'bout that…" Meenah muttered awkwardly, before slamming her 2X3dent into the Tumor. This made it explode before anyone could protest. Needless to say, everyone was horrified, even Mituna, except for Rufioh, who felt a sense of closure at all of the dead Damaras lying around./p
p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0in;"Amidst the explosion of dead troll bodies, another Meenah abruptly appeared from the past, ready to detonate another copy of the Tumor she had taken with her as the HorrorTerrors pulled the remaining dreamselves that had not died earlier in as well. They all screamed in horror at the realization that Meenah was evidently a mass slaughterer./p
p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0in;""Meenah…why?" Aranea whispered, nearly frozen with fear and a sense of tragic betrayal./p
p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0in;""Hey, it wasn't me!" Meenah insisted. "That was the other me!" Technically, this Meenah iteration was correct, but it didn't change the fact that she still had to kill all of the dreamselves with another Tumor. She quickly did so "again", making sure that everyone was close enough. Even a Damara, clad in Dersite pajamas, was caught in the blast./p
p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0in;" /p
p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0in;"And so, the A1 session of Sgrub went out with a bang—technically two bangs, and both very literal. All of the trolls were killed by the Tumor were spared, but all of the Damaras Meenah had killed earlier remained dead, to be devoured by Lord English as the universe crumbled around the corpses. The ectobiologized clones, some of which became what we know as the trolls of Alternia, as well as the ones that would later become the adult versions of themselves that would play key roles in the story of the Signless Sufferer, were also preserved, as they were out beyond the Furthest Ring and therefore outside of the universe./p
p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0in;" /p
p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0in;"The one Damara from Derse who remained looked upon all of this and was filled with hatred and resignation. She would never serve Lord English again, that much was true. And she vowed to hate all of the other trolls for the rest of her life. She would do whatever she could to, at the very least, make them uncomfortable. Looking to Horuss and realizing what he could do to Rufioh with his mere presence, Damara got an idea…/p
p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0in;"Rufioh looked on and was satisfied at the closure he got from seeing his girlfriend eaten numerous times over. Still, a twinge of guilt was in his heart as he thought about how this could be looked at as all his fault./p
p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0in;"Mituna looked on with fear and held Latula close in the Dream Bubbles they were now all preserved in. The last vestiges of his old mind had been given up in order to save his friends, but Meenah would take all of the credit for it. The omniscient Mituna, now long gone, would have realized with sadness that Meenah had never actually needed to be the one to detonate the Tumor—anyone could have done it, and indeed there were timelines where that had happened. But all of those timelines were not the correct one, and in this one Meenah had done it to give glory to herself, as if she was the most powerful being in the universe. Mituna knew all too well the way that absolute power corrupts and isolates its wielders. But it all didn't matter, as the Mituna capable of thinking all of this was long gone, and the Mituna who remained could only look on with the sense that something was very wrong with the multiverse. And it made him very sad, and only Latula could make it better. He too felt guilt, as he felt that things were not meant to be this way. He should be able to help her, too, but he could not./p
p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0in;"Meulin looked on and felt her innocence crumble away. The deaths of so many sailor cats had been one thing, but the numerous dead Damaras eaten by Lord English was another thing entirely. She turned to Kurloz and saw him give her a thumbs-up. It gave her comfort that there was something stable out there./p
p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0in;"Kankri looked on and was extremely triggered by all the violence Meenah had done. So much so he decided it wasn't even worth addressing./p
p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0in;"Porrim observed quietly and pondered all of the misogyny she was seeing in her heart, deciding that Meenah clearly had internalized misogyny, no matter what she said to justify killing Damara multiple times later on. She decided to do the best and most empowering thing that a feminist could do—she wasn't thinking big enough, but she didn't find that out until afterwards./p
p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0in;"Latula looked on and shook her head. This game had sucked. If all of those reviewing websites had still been around on Beforus, she would have definitely given this game a bad review. But she looked at Mituna and realized no amount of bad scores was enough to fully condemn what this game had done to them./p
p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0in;"Something broke inside Aranea as she looked on. But she did her best to hold it all in. Remembering that Nelly was now dead left her in tears./p
p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0in;"Horuss didn't really know what to make of all of the chaos, only having the vague understanding that he could have brought it about if he had done things differently. Perhaps he not had spent his session wisely, having been too distracted by other things./p
p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0in;"Kurloz put on a brave face for Meulin, which was easy to do due to his mouth being sewn shut and not having to worry about making a frowny face. Such a thing was not fitting for one who served a mirthful messiah. Because his god had in fact spared him, he had no choice but to concede that he was in fact a messiah after all. He would continue to follow his god, regardless of what happened next. Perhaps he could still make himself useful after all./p
p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0in;"Cronus looked on with peace and hope in his heart, thinking of all of the death and destruction around him as a chance for a new start. The HorrorTerrors had told him that Mituna had died, although he didn't know if he could believe that, considering Mituna was technically right with him also. In his selfishness, Cronus did not share that hope with any of the other trolls, though they would gain it in time, without his efforts./p
p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0in;"Meenah grinned with satisfaction as she looked on with admiration at her achievement. She wasn't quite sure how she had done it, but she had won the game, and been most active with their session. If this game had had a list of achievements, she would have unlocked the most. Now it was time to enjoy the post-game, and let the credits roll./p
p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0in;"Although her session was over, what she didn't realize was that her story, and the story of the game itself, a game that altered time and space, was far from over. In fact, this was just the beginning—the end of the beginning./p
p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center; text-indent: 0in;" align="center"END OF ACT 4/p
p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center; text-indent: 0in;" align="center"END OF A1/p
p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center; text-indent: 0in;" align="center"THE END/p
p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0in;"strongAN: An epilogue remains, but this is truly the end of the fanfic. It was quite a ride, and several years in the making./strong/p
p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0in;"strongI'd like to apologize to anyone who genuinely waited for this long. I'd assume by this point you'd have forgotten all about this fanfiction. But hey, if you're just reading for the first time now, then you can read the whole thing from start to finish./strong/p
p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0in;"strongObviously, the writing style, plot, plot holes, and themes will change throughout the story, but I am proud to have finished it. I lost interest in Homestuck long ago, as it has taken numerous twists and turns that I don't agree with, on a personal level, as a former fan, and as an aspiring writer. My personal life, my various mental health issues, and other factors got in the way of me finishing this much earlier. But such is life—stories often take a long time to complete even if they seem short to read and consume./strong/p
p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0in;"strongNevertheless, this quite an adventure. I enjoyed the easygoing sense of freedom I had with this fanfic—I could write it with humor and non-seriousness when I wanted to, or I could wax philosophical and be very serious with it. I'd like to think I did a little bit of both in this final chapter, deus ex machinae aside. I had planned it all out as I wrote, and for the most part it was not spontaneous at all. Nevertheless, given that Homestuck itself had some deus ex machinae in it, in addition to time shenanigans, perhaps it is fitting that this story end this way, with time shenanigans I can't quite keep track of. /strong/p
p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0in;"strong /strong/p
p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0in;"strongIf you find yourself reading this and see anything that contradicts anything else or any serious plothole, let me know and I will likely attempt to fix it if it contradicts what I've established here. If it contradicts more recently-established canon, however—anything being established in Homestuck post Act 7 by the new team of writers, who, like I said, I don't prefer—then I'll most likely not be able to conform my fanfic to that to keep in harmony with current canon, especially since I started writing this WAY before a lot of that. I believe Act 7 hadn't even come out yet when I started writing this. And I never did finish the "meat" or "candy" epilogues, which I understand have also been retconned in favor of making a bunch of characters transgender? I don't know anymore. I'm satisfied with the way this fanfiction has turned out. The world has long since moved on from Homestuck and its fandom, including myself, but I'm happy to finally have finished my contribution to it. As always, reviews and feedback are appreciated./strong/p