I had read about forests.

On Mejare, we had two or three domes full of trees. Even on the Nirvana, we have the... "Arboretum". They were called forests, but...

Trees ascending to the heavens.

Soft ground underneath.

A smell, a mixture of decay and pollen and other plant scents that manages to be pleasant.

This is a forest. Overwhelming in it's scope, seemingly going on forever.

And somehow, more real.

Overhead, a missile arcs and detonates, the shock-wave bending the trees and blowing the foliage that had fallen to the floor all around me in a flurry.

From that explosion, John comes crashing to the ground, his body covered in a bright red and gold armor.

Just like this forest, that armor hadn't existed five minutes ago.

From the endless expanse of white, John had summoned beasts, demons, weapons of mass destruction, entire mountains, and enough items that I couldn't even identify to fill all the cargo holds on the Nirvana.

Yet, The Fixer still stands. For every new item John conjures, The Fixer responds with something else. Sometimes he just erases whatever John creates. Sometimes he creates items directly to counter John's creations.

After John had summoned the Tarrasque, The Fixer had brought out some sort of beam weapon and pointed it at me. John had sent something to knock me out of the way, which had shattered my concentration and allowed The Fixer to escape the bonds I had on him.

"Hmm?" The Fixer floats above the forest, scanning around for John. Doesn't look like he's spotted him yet. "Are you running, after all that bravado?"

I carefully move closer to John, careful not to be spotted by the grey man in the sky. He starts climbing to his feet, the armor melting away. He notices me approaching. "Meia."

"How is he coming up with all of these counters?" I ask him.

"Most of the things I can think of come from media I've read or watched or played." He responds, eyes scanning the sky, and some sort of bigger, thicker metal suit forming around him. "And in most forms of media, you don't make an ability all powerful. You have to have a counter, or there's no tension." He grimaces. "The Fixer seems to have consumed a lot of the same media as I have, and is using the established counters. Anything I bring from my reality he can just erase."

"That's odd. Shouldn't stuff you can picture better last longer?"

"That's what I thought too, but he just erased the Tsar Bomba I generated." John bites his lip. "And all the N2 mines. Those came from En Gee Ee though."

"Maybe the better he understands something the better he can get rid of them?"

John's face goes completely blank. "Hmm, if we consider that... It would explain why he couldn't erase the tarrasque so easily... But then, how could he make all of those counters? Clearly, he consumed the same media as I did, so he should have almost exactly the same understanding of events and the objects of any given-"

"There you are."

The armor completes rapidly, and for some reason a picture of a sword over three gears, with wings curling around the emblem.

A weird contraption that looks like a slingshot is pulled from his back and he loads a small missile onto it. "You might want to run." He says calmly to me, his voice slightly tinny through the helmet. "Or at least construct some radiation gear."

The small missile departs with a shrill whine, soaring up into the sky towards the grey man.

"Mini nuke? Cute." The Fixer's skin suddenly turns green for a second, his lips peeling back into a rictus grin right as the bomb hit him.

While improbably small, the explosion was still pretty impressive. Especially since it somehow defied physics and caused a mushroom cloud even on that small scale.

John swears under his breath. "Fuck, he became a super mutant."

"A super mutant?"

"Yeah. I... might have healed him with that." He notices my look as he lets the armor melt away from around him. "It's complicated, but that was a small nuke, and he changed into something that takes radiation and uses it to regenerate."

"That's... stupid."

"Welcome to the Fallout universe." He deadpans. Then he hands me a IV bag filled with orange liquid. "Here, drink this. It'll get rid of any ill effects that bomb had."

"Uh..." It doesn't look tasty at all. "Are you sure?"

"It's literally called RadAway. It's sole purpose it to save you from that world's version of radiation."

"I guess." I poke the needle into my arm and watch as the liquid drains from the bag scarily fast. The smoke starts to clear, and I catch sight of The Fixer through the dust. "We should probably get moving."

"Agreed." John points at the ground, where a ring of mushrooms had just spontaneously grown. "Go through that fairy ring."

I walk into the center of the ring, and my surroundings suddenly change, like a watercolor painting being hosed down revealing a second paining underneath.

John is a second behind me, and he snaps his fingers to set all the mushrooms alight. "Okay, plan time."

I give him a look. "Your plans suck."

He grimaces. "That's why I was about to ask you for a plan."

"Oh." I look up at the sky through the branches, trying to see if I could locate The Fixer. "Well, honestly, you seem to be doing a better job than me at the whole creativity thing. I only managed to imagine some handcuffs."

"Hmm." John shakes his head. "If only I could figure out why he can just cancel some things, I could figure out a way around it."

"What's so different about what you make from stories and what you pull from your universe?"

He shakes his head. "Just my level of understanding. For example, I know the basics of a lot of things from earth. Not all the specifics, but if it's a bomb like the mini nuke I just fired, it's just a lump of plastic that somehow explodes. But that's what I don't get, if my idea of the object is so hazy, it should be easier to reject, not harder."

"Huh. So, if you don't understand the technology, it's harder to get rid of it?"

"And harder to use it." John sighs. "I have to be able to imagine it concretely enough to form it in the first place."

"Wait a second." An idea had crept into my head. "So things that aren't real to you he can't erase?"

"Uh... Yeah. Sounds about right."

"Here, let's try something." I imagine a laser ring just like the one I'm wearing to appear right in front of me. "Okay, so try to erase that."

John picks up the ring, then squints at it. After a few seconds, he shakes his head. "Nope."

"Okay, so now I'm going to explain it to you." I give him a brief rundown of the mechanisms inside of it, just what I knew, but that's what's important. "So try it again."

The ring vanishes. He looks at his hand in amazement. "What?"

"I bet that it's not how well you know something, but how close the thing you're trying to erase is to your idea of it. If you see the object as a lump of plastic, but your enemy is trying to erase an entire bomb with working components, it's not going to work."

"Holy crap." John continues to stare at his hand, but his mind is clearly elsewhere. "..but even then, that still doesn't explain why he can't erase stuff I make from the books I read."

"It's just like my ring." I point out. "If he's been looking into our universes, he's going to know all the real details, not just what shows up in the cartoon."

John turns to me. "Meia, you're a genius."

I can feel my face start to flush, but get a hold of myself.

"So, how do we use this to our advantage?" John stares off into the distance.

"Well... we could-"

"What a nasty trick, using fairy rings." The Fixer appears right behind John. One hold bolting out to plant on his shoulder. "Maybe I should just get rid of this nasty forest already, it's starting to get on my nerves." He sighs dramatically. "It's used to be so nice around here, a vast, unblemished field of white."

"What? So unimaginative that a world full of literally nothing is the most you can come up with on your own?" John snarks over his shoulder.

"A perfect world doesn't need extra bits. Until you came along, it was perfectly white, symmetrical." A rifle of some kind materializes in midair, pointed straight at John's heart. "A fact I will now remedy."

Through the forest only minutes old, the sound of a gun's report could be heard for miles.

"Dita, I can explain."

I look from Duelo towards the twisted horror of Zan. "W... What?"

"Zan just wants to be with John." Duelo expounds. "She can apparently sense the nanobots that John was harboring, and control them to some extent."

I look back at Zan for a few long seconds before the sheer creepyness gets to me. "Duelo, I can't-"

"Just get everyone else out of the way. We can go after John, and hopefully nobody else will die."

"Nobody... else?"

Duelo looks at me carefully. "John's robots... may have gone a bit crazy. Right now, the only thing holding them back from eating everyone on the ship is Zan. If she dies, we all die with her."

I'm growing nervous, so I take a glance around. It doesn't seem like anyone else is around. "Um, I guess I could try to clear a path to the engine room, but-"

"The engine room?"

"Yeah, John was going to do something with the Paksis, Parfet said-"

Duelo's face grows stiff. "Let's hurry, and hope John hasn't completely gone off the deep end."

Interesting.

The bullet had clearly penetrated my body, but it hadn't gotten far. After all- "Lacking imagination isn't something I've ever been accused of." I stand up straight, skin regrowing over metal endoskeleton, blocking Meia from view. What can I use, that he would not be able to unravel?

"Black hole." I mutter. It fails to consume the Fixer in the brief moment it was around, before it collapses into nothingness itself. No matter, it's a distraction-

The trees surrounding the Fixer reach out to restrain him, and he teleports away before I can do anything else of note, leaving behind only a curse.

"Meia?" I ask, as gently as my panting voice can muster. "Idea?"

She proceeds to explain her idea in a hushed whisper, then we do some quick testing, and decide it's good enough. Her idea isn't sane. It's got a survival chance in the low fractions of a percent. I can't help it, a grin spreads across my face. "Great, we'll go with that." I turn to get into position, but Meia's voice stops me.

"Are you sure you're up for this?"

I pause, ignore the part of me screaming how bad an idea this whole plan is, and respond. "I... I guess I have to trust you, Meia."

Her breath catches behind me.

"You'll be the second person I've trusted with anything important. Try-" I throw up a little in my mouth, before swallowing it back down. "Try not to let me die, okay?"

"Was the Paksis always this... purpley?" I ask Parfet.

She shakes her head. "Ever since John and Meia went in, it's been like this. I think it's scared of... something."

"John and Meia are in there?" Duelo smacks his forehead. "Zan-"

The mass of organs walks steadily towards the sphere. "I can hear it. I can hear it! It wants me to help!" Zan's voice grows excited. She reaches out to touch the sphere-

And disappears without a trace.

Duelo sags to the ground. "Well, that was unexpected." His words completely at odds with his nervous expression.

"So, what do we do now?" I ask. "Should we go after her?"

Slowly, Duelo shakes his head. "'We' should not go. I will go, since-"

"No!" Parfet grabs Duelos arm. "I'm not going to let you go in there!"

Duelo ponders this for a minute. "Is there a reason for me not to go?"

"I don't want to lose you." Parfet admits, her voice growing quieter by the syllable.

Duelo nods to her. "I understand your point, but someone needs to get in there to put a leash on Zan."

I raise my voice. "I can go! Zan is one of my best friends, I'm sure she'll listen to me!"

Duelo shakes his head. "That may be, but you are too valuable as a pilot. We might need you if John doesn't make it-"

"If I go in there, John won't die! I'm sure of it!" I'm not sure of it, really, but-

Duelo makes a shooing motion with one of his hands. "Well, if you're that convinced, waiting around here isn't going to do anyone any favors."

I turn and bolt for the purpley ball of light, reaching out and extending my arms to reach it just a little faster-

Off to our left, a large chunk of the forest explodes upwards, forming tall grey spires glimmering with lights of all colors.

John looks puzzled by their sudden appearance, and it wasn't my doing either. "Looks like the Fixer has something interesting planned." John says calmly. "Let's not let him finish his plan, okay?"

"Got it." I close my eyes and start focusing on the object John had described to me. He had described it only loosely, as I had told him too. After all, if I have no idea how it works, how can the fixer know? In a few seconds, I grasp the odd device in my hand and pass it to John. "Good luck."

John hands me the item had had conjured in turn. "Same."

I take his device without another words and turn to head out of the forest. John turns for the newly created spires, heading for the Fixer.

We have one shot. One time this plan could work.

I look down at the odd device in my hand.

It's a trigger, but to what, I have no idea. It almost looks like a gun, but it has no emitter or barrel. when hashing out the plan, John had told me to pull the trigger and not let go.

But what is this "Posiden energy"?

Odd.

The songs around me, they're all me, but not me.

Great pillars of me. Singing to the heavens of this oddly quiet world. Quieter than even the absolute silence of the ship.

John has gone quiet but for a small fraction of himself, floating around me, waiting for my song to begin.

Discordance.

Someone- no, something appears before me.

"Ah, the charming miss Zan. Back so soon?"

Ah. I remember. This is the voice that allowed me to hear the singing.

His discordance is weird. I don't like it.

"Where is John?" I verbalize.

"He is coming here, no doubt." The discordant one says. "I wonder, is he here for me or for you?"

The discordant one laughs in a grating manner, and I feel disgruntled enough to shove him out of the way.

The discordance cuts all of a sudden, reappearing behind me.

"I wouldn't do that, if I were you. After all I have important info for you." The discordant one smiles. "You see, this place can drive some mad, make them see things that aren't there." His voice is filled with... the sound of guitar strings snapping. "John isn't going to see you as a friend. You'd best be ready to defend yourself."

The songs change abruptly.

John's song. I can feel John's song!

Where is he?

WHERE IS HE?

What even does this thing do? I click the trigger, and there's a small beeping noise-

Lasers suddenly split the sky, three of them converging where I'm aiming, spiraling in toward the final point.

The Fixer.

Instead of dodging, a twisted smile crosses his face.

Beside him, a purple aura opens out and he pulls out... The most disgusting lump of flesh-

ZAN!

I jerk the lasers off target, and a veritable column of pure light carves a crater ten feet deep into the landscape.

The gun in my hands dissolves.

John lands next to Zan, who is currently thrashing around in a panic.

He bites his lips for a second before grabbing the the inside out hand and dragging her away, into the forest.

A ripping sound comes from behind me, and I turn around just in time to catch Dita as she stumbles through.

"...Where are we?" Dita looks all around her in wonder.

"I... Don't exactly know."

The Fixer focuses his attention on Dita and I.

"But I know that we can't stand here!"

The songs are all wrong.

He... he did something. and now the songs are muddy.

He dragged me in here. I'll get him. I'll show John how useful I can be!

I try to grab the source of the noise, but it dissolves into a puddle and reforms to the side.

Annoying, like a fly.

I would crush it if I could.

"Zan"

I ignore the noise. You don't pay attention to the noise, you pay attention to the melody.

The melody. Yes, the melody.

"Zan, it's me! John!"

Ignore the noise.

I sweep my arm around and destroy everything around me, a cascade of sound.

Trees?

It felt like trees.

Also, a scream of pain. The pain cuts deep, despite it not being my pain.

My eyes open up, and for a moment it hurts to see. Too bright. Whiter than the inside of the Nirvana. For a moment, I want to close my eyes back up and listen to the music instead.

But there lies the bloody body of John.

Why is John in front of me?

He should be... I wouldn't attack John.

But-

John? Yes, it's his song.

His song leaves me and joins John.

"W-what am I doing?"

John's eyes open slightly, and he pukes up a bunch of blood.

"John!" I rush to his side. His song is weak. I start singing an accompaniment quietly.

"Hey Zan. Try not to gore me please."

His song is fading. No! It's not allowed to fade! He'll get better.

The world responds to my song. The very ground and air echos and amplifies my song, and slowly, the song stops fading, and then starts getting better.

John's face gets back a hint of it's color. His song starts growing louder.

"Zan. you back with me?"

"Always."

He laughs to himself. "The bad guy is over there. He's going to make some things. Can you sing? Sing a song to counter him?"

For John, I will always sing. "Yes."

John's song wraps around me. "Alright. Please go back up and help Dita and Meia. I'll be back in a second."

Of course. My song shall be your savior.

The Fixer is a formidable foe. With John currently out of the way, he's going all out against Dita and I. It's all I can muster just to stop his attacks. Everything from lasers to bullets to entire spaceships launched straight at us.

In between dodging debris and projectiles, I manage to yell to Dita a rough approximation of how this world works.

She quickly made herself a sword and shield that seem strong enough to withstand the onslaught, meaning The Fixer had started to focus on going around her.

That is, until the increasingly ungodly form of Zan comes tearing out of the jungle, tackling The Fixer. He seems to have a hard to reacting to something that can just make itself a new arm every time he cuts one off.

It's like siccing a mutant dog on a steak.

Each time The Fixer starts trying to do something, it just crumbles, Zan's voice warbling through the air and destroying everything he tries to create.

John lands beside me, having just lept out of the forest. His face and shirt are covered in blood. "Looks like everyone's here." He glances at Zan's grotesque form, currently changing it's appearance at a rapid pace. "So, I figured something out."

I glance at him, and suddenly there three of him. Then twenty. More. All of them are nearly identical to each other. In fact, I can't even tell the difference between them, if there is one.

"John?"

"I'm surprised that worked." He looks at another one of himself, who nods and starts running off past my crater.

"What is that?" Dita asks, shield and sword fading away.

"Turn's out, the ability to imagine anything includes... limited time travel."

"Limited?" Dita looks around her. "Wait, time travel? How could that even work?"

A few of the Johns start crafting a concrete barrier to shield us from sight of The Fixer.

The rest of them start making some complicated structures in their hands, a confusing mishmash of a dome.

The Fixer is obviously trying to counter it, but it seems with so much being created from so many sources, he can't keep up.

"Dita."

Dita turns to face one of the Johns not currently creating... whatever it is. "John!"

He smiles slightly. "Can you do me one favor?"

She looks up at him with the complete admiration only possible of those blind to reality. "Of course!"

John points at the great metal dome he is constructing around The Fixer. "If you can please just imagine this dome as unbreakable, as hard as you can, until I say you can stop?"

Dita looks puzzled, but she nods and faces the structure. He face screws up and she presses her fingers into her temples.

John walks over to me. "Meia."

"John."

"I'll trust you to fire the final blow."

"You're the one who's good with making massive weapons of war."

He laughs. "Yes, but I'm already straining myself here. There's already too many of me here, and I can't focus properly. I'd be more confident if you took him out."

"Of course." I start trying to imagine something super powerful.

An image pops into my head, and I start creating.

Well.

Imagine anything, and it becomes real?

Yeah right.

I've spent too much time reading why time machines are impossible to whip up something that could convince myself enough to work.

Even if I could, I don't think anything, not even the Paksis can turn back the hands of time.

Clones? That's easier.

However, I can feel them rotting at the edges. The Fixer is clearly onto my scheme, trying to change the metal shell I'm trying to construct around him and my clones, but since he thinks they're time shifted somehow his attempts at undoing them aren't so successful. Dita's efforts to buff the shield are helping immensely.

Zan's... disturbing attacks keep grabbing the gray man and threatening to drag him under the ground, or cut him to ribbons, or... suck his face off?

I wonder if Zan would like the Cthulu mythos.

For the first time, The Fixer looks truly terrified. The rule he wrote aren't working, due to a combination of everyone working together.

Meia's weapon finishes, a small green ball that she hefts in her hand like a baseball.

With little effort I open an area of the dome, widening the crack to give her a good shot at the sole occupant. The metal dome starts to rust at an extreme pace, and The FIxer starts looking around for an exit.

Meia narrows her eyes, winds up, and launches the ball at The Fixer faster than any baseball I've seen pitched.

"ZAN!" I roar.

The blob of flesh leaps up and away like a rocket. She squeezes out of the dome without a hitch, then leaps behind the concrete barrier I erected.

The green orb soars past the dome, and I clench the dome together with all my mental might.

One big thump and the world becomes completely quiet.

I wait for a few seconds, but no more noises come from inside the dome.

I let it crumble, and stand up to find charred ground, with the remains of a badly scorched skeleton missing his left hand. "Damn. Meia, what was that?"

"It-" Meia covers her mouth, swallows, and continues. "It was an antimatter warhead. My Ohma was once invited to a meeting where they requested her help on it. She told me about it, and I was curious enough that I asked her all about it." She smiles. "I wish I could thank her."

"Good job." I collapse to the ground, let everything I'd made dissipate, stare at the uniform white sky. "I- I'm glad I decided to trust you."

"Did you see John? I kept the dome intact! I helped!" Dita comes running up.

"Yes, good job, Dita."

Zan wanders out of the decaying forest. Her body is reverting back to normal, which is a remarkable disturbing process in itself as it's not gradual and uniform, but more like popcorn, suddenly reverting one piece at a time. "We won?"

"Yep." I pat the ground next to my head. "Hey, why don't you all lie down next to me? Weather's nice."

Meia rolls her eyes but joins me with the other two in tow.

"Thanks. You've all been so wonderful to me. I really, really don't deserve to have you all loving me."

Meia starts, probably picking up on the finality of my tone.

"Meia, I want to say that if I had met you in my world, I don't think I'd have ever gotten along with you. I'm grateful that I got to learn the real you, and talk to you, and fight alongside you. I wouldn't trade our time together for the world. I love you."

"Hey-" She starts to say something, but the sky suddenly cracks, and darkness starts to seep through, a shower of black dust falling from so high up that I don't think it could ever reach us.

"Dita, your enthusiasm, endless support, and general cheerfulness has helped more then you could ever know. Unconditional love is rare and precious, and I can't say how grateful I've been of you. Even if I never really showed it properly. I love you."

"I- I love you too, but-"

"Zan, your music, your spirit, and your insight into everything have been a joy to be around. If I could, I'd continue to sing with you, to you and around you for years to come. I love you."

"J-John, what are you saying?"

"Yeah!" Dita leaps back to her feet. "We've got more stuff to do! We can't let you leave us now!"

I point up the the fracturing sky. "I don't think we have much choice. I think this place was based on The Fixer's power, and now that he's gone everything is reverting. Just like any time I lost focus on whatever I was working on here, it would fade away. The smaller it was, the faster it went away."

"So this dimension isn't holding?" Meia asks.

"Well, I feel like it's reverting." I point to Zan. "She reverted. The forest has shrunk."

"Oh."

I let my arm drop to my side, and clamp my eyes shut. "I expect that all his change will be reversed... And that probably includes him transporting me here."

Dead silence. the sky cracks wider, the shower of black dust almost looking like an inverted image of the night sky, black starts twinkling in the whiteness of empty space.

"So, just for a little while-" I choke up, my throat closing on the words. "Just for a little while, can we all just lie here?"

Dita lies back down and the four of us stare at the sky, crumbling away so far above us.

No words are spoken.

If I could have one wish, it would be that I could be with these women forever. Just stay here, and never have to leave.

At some point though, this world would come to a close. At some point, against my wishes, I closed my eyes.

BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BE-

My hand slams down on the snooze button of my alarm clock radio combo.

Blearily, I look around my room.

It seems so foreign after that... dream.

A dream?

I sit up, and a bottle of sleeping pills rolls off of my blanket and onto the floor, spilling it's contents everywhere.

Oh yeah. I tried to overdose. Obviously, it didn't work.

I grab the bottle, putting the pills that hadn't landed on the floor back in the bottle. I guess I need to put it back. Maybe My sister won't notice it's missing if I'm careful.

I climb out of bed, brush my teeth, and prepare for another day of sleeping all my time away.

When I flop down onto the mattress, something pokes at me. I fumble with my pockets to find-

A small plush UFO.

An eyepiece/headband combo.

A sheet of music, that quite frankly I can't read. But I recognize the handwriting.

On the back, "Don't worry, we'll find you." is scrawled.

I'm still pondering the note when mom bursts into my room, sees the pills, and freaks out.

Well hello there.

I've been gone a year, and here we have the most unsatisfactory ending in all of fanfiction.

The lesson to be learned here is not to give your characters a massive superweapon that they can use. it's the ultimate "Go fuck yourself!" to any logical and tense battles you could come up with.

I've written and rewritten this chapter at least ten times, and it never gets better. I painted myself into a corner, and I refused to back out of it despite the paint drying and having the chance to choose a color other than "puke." However, it the story ended as I always expected it to.

Life goes on regardless of my whims. It's time to turn the page.