"Lina," said the Commodore, "I think we need--"
"I'm on it!" Lina was already dashing for the car's rear door. She threw it open, and stepped out onto the narrow platform at the end of the train. Raising her arms, she chanted, "Darkness beyond blackest pitch..."
"Oh, shi--" began Amelia and Zelgadis.
"What's going on?" asked Ryoko.
"She's going to cast the Giga Slave--the ultimate spell!" said Amelia breathlessly.
"...King of darkness, who shines like gold upon the sea of chaos, I call upon thee..." Lina continued, as an aura of unearthly power surrounded her.
The Commodore stood before the rest of the group. "Everyone who can create a shield, bring it up as soon as Lina finishes!"
"...Let the fools who stand before me..." Streamers of magic shot out over the platform. Some of them reached back through the open doorway and touched the Commodore. Instantly they strengthened, and everyone could sense immense power flowing from him. Lina's eyes went wide, but she concentrated on channeling the power. A ball of swirling grey energy formed in front of her.
"...be destroyed by the power you and I possess--" Lina's chanting reached its climax. "--GIGA SLAVE!" She hurled the swirling grey nexus towards the distant tower.
It expanded as it went, throwing off bursts of grey. Wherever they touched, everything material collapsed into chaos. The tower let loose its beam into the oncoming spell, but it was instantly absorbed, and the grey area of devastation grew ever larger. The tower collapsed in a huge spray of sparks, which were also quickly sucked in. The swath of destruction began to race down the tracks, back toward the train. The Commodore took Lina by the arm and pulled her back into the car, slamming and bolting the door behind them.
By this time, Amelia, Zelgadis, Naga, and Ayeka were projecting shields with all their strength. Washu's fingers typed furiously at her holo-keyboard as she coordinated the defenses. Tenchi looked forward, and saw that the train was almost at the end of the tracks. He held his breath. But the train ran smoothly into empty air and continued to climb, picking up even more speed.
But it still wasn't fast enough. Like angry tentacles, grey streamers of destruction reached out and struck the shields. Ayeka and Amelia cried out, and the others bared their teeth with the effort. By this time the train was high enough so that the group could see the entire city, rapidly being consumed by the spell. In a few seconds more, nothing was left, and the area of destruction continued to spread across the countryside. The grey advance streamers struck the shields again, and were held again. But the main body of the spell was accelerating faster than the Galaxy Express.
There was a hiss as seals moved into place around the edges of the doors and windows. The train flew by the last wisps of cloud, and in few more moments the curvature of the planet could be seen. It was now clear that Lina's spell would consume it entirely. Closer and closer to the train came the terrible wall of grey.
"The shields won't hold!" Washu announced grimly.
"You must stop the spell." Amaroth's voice sounded in everyone's mind. "Your choices are what they always were: join me or die."
"Well," Ryoko said, "can't let Ayeka hog the glory." She flew to the forward end of the car. She struck the wall like a human dart, legs stretched horizontally, palms pressing against the paneling. The bulkhead gave an audible creak as she pushed, and the train began to move still faster.
For a few heart-pounding seconds the Galaxy Express kept the same distance from the grey destruction. Now it was reaching the limits of the atmosphere, and without the drag the acceleration increased still more. A few moments later, the churning zone of grey slowed as there was less and less matter to feed on.
"It is still my world, Amaroth!" came the Commodore's voice, but his lips did not move.
In answer came a fearsome sound; the death-cry of a god. It was a roar compounded of rage and despair and fear never felt before. The sound was lost as the remainder of the planet was reduced to formless chaos. Everyone stared transfixed by the dreadful, yet strangely beautiful spectacle. And then there was only a slowly spreading grey mass, like the cloud in an unimaginably large coffee-cup.
The Commodore quoted softly, "When beggars die, there are no comets seen; The heavens themselves blaze forth the death of princes."
"Julius Caesar, Act II, Scene 2," said Washu. She shook her head as if to get her eyes to blink. "And that's something about Earth I haven't been able to figure out yet. Can you tell me why everyone is supposed to give the act and scene when quoting Shakespeare? Isn't it snobby enough already?"
"I don't know." The Commodore responded. "But it's a tradition!" He turned back toward the rest of the group. "I think this deserves a banquet in celebration. If you'll follow me to the dining car, I'll tell the attendants to start serving at once."
"There is something I would like to discuss first," said Lina. At this, Amelia, Zelgadis, Gourry, and Naga all stared open-mouthed. If Lina was delaying a rendezvous with food, something big was up.
"And that is?" queried Cotu.
"That you are the Lord of Nightmares," said Lina quietly.
"WHAT?" yelled Amelia, Zelgadis, and Gourry together.
"The Giga Slave is the ultimate spell because it draws on the ultimate power," Lina continued. "The power of the Lord of Nightmares, the creator of the universe. That's why you call yourself Cotu, isn't it? Creator Of The Universe."
"Very good, Lina," answered Cotu, "but actually it should be Creator Of This Universe. I suppose I owe you an explanation." Several heads nodded. "But I warn you that you'll hear some unpleasant news. Perhaps Sasami would prefer to have something in the dining car?"
Sasami shook her head. "I want to hear what's going on."
"All right." Cotu drew in a deep breath. "Amaroth had the power to open up passageways to and from different dimensions -- including alternate universes. He managed to find a way to make a dream world real, and then to create a portal from the dream-world into the world of whoever was dreaming it. So he looked for someone with vivid dreams and a fertile imagination, and, well, he chose me. But he didn't anticipate that I would find the portal he was creating."
"In your bedroom closet?" Lina asked.
"Of course. I used it to enter the dream-world, and tried to stop him. Since it was my own dream, I could affect it by using my imagination, but I found he was able to bend any of my creations to his own purposes. So, I summoned eleven characters to help me whose personalities and abilities were already fixed."
Mihoshi began to count, but Washu was ahead of her. "Are you telling me we're all figments of your imagination?"
"Yes, but legally you are the concepts of--" Cotu began.
"This entire universe is your dream?" Zelgadis demanded.
"But when you return to your world…" said Tenchi.
"We'll all cease to exist," Ayeka summed up.
"Well, that's true, but--" Cotu tried again.
"Suppose we kill him first?" Ryoko's energy sword re-appeared.
"No!" Lina put her hand on Ryoko's shoulder. "The dream-universe would collapse immediately. There's nothing we can do."
The faces of the group drained of color. Here, suddenly but inescapably, was the doom they had no chance of defeating. Each heart sank, each spirit began to prepare for oblivion.
Except one.
"Oh ho ho ho ho!" Once again, Naga's laugh assaulted the ears of everyone else. "You're so panicky, Lina Inverse!"
"Naga, we're about to be obliterated! What the hell are you laughing about?" Lina erupted.
"He's not going anywhere." Naga replied. "No man would chose to destroy this much beauty!"
"Of all the egotistical delusions you've ever come up with, this one has got to be the most --"
"Actually," said Cotu, "Naga has something of a point."
"What!" Lina's face turned crimson as Naga smiled. "I can't believe you would preserve -- oh, wait -- not being destroyed is good thing, isn't it..."
"But it isn't just Naga." Cotu hastily added. "I don't want to abandon any of you. You see, I think that's what Amaroth's second spell did: he gave you each an independent non-deterministic consciousness."
"Huh?" said Gourry and Mihoshi.
"He made you real," Cotu clarified.
"Oh." said Gourry and Mihoshi.
"But even if you're not going away," pointed out Zelgadis, "we have nowhere to go. And I for one do not care for the idea that my existence is someone else's fantasy."
"ZELGADIS!" Came the general shout. Lina whacked him on the back of his head with her shoe. "Work with us here!"
"Well," Naga looked at Cotu, "you'll just have to dream up a new universe, won't you?"
"It's not quite that simple." Washu spoke as Cotu paused. "It would have to be a universe existing independently of him, since he can't dream of multiple areas, let alone planets, at once. And that means he wouldn't have any power over it."
"But you don't need to be powerful, do you?" Sasami asked Cotu.
"You see, Princess, if anything went wrong, I couldn't do anything to fix it." Cotu explained. "Wars, plagues, famines -- they would happen, and even all of us together wouldn't be able to stop them. Do we have the right to create a universe out of control?"
"But there would be good things happening as well," Tenchi pointed out, "think of all the happiness that would never come to be. We know there can be heartbreak and tragedy. But I'm willing to take the chance--I think all of us are." Heads nodded around the room.
"Deuteronomy 30:19." Washu stood next to Tenchi. "I call heaven and earth to witness against you today that I have set before you Life and Death, blessings and curses. Choose Life, therefore, so that you and your children may live.'"
"You know you want to." Ryoko purred.
"I think I've created a monster." Cotu said.
"More than one." Ayeka agreed. If looks could burn, the ones Washu and Ryoko gave Ayeka would have reduced the princess to a pile of ash.
But since Ayeka was unharmed, Washu returned to the business at hand. "And, now we'll be able to answer Einstein's question about whether God had a choice in creating the universe."
"Did you mention choices?" Zelgadis spoke up. "If there is a possibility of change, I want to be fully human again."
"Sorry, Zel," said Lina, "we're going to need the power of your chimera form. Anyway, you were actually never human -- you just remember it that way." Zelgadis looked even more disgruntled than usual.
"I want to have my sister Gracia back home with me," Amelia put in her request.
"I want to be Naga the Serpent, wandering where I please!" countered Naga.
"I want to marr--" began Ryoko, Ayeka, Mihoshi, Washu, and Sasami simultaneously.
"Tenchi has free will, and it will stay that way,." Cotu interposed firmly. Tenchi gave the sigh of a man rescued from the frying pan but headed toward the fire.
"I want to have bigger breasts," Lina declared, in a tone unlikely to accept "no" for an answer.
A large drop of sweat appeared on the Creator Of The Universe's forehead.
It was much later. Magical artifacts had been enchanted, complex devices had been built, and words of power written onto scrolls. Wiring had been strung in several places, elegant furnishings had been gleefully dismantled and fine carpeting had been ripped up, pentacles had been inscribed onto floors, and the train attendants had needed considerable pacifying. Large amounts of food of many kinds had been consumed, though Sasami's miso soup had been pronounced the favorite. Several experiments both magical and scientific had been conducted, although even more had been aborted by calm logic and/or daring last-second rescues. Some sleep had even been caught, no small feat considering the heated arguments that had erupted over the sleeping arrangements.
"I still say it's the weirdest incantation I've ever seen," Amelia said.
"It doesn't have to make sense, since the universe is still in primal chaos. It just has to be significant for Cotu," Lina explained.
"And Washu's Universal Chaos Sequencer looks exactly like a karaoke machine," opined Mihoshi.
"I like my inventions powerful but compact." Washu said with more than a touch of self-satisfaction. "All right, ready on this side."
"Your Highnesses, ladies and gentlemen," Cotu announced, "if you'll be so kind as to take your positions?" The group divided into three, and stood on their respective pentacles.
"Well, here goes -- everything." Washu activated the Universal Chaos Sequencer. The machine flickered to life and began to fill the train car with sound.
The four males started the base of the spell.
"Row, row, row your boat,"
Ryoko, Ayeka, Naga, and Washu began the alto portion.
"Row, row, row your boat,"
Sasami, Amelia, Mihoshi, and Lina began the soprano part.
"Row, row, row your boat,"
The pentacles began to glow with power.
"Gently down the stream,"
Magical auras surrounded each of the spell casters.
"Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily,"
The swirling chaos outside faded into an inky blackness.
"Life is but a dream..."
One by one, the stars blinked into existence.
T h e E n d ( or The Beginning)