Regret and stress filled over Chara's mind...something inside her, hours ago, tried to warn her she should've gone with Coraline and Cornet Espoir. But she didn't listen...she went to risk her life and many others with Kebako.
As those thoughts ran on her mind, she balanced the same knife Zalgo gave to her many years ago...before corrupting half of the timelines of her universe. She tapped one of the gems, summoning the two blades of the knife.
"Chara...should I juse like, the dance-off bullets, or the jumping guy's bullets?", Kebako asked, as she checked the gun fixed on her arm. "I'm just deciding which are gonna be used if situation gets salad. But I kinda prefer the-"
"I need you to make a promise.", Chara cutted out Kebako, who just looked mildly confused.
"...whatever ya say!", Kebako agreed.
"Whatever we end up doing, we'll eventually find Zalgo.", Chara said, getting up.
"That's why I'm choosing the bullets.", Kebako interrupted her friend, before getting sort-of regretful. "...uh, go on..."
"If everything fails, and Zalgo gets me...I want you to promise...that you'll kill me.", Chara coldly continued.
"Excuse me, the FUCK?", Kebako sweared, out of surprise. "That's like...a joke?"
"No.", Chara bluntly stated. "I know a secret he's searching for. And if he finds out, entire worlds could be at risk."
"And what's that?", Kebako asked.
"If you know about it...he'll probably hunt you down as well.", Chara warned.
"This is so annoying!", Kebako angrily stated. "Why we have to die?"
"*sigh* Just...trust me. It's necessary.", Chara tried to mildly comfort her catgirl friend.
"I mean...I really wanna do that. But y'know, I-", Kebako tried to state her point, but Chara gently covered her mouth.
"Swear on me. In the name of your mother...", Chara demanded, crying black, tar-like tears from her eyes, as Kebako wiped her own tears away.
"Okay...okay.", Kebako decided to seal the promise, before kneeling to wrap her arms on her smaller friend's neck, who returned the hug gently. They touched foreheads for a while, long enough to make both of them blush, before being interrupted by a...bumping noise.
They broke the hug to find out Liddell and Pucca, the former holding her pumpkin umbrella, and the latter shocked and surprised for a while, before happily giggling.
"Ma'am...how long were you standing there?!", Kebako said, flustered.
"An hour.", Liddell simply said, as Pucca waved before rushing to another part of the ship, leaving a awkward trio behind.
Talking about the ship, it finally arrived at it's destination: the Echanted Forest of Gravity Falls, Oregon, that was very different from the first time a certain pair of twins visited it in 2012, and the Amazons of the Galaxy visited, some years later.
As the ship landed, they could feel a devilish presence inside the Home of the Unicorns, so they prepared to burst through the now-always-open gate of entrance.
"There's no stone here!", Celestabellebethabelle, the con-woman uncorn of falsetto voice, tried to verbally defend herself from Zalgo. The quartet glanced a bit, seeing scars over the unicorn's face spread like freckles.
"You are the worst of all the unicorns of this place, because you lie.", Zalgo's deep, demonic voice, echoed over the place that was supposed to be beautiful because of the mini-waterfall and flowers. "But I can see through your fake, transparent lies. I know the Reality Stone is here...somewhere. Give it to me, and you won't suffer.", he continued, stomping Celestabellebethabelle's head.
"I know, I am a jerk...but I really don't know anything about it!", Celestabellebethabelle weakly said.
"So, you do understand...that even you wouldn't give anything like that easily.", Zalgo coldly said. "But then, you are even more foolish. I'll give you one last chance: where's the Infinity Stone?"
"Shhh...Liddell, don't ya dare...", Kebako whispered, as Liddell began to growl and pull out her umbrella, to attack.
"Sleeep...", Pucca said, as she forced Liddell to sleep. However, her THUD over falling into the grass forced the quartet to hide.
Zalgo already noticed the presence of the girls as easily as noticing a fly bothering someone, and shoved away Celestabellebethabelle in the waterfall before slowly walking forward.
"Pucca, Chara, you two go to the right...", Kebako whisper-screamed the command, unfortunately not noticing that Chara sneakly run inside the Home of the Unicorns. "The other right!", Kebako tried to warn, but it was too late.
Chara ran, summoning a copy of her main weapon, the Real Knife, and rushed to fight Zalgo. He parried the first two stabs and broke the tip of the knife at the third swing. However, with quick thinking, Chara used it to stab Zalgo's mouth in the top of his chest, already making him groan in pain and sip greyish-scarlet blood. Then, she picked up the blade he gave to her years ago and promptly stabbed him in the mouth below.
As Zalgo weakly used his gauntlet hand to pull out the second knife, he realized with disappointment it was the same he gave to Chara, years ago.
"Why?", he asked, falling to his knees and collapsing on the ground. "Why you, my friend?"
After listening to those words, Chara couldn't help herself but contort her face into a grieving one, as she cried in a mix of relief and sadness. Tears felt down as she watched Zalgo's mouths fill with blood and drown him in it, finally killing him.
"That was...like...super-fast.", Kebako commented in surprise.
"Magnificient!", Celestabellebethabelle cheered for the death of the Hivemind of Chaos. "Magnificient! Magnificient!"
Chara didn't react to any of them; she just kept mourning the death of her former friend.
"Is that sadness I sense in you, dear?"
Zalgo's voice was heard everywhere, in everyone's hearts and minds, making Chara gasp.
"I knew deep inside your SOUL, you still scared."
The thing supposed to be the corpse of Zalgo disappeared, in a cloud of red pixels. Soon, the Home of the Unicorns followed suit, transforming itself into a dried, destroyed place, with Celestabellebethabelle waving at Chara before going away.
"But one never knows until a last test. Reality is pitful. That is...it used to be.", the words of Zalgo's voice echoed, before he appeared, alive and well, out of a cloud of red pixels. "Now...Reality can be anything I want it to be."
"I knew you'd be here...", Chara said, choking in her own, black tar-like tears.
"I always counted.'", Zalgo agreed, calmly. "We need to talk, little one."
Chara tried to once again summon a copy of her Real Knife to stab her former friend turned enemy, but Zalgo held her by the back, in a unescapable grip, making her scream.
"ZALGO!", Liddell furiously shouted, before rushing forward.
Before she could cast one of her offensive spells, Zalgo used the Realty Stone to transform her into a doll form of herself. Pucca shaked in fear, and soon Zalgo discovered her, using the Stone once again to transform her into a pile of cooked noddle with her face still intact.
"Let her go, Mephistopheles!", Kebako screamed, pointing her arm gun towards Zalgo.
"Kebako.", Chara said with disappointment.
"You should have gone right...", Kebako told to Chara, disappointed over her vain effort.
"Seriously?", Chara replied.
"LET HER GO, SUNNOVA BITCH!", Kebako yelled her threat towards Zalgo.
"Ah...the new friend.", Zalgo calmly "recognized" Kebako, as Chara struggled to try and get free from his grisp, to no avail.
"Nah. I like to think of myself more as a demon-killing long-term booty call.", Kebako said, trying to sound menacing. "I'll blow that...Cthulhu-copy head right out of your body!"
"You promised...you promised.", Chara said, trying to remind her friend of the promise. It bitterly worked, as she slowly aimed her blaster at her instead of Zalgo's head.
"Oh, dear. You expect alot from her.", Zalgo said to Chara, before turning his direction towards Kebako. "She asked, didn't she? Do it."
The command was absorbed into Kebako's head, but she couldn't move. Either let her friend live and let a billion of lifeforms become part of Zalgo, or kill her. Her pupils shaked, as her arm became like jelly. Zalgo simply groaned, in deception, before pushing Chara's face closer to Kebako's blaster. "DO IT.", he commanded, more strictly.
Kebako, a cat girl that had to save countless universes many times (with one of them being killing her biological, faceless father), couldn't help herself but cry, along with Chara, who was just patiently waiting the shot. "You should've gone to the right...", Kebako said, gulping her tears.
"Please, stay determined.", Chara calmly said.
"..stay determined too.", Kebako replied, as her breath became heavier and faster and Chara closed her eyes. Soon, she closed her eyes and blasted, expecting her common pea shooter bullets to appear.
But instead, it's a bunch of petals from golden flowers, the favorite ones of Chara, that appear. Kebako and Chara open their eyes to realize the tragic surprise and, at first not realizing it's the Reality Stone, Kebako angrily used her other hand to lightly punch the blaster, thinking it was having a defect.
"I like you.", Zalgo said with a small smile before opening a portal that sucked him and Chara, leaving Kebako shocked, and horrified.
Kebako felt to her knees, gently cupping the emerald gem knife Chara had, and holding it on her chest, grieving over losing her closest friend. Soon, Liddell's doll form reformed back into cloth and skin, and Pucca's body came back to normal, as the only noise in the ambient was the mini-waterfall.