AN: Welcome to all readers. Things are getting hot as the inevitable resolution creeps ever closer. Don't be afraid to review and tell me what you think of the developments!

Last chapter: Haruhi and Tsuruya. Passion, determination and a single blow to end the world. The clash begins, and the fate of the world hangs in the balance. The victor? What exactly is victory?

Haruhi felt cold.

The metal mass had moved almost entirely away, revealing more and more stars in its wake. Haruhi was cold, colder with every shining dot that returned to the sky.

It was dreadfully silent.

Hearing the voices of all people in the world in the back of her head had overwhelmed her at first. So much so that she had been unable to think straight or tell her own ideas apart from the thousands of foreign others. Before she noticed, though, she was tuning the voices in and out as she pleased, and they became a source of familiarity and reassurance for her.

Now she was robbed of it all. She felt a gaping hole in her consciousness, giving out nothing but silence.

"Well, sa."

Tsuruya was out of breath, and as she turned around to look over the abandoned city, it seemed as if her legs were about to fail her.

"That's the feeling," she paused for a quick intake of breath and continued speaking in short bursts "My grandmother. My father, somewhere. A sleeping friend. They were all there. Now, it's this feeling of emptiness, sa?"

She faced Haruhi, and saw the girl faring no better, worse even, than herself.

Haruhi's face was pale, her breathing irregular and her whole frame swayed. Those bright eyes barely remained focused. The rest of her body appeared ready to fall apart at any moment.

Tsuruya could guess what her friend was going through, but no more than that. She was glad for it. She already had to struggle to maintain her lasting reality manipulation, even without another factor to unbalance her. Ignorance also had another upside.

"I thought him, of all people, you'd protect, Haru-nyan-n."

It made beating the last nail into the coffin that much easier.

"But I don't suppose Kyon-kun could've possibly survived that, sa."

Haruhi lurched forward, fell to her knees, now even her eyes dulled and- It was true. She couldn't feel anybody which meant she couldn't feel Kyon because he was no longer there. It was like feeling sick. Only it wasn't her stomach feeling upset but her whole body, every pore of it wishing to reject this horror, this chasm, this pain, no, this world.

For the shortest of moments, Haruhi let go.

"Think about it," such were the words of the late Koizumi Itsuki "Think about it, that should the world have been the least slight bit different, any one fact, one constant, and there would be no life at all."

"For example, all matter draws other matter towards itself. Planets capture planets, Earth enslaves humans, atoms travel to other atoms. It's merely the work of intermolecular repulsion forces that allows all things to retain their individual, separate forms."

Tsuruya understood, for the split-second it took for the entirety of her existence to cave in on itself, that it was enough to… release… those forces, and the world was lost.

Haruhi's fit was over – she reached out with her hand to grasp at something slipping away, but, just like the revolting feeling, everything around was already gone.

There was a bit of anxiety, but much more honest puzzlement in her as she looked at her new surroundings.

All around her stretched endless blank space. There was no boundary in this vast plain, neither a ground nor a sky to define its limits. It did nothing to make her feel insecure – rather, it gave a sense of freedom and her feet easily found support in air. The up and down were hers to choose. The realm would have been foreboding, Haruhi thought, if not for the iridescent, ubiquitous, orange jelly hanging in the void.

If you can see the jelly, the jelly can see you! Or something to that extent, because wherever Haruhi concentrated her gaze, the fluorescent object sprang to life and leapt at her, joyfully circling round and round her nose, making her dizzy.

"Ha! Ha! Ha! Everything!"

Haruhi gasped, spun. Her heart leapt. The source of the laughter, that unmistakable figure, and her eyes widened in disbelief.

"The end of time! Sea of chaos! The Word that was with God! Call it whatever you want, and so megas much of Everything!"

Mirth had left her half bent over, but Tsuruya seemed to find no difficulty in screaming all this out in a far-reaching voice, not showing even a sliver of her previous fatigue.

Haruhi was about to say something, question the laughing girl's ramblings, when a blob of the jelly passed her an inch away from her face and she saw. It was true – somewhere, somehow, the blob contained an old gramophone, some of Einstein's better ideas and the song of a young, bathing queen Elizabeth. That was just the surface Haruhi skimmed, and within the blob's depths was an infinite number of every single thing.

Haruhi shook her head to tear herself away from this bizarre spectacle.

"What are you doing here, Tsuruya-san?" she demanded "I-"

"Destroyed the world!" Tsuruya interrupted her, pointing an accusing finger at Haruhi with so much glee it made the grin on her face look scary, seemingly ready to scream out 'Objection!' at the top of her lungs and close the won case "And I hit my third jackpot!"

Haruhi blinked, but Tsuruya now seemed indefatigable as she raised both her arms in a grandiose gesture.

"Everything! Every smallest action here twists infinity, gives rise to an absolutely inexhaustible number of possibilities, those fellows can predict nothing here! This is the end of their elusive dominion!" she twirled her arms and looked ludicrous doing it, like a prideful chicken flapping its wings to impress another "Proof? I am alive! They pre-programmed me to survive the end of the world just in case, knowing I could provoke it when outside their control, but not knowing the results, unable to foresee this place existing!"

"World destruction as a means to a greater end?" Haruhi asked in exasperation "You megalomaniac you."

Tsuruya smirked, twisted a hand in the air and the goo around Haruhi became searing hot and went into a frenzy.

Haruhi leapt back on instinct, possibly saving herself from being decapitated. Her incredulity lasted only that long, however, and the offending mass was gone the next instant, wiped away by the power of her will.

With a mad laugh, Tsuruya prepared for another assault, but no sooner had she made the slightest move than Haruhi pointed a finger at her. Tsuruya was enveloped in an orange aura, flashed green for a second, was back to normal right after and took two gleeful steps towards Haruhi.

And then her legs buckled under her and she fell to the conventional ground, coughing out blood for it to float in the endless space.

Haruhi looked at her friend severely.

Tsuruya struggled to speak amidst her coughing, barely raising her head to meet Haruhi's eyes, but her spirits didn't drop.

"Magnificent, Haru-nyan!" she praised "Antimatter forged perfectly to end me – miniature dots of absolute destruction. Those I could stop, you knew, with enough probability manipulation, but sneaked in-between them a million collapsing atom cores like so many of your own suns, heralding your glory with their radiance. Even as I removed all of them, their heat permeating the air, so very damaging, I did not, and so I fell to you."

"That was stupid, Tsuruya-san" Haruhi grimaced, not really proud of her handiwork "I don't think I can be defeated right now."

Chuckling weakly, Tsuruya picked herself off the ground.

"Sa," she nodded in agreement "Finish this, Haru-nyan."

Haruhi stared at her unblinkingly.

"Here, there's a way even that parasite can be killed – something I worked so hard for, sacrificed so much for, this chance," Tsuruya seemed to have calmed down and her smile returned to normal proportions "With everything you've got, Haru-nyan, finish it all!"

Their eyes locked onto each other.

Silence from Tsuruya, who had nothing more to say.

Silence from Haruhi, who had no idea what to say.

With no point of reference, time was lost for them.

Haruhi's lips moved.

"Cease to be."

The darkness was torn asunder with a pillar of light and that unforgiving shine devoured Tsuruya completely.

It thinned the next instant.

Haruhi remained facing it.

The light disappeared. Tsuruya remained facing Haruhi.

Even as her eyes widened, Haruhi's mouth moved again.

"Cease to be!"

The brilliance came down again and again it went away. To no avail.

"It is the prerogative of existence to recognize itself," Tsuruya recited in a sing-song voice, somehow managing to slip in a note of apology "Things are or things are not, through the power of their own validity."

Haruhi staggered.

"I-impossible! You weren't there! You couldn't have!"

But her protests changed nothing.

"Sasaki-chan's true memento," Tsuruya's daring smile belied her quiet voice "The way to overturn the will of gods."

Haruhi had seen that once before – numbers, equations and calculations all swirling around as if they were no longer mere ideas, but a palpable force, Sasaki had explained that in detail, called it her-

"Law of Logic."

The power surrounding them rushed at Tsuruya, attached to her back and snapped into the shape of a single luminous azure wing, writings falling from it instead of feathers.

"I heard the original, ten minutes long version even before Sasaki-chan presented it to you, Haru-nyan" Tsuruya explained "But it is only against you, who warps reality so indiscreetly, that thought can be used as a weapon."

Tsuruya waved at her adversary invitingly.

"Now that you cannot simply erase me, Haru-nyan, what will you do?"

Haruhi pulled her composure back together.

"Like I did Sasaki," she responded calmly "I'll kill you in a perfectly logical manner."

The void was void no more.

Haruhi didn't have the time to see Tsuruya's reaction before the other girl was hidden by a literal wall of spikes emerging from the air. It would be satisfactory for Tsuruya to die impaled or crushed. It would be even better to make sure – Haruhi changed the composition of the weapons after the initial impact and let them serve a new purpose as explosives.

The goddess bathed in fire and smoke.

With a wave of her hand, she cleared the air. Her own fire didn't burn her; her own smoke didn't choke her. For anyone else, they were lethal.

For Tsuruya, they were lethal.

Haruhi walked up to the unmoving body suspended in the void, allowing her eyes to trail after the last bits of the azure wing now detaching from its previous host. From up close, she could confirm what her expanded senses had already told her long before – there was not a spark of life in the body before her.

It was a curious corpse, with spots full of holes, others burned to a crisp and the rest in perfect condition – results of Tsuruya's last ditch probability manipulation. Haruhi kneeled, reached out and closed the girl's eyelids.

"You admitted this kind of manipulation was not unlimited. Sooner or later, I'd get around your defense if I forced a large enough time loop on a simple, physical attack," Haruhi sighed "But why did you copy Sasaki's power in the first place?"

"I do look kind of pathetic, sa."

Haruhi fumbled and fell on her bottom. Her breath caught in her throat. Before her lay the dead Tsuruya. Above her stood a living, smiling Tsuruya.

"I envy Sasaki-chan. Her law is so lucid and orderly, when she had little time to prepare it," the reborn Tsuruya glanced wistfully at the wing reforming on her back as it absorbed the calculations surrounding it "No matter how much I dwelled on it, I couldn't match her craftsmanship."

One, two Tsuruyas – both were genuine. But probability manipulation affected resources present; it couldn't create a copy of something.

"If all possible causes lead to all possible results, are we not merely burdened by the former? Are we not defined perfectly by our desires, rather than the uncontrollable processes leading to their realization? Isn't the destination the final, only truth? Can we not ignore reality and grasp the favored outcome?" Tsuruya went on "These questions were the only way I could express it. My own-"

"This is madness," Haruhi blurted out.

"Problem of Inconsequence."

A tornado of images enveloped them, pictures of what could be surging at Tsuruya and perching on her back, coalescing into a short and rugged, deep green wing.

"If I die, I am dead. Break the chain of cause and effect, though, throw away all causes, and you can die and live to tell the tale."

Haruhi gawked at the horrid absurdity before her.

"And now Haru-nyan, that you can neither erase nor kill me, what will you do?"

Haruhi's stupefied expression told Tsuruya everything she needed to know.

"Then, sa, if you cannot stop me, watch me surpass a god."

"Wait, Tsuruya-san!" Haruhi screamed, panicked.

"In my right hand, the Law of Logic," Tsuruya extended her hand as it filled with azure light and took a step towards the sprawled Haruhi "In my left hand, the Problem of Inconsequence" she lifted her other hand - it glowed green, and took another step forward.

Haruhi knew she couldn't be hurt, but she was shaking with fear as she tried to crawl away from Tsuruya. She didn't know the reason behind this fear. That only made it worse.

"Within those clasped hands-"

"Tsuruya! Stop this!"

Chapter 6

Theory of Everything

Haruhi felt sick. It was the same feeling she felt when all of humanity was lost. Maybe not as strong, but no less painful.

She forced herself to endure it and raised her eyes to look at Tsuruya's hunched form. For a short while, the wings on the girl's back had shone a divine cyan, but they were slowly coming back to their original colors. Tsuruya did not move for what seemed an eternity, and her hair hid the expression on her face.

Finally, the winged girl let out a hollow laugh.

Haruhi knew immediately it sounded wrong.

"Foolish girl."

Tsuruya faced Haruhi, but her eyes were a ghastly green and her voice that of a thousand snakes hissing in unison.

"She wanted power, more and more power until she could destroy us. She couldn't handle that. She ran out of time."

Haruhi forced herself up, but her legs failed her right away. The weakness wouldn't leave her. Even when she needed to be strong. Face to face with the Canopy Domain.

Before she could utter a curse, the demon was before her with an outstretched hand.

"Now you, our treasure, become a puppet!"

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