"I need... orders."
Haruhi whispered this in a soulless voice.
The Canopy Domain heard her perfectly well, the answer it had predicted, even without access to its probability insight in this space.
It didn't laugh.
"Come to use and we will guide you, free you of your indecision. Forevermore."
They were offering her to lose herself. And she would accept. The decision itself was a mere formality changed nothing. She had already lost too much to hold onto whatever remained.
"I need orders," she confirmed to the Canopy Domain's satisfaction "But..."
The five-dimensional parasite watched on quizzically as Haruhi struggled with uttering words. Spoken language was a part of her humanity, and she would soon forget even that.
"But I want you dead," Haruhi forced out of herself.
The Domain raised its eyebrows in light surprise.
"Emotions. They remain vivid within you even when you cannot recollect their cause. Do not worry. This feeling will disappear, like everything else, in mere minutes. Just wait, and you'll be free."
It explained all this with the comforting voice of a parent reassuring their child.
Haruhi's face relaxed slightly and took on a more natural expression.
"Yes. Freedom..."
Then she grimaced in fright and pain.
"But it burns!"
Haruhi wrapped her arms around herself, clutching desperately at her coat, screaming, shaking, anything to alleviate the hellish suffering but everything in vain.
The Domain stiffened, mirroring Haruhi's reaction with an angry and uncomprehending frown. This wasn't supposed to happen.
But within seconds, the frown transformed, filling not only with new levels of burning rage, but also with revolted recognition.
"Our own probability manipulation..." it watched with hateful passion as one of Haruhi's coat pockets bulged and spat out a small will-o'-the-wisp. The ball of what seemed to be fire immediately began spinning around Haruhi at near-lightning speed "...and the abominable data manipulation combined."
Haruhi didn't hear it. She breathed heavily, fighting off the last, weakening waves of pain. Her eyes were scrunched shut, small tears evident in their corners, traces of her own fingers would be left where she had dug them deep into her body. And it did her good.
"Your orders," the pain, the anger, that miniature sun - a distinct memory of Mikuru putting so much trust in her, and when Haruhi next opened her eyes, they were filled with intent "when Mikuru asked me to liberate!"
The goo around them went vicious.
More like a waterfall than thick ooze, it slammed together into a single current and then rushed forward, smashing into the Canopy Domain, enveloping it.
The being lurched back and met the onslaught with an outstretched hand, the green glow of its powers sprang to life - possibilities of the blobs not attacking, of being aimed elsewhere.
It was not enough. It was not fast enough.
The Domain was flung to the right just as its appendage, torn easily off, flew to the left.
The mass of goo blew past it and went into a giant arc, slowly forming a ring around the last two beings.
"Your guidance," Haruhi let out through gritted teeth, letting her emotions fuel the menacing mass, spin it around faster and faster; now there were two wisps orbiting around her "when Itsuki told me to lead!"
Streaks of blazing goo launched from the ring all across its surface.
The Canopy Domain fought back. A phantasmal arm flashed into existence to replace the lost one as the creature used probability manipulation on itself - the possibility it had not been hit. the previously lost body part dispersed into nothing as new reality reasserted itself. The Domain paid that no heed as it spread its aura to take on the bombardment coming from all sides.
Its efforts couldn't stop everything.
Projectiles pierced right through it, carrying Tsuruya's blood with them as they entered the opposite side of the ring to prepare for another go. But their target would not falter or succumb to any wound. The gravest injury disappeared in seconds, a single green flash replacing months of recovery. And the more damage it sustained, the faster the Domain fixed it, as if tapping into ever deeper reserves of an unlimited potential.
"Your ambition..." Haruhi spat out as yet another fireball left her pocket.
The ring widened, without thinning like any finite material would have, until it became an encasing dome radiating its threatening glow from all around them.
Haruhi and the Domain shared hateful looks.
"...when Yuki ordered to protect!"
The dome descended upon them. No longer an attack of beams but a regular whirlwind of destructive mass filled every inch of open space, miraculously increasing its volume not to leave a single opening in its wake. It didn't take one second for the maelstrom to divide the two opponents, grasp them so completely in its jaws they lost sight of each other. It wouldn't abate for a for longer time - such was the relentless wish egging the mass on. And when the storm started the calm, the fact itself was enough for it to burst into life once more - it had seemingly a pride of its own, couldn't bear to become weak, to release its prey, to yield to mere tenacity.
So it disappeared only begrudgingly, haltingly. Single streaks of opened space danced before Haruhi, multiplying to reveal to her the outcome of her rage.
The Canopy Domain had not moved. Or so it appeared, with its eyes still aiming their venomous glare towards Haruhi. the creature was disheveled beyond description, its hair and clothing clinging to its body like wet rags. Every inch of its body shone that deathly green, but whether it was the glow of a million wounds or whether it had physically died and revived itself, a droplet replaced with another indistinguishable alternative, Haruhi didn't know. it didn't matter.
"Not enough!" the monster screamed at her in triumph "Not," and its screech was filled with sadistic satisfaction "enough!"
Haruhi's face contorted in fury so vicious it was entirely unnatural for her. The fireballs around her entered a flashing, spinning frenzy, putting words in her mouth.
"You are limited, your power finite. Cling onto your life, but sooner or later you'll make that one mistake and fall to where you belong!"
She slashed a hand through the air, leading the goo into another maneuver. So the blob-like mass parted completely, and showed the true aftermath of the clash.
Haruhi's unwavering ire succumbed, for that single moment of shocked realization.
"Your time is a drop of water, our power a vast ocean. But that..." the Domain spread out its arms, as if willing to embrace the entirety of the carnage "...is entirely meaningless."
A massacre. But every slaughter has to it a degree of realism that screams at you, if not to accept it, to run as far away as possible. This was grotesque. Crimson - airborne pools of blood without a surface to splash on or gravity to give them direction. But it couldn't cover that ugly painting, bodies a landscape - mutilated, bent bodies, their final destination an unreal pattern of twisted forms stacked one upon the other, spinning slowly like exhibits in a museum. Each cadaver was true enough - the widened eyes, lips parted in a shared scream, revolting enough, but together...
Such was the graveyard of only one girl - Tsuruya a hundred times dead in retribution for her sin of attempting to surpass destiny itself. The one left standing, the Domain, a living lie, all that remained of her.
"She didn't know what she was doing," the five-dimensional existence hissed "as she reached for the power to defy everything, and thus made that power our own."
It had that moment of hesitation, a falcon with prey in its claws.
The Domain's presence swept through the area, nothing but a translucent shape in appearance, nothing short of a hungry beast in speed. Haruhi reacted instinctively, willing its influence not to reach her. But this time she was on the defensive, moving too late and swaying as the malevolent intent smashed into her ad hoc barrier.
That happened in the split-second her mind needed to comprehend her situation. Once it had comprehension, it could have a wish. And from a wish an order.
Disperse.
The vile power did. Instantly.
It seemed they had returned to their previous stalemate, the power of one not reaching the other. It wasn't so.
Haruhi felt it first as a wave of boredom, of not being able to care anymore. And then she saw with her own eyes, realizing for the first time they were even there, the once-bright flames around her, now tiny and smothered by green fumes.
The objective of the attack all along.
"It is not the power itself that threatens us," the canopy Domain said "but the artificial desire to destroy us that drives it."
Haruhi stared dully at the flames, as if trying to grasp what they had done to her a mere moment before, what was taken away from her just now. She reached out tenderly for them, having them obediently fly towards her, and cupped them in her hands.
"You cannot restore them," the Domain announced "And not because you lack the power to do so," and, for once, the creature's hissing voice had to it a measure of wonder rather than condescension "but because, as a human, you lack the will to knowingly choose one lie over another."
Haruhi lowered her hands.
She reached into her coat pocket, seeking the last traces of warmth she could still feel. She retrieved Nagato's letter with unsteady hands. The piece of paper was half-burned, black marks the only thing staining its perfectly white surface. Where Haruhi's fingers touched it, the fire sprang anew.
Her hands fumbled and it fell to her feet, as if it alone had weight and could behave normally in this world.
And after a second of nerve-wrecking stillness, the smoke coming from it coalesced to form a final fireball.
Haruhi's eyes filled with a foreign desperation. The Domain's eyes filled with renewed anger.
They moved simultaneously.
The void around Haruhi shone green as she dived for that last spark of hope. Tendrils of the Domain's power overtook her. then they stopped, were stopped, Haruhi's divine power slashed through them. They formed anew. Lurched anew towards their target. Relentless.
Haruhi's hands smashed through the green fumes and clasped the will-o'-the wisp.
The power around her flew back to where it belonged. She made no further move, seemingly uncertain. Afraid. The Canopy Domain remained where it had stood, motionless, with a sneer on its face. Waiting. Both waiting for the judgment.
Haruhi unfurled her fingers and stared deep into the depths of the flickering, stifled flame in disbelief. The Domain grinned.
"Lie upon lie, all to defeat what she herself called the god of lies. Manipulation and so little honesty, always shouldering all the responsibility herself, afraid of depending upon others."
Haruhi raised her head to look at the speaking Domain, her eyes devoid of her previous anger. Devoid of everything.
"She never left you a single truth to cling onto. Such was the flaw in the plan of the girl you knew as Tsuruya."
Haruhi stared unblinkingly. The terrifying creature in a girl's body, the two radiant wings on its back, the corpses strewn around, the orange goo in the distance.
Ever so slowly, she closed her eyes.
"Tsuruya's failed plan?" she asked in a whisper "As in... you admit she and her plan existed?"
The Domain's grin faltered.
Haruhi's eyes snapped open.
She whipped her hand through the air and tore one of the fiery orbs - the involuntary admission of Mikuru - apart.
"A lie!"
There was no pause before her hand slashed again.
"Another lie!"
Koizumi's confession disappeared into the depths of unrealized possibilities.
"Mere lies!"
The memory of Yuki followed into the footsteps of its predecessors. Haruhi swung her hand a fourth time.
The goo around them was aglow. The Canopy Domain itself radiated three kinds of light. But they nevertheless seemed to be plunged into darkness as the light of the last fireball disappeared.
The Domain blinked, too bewildered to draw satisfaction from Haruhi destroying the last means of her own support in this world.
"If Tsuruya existed, if she had a flawed plan, if you and I alone remain..."
Haruhi's frame shook with the effort to make that one connection, one leap of logic.
"then she bet everything on me! Then this-"
With what little time one has in this world, the choice is but to wait and die, or laugh and fly.
"-is an extraordinary lie!"
She opened her hand. Her face was bathed in a warm glow, fire burning happily above her palm, the final spark rekindled.
Green waves embraced her immediately, hastily, embodying both the Domain's anger and panicked surprise.
Haruhi let them come, watched them placidly without moving. Watched them burn as the fire she cradled turned gold in color and caught onto the vile aura.
And then her eyes, very alike that golden fire, went to the Canopy Domain.
"Vanish."
That desire descended, cleft and erased, as it had before, in the form of a brilliant light. It fell right upon the Canopy Domain.
Which had never been there in the first place. The possibility that, all along, it had stood just a few steps to the right. Reality readjusted itself and so did Haruhi's will another pillar tearing through the space, this time vertically, to capture its target.
The Domain put little effort into this godly game of cat-and-mouse, disappearing and reappearing just fast enough not to be consumed. But in reality manipulation, there was little distinction between a great feat and a small one.
But the Domain was angry, fed up with this prolonged epilogue of its ascent to supreme power.
"You will not hit," it hissed at Haruhi "As long as you have to aim, you can miss. As long as you can miss, we will evade."
Already, the world was filled with a spiderweb of nullifying energy, dense and blindingly bright.
Haruhi snorted.
"You're absolutely right," there was something in her eyes, right next to the fear, the desperation, the clinging to a tarnished self-awareness, that was like a trickster's spark "There won't be any collateral damage if i don't bother aiming."
So she didn't.
The tiny fireball in her hands exploded with light. The golden radiance took in everything: the goo, the dead bodies and the Domain, intent to leave only Haruhi herself behind.
It was quick, over in that single flash.
Where there had been silence before, a thundering popping sound erupted. The orange blobs had vanished, but now they noisily returned to existence. Haruhi paid them no heed.
The Canopy Domain stood tall, swamped in the bluish light of its right wing.
"That inexplicable power which could instill fear even in us," the Domain ventured "To think it would be rendered a non-factor by none other than that human, Sasaki, a mere pawn of ours. Another one of Tsuruya's mistakes we are thankful for."
Haruhi shook her head.
"That's a beautiful ability. A complete truth even you had to accept. Whichever Sasaki existed in my world, she understood logic perfectly. And Tsuruya..."
Will you be there to fire it for me, Haru-nyan?
Haruhi gazed at the golden flame in her hand in sudden realization.
"...had no idea about chaos at all."
She remained gaping at the swirling, dying light.
"It is over," the Domain announced, annoyed, taken aback to see the girl accept failure so calmly now, after all the struggle "You cannot defeat us."
"I cannot," Haruhi acquiesced, lowering her arm.
She raised her head, met the Domain's eyes, nodded and started walking in its direction.
Just like that. Everything over. The popping noise disappeared. Haruhi kept on walking. Kept that weary smile on even as she spoke.
"After all, you've already been defeated."
Chapter 8
Quod Erat Demonstrandum
"What?" the Canopy Domain demanded.
Haruhi shrugged. She was certain the Domain had heard her correctly, anyway. Repeating herself wouldn't change anything at this point.
"There are, of course, questions I'd like to ask," Haruhi said with a bit of shy reserve, like one asks a neighbor to borrow them sugar "One of us must have brought about the destruction of the world. Me or you? Was it necessary? Did they suffer?"" Haruhi shook her head slightly "But I have no time and it wouldn't even matter. Not with the double checkmate we're in."
"Will you keep on babbling nonsense until the very end?" the Domain cut her off, unamused, bored with the game.
Haruhi shook her head once more.
"It's not like I don't understand your attitude. I'm tired, too. Very tired," she gave the Domain one last look and closed her eyes "We may begin, then?"
The Canopy Domain wouldn't grace that with an answer. She took the silence as agreement.
A deep breath. She cleared her throat, opened her eyes to peer deep into the azure wing on the creature's back.
"All existence has a single form, a single state, a single identity in any single instant. Because it is, and because it is so defined, it is the privilege of existence to recognize itself," Haruhi recited, as if reading from the wing's surface "The Law of Logic."
The Canopy Domain merely looked at her expectantly and so Haruhi went on.
"For existence to recognize itself, for it to be, and for it to be defined, it is the duty of existence to have a single form, a single state, a single identity in any single instant." Haruhi paused, giving the Domain a second for her words to sink in "Law of Logic Contraposed."
The Domain's azure wing burst open.
It didn't disappear. It stretched, thinned, spun-part of it returned to its original shape, but already the rest formed miniature threads that shot out with enough force to topple the Domain with backlash alone, and then they entangled it and wrapped themselves around points all over the empty space, tautening as if they had real support.
"this is the price one such as you, with no true form, human in body, living potential in spirit, has to pay for the protection of Logic," Haruhi explained calmly.
The Domain struggled within the confinement, squirming and turning until it returned to its previous standing position.
"A parlor trick!" the Domain spat "You still cannot reach us!"
"No," Haruhi confirmed immediately "This is Logic. Integrity. Protection. Even as an abomination, you needn't fear harm from it," she laid it all out in a light tone "This merely ensures you exist here and now. that you are present to be destroyed."
The Domain snapped.
The area exploded in green colors, blow after blow of the potential manipulation raining upon Haruhi. But, even as it diminished further with every second of the assault, the golden-hued fireball circling around the girl made sure to burn everything up before it could reach her.
"To define oneself only through one's desire. to ignore reality and grasp the favored outcome. To break the chain of cause and effect and throw all causes away - The Problem of Inconsequence," Haruhi shook her head sadly as she read this from the deep green wing "Tsuruya tried to define Chaos, but, without realizing it, she was only grasping at Freedom.
The wing flashed viciously, acknowledging her, awaiting her words.
"If Sasaki sought Logic, then I sought Chaos. I learned its allure and its pitfalls. I understood it. Accepted it."
She said this calmly, and feared her own words all the way.
One last shuddering breath.
"And all causes are discarded. And all goals are reached. And then what? The future - the first step shifts into the second, effects become new causes. but if we throw away causes away, how can we make another step?" If our truth exists only tomorrow, what right do we have to exist now?" Haruhi's voice was tiny. But it was enough "Problem of Inconsequence Perfected."
The green wing on the Domain's back trembled and collapsed.
And then it burst out through the creature's chest. an instant before a blood-freezing shriek erupted from the parasite's mouth.
Haruhi watched on as part after part of her tormentor's body caved in and fell apart into dust, turned inconcequential and thus denied the right to exist. The wing twitched spasmatically, spreading its poison - once a readily accepted defense, now more akin to the barrel of a loaded gun.
The Domain gritted its teeth to suppress further screams of pain. Already its powers rushed in to revert the wounds icurred, aided in this task by the azure radiance of Sasaki's memento as it strived to protect the truth of existence until the very end.
The Domain reared its face at Haruhi, its expression that of anguish, eyes desperate and searching for salvation, as if it could convey emotions equally well through thos borrowed body body as it would through one of its own.
And then it smiled.
Haruhi glanced breifly at the source of its relief - the flame of her awareness, now reduced to a single spark. the Domain had collapsed to its knees , suspended by azure threads, but it no longer shook in pain, as if the twin theoretical powers had found a compromise, some state of absolute inaction between existence and nonexistence both could be satisfied with.
"You will fall before us," the mutilated thing wheezed out "and we will have all!"
Haruhi pitied it.
"One day, Logic and Chaos might work together to seize everything," she allowed " But not today."
She dropped to one knee in front of the Domain and reached for its hands.
"Within your right hand, the Law of Logic."
The familiar light filled their joined hands. Haruhi wondered which particular Sasaki of all the possible ones had given birth to that comforting presence. Had she met her in person, before all this happened?
"Within you left hand, the Problem of Inconsequence."
And now, Haruhi's own presence. It felt like like discovering herself anew, a single, definite version of herself.
Haruhi turned to watch Tsuruya's face. Who was this girl? Of the myriad of possible histories, which one was true and had lead the pair up to this point?
Haruhi didn't know which Tsuruya was before her. She just knew the girl had sacrificed everything for freedom. For the human desire of Choice.
"Within those clasped hands-"
If that couldn't justify her actions, nothing would.
"Theory of Nothing."
Everything and nothing. Fanciful names for the two sides of the same coin.
For a second, the Domain, no, Tsuruya, raised her head to give Haruhi a toothy grin, only partly obscured by the falling pitch-dark feathers.
And then she was wiped away from existence. Completely. Meticulously. Every part of her. From every place, every time, every possibility. Instantously. Haruhi fell forward as her support disappeared.
The fireball by her side burned out.
For a moment of silence and calm afterward Haruhi drifted purposelessly in the infinite space. Thinking.
She ran her hand across her foreahead, pretending to wipe off sweat. Her whole arm was black, and the color was spreading further down her body. She partook in nonexistence, and would have to take everything of nothing.
"What made you smile in the end, Tsuruya-san? Or was that the choice you sought, the last one you could make? To laugh and to fly?"
Haruhi looked wistfully at the orange blobs above her.
"Or maybe you expected me to save the world? Even though you knew i would have lost too much to even save myself."
She held her hand in front of her face, watching its contures become blurry, indistinct from the surrounding space.
Her gaze fell to her feet.
It didn't even last a second, but just then, her eyes widened and lips formed an ironic smile, not much different from that of Tsuruya.
And then she too met her end.
AN: ...and then there were none.
Thank you to Theos Amneos, whose insight helped me decide how to present some aspects of this chapter. Also thanks to everybody who made a guess on what was to happen, I promise to get in touch with you before this story is wrapped up.
And now, towards the future?
Preview: He understood. And he kneeled.