Chapter 42: Reality Avatar Final: Though Hope is Found, The Worst Has Yet To Be Seen
…To think that I would be revisiting this scenario, but this time I would be facing it in real life instead of in the world of dreams and nightmares. I thought about things for a moment to make sure that everything matched up correctly. I was on my back, battered and broken with blood having spilled from my body. The black beast was standing above me, drooling in wait to devour me whole. My sword was broken beside me, and the world was collapsing into non-existence. I blinked, the opening and shutting of my eyelids taking five seconds total as I said in my mind "So Mr. Reality was wrong…He wasn't responsible for the game being reset…"
As I crested the Time Stone into the grasp of my left fingers, I cared not about the acidic drool dripping on the ground around me and the lightning bolts tearing apart reality. With a deep breath, I explained to myself what my observations had revealed. "Everything did happen before up until this point…And either I used the Time Stone to restart everything because I didn't believe I could win, or the Time Stone did the job itself to give me a second chance to save everyone. "With the acceptance of your identity, you have taken a major step forward in averting the events that had transpired once before" What the Elemental Overlord's spirit said to me echoed in my mind, reminding me of the hint he gave that proved my observation correct.
"And because Mr. Reality and I were in close proximity with the stone, we retained some memories of the last moments of the game…The dream world…A portal to both the past and the present, is it not?" As I turn and look up at the beast, I am surprised to see it retract its head and leap into the air. With a graceful flight and a turn of its body it returns to the top of the roof where it had been perched once before, caring not about my condition since I was in no state to fight back against him. I released the grip on the Time Stone and let it fall back onto the ground beside me. With a weak twist of the head I saw the blood that was dripping between my fingers like miniature streams, which made me wonder just how thick the puddle was below my body.
"How can I even still be alive?" I asked myself as I closed my eyelids and let out a melancholy release of air through my nostrils. The moment I do so though, I cough and hack up blood through the mouth. Some of it lands on my shirt, and the rest of it drips across my flattened chin. "Heh, not like it matters much…I'll either die here or be wiped from existence…Either way, this battle has ended in failure…" Despite how depressing this all sounded, my tone was rather calm and accepting. But after a few more seconds of thinking, I turned my head with all of my might and looked at the Time Stone, struggling to push my hand forward in order to grab it once more.
"Perhaps…Perhaps it would be for the best if I started the game over again…Hope that more memories will reverberate through those dreams and make me realize that this scenario could all be avoided…" As I began to seriously consider going through with this plan of mine, my hand froze in place and limped down onto the pool of blood. "…No…I can't do it." To go through with it would be hypocritical, especially after the thoughts I expressed on why Mr. Reality resetting things would be morally wrong. "Everyone having to suffer all over again…Just because of an assumption that things will go right the next time?"
I scowled at my own stupidity, laughing calmly at myself as I tried to lift my head up with all of my might and closed my eyelids tightly, thinking as a warm sensation passed through my chest "What kind of person was I in the last cycle if I so willingly restarted things? …I'm sorry, but I'm not going to do it again right now…" With a push that defied the broken confines of my body, I bended my elbows against the ground and started to lift myself up. The strain on my muscles was enormous, and I could literally feel the tendons tearing apart in the upper part of my arms as I continued to press my weight down on top of the elbows. I flinched, but continued pressing on against the pain even if it would kill me to do so.
"I have too much to fight for…" I lifted my head up halfway, glaring into the darkened sky and seeing reflections of Driad, Mario and Luigi's smiling faces beaming down upon me as I grit my teeth and my left eyelid shut halfway. A cold sweat dripped down my face as those images faded away, and I once again said out loud "People have died for me to reach this point in time once more…" I thrust my head forward in one hard motion, seeing the front of the citadel's command room in front of me as the Master and Toadsworth's faces are implanted against the wall, their eyelids sealed tight to represent their fallen bodies. I curled my fingers into the shape of a fist and lightly pounded the ground to provide me with some support as my back was pulled straight up and my head leaned forward with a cough of blood breaking through my agape mouth.
As a couple drops of sweat trickled around the rim of my lips I took in some air and released heavy breaths. My heart was beating fast as it was barely able to keep the blood flowing, but I cared not about what my body was feeling. It was what my soul was saying that fueled my decision here, and I was never going to betray it until the day it was obliterated from existence. With my left hand clenched against my chest, I bended my knees upward and began to work on standing up as I swung my right hand out beside me and reached for the handle of my broken sword.
"I don't need it to be complete to keep on fighting…My main weapon has always been my indomitable spirit fueled by the promises I have sworn to keep." As I picked the broken handle up, a warm wind begins to pass around my body, heralding in a circular, glowing white gust that swings from the center of my backside to the front of my body to create a perfect ring of energy below my body. I focus not on the light as I begin to stand up, my body somehow managing to keep my weight from forcing me onto my back once more. I let out a light grunt as I kneel forward and keep myself balanced with my broke sword swung out at my side and the wings on my back laying limply towards the ground.
"S-So what if I'm in no condition to win? I'm not taking the easy way out of this fight by restarting things from the beginning…Even if my body crumbles, I'll keep my soul planted in this world and continue fighting! I will not pass away until I have no more promises to keep! This is how I have chosen to live, and that is why I will continue to defy you even as your tear away at this planet's existence, monster!" As I fiercely spoke with bravado towards the beast, the ring below my feet glowed ever brighter, and from afar I heard the echoes of a calming voice saying to me "You have been deemed worthy…Phoenix of Rejuvenation…" Upon hearing this voice my body freezes entirely in place as it is engulfed by the rising gust of light around me. I do not react to the sudden sensation of warmth and renewal that fills me to the very last inch of my soul with anything more than a solemn sealing of my eyelids and a straightening of my own body.
The process is swift, and is I undergo it I feel the weight of my own body melting away into nothingness as a tender sensation slips underneath my right fingers. A new triggers is melded onto the handle of my blade, its glowing form pushing my fingers upward slowly until it fully solidifies. By that point the gust of light departs in multiple directions, leaving my body floating a couple of inches off of the ground with a thin ring of light surrounding me on the ground. I feel strangely renewed, as if I had never been harmed at all by the beast. My body was still covered in light in various places, but it faded away and was replaced with a new set of clothes.
It was a holy warriors garb, with the first thing my eyes went towards being the samurai's chest plate with a mixture of white and black steel built into the structure. The plate was kept on by two metal bands draped over my shoulders, and as I looked up at them I felt something rather fuzzy rubbing against the skin as I moved. It was a beautiful white robe that was tucked underneath the armor and continued out underneath it, only both sides split off halfway at the point below my waist and stretched out beside my hips. My sleeves were kept in place by two metal gauntlets. The part of the gauntlets that were wrapped around the lower part of the my arms was decorated with archaic golden runes on top of a sapphire plate, and those lead into a curved, triangular point above the backside of my hands. Around my waist is a thick, brown leather belt with seven miniatures diamonds encrusted in the center of the same amount of golden rings. All of those rings are kept around the belt by multiple red strings. My pants were made of pure white silk, but instead of having two legs it was one rounded cloth that was merely split at the center in front of me up to the point of my knees. My feet were kept protected by pristine, silver grieves that rode up my leg until they reached the underside of my knees. My sword, which I had long since been familiar with, had changed forms to that of a thickened katana made entirely out of silver diamonds that was still the length of my whole body's height. As I held the blade out horizontally, I looked at the handle and saw that a golden crescent had been placed between the top of my finger and the bottom of the blade, and it curled down until the end point reached below my grip. After seeing my own reflection in the blade, I noticed that my hair remained the same while my eyes had become a ghostly grey color.
With my new form examined in nearly all of its glory, I realized that there was only one thing missing from my appearance. I did not need to turn my head around and look at it though, for all it took was a simple whim to get the feathery, white angelic wings that have now been attached to my back to lift up and spread out wide. A holy glow is released from my entire body, one that is both thin yet bright. As I take my sword down to be held beside my right hip, a holster is suddenly drawn from the light in order to give me something to put and draw the sword from. With the clink of diamond coming from my blade being put away, I lifted my eyebrows in surprise and yet at the same time smile at the convenience of the holster.
I close my eyelids and slowly turn my head back forward, thinking to myself "So that glowing light in the citadel was an energy reserve…" As I thrust my eyelids open and kept my hand rested against the front of my sword's handles and slanted my eyebrows towards the nose, I look up at the beast as it roars upon noticing my renewed body. It was furious at my return, and seemed to take great offense towards my new form as it quickly summoned forth its wings and took flight off of its pedestal. With a light smirk I smoothly moved my fingers towards the handle of my sword and lightly pulled it from the holster. "Whoever said I was worthy of this…Don't worry, I won't let anyone down now!"
With a brave declaration I pulled my body back and got into a samurai's stance, folding my wings together as the beast neared closer. Merely inches away from my face, I leaped into the air as a flash of light, dragging my sword across the air like a gigantic cleaver as the beast stomps on the ground where I once stood and a streak left behind by my sudden flight cuts across the front of his body. As I cut off my own flight suddenly mid-air and spin myself around, the streak disappears and a massive gash is cut through the beast's skin diagonally, light being flushed into the open wound for a few seconds and causing the head to rear up and roar in pain before a green ooze that was likely his blood gushed out of his body and dripped onto the ground.
As the wound was slowly healed up by flesh growing back one molecule at a time, the beast flipped his body around and dismembered its own facial features before it rips its mouth up wide with acidic saliva dripping from his many teeth and he lets out another roar similar to the one that broke my mind once before. With a calm, vertical defensive stance in front of my body I met the tearing of reality with a shield of holy light. As the tear stopped at the front of my mighty shield I break through my own defense by twisting my blade diagonally and swinging it upward towards my head in one fell swipe. As I cut through the tear the power of light flows through the edges and creates a blinding flash through the tear itself, and in a matter of seconds the destroyed space is renewed without any signs of deterioration in the first place.
The beast swings around, slamming its tail against the ground to crack it before it leaps up towards me and opens its mouth up wide ready to blast me with a powerful spread of energy. As the red glow climaxes at the back of his mouth I take my sword and lash it out in front of me horizontally, dragging the palm of my left hand across the blade to transfer light across it. With a few rapid swings after that, I send wave after wave of pure crescent light into the mouth, each one breaking through a different part of the red and black energy sphere and shrinking its form until cracks appear in the surface due to an overload of light energy. The resulting burst hits the roof of the beast's mouth and makes him recoil backwards while roaring in pain.
While his body has been thrust back mid-air, I take my sword and hold it in both hands, bringing the blade's handle beside my right shoulder as I nod once and make the tip of the blade glow with a magnificent, luminescent sparkle. With a lunge of my body I fly forward through the air with my wings alongside my figure, taking my blade towards the vulnerable ghastly gut of the monster and puncturing straight into the center of it. A hole twelve times the size of the glow is immediately burned through the hollow flesh, and the skeletal hands that plagued me once before try in futility to grab me and bring me into their body only for them to disintegrate into nothingness the moment they come in contact with my pale aura.
With an opening provided in the body, I holster my sword momentarily after a quick spin mid-air, and brandish my arm horizontally in front of my chest. With the tip of my gauntlet being fueled by the energies of my illuminated soul, I slant my eyebrows and peer into the gut as it slowly regenerates, and upon finding pure red darkness seeping through the cracks in the swarm of skeletal hands I hold my gauntlet out in front of me and brace the arm by wrapping my left hand around the elbow. With a single cock of the arm to make sure it was in position I fire a thin stream of energy through the innards of the beast.
Everything between the front of me and the backside of the beast is sliced through with incredible ease, and the aura of light surrounding my attack melts a large gap through the skeletal hands until it reaches the unholy, beating heart of the beast and overfills it with the purity of my energy. Much like the energy attack I stopped earlier, the heart begins to crumble under the influence of the light that broke through it for a span of three seconds. As my attack cuts through the back skin of the beast like a sudden bullet that disperses into nothingness, I get a clear look at the decaying heart as the beast falls backwards through the air.
The moment I tilt my head downwards to keep following it while lowering my gauntlet down in front of my waist, the heart collapses in a fiery explosion of darkness that incinerates all the ghoulish hands and covers the remainder of the beast's body in a hollow, black fire. The head remains untouched by the flames, but the eyes curl backwards into the skull as the creature finally falls to the ground with such force that it was any wonder that the crater it made didn't collapse under the beast's weight and send him tumbling into the deepest parts of the citadel. With the mouth agape and its acidic tongue laying on top of the upper row of teeth, I presumed the beast to have been finished off. At the very least, in any other form I would have immediately drawn that conclusion. But with my body imbued with the full purity of light's embrace, I could now see traces of darkness that no one else could perceive, and from a quick glance at the beast's head and burning body I noticed activity in the darkness.
With my body once again on-guard and the flames in the beast's now hollow gut beginning to quiver, I watched carefully as those black flames spread out from within, moving across the skin and spreading out along specific points to fill in where the neck and limbs should be until the claws began to twitch and the skin on the head begins to melt away in the form of an unholy, pitch black ooze that forms a gruesome puddle below the whole body. Without warning and a flash of reality rupturing lightning, the beast had flipped back around and was now on its feet, its body filled to the brim with an aura of black flames as the head had now been replaced with a gigantic, flesh-less decaying skull and the hollow gut housed the spiraling spirits of the damned.
The beast was nothing more than a rotting, berserk embodiment who only desired to finish carrying out the erasure of this planet's existence. It didn't have much energy left within him, but he planned to use what little he did have to remove the only threat to its power from the world for good. With a roar the beast leapt into the air with its flaming aura blowing behind him. It appeared in front of me ready to clamp its boney teeth against my flesh, only for a quick sprint to the right to get me out of the way as it lurched its jaws to the side under the assumption that it had devoured me.
While it was frozen in place and the edges of its aura tried to lash out against me, I drew my sword once more and cut through the black flames, cleaving a divide through them and giving me an opening near the eye socket of the skull. I charge forth, the darkness brushing against my wings as they close in until I enter the head itself. From there I dash around back and forth, rebounding from side to side as I quickly cut across the surface of the bones and melt away any of the darkness that happens to dip close to my glowing figure. After doing whatever damage I could, the beast suddenly jerks its head upward while I'm still inside, flinging me quickly towards the hollow backside and back outside where my eyes catch a glimpse of the beast unfurling its six wings with the tips lacing themselves with pulsating orbs of collapsing darkness.
Once they have compacted into a spherical form many lasers are sent my way, attempting to bombard me as I flip around and fly across the backside of the beast with my sword by my side. I had no time to calculate where the projectiles were going to land mid-flight, so a proper defense could not be mounted. My best bet was to slip across the top of the dark aura and make it past the tail before I launched my next attack. However, the wings creased towards the center of the back, taking me entirely off-guard as they fell down ready to press me against the scaly skin of the beast.
Though considering how thin the membranes were, all it took was a short rise and a swing of my blade to cleave through the vein-y fibers and make it high above the beast. Now high above the air, I crossed my arms in front of my chest and held the blade of my sword out to the right, grabbing near the tip with my left hand and yelling out with great vigor "Time for you to stay down!" In a span of time incalculable to the mighty berserker, the turn of its head was met with a gigantic, thin glowing cross slamming down upon the dark flames that composed its neck. Within seconds the beast was pinned to the ground, unable to break free no matter how much it roared and struggled. With a few more seconds of concentration I pinned down the claws against the ground as well, the limbs being spread out by the crosses.
The darkness is slowly seeped out of the aura and into the crosses, the glowing symbols losing none of their magnificence as I drain the beast of every last ounce of its remaining power. Eventually, the roars whittle down to but a tired whimper and the beast's head finally collapses against the ground. I remove the crosses, certain this time that I had beaten the beast. Yet as the crosses vanished I looked up into the sky, and was puzzled by the sight of the lightning bolts still tearing apart what little remained of the planet's surface. "This can't be…I know the beast is dead for good this time, so why isn't the destruction stopping?"
I looked down at the aforementioned beast and as I squinted my eyelids together I watched as the individual molecules that composed its being began to rise up towards the dark clouds, which split open to allow them to pass on through. It was then that my eyes rose up in horror and I realized the only possible conclusion. "That was far too easy…Which means that wasn't the real threat, but merely an avatar of it…Whatever is threatening to tear Plit away from existence, its looming above the planet…I have to take the fight to it now, before its-" As I spoke to myself, I am suddenly interrupted by a great tremor that shakes apart both the air and the planet to its very core.
The lightning bolts come to an end while the clouds disintegrate from existence, and the erasure of the planet speeds up immensely as within seconds what little remained of Toad Town is wiped away. As I float with my head turned towards the destruction, the rumble of the air is broken by the disoriented voice of Alpha. "…Mew, I'm sorry…" He had succumbed to despair, his voice dripping with solemn depression as he quietly talks to me. I didn't say anything back to him, as I my slowly beating heart froze me in place upon hearing the panicked cries in the background of his communication.
"…We…We did everything we could. But the erasure of our planet has become too widespread, and all of us are isolated on a slowly deteriorating moutainside with no hope of escape…I know you tried your hardest to save us, but…Its over…We've all lost our planet, and that is something we have to accept…But Mew, I don't want us to go away without fulfilling all of our purposes, especially since our spirits will never be able to linger in the mortal plane ever again…So before I am erased from existence, I just want to say that I'm sorry…I'm so very sorry that I failed both you and Alex…Because above all else, I was hoping I could have been your fath-"
…That's all I hear from him. As much as he talked about leaving existence with no regrets, Alpha wasn't even able to finish his sentence before being wiped clean from the planet along with the rest of the heroes and the people they wished to protect… "But…You are wrong Alpha…" I gain control of my emotions as a fervent tear trickles down my left and right cheeks. I thrust my head towards the sky as the way to space above is opened via the parting clouds. There was something massive lying in wait for me to combat it, and as I clenched my left hand while keeping my rage from breaking through I said to myself "If my assumption is correct, there is still a way to fix everything…" With no other words to speak due to no one being around to hear them, I fly up towards space for the final battle…As Plit vanished out of existence around me…
Next Time: The Leviathan that Ends Al